Adam's Daughter

by Kristy Daniels

  “It’s all right, Hildie,” Elizabeth said. “It wasn’t your fault. You go on up. I’ll put Kellen to bed.”

  Hildie left, and Adam watched Elizabeth comfort Kellen, trying to control himself. “I can’t take his attitude anymore, Elizabeth,” Adam said. “The boy needs to be disciplined. I’m going to look into sending him to a military school.”

  Elizabeth looked at him over Kellen’s head. “Don’t send him away, Adam. That’s the last thing he needs right now. He needs you. Can’t you see that?”

  Adam was taken aback by her accusatory tone. “Elizabeth, you know what it’s like at work now. I don’t have time to take an extra breath. Besides, he’s not a child anymore, he’s nearly fifteen. For God’s sake, I was on my own when I was his age.”

  “He needs his father, Adam,” she said.

  Adam threw up his hands. “I try! I spend time with him. He doesn’t even care anymore. He doesn’t care that I work hard so he can have what I didn’t. I don’t want him to ever have to struggle like I did or have people look down on him, goddamn it.”

  Elizabeth looked up at him sharply. “Please, not in front of the baby.” She dabbed at Kellen’s eyes with the hem of her dress. “I understand what you’re saying, Adam, but Ian doesn’t. All he knows is that you’re not here.”

  Adam ran his hand over his face. He hated himself for arguing with Elizabeth. These were the first sharp words they had ever spoken to each other.

  Elizabeth rose, taking Kellen’s hand. “Why don’t we go on up to bed?”

  “No!” Kellen said. “I don’t want to go up there. I want to stay down here with you and Daddy.” She tried to make her face into a defiant frown but her chin was quivering.

  “Ever since that bad thunderstorm last week, she’s been a handful to get to bed,” she said to Adam under her breath. She gave him a conciliatory smile. “I’ll just be a minute or two, and then we can have our coffee together.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tell you how to raise your son.”

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Adam said. He leaned down to give Kellen a hug then started toward the dining room. But Elizabeth’s soft voice made him pause and look back. She was standing at the bottom of the staircase holding Kellen’s hand, trying to coax Kellen upstairs.

  “I’ll tell you a story in bed,” Elizabeth said.

  “Tell it to me down here,” Kellen said.

  Elizabeth paused thoughtfully. “Once upon a time,” she began, “there was a little girl who was always afraid to go upstairs to bed.” She pointed to the small carved frowning face at the bottom of the balustrade. “Every night, she’d make her face into a big frown just like this, just like that one on your face right now.”

  Kellen suppressed a giggle, determined to be stubborn.

  “Then one day,” Elizabeth went on, “an evil fairy froze her face in a frown and turned her into wood, trapping her inside the staircase.”

  Kellen looked up at Elizabeth and down at the carved face.

  “The little girl cried so much that finally a good fairy heard her,” Elizabeth went on. “She told the little girl that she could break the spell by being brave and climbing the stairs. But she also had to smile because smiles are very powerful weapons against evil spells.”

  Kellen was listening. So was Adam.

  “It was hard but the little girl made a tiny smile,” Elizabeth said, “and she began to float up the stairs.”

  Now, Elizabeth was gently leading Kellen up the stairs, pointing out the little carved faces as she went. “The bigger her smile became, the farther up the stairs she floated. Until there she was, at the top of the stairs, free at last from the evil spell.”

  Elizabeth and Kellen were now standing on the landing. Kellen was staring at the topmost carved face, which was turned up in a toothy smile. She wrapped her arms around Elizabeth’s legs.

  “Oh, Mommy, that’s silly,” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” Elizabeth said, laughing. She glanced down and saw Adam staring up.

  Kellen looked down, too. “Good night, Daddy,” she said. “I’m going to bed now, by myself.”

  “Good night, Lil’bit,” he said softly. He watched them until they were out of his sight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  During the next few months, Ian seemed to calm down, and Adam put aside his plan for a military school. But just before Ian’s sixteenth birthday, Adam received a call from the man who ran the stable where Ian’s horse was boarded. Ian had been seen mistreating the horse. Adam sold the horse and ordered Ian to stay in the house.

  “I don’t know what to do with him, Josh,” Adam said. They were sitting in Adam’s office. It was early evening, and outside the August sky was metamorphosing into a blazing sunset. Adam morosely studied the sky for a moment.

  “Maybe he’s just trying to get your attention,” Josh said.

  “He’s not a baby anymore. I refuse to treat him like one.” Adam leaned back in his chair. “How come your kid never gives you any trouble?”

  Josh smiled. “Stephen’s only seven. Give him time.”

  “I’ve got to find a way to get through to him,” Adam said. “Lilith is coming home soon. He’ll be legally old enough to decide who he wants to live with. Despite his behavior, I just can’t let him go back to her.”

  “Maybe Ian needs something to keep him steady. Maybe he needs to work.”

  Adam smiled ruefully.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I’ve spent my life working my ass off so my kids wouldn’t need a thing. And you’re telling me Ian should get a job.”

  Josh rose. “I’ve got to get home.” He paused at the door. “What I said about a job, what I mean is that maybe Ian just needs something to really care about.”

  Adam nodded absently. “Yeah, maybe. See you tomorrow.”

  A week later, the war ended. The city went wild in a frenzy of celebration. People wandered the streets, singing and hugging. Car horns blared. Bells pealed. In the Times newsroom, Adam drank a paper cup of champagne with his staff. Then everyone went back to work, covering the story. By night, the story had developed a sinister angle. Mobs of drunken men were roaming Market Street. Fighting broke out. Windows were smashed, and stores were looted.

  As the violence grew through the night, reports of raping filtered in. Around midnight, Elizabeth called Adam, sounding distraught. Ian had been arrested.

  Adam drove quickly to the police station. He was told that Ian had been apprehended as part of a gang. When it was discovered Ian was a minor, the police had called the Bryant home. The sergeant on duty watched disdainfully as Adam signed for Ian’s release.

  “I can’t charge him with anything, Mr. Bryant,” he said. “But you should know this was a bad bunch your son was with, older men, including two men we booked on rape charges. You’d best keep an eye on the company your son keeps.”

  Adam drew in a breath when he saw Ian emerge, dirty and bruised. They were silent as they rode home in the car. Adam clenched the steering wheel, trying to control his surge of anger and disappointment. Finally, he pulled the car to a halt and turned toward Ian.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” he said. “Why did you do this?”

  Ian stared out the windshield.

  “Answer me!”

  Ian flinched but did not turn toward Adam. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Adam stared at Ian’s profile. He felt an urge to strike Ian rise inside him, anything to get a response. Appalled at his own anger, he shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he felt only slightly calmer.

  “Did you rape anyone?” he asked.

  “No. I just watched.”

  Adam glanced over at Ian, who was still staring straight ahead.

  “I don’t understand,” Adam said, almost in a whisper. “Maybe you can help me. Make me understand what you are doing. I give you everything. I give you the best. How do you repay me? You go out and —-”

  Ian turned toward him. �
�I didn’t do anything to you. That’s all you care about. How it looks to everyone for your precious son to get thrown in jail. It sure puts a dent in your plan to be a big shot, huh? Well, I don’t care about any of that shit. I don’t care about anything.”

  Adam could only stare at Ian. Then he started the car and began to drive slowly home. He glanced over at Ian. The muscles of his handsome face were clenched in agitation, and his dark eyes were glittering.

  How did he get so angry, Adam thought, how did he get so empty?

  The ache in his chest was the pain of sad realization. His son was not simply mean-spirited or apathetic. He was emotionless. He had no passion. He really didn’t care about anything, not even himself. Adam thought back to his talk with Josh. What had he said? That Ian needed something to care about? But what? Nothing seemed to move him.

  The next morning, Adam woke Ian early and told him to put on a suit and tie. Sullenly, Ian did as he was told. He didn’t say a word as he rode with Adam to the Times building. He didn’t speak as Adam led him up to the newsroom. Ian simply walked by Adam’s side, his bruised face inscrutable. Just inside the newsroom, they paused. Faces looked up at them with intense curiosity.

  Adam scanned the busy newsroom. Ian stood, hands in his pockets, staring at the linoleum.

  "This is where you’ll start,” Adam said.

  Ian looked up in surprise. "Start what?”

  “To learn.”

  A woman brushed by them and looked back over her shoulder. Ian tried to hide his embarrassment.

  “Ian, listen to me,” Adam said. “This place is very important to me. I built it. I care about it. It is my...my passion.” He paused, feeling awkward. “I want you to care about it, too. You’re going to run it someday. I’d always hoped you would.”

  Ian looked out over the large room. It bustled with seemingly random activity and was filled with strange faces and an odd, dry smell of smoke, dust, ink, and paper. Slowly, from somewhere in his memory, a picture of himself as a boy sitting in a similar office with Adam drifted up to his consciousness. Watching his father shave, a parade at the bridge. He couldn’t remember much else, other than a vague feeling of security.

  He turned to Adam. “I’ll try,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ian worked in the newsroom for the next year as a copy boy. He didn’t like running errands for the people who worked for his father, and the dinginess of the place offended his senses. But there were things he did like. He liked the near-military energy of the city room, and he liked it when the power brokers and politicians came in, kowtowing to his father. For the first time, he began to see Adam in a different light, the reflective light of power. He began to envision himself in the same role.

  Encouraged by Ian’s interest, Adam created an editorial aide position for Ian. When Lilith finally returned from New York, Ian shocked her by announcing he wanted to remain living with Adam.

  For the next three years, Ian spent time in advertising, circulation, and other departments. On his eighteenth birthday, Adam named him associate publisher. It was, everyone in the newsroom knew, a figurehead position. But Ian took his new title seriously, carrying out Adam’s orders with the air of a newly christened lieutenant. Adam’s editors bristled at Ian’s superior air, but they tolerated him as a harmless dilettante.

  Ian still had a bad temper, directing it mainly at servants and an occasional low-rung newspaper employee. But to Adam, he seemed to be if not happy, at least occupied.

  After Ian graduated from high school, he surprised Adam by declaring that he wanted to go to college to study business administration. Adam pulled every political string to get Ian enrolled in Princeton’s freshman class of 1949.

  With Ian gone, the house on Divisadero Street seemed drained of the tension that had gripped it for years. Elizabeth, who had been plagued with sporadic migraines and depression, seemed rejuvenated.

  The four Bryant newspapers were flourishing, and for the first time since his marriage to Elizabeth, Adam was beginning to move forward on the impetus of money he generated, not just money Elizabeth gave him. Everything was still in her name and always would be. But Adam allowed himself a feeling of pride. He was finally, truly, a man of means.

  “Perhaps you can slow down now and enjoy yourself,” Elizabeth told him one night at dinner.

  He heard the hint buried in her voice and felt a stab of guilt for all the nights during the last four years he had come home from the office too late to do more than slip into bed beside his sleeping wife.

  He looked at her across the table. He had planned to tell her about a newspaper in Oregon he was thinking about buying. She had always been excited to share in his dreams. But tonight, he saw a loneliness in her eyes that had never been there before and he decided it should wait.

  “I think that it’s time for a second honeymoon,” he said. “How about Paris this time?”

  Two weeks later, they left for Paris, taking a suite at the Ritz. The weather was cold and drizzly, but the ambiance in the city was alive with the post-war celebration. The Parisians’ faith in the future seemed to parallel Adam’s confidence in his own.

  Elizabeth’s love for Paris was contagious, and she happily took Adam to her favorite places. They went to the opera and to a club crowded with Parisians who had come to hear “Le Jazz” of Louis Armstrong. When it was too cold to venture out, they stayed in the suite and made love. Elizabeth half joked about how the air was so conducive to conceiving babies. They celebrated Christmas Eve by ordering a dinner from room service.

  The day after Christmas, a fog enveloped the city, gently blurring the gray facades of the old buildings. They walked hand in hand along the Seine, past the shuttered booths of the bouquinistes. They stopped for coffee at a cafe, where the empty terrace was heated by large coal-filled bracieri. They sat at the table saying nothing, content in each other’s company.

  “I love this city in winter. It is like being inside a gray pearl,” Elizabeth said, looking out at the fog. “My parents brought me here for the first time in winter when I was thirteen. I wanted to live here someday.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Adam asked.

  “I got married.”

  Adam watched the wistful smile fade from her lips. He decided he would not ask her the question that had formed in his mind, if she regretted the turns her life had taken.

  “Oh, well. It wasn’t meant to be,” she said suddenly. “Maybe that’s why I like San Francisco so much. It reminds me of Paris a little.”

  “But you could have had the real thing,” Adam said.

  She smiled. “I do.” She pulled the collar of her fox coat up around her neck.

  “Are you too cold?” Adam asked. “We could go back to the hotel.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  He realized suddenly that she looked tired. He always took her energy for granted, and it was odd seeing her look wan. The skin under her eyes had a slight blue cast. She had been trying so hard to make the city come alive for him, he thought, and she had simply run herself down. He picked up her gloved hand and pressed it to his lips, shutting his eyes. When he opened them, she was looking at him, smiling.

  “I love you,” he said softly.

  “And after another twelve years of marriage, when I’m old and fat, will you still love me as much?”

  “Yes.”

  She kissed him. Her lips were cold. She laid her head against his shoulder. Her hair was soft on his cheek, and he brought a hand up to cradle her head. She was quiet for a long time.

  “This fog reminds me of home,” she said finally.

  This time, Adam clearly heard the fatigue in her voice. She began to shiver, and he pulled her tight into his arms.

  “Let’s go home,” he said suddenly.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Tomorrow.”

  He stroked her hair and stared out at the bare trees lining the boulevard, standing like gaunt sentries in the fog.

  CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

  Kellen ran, her legs churning over the grassy hills. She ran up one slope and down another, her hair streaming behind her like a tattered red banner. At the crest of a hill, she stopped. She began to paw the ground like a horse, her breath making clouds in the cold air.

  Another girl ran up the hill and drew to a stop at Kellen’s side. The girls made snorting and whinnying noises.

  “I’m chestnut colored and my name is Charger,” the other girl said.

  “I’m all black with a white mark on my forehead,” Kellen said. “My name is Diamond, and I’m faster than anything.”

  Kellen bolted down the hill, driven by the sea wind and an impatience inside her that she didn’t understand.

  She ran until her head throbbed and her sides ached then fell down on the grass. Her friend caught up and plopped down beside her. They lay there, staring up at the blue sky.

  “I hate being ten,” the other girl said.

  “You’re not. You’re only nine.”

  “Nine and three-quarters.”

  Kellen sucked on a blade of grass. “Well, I’m ten. Soon I’ll be thirteen, then sixteen. I can’t wait to be sixteen. Then I can go wherever I want.”

  “Where?”

  Kellen sat up and gazed out over the green meadow of Golden Gate Park. “I don’t know. Somewhere.” She heard someone calling her name and saw her governess Hildie motioning for her to come back.

  “I gotta go.” She ran to the car, arriving out of breath.

  “Look at you. You’re a wild thing,” Hildie said, picking the leaves out of Kellen’s tangled hair.

  “Why do we have to go home so early?” Kellen asked.

  “You have a date with your father tonight, remember? And it’s going to take hours just to get this hair combed.”

  As they rode home, Kellen thought about the party that night. It was the annual father-daughter dinner at the Olympic Club, her first one. She hated the thought of getting into the dress her mother had bought for her, a stiff white organza thing that scratched her neck. But she was looking forward to spending the evening with her father. Finally, one whole night when she could have him all to herself. He hardly ever had much time for her. Oh, he’d hug her, and ask her how school was going, and look at the pictures she drew. But tonight, for one whole night, he was hers.