“Touché,” boomed Joshua. “Touché!”
“Charles, what was he like, your father?” Sari asked. The mysterious, often unjust laws of genetics had denied the girl her mother’s beauty while endowing her with the gentle, husky little voice. On the telephone the two were often confused. “I’ve heard a million stories.”
“He was everything people said. A true musical genius. A magnificent human being.” The praise emerged in the rhythm of a much recited line of poetry.
Sari reacted like litmus paper to emotional chemistry. “You must have been asked that ten million times. I’m sorry.”
For the first time, Charles leveled more than a cursory glance at the girl opposite him, looking into Sari’s eyes, eyes that Joshua had once fancifully described as having the soulful darkness of an Italian saint. “My father was old when I knew him, in his eighties. People told me he was a perfectionist on the podium, they said his orchestras stayed on pins and needles. For my part, I can’t ever remember him shouting.
“He had so much life,” Roy said. “I must have told you this a thousand times, Charles. When I met him I was seventeen, and he bowled me over—I’d never met an older person who truly got such a kick out of everything.”
“The last time I saw him,” Charles said reflectively, “he was on holiday in England. We have a house in Eastbourne—we have places in Geneva and London, too, but this he considered his home. Anyway, it was an Arctic winter, and old people stayed indoors. Not Father. There are three levels to the front in Eastbourne, and we would walk along the one nearest the sea. I’ve tried to remember what we talked about, but I can’t. All I can remember is my lungs hurt from so much laughing in the cold wind.” Charles stopped abruptly, as if the remembrances were too intimate to share.
After the dessert, Billy said, “Charles, how’s about joining me? The Ahhs are playing the Troubador.”
“This has to be an early night.”
“That’s a helluva note when I’ve lined up a couple of the foxiest ladies in Beverly Hills.”
“Another time,” Charles said. “Tomorrow is my grandfather’s operation, and Mother’s expecting me home around nine.”
* * *
“Althea’s boy has right nice manners,” NolaBee repeated.
It was a half-hour later, the three young people were gone, and the others were settled into the deep upholstery of the den.
“So you said five times already,” Marylin retorted with a cantankerous annoyance so out of character that Joshua and Roy turned to her in surprise.
“I reckon it’s true,” NolaBee retorted. Her chatter had taken on a repetitiveness, but other than that she showed remarkably few signs of the aging process. “Good-looking as all get-out, and rich as sin. I reckon he has the girls swooning over him.”
“Nowhere near as many as Billy,” said Roy. Though fond of Charles, her heart of hearts found him too impervious.
“Our Sari was smitten,” NolaBee said archly.
“Sari?” Marylin and Joshua chorused.
NolaBee nodded vivaciously. “Didn’t you notice how she kept peekin’ in his direction?”
“She did not utter two consecutive sentences to him,” Joshua barked.
And at the same moment, Marylin said, “Mama, you know Sari’s never been silly about boys.”
“I reckon this one isn’t a boy,” NolaBee said. “He’s a man.”
“Wipe that matchmaking gleam from your eyes,” Joshua snapped. Sari was the delight of his old age, and his mother-in-law’s implications annoyed him. “Thank the blessed Virgin, as my sainted mother used to say, Sari’s not the sort to fall for an international playboy. Which, by the same sacred oath, is just as well. Charles Firelli isn’t in town for romance.”
Roy’s face went somber. “Althea tells me Mr. Cunningham’s in very bad shape.”
* * *
The following morning Mr. Cunningham underwent major surgery, his fifth time in that many years. He nearly died on the table—the team of surgeons were positive they had lost him, yet somehow the wasted, cancer-devoured body summoned the strength to survive and he was wheeled from the operating room aided by the most sophisticated life-support systems that money can buy. His doctors didn’t expect him to make it through the day, but he did, a comatose skeleton regulated by machinery. Mrs. Cunningham sat by her husband, her jaw quivering as she bulldogged the private nurses, reminding them when it was time to change an I.V., to take the pulse or blood pressure. She fought death on death’s own turf, armed with the power of desperate love and every ounce of Coyne proprietorship—a true Coyne never lets go of belongings.
The days stretched into a week.
As always, Althea’s emotions about her father were a rat’s nest. After a few minutes in the enormous flower-filled hospital room she would dash out, walking for hours through the surrounding quiet, shabby streets.
Charles often accompanied her on these forays.
“Darling,” she said, “you’re being wonderful to me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“It’s hard on everybody,” he sighed. (Though Charles’s emotions were tight-reined, he loved his grandfather, and the humiliations of sojourning Death disturbed him profoundly.) “What you need is to forget for a bit. Why don’t I make reservations at a restaurant tonight? I’ll round up some people. Maybe Mrs. Horak?”
“Darling, I hate to sound a drag, but I simply am incapable of conversation with old friends.”
“What about Billy Fernauld?” Charles asked.
“Is that Marylin’s son?”
“Yes. With him no effort’s needed. He’s a charge. A terrific, unpredictable sense of humor.”
Althea came out of her convoluted absorption to look up at her son. His face was drawn so that the cheekbones seemed more pronounced than ever. She patted his hand. “That’s more like it. A young crowd.”
“He has a sister, a quiet little girl. She can round out the foursome.”
* * *
Charles made the reservations at L’Auberge on Beverly Drive, a spot not chichi enough for them to bump into any of his mother’s friends yet serving food that was a reasonable approximation of Provençal cuisine.
Billy and Sari were waiting for them in a cushioned walnut booth.
Billy half-rose. “Well, pretty lady, we meet again. Now I have my driver’s license.”
Althea realized she had already met this cheeky youth, who wore, of all things, a T-shirt under his tweed jacket. Yes, of course, at Roy’s house. But it had been right after Gerry’s accident, when random stretches of time had eluded her memory banks.
She found herself responding to the engaging grin. “Good. Now you can keep your promise to show me where Simon’s used to be.”
“Hey hey. You remembered.”
“Do you know Sari?” Charles asked.
The little red table lamp cast an odd shadow upward on the girl’s thin, irregular features. How could Marylin have such a plain daughter? Althea wondered. “No, I’m positive not,” she said.
Under the categorizing gaze, Sari looked away. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Stoltz,” she murmured.
“You don’t look a bit like either of your parents.”
“Not so,” Billy said. “She has the Fernauld proboscis.”
“BJ and Linc both did have that nose,” Althea said. “I met your half-brother during the war and thought him the most devastatingly handsome older man I’d ever seen.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Billy had never seen Linc again, and Sari had never met him. A family rift, unexplained, buried under the snows of silence. Secrets, secrets. Then Billy said, “And what about me? A devastatingly handsome younger man?”
“Not even in this atrociously bad light.” Althea laughed.
During dinner Althea found herself responding with outright laughter to Billy’s masterful, wildly accented repartee about possible scenarios for every kind of film. The two of them carried the conversation until after they’d
finished the main course.
While they waited for the dessert soufflé, Charles asked Sari, “Where do you go to school?”
“I don’t.”
“Oh?” Charles said, tilting his head with courteous inquiry.
“I’m taking a kind of sabbatical from Mills—that’s a campus up in Northern California. I started pretty young, and this would be my senior year.”
“Good Lord, a college senior!” Charles said. “I’m embarrassed to say I had you pegged for twelve.”
She looked across the table at him.
And Billy said, “Come on, Charles, you’re not so old that you don’t know when a girl’s prepubescent.”
“I do sound stuffy, don’t I?” Charles said, looking at Sari. “Next I’ll be asking what you want to be when you grow up.”
“That’s why I stayed out—I needed to find out where I’m heading. And what about you, Charles?”
“I’m going into the Coyne New York Bank.”
“Banking?” Sari asked, her doubts of the capitalist system near-palpable in the single word.
“Now, Sari,” drawled Althea. “Charles didn’t say he was signing a pact with the devil, he said he was going into our family’s most respectable enterprise.”
“Althea,” Billy interjected, “I’m with Sari. It shakes the mind, hearing what Charles’s got in mind. Bankers are staid, fat-bellied conformists, which, in case you haven’t noticed, Charles isn’t.”
“I’m not going into Coyne New York to increase the family’s net worth—we have more than we can possibly ever need. My intent is to use the bank’s assets in a progressive way.” Charles’s voice was low and compelling.
“You’ll do it,” Sari said softly. “You inspire trust.”
“Just the same, Charles”—Althea smiled—“better not let your cousin Archie hear you voicing those sentiments.”
Silence settled over the table. As if to sweeten the minor tension, their waiter descended with the steaming, puffed, sinful chocolate soufflé.
When they finished their coffee, Billy suggested a stroll. Turning left on Wilshire, the foursome split into couples. Billy and Althea walked ahead, Sari and Charles strolled at a more leisurely pace behind.
These few blocks on Wilshire were the only part of Beverly Hills that pedestrians used at night. Smartly jacketed groups browsed in front of window displays at Bonwit Teller, Sloane’s, Saks, Magnin’s, Patricia’s.
Billy said, “You’re too high-bred and elegant to have sprung from these haut-bourgeois surroundings.”
“I was born in Beverly Hills.”
“Impossible. There’s no hospital.”
“A delivery room was set up in Belvedere.”
“For the royal birth—I should have known. How many salvos did they fire from the top of City Hall?”
“Twenty-one, at least.”
They both laughed.
“You are my type,” Billy said. “So tell me, are you enjoying yourself avec moi?”
“More than I anticipated.”
“Does it disturb you I’m younger?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“That tone says you know exactly what I mean.” Billy took her arm possessively.
“Yes, the intent was to put you in your place.”
“What if I won’t stay put?”
She couldn’t repress her smile. “We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll see.”
“You’ve given hope to a drowning man,” Billy said, tucking his hand in tighter between her vicuña coat and its sleeve.
The other two caught up, Charles in his well-worn impeccably tailored gray suit, Sari in a long skirt and a muskrat jacket from another era. As Althea turned, Charles quickly released Sari’s hand.
60
When Sari was a black-haired infant, incongruously plain in her lacelooped bassinet, Marylin had formed a late-night habit of checking her daughter’s nursery. The ritual still prevailed, a time of pensive, uncomplicated mother-daughter intimacy.
Sari had chosen the only third-floor room (a dormered attic originally intended for a sewing room) because of its unimpeded view of the stream. Marylin was commanding herself to hide her distress while finding out about her children’s encounter with Althea and Charles as she climbed the staircase.
The lights were out, and in the darkness the radio dial glowed an unearthly green: Joni Mitchell’s pure voice soared like the clouds she sang of. Sari stood at the window, the spare outline of her body showing through a cotton nightgown turned to chiffon by moonlight.
“Did you ever see such a night, Mother? Look . . . the moon’s nearly golden.”
“Beautiful,” Marylin said, closing the door behind her, feeling her way to the very old, crudely made rush-bottomed chair that Sari had found in the stable, a leftover from Tessa Van Vliet’s time.
“Have you ever seen a moon this color?”
“It’s beautiful,” Marylin repeated.
“This must be how the sun looks from Mars, or maybe Jupiter.”
“Have a good time tonight?”
“Fantastic,” Sari said dreamily.
“I heard you come in, but not Billy.” Billy, who moved in and out of the house on whim, was temporarily ensconced in his rooms downstairs. “Did he drop you off and go on someplace?”
“He drove Mrs. Stoltz—Althea—home. Charles brought me.”
“Oh? That seems a lot of extra driving.” There was an edge to Marylin’s voice.
Sari moved through the darkness to the bedside table, turning off the radio. The room was alive with the mournful chittering of crickets and the faint rush of the stream.
“Mother,” she asked slowly, “why’re you so uptight?”
Marylin had always practiced zealous honesty with both her children, avoiding parental hypocrisies, platitudes, and phony circumlocutions. Tonight, though, she found herself equivocating. “I meant . . . well, for Charles to come all the way out here while Billy takes Mrs. Stoltz home seems wasteful.”
“You sent up sparks when I told you Charles had invited us both to dinner.” The soft, unhappy voice—so like Marylin’s own—became near-inaudible. “Don’t you like him?”
“It’s not Charles,” Marylin said, adding with regrettable savagery, “it’s Althea!” She drew a calming breath. “Something she did a hundred years ago, but I can’t ever get it out of my mind. She wrecked Auntie Roy.”
“But now they’re so close.”
“That’s your aunt all over. Once her friend, always her friend.”
“What was it Mrs. Stoltz did?”
“Can you remember that before Uncle Gerry’s accident he was away for a long time?”
“Yes, sure. Auntie Roy was so sad and unglued. You mean, Mrs. Stoltz—?”
“Yes. Gerry was with her. Those months were hideous for Roy. She worshiped Gerry. She changed from an eager, bright girl while we watched. There was nothing we could do to help—or to stop the life draining from her. When I say it, it sounds so corny, like the plot of that last tearjerker I was in, but, Sari, it’s true. Althea took the living heart out of Roy, and after it was over, Roy kept right on being her friend.”
Sari padded cross the moon-silvered darkness to sit on the rug near Marylin’s chair. “Mrs. Stoltz . . . I felt sorry for her because of her father. But . . . she has the weirdest eyes. The way she looked at me made me feel like a virus on a microscope slide. Do you think it has to do with that old junk, poor Uncle Gerry, or because she bugs out at the least hint of Charles looking at a female?” Her voice was tremulous as she said “Charles.”
Marylin breathed deeply, then resorted to an actress’s tone of neutrality. “Offhand I’d say she doesn’t have a thing to worry about.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know Charles very well, of course, but it seems to me he’s the last one to do anything rash.”
“Oh, Mother.”
“I didn’t mean that as criticism. But he, well, he’s very sure of himself.
”
“That’s only how he seems. He’s great-looking, terrifically intelligent, he has a famous name and a family mentioned in every history textbook. But underneath it all, he’s . . . I don’t know. Vulnerable. He can’t express his feelings, so he pretends he doesn’t have them.”
Marylin’s maternal instincts jangled. Sari had dated two boys, and both of them, the stammerer and the tall one with the terminal acne, had fit like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with the girl’s boundlessly loving tendencies toward nurturing. This insufferably stuck-up, poker faced son of Althea’s has somehow roused her sympathies. He’ll break her heart. I’ll kill anyone who hurts her. Reaching out in the darkness, she encountered her daughter’s soft hair.
“Mother . . . won’t you try to like him? For me?”
“Then there is . . . something?”
“It seems wild, doesn’t it?” The soft voice shook with joy and uncertainty. “He’s so far above me.”
Marylin was remembering back through the years, to a deeply tanned young naval officer who in his whites was surely a deity descended, an impoverished girl who lived above a garage . . . that awful bleak doctor’s office with the stirrups . . . the ignoble demise of part of her soul. . . . Nobody had set out to hurt or maim.
“It’s not a matter of who is too good for whom,” Marylin said. “It’s just that Charles is different. He has to be. His kind of wealth is like living behind a thick wall. It sets you apart from other people, and life. It can make some men, well, exploitive.”
“Charles isn’t stuck behind some ‘thick wall,’ he’s not different.”
“I just can’t bear for you to be hurt,” Marylin cried. “That’s the worst part of being a mother. You can feel all of your child’s pain whether the child is grown or not.”
“Then try to see Charles as a person, not a stereotype.”
Chagrined and taken aback by her daughter’s hostility, Marylin was silent for a moment. “You’re right. I have been connecting him with that mess with Gerry.” She paused. “It’d be so easy for anyone with his name, his family, to be a phony, but Charles certainly seems sincere.”
Everything and More Page 45