Jennifer stared at her stepdaughter, listened to her clear lovely voice saying her vows to the prince. So sure of herself she was, so arrogant and confident. She always had been, even when her new mother, Jennifer, had come into the Foxe mansion when Sydney had been only six years old. She’d looked up at Jennifer and smiled and said so quietly that only Jennifer could hear her, “You won’t replace my mother. You won’t replace anyone. I’ll see to it.”
Jennifer smiled now as she watched the prince slide the di Contini family wedding band on her finger. And she thought: At last you will be far away from me, you damned destructive bitch.
Lindsay Foxe could feel her body growing, particularly her legs. They ached and cramped and pulled and hummed with growth. The unfamiliar panty hose just made it worse, as did the low-heeled pumps that hurt her toes. She squirmed on the hard wooden bench, trying to get comfortable. Her mother gave her one of her looks and she tried to hold still. How tall would she get, anyway? She tried to focus on the wedding, but all her attention was really on the prince.
“Alessandro, do you take this woman, Sydney Trellison Foxe, to be your wedded wife?”
Lindsay looked at her mother’s profile and saw a pleased smile on her mouth. She wondered what she was thinking. She looked toward the prince again as he repeated his vows. She didn’t really want to, but she couldn’t help herself. She was sick in love with him, and had been since the first time she’d seen the photograph of him aboard his yacht, the Bella Contini, off Corsica, sent by Sydney some eight months ago. He’d been dressed all in white, and his black hair, dark eyes, and swarthy skin made him look like a devil masquerading as an angel. In bed at night she fantasized that he kidnapped her and took her on his yacht and sailed with her far away. He sang to her, told her how much he loved her, and fed her grapes and cantaloupe. When he and Sydney had finally arrived last week, Lindsay saw that he was more beautiful than his photo. She hadn’t giggled like her girlfriends, or swooned when she’d seen him and rolled her eyes. No, she’d been struck dumb, and had backed away whenever he’d come near her. Seeing him in person, she simply couldn’t imagine him loving her, singing to her ever, or feeding her anything. He was a god, far beyond her reach.
It was odd, though, but he never gave her that indulgent amused look he gave to her girlfriends. No, he would just nod to her, his look grave, his beautiful mouth unsmiling. He was normally quiet around her. Lindsay recognized he was handsome, a true prince fit for a princess, but it wasn’t entirely his superb good looks that made her numb and sweaty and tongue-tied. When he did speak to her, he was unfailingly kind, his voice pitched low and soothing, as if what she was and who she was mattered to him, as if he didn’t notice that she was a gawky teenage girl who was nearly as tall as he was. He didn’t appear to notice her stupid behavior, and most probably he didn’t. She wasn’t important enough to notice. After all, she was a kid, clumsy and stupid, ugly as sin with her frizzy hair, and he was marrying beautiful Sydney, who didn’t have a bumbling bone in her perfect body. Ah, but lately it seemed that Sydney had garnered a lot of mean bones; Lindsay would have wagered that the prince had never seen a single one of them.
The prince was speaking in his firm deep voice, swearing fidelity and his love to Sydney forever. His voice was as beautiful as the bishop’s. Why should he care if Lindsay had decided she would willingly give her life for him? He had Sydney; he had the world.
Lindsay looked away from him, swallowing tears. It hurt too much. Her knees creaked and ached and she shifted her legs. At sixteen she had come to the conclusion that life was made up of very few happy bits and big-doses-of-misery bits. She thought about her dreams of the prince. Silly and absurd. They were pathetic.
“. . . forsaking all others until death do us part.”
The sun was brilliant overhead outside the church. It was just one o’clock in the afternoon. Paula Kettering shook her head at the accomplishment of her own private prediction. A lovely wedding, perfectly planned, perfectly executed. She drove her BMW to the Foxe mansion on the corner of Pacific and Bayberry for what would undoubtedly be the most elegant, the most sumptuous reception of the entire year.
Princess Sydney, as her friends were already calling her, was upstairs in the Foxe mansion in her bedroom, studying her reflection in the mirror.
She was flushed with pleasure, her cheeks a glowing pink. Everything had gone off perfectly. Of course, she never left anything to chance, it wasn’t in her nature. She was thorough. That was one reason why she was an excellent attorney, that and the fact that she was so beautiful, the opposing attorneys many times forgot why they were there, they were so intent on staring at her. They lost big, usually. As for the female attorneys who opposed, she usually managed to intimidate the hell out of them, poor homely bitches.
She turned from the mirror after applying another coat of lip gloss to see Lindsay coming awkwardly into the room. She frowned.
“For God’s sake, pull your shoulders back. You look like a hunchback. At least you don’t have a teenage complexion. That would put the topping on the cake, wouldn’t it?”
Lindsay’s hand went to her face; then she dropped her too-long arms back to her sides. Her hands felt big and useless, and the knuckles ached. “Yes, it would. You look beautiful, Sydney. The prince asked me to see if you were ready to come down. Mother wants the cake cut now.”
“Lady Jennifer can wait until I’m ready. It’ll do her good. Besides, she’s fat. That wedding cake is the last thing her waistline needs.”
Lindsay just wished Sydney would hold her tongue. But she couldn’t let it pass, and said, “Mother’s not very happy, you know that.”
Sydney shrugged and gently eased a flap of lace over her wrist. “If she didn’t let herself go, then Father wouldn’t be screwing around. He told me that making love to a cow wasn’t his idea of a good time.”
Lindsay turned quickly. “I’ll tell them you’ll be down soon.”
“Yes, you do that. Oh, yes, one thing, Lindsay. Your puppy infatuation for the prince is amusing, at least I thought it was at first. He told me it was getting embarrassing. Father asked me to speak to you. He says it’s pathetic. Try to keep your little-girl sighs to yourself, all right, dear?”
Lindsay fled.
“That’s a lie and you know it!”
“Why, if it isn’t Lady Jennifer. You’ve stooped to eavesdropping now?”
“There’s no reason to make Lindsay feel rotten,” Jennifer said, coming into the room. “She’s a good girl, sweet-natured, and yet you persist in putting her down. And you just started doing it. When you saw her father doing it, right? You can’t act for yourself, can you, Sydney? You have to do what your damned father does, no matter the consequences, no matter who gets hurt. You always assume he’s right. Well, in this case he isn’t, he’s just being vicious and mean and you’re copying him just like a little Xerox machine.”
Sydney shrugged. “Actually, I don’t give a damn about the kid, not a bit more than Father does. She’s pitiful, and Alessandro thinks so too. As Father says, she’s a weed in his garden, big, gawky and ugly. It hurts him to have to see her here. He plans to send her away, you know.”
Jennifer wanted to slap her. She was lying about Lindsay. Royce wouldn’t do that to her, he’d never send her away, never. His mother would stop him. She was trembling, her hands fisted at her sides.
“Come down. Cut the bloody cake and then get the hell out of here. The thought of you living eight thousand miles from me is the only one getting me through the day.”
“The thought of coming eight thousand miles to visit me in Milan is the only thought getting Father through the day.”
2
Exile
“No, this can’t be true. Sydney told me you were going to send Lindsay away, but I didn’t believe her. I never believed her, not for a minute, that’s why I didn’t say anything to you, but now—” Jennifer Foxe waved a thick envelope in front of her husband. “Tell me it isn’t true, Royce. T
ell me this is a mistake.”
“On the contrary, Jennifer, it’s completely true. I’m finally sending your daughter away from here. Are those her registration papers? Finally? Good, I was getting concerned that I would have to call that Mrs. Anglethorpe woman who runs the school to see if they’d somehow lost her.”
“Her has a name, damn you, Royce! Your daughter’s name is Lindsay Gates Foxe. For God’s sake, when will you stop comparing her to your precious Sydney? So what if she won’t be a lawyer or, heaven forbid, another federal judge like her sweet kind daddy? What if she won’t marry an Italian prince? What the fuck does it matter?”
“The gutter language doesn’t fit a woman of your years and figure, Jennifer. Though, come to think of it, perhaps it does suit a woman who drinks like the proverbial fish. Incidentally, I think Saddam nuking the world is more likely than your daughter becoming anything at all useful. That damned ugly weed will be around my neck until I die. Now, if Sydney told you, why haven’t you asked about it before now?”
“Because I assumed she was lying, I told you. She did it just to torment me. Tormenting has always come easy to Sydney, but you’ve always known that.”
Royce Foxe merely shrugged. “She wasn’t lying. Sydney never lies. Now, as to where I’m sending her—” Royce took the envelope from her hand. Jennifer turned quickly away and walked to the large bow window that looked over San Francisco Bay. It was foggy this morning but it would burn off by noon. That was what usually happened during the summer, she thought vaguely, trying to control her fury. She was shaking. She hated it. She hated the helplessness, the damned vulnerability. He always got the better of her, always. She had to get hold of herself.
She was turning back to face him when she heard her mother-in-law, Gates Foxe, say in her clear imperious voice from the library doorway, “Lindsay will be traveling to Connecticut to a girls’ school that I have personally selected, Jennifer. You needn’t worry. I told Royce this would be the school for her. It’s the Stamford Academy and it’s very highly regarded. The weed should do well there.”
Jennifer stared. Royce actually flushed and tried to salvage things. Good God, he was still afraid of her. It was the money, Jennifer knew, it was the money, nothing else. “Mother, I didn’t mean—”
“I know exactly what you meant, Royce. Now, enough, from both of you. You might also consider that the girl has two healthy ears and a fully inquisitive nature. I could hear the two of you myself from the foyer.”
Jennifer raised her chin. “Her name is Lindsay.”
“Yes, dear, I know that.”
Jennifer’s chin and voice rose together a bit higher. “Her middle name is Gates. After you, Mother.”
“I’ve always wondered why you named the girl after me,” Gates said. “Royce did admit to me that it was your idea. You never particularly liked me, Jennifer, you’ve hated living in this house, hated having to defer to me, an impossible old artifact. For the life of me I can’t figure out why you’ve put up with it. But I suppose it’s the status of this house and all that lovely money, not that you don’t have enough of your own for several lifetimes, Jennifer. I do wonder sometimes what Cleveland would have thought about all this—our son still here in this house. He always said that a boy should be out on his own, not living off his parents. Or just his mother, in this instance.”
Royce looked suddenly as austere as the federal judge he was. Jennifer had always marveled how quickly he could adapt to any situation. He said now, “I assumed that since you are no longer as spry and young as you once were, Mother, you would want someone here taking care of you, someone who cared what happened to you.”
“That would be nice, certainly,” Gates Foxe agreed.
Jennifer said abruptly, “All of this is nonsense. I don’t want my daughter going back east. She’s too young, she’d be miserable, she’d—”
“Actually,” Royce said calmly, “she is quite thrilled about it.”
Jennifer stopped cold. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying.”
“Why the hell should I lie? For one awful moment there I even thought she was going to throw her skinny arms around my neck.”
“No, no. It isn’t true. She wouldn’t want to leave me. I’m going to find Lindsay. She’ll tell me the truth, that she doesn’t want to be exiled.”
“I wouldn’t assume that to be true, dear,” Gates said, her voice suddenly gentle. “There’s no reason for Royce to lie about that. It’s too easily verified, you see. And as for you, Royce, despite what you think, the girl isn’t stupid. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that she was well aware of your plans for her long before you said anything to her, Royce. She hears things, intuits things. She reads people quite well. What Royce said is true, Jennifer. She really is quite excited about going back east to school. She’s said nothing as yet because she’s afraid of hurting you, Jennifer. But she does want to leave this house. No, Royce, she isn’t stupid. She may be homely and too tall and somewhat clumsy and boorish in her silences, but she isn’t stupid. I see a great deal of you in her, Jennifer. Unlike you, Royce, I can also see what she just might become in a few years.”
“I’m leaving,” Jennifer said.
“Don’t forget that the Moffitt Hospital committee is meeting here at four this afternoon, dear. You are expected to attend, since you are the secretary/treasurer. As for you, Royce, you will leave before any of the ladies arrive.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Gates Foxe waved both of them away. The two of them were exhausting. She walked slowly to her favorite chair that was set with its back to the magnificent windows, facing a wall on which hung an oil painting, a fairly good likeness of her long-dead husband, Cleveland, painted by Malone Gregory in 1965. He’d already gotten old, she thought, looking at the slack jaw, the loose flesh beneath his eyes. Ah, but that look in his eyes was still a flame, even though he was nearing sixty, and she wondered if perhaps when it was painted, he was thinking about that silly girl of twenty he’d been sleeping with until his heart attack. Sydney had the look of him in his younger days, that dashing sparkle that ignited people and made them fall into line trying to please her. Now Sydney was married and an Italian princess. Gates wondered if she would give up her law practice and be a wife in the traditional way. She couldn’t quite imagine it, but one never knew.
Gates thought again about the endless discord in her home. She wondered how much Lindsay had heard of her parents’ screaming match, not that it mattered. Lindsay wouldn’t let on; she’d keep everything behind that sullen homely face and not let out a single peep, even to her grandmother.
Lindsay stood very quietly in the shadows underneath the grand central staircase. She watched her mother and then her father leave the library. She still didn’t move. A weed, she thought, a weed in their garden. She touched her fingers to her curly hair. It was a mess as usual, frizzed out and oily because if she washed it too often it just looked like dry straw. She wanted to leave this mansion and everyone in it, even more than she’d realized before. She wanted to go to Connecticut to school. She wanted to be free. Just two more weeks and she would be free. Stamford, Connecticut. It sounded really distant. She felt a brief pang for her mother, then dismissed it. Her mother would have to learn to take care of herself. Lindsay left her hiding place after another fifteen minutes and escaped the Foxe mansion, walking downhill on Bayberry toward Union Street.
Dinner at the Foxe mansion was formal and elegant and followed an unvarying routine. The night before Lindsay was to leave was no exception. Dorrey, the cook, was huffing as she came into the dining room, for the two silver-covered trays she balanced on her forearms were heavy and she was stouter than she’d been just the year before. She carefully set the trays before the master. At his nod, she lifted the silver covers, watched him give the braised sirloin a gourmet’s appraisal then turn to the two small bowls of fresh vegetables, small red potatoes and green beans with French almonds and tiny Japanese pearl onions. At his look of approval
, she removed the salad plates and lifted the nearly empty tureen of fresh mushroom soup from the table and took herself back to the kitchen. She’d sliced herself a good half-dozen strips of the sirloin, and her mouth watered thinking about it.
Royce sat at the head of the table and Grandmother Gates at the foot. They took turns directing the conversation. Jennifer sat on her husband’s right as she’d done for as long as she’d been in this house. She spoke only after her mother-in-law or her husband had begun a specific topic and invited her opinion. Jennifer looked across the table at her daughter, wondering not for the first time what she was thinking, for her silence was absolute. She even made no noise at all eating. Jennifer wondered if she was wise in allowing Lindsay to come to the dining room with the adults. The girl was terribly thin and at that gawky age. She was just as likely to spill the soup in her lap as to get the spoon in her mouth. She would have to improve in appearance soon; she certainly couldn’t go much further the other way.
“I had a letter from Sydney today,” Royce said after he’d carefully chewed a piece of braised sirloin. He decided it was time to offer Dorrey a raise.
“She is well?” Jennifer asked, wishing Sydney would magically disappear from her life. Milan, Italy, wasn’t far enough away for the girl who’d made Jennifer’s life a misery until she’d left home for Harvard at age seventeen.
Beyond Eden Page 2