The LeBaron Secret

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  There is a silence, and then Eric says, “Lovely. I’d like a copy of that little speech, Aunt Jo.”

  “But it’s not a speech,” she insists. “It’s what I feel, and what I mean. You know what I mean, don’t you, Sari?” She laughs. “Or is the old advertising copywriter coming out in me? I always wanted to find some way to use that barrel in Baronet’s advertising, but was never clever enough to figure out how. Of course, we don’t handle the Baronet account anymore.”

  “It was you who resigned it, don’t forget,” Sari says. “That wasn’t my idea.”

  “But we’re not to talk about business.”

  You see? That is Joanna’s cleverness. She knows that they are not to talk about business, and yet she steers the talk around to business anyway.

  “I’m still getting calls from agencies who want to pitch for the account,” Eric says. “But of course, since I’m no longer with the company, I refer all those calls to Peeper.”

  “Hey, I was wondering how those guys got my private number,” Peeper says.

  “No business talk, remember?”

  “But, Sari,” Mildred Tillinghast says, “what do you think of Harry’s offer? Don’t you think it’s exciting?”

  “No business …”

  “Just give us a tiny little hint of what you think of it!”

  “The old wine barrel. People who come to the house for the first time think it’s a very peculiar thing for me to keep—and an even more peculiar place to put it!”

  “The portrait gallery …”

  “Sometimes it weeps. In certain kinds of weather.”

  “And when I was a little girl, Sari, on California Street, I used to put my ear up to it, like listening to a seashell, and sometimes there would be little gurgling sounds. Grandpa’s wine was trying to talk to me.”

  “Wine keeps changing. It never dies.”

  “Sometimes the barrel feels warm to the touch.”

  “Just think. Over a hundred years old.”

  “Nearly a hundred and thirty …”

  “What would we find, I wonder, if we were to open it?”

  “At every party, there would be someone who’d want to open that barrel!”

  “The bung’s so calcified into the bunghole now, it would take a sledgehammer to open it …”

  Thomas is moving about the room again, taking more drink orders, and a housemaid is passing hors d’oeuvres, mushroom caps filled with sour cream and caviar. “What’s this stuff?” Sari hears Mr. Littlefield ask Melissa.

  “That’s caviar, dear. Sturgeon roe—salmon eggs.”

  “Fish eggs?”

  “Don’t eat it if you don’t want to, dear.”

  “The portraits,” Joanna says. “How was yours done, Sari? I forget.”

  “Your father had it painted from a photograph of me that was taken when I did that play.”

  “Oh, that play! That’s how we met, of course, when you brought your play to Burke’s. How I loved that play!”

  “Oh, it was an awful piece of claptrap.”

  “But you were what made it wonderful! If you hadn’t married Peter, you could easily have gone on to Hollywood and become a great film star. That’s what I always thought.”

  “Where’s the john?” she hears Mr. Littlefield ask Melissa.

  “Out the door there, down the hall, and to your right.”

  “Just think—everyone in this room is hanging out there in that gallery,” Joanna says, and Sari thinks: You have to hand it to her. She tries to keep the conversation bubbling on, even through the rocky patches.

  “Well, I’m not there,” Alix says. “My children are there, but I’m not, and neither are Mummy and Daddy. Because we’re not considered family.”

  “Well, we’ll have to rectify that, won’t we, Sari?”

  And Athalie isn’t there, either. Where is Athalie? Forget Athalie, forget she ever existed. But she did exist. She did.

  Mr. Littlefield has returned from using the facilities, and Sari cannot help but notice a change that seems to have come over him. His face is flushed now, and his hands are twitching, his head bobbing up and down in strange little jerking motions. He is trying to light a cigarette, with a match, and it takes him four matches before he can get the flame and the tip of the cigarette to come together. He looks all at once quite unwell, and Assaria LeBaron propels her chair toward him, determined to discover what this allegedly tremendously talented young man does for a living, and what his relationship might be with Melissa. “I hope all this family talk doesn’t bore you, Mr. Littlejohn,” she says.

  “Littlefield,” and with more little jerks of his head, he says, “Nice place you got here. Like, man, this is a real mansion.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose—”

  “I mean, like, thanks for asking Melissa and I up,” he says. And then, “I gotta go to the john again,” and he steps out into the hall once more, the cigarette clenched between his teeth, and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his borrowed suit jacket. Sari thinks that surely he is ill, and that perhaps among his problems is one to do with his bladder.

  “Did you know my brother, Harry?” Joanna is saying.

  “Only slightly. But of course, everyone knew him by reputation.”

  “A good reputation, I hope.”

  “Oh, the very finest.”

  “Together, he and Sari made an unbeatable team.” Then, in a quieter voice, she says, “Tomorrow, I’d like to go out to the Sonoma vineyard and see Mother and Daddy’s graves, see the trees. Peter always thought it was barbaric, the way they wanted to be buried, but I always thought it rather—poetic. Would anyone like to go with me? Sari? Melissa?”

  And now Mr. Littlefield has returned from the bathroom again, and this time his appearance is almost alarming. His face is now very flushed, and his eyes are quite large, and the twitching of his hands and the jerking of his neck muscles are more pronounced. Surely this young man is very ill, Sari thinks. Melissa has noticed something, too, for she sees Melissa whisper something to him, an anxious expression on her face. Then Sari notices another extraordinary thing. Mr. Littlefield has an erection! Its unmistakable size and contours are quite obvious against the trouser leg of Peter LeBaron’s old blue suit. She wonders if others in the room will notice it, or whether, since now the others are all standing, while she, of necessity, is seated and therefore at eye level with his condition, it will escape their observation. To Thomas, who has just handed her a fresh drink, she whispers, “Is dinner nearly ready? You know I dislike a long cocktail hour.”

  “I’ll speak to Cookie, Madam.”

  “After Mother and Daddy died, Peter and Sari and I went out into the fields,” Joanna is saying to Harry Tillinghast, “and we got down on our hands and knees with the field hands, and started planting vines …”

  “Remarkable.”

  This, of course, is one of the annoying things about Joanna. She tends to take over and start controlling the conversation, which Sari herself should be doing. If Sari is not careful, she will have surrendered the hostesship of her dinner party to the tyranny of wit and beauty, but she is so busy trying to keep her eyes from traveling back to Mr. Littlefield’s aroused state that she can think of nothing to say. Interrupting Joanna, she makes a statement that even embarrasses her with its banality. “Well, I hope everybody has a good appetite because we have quite a nice dinner planned,” she says. “Cookie has worked very long and hard …” And she finds herself blushing, thinking: Very long and hard.

  There is a little laugh from Joanna, and Sari knows that Joanna has noticed the Littlefield situation, too—Joanna, who notices everything. Joanna winks at her, and then turning to the young man, says, “Are you from San Francisco, Mr. Littlefield?”

  He stares at her dumbly, as though he has not understood the question. Then he repeats, “San Francisco?”

  Melissa says, “Maurice, I think—”

  Joanna laughs brightly again. “Melissa, dear,” she says without a trace of sarcasm
, “where do you find such interesting young men?”

  “Maurice is—” Melissa begins, but she is interrupted by Thomas, who has stepped into the room to say, “Dinner is served, Madam.”

  Thank goodness, Sari thinks, as the group makes its way through the portrait gallery toward the dining room, with Thomas propelling her chair. At least Mr. Littlefield’s peculiar problem will soon be concealed under the folds of the table linen.

  The dinner begins smoothly enough. Sari has memorized her seating chart, and directs each guest to his place, and Thomas has stationed himself just slightly behind the hostess’s chair, where, in his role as her majordomo, he will supervise the service. Mr. Little-field has picked up one of the white napkins and is scrutinizing, farsightedly, the heavy gold embroidery. “What’s this?” he says.

  “It’s your napkin, Maurice,” Melissa says a little sharply.

  “No, I mean what’s this? It says Alleb on it. What’s that mean, Alleb?”

  “That’s my monogram,” Sari says. “A-L-Le-B.”

  “A cucumber velouté,” Thomas says, as the soup course arrives.

  While the soup is being served, Sari notices that Mr. Littlefield has managed, with difficulty, to light another cigarette, and she also sees that he has lighted the end with the filter tip. She whispers to Thomas, “An ashtray for Mr. Littlefield, please.”

  Beside her, on her left, Harry Tillinghast is saying in a low voice so that the others cannot hear, “You made a very serious mistake, Sari, when you fired Eric the way you did. I’ve always admired you as a businesswoman, but that was a mistake.”

  “Well, what would you have done, Harry, if your marketing director had decided to organize a palace revolution against you? Pin a medal on him?”

  “In my opinion, that was a mistake in judgment, Sari, and counterproductive.”

  “Well, it was my decision to make. Besides, we’re not going to talk about—”

  “Did you drop your napkin or something, Allie?” she hears Peeper say to Alix, who is seated on his left, and she looks down the table in time to see Alix’s hand quickly withdraw from where it must have been touching Peeper’s knee. Oh, dear, she thinks, what can be done to divert this evening from what suddenly threatens to become a disaster? She takes her first spoonful of soup, and the others follow her lead, except for Mr. Littlefield, who is still smoking his cigarette with the wrong end lighted. This creates an acrid smell, like burning rubber, that mingles unhappily with the gardenia perfume from the scented candles. “A toast,” she says, a little desperately. “To all of us! To long life, peace, and happiness!” And lifts her glass.

  “Is this Baronet wine?” Mr. Littlefield asks, and the room falls silent. It is a question that, somehow, has never been asked at Assaria LeBaron’s table. “Well, is it?” he asks again.

  “No, actually it is a Monbousquet, nineteen seventy-nine,” Sari says at last. “French. Our wines are inexpensive jug wines. Vins ordinaires.”

  “But of course they wouldn’t always have to be,” Harry says. “Baronet possesses the vines, and the capacity, to produce truly noble wines. Under a different label, of course. Have you ever thought of that, Sari?”

  “Yes, thought of it and immediately dismissed it. I know my market, Harry.”

  “But there’s a whole new upscale market that could be tapped. Young urban professionals—”

  “I know all about yuppies,” she says. “But I also know my market. What do you know about wines, Harry?”

  “Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. I’ve had my office do a study on it. Demographic profiles—”

  “Yes. Studies. Demographic profiles. But I’ve learned this business from the ground up, as Joanna says. I’ve fought off the larks—”

  “Larks haven’t been a problem for years, Sari. Pesticides took care of them.”

  “Yes, and do you know I miss them? They were beautiful birds with a beautiful song. Beautiful, voracious birds.”

  Turning to Mr. Littlefield, on her right, Mildred Tillinghast says, “I hope you’ll forgive all this talk about the family business, Mr. Littlefield.”

  Sari cannot let this comment pass. “It’s not your family business, Mildred,” she says sharply. “At least not yet!”

  “But, Sari, Harry and I own stock!”

  Down, down, she can feel her evening descending, ineluctably, into the widening whirlpool of discord she had so hoped to avoid, and the downward descent seems to be gathering a momentum that she can no longer control.

  Turning back to Mr. Littlefield, Mildred says, “What business are you in, Mr. Littlefield?”

  “Business?”

  “Yes. What do you do?”

  “I’m a rock star.”

  “A rock star. How very—”

  “Oh, my God!” Sari cries, because she has just realized who Mr. Maurice Littlefield is. “You’re the one who killed the snake!”

  “Bugger bit me!”

  Once more, the table falls silent.

  “Tell me,” Sari says, trying, if it is still humanly possible, to rescue the evening, “how did you and Melissa meet?”

  “We didn’t meet, exactly,” he says. And then, his face still hotly flushed and his eyes wide, still not having picked up his soup spoon, he begins, “Listen, let me tell you a story, lady, a story about that snake that will knock you off your feet!” The silence at the table becomes one of shock at the enormity of this gaffe. But, unaware that he has committed one, he repeats it, and in a much louder voice. “I mean, this will really knock you off your feet!”

  “Maurice,” Melissa says in a low, warning voice from across the table.

  “Wait! Let me tell it. The snake’s name was Sylvia. I mean that was its name, Sylvia, and there was this girl in the group named Marty, in I think Omaha, and this Marty she really loved that snake. She used to tie it around her, she used to wrap it around her, you know, her neck, and she used to even stick it down under her dress to make it look like, you know, she had these big tits, and she’d play with that snake—crazy, man!—like she really loved it, and it was like that Sylvia really loved this Marty, and she’d wrap herself around this Marty like she really loved this Marty, and Sylvia never done nothing to hurt this Marty, see? So in I think Omaha we had this gig, and this Marty was out on the stage with Sylvia and I—Sylvia, who was this snake—and Marty was wrappin’ the snake around her, stuffin’ it inside her dress to make it look like these big tits, you know? You know? You know? And—whee!” He is shouting now, and he flings his head back, and the cords of his thin neck stand out. “Whee! There goes my head! Hold me down, Major! Hold me down, Captain Marvel, ’cause I’m up on the ceiling, I’m up in the stars, I’m out in space, man! Whee! I’m climbin’, man, climbin’ to the fuckin’ stars, man! Ace me out! Ace me out of a fuckin’ sp-i-i-i-n! Sing to me, sugar! Sing to me, Lucius! Dance on the head of my dick, Lucius! W-o-o-o-o-o-o! This is Star Wars, baby, and here comes Darth—”

  “Maurice!”

  “W-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo! I’m trippin’, man!” And all at once his head topples forward, his whole body sags, and his head falls into his soup bowl, sideways, with a soft splash.

  “My dress!” Mildred Tillinghast cries, half rising and gathering the folds of her Galanos skirt about her knees.

  “My Spode!” says Sari. And yet, miraculously, the soup bowl from her treasured set of porcelain, so thin that through it you could see the outline of a bird’s foot, remains unbroken from the apparently inconsequential weight of Maurice Littlefield’s head. Meanwhile, all the men at the table are on their feet to assist the young man out of his velouté.

  Melissa has also risen. “I’ll handle this,” she says in a taut voice. “Stand up, Maurice!” she commands. “Stand up! I’m taking you downstairs.” She pulls him slowly to his feet, and soup dribbles from his face down across his shirt and jacket and necktie while Sari and Thomas exchange looks of mutual consternation.

  “I’ll be right back,” Melissa says, and there is silence from the rest
of the table as, with one hand firmly grasping the young man’s elbow, she steers him on an unsteady course out of the dining room.

  “Well!” Sari says at last. And then, determined not to lose control of the gathering, she says to Thomas, “Just remove his place setting, Thomas. Mildred, you and Harry can move a little closer together. I know it means husband next to wife, but the circumstances are a bit—unusual, I guess you’d all agree. Mildred, is your dress all right?”

  “Yes—I think so. Was it something I said, Sari, that made him do that?”

  “I doubt it,” Sari says. And then, “Tell me—I want to know what each of you thinks—is Claus von Bulow guilty? I think he’s innocent—either innocent or stupid to have kept the hypodermic needle. Peeper, what do you think?”

  “I think …” And for the next few moments, everything is a forced babble of chatter, as everyone tries to put behind him or her the Littlefield episode.

  “I’m prepared to sweeten my offer, Sari,” she hears Harry Tillinghast, on her left, say to her. “Thirteen point two five shares per.”

  “I thought it was thirteen a little while ago.”

  “I’m sweetening the sweetener, Sari.”

  “It’s still chickenfeed. My company’s shares are worth a damn sight more than thirteen point two five of yours.”

  “Your company, Mother?” Eric says.

  “We’re not here to talk business! This is not a business dinner. How often must I remind you?”

  Now Melissa has returned to the dining room, and takes her seat at the table again. “I’m terribly sorry,” she says. “It’s entirely my fault. I was trying something, an experiment, and it didn’t work. It’s really a tragic story. It has all the classic ingredients. Born and raised in some dreadful little East Texas town—an alcoholic mother, and a father who was a wife beater and a child abuser. Ran away from home when he was ten. Got into drugs. But underneath all the sordidness, there is this really remarkable natural musical talent. That’s what I hope to rescue somehow. But the problem is shyness—a terrible shyness. It affects him in front of audiences. So he’ll take an upper to feel better, and then a downer to bring him down from the high, and then he’ll snort a line of cocaine to bring him up again, or sniff some amyl nitrate. I’m trying to rehabilitate him, that’s all, because of the very real talent that’s there—trying to let that talent come out. I thought, perhaps, if he could join a normal family for a nice, normal little dinner party—”