“Good-bye, Mr. McKie, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.” George Mitchell’s boyish face pinkened. “And—an honor.”
Alex shook hands. “The pleasure was mine.” Behind Mitchell’s shoulder, he saw Professor Stern wink at him in amusement.
“It’s really nice of you to offer to look at my drawings. Shall I send them to New York, sir, or to your hotel in San Francisco?”
“Since I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be here, why don’t you send them to New York. Professor Stern can give you my address.”
“Very good, that’s what I’ll do. Thanks again, sir, it’s awfully nice of you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Bemused, he watched the professor open the door for young Mitchell and see him out.
When Professor Stern turned back, his mild gray eyes were twinkling. “Mitchell’s never found talking to me an honor,” he noted, leading the way down the hall toward his study. “Martha, don’t do that now—leave it till morning and I’ll help,” he called to his wife as they passed by the archway to the dining room.
Mrs. Stern flapped her hand and resumed clearing the dishes from the table. “Go sit down, the coffee’s almost ready.”
Stern shrugged and kept moving.
In the study, at the professor’s insistence, Alex took the place of honor—a soft, worn leather chair whose back reclined at the touch of a button on the wooden arm rest.
“Brandy?”
“Thanks.”
“What did you think of Mitchell?”
“I liked him. He seems very bright.”
“He is bright, the best student I’ve got this year. He was thrilled when I told him you’d be here— don’t be surprised if he asks you for a reference. He wants to study at the Beaux Arts. Following in the master’s footsteps, don’tcha know.” Alex laughed as he took the glass Stern handed him. The professor sat down on the sofa opposite and set about lighting his pipe. “So,” he said, puffing cloudily. “Tell me what you really think of my new house.”
“I’ve already told you—it’s magnificent, it’s splendid.”
He blew out a deprecatory puff of smoke. “Come, come, you’ve no need to flatter me now; I haven’t graded a paper of yours in about ten years.”
“Nine,” Alex corrected. “And I got an A.”
Professor Stern guffawed. “I don’t doubt it! Not a bit!” He crossed his short, stocky legs, revealing an inch of hairy skin between trouser cuff and stocking top. “I never had such a stubborn, single-minded pupil as you, Alex. What were you when you showed up in Oakland, seventeen? Eighteen?”
“About that.”
“Not many boys know what they want at that age as surely as you knew. Or else they think they want to run off to sea, or be cowboys, or outlaws. You don’t find too many runaway seventeen-year-olds with a burning desire to become architects.”
Alex smiled. “All I knew was that I wanted to have clean hands and wear suits and walk on city pavements. With women my grandfather wouldn’t approve of.”
“Well, I guess you got all that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I got all that.”
“That’s not it, though,” Stern said after a moment, turning serious. “That’s not what you wanted. You could’ve been a banker if it had been, or a politician. No, no, you wanted to be an architect. You’ve got to admit, that’s rare at that age.”
That age? Alex thought, sipping the rich California brandy slowly. He’d known what he wanted to be from approximately the age of five. He’d never told Stern why, though. “Did you know my father studied engineering here, sir?”
Stern raised his white beetle brows. “Why, no, I didn’t. You never told me that. In fact, you never told me much of anything about yourself. And you were the kind of young fellow who discouraged people from asking questions.”
Alex had no reply to that.
“When was your father here?”
“ ’Sixty-six and ’sixty-seven.”
“He didn’t graduate, then?”
“No, sir, he died. In a boarding house fire.”
“Well, now, I’m sorry.”
“He wanted to be an architect—that’s what he was studying for.”
“Did he?” Professor Stern peered at him shrewdly through a haze of pipe smoke. “You must’ve been very young when he died.”
“As a matter of fact, I wasn’t born yet. It was my mother who told me about him.” Told him, almost every day until the end of her life, all of Brian Alexander McKie’s hopes and dreams. She’d made his father as real in Alex’s imagination as if he’d never died.
“Well, now. Wasn’t it lucky that your ambition and your talent happened to coincide so neatly? Not many men are so fortunate.”
“I often think of that, sir. But I was lucky in other ways too.”
“How’s that?”
Alex smiled. “We both know that if it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have made it through my undergraduate studies.”
“Oh, now, that’s—”
“But if by some miracle I had, I’d never have gotten accepted into the Beaux Arts without your help and influence and political backing. Not to mention a sizeable loan.”
“Well, that might be true—I say it might be true, but only because they’re such a hidebound, backward lot. They think if an American boy hasn’t gone to a fancy eastern prep school, he’s got no business studying architecture in Paris. But the rest of that, my friend, is pure hogwash.” His pipe sputtered out. He stood up and busied himself with pouring more drinks.
Alex sighed, familiar by now with his old teacher’s dislike of gratitude in any form, except maybe high-scoring examination papers. But the debt he owed Stern was real, whether the professor chose to acknowledge it or not. Alex thought of the day he’d appeared on Stern’s office doorstep—seventeen years old, penniless, scrawny, hungry, and claiming he wanted to study engineering so he could become an architect. It didn’t take Stern long to ascertain that he had a lot more practical knowledge of lettuce farming than descriptive geometry. Nevertheless, and for no particular reason Alex had ever been able to determine then or now, the professor decided to help him. Within days, by what must have been legerdemain, he’d gotten him enrolled in the college. After that, he found him the easiest, highest-paying campus jobs, tutored him personally, guided, encouraged, and occasionally comforted him, and finally bullied the department committee into granting him a full scholarship.
Alex raised his glass in the air. “To hogwash,” he said fervently.
Stern smirked. “Hogwash.” They drank.
“So, Alex. You’re a big New York architect now, designing mansions in Newport. How do you like it at Draper and Snow?”
“I’d better like it. They’ve offered me a partnership.”
“No!” Stern smacked his knee. “I’ll be damned! Say, that’s wonderful. Congratulations.” “Thanks. It just happened last week—took me by surprise. I knew they were considering it, but I assumed it was a few years off.” He shifted, uncomfortable himself now under Stern’s respectful gaze. Professor Stern was supposed to be his mentor, not his admirer. But he knew a sure way to distract him. Glancing around the room, he asked, “How long did it take you to build the house, sir?”
“Three years, start to finish. Martha almost left me about six times. So you really like it?”
“Of course. It’s bad for business, though.”
“Bad for business?”
“Sure. People are going to take one look and say, if a lowly engineer can design a house like that, who needs an architect?”
Stern laughed delightedly. “It must seem pretty simple to you, though, compared to what you’ve been doing, the materials you’ve been working with. This Eden you were telling me about—now, that’s a house.”
“No, sir. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a house.” A monument, Sara had called it. That probably came closest. “Have you seen some of the homes going up now in the Berkeley hills? I took a walk around there yesterd
ay. Have you seen them?”
“Some, yes. What’s your opinion?”
“I think they’re amazing, completely unique. There’s nothing like that on the east coast as far as I know.”
“It’s this English movement, isn’t it? This ‘arts and crafts’ thing you hear about—”
“No, it’s different. Maybe it started with that, but what I saw yesterday goes much further. It’s not so plain, it actually allows ornamentation.” He sat forward, intent. “They’re using redwood almost exclusively. The colors are incredible—some of the houses are practically invisible, they blend in so cleverly with the trees. The work in stone is good, too. There’s one made of stucco and shingles on St. Claire Street—have you seen it? It’s not finished, they’re still working on it. I walked around to the back—nobody was there—and I swear they’re throwing buckets of muddy water on the stucco just to get the right shade of brown.”
Stern chuckled. “You like that, do you?”
He sat back. “Yes, I do. I like to get my hands in what I’m making. I like the feel of wood. I like to see things change.”
Professor Stern sucked rhythmically at his pipe, blinking alertly through the smoke.
Alex crossed his legs and folded his arms—a defensive posture. “Of course, there’s no money in that, and that’s not what we do at Draper and Snow. We work in stone, primarily, and fine marbles, occasionally brick. Steel. We don’t just build mansions for the rich, though; we design stores, schools, churches, gymnasiums—”
“You’ll have to specialize, though, won’t you? Since you’re a partner now, won’t they expect you to pull in more clients for the big, expensive houses? I don’t know, of course, I’m just—”
“Yes, probably,” Alex said shortly. “For a few years, anyway.” He massaged the arm of his chair, running his fingers lightly over the smooth, oiled wood. Marshall Farley, he’d just heard, was going to name the house Alex built for him in Newport “Kubla Khan.” The professor would enjoy that, would laugh if he told him. But for some reason he kept it to himself.
A few minutes later, Mrs. Stern came in with a tray of coffee and pastries and fruit. “Only two cups?” Stern noticed. “Get one for yourself and sit with us, Martha. Alex has been telling me how wonderful our house is. You need to hear this.” He sent Alex a wink while he tugged on his wife’s hand until she had no choice but to set her wide rump down on the arm of the sofa, and then he put his arm around her waist. They looked alike, Alex realized—both short, rotund, white-haired, and gentle-faced.
“Why do I need to hear somebody else say how wonderful it is when I’ve got you to tell me the same thing several times a day?”
“Yeah, but Alex is a very important architect. Him you might believe.”
“Don’t you like the house, Mrs. Stern?”
“Of course I do,” she answered, laughing. “But for Walter, you see, it’s not really a house, it’s more like his first-born son. As far as he’s concerned, nobody can ever like it enough.”
“I can’t deny it,” the professor admitted, giving her a squeeze.
She ruffled his hair and stood up. “I’ll leave you two to your coffee.” Alex rose and took her hand when she offered it. “Good night, Mr. McKie. I hope I’ll see you again before you go back to, New York.” He said the same and thanked her for dinner. She sent her husband a wry, affectionate look and bustled out.
Alex watched her go and realized that she reminded him of Sara. Not because of her appearance, certainly, or anything else tangible. Just the fact of her, the soft, kindhearted essence of her.
Professor Stern was leaning toward him, elbows on his knees, face alight with an exciting secret. “There’s a room upstairs I didn’t show you and young Mitchell,” he confided in a conspirator’s voice. “At the end of the hall on the west side—you probably thought it was a closet. But it’s not. It’s a bedroom. We go there…every once in a while. Know what I mean?”
Alex nodded, and raised his eyebrows in imitation of the professor’s touchingly lecherous leer.
“There’s a skylight and a bed, that’s all. Oh— and a gramophone. We put on Mozart and…well…” Modesty prevented him from continuing.
Alex was charmed. “That’s very…nice,” he said inadequately. “Very, very nice. How long have you been married, sir?”
“Thirty-eight years.”
Stern leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest with a slightly complacent smile. “So, Alex. When do you go back?”
“Sooner than I thought. A few days, I’m afraid.”
“Oh? I thought you meant to stay for a while arid sell your grandfather’s farm, settle his affairs.”
“I’ve hired an agent to take care of all that.”
“Can’t wait to get back, eh?”
“It’s not that. One of my clients has decided to pay us what he owes us, which means I’ve got to go back to work on his house.”
The prospect demoralized him. “Eden” was a joke to him now, a rich vulgarian’s megalomaniacal celebration of himself. But what Alex hated even more about the house was that Sara was going to live in it with Ben for the rest of her life, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Part of him had rejoiced when construction had halted—even though Cochrane’s financial problems affected Sara and he had no way of knowing how serious they were. But designing rooms for her to walk and talk and sit and eat and sleep in with Ben had become an obscenity to him, a travesty of his expertise and a perversion of his feelings. He wanted to build her a house she could be happy in, but when he pictured Cochrane in it with her, he wanted to sabotage it.
“You don’t look too enthusiastic,” Professor Stern noticed.
Alex rested his head on the back of the chair. “Someone I knew during the first phase of building this house—won’t be there this time,” he explained cryptically.
“Ah. A woman?”
He nodded.
“Ah,” he said again. “The sort of woman your grandfather would disapprove of, I take it?”
His smile was cynical and hopeless. “Most definitely.”
The professor swirled the brandy in his glass, then abruptly set it aside. “Alex, Alex, what are we going to do with you? Spend six weeks in this house—the second-floor guest room is yours, take it—and I promise you Martha will find you a wife and have you married off before Thanksgiving. It’s a sure thing; I won’t even take your money by suggesting a bet on it.”
“That’s a handsome offer, sir. I’ll certainly give it some thought.”
“I’m serious! Oh well, I can see you’re not interested. But if you think it couldn’t happen, you’re underestimating my wife’s powers of matchmaking. Believe me, they’re formidable in the extreme. I would go so far as to call them supernatural. Oh—you’re leaving? It’s early yet, do you have to go?”
“Yes, sir, much as I hate to. It’s been wonderful seeing you again.” But he’d suddenly had enough of conjugal bliss, secret lovemaking rooms, and Mrs. Stern’s supernatural marriage-brokering prowess. He shook hands with his old friend warmly, thanked him for his hospitality, and promised to be a better correspondent in the future. They said good-bye at the door, and Alex made the professor smile by telling him the entrance to his house was a triumph because it expressed welcome at the same time it gracefully ensured the Sterns’ absolute privacy.
Instead of hiring a cab, he walked back to his hotel. It was a long way, but the chilly, misty evening reminded him of a thousand undergraduate nights and he couldn’t resist it. San Francisco was still magical, still pulled at him; and yet, as dreary a prospect as Newport was, in some ways he would be glad to leave California. Melancholy had descended on him the moment he’d arrived. There was something here for him, some truth he needed to learn, but so far it had eluded him, and he sensed that he was still a long way away from discovering it.
He wasn’t used to introspection. His life had been forward-looking and goal-centered for the last thirteen years; this new contemplative
ness made him edgy. Memories he’d avoided were coming back fast, so fast he had no time to filter or censor them. By almost anybody’s standards he was a success now; he’d surmounted rotten odds and gotten everything he wanted by defeating his grandfather and becoming all the things his father had wanted to be. He’d won. The dream was fulfilled. So what underhanded trick of fate had decreed that he couldn’t be happy?
It wasn’t only that he’d fallen in love with a woman he couldn’t have. He’d also missed something, lost sight of an ideal he’d once had, something strong and clear that had sustained him through the worst of times. He didn’t want to name it, that goal, because at the same time he missed it he was glad it was gone. It was too messy, it confused things. He was on a straight and narrow path to fame and fortune. Fame and fortune. They weren’t just words, a cliche that applied to unknown, abstract others. They were real and possible and imminent, and he would be the world’s biggest fool to take some sentimental wrong turn now.
He walked home in the mist, thinking of his mother, of his grandfather, of the rich Salinas soil. He thought of John Ogden and the New York Club. Of Professor Stern and his wife and their lovely secret room. Sara. And Michael. The monstrous house he had to finish for them.
Maybe that was it—maybe Eden was the key. If he could finish the damn thing, be done with it once and for all, maybe his life could get back on that neat, tidy track he could just barely remember it had once been on. If he couldn’t have Sara, his career would console him. That was no tragedy; that was the way he’d always seen his life unfolding—success in his work paramount, a loving wife and family shadowy seconds, standing behind him like figures in some old-fashioned daguerreotype, sepia-colored and a bit faded.
Eden was the key, then. He’d even stop putting scornful quotation marks around it in his head. “Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world would cut off an arm to live there,” Ogden had lectured him. Damn right. Hell, yes. He’d finish it and get on with his life. He had work to do, a reputation to make.
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