A Gift of Love

by A Gift of Love (lit)

  Corey felt faint with joy and relief, but she was wise enough to refrain from a display of too much exultation and risk suffocating him. “It’s very nice of you to offer.”

  “I’m on my way back to Dallas. You can tell me when I come home Christmas week if you want me to take you.”

  “Oh, I do,” Corey said quickly. “I can tell you right now. The dance is the twenty-first. Could you pick me up at seven?”

  “Sure. No problem. And if you get a better offer, just let me know.” He turned on the front step as he zipped up his jacket, and Corey said in a daring, grown-up way, “You’re a complete sweetheart, Spence.”

  In answer, he chucked her under the chin as if she were a six-year-old and left.

  Seven

  ON DECEMBER 21 AT SEVEN, WHEN COREY CAME DOWNSTAIRS in her gown of royal blue silk and matching blue high heels, she didn’t look or feel like a child. She was a woman, her eyes shining with love and anticipation; she was Cinderella on the way to her ball, watching for her Prince Charming at the living room window.

  Prince Charming was late.

  When he hadn’t arrived by seven forty-five Corey called his house. She knew his grandmother wasn’t planning to return from Scottsdale until the next day and that she’d given the servants some time off before Christmas, so when no one answered the phone at the Bradley’s, Corey was certain it was because Spence was on his way.

  When he still wasn’t there at eight fifteen, her father gently suggested that he go over to the house and see what was keeping Spence or if something was wrong over there. In an agony of suspense and foreboding, Corey waited for her father to return, certain that only death or injury would keep Spence from honoring his commitment.

  Twenty minutes later, Mr. Foster came back. Corey took one look at his angry eyes and hesitant expression, and she knew the news was bad. It was worse than bad; it was devastating: Her father had spoken with the family chauffeur, who lived in an apartment above the garage, and the chauffeur had told him that Spencer had decided not to come home for the holidays, after all. According to the chauffeur, Spencer’s mother, who’d been expected for Christmas, had decided to go to Paris instead, and as a result, Spencer’s grandmother had decided to extend her stay in Scottsdale until the New Year.

  Corey listened to that shattering recitation in anguished disbelief, fighting back tears. Unable to bear either sympathy or righteous indignation from her family, she went upstairs to her room and took off the beautiful gown she’d chosen with such care to dazzle and impress him. For the next week, she jumped every time the phone rang, convinced he would call to explain and apologize.

  On New Year’s Day, when he had not done either one, Corey calmly removed the blue gown from her closet and carefully packed it in a box, then she removed every single picture of him from all the walls, mirrors, and bulletin boards in her room.

  Afterward, she went downstairs and asked her family never to mention to Spencer that she had waited for him or had been disappointed in any way that he failed to show up. Still furious at the hurt Corey had suffered, Mr. Foster argued vehemently that Spencer was getting off much too lightly and deserved to be horsewhipped, at least verbally if not physically! Corey calmly replied that she didn’t want to give Spencer the satisfaction of knowing she’d waited and watched and worried. “Let him think I went to the dance with someone else,” she said firmly.

  When Mr. Foster still argued that, as Corey’s father, he was entitled to the satisfaction of “having a few words with that young man”, Corey’s mother had put her hand on his arm and said, “Corey’s pride is more important, and that’s what she’s saving with her plan.”

  Diana, who was as angry with Spencer as her father was, nevertheless sided with Corey. “I’d love to give him a good swift kick, too, Daddy, but Corey’s right. We shouldn’t say anything to make him think he was ever that important to her.”

  The next day, Corey donated the beautiful blue gown to a charity resale shop.

  She burned the unmounted photographs.

  The photo albums she’d kept under her bed were too big and too handsome to burn, so she packed them into a large box along with the framed photographs she’d taken of him. She lugged them up to the attic, intending the remove the pictures some day and use the albums and frames for photographs of more worthy subjects than Spencer Addison.

  When she went to bed that night, Corey did not cry, nor did she let herself ever again fantasize about Spencer Addison. She had packed away more than his pictures that day; she had put away the last traces of adolescence with all its lovely, impossible dreams.

  After that, fate presented her with only two opportunities to see Spencer, had she wanted an excuse to talk to him . his grandmother’s funeral that spring and his wedding to a New York debutante that summer. Corey attended the funeral with her family, but when they went to talk to Spencer, she deliberately let herself be obscured by the crowd of mourners. With her gaze on the flower-strewn coffin, Corey paid her last respects to the elderly woman in silence, with a prayer, while tears of sorrow slid unnoticed down her cheeks. And then she left.

  She did not attend Spencer’s wedding with her family either, even though it took place in Houston, where the bride’s maternal grandparents lived, nor did she attend the reception. She spent his wedding night doing exactly what she knew he would be doing that night: she went to bed with Doug Hayward.

  Unfortunately the young man to whom she had chosen to surrender her virginity was a much better friend and confidant than he was a lover, and she ended up weeping her heart out in his awkward embrace.

  In time, she forgot about Spencer entirely. There were other, better, things to concentrate on, to anticipate and celebrate.

  For one thing, the Foster family was becoming quite famous. The family’s joint interest in gardening, cooking, and handiwork that had seemed like a lark to many had become something of a trend, popularized by Marge Crumbaker, who continued to give it glowing mentions in her column.

  During Corey’s freshman year at college, an editor at Better Homes and Gardens saw one of the columns, and after coming out to the house and attending a Fourth of July party, the editor decided to do a huge feature on what she dubbed “Entertaining – Foster Style.”

  When the magazine came out, there were pictures featuring tables set with Grandma’s hand-painted china and handmade place mats, with beautiful flower arrangements that Corey’s mother created from flowers taken from their own garden and their little greenhouse. Also included were pictures of some of the family’s favorite meals, beautifully photographed and described in detail, with recipes and directions for growing the fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables that were used for the family meals. But the most memorable part of the article came at the end, where Corey’s mother had tried to describe her feelings about what she and her family did and why they did it: “I think the real pleasure of having a party, or preparing a meal, or planning a garden, or creating a furnished room, comes from doing it with people you love. That way there’s satisfaction in the effort, no matter how that effort turns out.”

  The magazine dubbed that last sentence, “The Foster Ideal,” and the phrase stuck. After that, other magazines contacted the Fosters asking for articles and pictures, for which they were willing to pay. Corey’s mother and grandparents were only able to produce the raw material, so Diana wrote the articles and Corey took the photographs.

  In the beginning, it had all been a family hobby.

  Robert Foster died of a stroke five months after the stock market made its downward plunge in 1987. when his attorney and accountant gave the family the details of his dire financial situation, they understood why he’d been so tense and preoccupied during the last year, and why he had wanted to shield them. After that the family hobby became a business that enabled them to survive. Marge Crumbaker’s columns had already made Mary Foster into a celebrity hostess, but in the aftermath of Robert’s death, that no longer had any meaning to anyone, particularly his
grieving family.

  In the end, it was Elyse Lanier, the wife of one of Houston’s leading entrepreneurs, who hit upon a way to help them stay afloat. A few weeks after Robert’s death, she phoned Mary and gently asked her if she’d be willing to accept the responsibility for the food and decorations for the Orchid Ball. When Mary said yes, Elyse used her considerable influence to make the rest of the ball’s committee agree.

  It was the first time in the ball’s history that one person had ever been entrusted with so much. On Elyse’s part, it had been an act of friendship and support, one that Mary never forgot. Several years later, when Elyse’s husband was elected Houston’s mayor, Mary finally found a way to express her gratitude. She did it in the form of a large picnic basket, the size of a compact car, which bore a huge red, white, and blue ribbon when it was delivered to the Laniers.

  In it were hand-painted dishes, wineglasses, coffee cups, candlesticks, napkin rings, and salt and pepper shakers, along with handmade napkins and place mats. It was a full picnic service for twenty-four people. Each piece was lovingly crafted. Each item bore the Laniers’ monogram in red, white and blue.

  Despite the Fosters’ instant renown as Houston society’s “caterers of choice” after the Orchid Ball, there would never have been enough money to maintain their house or their living style from catering alone, and the hard work quickly began taking a heavy toll on Corey’s mother and grandparents.

  In the end, it was Diana who decided the family should be capitalizing on the fame they’d acquired in various home and entertainment magazines, rather than trying to run a catering business for which they were actually ill-equipped. She was the daughter of an entrepreneur, and although Robert Foster had suffered the fate of many other wealthy Texans in the seventies and eighties, Diana had clearly inherited his proclivity for business.

  She drew up a business plan, packed up the magazine articles and recipes that had been published over the years, and put together a large collection of Corey’s photographs taken of family projects.

  “If we’re going to do this,” she announced to Corey as she left to see a banker friend of her father’s, “we have to do it big and with plenty of financial backing. Otherwise we’ll fail, not from lack of ability, but from lack of funds to keep us going for the first two years.”

  Somehow, she got the funds they needed.

  The first issue of Foster’s Beautiful Living magazine came out the following year, and although there were some difficult, and even terrifying, setbacks along the way, the magazine caught on with the public. Foster Enterprises began putting out recipe books and then coffee-table books, where Corey’s photography won acclaim and generated even more income for the family.

  All of that had led up to Newport, Corey thought wryly. After more than a decade of years and dozens of cameras, she had come full circle: she was about to take a camera with her and go see Spencer Addison again…

  Corey pulled out of her reverie, glanced at her watch, and hastily opened the car door. As she walked up the front steps of the house, she suddenly realized that the prospect of seeing Spencer again no longer upset her. For more than a half hour, she’d been sitting in the car, dredging up old and awful memories that she’d buried in the attic with all his pictures and photo albums. Now that she’d taken out the memories and examined them as an adult, they no longer hurt.

  She had been a dreamy adolescent with an enduring crush on “an older man.” He had been the unwilling, and in the end, unkind, recipient of her adoration. It was as simple as that.

  She was no longer an adolescent, she was nearly twenty-nine, with a large group of friends, a long list of accomplishments behind her, and an exciting life ahead of her.

  He was… a stranger. A stranger whose marriage had ended five years after it began and who had stayed on the East Coast, where he’d developed some sort of pleasant relationship with his only remaining relatives – his half-sister and his niece, who was about to be married.

  Now that she’d thought the whole thing through, she could hardly believe she’d reacted so badly to the thought of seeing him. The prospect of photographing that wedding and featuring it in Beautiful Living was challenging and exciting to her professionally and she was a professional. In fact, her feelings for him were so totally impersonal, and her infatuation with him so silly in retrospect, that she decided she really ought to ship the box in the attic to Newport, along with the other supplies that would be sent ahead. She had no use for those photographs, but they were a chronicle of his youth, and he might like to have them.

  Her family was seated at the kitchen table with lists spread everywhere. “Hi, guys,” Corey said with a grin as she slid into a chair. “Who’s going to Newport with me?”

  Her answer was relieved smiles from her mother, her grandmother, her grandfather, and Diana.

  “Everyone is going but me,” Henry Britton said, glancing at the walker he used now to get around. “You girls always get to have all the fun!”

  Eight

  COREY’S PLANE WAS TWO HOURS LATE, AND IT WAS NEARLY SIX o’clock by the time the taxi turned down a quiet street lined with palatial homes built at the turn of the century when the Vanderbilts and Goulds spent summers in Newport. Spence’s house was at the end of the road, and one of the most imposing of them all.

  Shaped like a wide U that faced the street, it was a three-story masterpiece of architecture and craftsmanship with soaring white columns that marched across the front and joined both wings. No matter how Corey felt about Spencer Addison, she adored his house on sight. A high wrought-iron fence surrounded the lush lawns, and the driveway was secured by a pair of ornate gates that swung open electronically after the cab driver gave her name on the intercom.

  A butler answered the front door, and she followed him across an octagonal foyer that was easily sixty feet across with pale green marble pillars supporting a gallery above. It was a rotunda meant to welcome bejeweled women in fabulous ball gowns and furs, Corey thought wryly, not modern businesswomen in dark suits and definitely not a female photographer in a turquoise silk shirt and white gabardine pants with a matching jacket over her arm. If jewels were the ticket of admission, she’d never have gotten in the front door of this place, not even with the wide gold bracelet at her wrist or the turquoise and gold earrings at her ears. These were authentic pieces and very fine, but this place called out for emeralds and rubies. “Could you tell me where I’ll find the group from Beautiful Living magazine?” she asked the butler as they approached the main staircase.

  “I believe they are out on the back lawn, Miss Foster. If you wish, I can show you to them now and have your suitcases taken upstairs to your room.” Corey was more anxious to see how things were progressing outside than she was to unpack, so she accepted the butler’s offer and followed in his wake.

  In contrast to the foyer, which had been quiet and serene, nearly all the other rooms she passed were hotbeds of activity, with furniture being rearranged and wedding decorations being put up.

  Her mother’s handiwork was clearly evident in the dining room, where a forty-foot table had been set with exquisite china and crystal on handmade lace cloths, but the unmistakable “Foster Signature” would be the individual centerpieces that would be placed on the table the morning of the wedding for each pair of diners. All of the centerpieces would contain the same kinds of flowers, but each arrangement would be unique, and all of them were meant to be taken home by the ladies whose places at the table they had adorned during dinner, a token – Mrs. Foster said in her monthly column in Beautiful Living magazine – of the hostess’s affection for her guests.

  The author of that column was standing on the back lawn, oblivious to the glorious expanse of blue water or the pink and gold sunset taking place on the horizon as she directed four of the six freelance helpers that Spencer’s sister had provided. Corey’s grandmother was standing beside her, irritably shooing away her two assistants with the obvious intention of rearranging the wires that wer
e being wound in and around the framework of the flowered arches the bride would walk under on her wedding day.

  Corey came up behind them and gave them both a hug. “How’s it going?”

  “About like you’d expect,” Corey’s mother said, kissing her cheek.

  “Chaos!” Her grandmother said flatly. Age had not made many changes in her except that she had acquired a disconcerting bluntness that her doctor said was common to many of the elderly. If something was true, she came right out and said it, though never with any malice. “Angela – the bride’s mother – is interfering with everything and getting underfoot.”

  “How’s the bride holding up?” Corey asked, avoiding asking about Spencer.

  “Oh, she’s a sweet enough girl,” Gram said. “Pretty, too. Her name is Joy. She’s dumber than a box of rocks,” she added as she walked off to correct one of her helpers.

  Stifling a nervous laugh, Corey glanced over her shoulder, then exchanged knowing glances with her mother, who said a little worriedly, “I know how important it is to use real events like this for our magazine layouts, but they’re very wearing on Gram these days. She doesn’t like working under any sort of deadline pressure anymore.”

  “I know,” Corey said, “but she always insists she wants to be part of it.” She looked around at the bustle and activity taking place on the grounds, at the newly erected gazebo being covered in climbing roses, at the banquet tables beneath the big white tent near the water, and she smiled at the transformation taking place. “It’s going to be splendid.”

  “Tell that to the bride’s mother before she drives us all crazy. Poor Spence. If he doesn’t strangle Angela before this is over, it will be a miracle. When she isn’t worrying, she’s complaining, and she’s nipping at his heels like a hyperactive terrier all the time. She’s the one who wanted Joy’s wedding to take place here, and she’s the one who wanted us here, and it’s Spence who’s paying the bill. Diana was right about that. Spence never complains and Angela never stops.”