Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  Hugh sat alone. The dining room candelabra cast light across his sleek, graying blond head. “Haven’t you been up long enough for one day?” he asked.

  Smiling, she shook her head and reached for the brandy. She downed it quickly and took another.

  When she reached for the decanter a third time, Hugh laid his hand on hers. “That’s very powerful,” he said.

  “I better look out, then. If I get blotto you might take advantage of me.”

  For the first time she was speaking to him in the teasing sexual banter she reserved for her boyfriends.

  “You’ve had enough,” he said uneasily.

  “Nerving myself up,” she said, then blurted: “Hugh, why haven’t you ever married?”

  Quiet ascended to the Grinling Gibbons–inspired carved ceiling above them; falling snow wrapped them in its hush.

  After a minute Hugh replied in a purposefully matter-of-fact voice, “For the obvious reasons.”

  Zoe’s dark eyes swam, lustrous with fever and brandy. “To the right girl it wouldn’t mean a thing.”

  An offer was being made.

  They both knew it.

  Hugh was keenly tempted. Not by Zoe, though Zoe’s magnificent eyes were gazing at him with a profound amorousness. How could so well-boiling an infatuation have escaped him? For the first time in decades he allowed himself to think of … children.… His own genes moving into the future … his own sons to fill the airy palace of his plans … kingmaker to his own tribe.

  While he floundered in his momentary valley of decision, Zoe blundered. As though fearing she had not made herself clear, she stood to tighten her robe sash. Satin outlined her long, perfect legs, her small waist, the magnificence of her full, out-of-fashion breasts with their raspberry-shaped nipples. Zoe’s body seemed to present not only a promise but a sexual mission. Hugh understood this with a rationality that was absolutely lucid. He experienced not a quiver of lust. For years he had lived in a celibacy whose purity would be envied by most priests: he had sublimated the remotest fantasy, the tiniest hint of desire into his work and his machinations for those he loved. Sweat broke out on his forehead. I can’t, he thought. I can’t anymore.

  “Where on earth am I going to find a dried-up old spinster content to bury herself with a deformed recluse?” A trailing laugh ended his question.

  The brandy had affected Zoe. She did not catch his panic. “If a girl loves—”

  “Zoe!”

  “—a man the way I—”

  Hugh slammed the table, a sharp retort that flickered candle flames. “What’s gotten into you today?” he barked. “First destroying your mother’s reputation, then getting vicious with me!”

  Zoe’s face went slack. Her mouth opened and she sank into a chair.

  The front door opened. And miraculously delivered unto Hugh were Justin and Caryll, their voices floating down the hallway. The falling snow had muffled the car’s approach.

  Hugh ran into the hall. “Boys! We’re in here, in the dining room.”

  Caryll, seeing Zoe, halted below the wood-ribbed entry. “Hello,” he muttered, and came no farther.

  Justin, cheeks red from outdoors, came to kiss her shimmery hair. “Good. You’re up and around.”

  “Hugh’s been giving me his famous cold cure.” She turned in her chair to fix her febrile glance on Caryll. “Has your uncle ever tried it on you? Three brandies one right after the other. What a nasty man! Now I’m not talking right.”

  Hugh recognized the importance of salvaging her pride: in her thwarted humiliation might she not infect Justin with her own doubts regarding their mother’s carnal irregularities?

  “Brandy does wonders for my asthma. Why not for your cold?” His voice was rich with avuncular benevolence. “Have you two Sunday laborers eaten?”

  “I’m starved.” Justin sat on Hugh’s left.

  “Caryll?” Hugh asked, his evening pump resting on the nub where the buzzer rose beneath the carpet. “Something hot?”

  “No, thanks. I had dinner at Woodland with Dad.”

  Zoe smiled. “Then you can keep me company upstairs.”

  Caryll said coolly, “Justin and I were planning to discuss the shatterproof windshield. That’s why I tagged along.”

  “Talking about the Seven while he’s eating’ll give him an ulcer,” she said. “Upstairs, upstairs.”

  And she ran past him, the Louis heels of her mules striking the Great Hall parquet sharply, setting up a provocative motion in the naked, delectably round buttocks below the satin.

  VI

  She leaned against the Queen Anne chest on the landing and waited for him. They climbed to the second-floor gallery without speaking, side by side. He could feel the heat emanating from her body in perfumed waves. She swept through the open door of her little sitting room.

  “I’ve missed you, Caryll,” she said in a forlorn voice.

  “Have you?” His mouth moved stiffly.

  “It’s been weeks.” She glanced around at the vases of white flowers. “I’ve been ill.”

  “Justin mentioned you had a cold.”

  “It’s not like you to be such a stranger.”

  “We’ve all been working like mad.”

  “Oh, you know I can’t bear it when people are angry with me,” she cried.

  “I’m tired of being whipped then having to beg your pardon.” He circled the overheated, flower-thick room to stand on the far side of the chaise longue. “It’s Hugh, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hugh’s the unmarried man, the one you’re in love with.”

  Her laughter was high, a little drunken. “That’s not funny, Caryll.”

  “Who else can it be? You’re always admiring him, telling me to follow to his advice.”

  “Justin admires him and listens to him. Do you think Justin’s in love with him? Hugh’s been a father to us.”

  Caryll gazed at her uncertainly, his senses swollen by her opulent, feverish beauty and the clinging negligee, his brain off the track, too disorganized to weigh her veracity. “Who is it, then?”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “The man you’re in love with.”

  “Oh, Caryll, you nut.” She moved closer to him. “Honey bear, I didn’t mean to hurt you or make you jealous. I just needed time to think.”

  Her perfume tickled the depth of his stomach. “About what?”

  “The question you asked me.” She raised her hand, caressing his cheek.

  He gazed into her moist eyes for several seconds. He buried his face in the soft stork feathers. “Zoe. I’ve been in hell.”

  Her body was burning against his. “Don’t ever leave me again. It’s awful.”

  “Then you mean it? You’ll marry me?”

  “Do you really love me?”

  “Stop tormenting me. You know I do.”

  “How much?”

  “So much that I’m ashamed.”

  “Will you ever put anything ahead of me?”

  “Never.”

  “Your mother?”

  “No.”

  “Your father?”

  “No.”

  “Onyx?”

  “Nothing, darling.”

  “What if we have children?”

  “Not them, either.”

  “I couldn’t bear it if I didn’t come first with you.”

  “You’ll be the only.” He sank to his knees, touching his lips to the pointed satin toes of her slippers. Kissing Zoe’s feet might have seemed an embarrassing high drama to another, yet neither Caryll nor Zoe considered it that.

  “I can’t stand this house,” she said. “Let’s get married right away.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Mr. Justin Hutchinson

  Requests the pleasure of your company

  At the marriage of his sister,

  Zoe Claudine,

  To

  Mr. Caryll Bridger

  At six in the evening,

  Thursday,
December 23, 1926

  At the Farm, Michigan

  The sound of hammering awoke Tom.

  For a moment he tensed, worrying he had overslept and missed the welding of the Seven’s rear end, an innovation of his that might (or might not) replace the traditional bolts, then he stretched his legs luxuriously, recalling that the experiment would proceed without him. Today he would not be at Woodland. His first day off in how many months? Yawning, he went to a window, looking down at the bundled-up workmen erecting rows of green canvas marquees that would protect the guests’ cars in what he hoped was an unnecessary precaution. The sky. was lit by the opaline pallor that precedes a sunny winter day. Happy the bride, Tom thought, grinning.

  Though Caryll’s timing was rotten—engineers were working double shifts at the Triple E Building to design the Seven while Administration was bracing to handle the shutdown—Tom was delighted by his son’s choice: Zoe was gorgeous, high-spirited, beguiling, and Antonia’s daughter. Zoe’s marriage to Caryll would draw Justin quite naturally into the family circle.

  Tom opened his top bureau drawer, extracting the two sheets of paper that a typist had stayed late the previous night to complete. The long, slender fingers lovingly arranged the papers side by side on the desk.

  Pulling on a swimsuit with faded gray and blue stripes, then a robe, he jogged downstairs. Ropes of powerfully scented white roses festooned the carved oak banisters. On the first floor all was confusion. Florists on ladders decorated the pair of bronze chandeliers with more white roses, caterers’ assistants in monkey jackets bustled about, two bridesmaids flirted with an usher while Mary, the parlormaid, served them breakfast. “Top of the wedding morning to ye, Mr. Bridger,” called Mary in her Cork lilt.

  Tom made a mock bow and the approval of young laughter trailed him through the passage to the swimming pool, where he stood warming his back at the rough stone fireplace: somebody had remembered to build a fire even on this day of days. Caryll was already churning along. Watching his son’s diligently earnest breast-stroke, Tom felt tears form in his eyes. A sweet and very tender part of his life was ended, these dawn swims, the hours he and Caryll had tramped through the woods, worked together in the basement shop, shared late suppers at the square kitchen table.

  Caryll, raising up for a breath, saw him. “Good morning, Dad,” he panted. “Come on in.”

  Tom squatted by the edge of the pool. “There’s something I have to talk to you about first.”

  Caryll was in the shallow end. He stood, water coursing from his broad, sloping shoulders down his hairless chest into the vest of his swimsuit. “Advice to the about-to-be-married man?”

  “There’s a subject I wouldn’t tackle,” Tom chuckled. “From today on, you own five percent of Onyx.”

  Caryll’s head jerked up in surprise.

  Tom chuckled at his son’s bemusement. “You’re a partner in the shop.” He continued to use the term to refer to his enterprises: Woodland, the Hamtramck, the thirty-one assemblies across the country, the shipping line, the three railroad lines, the vast stretches of timberlands that had been leased out since 1920 when wood was no longer used in the Fiver’s frame, two banks, the twenty-one factories on foreign soil, the mines in Canada and Africa, the rubber plantations along the Amazon. “Five percent.”

  Caryll found his power of speech. Pushing wet hair from his astonished gray eyes, he said, “Dad, that’s a fortune! You flabbergast me! You’ve always made such a big point of being sole owner.”

  “Minds are meant to be changed now and then.” Tom grinned. “Therapeutic.”

  Caryll shook his head, still uncomprehending.

  “It’s a wedding present, Caryll.”

  “You already gave us one.” The million dollars had made headlines. “A lallapalooza.”

  Wagging his index finger, Tom mimed severity. “Will you quit arguing with your old man?”

  “You’ve taken my breath away. Thank you, Dad.”

  The shyly wholehearted smile, Tom decided, made Caryll look younger than twenty-two, far too young for this to be his wedding day: his voice caught a little as he said, “After we’ve finished our laps, you’ll come upstairs and sign.”

  “What about Zoe?”

  “The shares are in your name.”

  Caryll’s smile faded. “I can’t take the gift, then, Dad.”

  “You have to,” Tom retorted, his pleasure cracking a little. “How else can I give Justin his?”

  “Justin?” Caryll cried, gaping. “Justin?”

  “He’s getting the same amount.” Tom walked around the pool to the diving board. He did not want to talk about it, and Caryll usually was hypersensitive to his elliptic silences.

  But Caryll followed him, churning through the pool until water was up to his shoulders. “Dad, you have me up a tree. I don’t understand one thing about this. Why are you suddenly handing out shares in Onyx?”

  “Call it a case of advancing senility,” Tom said dryly.

  “To Justin of all people!”

  “He’s the best damn administrator we’ve ever had.”

  “I’ll say. But you’ve never shown him the least favoritism. I know this isn’t true—but people say you don’t even like him.”

  “Right now he’s extremely hot under the collar because I asked him to postpone his vacation until you get back from Palm Beach. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you he might move over to Ford or General Motors?”

  “Often, but—”

  “Then what’s so wrong with dangling a carrot to keep him with us?” Tom’s explanation echoed through the chlorine-odored space. He felt ashamed, resentful, awkward. He balked at discussing this most personal and hidden of his relationships—and with his other son. People say you don’t even like him. Jesus, Tom thought. Well, it’s better than having them guess the truth.

  Caryll’s jaw tensed in that dogged way of his. “He deserves the shares more than anyone. But, Dad, what makes you think he’d leave? You’re a hero to him.”

  Unable to go further in defense of his actions, Tom shed his robe. The strong, spare length of body had aged remarkably little, a slight incurving of the shoulders, a few more muscles below the rib cage, that was all. “The transfers are made out, everything’s set.” He ran along the board, jackknifing into the pool.

  When he surfaced, Caryll was treading water near him, looking determined—and also as heartrendingly timid as when Tom had dropped him off at that military school. “Dad, I can’t take any shares.”

  “What’s eating you? Justin’s supposed to be your best friend.”

  “It’s nothing to do with Justin. It’s me and Zoe. She comes first with me, and if you don’t want her as a co-owner, I can’t take the shares.”

  Tom’s laughter tasted of chlorine and relief. He dog-paddled. “You do need premarital advice, son. Stop worrying. From here on, Caryll, what’s yours is hers. And what’s hers is hers.”

  “Don’t rib me, Dad. You don’t realize how I feel about Zoe.”

  “I’m not blind,” Tom said, wanting to cry as he reached out to hug his son’s cold, slippery shoulders. If only one could buy insurance against the griefs and inevitable disillusionments of matrimony, he would shell out what he must to insure his son. “I’ll have the wording changed,” he said. “When you get home from Florida, the both of you’ll sign.”

  II

  Tall baskets of white roses formed an aisle leading from the south fireplace through the drawing room and across the hall to join the roses that decorated the banisters. The organ’s wandering music ceased. Portentous chords resounded. To honor the sacrament the one hundred and eighty guests sat erect in their gilt chairs. Walter Chrysler. Henry Ford and his plump littla Clara flanked by Edsel and Eleanor. Alfred Sloan of General Motors. William Durant (formerly of General Motors, now manufacturer of the Durant car) with his very young second wife. Shock-haired Carl Sandburg. Senator Couzens, who sat as far as possible from his enemy and onetime partner, Henry Ford. Mayor John W. Smith. Lor
d and Lady Edge, she dowdy in ice-gray taffeta, he beaming affably despite a cold caught on the Berengaria. And in the place of honor customarily reserved for the bride’s parents, freckled President Calvin Coolidge, his narrow mouth firmly shut while Mrs. Coolidge smiled.

  The Reverend Mr. Johnson, smoothing his surplice, approached the table. Caryll and Tom, freshly barbered and both wearing cutaways, entered by the side door. There was a rustling of approval over Caryll’s choice of his father as best man. All five Sinclair boys were ushers: it was the oldest, Phil, who escorted his aunt down the aisle. Maud’s tan lace was the most festive, least sensibly serviceable gown she had ever owned, and her cheeks were bright with happiness. In the past few weeks she had become very fond of Zoe, traveling with her to New York, positioning herself in Hattie Carnegie’s large, silk-walled fitting room to insure with her seamstress’s eye that the lovely child got value as well as style in her enormous trousseau.

  The organ halted briefly. The first triumphant bars of the Lohengrin wedding march resounded. Rosamunde Baardson, wearing crimson velvet, solemnly bore her sheaf of white roses down the staircase, followed by nine other bridesmaids.

  Justin appeared with Zoe on the landing, one hand under her elbow, the other protectively clasping hers. She carried a shower of white camellias strung on narrow white satin ribbons; her bridal gown displayed the front of her charmingly dimpled knees, then curved into a long court train, and her veil, drifts of snowy Valenciennes lace, flouted tradition by failing to cover her exquisite face. He with his thick black hair, Roman nose, deep-set eyes, she in her dewy, voluptuous beauty, they swept down the staircase like tall, graceful birds in paired flight.

  Watching them, Tom thought: Ahh, love, love, how beautiful they are, your children, comely beyond the race of man.… Choking, he bit back tears.

  The ceremony was brief.

  Afterward, Guy Lombardo’s orchestra played Strauss waltzes and crowds formed around the champagne table in the library, discreetly out of sight of the man who had taken public oath to uphold the laws of the land. Fortunately President Coolidge disliked parties and left immediately after congratulating the newlyweds. The caterers’ footmen began to pass drinks.