Her Father's House (3 page)

“Blood's thicker than water? Cliché,” she said.

“A cliché is a cliché because there's truth in it. After my mother died and I was truly, totally alone, I can't tell you how much I wished I had somebody who belonged to me. He could have been almost anyone but an ax murderer and I would have welcomed him.”

“Well, you do have those third cousins out in—where is it?—Nebraska?”

“Wyoming. And I've seen them one time in my entire life. But your relatives live on Long Island and you grew up practically next door, you said.”

“Nevertheless, I don't want them.”

The firm tone was irritating. “Who are these people? What's this all about? Why the secrecy?”

“They're just people, for heaven's sake! What are you hinting at, that they're all convicts or something? They're just plain, ordinary people.”

“Of course they are. But can't you say something about them? What do they do, for instance?”

“I don't know what they do. I'll find the address and phone, since you're so persistent, and you can find out all about them yourself. Just please stop foisting them on me.”

“I'm not ‘foisting' anything at all on you, Lillian. But I must say, you're a little bit touchy today.”

“I'm not touchy! You're pestering me. It's not like you.”

He was nonplussed. Here we are, we who love each other beyond words—yes, beyond words, he thought—and we're quarreling over nonsense like this. Perhaps after all he really was making a fuss about nothing. Don't be a pompous jackass, Donald. If for some reason she wants to be rid of these relatives, what difference need it make to you? What business is it of yours?

Yet he could not resist one more remark. “You never even talk about your parents.”

“They're dead.”

“Is that a reason never to talk about them?” he asked very gently.

“What is there to say? She was a housewife, he was a salesman, and they lived, just lived, the way millions of people do.”

All of a sudden, he saw a flashback of himself at ten or twelve, on the day when, rummaging perhaps where he was not supposed to rummage, he came upon the telegram from the War Department:
We regret to inform you
. . . He had just stood there staring at the piece of paper in his hand with the world gone strangely still and gray around him. Of course she did not want to talk. Why open the wound to bleed again?

He went over and put his arms around her. “Forget it, darling. What a stupid quarrel! We're both nervous and overexcited, that's all it is. So let's have our little party right here. I'll have my group—they're all crazy about you. And you'll have anybody you want, or nobody.”

“Just a few favorites from my office, and Cindy with her boyfriend. Unless you mind having them?”

“Of course I don't.”

“Well, you're not very fond of her, so I thought—”

“No, I'm not fond of her. But I haven't a thing against her, which is altogether different. She's your friend, and that's enough. You know what? I just thought of something. I have to introduce you to Mr. Pratt. Get off from work a few minutes early one day, tomorrow if you can, and stop in for a minute. I want to show you off.”

   

“I found her,” Donald announced to Mr. Pratt the next morning. “You've been urging me, and now I'm doing it. We're being married at the end of the month.”

On the shelf behind the other man's smile and handshake stood the photograph of his family. Even more than his achievements in this office, the picture seemed to define the man, as if to say:
This is what it's all about. Love, loyalty, family.
And now, I, too, thought Donald. Lillian and I, a family.

“She's going to call for me here this afternoon. If it's convenient, I'd like you to meet her.”

“Convenient? Donald, I'd be really hurt if you didn't introduce me.”

So she came, and the introduction was made. In her plain, dark blue dress, with pearls in her ears and gloves on her hands—for as she later explained, she had assumed that so proper a man as Augustus Pratt would approve of gloves—she was perfect. Everything, from her well-modulated voice to her well-chosen words, was perfect.

It bothered Donald the next morning that Augustus Pratt, such a master of language, had so little to say.

“A beautiful young woman. How long have you known her?”

“We met in April. Sort of love at first sight.”

Pratt nodded. “I wish you everything I could wish for my own son, Donald.”

He could have said more, couldn't he? He could have been warmer. Donald was slightly annoyed. But then, sometimes when he was preoccupied, Pratt did have a way of turning down the thermostat.

Events moved happily along. They were married on a golden day in a mahogany-paneled study just off Fifth Avenue, each with one friend from their respective offices as witness. Then through the mild afternoon, they walked back hand in hand, up the avenue toward the park, and turning eastward, arrived at their home where a welcoming crowd was waiting.

The apartment overflowed with splendid autumn flowers. The caterers, who had been recommended by Mr. Buzley, had supplied them, along with superb food and the best champagne.

“I can't believe you didn't invite him,” Donald whispered to the bride.

“He wouldn't enjoy the company. He's twice our age. Anyway, his wife is terribly sick at home.”

Nevertheless, he had sent his wedding gift, a silver service for twelve that Lillian described as “Danish silver, about the best there is.”

“I wouldn't know,” Donald said.

“It costs a fortune, I can tell you, but he thinks nothing of it. He's always doing things like that for people. All the time.”

The party was lively. First the women all wanted to look at the gifts that Lillian had tactfully stored away. Then someone found the record player and added music to the pleasant hubbub of talk, toasts, clattering china, and popping corks. People were all feeling very, very good.

Toward the end of the evening, Cindy got drunk and had to lie down in the bedroom, where she managed to smear a faceful of garish makeup on the silk pillow shams. Her current boyfriend, in T-shirt and jeans with hair rippling and beard rumpling to his shoulders, stood out among this gathering of ties and jackets. Nevertheless, everybody enjoyed him, and Donald observed that he “added an exotic note” to the scene.

“Come to think of it, he may be smarter than any two of us here put together. On the other hand, he may not be. God bless him, anyway.”

So, full of champagne and good humor, he closed the door on the departing guests, set the alarm clock in time for an early departure to Vermont, and took his wife to bed.

Chapter 4

T
hey decided that because the semester had already begun, Lillian would wait until the following fall before starting to work on a master's degree in art.

“It's what you really want,” Donald said. “So what if you can't be Mrs. Renoir or Mrs. Picasso? You'd do wonderfully in an auction gallery or a museum. With all you already know, you're halfway there. All you need is the degree. And in the meantime, I think it's fine that your boss will let you work three days a week to keep yourself busy.”

“Howard Buzley is absolutely the best.”

“I really should meet him sometime, don't you think?”

“You wouldn't like him.”

“Why do you always say that?”

“I don't always say it.”

“Well, you sometimes do. Anyway, why wouldn't I like Buzley when he's been so good to my girl?”

“He's just not your type.”

“What on earth do you think my life is like, that I just go around selecting clients who are ‘my type,' whatever that is?”

Lillian laughed. “All right, I'll arrange it sometime. But seriously, what am I going to do with the days I don't work? I'm already starting to feel pampered and lazy.”

“It won't hurt you to take it easy for a change. Do some reading and get a head start on your course. Go out with some women, have lunch, make friends.”

“You know what, Donald? You're a darling. You're too good to me.”

Good to her? How else could he be but good to her?

Every evening when he opened the door and stepped into the hall, he caught sight of the table. Always it was a picture for a luxurious magazine, set with a little pot of flowers, proper china, and Howard Buzley's Danish silver. Often the food was something unusual, culled from the shelf of cookbooks that she had begun to collect.

“I've never done any serious cooking,” she told him, “but now that I've begun, I want to do it perfectly.”

“You do everything perfectly.”

One day when he came home, she was all excited. “You can't imagine where I was today. In the penthouse! Oh, you should see it, Donald! I had no idea. It's a regular ranch house, a spacious one with a garden so big that you'd think you were out in the suburbs. Oh, I knew what a penthouse was, of course, but actually seeing one is something else.”

Definitely not interested in penthouses, he was interested in her enthusiasm, which was always delightful.

“I'm all ears,” he said.

“You know that tiny dog, the Yorkshire terrier we sometimes see in the lobby? Well, he belongs to the people in the penthouse. Sanders, their name is, and this morning, the boy who takes the dog for a walk lost him. I can't imagine how, oh yes, the hook that fastens the leash to the collar wasn't on right and the dog ran away. Well, I happened to be in the lobby just going out, when the boy came back practically out of his mind. Stupid! Instead of going after Spike—isn't that a name for a big, tough, six-pound dog?—he came running home. So I went out and raced down the street, turned the corner, and there were some fellows walking away with Spike. Now
they
really were big and tough. I gave a shriek, ‘That's my dog!' which attracted a lot of attention, so they dropped Spike, I grabbed him, and ran home.

“Well, Mrs. Sanders, Chloe, wouldn't let me go. I had to go upstairs with her, have a second breakfast, take a tour of the house which is incredibly beautiful, including Spike's nook, where his basket is upholstered to match the room.”

Donald smiled. She was so charming, rosy, out of breath, and full of her story.

“Remember that day when I said dogs and babies break the ice? If it hadn't been for Spike, we'd never have done more than nod to each other in the elevator, if that. She wants us to come up one evening soon. He's on Wall Street. Frank Sanders.”

“Yes, one of the biggest new names in the city. Made a few hundred million before he was thirty. Too rich for us, Lil.”

“Oh, do you think so? I hope not. Of course, when we have to invite them back—oh, I don't know—I did say that we're just married and will soon be looking for something larger.”

“Not soon. It'll be a while before we do anything like that. You shouldn't have said it.”

She answered quickly, “I didn't mean that I don't appreciate this apartment, because you know I do. You aren't annoyed, are you?”

No, he was not annoyed, and he said so. Rather, he was surprised by this evidence of insecurity coming from so sophisticated a woman. And then he thought, there are bound to be many surprises, aren't there? Consider that starting a marriage must be something like opening a new book; as you turn the pages, unexpected scenes and situations will be revealed.

“So you'll accept if they invite us?”

“Of course I will.”

The Sanders were leaders among the young group who, like themselves, had made enormous quick fortunes. They were friendly and never could thank Lillian enough for her rescue of Spike. Clearly, they were taken with her, Donald saw. But then, most people were. For how often did one meet a human being so filled with alert and joyous energy as Lillian was?

So, on rare evenings when they were home, the Sanders—soon to be simply Chloe and Frank—invited Lillian and Donald to have some after-dinner coffee and dessert on their marble coffee table in their forty-foot-long living room. Once in a while they came downstairs to the Wolfes'. Therefore, it was not as astonishing as it might have been when invitations to gallery openings, teas, benefits, and gala charity dinners began to arrive in the mail. Chloe Sanders apparently had decided to sponsor the interesting newcomers.

Most of these events turned out to be for Lillian in the daytime, since Donald, unlike many of the men in circles like these, was a worker with long hours, into which great balls and banquets seldom fit. But she, an unknown from the city's outer rim, was gradually being drawn toward its center. And Donald, seeing her pleasure, was glad.

   

Often, much later, whenever he tried to find a pattern behind events and a reason for the pattern, he would wonder whether this friendship—or was it just acquaintance?—with these people could have been the moving cause. But no, he would usually argue, an event is simply the result of a situation's meeting up with a particular character or temperament. In short, it would all have happened, anyway.

   

Perhaps it had been negligent of Donald not to have discussed with his wife in greater detail the ever-present subject of money. But because he felt himself to be prosperous it hadn't seemed important.

One day he came home to find a painting on prominent display between the windows.

“What's this?”

Lillian wore the proud look of a mother with a new baby. “I bought it this afternoon. Do you like it?”

“Yes, oh yes I do.”

It was a small-sized oil, suitably framed in what looked like old wood, of a winter scene with angular, dark branches and slender, short new growth half buried in blue-white snow, all these wrapped in a stillness of silvery gray air.

“Waiting for spring,” he said, stepping back for a better view. “I have a sense of late winter, of thaw. Maybe it's February. Where did you find it?”

“At that showing this afternoon. I couldn't take my eyes away. And it was a very good buy.”

“Really? How much?”

“Seventy-five hundred. It's worth much more. It's old. Nineteen-ten.”

“Seven thousand, five hundred— Lillian!”

“For goodness sake, you know what prices art commands these days. You've been around enough with me to recognize a bargain.”

“That depends on the point of view, the ability to pay.”

“I don't understand. I've not been extravagant, have I?”

She was staring at him as if she could scarcely believe him.

“No, but—come on in here to my desk. I need to show you some figures that I guess I should have shown you before this. Look here.”

Drawing on a pad, he made a simple chart: so much for income, so much for taxes, the remainder subdivided for rent, insurance, daily living, and savings.

“We have to start some real saving. Oh, we can live well, we do live well, but we have to be prudent. There will be children who will need money for their education. So we need to discuss all our big purchases, like this painting, for instance, before we go ahead.”

She did not answer at once. Frowning a little, she stood at the desk, caressing her smooth hands while she appeared to be studying her rings. It was a habit she had very lately developed, and it bothered him.

“I thought you made much more than this,” she said.

“I don't know what made you think so. It's a very handsome income.”

“I didn't mean that it wasn't a great deal of money, of course I didn't. I meant that if I had known this, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to take the painting. But Chloe kept saying, ‘For heaven's sake, treat yourself. You're dying to have it,' and I was embarrassed to walk away without it.”

“But how did you pay?”

“Chloe did. She gave them a check, so now we owe her.”

Feeling a strong rise of anger, he waited to let it subside before he should say something that he might later regret.

“I can pay part, Donald. It won't be much, but I still get salary every week from Buzley, don't I? So I can help.”

Making amends, she stumbled over her words. And when he saw her condition, his anger actually did subside.

“No,” he said, “I'll take care of it. Only next time, let's talk it over first. Agreed?”

“You can call it a birthday present and a Christmas present combined for the next few years, Donald,” she said, now almost in tears.

She was so contrite that he even began to feel sorry for her.

“Leave that to me. In the meantime, we'll enjoy the painting together. It'll be our treasure,” he added, and actually began to feel good about the whole matter.

Then suddenly later in the evening, she told him something else. “Do you remember the opera gala, Donald? The Sanders and their group have taken boxes as usual, and Chloe can get us two seats in her aunt's box. Actually, she's Frank's aunt, Gloria Sanders. You've read about her.”

“I haven't. What's she done?”

“Not done, exactly. But she goes everywhere, to all the openings. She's always in the newspaper. She's ages old, but she doesn't look it.”

“What opera are they having that night?”

“I don't know, I didn't ask.”

“Well, I'd like to know what I'm going to hear before I buy tickets.”

“I'm sure it will be wonderful, whatever it is. The important thing is to be there. It's the occasion that counts.”

“Not to me. How much are these seats?”

“They're expensive, but nowhere near what the whole box would cost.”

“I should hope not. How much?”

“You see, I didn't know anything until tonight about what to spend.” She looked at him doubtfully. “And so I said yes. They're a thousand dollars each.”

Objects, the lamp, the new painting, and on his lap the typewritten document over which he had been laboring, all spun slightly before Donald's eyes.

“I'm sorry, but you'll have to change your mind about accepting,” he said. “We'll go if you want to, but we'll sit in our usual seats. As seats go, they're B-plus. We don't have to have A seats in the boxes, plus a donation.”

“You're angry, Donald, and I'm sorry.”

“I'm trying not to be angry. You didn't know. But now you do know, and it won't happen again.”

“No harm done?”

“There's never any harm done between you and me.”

   

The opera was
Tosca
. It had become one of Donald's favorites, not only through these past few years of operagoing, but also because of a childhood memory, when his mother had used to turn on the radio for the Saturday afternoon broadcast. The house had been very small, and from his room he had been able to hear what was to him merely a jumble of voices, violins, and drums. Now and then, though, he had been summoned to listen to something that, his mother said, must not be missed. Most of the time, he would have preferred to miss it, but occasionally, something did catch his ear, a stirring march, or a woman's voice as pure as a flute. So when he heard “Vissi d'arte,” he knew he had heard it before.

Now on this festive evening, he was to hear it again. Here in this splendid hall he sat with his lovely wife glowing in crimson silk, while on the other side of the orchestra pit, a musical drama of incredible tragic beauty was being played. A thrill quivered through his nerves. He felt as if he was being given all the best that life has to give.

In this exultant mood, he stood among the crowd in the lobby between the acts. “She's the best Tosca I've ever heard. Of course, I've only heard one other,” he said, laughing at himself. “What are you looking at?”

Lillian had turned to peer at a group standing near the bar.

“Over there,” she whispered. “Quick! There's the Sanders' aunt I was telling you about. That emerald pendant—can you believe it? Eight carats at least, maybe ten. Have you any idea what it's worth?”

“None at all,” he said.

Whether or not his tone had revealed his abrupt change of mood, he could not tell because she continued her train of thought.

“It must be great to sit like royalty in a box and let your jewels glitter. When you come down to it, there's nothing like opera for dignity. It has a kind of stateliness, don't you think?”

“I guess so,” he said.

The next morning was Sunday, so there was time enough to lie in bed and think while Lillian slept. He knew her face in every detail and yet, what did he really know of
her
? Or anybody?
A secret inside a riddle inside an enigma.
He had been stupid to let himself be hurt by something as trivial as her relative indifference to
Tosca
. What, Donald, is she supposed to be? A carbon copy of you? Who do you think you are, anyway?