Blood and Money

by Thomas Thompson

  Pa was now threatening to sell the place altogether, for it was not paying its way through boarding and riding lessons. Often he told Joan that he would not underwrite a major program of breeding and training until the ledger was written in black ink. Joan was flustered. Desperately she wanted to hold onto Chatsworth, for it remained a dream as cherished as John’s music room. She knew that the potential was there, and through Chatsworth she might leave a mark on her world.

  Thus she came up with the idea of hiring an old friend, Diane Settegast, to run the stables, more of a stopgap than anything else. Earthy, rough-talking, most comfortable in jeans long before they became high fashion, Diane was a smoldering Dallas woman around thirty who was proud to reveal that her breasts had been amplified by John Hill’s silicone implants. Her companion and roommate was an older woman in her mid-forties named Eunice Woolen. Both were frequent guests at the Hill home.

  Diane Settegast knew little of breeding and training show horses, but she could teach the little brats how to keep from falling off their ponies. And, in time, Joan would figure out something else. Anything to keep Ash from selling Chatsworth.

  On March 9, 1969, Diane and Eunice arrived at the Hill mansion to spend a day or two and discuss the job proposal. Hardly were their bags out of the car and into the foyer before their hostess greeted them with anger in her eyes. She had just hung up the telephone to conclude a quarrel with John. “The son of a bitch stayed out all night again,” she said in greeting. “He promised to take Boot to the car races at the Astrodome, and now he says he can’t make it, so I’ve got to go.…”

  The visitors were surprised. They had heard of the couple’s spectacular estrangement and breakup—gossip had traveled quickly to Dallas where they lived. But now they were under the impression that John and Joan were happily together again.

  “And Pa’s gone off somewhere, too,” continued Joan. Ash had promised to be present when Diane Settegast arrived, but he had flown instead to Florida on oil business. It seemed that little was going well for Joan at this moment of her life. But soon something struck her as funny, and she was her normal self, warm, laughing heartily, anxious to gossip and show off her house.

  “Have you seen our own little Versailles?” asked Joan as she showed her old friends around the house. She led them up the grand staircase, across a theaterlike foyer, and through double-sized doors into the great room. “Jesus God in Heaven,” whispered Eunice. Diane stood transfixed, staring at the convocation of gold, white satin, and crystal.

  What did it finally cost? Diane wanted to know.

  “John’s very secretive about just how much,” answered Joan. But she knew that the piano alone cost more than the original estimate for the whole room. “And the son of a bitch complains when I need two hundred dollars to pay some groom at the stables.”

  John Hill came home from hospital rounds shortly after sundown and greeted the two Dallas women warmly. He did not let on there was new tension in his household. To welcome the guests, he suggested dinner at a restaurant called The Stables, one of the city’s better steak houses. There the three women and the surgeon ate heartily, with the conversation chiefly turned to Chatsworth and what Joan hoped Diane could accomplish there.

  Diane asked if Joan knew what Ash Robinson was planning to offer as salary, and Joan said she did not—only that there was a fixer-upper house available on the premises rent free, and that she would receive a commission on the riding lessons she gave.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, John Hill received a “beep” on his Page Boy apparatus. He went to the telephone to call his service and when he returned he apologized. “I’ll be gone to the hospital for a few minutes,” he said, “and when I get home we’ll talk some more and have some pastries.” Diane made a gesture of no thanks, pointing to the heavy meal she had just consumed. “Maybe we’ll all be hungry later,” said John.

  Past eleven on this Sunday evening, John returned from his announced destination—Hermann Hospital—and he was in an ebullient mood. He spoke of how much he had valued the friendships of Diane and Eunice for so many years. Diane warmed to the flattery. She had always liked “ole John,” particularly after he performed the breast augmentation procedure on her for a fee of next to nothing. The silicone implantation was so successful that Diane not only enjoyed telling about her new dimensions, she occasionally—if the party was festive enough—even showed them off.

  At one such occasion in the Hill home a few months earlier, Diane had unknowingly precipitated a saddening quarrel between John and Joan. During one of John’s musicales, Joan and Diane were sitting together, along with Vann Maxwell, and the women were bored by the chamber music being performed on the Hills’ patio. The group was playing beside the pool, and the audience of thirty or forty was on rented folding chairs, giving the event the air of a civic outdoor concert. When Joan caught first herself, then the other girls nodding off, she whispered, “Let’s go in the kitchen during the next intermission.”

  There, all the escapees from Bach poured themselves drinks, and Diane Settegast waltzed off to find some mischief, as was her wont. To mark her spectacular new bosom proportions, a friend had given Diane a set of strip-tease tassels, and now seemed a good time to display them. She unbuttoned her blouse and put them on her nipples. While the chamber group played, Diane located a picture window through which only the flute player could see. She stood behind the window and, to the tempo of a seventeenth-century composition, performed a slow strip, flashing her blouse open and shut, the effect so hilarious—and provocative—that the musician could not continue. John Hill found the episode amusing, perhaps because the breasts that he had enlarged were the ones causing all the commotion. Joan laughed so hard that she literally fell down on the kitchen floor. A week later, through the devices of an actor friend, Joan borrowed a set of burlesque pasties herself, and one midnight when her husband returned “from rounds,” she put New Orleans jazz on the stereo and began a dance that surpassed Diane’s in sexual provocation. Joan was proud of her figure, and with her careful dieting—and pursuit of yoga—she looked trim and sexy. “No need to fix these up, is there, honey?” she laughed, cupping her breasts.

  John Hill rose, shut off the music, and looked at his wife with ice. “That’s shameful,” he said.

  “It wasn’t shameful when Diane did it. You laughed your god damn head off.”

  “Diane isn’t my wife.”

  Diane knew nothing of this incident, nor did Eunice, and on the late Sunday night as they sat with Joan in the great house’s richly paneled den, a fire warming the chilly March night, its flames flickering across the glass of the framed prints of horses, it would seem that the doctor and his wife were somehow holding their crazy marriage together. Joan had spoken gently of him and dismissed his spree with Ann Kurth as “a dumb thing he did, but it’s over with.” Toward midnight John announced cheerily, “Now let’s have those pastries.” Eunice Woolen, being the kind of helpful woman who helps hostesses clear dinner tables without being asked, rose to help John with the serving. But he shook his head and gestured for her to keep her seat by the fire. “This is my treat,” he said. “You girls keep on talking.”

  Presently John appeared with a silver tray on which there were four small china plates, each containing an individual pastry. But John did not permit the ladies to choose their preferred treat. As if he were a waiter who had previously taken an order, he handed each of them a pastry. Eunice received a strawberry tart, Diane a chocolate éclair, John the cream puff, and Joan also a chocolate éclair. During the eating, Joan remarked that her husband’s cream puff was the most alluring of the treats. “But you like chocolate,” said John. “That’s why I served you the éclair.”

  During the snack, John received another page on his beeper. He went to the telephone and came back to the den to report that he had to leave again, on an emergency call. His mission this time was to sew up the lip of some young attorney. Who? asked Joan. He did not know, said J
ohn, but the task should not take more than a few minutes. But he left and he did not return the rest of the night. At breakfast the next morning, Joan was furious. She telephoned Vann Maxwell and said, “He’s running around again. I think we’ve both had it.” But at midmorning John called, all apologies. The case of the attorney’s lip had been a complicated one; he had worked until almost dawn, then he fell asleep in the surgeons’ lounge because he had a facelift scheduled at 7 A.M.

  On Tuesday night the three women—Joan, Diane, and Eunice—dined at a barbecue restaurant while the doctor supposedly worked at his office, catching up on patient records. When they returned to the mansion at ten-thirty, John was in his music room, the volume from the stereo fortissimo. Smiling, he rose and announced he had another surprise. Just sit down here and wait.

  Presently he returned with a tray of pastries, repeating his precise ritual of handing each woman her seemingly preselected plate. Again Joan received a chocolate éclair. On this occasion Joan commenced eating her treat, and after one bite glanced covetingly at what John was eating—a cream puff. “Let’s trade, John,” she suggested. “Cream puffs are my favorite.”

  John shook his head negatively. “They’re my favorite too,” he said. “Besides, I’ve already eaten half of mine.”

  The week went from bad to worse. On Wednesday, John and Joan went to a party at the home of a bachelor doctor, and she returned home alone. Once again he had received one of those emergency calls “from the hospital.” Joan waited until midnight, then she began dialing around trying to locate her husband, but the Diagnostic Hospital—his destination—could not locate him, nor was he at his office, nor did he answer his emergency number. Angry, she went to bed alone.

  The next day Joan rose early, packed Boot off to school, and drove to Chatsworth where she rode for two hours, pushing her horse and herself. A groom noted that she whipped her mount with a crop because he did not perform adequately. It was not like Joan to strike her horse in anger. In fact, the groom had never seen her do it before.

  When she returned home, Effie Green, the new maid, an ancient black woman of the Old South, said that Dr. Hill had telephoned. He would definitely be home for dinner. Joan brightened immediately. Her mood swung quickly from anger to happiness. She hurried about the house, dispatching orders to the maid to prepare broiled steak and sweet potato pie, happily informing Diane and Eunice that dinner would be at 7 P.M., en famille. At five Joan drove quickly to her hairdresser for a comb-out. Then she put on a new hostess gown she had purchased a few weeks earlier in a fit of anger over John’s gifts to Ann Kurth. Both of her house guests noted how desperately she wanted the evening to work. They planned to withdraw to their room as soon as dinner was over, to leave the warring couple alone.

  At 8 P.M., when dinner was an hour late, and cold, Joan sadly asked her guests and her son to take their places. They began to eat without John Hill, who had not even telephoned with an apology. Suddenly he drove into the driveway and appeared, full of apologies, a pastry box in his hand. He was late because he had stopped to purchase the treats.

  “I’m getting sick and tired of pastries,” snapped Joan. “We’ve been waiting for you more than an hour.”

  Sorry, said John. There had been another last-minute emergency at his office. No time to call and explain. He would skip dinner anyway because in a few minutes a friend was coming to play duets in the music room. Joan’s mouth tightened. She went to bed alone again.

  On Friday night of this important week, the Hills were scheduled to attend Houston’s annual wild game dinner, a charity affair at which the Heartbeats would play after a meal of venison, boar, even bear shot by local hunters who had been to Alaska. Joan always had fun at this masculine and rowdy party; she had attended for years. The year before she had danced every number with the most attractive men in the hall and had begged the band to keep playing after quitting time at midnight.

  In the late afternoon, at a shopping center near her home, Joan encountered Mrs. Dotty Oates, wife of a doctor named Jim Oates who was a member of John’s music set and his occasional partner in piano duets. She had not seen her friend in several weeks, and now she exclaimed over how well Joan looked.

  “Honey, you look sensational!” said Mrs. Oates. She was a nurse, and she always talked both saltily and with authority, as if ordering a patient to take a pill. “You’ve lost weight in the butt, but not in your boobs. How the hell do you do it?”

  Just trying to keep a wandering husband on the leash, said Joan lightly.

  “The way you look,” said Mrs. Oates, “any man oughta stay at home permanently.” As Joan drove off, her friend noted once again that she looked better than she had looked in months. Within a few days this recollection would loom significantly.

  The wild game dinner was not the occasion that Joan had hoped it would be. She and John arrived late and took seats at a table occupied by Frances Johnston, who had quit as office manager for the doctor, her chief reason being the Ann Kurth commotion. Joan drank lightly, taking but a few sips of scotch and soda from Frances’ glass. This, too, would be remembered before another week passed. Joan picked at her plate, nothing more than a few bites of venison. Dieting, she explained. While the Heartbeats played, Frances noted that Joan watched her husband intently, and a wide range of emotions played across her face. At one moment she seemed to adore him. Then a wave of hostility crossed her eyes. But it went away quickly, replaced by tenderness, a memory, perhaps, of a happier moment.

  When the orchestra finished its concert, John packed up his tuba, returned to the table, and announced that he and his wife had to leave. He had rounds to make. One of the doctors present in the group glanced at his watch. It was almost ten. Most patients would be asleep. But the doctor said nothing.

  Joan started to protest. The evening was just beginning. A rock band would be taking over, and there would be dancing until past midnight. She wanted very much to stay.

  “We can’t stay,” said John firmly.

  “Just for a few minutes, honey?” Joan pleaded.

  “I’ve got to go to the hospital, you know that,” said John.

  Frances Johnston intruded tactfully. “Why don’t you stay with us, Joan?” she suggested. “We’ll drive you home.”

  Joan looked at her husband; their eyes locked briefly. Then she shook her head and whispered in Frances’ ear, “I’d better do what he wants. I’m still trying to make it work.”

  On the way home Joan asked her husband if he would be late. He did not know. It depended upon the condition of his patients. Perhaps he would, perhaps he would not. Then, she said, she would wait up for him. They could have a nightcap in the music room and listen to records.

  “Don’t do that,” said John. “I’ll probably be late.”

  At that moment the Cadillac pulled into the driveway of the great house. “Another all-nighter, maybe?” said Joan hotly.

  “What do you mean by that?” said John.

  “Twice this week you’ve been out all night,” she said. “If you stay out tonight, then don’t bother to come home.”

  Joan got out of the car angrily. As her husband threw his car into reverse and backed out of the driveway she called after him. She screamed, loud enough for the neighbors to hear, “You’ve blown it, John! You’ve just lost your wife, your son, and your god damn music room.”

  Hot tears falling on her cheeks, she ran into the house.

  TWELVE

  The next day, Saturday, Joan did not rise until almost four in the afternoon. Twice during the day Eunice Woolen grew concerned over her friend sleeping so late, it not being her nature. Normally Joan was up by seven to pack Boot off to school and to attend to her busy schedule. Joan’s appointment book was always heavily filled with meetings, parties, and horse activities.

  Around noon Eunice opened Joan’s door quietly and peeked in. She appeared to be sleeping deeply, curled up and buried under a wad of blankets in the king-sized bed. Around 2:30 P.M., Eunice asked John Hill
if there was reason for alarm. Was Joan feeling unwell? Not that he knew, was the answer. The night before, when he returned home from late hospital rounds, Joan had seemed upset over something. They had disagreed over some minor matter at the wild game dinner, and she encountered difficulty in going to sleep. So he gave her a tranquilizer. It was perfectly all right for her to sleep this long.

  “When are you girls leaving, by the way?” asked John pointedly.

  “As soon as Ash gets back from Florida and we have our talk about the job at the farm,” answered Diane.

  The two house guests were more than ready to take their leave. The week had been unpleasant, with Joan snappish and cross, John disappearing, both glaring at one another and stalking about the house in elaborate silence and avoidance. “The funny thing,” Diane mentioned to Eunice, “is that John used to like to have me stay here. He always seemed anxious for me to be here a few days and keep Joan company because he was so busy with his practice and his music. But this week he’s done his damnedest to make me feel totally unwelcome.”

  When Joan finally rose and groggily descended the staircase, she was embarrassed at having spent the day in bed. The telephone was ringing and she answered it. A friend wanted to remind her of a meeting set for the next Wednesday, the Opera Guild fund drive. “I just did the craziest thing,” said Joan. “I slept all day and left two house guests to fend for themselves.”

  She found Diane and Eunice in the kitchen and apologized for her rudeness. “John gave me some pill last night and it really knocked me out,” she said. And, by the way, where was her husband? Diane pointed up, toward the second floor’s music room. Joan nodded wearily. If her husband was not out “making rounds,” then he was in his music room. His life seemed distilled to these two alternatives. She went in search of him; John had promised to take Boot to the barber for a long-overdue haircut.

  During her long sleep a score of telephone messages had stacked up and now, having sent her husband and son to the city’s most prominent men’s hair stylist, she settled into a chair in the den and began answering them. In the next week she had five meetings scheduled for various charity affairs, and she was making plans to ride in a horse show at Lexington, Kentucky, later in the month. But first she called her mother down the street, who reported that Pa was returning from Florida the next morning and would be able to talk terms with Diane Settegast about the farm position.