Too Much Too Soon

by Jacqueline Briskin

Blowing her nose, she went to the door to call his nurse. If only Alexander were alive, she thought bleakly, he would have had what he always longed for—the recognition of his father.

  Epilogue

  From The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday May 8, 1985.

  SAN FRANCISCO—Crystal Talbott, chairman of the board of the Talbott Group, in conjunction with the group’s president, Gideon Talbott III, and Curt Ivory, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles headquartered Ivory Corporation, have announced a merger. Talbott-Ivory, like its parent companies, will be privately owned. Last year Ivory booked $8.3 billion, while Talbott’s ran a close second with $7.9 billion. The new company will be the world’s largest force in engineering and construction.

  To celebrate the merger, Crystal threw a small reception.

  By chance the date she circled on her calendar fell a week before the Clay Street house became the Alexander Talbott Historical Mansion, and so she decided to display her efforts to her guests—the family, Imogene and a few dozen other friends, the senior vice presidents of both companies with their wives.

  In the years since Alexander’s death, Crystal had dedicated herself with evangelical fervor to building memorials to her slain son. There was an Alexander Talbott Park on a ransom of land in the Financial District—the green and ferny gardens, planned by Honora, had become a favorite place for workers from the surrounding tall office buildings to enjoy their bag lunches. Already under construction was the Alexander Talbott Modern Art Museum in Golden Gate Park, for which Crystal had donated the initial five million. This house, however, sacred to her son’s boyhood, was her most hallowed project. For over a year, she had been tracking her size 4AA footprints in the sawdust and getting headaches from the whining saws as she directed European craftsmen in the uncovering of original woodwork that she had disguised.

  * * *

  Before dinner was served, the chief caterer caught Crystal’s eye, giving the meaningful nod that meant the buffet was ready for the traditional hostess inspection. Crystal glanced around. Her hint of hesitancy, like the small lines fanning from her intensely blue eyes and the streaks of white in her natural ash blond hair, added a beguiling softness to her beauty. Mitchell, sensing she might need him, hurried to her side.

  As they walked across the hall’s magnificent parquet, under carpeting for many decades, he inquired solicitously, “What is it?”

  “Everything’s so much like the first time I came here when I was churchmouse poor. It’s given me the willies.”

  Mitchell alone fully understood how Alexander’s death had unleashed Crystal’s prodding devils of self-doubt. “I’ve never heard so many compliments,” he said. “Your dress, the house.”

  “You don’t think I’ve gone overboard on this global theme?”

  “The occasion calls for something unique.” His tone deepened respectfully. “If Mr. Talbott were here, he’d tell you so, too.”

  He opened the side door of the baronial dining room. On either side of the vast Waterford chandelier dangled a pair of enormous floral replicas of the planet earth. One for Ivory, one for Talbott’s. Various shades of roses portrayed the continents, and the oceans were blue-dyed marguerites. Both globes bristled with the sprays of white cymbidium that marked the projects of each company. (Ivory had regained its old momentum, and Talbott’s, under Gid, had prospered without bid-rigging or any such monkey tricks.)

  To carry out Crystal’s theme, the menu was international. A turbanned Sikh stood behind a chafing dish of chicken curry, a sushi chef in a hapi coat presided over his art work—Crystal couldn’t for the life of her comprehend how anyone could eat seaweed and raw fish wrapped around cold rice, but the younger crowd relished it. There was a veiled lady for the b’stilla and the baby lamb simmered in the Lalarheini manner. In deference to the three little boys, a burly, beaming young black man wearing a Giant’s uniform held tongs over hot dogs.

  “It’s in perfect taste,” Mitchell said, smiling down at his employer. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

  She patted his thin hand. “Thank you, Padraic.”

  For years her friends had been after her to break this attachment to Mitchell. Imogene had told her point-blank, “Old men dote on their secretaries, not gorgeous things like you. Why, you could marry the cream of the financial crop.” Imogene’s argument didn’t hold water. Crystal had an enormous fortune of her own. Besides, what would some stranger, who saw only her admittedly ornamental exterior and put-together act, know of her idiosyncratic needs? Padraic had lived in this house with her that dreadful year after Alexander died, he had used a demitasse spoon to feed her purees, he had held her when her whole body trembled with chill.

  And after she had moved to the penthouse condominium of a new Nob Hill high-rise, Mitchell had bought a small apartment in the same building to be near her, yet never in all the years had he so much as hinted at marriage or “going all the way.” Their relationship suited Crystal to a tee.

  Together they admired the length of buffet for another moment, then Crystal smiled at the chief caterer, a signal for him to push back the ornately carved folding doors to the hall.

  Over the rippling music of the trio and the party clamor came a child’s gleeful whoop that grew louder. One of the boys must be sliding down the highly polished banister.

  “And I thought the magician would keep them entertained,” Crystal sighed. “I’ll bet you anything it’s that little devil, Evan. Talk about uncontrollable.”

  She said it lightly. Like the rest of the family, she considered the child spoiled, and like the others could not condemn the Ivorys. (The truth was they did not overly indulge their son: Evan was Evan, born with an incorruptible strength of will.)

  Honora hurried into the hall just as Evan landed on his feet. Crystal could see her sister bending and talking to the child, who replied with a cocky smile that lacked any trace of contrition.

  * * *

  “Evan, Daddy distinctly told you not to do that,” Honora’s rebuke was ameliorated by a stroking back of dark hair from the boy’s domed forehead.

  In appearance, Evan Ivory was all Sylvander, with narrow, attenuated bone structure, long face and round-lidded blue eyes—as a matter of fact, he looked very much like his grandfather.

  Langley, now ensconced in the Ivorys’ Los Angeles house with three shifts of nurses, emerged from his querulous misanthropy only for this grandson. He pronounced Evan a little gentleman. This, Langley’s highest compliment, was a misrepresentation if ever Honora had heard one.

  Evan shrugged away from her hand. “Didn’t you ever slide down when you lived here?” he asked.

  “It’s a three-story fall from the top—”

  “What’s going on?” Curt had come into the hall.

  “I tried the banister,” Evan said.

  “Didn’t I tell you specifically it was off bounds?”

  “What do you think gave me the idea?”

  Evan might look like her side, but as he stared up at Curt with that same truculent half smile, Honora knew which parent he honestly resembled.

  Unable to stifle his laugh, Curt said, “You’ll really get it, buster, if you interrupt my toast.”

  * * *

  Most of the guests had congregated in the rear drawing room, with its small-paned but spectacular view of sailboats gliding homeward through the lavender haze of the Bay. Accordingly, Lissie Ivory had seated herself in the music room, sparsely populated, farthest from the crowd. She had flown home for the party from Washington, where she was working toward a masters in psychology at Gallaudet. At nearly five ten, and slim, with long glossy black hair, the childhood resemblance to Crystal was far less marked. Leaning back on one tanned arm, her legs thrust out in front of the poufed velvet piano bench, she might have been a model posing in the stylish, outsize white pantsuit, even to the expression of hauteur. Lissie raised a wall to prevent strangers from striking up a conversation and thus intruding on her handicap; however, with a family and close friends her man
ner was warm and engagingly uninhibited. Her friendships and the three young men with whom she’d had relationships were all drawn from the lively if silent subculture of the deaf.

  Joscelyn was sitting near her.

  “What I can’t get over,” Lissie said, “is that Alexander grew up here. I had sort of a crush on him when I was little—he was the most hip, with-it person I could imagine. And could anything be more old-fashioned than this house?”

  “Your aunt’s done a fabulous job at restoration, but don’t let it fool you.” Joscelyn set down her scotch to sign. “This is how the place was when she married Uncle Gideon. Long before Alexander was born she’d changed everything to what we used to call ultramodern in those remote days. Believe it or not, this house was perfect for the Pollocks and de Koonings that are going to Alexander’s modern art museum.”

  “Art, mmm. Auntie Joss, Mother and Daddy showed me some terrific photographs of wild-flowers that your friend took.” Lissie’s arch smile proved what her intonation lacked. “He’s quite an artist himself.”

  Pleasantly embarrassed, Joscelyn glanced toward the center drawing room, where Gid was talking to a robust man with thick, graying hair. “Her friend,” as the family called him, was Dr. Jack Steiner, a divorced New York pediatrician whose avocation was photography. She had met him two years ago when she was working on a high-rise project in Manhattan. Dining alone at adjacent tables at a small Columbus Avenue Thai restaurant, they had struck up an acquaintanceship. Joscelyn’s unrelenting guilts, not to mention the searing memories of Curt’s rebuff, had kept her aloof for a long time. But the doctor had wooed her via long distance calls and by mailing her rare jazz albums and humorously captioned samples of his photography. She had succumbed cautiously. They had shared several bi-coastal weekends before she would consent to a vacation at the Mauna Kea. And after Jack had mentioned that he would be in San Francisco for a medical conference on the date of this bash, she had needed to work up a ridiculous amount of courage to invite him.

  Jack caught her glance. He smiled, tapping his pipe against his nice square teeth to let her know that he was enjoying himself. Joscelyn half-raised her hand, smiling. Doubtless Crystal looks down on him because he’s Jewish, but so what? God knows he’s far more presentable than that creepy secretary of hers.

  “I think he’s great,” Lissie said. “And so do Mother and Daddy.”

  “He is nice, isn’t he?”

  “And very interested in you.”

  “We’re just good friends,” Joscelyn said, reddening.

  Imogene, bone thin and looking like death warmed over from her most recent face-lift, stood in the doorway calling that dinner was served.

  Jocelyn said to Lissie, “The buffet is officially open. I understand from reliable sources that there’s a terrific curry.”

  A minute later, Vi waddled over to slowly spell out that there was a b’stilla and Lissie should get some now before it was all gone.

  Then Honora drifted into the music room. “Lissie, the buffet’s open. Wait until you see the sushi.”

  Lissie glanced in mock dismay at Vi, Joscelyn and Honora. “I’ll be fatter than a house, with my three mothers,” she said. But it was Honora’s hand that she clasped.

  * * *

  When everyone was in the hall or dining room, Gid stood on the staircase, introducing his uncle.

  Curt took a glass and Gid handed him the mike.

  “I’m going to make two toasts, but I promised Crystal not to let the dinner get ruined, so they’ll be short.” He raised the tulip-shaped glass. “I give you Talbott-Ivory, a joining of the two best damn engineering outfits the world has ever seen.”

  With a scattering of hurrahs, the assembly chorused, “To Talbott-Ivory.”

  “And now let’s drink to absent friends.” Curt held his glass higher. “I give you Gideon Talbott, my mentor, a man of utmost integrity, an illustrious engineer. He’s still with us, and if you don’t believe me, take a look out the window and you’ll see his bridges.” Curt paused, and when he spoke again his eyes were fixed on Crystal. “And I give you Alexander Talbott, whose brilliance was cut short. Many of you here knew Alexander both as a boy and a man.” His voice went lower with sincerity. “I envy you.”

  Crystal’s guests drank her vintage French champagne, but she did not. She was weeping, and so was Gid, who had his arm around her.

  The crowd milled toward the buffet.

  Curt drew Honora a few steps up the staircase. “Listen, you didn’t mind my mentioning Alexander?”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “Time was when you couldn’t cope with that particular situation.”

  “Neither of us could,” she said. The years had healed her wounds and now she was able to think of Alexander as her dead nephew. And as for Curt, after that confrontation with Crystal in his hospital room, his fevers (and paternal resentments) had ceased.

  * * *

  For Honora, the dark nooks and corners, the ornate bulges and heavily fringed velvet upholstery were crowded with youthful ghosts. Filled with a desire to recapture that time when life was lit by a younger, rosier star, she set down her half-eaten curry, murmuring an excuse to Gid and Anne, who were sharing a chair next to hers. She slipped across the hall into the circular room, the Salon Oriental.

  She was alone and as she closed the door, she could hear, actually hear, the hushed, bickering English voices. Her ears tingled, growing warm. She sank down on the huge, voluptuous central ottoman, remembering, remembering.

  As the door opened she glanced up with a hint of annoyance. But the intruder was Crystal, a flutter of fog-gray chiffon, the other half of her memories.

  “So you weren’t able to resist either,” Crystal said. “Can’t you just see the pair of us in our City of Paris marked-down bargain hats?”

  “It’s sheer magic, Crystal, the way you’ve turned back the clock.”

  Absurdly delighted by Honora’s approval, Crystal laughed. “Do you remember how you fought against coming?”

  “I never did have your good sense.”

  Crystal took this sincere compliment for a sisterly dig, possibly about Padraic Mitchell: though she clung obstinately to him, she was extremely sensitive about the relationship, seeing criticism everywhere. “If it hadn’t been for my so-called good sense,” she retorted, “what sort of lives would we have had?”

  “Exactly what I was thinking when you came in. Crystal, Gideon was so very good to us.”

  Though mollified, Crystal couldn’t help adding another prod. “You never would’ve met Curt.”

  “Crystal . . . have you ever stopped to think that we’re each connected to him by our children? I have Evan. Joscelyn asked him to adopt Lissie. And there was . . .” Her voice faded. Crystal’s lovely mouth had curved down. Honora put an arm around the small, square shoulders. “Crys, do you still miss him so terribly?”

  “Every day—every single day—I wake up thinking, ‘This morning I’ll see Alexander.’” Crystal paused, continuing in a determined voice, “Curt tells me you’re doing a reflecting garden for the Norock Museum.”

  Honora held up her crossed fingers. “Hoping to.” Pregnancy had put an end to her London landscaping career. However, Evan, after his first two years, had steadfastly battled off any attempt at high-caliber mothering so Honora had begun working again, this time from an office in her Bel Air house: she had more than enough jobs to keep her busy. “They’re making their decision next week.”

  The door opened again.

  “Crystal, Honora,” Joscelyn said.

  As her sisters turned toward her, Joscelyn couldn’t control a dart of that old, childish misery. They never thought of asking me to come in here with them. Would she ever shake this sense of being barred from their closeness, cut off from their enviably popular, more beautiful lives? “Why’re you hiding?”

  “We both felt drawn,” Crystal said with a hint of annoying mystery.

  “To what?” Joscelyn demanded.


  “This room. It’s where we were put to wait for Gideon the first time we visited,” Honora explained, smiling and making a circular, invitational gesture with her arm. “Come be nostalgic with us.”

  Feeling part of the Sylvander sisterhood again, Joscelyn sat on the ottoman with them. “What point in the memoirs have you reached?”

  Crystal said, “We’d just started.”

  “The first time I saw the place I can remember quite distinctly thinking that there couldn’t be a man richer or more lavish than Gideon.”

  “He was always tremendously generous,” Honora put in.

  “Looking back, in our cases maybe a bit much so,” Crystal said thoughtfully. “He gave us too much too soon.”

  “Especially me,” Joscelyn chuckled. “God, the amount of cake I gorged at those Open Houses!”

  “It must’ve been pretty dreary for a child,” Honora excused. “No wonder the food seemed the best thing to you.”

  The sentimentality that Joscelyn normally kept incarcerated had been released. “Not the best thing,” she said a bit shakily. “I know I kept it well hidden, but having you two for sisters was the best thing—and it still is.”

  “Same here,” Honora and Crystal said at the same moment.

  Misty-eyed, the sisters wound their arms around one another, a joint hug like the embraces that the Sylvander family had shared long ago.

  Joscelyn pulled away first.

  They began dredging up recollections of those long ago months when they had lived under this immense slate roof, interrupting one another as the memories flooded.

  Curt had come to the door, which Joscelyn had left ajar. He stood for maybe a minute watching the three women on whose lives he had made such an indelible imprint. “Don’t get too close to the nitty-gritty, gals,” he said, his flippant tone marred by a slight huskiness. “You have an eavesdropper.”

  As they looked toward him, each remained immersed in the past.

  Crystal inevitably thought of the hideous speck of time when he had flung himself between a gun and all that she held dearest on this earth.