“I think so. The building it was in got torn down while I was away at school.”
He smiled. “Once I’d made the offer to the kids, I thought I was out of my mind. But something of Abby must already have reached me without my knowing it. The kids were thrilled, and I was able to point out a few celebrities to them. Abby talked intelligently while we ate, understanding what I was trying to do with my role, but not fawning over me. I asked for her phone number, and she was pleased and blushed, though I never expected I’d call her. She came to the play again, this time in the evening, and sent a note backstage. So I asked her out to supper and we talked away half the night. After that, I saw her every week or so, all winter. She had a kind of innate dignity. She still has, though it’s deeper now. I nearly destroyed her, but there’s something in Abby that’s indestructible.” He looked across the water in the direction in which Alice and Ben had gone in the dinghy. “Alice has that quality, too. It doesn’t come free. But it’s worth it, Emma. It’s what I want for you. I can see it in you, too.”
Emma looked down at her feet in worn, stained sneakers. “Abby and Bahama?”
“Loved each other from the start,” David said. “I hurt my parents when I divorced Abby. But they remained friends. It was Bahama who suggested that I ask Abby to be your godmother. That was healing, for all of us.”
Still looking at the grass stains on her sneakers, Emma said, “But Myrlo—”
“You don’t understand Myrlo, do you?” David asked wryly. “Neither do I.”
No, Emma did not understand Myrlo, the wife who followed Abby. “You met Myrlo in a play when you were still—” She broke off.
“Still married to Abby. Yes. I would leave Abby, and our twins, and death, because I knew our babies were dying long before either Abby or I accepted it, and went to the theater, and there was Myrlo and life. How greedy I was for life.” He let out a long, slow breath. “Abby and I might have worked through everything if Myrlo hadn’t become pregnant. She told me she was taking precautions and I believed her. Maybe she was. I wasn’t. I am ashamed, bitterly ashamed, of what I did to Abby. The babies terrified me. Tiny, scrawny, wailing all night long until I thought my eardrums would be pierced by that feeble, constant crying. I didn’t know how to be a father to those fragile creatures, or a husband to a mother who was in agony.”
“Where was Bahama?” Emma asked.
“My parents were in England for a year. But I was a grown man. I should not have needed my mother—or anybody else—to teach me fidelity and courage. Emma, this is not a conversation I should be having with you.”
Emma took the cup from him. “If you can talk about it, Papa, it helps me to understand.”
David hitched himself up slightly on the pillows, reaching out toward Emma as she put the cup down on the shelf. “There’s a lot to explain, isn’t there? Myrlo wasn’t—isn’t—a bad woman. Greedy, yes. But so am I. And with less excuse. She was shallow. Never read a book. Or a newspaper. What went on in the world had little relevance for her. It wasn’t really her fault. Her mother was a tart. Myrlo didn’t even know who her father was. But she wanted to make something of herself. Myrlo manipulated me by getting pregnant, and I knew I was being manipulated, but I didn’t have the strength to say bugger off, your trick isn’t going to work. I was a step on the ladder. We never loved each other. Not love. But we had Billy. Unlike Abby’s and my twins, he was healthy. My first child to live. My first grown child to die.” Tears slid down his cheeks. “We won’t talk about Billy. There’s too much pain, for all of us.”
Emma took David’s empty cup and started toward the steps. “I’m just going to rinse this out. I’ll be right back.”
“Emma—I’m sorry—” His voice drifted after her.
She rinsed and dried the cup, put it away, and returned to the pilothouse. Through the windows she could see the dinghy returning to the Portia, Ben at the oars. “Ben and Alice are back,” she said.
“Good. That you and Alice are friends is a great joy to me.”
Emma sat on the revolving chair, listening as the rowboat bumped gently against the solid bulk of the Portia. In a moment Alice came to the pilothouse and sat on the side of the bunk, taking David’s hand.
“I’ve been telling Emma about Myrlo, my third wife.” David’s voice was strained. “Our marriage was a bust. Billy was all that kept us together. He was beautiful, and Myrlo liked showing him off, though she didn’t enjoy caring for him, so we had a sort of nanny. He didn’t get the loving attention he should have had from his mother any more than you did, Emma. Or from me.”
“Dave, you’re tired,” Alice interrupted. “Enough for tonight.”
“Enough. Too much is enough. Emma, I’m—did I upset you?”
“You’re upsetting yourself,” Alice said. “Em, will you help Ben with the dinghy?”
“Sure.” She rose.
“Come back and say good night to me,” David called after her.
“I will, Papa.”
While they were getting ready for bed in the cabin under the pilothouse, Alice said, “I think Dave needs to do this, go over the past, come to terms with it.”
“He’s got a lot to come to terms with.” Emma pulled on a flannel nightgown.
“Did he upset you?”
“Yes.”
“Bear with me,” David said the next night. “Meredith. Abby. Myrlo. Then Marical. I saw her picture in Vogue and fell in love with her then and there. Myrlo was already pleasuring herself with another actor, withholding what she called her favors from me as a way of punishing me. For what, I don’t know, because I was trying in my own way to be a good husband. Am I rewriting again? trying to let myself off the hook? I used to look at pictures of Marical, who was one of the most photographed models of the year, and dream lovely dreams about her, not necessarily erotic, just beautiful. She had that effect. It was the secret of her success. And she seemed not even to realize it. It never went to her head.”
Alice was sitting on a stool near David’s head. “But how did you meet her?”
“Through a mutual friend. He arranged it, after the theater. Marical had not liked the play; she thought it was shocking. But she liked me, and the way I played down the more obvious bad taste. It wasn’t, for its day, as bad as Marical thought, or I wouldn’t have done it. Despite the fact that the sex was pretty overt, it was not gratuitous. We talked and I invited her to go to Carnegie Hall to the Bach B minor Mass. It was all very chaste. She knew I was married to Myrlo. But by then Myrlo had met an insurance executive who could give her diamonds and servants and an apartment on Park Avenue. She wanted the divorce, and had lawyers who were able to facilitate things by basing the divorce on adultery. Mine. Fortunately, Marical’s name was never mentioned, and there had certainly been no adultery—except mine and Myrlo’s, and nobody seemed to remember that. However, I let it go. I wanted out as badly as Myrlo did.
“When I married Marical, I thought the fairy tale had really come to pass and that we’d live happily ever after. We almost did. Our children were healthy and beautiful. Etienne. Everard. Adair. And finally our little girl, Chantal. I had everything any man could want. We were a gorgeous couple. Wherever we went, our picture was taken, people stared, admired. We were happy. Marical did not enjoy the stresses that are an intrinsic part of a model’s life, and she loved being a mother. My career was going well. And then I blew it. Marical had taken the children up to Maine, out of the summer heat. I met Harriet, my ballerina, all cool and beautiful as an ice princess, and I was simply curious, wanting to know if there was flame under the ice. Her dancing was pure and perfect and I wanted to know what fired it. We had a one-night stand. A flicker. That should have been it, would have been it, except that Harriet got pregnant. She offered to have an abortion, but we both felt—reasonably or not—that a life had been started because of our impetuousness and we had a responsibility toward that life.
“Harriet was quite willing to go ahead and have the baby and bring it up her
self, and in a sense she did, because she didn’t want to be married, to be tied down to a husband. But I told Marical. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, I don’t know, but I told her, confessed, and she insisted that we at least legitimize Jarvis, and then, even after Harriet and I separated, Marical would not have me back. I can’t blame her, and yet her punishing me hurt all of us.”
Ben came up the steps to the pilothouse and sat on the top one, elbows on knees, listening.
“That’s it, I thought,” David said. “Then I went to Hollywood and met Elizabeth. Your mother, Emma. Marrying was a habit with me, a bad habit. We played well together, and Elizabeth knew all the right people, and we were stars. Jealousy is a terrible thing. She was good—oh, Elizabeth is a good actress, but I got better reviews. Most of the time. The green-eyed monster stalked back and forth between us. And ultimately split us. I came home to New York, to you and Bahama, Emma, and this time I was certain I would never marry again. It took ten years before I fell into the old pattern of self-indulgence and lust. Edith was a disaster.”
“Tomorrow,” Ben said, as though not changing the subject, “I’ll pull up anchor early and we’ll head for Bella Bella.”
“Bella Bella and Abby.” Suddenly David looked anxious. “Emma—”
“Yes, Papa?”
“It is tomorrow that Abby is coming?”
“Tomorrow.”
Ben pointed to a framed pencil sketch of two loons which Abby had drawn many years earlier.
“She’s not a great artist,” David said, “and she knows it, but she’s a good one. And a great person. Only a great person could have forgiven me, could have become friends once again. We didn’t see each other until after you were born, Emma. She came to New York, where she had an opening. It went quite well, and I saw the reviews in the papers. I’d just come back from Hollywood, knowing my marriage to your mother was a mistake, and I went to the gallery to see Abby’s paintings, and she was there. And I loved her. It wasn’t a romance this time. I may be an incurable romantic, but I knew that with Abby what I needed, and what I hoped she needed, was friendship. It was—am I repeating? Sorry.”
Yes, Abby had always been a warm and loving part of Emma’s life, and it did not seem strange to her that her godmother was coming to the Portia. “I’ve made up the bed in the lower cabin for Abby,” Emma said. It was the only real bed on the Portia; the rest were bunks. Emma thought of her godmother as being wise, but Abby had been young and untried when she married David Wheaton. Only Alice, Emma thought, had been fully mature at the time of marriage, an experienced physician and a woman who had long since come to terms with her own humanness and that of those she loved. Alice’s beauty was of the spirit, and this had attracted David, rather than what Bahama had called ‘youth and pulchritude.’ Alice and Bahama would have loved each other, Emma thought.
Abby Wheaton was good about staying in touch with her godchild. Even during the years when Abby was married to a Yugoslavian count and was living in France, she managed to spend a couple of weeks each year with Emma. The marriage was a happy one, and ended with the count’s death. Abby always seemed to bring with her a sense of proportion, and that was something Emma badly needed.
This was the first full summer she had spent on the Portia. When she was a child, Bahama had taken her to Seattle for as much of the summer vacation as possible, sent her to camp, tried to keep her life normal. Emma’s times on the boat were a few days between school and camp.
Once she was grown and living on her own, Emma had little free time to make the long journey to the West Coast. When a play closed, Emma seldom knew when or what her next job was going to be, so she stayed close to the phone: if an agent or producer called and she was not there, the next person on the list would get the call.
Occasionally, when she had a secure job in summer stock ahead of her, she would plan a few days on the Portia, away from the phone, away from the stresses of the city. This became particularly important after her father married Alice and Ben took over the running of the boat. Alice was far more Emma’s friend than she was another of her father’s wives.
What would happen to the Portia? Emma blinked tears away quickly so that her father would not see them.
But he did. “Don’t weep for me, my Em.” His smile was gentle. “This is simply part of the journey that comes to us all.”
Bahama
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward …
But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul’s servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee. Let our lord now command thy servants … to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.
And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand, so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.
I SAMUEL 16:13–16, 23
At least once a year Bahama took Emma on the overnight train to Georgia to visit her maternal grandfather. Sometimes Bahama stayed for a few days and then left Emma, returning later to take her back to New York. Emma loved her visits to Georgia, the warmer winter climate, the great Spanish-moss-hung oak trees, the food, hominy with every meal, spoon bread, black-eyed peas.
The year Emma was ten, when she returned to New York after a month-long visit with Grandpa Bowman, she felt that something was different about her father, that somehow he was not entirely there, and she was not sure where he was. She sat up in bed and thought,—He’ll be back.
Bahama did not say anything, but she, too, seemed distant.
‘What’s wrong?’ Emma asked.
‘Life changes,’ Bahama said, unwontedly cryptic. ‘Things don’t stay the same, my Em.’
Emma turned to Marical’s children, the brothers and sister who took her into their lives, loved her, advised her, never made her feel plain in comparison to their beauty; they were lean and long of limb, with apricot-colored skin, straight, silky black hair, and large, luminous eyes. They called their father Papa, the French way.
Chantal was a loving older sister who treated Emma like a favorite doll. Etienne and Everard played with her, read to her. Adair, the youngest of the three brothers, she worshipped. Adair looked like a young god; he shone like burnished copper, drawing people to his light. In Emma’s eyes he could do no wrong. Adair was her protector, her St. George who would slay any dragon that threatened her.
Jarvis was a dearly loved if definitely bossy older brother. Emma could not imagine being without Jarvis, who spent more time with Marical and her children than he did with his mother, Harriet. It was Jarvis who ended up being the producer of David Wheaton’s King Lear.
Harriet and David were from different worlds. Harriet was not interested in the theater. David enjoyed ballet but did not see it as an entire way of life. Their marriage was brief, their parting amicable.
‘Why didn’t Papa go back to Marical?’ Emma had asked Adair when she was old enough to wonder about such things.
He smiled ruefully. ‘She wouldn’t have him, little sister. Maman has some very strict ideas.’
‘Don’t you?’ Emma asked.
Adair had sighed. ‘Yes, I do. But I also believe in forgiveness.’ Then he had laughed. ‘However, if Maman had gone back to our father, you would never have been born.’
‘My mother was another mistake, like Harriet, and so was I.’
‘No, no.’ Adair had reached for Emma’s hand. ‘You were wanted, never forget that.’
‘Who wanted me?’ Emma asked bluntly.
Adair replied thoughtfully, I think both your parents wanted you, but when things didn’t work out between them, you would have slipped through the cracks if it hadn’t been for Bahama. Bless Bahama, she’s a wonderfu
l grandmother to us all.’
It happened to many children, Emma knew. It had happened to some of the children of divorce in her school. She herself felt no want of love, not only from Bahama and her father, but from Marical, and from Abby on her annual visits. Any feeling of sadness she had because of her mother’s disregard was unconscious until her father married Edith when Emma was ten. For ten years Emma had had her father and Bahama as the center of her universe. Somehow it had never occurred to the child that David Wheaton would marry again.
One day after school she came home to find Edith in the living room, drinking a dry martini.
Her father introduced them, a little hesitantly, and told Emma that Edith was going to be her new mother. Edith, sophisticated, elegant, looked Emma up and down appraisingly. Her look said, ‘She’s not beautiful.’
David said, ‘She’s like Duse.’
Edith was a lawyer with a big Wall Street firm. ‘Who?’
‘Eleonora Duse, the great, the sublime actress.’
Emma stood and looked back at Edith. Edith was beautiful. Where was Bahama?
It soon became apparent that Edith’s presence was going to be Bahama’s banishment. Edith made it quite clear that she planned to be mistress of David Wheaton’s house, and that it was going to be her house. She moved David—and Emma—from the apartment which had been Emma’s home all her life, across town to a much larger apartment on Riverside Drive, with a magnificent view of the Hudson River. Bahama went off to do some long-deferred traveling with a group of friends.
Edith was not particularly pleased to see Emma until after the baby, Inez, was born and Edith discovered that Emma was a convenient baby-sitter during the nurse’s time off. Emma adored the baby. She was embarrassed by Edith. Edith purred like a cat when she was with David, and like a cat twined herself about him. She gave dinner parties for important clients of her law firm; there was a cook in the kitchen, and a maid, as well as Inez’s nurse.
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