by Belva Plain
“Yes. More’s the pity.”
“I’m very happy with my choice. I’m sorry if you’re not.”
His father sighed and looked down at the purring cat in his lap. “I would never dream of trying to impose my will on you.
Please continue, Jeffie. I would like to know how a man working for a small brokerage house in Wrightstown becomes the owner of a multimillion-dollar corporation that sells natural gas and electricity.”
Not for the first time in his life, Jeff realized that he should never underestimate his father. Dad liked to say that he was a man of the mind with no interest in worldly affairs, but the question he’d just asked was astute. And the answer was that there had been a series of mergers, some of which were frankly questionable, followed by takeovers of small companies by larger holding companies that had skated perilously close to violating several FTC regulations, although the deals had not been investigated, thanks to some good friends in high places. And when all the smoke cleared, Jeff had emerged as the CEO of the newly formed and branded company called JeffSon. He had offices in New York and Texas, as well as the glossy two floors he and his company occupied in The Amber. He kept his base in Wrightstown mostly for sentimental reasons. And because being in such an out-of-the-way place, and forcing other businessmen to come to his turf, was a demonstration of his power.
“The ways in which companies acquire assets are very complicated, Dad. I started with a small natural gas company in the Midwest and merged it with a similar one in Texas. We used the collateral from that new entity to leverage the acquisition of other similar assets in the natural gas industry, and eventually we branched out into the area of electricity.”
“And what do you know about these commodities you sell?”
“I don’t sell them, exactly; I distribute them. And I don’t have to know the details about the power plants or the gas companies. I hire people for that.”
“Then what do you do?”
“I oversee the financial end, as well as the marketing and the legal issues, and of course I decide where and how we should expand next.”
“Expand? Aren’t you big enough, Jeffie?”
That was another good question; one that both scared and excited Jeff. Because while it sounded fine to say that he didn’t need to know the details of the businesses he was managing, the truth was, when you were flying blind you could make mistakes. But it was Jeff ’s belief that you had to fly blind at times in order to grow, and you had to grow in order to survive. If you lost your nerve and stopped growing, the sharks in the water around you would smell blood and you would find yourself the target of the same kind of financial attacks that you yourself had launched when you were on your way up. Besides, Jeff wanted his company to grow; he wanted to be the CEO of the biggest and the best. People admired him and he liked it. When you came from a home where the standards for excellence were Plato, Shakespeare, and Mozart it was a heady feeling to find yourself hailed as a wunderkind. So it was worth it to fly blind and risk falling.
“There’s no such thing as being too big,” he told his father cheerfully. “But I came here to talk about you. Now, since Shady Manor is out, I’m assuming you’ll move to Wrights town. We can probably get rid of this house in a couple of months if we price it right, and you and Sammy can stay with me until I have your new place built.”
“You know, son, I think I’d rather stay put” was the infuriating reply.
“Why, for Chrissakes?” Jeff exploded. “Why do you want to live in an old dump with a leaking roof in a lousy neighborhood when you could have the best of everything?” But even as he said the words he knew what his father’s mawkish answer would be. I have the best of everything right here. And then he’d go on with some kind of garbage about materialism and how it corroded the mind. But his father surprised him.
“I’m afraid I don’t trust the business you’re in, Jeffie,” he said briskly. “I know I’m not an expert in such things, but it all sounds a little too much like an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme for my taste.” He looked around his den. “I’ve paid off the mortgage on this place, and the taxes are low. I can manage here on my pension. I’d rather not take any chances.”
And that was that. Jeff argued that his father’s lack of faith in him was insulting; he pointed out that JeffSon was being hailed in financial circles as one of the most exciting new companies of the year; and he said that his father was just being stubborn. Nothing moved the old man.
“At least let me pay to get your damn roof fixed!” Jeff finally said. “And I’m going to hire a housekeeper to cook for you and to clean up after you.”
His father bowed his head and thanked him. Then he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Jeffie. I know you meant well. But I’m too old to gamble.”
* * *
His father walked him to his car. When Jeff had bought the Lamborghini he’d debated between red and a neon yellow and finally settled on the yellow, which now looked garish in this drab neighborhood. “Oh, my,” said his father when he caught sight of the car. “Is that yours?”
“Yes.” Even to his own ears, Jeff sounded like a sulky child.
“It certainly is . . . splashy,” said his father. Then instead of his usual handshake, he enveloped his son in an awkward hug. “Beware of Faustian bargains, Jeffie,” he said.
* * *
NPR was playing Verdi’s Requiem. The stately lament suited Jeff ’s mood, and as he drove back to Wrightstown alongside the winding river, he turned up the volume on his car radio. The visit with his father had, as such visits often did, brought to the surface thoughts that Jeff usually tried to keep buried. Contrary to what he’d told his father, Jeff had been ambivalent about his choice to drop his beloved philosophy courses and go into business administration when he was in college. And the ambivalence had gotten worse when he’d begun working. The daily routine of buying and selling stocks and bonds, the endless phone calls to clients and prospective clients bored him until he felt he couldn’t bear it another second. He lost track of the number of times he’d decided that he was going to quit, get his doctorate, and spend the rest of his life teaching eager young minds about Sophocles and Kant.
But then there would be a phone call from his parents, or worse, he’d go home for a visit, and he would remember once again the stuffy rooms in the dingy little house, and the aged car that—fingers crossed—had to last through one more season. He’d remember the much-dreamed-of trip to Europe that was always postponed for lack of money, the months of scrimping for the annual trek to Boston for one night at the opera or the ballet, and the look of longing on his mother’s face—quickly masked—when a neighbor gave his wife a pair of diamond earrings that Dad could never have afforded. And Jeff would go back to the purgatory of his job, determined to become one of those who never had to think twice about buying opera tickets, or airplane tickets, or diamond earrings.
But even with all of that, when the opportunity to get into the risky business that was now his had been presented to him, he’d been hesitant. In fact, he probably would have passed it up if he hadn’t met that girl at Gwendolyn Wright’s birthday party—the girl whose name he did not know. He thought about her sometimes, the lovely oval face, the ebony hair, and the ruby red mouth, with its remarkably white teeth.
I know what it means to want, she’d said. Get over your doubts. And he had.
The result had been JeffSon. What would that girl say now, he wondered, if he were to find her and tell her that she was responsible for the creation of one of the hottest new businesses in the country? What would she do if he were to take her on a tour of his office high in the sky over Wrights town? Would her extraordinary violet blue eyes shine if he showed her his offices in Texas and New York? Would she gasp with pleasure if he took her for a ride in the purring beast that was his car and showed her the drawings for the home he was going to build? Her energy had been like a life force on that night two years ago, and he could use some of it right now. Maybe she
could erase from his mind the look on his father’s face and the words he’d said.Beware of Faustian bargains, Jeffie.
The Requiem was over, and so was his drive; the river straightened as he reached Wrightstown. He checked the time; it was not quite six. His visit to his father had taken longer than usual. He could go to the hotel where he’d been camping out while he waited for his house to be built, take a shower, order an early room service dinner, and call it a day. Or he could go back to the office and see if that call to Brazil had gone through. He opted for the office and Brazil.
* * *
Jewel was ready to give up. The parking lot attendant had said that Jeff Henry would be back in three hours, so she’d claimed to have a headache, and asked Patsy to give her the rest of the day off. After dawdling around the lobby of Jeff ’s office building for almost two hours, she’d returned to the parking lot with a magazine and sat on one of the concrete benches near the entrance to wait for him to drive in. But after four and a half hours, the man hadn’t shown up. She’d lost half a day’s pay and her left leg had fallen asleep from sitting so long. She stood up, stamped her foot on the ground to get the circulation going, and was starting toward the lot exit when she heard a roar behind her. She turned and saw a yellow car whipping into the garage. But this was not any car; this was the kind of car you dreamed about, the kind of car you would kill to drive just once. She didn’t have words for what she would do to own a car like that.
* * *
Jeff parked in his spot and got out of the Lamborghini. His gray mood had darkened to black, and he was beginning to regret his decision to come back to work. Even if he could get through to Brazil, after all his father’s doubts and warnings he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to conduct delicate negotiations. He really should go to the hotel. But that would be depressing too. He locked the car.
“Hey,” a feminine voice called out. He turned and there in front of him, miraculously and unbelievably, were the oval face, the blue-black hair, the spectacular eyes, and the smile that he’d been thinking about on the way back to Wrightstown.
“What the hell is your name?” he demanded.
“Jewel,” she said. “So, are you rich yet?”
Chapter Twenty
Jewel made Jeff laugh. She was so pure, so unabashed in her pleasure at the things his money could buy. A gold bangle for her wrist, a dress from Sofia’s, a trip to New York in a chartered plane, a night at the Waldorf after seeing the season’s biggest Broadway musical—all of these things filled her with a childlike delight that banished his doubts and made his father’s warning about bargains with the devil seem like nothing more than the fears of a tired old man. When Jeff was with Jewel he was free to enjoy his custom-made suits and shirts, his expensive offices done by the designer of the moment, and his “splashy” sports car. When he said he wanted a yacht Jewel saw nothing wrong in it; when he voiced the wish for a private plane, she thought he should have a fleet of them.
True, she wasn’t interested in the eleventh-century Book of Hours he’d purchased for an enormous sum after weeks of long-distance discussion with a rare book dealer in London, and when they were in Manhattan she preferred to spend her day at a spa instead of accompanying him to the auction where he was bidding on a Matisse. What excited her was knowing that they’d gotten a table at a restaurant where the waiting time was normally six months.
But she was an asset in other ways. Jewel had met most of the men with whom he did business at various dinners and parties and she was a big favorite with them, as well as with their wives and girlfriends. In a couple of cases she was friends with both the wife and the girlfriend, and managed the dual loyalty with a dexterity that was a little unnerving to Jeff, although his male acquaintances saw it differently. “You’ve found yourself a gal who can be friends with both of those women and not tell all she knows? Marry her tomorrow!” said one.
“Jewel is the right name for her,” said another, “because that’s what she is. Beautiful and fun and she’s willing to do anything to please you.”
“She’s sexy as hell,” said a third.
And that last part certainly was true—but then with that body and that face there was no way she could avoid being sexy. When they went to dinner with the married men and their wives she dressed sedately—she told him once she’d learned the hard way to do that around other women. When she and Jeff went out by themselves, she dressed to attract attention, which he didn’t mind since she also made it clear that she only had eyes for him. She was flirtatious with him and so overtly affectionate that it probably would have stunned his friends to know that when he and Jewel stayed at the Waldorf, the separate rooms he booked for them were not just for show. She slept chastely in hers, and he stayed equally chaste in his. Because, irony of irony, jaded and cynical Jeff Henry, who had had women throwing themselves at him since he was in his teens, had fallen for a girl who had announced on their third date that she was saving herself for marriage. It seemed Jeff had been right about her when he’d met her that first night: Jewel Fairchild was full of surprises.
At first he had taken her statement as a challenge, and he had tried to seduce her.
Jewel had wept. “I’m sorry,” she’d sobbed—she was one of the few women he knew who became prettier when she cried; the violet eyes became even more luminous and the porcelain cheeks flushed a lovely pink. “It’s not that I don’t want you, because I do, you must know that.”
He did, or at least, he thought he did. She seemed as urgent as he was when they kissed, and he could have sworn that it was as difficult for her to pull away as it was for him. But she had her standards. And her rules. “Even if it means losing you, and you know I’d die if that happened,” she’d said. “This is the only way I know how to be.”
After the initial surprise, he found it rather charming. For all her seeming worldliness, she had held on to this old-fashioned, romantic notion since childhood. And the truth was, she wasn’t altogether wrong. There was something intensely romantic—and exciting—about holding back. Soon, his desire for her was far more intense than any he could remember feeling before. He began resenting the comments of men who found her so attractive. When one of his acquaintances spoke about Jewel as “a nice piece of arm candy” he was furious.
And yet . . . and yet. He couldn’t seem to make the next move. The one he knew she was waiting for. He couldn’t seem to ask the question that hovered on the tip of his tongue: Will you marry me, Jewel?
When he was alone; when she was not in front of him with her wide smile and her spectacular beauty wiping away all rational thought, he wondered whether he and she really had much in common. He was a reader; she was not. He had graduated from college at the top of his class. She cheerfully said that she’d found it a pain getting through high school. But then he would ask himself how important was it really, to have what is called “learning”? Mere facts can be taught if there is need. He wanted her and he wanted her for keeps—wasn’t that enough? And yet . . . and yet.
He took her to Horaceville to meet his father. And he knew as soon as they walked in the door that it had been a mistake.
“You wouldn’t believe how that Lamborghini drives, Mr. Henry!” Jewel had said as they sat down to have tea in the dark room Jeff ’s mother had called the “drawing room.” “It was better than flying. I’d never flown before Jeff took me to New York. In a private plane no less!” Artless, and unknowing as she was, she didn’t seem to sense the chill that had filled the room. She hadn’t seen Dad’s eyes narrow, hadn’t understood that she was being vulgar. “You must be so proud of Jeff,” she went on.
“I’m afraid I don’t believe in being proud of another man’s accomplishments,” Dad said stiffly. “Jeff is, after all, an adult. I would hardly wish to bask in his reflected glory. Not that I can see anything particularly glorious in the ownership of an automobile.”
“But this isn’t just any automobile!” Jewel protested with her most sparkling smile. “This is a La
mborghini! It cost six figures!”
Dad’s eyes were now slits. “Ah,” he said, “a chariot for the nouveau riche.” He turned to Jeff. “Son, the next time you are in Boston you must take in the new exhibit at the Gardner. A former student of mine writes that it is quite extraordinary.” He turned to Jewel. “Do you like Renoir, Miss Fairchild? Or are you one of those who say his work looks like it came out of a pastry tube?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Jewel said. Then as Jeff tried to think of a way to rescue her, his father launched into a lecture on the Impressionists, only stopping every once in a while to ask Jewel questions which she could not answer. After that he launched into the fields of literature and music, interspersed with more questions. It was an exercise designed to expose Jewel’s ignorance, and there was no way to stop it without embarrassing her. Fortunately she didn’t seem to notice, as she admitted to not knowing who Schopenhauer, Rachmaninoff, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Matisse, and Monet were. She had heard of Jane Austen because of the movies that had been made from Austen’s novels, but she confessed that sitting through films made from old books made her sleepy.
When Jeff suggested that it was time for them to be on their way, Dad didn’t even bother with the ritual of urging them to stay on. Jewel excused herself to powder her nose—a prissy euphemism which won her more narrowed eyes from Dad—and as soon as she was out of the room, Dad began his diatribe. “Jeffie, you cannot be contemplating anything more serious than a fling with that girl. I’ll admit she is beautiful—what we would have called in my day a looker. But I would be amazed to hear that she’s ever read a book that wasn’t one of those ghastly self-help tomes. And as for her taste in music . . . I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone before who didn’t like Mozart. What do the two of you find to talk about? But I suppose the point is that you do not talk. Very well, as I said, have your fun, but for God’s sake don’t tie yourself down. Because someday you will wish to converse with your mate, and for that you will want a woman who is your equal in intellect, education, and breeding. . . .”