By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  Mavis leaned her head back on the doorjamb and closed her eyes. She remained in that position until she felt Alan's kiss at the base of her throat; and then emerald eyes met his sapphire ones as he asked, "Are you staying tonight?"

  "I ... no. No, I'm not. That was insanity last night. I still can't believe what I did; what I told you. Besides, no man likes to function under that many ... constraints. There were too many constraints for you," she said in a pained voice.

  "You mean: lights out, no fondling, you on top, no lying around naked after? I have to admit it was kinky, but I liked it." He leaned over to kiss her lightly on her mouth.

  "You know why it had to be that way—now," she said, her cheeks flooding with color.

  "Mmnn," he murmured. "Your mastectomy. Personally, it doesn't matter to me whether you have one breast or—"

  Mavis sucked in her breath sharply and pushed him away. "That's cruel, Alan!"

  "Cruel? Why is that cruel?"

  She flew to the study, then rounded on him. She was towering, fierce, unforgettably beautiful as she raged at him. "How dare you make light of this! As if I'd broken a fingernail instead of been maimed for life! How dare you condescend to me! You bastard—you cruel, unthinking bastard!"

  She threw up her hands to ward him off as he came closer, but he held her wrists and said, "Mavis, listen to me, listen to me! Artless, yes. But cruel, never. No, wait! Listen! Do you think you're less desirable because you have a prosthesis? Then you're a stunning fool. It makes absolutely no difference to me. It wouldn't to most men. Only to you, Mavis. You're obsessed with an image of your own perfection. Where did that come from? Why are you like that? Have you made allowances for old age? For wrinkles and liver spots and bifocals?"

  He relaxed his hold on her wrists, aware that she was becoming rigid in his grasp, shocked by what he was saying to her but angry enough to keep going. "It's inconceivable to me that you said nothing about your cancer, or your surgery, or your chemotherapy two years ago. It boggles my mind that you just cut off the relationship and went into hiding. When you looked me up to sail the Pegasus, do you know what I thought? 'She can be a living nightmare, but I'll do it anyway.' So much for your careful image of perfection. If you had just told me, trusted me ...."

  Mavis' voice was deadly calm. "Have you finished?"

  He let go of her wrists. "All right, I know I haven't handled this well. Your analyst will be apoplectic. But I swear to God—last night, when you were fairly pulsing with desire—to think you'd gone two years without being with someone—starved yourself—for what? For an image? And now finally you've let it all out, but you treat last night like a moral lapse, like some crazy fall from grace. I don't understand it, Mavis. I don't understand you."

  She pushed her way blindly past him. "And you never will."

  ****

  Cindy Seton picked up the phone and dialed the number for Wisteria Pizzeria in Westport, Connecticut. "I'd like to order eleven pizzas, with everything. The name is Alan Seton." She gave them her husband's address, said thank you, and hung up, smiling.

  Chapter 9

  Some little girls grow up gradually. They trade their Barbie dolls for soccer balls, their soccer balls for baby strollers or attachés, all in a smooth continuum. Other little girls grow up overnight. Oldest daughters, youngest daughters, kindest daughters—it can happen to anyone, and the cause is nearly always the same: sudden responsibility. It happened to Quinta Powers, who compressed more growing up into the three years following her father's crippling accident than many women do in a lifetime.

  Not that Quinta was tragic about it. She had already decided before her father's accident to commute to an in-state college for economy's sake, so renouncing Greek life and non-stop partying never was an issue for her. She didn't sign up for sports, theater, political clubs or any other extracurricular activity either, because she'd never been a joiner in the first place. The pain of doing without them wasn't terribly severe, either.

  What Quinta did refuse to give up throughout her compressed three-year college education were the things she loved most: sailing her dinghy in Newport Harbor; ushering for a local, thoroughly Off-Broadway local group perpetually in search of an off-season audience; reading, hiking, and playing chess. Her four older sisters (grateful that she'd taken on the burden of caring for their father) thought she was spunky and cheerful. Her ex-boyfriend (a varsity jock who couldn't understand why she rarely went to his games) thought she was too hard-working and thoughtful. Her father did not express an opinion either way.

  Quinta was barely twenty when she graduated magna cum laude from URI in 1986 with a major in applied math and a minor in creative writing. Her sisters called her precocious; Quinta called herself ambivalent. She proved it, too, by accepting two completely different jobs: one as a software engineer with a local company, to begin in September; the other as a writer for Cup Quotes, a Newport newsletter covering the America's Cup scene while it was still in the States. The assignment at Cup Quotes would wind down at the end of summer when the last American boat left Newport's waters for Australia. By the time the trial races began off the Freemantle coast in Australia in October, Quinta would be at her real job, standing on the first rung of the ladder to high-tech success.

  At least, that was the plan. But as the summer rolled by at Cup Quotes, Quinta was finding that she was capable of turning out very decent copy. Her initial factual updates evolved into insightful profiles on different bit-players in the Cup drama. She wrote a nice little piece on a Newport welder who helped build one of the American contending yachts, and another one on what the loss of the Cup in 1983 meant to the shops and restaurants that lined Thames Street. Subscribers wrote in, saying good things. One of the city's council members mentioned her in a speech. Her editor quickly gave her a byline, then a feature column of her own, "Quintessence." It was heady stuff for a twenty year old. By mid-July she had secretly decided to renounce her forthcoming job as a software engineer and become a prize-winning columnist for The New York Times.

  Quinta Powers believed that she could do anything, once she put her mind to it.

  ****

  "Dad, I have a question about—well, about morality, I guess," said Quinta one evening to her father over dinner.

  Neil Powers looked up from his corncob and fixed a wary eye on his daughter. "I don't approve of drugs or sex. Other than that, I have no opinion."

  "Dad! I would never ask you about those," she said with an ironic smile. "No, this has to do with my column." (She loved to say that—'my column.') "I want to do an in-depth interview that no one's been able to get. I want to interview Alan Seton."

  Quinta waited for her father's reaction. It was the first time she'd spoken Alan Seton's name aloud since the period of her father's accident. She had just violated a family taboo, and she knew it. The names of every other American skipper—Dennis Conner, Tom Blackaller, John Kolius, Rod Davis, Buddy Melgus—were household words at the dinner table. Not Alan Seton's. The man had never been forgiven for having married a hit-and-run maniac who'd destroyed Neil Powers' life.

  Her father wiped his lips with his napkin, pushed his wheelchair away from his plate, and jammed balled-up fists into the edge of the table. "Why Seton?"

  "Because he's such a mystery," Quinta admitted. "Even Dennis Conner confides more to the media than Alan Seton does. I respect his effort to keep the Pegasus shrouded in secrecy; lots of the syndicates are doing that with their boats. But I want to do a human-interest piece, and the man won't give anyone more than his name, rank, and serial number."

  "So pick another human to be interested in."

  "But don't you see? He's got a story to tell—coming back from emotional devastation in 1983 to try again. Let's face it, people think of Alan Seton as a quitter. Is that why he's back? Is he afraid not to try again? Or is it the simple fascination of the Cup? I want to know; everyone wants to know. He'd be a great 'get' Dad," she added. "He really would."

  "And you need my per
mission to go get him? Since when have you ever deferred to my wishes?"

  He sounded petulant. Anyone would think that Quinta made a habit of hiding his food and water.

  "Not your permission, Dad," she said patiently. "Just your advice. I'm sure—I'm absolutely positive—that Alan Seton will grant me this interview if I call and ask him. He'll do it because he promised to help us if we ever needed anything."

  "For pity's sake, Quinta—you were a teenager then. He was telling you what you wanted to hear. Besides, he knew damn well there'd be a lawsuit."

  "No. Those weren't the reasons. I'm sure he'll agree to do it. But would it be right for me to take advantage of his … well, guilt?" Her brows drew together intently as she weighed the moral implications of her plan. At that moment, anyone who'd ever known Quinta's grandmother, Laura Andersson Powers, when she was Quinta's age would have seen an unmistakable family resemblance.

  Neil Powers reacted as he always did at such times: he clamped down hard on his jaw and looked away. Automatically he reached out to the black Lab who had settled alongside his master for a nice long ear-rub, now that the meal was over.

  "Why bother me about this?" her father said, annoyed. "You'll do what you want to do anyway. But I think you should leave the man alone. Just leave him alone."

  ****

  Even in the gray July rain Mergate looked pleasing. There was something about its solid brick sturdiness that appealed to Quinta, who had spent her childhood hiking up and down Cliff Walk past some of the most ostentatious and oversized estates in the Western hemisphere. Alan Seton's Connecticut house offered reassurance, and she hoped it offered hot tea; it was not a nice morning. She pulled into the circular cobbled drive, looking around for a car. She saw none, so she parked in front of the house. Hurrying to the door, she lifted the knocker and let it drop several times, not at all surprised to hear her heart thumping in time to the signal: this was her first big-time interview.

  The door opened, and there he was: three years older, presumably three years wiser, and to her, still irresistibly dashing. The last time they were face to face, Quinta had been holding a puppy who'd just peed on the back seat of his car.

  "Hi," she said with a self-conscious smile, and whipped her head around to indicate her car. "I hope I'm not blocking you; do you still have the silver Mercedes?" she blurted.

  His friendly look turned blank for a moment, and then he said, "Ah! No. The car was leased. I have a black one now."

  She nodded wisely, as if he had progressed through a logical color sequence, and waited to be invited in. That sure was a dumb way to start things off, she told herself. Remind him, why don't you?

  "Uh ... come in, come in," he said at last, stirring. "I was a little taken aback by how much you've grown up."

  She didn't know how to respond, so she settled for saying, "College can do that." Which also sounded dumb. Well, too bad. She wasn't raised around witty banter and clever repartee.

  In any case, they weren't there to talk about her. "It's good of you to agree to this on such short notice, Mr. Seton. And to let me barge into your home. I thought for sure you'd be in Newport when I called the syndicate office."

  "Yeah, well, I've got some compelling business at this end. Call me Alan. Coffee?"

  "That would be nice," Quinta said, wishing he'd offer her tea. Following him into the kitchen, she remarked, "This is a really lovely home, Mist—it has a wonderful personality, um, Alan." She winced in distress; Barbara Walters would not be so tongue-tied.

  "Mergate's been in the family a long while," Alan explained as he punched the brew button. "Anything you see that has dignity and taste was probably put there by my grandfather, Geoffrey Seton, when he took over the house from his in-laws. He was a transplanted Englishman. If it's strange or whimsical, like that sculpture in the entry hall or the warped banjo on the wall there that's been made into a planter, for that my grandmother can take credit." He smiled to himself in recollection. "They played off one another perfectly. I've never known a more suited couple."

  "Did your parents ever live here?" Quinta asked, vaguely envious of happy couples.

  "Actually, they didn't. My mother's a proper Bostonian, and she'd never consider leaving Beacon Hill. My dad is surprisingly okay with that, but he's more or less okay with everything. After my grandmother died, Mergate was put on the market, so I bought it. I spent a lot of happy summers here. I learned to sail here. Sailed with my granddad all the time. And, of course, the family shipyard is nearby. Am I telling you all this for public distribution?"

  "Well, I'm not really …." she trailed off. Her attention had been caught and held by a dozen white pizza boxes, piled high on a soapstone countertop.

  "Oh—those," he muttered. "I haven't got around to throwing them out."

  "Your eyes were bigger than your stomach?" she ventured.

  He gave her a quick appraising look, then said, "Someone's idea of a practical joke; everyone knows I hate anchovies. Look, are we on the record yet? Because I'd rather those weren't mentioned. I can see the tabloids now: 'Pizza Man Vies for Cup.'"

  "I don't think the tabloids are much interested in the America's Cup Races, to be honest," Quinta responded, surprised by his egotism. "Maybe if one of your crew had eight fingers on each hand, or if the Pegasus was haunted by a poltergeist …."

  He looked chastened. His tanned face flushed darker, and he said, "Weren't you just a little girl not that many years ago?"

  Now it was her turn to color. She bit her lip and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to belittle the Races. It's just that when I visited my cousins in Minnesota and went blathering on about the America's Cup, they received me with polite yawns. 'Sounds a lot like watching corn grow,' is how one of them put it. So now I think it's a case of maybe you have to be there."

  Alan filled two mugs with strong-smelling coffee. "Wait until Australia. Do you take cream or sugar?"

  "A lot of each, thanks," she answered, eyeing the liquid cautiously.

  "Here's the thing: at the very least, the America's Cup is a race for technological prestige: why else would most of the European Common Market—and the United States, a defeated but still formidable past champion—and Australia, a smart, rich country with an inferiority complex—be spending untold millions of dollars the past couple of years? Because prestige is beyond price. It's also a prime marketing opportunity, like the Statue of Liberty centennial or the Olympic games. Everything from Levis to Budweiser will be hawked at these races."

  He handed Quinta a mug and slipped onto the bar-height stool beside her. "It's not a contest anymore between genteel men of two countries; it hasn't been since the nineteen-sixties. Every challenge brings more and more syndicates from more and more countries. It's a shame the Soviets didn't throw in their lot. The president could fire up the whole country then, including your Minnesota cousins. Why aren't you taking any of this down?"

  "Oh! I ... don't have any idea why not," she answered, blinking. Because I haven't heard a word you've said. I'm only looking at you. "Hold on. Don't say anything more until I set up my tape recorder. I hope you're not averse to taping ... I'm a stickler for the exact quote ... is there an outlet? My battery's low, I forgot, so …."

  "Wait." His hand was on hers, restraining her fumbling plunges into her bag. "Wait." His voice turned low and more serious. "Before you turn it on, tell me. How is your father?"

  Quinta looked back at his handsome face with its earnest blue eyes, and suddenly they were at the hospital outside her father's room, and she was a kid in jeans, holding herself together with emotional baling wire. Three years. She'd changed; she'd changed so much. But he seemed just the same. "Dad's … good," she said. "Better. As well as can be expected," she finished up, covering every possible base in her confusion.

  "He hasn't got over it, then," Alan said quietly.

  "Well, how can he?" she snapped. Obviously Alan Seton hadn't followed her father's painfully slow progress at the Vanderbilt Rehabilitation Center, hadn'
t noticed the flowers in the front of their house go to weed and brush, hadn't watched an already shy man turn into a reclusive one.

  Alan stared into the brown pool of his coffee cup and said, "I suppose I hoped he was going to be one of those special cases you read about. You know, the kind of guy who seems to outperform the rest of us, without the benefit of the use of his legs or eyes or whatever—all the while keeping an enviable sense of humor. I suppose I wanted a miracle. I wanted Stevie Wonder. I wanted Franklin Delano Roosevelt." He took a deep breath, held it, blew it out his cheeks, grimaced.

  "You tried to get in touch with him during those first months after the accident, didn't you?" she said.

  "Well, yes. To see if he needed anything ...."

  Quinta shook her head. "He didn't want any of us—you or me or anyone—to spoil the intensity of it with our sympathy, you know," she said, amazed that she was confiding a theory to him for which she'd been ridiculed by her sisters.

  "Spoil it?"

  She was reluctant to go further, but his voice was so soft, so sympathetic, that she went willingly on. "My father is convinced that he's ruled by a blighted star. I know I told you that he lived on a coasting schooner during the Depression, and that he was still a boy and was aboard when the boat was wrecked. Well, not long after that, his father died in a freak accident: he got backed over by a truck. And then, of course, this last and worst tragedy of all. You've got to admit, he's suffered some pretty awful misfortunes. But I think that he feeds on the larger-than-life aspect of them. He never dwells on the ordinary, positive sides of his existence, because that would be inconsistent with his vision."

  "He's in love with his misery, you're saying," said Alan.

  "Well, he sure doesn't get any satisfaction from his success as a consultant. Just like he never thinks of the wonderful marriage he had with my mother; only that she died of cancer. For that matter, he doesn't seem aware that he did manage to live through a shipwreck; only that they lost the boat and everything in it. I guess there really is a kind of tragic grandeur to his life, but ...."