An Independent Woman

by Howard Fast

  Barbara was now munching the toast, carried away on Eloise’s river of words.

  “Adam and Freddie are battling away like cats and dogs—”

  “Freddie and Adam? I don’t believe it.”

  “Oh yes. You know, Freddie takes off every winter for the wineries of Europe, and this time he brought back a case of Imperial Tokay, from the gardens that once belonged to the emperor Franz Joseph. It tastes like elixir of the gods, and he brought a bag of seed. He paid a thousand dollars for the case and another thousand for the seed, and he had to bribe all sorts of people to smuggle them out—which, you know, is typical of Freddie—and Adam says we can’t grow it in the Valley and that every California Tokay he’s tasted tastes like—well, I won’t use the word—and anyway Adam hates sweet wine, and Freddie brought in the argument that when Jake and Clair bought the winery for a song in 1920, the only business they had was sacramental wine for the Jews and the Catholics and the Episcopalians—and it just went on, and for two days they didn’t speak to each other—”

  In spite of herself, Barbara was caught up in Eloise’s outpouring of family gossip. “And are they going to grow it?”

  “Heaven forbid! Freddie apologized to Adam—for what, I don’t know—and we drank the Tokay every night after dinner, and Freddie gave a bottle to Candido as a peace offering—you know, that wretched business with Freddie and Candido’s daughter—and Candido, who never saw a bottle of wine at a thousand dollars a case, won’t open it but is saving it for his daughter’s wedding. Adam, as a gesture toward Freddie—you know, Barbara, Adam is a very sweet man, and I think his anger at Freddie was more because of the way Freddie treated Carla than about the Tokay—and anyway Adam went to the university and consulted Professor Hermez, the dean of the vintner school, who agreed with him that only the soil around the town of Tokay in Hungary could produce the wine, but pleaded for a handful of the seed for their experimental garden—which Freddie provided—so everything is healed and the professor came to dinner and drank two glasses of the Tokay and declared it one of the great privileges of his life. So there you are.”

  Eloise was far more intelligent and complex than people gave her credit for, and Barbara didn’t know whether she had formulated her story deliberately or not, but it caught Barbara up in the life of Highgate, which was stocked well with her memories, and she said yes, she would come, she’d love to come.

  “And you’ll be there in time for dinner—please, Barbara.”

  “Yes, I can be there in time for dinner.”

  “And you’re all right now—enough to drive alone?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “And one other thing. Freddie bought one of those new facsimile machines, the first one in the Valley, so if you decide to stay a while, you can send in your column—‘faxing,’ they call it.”

  Smiling sadly, Barbara shook her head. “There is no column, Ellie. The first thing that wretched wife of Carson’s did this morning was to call the paper and tell them that my column and my job were over. She must have called from the beach house the moment she heard that Carson was dead.”

  “No! I can’t believe that.”

  So much had happened. It was only the day before that she’d had lunch with Dianne Feinstein at the Redwood Club; it felt like weeks ago. “Dianne Feinstein has that handgun ownership bill coming up for a vote day after tomorrow. She asked me to write a column for the paper, and I called Carson. He was so pleased with the idea that he asked me to make it a feature story. I sat up half the night with it—the last time I spoke to him.”

  “Poor dear, I’m sorry, so very sorry.”

  HIGHGATE WAS MORE THAN A NAME on red wine that was recognized and appreciated the world over; it was saluted as the best Cabernet Sauvignon produced in California, by virtue of twenty-two awards; and to an extent it had made the Napa Valley famous. The winery was still totally a family business, presided over by Adam Levy, Eloise’s husband, and by Frederick, Eloise’s son by her first marriage, to Thomas Lavette, Barbara’s brother. Adam, who had just turned sixty, had taken over his father’s role as the patriarchal head of the winery, while the merchandising was in the hands of Frederick, now forty.

  Dinner was served at eight-thirty, in the great kitchen–dining room of the big stone house that was the central feature of the winery. The kitchen–dining room measured twenty-two by forty feet, with one end open, and in the Mexican style the walls were covered with blue tile. The open end of the room had heavy drapes of coarse wool, handwoven in Mexico, but on this balmy June night they were drawn back. The whole opposite end of the room was given to a great iron wood-stove, half of which had been converted by Clair to natural gas. In the center of the outside wall of the room, there was a large fireplace, cold now that it was summer. The dining table was a bit more than twelve feet in length, the top made of a single redwood plank. It was an old table that had been there when Jake bought the place, and it had been waxed and polished through the years to the point where it shone like a gleaming stone. It stood lengthwise in the room, and on the side opposite the fireplace were cupboards for dishes and an iron band of hooks from which pots and pans hung.

  Adam, white bearded, with a shock of white hair still thick, sat at the head of the table, Barbara on one side of him, Eloise on the other; and down the table toward Freddie, who presided over the opposite end, were Barbara’s son, Sam, and his wife, Mary Lou; Sally and her husband, Joe Lavette, who practiced medicine in Napa; and their son and daughter, May Ling and Daniel Lavette. Freddie had once married and divorced May Ling, and now, having ended his relationship with Carla, Candido’s daughter, he was wooing May Ling, as Barbara saw it, like a rejected puppy.

  Once, in writing about her family and its intertwining, over the many decades of Highgate, she had faced their tangle of relationships in despair. Now, sitting at dinner with the people she knew and loved best, she was filled with guilt. Carson was dead, his body scarcely cold in the grave, and here she was, engulfed in sympathy and love.

  Eloise, responding to Barbara’s gloom, said, “Darling, my mother was Irish and my dad was part Irish, and the wake goes way back into time, and I used to think that the Irish were barbarians to carry on that way, but this is a celebration for the living, not for the dead. The dead will go their way and we will go ours.”

  Meanwhile, now that she had finished filling the goblets with wine, Cathrena was stirring the steaming pots on the stove; and up and down the table, matches were struck to light the six thick candles that sat in hammered silver bases. Adam lit the last candle, and each at the table reached for the hands nearest, and Adam said, “For food of the earth and the fruit of the vines, we thank thee.” The invocation was always the same and had been for as long as Barbara could remember, all the time back to when Jake Levy had sat at the head of the table. Her eyes filled with tears and she covered her face with her hands. Cathrena brought platters of hot tortillas and baskets of bread to the table.

  “We’ll drink a toast to Carson,” Eloise said, raising her goblet. “May he rest in peace and always be remembered.”

  There was a roast shoulder of fresh ham, bowls of potatoes and turnips and carrots, a baked salmon for those who did not eat red meat, platters of sliced tomato and onion, and Mexican beans refritos. The bread was home baked, and except for the salmon, all of the food was raised at Highgate.

  Aside from a few bites of the toast at breakfast, Barbara had not eaten all day. After the first bite, she found herself stuffing her stomach with food. The Cabernet kept coming, and after the meat and the salad and the apple pie for dessert, she could barely keep her eyes open.

  “I think you have to sleep,” Eloise said, and though Barbara protested, Eloise rose and took her by the arm and led her upstairs to her room.

  It was always the same small room on the second floor of the big stone-and-redwood house, the dolls and dollhouse still there, things that Dan Lavette had bought for her on the occasions when both of them slipped away to Highgate, on d
ays when his wife, Jean, had other things to do. Now Barbara was half-asleep, full of good food and wine. Eloise helped her to undress, tucked her into bed, and she was asleep almost instantly.

  When Eloise returned to the kitchen, there was a flood of questions about Barbara: How was she, and what would she do now without the column that had meant so much to her? It was the first time in months that the whole family had gathered together at the table, an impromptu occasion when other appointments had been set aside because of Eloise’s plea that Barbara needed all of them. “She’ll be all right,” Eloise assured them. “I’ll keep her here as long as I can.”

  Sally, Adam’s sister, moved into Barbara’s chair so that she could harangue Eloise about the Devrons and particularly about Carson’s wife, whom she detested. Sally was given to emotional outbursts. “I met her once, at a party after the opera. I was introduced to her, and when she heard the name Lavette—I was married to Joe then—she looked at me, took her hand away, as if I desired to touch it—I would sooner touch a snake—and if looks could kill, I would have died at that moment. I liked Carson—I always did—but it was his family before everything. That was his weakness, and in that way he was weak.”

  “He’s dead, sis,” Adam said. “Let him be.”

  “The grand dame,” Sally went on. “El Rancho Gonzales. That was half of Los Angeles before the Devrons took it away from them, and she was the last Gonzales. Carson’s mother was determined to unite the two families.”

  Eloise nodded. “Barbara told me about it. It didn’t matter to her that Carson was weak. He was his mother’s baby, her child. That’s why they couldn’t stay married. He was the golden boy of California—the gold medal at the decathlon, America’s hero—but he never grew up.”

  “For God’s sake,” Adam said, and pushed back his chair and went to take Sally’s seat next to Freddie.

  “He can’t stand gossip,” Sally said. “I love gossip. My heart goes out to Barbara, and I hate status seekers, sadly—but to be snubbed by a Devron! That boggles my mind.”

  Eloise shrugged. “They do have Kit Carson as a noble ancestor, you know. Barbara used to twit him about that, poor man. And I’ve seen the old map of the Rancho Gonzales. It was a grant from King Philip I in the fifteen-hundreds—”

  “And they came here to get away from their dreadful Pasadena sun, to touch civilization—”

  “Do you remember,” Eloise said gently, quoting, “‘If you come to live here, be damned but you choose/to live with the Irish and the Jews.’”

  “Jack London?”

  “Or somebody. Adam liked Carson, but he could never understand a man who drank gin in preference to wine.”

  At the other end of the table, Adam and Freddie lit cigars and fell onto their favorite topic, wine. “I was wondering why you decided on a 1972 for tonight?” Freddie asked.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s a good year, but just a touch too much tannin.”

  “You’ve been cultivating your taste. Maybe we should buy some table wine from Mondavi,” he said sourly. Freddie was his stepson, out of Eloise’s first marriage, to Barbara’s brother, Thomas. Adam had adopted him legally and was utterly devoted to him, but they had a natural but easy antagonism.

  “That will be the day.”

  “The fact is,” Adam explained, “that we have a hundred cases or so of 1972 in the cellar.”

  “Do you want to move them? All it takes is a telephone call. I have a store on Market Street that’s been pleading for product.”

  Adam burst out laughing. “Freddie, Freddie—what in hell am I going to do with you!”

  NO ONE DISTURBED BARBARA, and she slept soundly until almost noon of the following day. Stiff but refreshed, she spent about ten seconds under a cold shower, agonizing, and then switched to warm water. She opened the drapes, and the sun poured into the room. How good it was to be alive! Poor Carson, poor Carson, no more in her life, gone away. Well, in November, she would be sixty-eight years old. No one lived forever. Long ago she had given up any reflections on a hereafter. Baptized an Episcopalian, it was years since she had set foot in Grace Church, and she had borne the deaths and the pain that threaded through her past with a passionate love of life. God forgive me, she said to herself, but I am glad to be alive and here.

  She slipped into a printed dress of India cotton and sandals. The long, smooth curves of her body were still much as they had been at thirty, and she used no makeup. She dried her hair with a towel, brushed it out, and went downstairs. Her son, Sam, and his wife, Mary Lou, had returned to San Francisco; Joe and Sally had gone back to Napa; and their children, May Ling and Daniel, had gone to Berkeley, where they lived and worked. The men had finished lunch and gone off to work, and Cathrena was clearing the table. Eloise still sat at the table with a cup of coffee, and she rose and embraced Barbara.

  “Did you sleep well, darling?”

  “Like the proverbial log.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “As Mother taught me, thank you.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “I make you some eggs rancheros,” Cathrena said.

  “Oh no, no. Just coffee. After last night, I won’t eat for a week.”

  They had their coffee, and then they went out and walked. This was a good time of the year for the vines, the new growth bursting forth from the pruned stems, the whole world around them an explosion of life and color. They climbed up the hillside to a little clearing where there were benches and a stone fireplace for outdoor cooking, and a great live oak to shade them.

  “I suppose the funeral will be tomorrow,” Barbara said. “Or today?” She had lost track of time.

  “Tomorrow, probably.”

  “Did you ever read Fannie Hurst’s book Back Street?”

  “Yes—years ago.”

  “I suppose that was the Victorian way,” Barbara reflected. “If I remember, he set her up in an apartment, and that was his real life, and his own wife was his respectable life, and I remember how demeaning I felt it was, and then when he died and she couldn’t go to the funeral—”

  “Fannie Hurst slobbered,” Eloise said. “She reached whole new peaks of sentimentality.”

  “She was no Edith Wharton,” Barbara admitted. “But I never felt degraded or demeaned. It sounds cheap and unpleasant to be someone’s mistress, but at least we never kept it a secret. We tried, but I suppose everyone in town knew.”

  “Not everyone. This is 1982, and no one cares much about such things.”

  “Except the Enquirer. You remember the story in the Enquirer?”

  “How can I forget it? Freddie threatened to hit the editor. Can you imagine Freddie hitting anyone? And Adam, my gentle, sweet Adam, declared that if any Enquirer reporter set foot on Highgate property, he would shoot him. Can you believe it?”

  Both women were laughing now.

  “And Carson—dear Carson,” Barbara said, laughing and crying at the same time. “He raged that he was going to buy the Enquirer and fire everyone who worked for it. He said he would sue them, except that there were so many people suing the Enquirer for so many millions of dollars that it would take twenty years before it ever got to trial.”

  “You never told me what his wife did?”

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing. She ignored the whole thing. She was not going to let a small matter like that get between her and the Devron billions. You know, they had season tickets to a box at the opera—and so did I, except that mine was a seat in the orchestra—and she came to the next opening.”

  “Did you?” Eloise asked.

  “Ellie, I’m not insane—weird, but not totally insane. He didn’t want to go, but she has a look that would freeze boiling water instantly. Carson said that the photographers were all over them, but she never even quivered. Poor Carson.”

  “And still you loved him.”

  “Did I? There are all kinds of love, and there are women who hate and fear men, and there are others like myself who adore t
hem and can’t live without them. I remember one night in L.A. in a hotel when he got himself gloriously drunk, and when we came up to the room after dinner, he collapsed on the floor, cold out, two hundred pounds of bone and muscle, and I had to get him into bed and undress him. Somehow, I did it—I don’t know how, and my back hasn’t been the same since, and thank God I’m one of those strong muscular types. But somehow I got him onto the bed, with him gurgling how much he loved me, and I undressed him and tucked him in and crawled in next to him, and all I was thinking was that this was my child, not a man, but an oversized beautiful child, and now he’s gone forever—” The tears came again.

  They heard Adam’s deep halloo: “Where the devil are you two hiding?” He came stomping through the vines up the hillside, his long white beard bent in the breeze. In his jeans and a blue cotton workman’s shirt, he looked for all the world like some patriarch out of the long past. Eloise, thinking of what Barbara had said, remembered the first time she had met him, in Jean Lavette’s gallery. He was a tall, lean, gentle boy, whose face had been scarred and torn in World War II (the scars were now covered by his beard), and she had loved him from the moment she met him. She had been married to Tom Lavette then, Barbara’s brother, and he had verbally beaten her to an emotional pulp; and then, under the love and shelter of Jean and Barbara, she had grown and matured. Adam was her world, her lover, her rock—how else could she have survived the suicide of Joshua and become whole again?

  Adam stood in front of them now. “Not my idea to break in on you,” Adam said apologetically, “but Dianne Feinstein called, and she wants to talk to Barbara, and she wants you to call her right back, and since she’s one of my favorite women, I set out to find you. What is it, Barbara? Are you back in politics?”

  “Never. It’s probably the gun thing.”

  It was the gun thing. When Barbara called City Hall, they put her right through to Dianne Feinstein. “Dear Barbara,” the mayor said, “my heart goes out to you. Carson was a fine, wonderful man. God only knows what will be the future of the World, and I shouldn’t be delighted with anything. But we took an early vote, and the bill passed six to four in the Board of Supervisors, and we’re the first big city in America to ban guns within city limits. We’ve done it!”