I'll Take Manhattan (61 page)

“
Take over the others
? But—but I never asked for, never dreamed of—that,” Maxi stammered, turning pale.

“But surely you realize that if I don’t sell Amberville someone in the family has to take over? And you’re the only possible person, aren’t you? That’s finally, at long last, obvious even to me. Late bloomer that I am.”

“
You’re not going to sell
?”

“You didn’t think I’d brought you here to tell you that I was? Good God, Maxime, I wouldn’t have done anything so unfeeling. I would have told you, but not here, not in your father’s office. Sometimes I think you don’t understand me at all.” Lily sighed with bafflement. “But let’s not talk about that … it’s a problem we may never settle, and it has no bearing on your answer. Do you want to take over? As publisher of all the magazines?”

“But what … I don’t understand … what will Cutter say?” Maxi’s normally nimble, skeptical tone had dissolved into the utter disarray of surprise.

“He will never have anything to say about how your father’s magazines are to be run,
ever
. He is … gone. I have sent him away. I intend to divorce him. His future is no concern of mine. None of us will ever see him again and I trust that we will never discuss him, never mention his name.” The liquid surface of Lily’s voice, as she spoke these
abrupt, curt phrases of absolute banishment, was flawed for the first time in Maxi’s memory, by whirlpools of raw emotion of complex, unpolished pain.

Another silence fell. Neither woman looked at each other, but in the dust motes that danced in the sun-striped air, questions were asked, answers were refused, questions were withdrawn and put away for all time.

Of all the rare and desirable luxuries that Zachary Amberville’s money had bestowed on her in her lifetime, Lily thought, this power to cast Cutter out of her life was finally the most valuable, the most necessary. The same power enabled her to impose silence on her children, to keep from ever having to explain to them. But one thing money could not buy, the only cessation that no coin could purchase, was freedom from her own knowledge of the kind of man he was. How could she have chosen such a man? Where did her faults begin? For how much of the tangled story had she been responsible? Why had she maintained that wild, irrational connection, unwilling to change her stubborn fantasies about him, no matter how often he had disappointed her? Just how evil had he been? Had he ever really loved her? Worse—
how could it still matter to her
? She was certain of one thing. Somehow she was as much to blame as he except in one vital way: Cutter had not left Zachary to die
because of her
, and in that fact she would have to find her strength, no matter how hard were the questions that tormented her. “Well, Maxime,” she asked again, “do you want the job?”

Maxi’s head was as light as if she had rapidly scaled a mountain peak and breathed deeply of the light, bright exhilaration of the air of the summit. She saw nothing except the vastness of the shining temptation, the immensity of the horizon, the infinite vistas that opened before her. She stayed there a moment, dazzled, and then she forced herself to return to practical things, coming back to the reality of the office, trying to visualize herself here every day, dealing with all the decisions, demands, problems and responsibilities that would fall to the lot of whoever was the head of Amberville Publications. She understood suddenly that she couldn’t possibly know what it would be like in advance. When she had so blithely demanded that Cutter
give her a poor old rag called
Trimming Trades Monthly
, had she had any idea of what it would be like to actually publish
B&B
month after month? Publisher?
Head of the company
?

“Oh, yes, Mother!
I want it
!” she exclaimed, out of a whole heart. She wanted it and she knew that her father would have wanted it for her.

“Good. I’m glad, Maxime. Very glad. I wouldn’t have offered the job to you if I didn’t think you could do it,” Lily said calmly, yet with a deep note of tenderness. “The sale was always possible, it is still possible. But I’d like to keep Amberville Publications in the family. I was once told that I’d sacrificed my life to the company, that I’d been deprived of my freedom by all the different ways in which I helped your father while he was running the magazines. I believed that interpretation of my life. I thought that my birthright, whatever that means, had been taken away from me.” She paused for a moment, as if pondering the meaning of “birthright.”

“Father believed in you,” Maxi said, “or he wouldn’t have left you control of his business. He would never have done that unless he’d thought you were worthy of the responsibility.”

“I don’t know about being worthy, Maxime, but I’ve done a lot of thinking in the last day, enough for years, and I know now that the magazines have enriched my life. Being part of them has become part of my life, a part that is much too meaningful to permit me to sell them to strangers, to see them pass out of Amberville control. I’m proud of the magazines, Maxime,
damn proud
and I want them to be better than they’ve ever been before—”

“Mother!” Maxi interrupted, “do you have any idea—”

“Indeed I do, more than an idea. I spent the morning with Pavka. I know what’s been going on behind my back. That’s over, once and for all. All those disgraceful orders have been revoked. But no others have been given. I was waiting to see what you’d decide. Now the only person who will give orders in the future will be you. You’ll have Pavka’s guidance, but I imagine you’ll have to earn the support of the old editorial board. Some of them may very well
resent you. I won’t interfere—but you can always use me … for window dressing. I’m very, very good at it.”

“Don’t say that!” Maxi protested. “You gave up a great career as a prima ballerina! Oh, Mother … you could have had
that.
”

“Not necessarily,” Lily murmured, with a small, mysterious, inward smile. “Not necessarily. I’ll never know, never
have
to know. Surely that was the
point
?” She shook her head and came back from the past. “However, as window dressing I was the very best and I intend to continue to be. Every window needs dressing, otherwise it’s just a bare and naked piece of glass. Never underestimate the power of window dressing.” Lily sounded matter-of-fact now, but there was a newly perceptive expression on the perfect oval of her face and a mourning, rueful look in her gray-green-blue eyes, a look that contained all the shrewdness that she had always hidden, the shrewdness that she now shared with this daughter whom she admitted to her confidence for the first time in their lives.

“Angelica once told me that Father said that she was the only one in the family with a head for publishing,” Maxi confided.

“He was wrong about that … even Zachary Amberville could be wrong. Even I can be wrong on occasion,” Lily said with a gossamer smile, in which relief vied with the beginning of self-mockery.

“The trouble with you, Mother, is that you always like to have the final word on any question,” Maxi said.

“Like you.”

“Like me. Just like me. Come on, Mother, give me a kiss.”

“Toby,” Maxi asked, “would your feelings be hurt if Angelica and I moved out of your attic? Now that I’ve got job security and a regular paycheck I can afford to pay rent. Nothing fancy, but just a little bigger. More closet space of course, a bigger room for Angelica, somewhere to put a few bits and pieces.”

“A few? You never had ‘a few’ of anything,” Toby retorted.

“Well, I will have,” Maxi insisted. “You know that I never did get around to auctioning anything? Even the furniture hasn’t been sold yet. I’ve decided to keep only the very few things I like best. Now that I’ve gotten used to living without all those objects I’m going to try the pared-down look for a while … just a couple of marvelous pieces, each one set off by its relationship to the space around it. Of course I’ll need a really top lighting designer …”

“Spare me, please spare me your decorating plans,” Toby begged. “Don’t you have Ludwig and Bizet to discuss this with? I thought they did all your places for you.”

“They used to but I feel as if I’m ready for a change.”

“Does it make the slightest sense to undertake a job that’s going to consume your life and try to redecorate a new apartment at the same time?”

“Put like that, no,” Maxi answered. Toby was lying in his favorite Eames chair, his feet up, his arm in an embroidered sling that India had somehow fashioned out of one of her sacred pillowcases, ruthlessly wielding a pair of scissors while Maxi vainly offered any scarf from a drawer full. “Still, we do have to move, now that the emergency is over. Angelica is miserable about it. She loves being here and the Troop really enjoys your pool.”

“It would have been nice if they’d brought their own towels, but somehow they never remembered to,” Toby said thoughtfully.

Maxi ignored him. “I don’t really want to move either. It’s so cozy up there and the leftovers are even better than the meals, and, oh Lord, you’re right about the job. I won’t even have time to do a proper job of apartment hunting. I won’t have time to do anything until I get the job under control. I’d better start going in early and staying late and working weekends and …”

“Don’t be dumb. You’re having an attack,” Toby cut in. “A stupidity attack. It comes over people when they’re faced with enormous changes in their lives, especially people like you who are all-or-nothing people, no compromises, no halfway measures, no doing things a little bit at a time. Now it’s your compulsive career. It used to be the compulsive search for fun, so that means that if you work it has to be compulsive work without any time off.”

“My compulsive career, as you charmingly call it, also happens to be the most marvelous fun in the world,” Maxi sputtered, outraged. “Instant analysis—disgusting.”

“May I remind you,” Toby said, “that you’re only almost thirty—”

“Why does everybody pick this time to remind me of my age all of a sudden?”

“Thirty,” Toby continued, “in the prime of life, with, I should imagine, from my memories of your scandalous past, a normal need for male companionship.”

“Men,” Maxi snorted.

“You sound just like Dad,” Angelica piped up from her place on the floor at Maxi’s feet. “That’s what he says, ‘women’ in that same contemptuous tone of voice. He isn’t even dating anymore. Remember the girl I used to tell him smelled like vanilla? Well, she’s been gone for months and actually she wasn’t bad if you don’t mind funny smells. And that exceptionally pretty one I told him I just instinctively
knew
was a wrong broad, he hasn’t called her in ages, and she wasn’t really all that bad, just not my type. And there were a whole bunch of others who were after him because he’s so successful—at least that was my opinion—or only interested in his looks. Superficial ladies. I always let Dad know my true feelings about them so he wasn’t in danger of being taken in—well, he’s not seeing anybody at all now. I wonder if I gave him some sort of complex?”

“Adolescence,” India ruminated, “was invented by a psychologist named G. Stanley Hall in a book he wrote in 1905. Eighty years ago, Angelica, before we knew about adolescence, somebody would have put you in the corner or made you write things on the blackboard a hundred times, like ‘I will not meddle in my father’s love life.’ Or maybe put you on bread and water. Even the ducking stool. I don’t know which you would have hated more.”

“I didn’t meddle, I just made observations. If he hadn’t paid any attention to me, like a regular father, it wouldn’t have affected him. And ‘love life’ is such an old-fashioned expression. He was just seeing them.”

“
 ‘Seeing,’ 
” Toby growled bitterly. “Now it’s become a word for all sorts of relationships, from the casual to the engaged-to-be-engaged. Just yesterday one of your gossips
told me that Julie Jacobson was ‘seeing’ that young art director at
B&B
—does that mean nightly, semi-nightly, twice a week? I wonder what damn fool invented that miserable
perverted
usage of a word?”

“Well, whoever did, I don’t know about Julie and Brick Greenfield but all
Dad
was doing was casual seeing,” Angelica answered him as Maxi and India exchanged worried glances. “It wasn’t as if he’d saved one of their lives and he was seriously in love, like you are with India. Anyway, I have to get dressed. Dunk is coming to pick me up in half an hour. We’re going to a revival
of Wuthering Heights.
”

“I’ll come help you dress,” Maxi said hastily, ignoring Angelica’s surprised eyebrows. She knew how to dress, for heaven’s sake.

“Well, you did, you know,” India said after a pause.

“So you’ve mentioned. Several times. Does saving your life make me your captive?”

“If you were Chinese and you’d saved my life you’d owe me all sorts of things because I’d become your responsibility or something like that.”

“I’m not Chinese.”

“No, you’re a full-fledged member of the Running Wounded,” India said angrily. “I’m going to pack. I’m sick of not being appreciated.”

“What the hell is that—the ‘Running Wounded’—what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what the walking wounded are—soldiers who’ve been wounded but don’t have to be carried off the battlefield. You’re different—you’re wounded but you’re running away from it, running around in meaningless circles, running so hard that you don’t feel the pain or you can pretend that it doesn’t exist. I’d thought you were different. You seem to have come to terms with being blind and you can do more than most men who can see. You’ll always be able to do more. Blindness is finite … it’s not going to get worse. But you’ve decided to cut yourself off from the rest of life. The harder part maybe. The human part. The part where I come in.
I
’
m not interested in your reasons anymore
! I’m only interested in what it does to me to be in love
with you. Without hope. I’m not willing to put up with it. I refuse to become one of the Running Wounded myself.”

“Doctor Florsheim?”