He couldn’t get over how beautiful she was, even nibbling on a chicken leg. Her smile dazzled. “I was born in Saratoga Springs and grew up in New York City. Now I live in Beverly Hills.”
“My father might care for Yankees even less than he does Hollywood people.”
“Well, I’m not a Yankee anymore.”
She’d laughed. “Once a Yankee, always a Yankee.”
“Are you…” He cleared his throat, exercising caution. “Are you in school?”
“I finished high school last month. I’m to go to a two-year college in Cedar Springs in the fall and study to be a schoolteacher, unless I get married. Father never would let me work and have a family.”
Again Nick had sensed an independence beneath the refined surface of Mattie Witt that he’d doubted her father, from the sound of him, would have noticed or, if he had, approved of.
“Do you have any prospects?” Nick had asked.
“For a husband, you mean?” Her dark eyes had sparkled, teasing him, perhaps herself. “Father has prospects for me, I don’t.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“He owns the Cedar Springs Woolen Mill.”
“Would he—do you suppose I could meet him?”
Nick had thought he must have gone mad. Another three days and he’d be back in Beverly Hills planning another movie. Mattie and her black, bottomless eyes would be just a pleasant memory.
Mattie had invited him to dinner the following evening at the Witt home on West Main Street in Cedar Springs. It was a town out of a William Faulkner novel. The house was Greek Revival, shaded by oaks, pecans, magnolias; there were pots of geraniums on the porch.
Jackson Witt was a short, domineering, surprisingly muscular man who read from the Bible before and after dinner. There was no liquor, and Naomi—Mattie’s little sister, a slim, tiny girl—wasn’t allowed to speak at the dinner table unless she was directly addressed by an elder. All through dinner Nick could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the front parlor. It was the most oppressive sound he’d ever encountered. Mattie, for whom this life was normal, would catch his eye and smile. Her world—wherever it was—wasn’t in that house on West Main. It was as if nothing her father said or did could touch her where she really lived.
“My daughter has informed me you’re from California,” Jackson Witt had said after dinner, while Mattie helped the maid—who hadn’t spoken another word to him—clear the table and prepare coffee. “I trust you have no part of the movie industry.”
Nick had coughed to cover his discomfort. Hadn’t Mattie warned him?
“Hollywood is corrupting the children and young people of this great country. For next to nothing they can see behavior and clothing not tolerated in polite company.” He’d fastened his gleaming black eyes on his guest; the clock had seemed to tick ever louder. “These Hollywood stars aren’t proper examples for our children. Their immoral acts are played up in newspapers and magazines all across the country. Divorces, wild parties, illicit liaisons, extravagant spending. It seems there’s a new scandal every day.”
In the Witt household, Nick had already gathered, anything undertaken purely for pleasure was considered suspect, an opening for the devil.
“In my view,” Jackson Witt went on, apparently assuming his guest agreed with his every word and that “his view” was the only right one, “these people have betrayed the public trust. They should be called to account. They are corrupt. As a business leader in this community, I strive to hold myself and my family to a higher standard.”
“I can see that,” Nick had said and tried to smile. He’d just wanted to get out of there. Forget Mattie and her beautiful black eyes. Her fanatical daddy was her headache.
“We’re simple people in Cedar Springs. Yet even out here we can’t escape the sins and sinners of the movie screen.”
Since one of those sinners was sitting in his living room, Nick couldn’t argue with the man.
When his older daughter had reappeared with a silver tray of coffee and something she called chess pie, Jackson Witt had changed the subject. The moral corruption of American society wasn’t a topic for discussion in front of ladies, at least according to his scheme of the world. Nick’d had a feeling Mattie could argue circles around her father. He’d also have bet the old buzzard didn’t know she and her little sister had been to the picture show on the square.
“I understand you’re an engineer,” Witt had said.
Nick nearly choked on his pie, which was smooth and ultra-sweet. He’d looked at Mattie, but she’d shown no sign of embarrassment. Her hand wasn’t even trembling as she’d handed over a china cup and saucer. There was an intense, compelling serenity about her, and Nick had found himself wondering how it would translate on-screen.
“I would say so,” he’d replied with a smile.
“Mattie tells me your daddy’s in the hydroelectric business,” Jackson Witt said.
“My father’s dead, I’m afraid.”
Witt nodded thoughtfully. “He’s gone to a better life then.”
That was what Nick believed, too, but the way Witt said it had made his skin crawl. He’d sipped his coffee, then set it and his empty pie plate back on the tray. “He wasn’t in the power business.”
“Oh, he wasn’t. May I ask what his business was?”
Mattie gave no indication she was anything but fascinated by Nick’s every word. He’d bet she knew just what his father’s business had been. Sensing her seething soul, Nick wanted to jump up and grab her, shake her until she promised she would get out of this nuthouse.
“Gambling,” he said, suddenly feeling reckless and malicious. “Like his father before him. A penchant for gambling runs in the family.”
Witt had remained rigidly seated in his high-backed chair. “You said your name was Pembroke.”
“That’s right, Nicholas Pembroke.”
The older man’s eyes became tiny pieces of black coal, fierce and intense. “Your grandfather was Ulysses Pembroke.” Jackson Witt’s voice was high and hoarse with indignation. Without looking at his daughter, he’d said, “Mattie, this man has misrepresented himself to you. Please leave the room.”
She’d obeyed silently, but moved with such grace and steadiness that Nick instinctively knew she’d hoped this confrontation would happen—her secret Hollywood friend would shock and horrify her father and perhaps even help set her free someday.
“Ulysses Pembroke was a thief and a profligate,” Witt said, “and you are his grandson.”
“Yep.” Nick was on his feet. “And I make movies for a living.”
He’d left before Jackson Witt could throw him out.
The next morning Nick had returned to the bend in the river, assuming Mattie wouldn’t be within miles. He’d behaved badly, no matter that her father was a rigid fanatic who justified his cruelty to his daughter through a corruption of his religious principles. Nevertheless, Nick had felt he had no right to judge another man’s beliefs. But he’d thought of the lost dark-eyed girl he’d met on the Cumberland. What kind of life could Mattie and her younger sister hope to have with such a father?
The canoe had rocked silently in the water, insects humming nearby. His life back in California suddenly had seemed enormously empty. He made movies. He bedded women. He went to parties. Every day was something new, and yet the same. To what end? Where would he be in another ten years? Another thirty?
“Nicholas.”
Her voice was so soft and melodic he’d thought he must have imagined it. He’d opened his eyes but hadn’t wanted to look, to have his hopes dashed.
Mattie had stood on the riverbank in a simple yellow broadcloth dress, a battered upholstered valise banging against her knees. Her dark hair was brushed out, hanging down her back, catching the morning sun. Nick had never seen eyes so huge and black.
“I want to go to California with you,” she’d said calmly. “Some of the best people I know are in Cedar Springs, but I can’t stay here.”
“I have money,” she’d said.
“Mattie.” Nick had been so overcome he’d feared he’d pitch headfirst from the canoe. “Mattie, you can’t.”
Her knuckles had whitened on the handle of the valise. “I can and I will.”
“Your father—”
“I have no father.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“He does. He disowned me this morning when I told him what I mean to do.” She’d spoken without drama or self-pity. “He won’t change his mind.”
“But your sister…”
Her eyes had gone flat with unarticulated pain. “Naomi has her own life to live.”
“What is it you mean to do?”
She hadn’t hesitated. “I mean to become someone else.”
They’d married on the train west.
Mattie had made her debut the following year in The Gamblers. Based on a romanticized version of Ulysses Pembroke’s life, it was a film that launched her career, secured Nick’s reputation as a director and turned his grandfather into one of the great American rakes.
Mattie had continued to work hard. She was popular with her colleagues. Invariably gracious, she never spoke ill of anyone and engendered remarkably little envy. Her one failing—if it could be called that—was a profound reluctance to speak to reporters. She was a private person and never discussed her past with anyone, but her reticence had only added to her aura of mystery.
Shortly before starting work on Tiger’s Eye, her second movie, Nick had brought up the touchy subject of her sister, something he’d usually avoided. “Why don’t we have her out here for a visit.”
“She won’t come.”
“Sure she will. Come on, Mattie, your dad can’t stay mad forever.”
“He isn’t mad. He’s disowned me completely. It’s as if I never existed. Naomi—” Mattie’s eyes had shone with tears, but not one spilled. “I asked her to come with me. I begged her to get away from him before he destroyed her, but she wouldn’t. Nick, am I a bad person for having left her?”
She’d always seemed so sure of herself that her uncertainty had caught Nick by surprise. “No—no, Mattie, no. You had to leave.”
“I could have stayed. I could have found a way to make a life for myself. Naomi stayed. She doesn’t remember Mother as well as I do. Mother had her peculiarities, but she wasn’t as rigid as Father. They were happy together in their own way. Father will never be happy with Naomi or me.” She looked away from Nick; she still hadn’t cried. “I know there’s nothing I can do, but still I think about my sister every day.”
Nick had offered to go to Cedar Springs and have it out with Jackson Witt, cart Naomi off himself. The kid would be better off living with her big sister in California than with that sour old bastard in Tennessee. But, claiming it would be useless to apply force, that Naomi knew the invitation to California stood, Mattie had refused Nick’s offer to intervene. Eventually she could no longer bear to talk about Cedar Springs and the father and sister she’d left behind.
After she and Nick had a son, the gossip pages carried pictures of the happy Pembroke family. Given Jackson Witt’s lurid interest in Hollywood’s goings-on, Nick had assumed his father-in-law had known he had a grandson. There was no note of congratulations, no softening of the old man’s hard heart, nothing from the much-missed little sister. Nick had felt like crying every time his wife returned empty-handed and white-faced from the postbox in the weeks after their son’s birth.
Their relationship was honest and fulfilling, and he had remained faithful to her for four full years. The temptations came on a daily basis. Not long after Mattie had arrived in California, she’d laughingly told Nick she’d learned most of the stories about her husband’s sexual adventures were true, but she’d claimed to believe in the transforming power of love and expected that meeting her—marrying her, having a child together—had changed Nick forever. And it had. But it hadn’t changed his wandering eye.
His first affair occurred on an August trip to Saratoga Springs while Mattie stayed in their Beverly Hills home to play with their baby and take unnecessary singing lessons. She’d never have to sing in any of her films. Being back in Saratoga had proved more than Nick could handle. The money flowed, and the temptations abounded. He’d lost a bundle, and as he’d driven past the abandoned estate he still owned, he remembered his promise to his mother. No gambling, no turning out like his father and grandfather.
Guilt had undercut his elation at winning at the track, and yet that night, unable to stop himself, he went to a private lake-house gambling parlor. An attractive woman in her forties taught him poker, then invited him back to her room. He said yes.
Mattie found out through a mutual acquaintance. There was always someone, Nick had discovered, willing to bear bad news. He’d admitted everything. At first it was unclear whether the zest for gambling he’d just revealed bothered her more than his infidelity, but then she’d let him know in no uncertain terms that in her view, gambling and infidelity were part and parcel of the same basic corruption. Nick had tried to explain that he had no intention of self-destructing like his grandfather, that the woman had been nothing at all like her, just a stupid fling, he couldn’t even remember her name. That only seemed to enrage her more.
“I had no idea monogamy meant so much to you,” he’d said, stung by her anger.
“Does it mean nothing to you?”
As far as his heart was concerned, he was uncompromisingly monogamous. Mattie was the only woman he truly loved.
She’d left him after his second meaningless affair, but came back. After the third she stayed away six months. They’d begun to argue. Less the polite, repressed daughter of Jackson Witt, Mattie had learned to hold her own in a good fight. After her husband’s fourth affair, she’d moved out for good. She finished the movie she was working on, announced her “retirement” and headed to New York. She and Nick were divorced. Mattie was thirty years old. Everybody—especially Nick—had believed she’d come back to Hollywood once she cooled down.
She never did.
Nick had accused her of being as hard-hearted and unforgiving as her father, igniting another of their by then legendary fights. And yet, even as she’d bought a town house in Greenwich Village and enrolled their son in school, he’d remained hopelessly and forever in love with her. He’d look back on his repeated affairs in despairing wonder. None of the women he’d slept with meant anything to him, nor he to them. So why had he indulged in affairs?
“I hope you find what you want in life,” Mattie had told him in one of her more charitable moments.
Too late, he had.
What he wanted—all he wanted—was the dark-eyed girl he’d found gazing at the Cumberland on a warm, quiet Tennessee morning.
But as his cab arrived at the busy Los Angeles airport, Nick pulled himself out of the past. He couldn’t undo his mistakes. What he could do, he thought, was to try to save his son and his granddaughter from them.
Thirteen
A lively discussion of the ailing Yankees had been going on for the past hour on Mattie’s front stoop. She was right in the midst of it, fiddling with one of her handmade kites as she maintained that pitching was to blame for the team’s latest ills. Not that she knew a thing about baseball. From argument over the years, however, she’d learned that a cry for more pitching was generally a creditable position to take.
She only half listened to the debate. A cab had turned down her street and slowed in front of her town house.
Before it came to a full stop, Dani jumped out.
Mattie quietly asked everyone on her front stoop to leave.
They complied. Nick had called a little while ago. She knew their son was now in the hospital in Saratoga.
A dark-haired man who had to be Zeke Cutler climbed out of the cab after Dani. He loo
ked like his father, whom Mattie had known as a little boy. And like Joe. Naomi must have sent him, she thought.
Their eyes met. He was definitely a Cutler, and Zeke was the only Cutler left.
He came up onto the sidewalk. “It’s good to see you, Miss Witt,” he said.
“Hello, Zeke.”
Dani stiffened visibly. “So you do know him.”
Zeke looked at her, and Mattie instantly felt his attraction to his granddaughter. “I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” he said.
To talk, Mattie thought. Of course. She’d have to tell Dani everything.
“No. Don’t leave.” Mattie set her kite down. “This concerns you, too, Zeke. Come inside. Both of you.”
Her front room was cool, the ceiling fan whirring, and she served fresh-squeezed lemonade she’d bought from a small grocery around the corner and a few butter cookies she pulled from the freezer and let thaw on a plate. Zeke sat on the couch. Dani sat across from him. There was one other chair, but it was uncomfortable, and Mattie had no intention of going through this ordeal on an uncomfortable chair. She sat next to Zeke on the couch.
“How’s John?” she asked.
There was a moment’s silence as Dani and Zeke exchanged glances, obviously debating who was supposed to answer. Finally Zeke said, “He’s doing fine.”
“It was an accident?”
“He told the doctors he tripped and fell.”
Mattie suspected he’d told Zeke more. But Dani blurted, “Which isn’t true.”
“I see,” Mattie said, setting down her lemonade glass, untouched. “John doesn’t know anything of what I’m about to tell you. I didn’t want him to have to be in the position of holding back from his own daughter….” She inhaled deeply through her nose, just wanting this done. “I thought this information was no one’s business but my own.”
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