The Family Fortune (17 page)

The evening of my speech, I met the dean of the Wellesley College English Department, Lydia McKay, in her office and together we walked across the frozen campus. Dean Lydia was young, in her forties, and she hadn't been at Wellesley when I was there.

I thought Dean Lydia was taking me to an ordinary classroom in one of the Gothic-style buildings I had loved so much when I was a student. Instead, she led me to one of the large auditoriums on campus that were meant to accommodate an audience of several hundred. These types of lectures were rare here (or at least they had been in my time). I was daunted by the size
of the room and asked Lydia if this was the only room she could get. Wouldn't a smaller one be more appropriate?

She scratched the side of her nose, pushed up her glasses, and looked at me as if I were a puzzle she couldn't quite figure out.

“Appropriate, Jane? I don't know what you mean.”

“I just think this room is a little big, but that's okay, we can have everyone sit up front so it won't seem so cavernous.”

“But I chose this room because I think we're going to need all of these seats. We announced your talk in the
Boston Globe
.”

“You've got to be kidding,” I said. The idea of several hundred people showing up on a Thursday night in late January to see me was not only frightening but also preposterous.

I was wearing my green suit and I'd gone to Mr. Marco so he could trim and tint my hair. My index cards were in my left pocket and I must have looked like someone competent, but I felt like a puddle.

“Anyway,” Dean McKay said, “I wanted you to see the venue. We're early so we can grab a cup of coffee in the student union.”

We walked back across campus. I poured myself a decaf from one of the huge urns I remembered so well from the all-nighters of my college days. The dean waved me past the cashier and wouldn't let me pay.

As we walked to the only open table we could find at that hour, girls called out to “Dean Lydia.” A girl with tortoiseshell glasses and blue-tipped hair approached us. She had a stack of
Euphemia Review
s in her arms.

“Miss Fortune, I'm a huge fan of yours. You're one of the reasons I came to Wellesley. I'd like to be an editor someday. Could you sign these?”

“Jane, this is Sarah Mulcaster,” Dean Lydia said, “your biggest fan.” I smiled at her. “Sarah, Miss Fortune will be signing after her talk. You can speak to her then.”

“Signing?” I asked.

“Some people want you to sign the
Review,
” she said. “So we've set up a table in the lobby.”

“But I didn't write any of the work in the
Review
. I really shouldn't sign it.”

“Why not? It's your
Review
.”

“And Evan Bentley's.”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

When we entered the hall it was almost full and people were still pouring in. I was appalled. I thought I was going to be speaking to a group of about twenty-five girls, not to men and women from God-only-knows-where.

My pile of index cards felt weightless and I had to touch them to make sure they were still in my pocket. Was there a way I could get out of this—feign sickness—or maybe death?

Just as I was beginning to feel like I might vomit (thereby making feigning sickness unnecessary), I looked up and saw Tad sitting in the front row. He smiled and waved. I jumped off the stage to greet him.

“I can't believe you came,” I said.

“Wouldn't have missed it,” he said. “Even for a hockey game, which, I might add, I had tickets to. You look very nice.”

“That's high praise coming from you,” I said.

“You ready?”

“For this? I don't think so. I thought I'd be in a little classroom talking to a few girls.”

“Oh, Jane, you just don't know.”

“Know what?”

“All these girls want to be like you.”

“I doubt that very much. Little girls say that they want to be princesses, nurses, sometimes doctors and lawyers, but they hardly ever say that ‘when I grow up I want to be a desiccated old maid.'”

“That's only because they don't know what desiccated means.”

Dean Lydia beckoned to me and I got back onto the stage by way of the stairs. She indicated a chair for me to sit on while I was being introduced, and as I was about to sit down, I was both surprised and delighted to see Bentley and Melody come through the door. It warmed my heart to
think that they would show up just for me. They must have seen the notice in the
Globe
.

Finally, Dean Lydia went to the podium. She tapped the microphone, unable to get it to work at first. Wasn't this always the case? It took a student well versed in audiovisual equipment to mount the stage and press the right buttons to get the thing going. Lydia's voice went from a whisper to a bellow and I thought about how I'd have to modulate my voice to keep from sounding too overwrought.

Just as Lydia was saying, “Generally known as one of the best things to happen to the short story in the last twenty years,” the door opened and a man came in. I looked up, registered mild appreciation, as you sometimes do with excessive beauty. Then, as he came closer, I realized it was Guy Callow. What on earth was he doing here? I didn't know he had an interest in literature. “And so I introduce one of our most accomplished alumnae, Jane Fortune.”

I couldn't feel my legs, but somehow I got to the lectern. I tapped the microphone as Lydia had done, which made a big popping sound like a gunshot, and everyone broke into nervous laughter.

“Thank you, Dean McKay,” I said. “I am Jane Fortune.” They knew that already. I took my cards from my pocket and they slipped out of my hand and fluttered to the floor. I stooped to pick them up. Now they'd be out of order. I felt sweat under my arms, between my shoulder blades, and even on my forehead. Okay, Jane. Pull yourself together. I stood up and gripped the podium.

“First, I want to tell you about Euphemia Fortune, after whom the
Review
is named. She was my great-grandmother. How many of you have heard of Isabella Stewart Gardner?” I asked. About nine-tenths of the room raised their hands. In a different audience it would have been fewer, but we were at Wellesley College. These people were bound to know about Isabella. “Well,” I said, “my great-grandmother hated her.” I paused for the laughter that came pouring toward me. This feeling of making a room laugh was a new one. I took the cards from the podium and tossed them into the audience. “I don't need these,” I said. This elicited another terrific response.

I knew the story I wanted to tell. I told about Euphemia's frustration with Isabella, how Euphemia would have liked to be more like her, but short of that, she wanted to create, like Isabella, a monument to her own good taste.

“When I took over the foundation and read Euphemia's journals, I tried to do what she had done. Euphemia had established a fellowship, a place and time for a writer to work. That had fallen by the wayside by the time I took over, so the first thing I did was reestablish it.”

I talked until I looked at the clock and my time was almost up. I ended by thanking Tad and Bentley and making them stand and take a bow. I hardly knew what I had said, but whatever it was earned me a standing ovation.

I turned to sit down, but Dean Lydia got up, moved me back to the podium, and said it was time for questions.

The first was from the girl Sarah. She had looked so respectful in the student union, despite her blue hair, but when she stood her voice boomed out with a snide confidence.

“I read somewhere”—she pulled on her tweed skirt and tossed her hair—“that you and Max Wellman were
like
together at one point.”

“The question?” Dean Lydia was obviously annoyed. The girl behind the wholesome sweater set and granny glasses had ambushed us—or me. That whole incident still embarrassed me somewhat in that I'd gone on to make such a success of the
Review
and the fellowship, yet falling for the first recipient—especially since it hadn't worked out—made me look like a dilettante even now, just as I'd been afraid it would.

“Is it true?”

“It was a long time ago,” I said. I felt like my dignity was draining through a crack in my voice.

“And what's your relationship now?” she asked.

“Friends,” I said.

I thought of him holding my hand at the hospital, his face pale and moist.

“Anyone have a more literary question?” Dean Lydia asked.

 

After the speech and after I had reluctantly signed some copies of the
Review,
Tad, Bentley, and Melody said that we had to celebrate. So long as eating was involved, I was fine with that. I hadn't eaten anything before the talk for fear it would make me sick.

Guy Callow approached and tried to hug me, but I put him off by holding out my hand. He shook it and told me I was marvelous, and frankly, for the first time in a long time, I felt marvelous.

Bentley invited Guy to join us at the Figtree Café down the street, and the four of us walked through the stone gates of the college and out onto Central Street. The Figtree was a generic type of suburban restaurant—not high end, not low end, sort of Italian, sort of nothing. It had large paintings of fruit hanging on its brick walls and the tables were a plain blond wood.

Guy looked good enough to dip in chocolate. Still, there was something about him I didn't trust. As soon as we sat down, Guy, though he could in no way be considered the host of the party, ordered several bottles of expensive wine. We also ordered three large gourmet pizzas, and I was so relieved that my talk hadn't been a complete disaster, I drank and ate with the enthusiasm of eight hungry truck drivers.

“You were so terrific, Jane. So smooth, so funny. But you must be used to public speaking by now,” Guy said.

“Used to it? I never do it.”

“You could never have guessed,” Tad said. “You were awesome.” There was that word again—a word more appropriate to a sunset or the birth of a baby than to Jane Fortune standing on a stage at Wellesley College.

“I don't know what's going to happen to me,” Bentley said. “I was always the public guy—because you didn't want to be. But you are far more entertaining than I ever was. Even when I was flirting with my students, I couldn't hold their attention like that.” Melody punched him on the arm. “Of course, that was in the past,” he added.

 

By the time we were finished eating, I was tipsy. Guy picked up the check for all of us and I thought this gallant of him, especially since this was a legitimate foundation expense and I would have been happy to pay for dinner. No one, though, not Bentley, Melody, or even Tad, was willing to have me pay on
my special night
.

Bentley, Guy, and Tad all offered to drive me home. There were two problems with that—one was that I didn't have a home, and the second was that I was staying at the Wellesley Inn right down the street.

“I don't have a home,” I said. Everyone but Guy, who didn't really understand the import of the statement, looked at me as if I were the saddest case in the world. Even Tad had a home, even if it was a dorm room at Harvard. “Oh, stop with the doleful looks,” I said. They all looked like Basil Funk. “I am treating myself to a room at the Wellesley Inn. That way I can walk over and pick up my car in the morning. Now, if someone would be so kind as to drive me that short distance, I would be most appreciative.” I was proud of my drunken aplomb.

Guy insisted on being the one to take me.

 

Guy found a parking spot on the street outside the inn, then turned to me and leaned in close. I knew what was coming and I didn't think I could avoid it: I didn't really want to avoid it. He snaked his hand behind my neck and pulled me in for a kiss. It wasn't unpleasant. I hadn't been kissed in so long. The only thing I really found wrong with it was that it looked like, if I wasn't careful, he might swallow my head. He was that kind of kisser, the type that acts as if they are trying to ingest you. I pictured myself disappearing headfirst into the winding tracts of Guy's large intestine. It wasn't a pretty picture and didn't help me feel sexy. Still, I was drunk, and he was warm, and it was cold outside. I tried to leave the car, but that wasn't his plan. He pulled and tugged at me and kissed and kissed at me, my neck, my fingertips, my earlobe, my elbow—my elbow? It was his con
stantly taking an unnecessary and unwelcome last step—the tonsillectomy when a gentle probe is sufficient, the elbow when most men would stop at the earlobe—pushing the envelope of love, that kept me in my head, even though I was drunk, and lonely and inclined to be amorous.

Guy asked if he could come in, but I didn't think it was a good idea. The Wellesley Inn wasn't that sort of place. That's what I was thinking, conveniently forgetting that the two of us weren't teenagers sneaking around; we were adults old enough to have teenage children of our own. It was highly unlikely that the night clerk would even look at us as we walked through the lobby.

I stopped Guy with a hand on his sternum and looked into his eyes.

“Let's just catch our breath for a minute,” I said. His eyes were shining with the look of a man whose little brain has already taken over. Even with my dearth of experience, I'd seen the little brain take over before.

“Please, Jane,” he said. “I've been wanting to be with you ever since the first moment I saw you on the mountain.”

I found that hard to believe. People don't look their best in goggles. His enthusiasm eventually swayed me and I told him he could come in if he behaved himself in the lobby so we wouldn't look suspicious.

 

Inside, Guy kept his hands at his sides as we walked toward the stairs. For all anyone could tell, we were a tired married couple ready to go upstairs to twin beds.