Poinciana

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I wondered if I should tell him of my sense of recognition when I’d met Vasily Karl, but with nothing definite to recall, it was too nebulous to talk about. Besides, my sympathy was really with Gretchen and I had to make some mild protest against his words.

  “Perhaps Gretchen needs someone of her own in her life.” After all, I knew what that yearning could be like.

  “There are plenty of men in America. She could have her pick.”

  “Perhaps he is her pick. She looked very happy in his arms.”

  “I won’t have it! I won’t have my daughter exploited. He’ll wind up breaking her heart.”

  Though I knew I shouldn’t, I went on. “Why don’t you wait and see? Isn’t her happiness worth it?”

  His expression was colder than I’d ever seen, and I wondered with a faint twinge of disloyalty if he was capable of considering Gretchen’s happiness. This was a man who possessed a power that I was only beginning to understand. Presidents listened, financial empires trembled at Ross Logan’s edicts. What he commanded must be done. I had begun to recognize this in small ways as we traveled together, and I saw it in the attentions and services that were paid him, and paid me because I was with him. But could a man who had found his way to such a position learn to accept defeat in anything? Was that what made him strong—refusing ever to be defeated? If so, there might be a painful time ahead for Gretchen and Vasily, and I wondered if his daughter could be equally strong in order to fight him. Her rage was very great. I had already seen that. But had she the iron in her to best him?

  Ross sipped his drink and looked at me again, his gaze softening. “I’m sorry, darling. I don’t want anything to spoil our first night together at Poinciana.”

  I was a little like Gretchen, I thought with unexpected clarity. When Ross looked at me the way Vasily looked at her, I melted. I wanted so terribly to be loved, cared for, protected, and I didn’t want to live with my guard up all the time.

  Shortly before dinner was announced, Jarrett Nichols came into the room, greeted me with distant courtesy, and accepted a scotch and soda from Ross. Again I was conscious of his striking red hair, and of the strength this man too seemed to exude. Though it was a different strength from Ross’s. Not so much a power that commanded outward events, but something inner that could be relied upon by others. This was undoubtedly why Ross depended on him, trusted him implicitly. And because of this I wished he might look at me with less antagonism.

  Jarrett, as became clear quickly enough, was here at Ross’s invitation. I gathered that he usually dined with his son in their cottage when he was at Poinciana, but tonight there were more business affairs to discuss.

  A butler, whom I hadn’t seen before, came to announce dinner, and we went down an inner hallway to a pair of open doors. On the threshold I stopped to view a room that was a perfect picture in itself.

  “Allegra again?” I said.

  Ross smiled. “My mother believed that any room worth doing must be seen like a painting on first sight.”

  A painting it was, done in glowing pink and silver gray. The walls were of pale gray satin, the Directoire chairs, about an oval table, upholstered in deep pink moiré. Mantelpiece and ceiling were a cloudy gray, and a shining Waterford chandelier hung above the table, glass tapers alight. A centerpiece of luscious pink rhododendron graced a cloth of heirloom lace.

  Ross’s hand guided me to my chair opposite his at the long end of the oval. Places were set for only three and Jarrett sat between us.

  “This is the family dining room,” Ross told me. “There’s a larger, more formal room for grander affairs. In Allegra’s day it was used frequently, but this was one of her favorite rooms. Brett had these chairs done over, but the rest is just as it was in my mother’s time, and the colors have never been changed.”

  I sipped white wine and thought again of Allegra Logan. She must sometimes have been a little bizarre and ostentatious, yet capable of creating this room of delicate beauty. A lady of contrasts and great imagination. Once more I saluted her and hoped humbly that her spirit would bear with me.

  “How old would Allegra be now if she had lived?” I asked.

  Ross glanced at Jarrett before he answered—a look I didn’t understand. “Ninety-two,” he said. “She was thirty-six when I was born. There were two other children ahead of me who died. A girl and a boy.”

  I was aware of Jarrett, staring at his plate in a fixed way, and remembered his previous withdrawal at the mention of Allegra’s name. There was something here that I didn’t understand.

  I began to spoon my cream of parsley soup, and it was Jarrett who finally turned the conversation to me by asking how I had liked Japan.

  I told him of our visit to Mr. Sato in Kyoto, and about the gift the old man had made me of the mother-and-child frog netsuke.

  “Perhaps I can have it made into a pendant,” I said. ‘It’s so beautiful and I would love to wear it.”

  Ross looked shocked. “Of course you will do nothing of the kind. That is a valuable collector’s item. Tomorrow you can bring it to the netsuke room and we’ll find a proper spot for it.”

  For just an instant I wanted to protest that the carving had been given to me, that he had no right to order what I should do with it. But I wanted no quarrel, and he was probably right, so I said nothing, though I was aware of Jarrett’s frank look upon me. A look that might be derisive. My intense awareness of this blunt red-haired man made me uncomfortable. What did it matter if he didn’t like me? I turned away quickly.

  For the rest of the meal, Ross talked mostly with Jarrett, and though my attention wandered now and then, I became aware of a certain tension growing between the two men.

  “I’m out of all that,” Ross was saying. “I haven’t been on the board of Meridian for more than a year.”

  “You’re still the major stockholder and you vote. Your influence isn’t likely to be overlooked. You know very well that new explorations for oil are vital. Ours should be moving ahead a lot faster. You need to urge this on personally.”

  “You worry too much,” Ross told him, and gave his attention to the steak that had been perfectly broiled with mushrooms.

  Yet even while Ross ate his dinner with obvious relish, I grew aware of a certain choler that had arisen in him. A flush had mottled his face at Jarrett’s words, and I wondered at its cause. Jarrett himself seemed coolly controlled, betraying nothing, and he let that particular topic go and turned to less irksome matters. I wished I might ask questions, learn more about my husband’s empire, but I knew that I lacked the knowledge to ask with intelligence, and that probably both these intimidating power figures would regard any words of mine as frivolous and ignorant. If I wanted to learn, I would have to go about it in more indirect ways.

  We finished the meal with a sherbet, and I became increasingly aware that I would not be needed in this house for the planning of meals. Not that living in hotels and schools had prepared me for a kitchen. But sometimes I had the whimsical wish that I might be turned loose with a cookbook and assorted pots and pans, just to see what adventures might await me in that unfamiliar world. At Poinciana it was likely to stay unfamiliar. Of those who worked here, no one but Mrs. Broderick had paid me the slightest attention, and I was quite aware that her acceptance of me had been laced with polite disapproval. I had yet to earn my wings.

  After dinner, Jarrett returned to his cottage, and Ross went up to my room to fetch me a shawl. We walked outside, and the sound of traffic seemed far away beyond the coquina rock walls that guarded Poinciana. Nearby sounds were only the rattle of the wind in palm fronds and the rushing of waves onto a beach. What a perfect jewel of a world! An antique if not archaic jewel, really, to be thus removed from everything that was ugly and painful and threatening. All those things that had hurt me so deeply could never touch Poinciana.

  I walked with my arm through Ross’s, safe in my imaginary sphere, able to believe for a little while that clocks could be turned back, and that a life
like this was still possible.

  Lights burned in the windows of several cottages and I waved a hand in their direction. “Who lives down there?”

  “Some are empty. They were guest cottages in Allegra’s day. Jarrett and Keith and their housekeeper occupy the largest. A few of the staff who’ve been with us a long while live down there if they have families. Let’s go this way. I want to show you something.”

  We walked around the front of the house and toward the boulevard, where Palm Beach traffic went by. Ross led me to a locked gate, which he opened, and we went down several steps to a stone passageway that led under the road. Allegra had seen to everything, including a private way to the beach.

  The echoing stone tunnel was damp, but it was free of debris and had obviously been swept. I could feel the rush of the wind through the arched openings as we approached the ocean. Another short flight of steps, another gate, and we were out on the sand. Off to our right were the tennis court and swimming pool. I smiled to myself, remembering what someone had told me about Palm Beach: “Nobody who is anybody swims in the ocean.” But I would.

  The beach ran the length of the island—not very wide, and bordered by sea grape on the land side. We went to the water’s edge, where the sand was packed damp and firm, and walked together, my hand in Ross’s. Though the beaches along here were private, no one could be barred from walking the sand, but no one was out tonight. Beyond the sea walls and the road, the great houses, their windows alight, seemed remote and of another world. The world of the rich and the favored that I didn’t really belong to.

  Appropriately, a huge Florida moon hung over the water, and I smiled to myself, thinking of Ysobel’s Moon Songs in a long-ago album, remembering that I’d thought them sentimental, when she herself was not. Tonight I could dare to be sentimental myself. The scene about us was so beautifully, unbelievably romantic, and I knew when Ross slipped an arm about me as we followed the strip of sand that he was feeling it too. Under his breath he began to hum an old song that Ysobel had helped to popularize—“Blue Champagne.” I might have wished that he had chosen some other tune, but I would not let thoughts of Ysobel trouble me now.

  Perhaps anticipation is one of the essential parts of lovemaking. To be close and to know what lies ahead, so that excitement begins to build in a warm awareness of what is to come. How lucky I was to have been chosen by a man like Ross. A man who knew every tender, arousing touch of love, who knew what a woman wanted. Especially a woman who had known so little about love until now.

  When he bent his head to kiss me, my mouth responded and I felt the tiny pulse awaken in my lips.

  “Let’s go up to the house,” he said, and we turned together and walked quickly across the sand, eager now, hurrying back through the tunnel.

  High in Allegra’s Tower, a light burned, but I turned my eyes away from it. I didn’t want to wonder who was up there. I didn’t want to think of Gretchen and Vasily, but only of Ross and me. Tonight there would be no repetition of that strange rejection I’d experienced on our last night in Japan. Tonight we were ready for each other. Perhaps more than we’d ever been before. I remembered that he had told me everything would be better at Poinciana, and I was beginning to understand what he meant.

  Up the lovely front staircase we floated, and at the door of my room he let me go. “Come when you’re ready,” he said, and went through the next door.

  Even though eager haste befuddled my fingers, I undressed tidily. Living in schools taught one not to drop clothes heedlessly about. When I’d put on a gown of sheerest chiffon, I sat at the dressing table to remove my jade earrings. For just an instant, my eyes rested on the frog netsuke, and a feeling I didn’t want to entertain ran through me. He had no right … But I wouldn’t think of that now. For this whole entrancing night I would think only of Ross and of how much I loved him, how much he loved me.

  As I moved barefoot toward the closed door to his room, I heard the sound of instrumental music starting—the same tune he had hummed earlier down on the beach. How lovely, how perfect! How well Ross understood that a woman needed the romantic. I adored that beautiful sentimental tune, and I no longer minded his choice. I knew it would make just the right background for our expression of feeling for each other.

  I had reached the door, my hand on the knob, when the singing voice began—and I froze. That was Ysobel in her old recording, and for a moment I couldn’t move. The idea of music was beautiful, but not my mother’s voice singing to us at a time like this. I keep a blue rendezvous … It was all wrong, jarring. Wrong for some instinctive feeling in me that perhaps went back to my childhood. Perhaps a confusion about sex and love—and what one’s mother mustn’t know. A confusion about my own feelings toward Ysobel.

  Quickly I opened the door and went into the room. I meant to go straight to the stereo and turn it off, but I never reached the machine. Ross was there, waiting for me.

  “Come here,” he said. “Come here, my darling,” and there was something in his voice that I had never heard before. In one terrible, rending realization, I understood. And there was nothing I could do. Short of utter rejection, there was nothing at all I could do.

  I heard the note of undisguised sexual feeling that could throb in Ysobel’s tones, and knew that it held and stirred my husband as I had never been able to. Stirred him because she was in his mind.

  I went to him slowly, unable to help myself, and he held me in his arms as he had always done, yet with a difference. That I had stiffened in something like horror seemed to matter not at all. For him, I wasn’t there as myself. He held another woman, from another time, and made love to her with a passion I had never felt in him before. A passion tinged with a strange hint of anger, though he had never been rough with me, as he was now. And all the while Ysobel’s velvety voice cradled us in its warmth. A warmth that was totally false. Though this was a bitter thought that I had never accepted fully until this moment, when it helped to make what I had believed was Ross’s love for me equally false. I lay beside him while tears wet my cheeks. He never knew. He had fallen into a deep, satisfying sleep, after pouring out his love for Ysobel through Ysobel’s daughter.

  Chapter 4

  Ross had always awakened early, and I was adjusting to the same pattern. I heard him rise and go into his bath, and I got out of bed hastily and fled to my room. There must be no repetition of last night, and I was glad that he had spent himself, as a younger man might not have done.

  Under my shower I tried to wash myself clean of memory. An impossible wish. What had happened had completely shattered me. For most of the night I had lain awake with my thoughts churning. The escape from the past, from Ysobel herself, that Ross had offered me, had been no escape at all. If I believed in what had just happened, then all my newfound confidence as a woman must be denied. As always, I was nothing—Ysobel everything.

  But morning light could bring a remembered courage, a lessening of night terrors. A slow, deep anger began to grow in me—against them both. Against Ross and Ysobel. If this was what Ross wanted in me as a wife, he must be shown how wrong he was, no matter how furious that might make him. I recalled the photographs Gretchen had taken of her father. I had seen in it a man who could charge furiously, like a bull, and I shivered.

  Moving automatically now, I dressed in cream-colored slacks and a silky shirt of pale amber, braided my hair into a thick strand down my back, and was nearly ready when Ross tapped on my door and opened it. I sat stiff and frozen on the dressing table bench, watching him indirectly in the mirror, steeling myself against whatever might come. He seemed no different than on any other morning in our brief married life, except that he was at home now and ready to return to his own busy and ordered existence. For the first time since last night, a faint uncertainty stirred in me, and I grasped at the fragile straw. Was it possible that I hadn’t really understood? Oh, if only that could be true!

  He kissed me with affection, and if I held back a little, he appeared not to notice as
he linked my arm through his when we went down to breakfast. I found that I could still play my old game of concealment. If others were false and not to be trusted, I could be like that too. It was a game that sickened me, because it had never been what I’d wanted in life. In marrying Ross, I had believed myself free of Ysobel, free of all pretense. This morning, however, pride was everything, and all that mattered was for me to hide the remnants of my shattered fantasy. What had happened must never happen again, but in the meantime I must play the role required of me as the new mistress of Poinciana.

  The breakfast room was still another, smaller room done with green bamboo wallpaper, and accented in tones of lemon. Ross seated me at a small table set with woven place mats, and rang for the same man who had served us last night. I found I wasn’t especially hungry, and I settled for papaya, toast, and coffee.

  Glass doors opened on a pebbled courtyard and looked out toward the lake. The water seemed as calm as it had been yesterday, with only a tiny breeze to rustle the palms. It was good to engage myself with the physical details of my surroundings and put last night far, far away. Putting something out of my mind, pretending it hadn’t happened, was an ability I’d developed over the years when I’d felt hurt and lonely. It was nearly always possible to enjoy the small pleasures of the present and not allow what stood outside the circle of the immediate hour to threaten me. Postpone the hour of reckoning, and the evil thereof!

  Listening to Ross and watching him, I could almost convince myself that my interpretation of last night was wrong. I was Sharon to him again, and he condescended to me just a little, as he often did, and I didn’t especially mind. How could he not, with the difference in our ages, so that sometimes he must look on me as very young indeed, and in need of educating and directing. Besides, I admired him in so many ways—for the ease of his bearing, his brilliance and knowledge, for his natural authority.