The Legacy (19 page)

“I'm not hungry,” Sam announced.

“I want you to eat a proper breakfast,” Barbara said mechanically, not looking up from the paper.

“I can't. I'm not hungry.”

“Yes —” She had finished the editorial. The meaning was sinking in. She looked at it again, picking out sentences, snatches.

“I have to ask you something,” Sam said.

Barbara looked around her. The breakfast room was floored with tile, and one side of it was sliding glass doors that opened on the terrace, the pool, and beyond that the tennis court. Her tennis was adequate at best, and she had little love for the game. Carson was a brilliant player. The court had been the deciding factor in his insistence on buying the house.

“Can I ask you something — please?”

Barbara put down the newspaper and looked at her son, the thought occurring to her that he never spoke about his boat, his beautiful boat that his grandfather had willed to him, lying tied up at the marina in San Francisco. Why had she thought of that right now? The editorial she had just read was still hammering at her mind. Her world was bending and swaying. There were no props; it was like a silent earthquake, felt by her alone, and across the table her son was watching her, this tall, slender boy who, she felt so frequently now, was the only reason for her existence. What else? She had stopped writing. The meals were planned for and cooked by their cook. Sometimes she did the shopping, but for the most part food was ordered by telephone from a specialty shop on Rodeo Drive. She had looked at the prices once and they sickened her, but when she complained to Carson about it, he waved her complaint aside. “Your time is worth more,” he said, and she wondered what he thought she did with her time. The long, wonderful walks that were so necessary to her creativity as a writer were impossible in Beverly Hills. San Francisco was a place where one walked. To walk in Beverly Hills was to recoil, to encounter culture shock, to become the prisoner of something alien and beyond her, an alienation she had never experienced in Paris or London or New York.

“Mom!”

“What is it, Sam?” she said gently. “What do you want to ask me?”

“Am I Jewish?”

It was the last thing in the world she had expected him to say, and her immediate thought was to tell him that it was time for him to leave for school; and then she said to herself, “The hell with school. There's something important here, and, God help me, I've forgotten what's important and what isn't.”

“Well, that depends,” Barbara said seriously. “I've never been absolutely sure about what makes a person Jewish except having a Jewish father and mother and a different religion, I suppose. But most of the Jews and Christians too, whom I know, appear to have no religion at all. I've been told that according to Jewish law, in a mixed marriage, if the mother isn't Jewish, the child isn't. But I'm not sure that really counts for much.”

“My name is Jewish. Cohen is a Jewish name. When I went to Sunday school at Grace Cathedral, as soon as the kids heard my name they knew I was Jewish. That's why I hated to go there. I look Jewish.”

“You what?”

“I look Jewish.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “It's late. I have to get to school.”

“Never mind school. You can be late today, and I'll give you a note. We're going to talk. You think you look Jewish. Steve Cassala is Italian. He has dark eyes and dark hair and a long, sharp nose. Does he look Jewish?”

“He's Italian, like you said.”

“Does Jake Levy look Jewish?”

“He's not Jewish.”

“No? Did it ever occur to you that Levy is also a Jewish name? Isn't Grandma Levy Jewish?”

“I don't know. I never thought about it.”

“Why are you thinking about it now? Did something happen in school?”

“No.” Sam hesitated. “Westcott,” he said.

“That is over and done with and in the past.”

“No, it isn't!” Sam said shrilly. “You paid him twenty-five thousand dollars. Someday I'll pay it back to you. I swear I will.”

For a long moment, Barbara simply stared at him, speechless. Then she said evenly, “Very well, suppose you tell me how you know about the twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“I went to see Mr. Westcott. He told me.”

“You went to see him? But why?”

“I wanted to apologize for what I did. I have almost eight hundred dollars in my savings account. That's the money that gramps used to give me. I offered to give it to Mr. Westcott.”

“Did he take it?” Barbara asked, anger welling up inside her.

“No. He told me —” Sam shook his head. “He used a lot of dirty language.”

“Tell me what he said.”

“You're sure you want me to?”

“Yes, I want you to. I've heard dirty language before. It won't shock me.”

Sam took a deep breath. “Well, he told me to take my money and shove it up my ass. Then he called me a dirty little Jew bastard. He said that the Jews were taking over California, but that he and others would soon put a stop to that. He called you names.”

“What names?”

Sam shook his head. “Then he told me about the money you paid his lawyer—” Sam had tears in his eyes now. “Did you do that so I wouldn't have to go to jail?”

Barbara went to him and put her arms around him.

“Is that why you did it?”

“No, darling, no. There was no question of your going to jail. He threatened a negligence lawsuit, and Boyd Kimmelman felt that the best thing I could do would be to settle the matter, and now it's over. I don't want you to think about it or mention it again, not to anyone. It's over and the money means nothing to me.”

“I'll pay you back someday — I promise.”

“We'll see. Meanwhile, it's over. I'll get you some warm breakfast, and then I'll drive you to school and explain your tardiness.”

When Barbara returned from driving Sam to school, she telephoned her mother in San Francisco. “I wanted to hear your voice,” she said to Jean. “You're an understanding person, and I've been thinking about that and I wanted to speak to you. Do you know that I've been married six months and it's almost Christmas again?”

“Are you all right?” Jean asked anxiously.

“I'm quite happy and very sad.”

“What happened?”

“Too much to tell you on the phone.”

“You have me totally confused.”

“I suppose so,” Barbara agreed.

Then she drove out to the beach, parked in the lot that faces the beginning of Sunset Boulevard, and sat on the sand facing the ocean. She sat there for almost an hour, watching the great breakers rolling in and soothing her soul with the sound of the ocean. It was a warm day, but at this time of the year there was only a scattering of people on the beach, some children with their mothers, a few young couples, and off to her left a group of muscle-builders tossing a medicine ball. She was close to her menstrual period, and already she could sense the change that came over her body at such times, a kind of effusion, a kind of swelling warmth, a physical sadness and need. Without thinking about the future, she knew what would happen.

It was late afternoon when she returned to the house in Beverly Hills. Carson was on the tennis court, playing a furious game with Kirk Alman, a very important star, whose new film had just been released. Two pretty, young, and exceedingly blonde girls sat on the sidelines, watching. With only an hour or so of fading daylight remaining, Carson was playing relentlessly, desperately, as if he were contesting the setting sun as well as his opponent across the net. As Barbara stood there watching, Sam came out of the house and joined her. “No one ever beats Carson,” Sam said. “He's too good. He could be a pro if he wanted to.” Barbara started to speak. Sam turned and walked back into the house.

The game finished. Carson vaulted the net and shook hands with Kirk Alman. The two pretty girls clapped hands, squealed with delight, and ran to the players, one to embrace Alman, the other to plant a kiss on Carson's cheek. Carson walked over to Barbara and kissed her. “What a good game!” he said. “I'm soaked. Let me shower and then we'll have a drink.”

“Alone. I want to talk.”

“No problem. I'll chase them away.” Carson introduced the girls. Barbara had met Alman several times before. The two blonde young ladies were actresses. Barbara nodded and smiled. While Carson was showering and dressing, Barbara went up to Sam's room. He was bent over his desk, working on a model airplane, carefully cutting the thin slices of balsa wood with a single-edged razor blade.

“How was today?” she asked him.

“O.K.”

“Did you ever play tennis with Carson?” she wondered.

“Once. He let me win.”

“Well, you can understand that, can't you?”

Sam nodded without replying. Barbara left the room, closing the door gently behind her. Downstairs, she mixed a pitcher of martinis. Carson walked into the library as she was pouring them.

“Cheers,” he said as he took his first sip. “That was a good game. Kirk hates to lose. He gets surly, so it's just as well you didn't want them to stay. You know, Bobby, Southern California spoils you for anywhere else. Tennis in December.”

Barbara listened and watched him. What a lovely man, she thought. Sweet, kind, decent. She wanted to cry. Years ago, she would have wept. Old habits die hard, but they do die.

“I suppose you saw the paper,” Carson said.

She nodded.

“Shall I talk — or you?” Carson asked her.

“You,” Barbara said, dropping into a chair.

He leaned on the bar, studying her. “You're quite a woman,” he said. “Times when it scares me.”

She shook her head. There was no reply to that.

“You saw the paper?”

Barbara nodded. “You asked me that. I read the editorial.”

“Angry?”

“No.”

“I want to explain.”

“All right.”

“I'm not squirming off the hook. Phil Baker wrote the editorial, but that's not the point. It was a family decision, and on top of that it was a decision of the board. Would you like to hear some of the thinking behind it?”

“Yes, I would.”

“In any case, Bobby, a presidential candidate is not a normal, usual type of human being. The drive, the ego, the compulsion required to take on such a campaign and see it through is rather unique, and regardless of the energy, the talent, or the brilliance of the candidate, the deciding factor is money. This is the age of television, and television is damned expensive. All right. We specify Norman Drake. He has the drive and he has the ego, and the whole compulsion of his existence is to be liked, to be voted for. Whatever you and I may think of him, he touches something in a hell of a lot of people. They see themselves in him. He's a vote-getter. He works for the party. He's born and bred in California, and we've never had one of our own down there in Washington, and there's money behind him. Unlimited money. Personally, I despise him, but candidates are not chosen on moral or social grounds. I know he was a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, but good heavens, if we are to hold a measuring rod up against everyone who played a role in the McCarthy era, we'd have no one to turn to. I'm the publisher of the
Morning World,
but I don't own the paper and I don't make the decisions for it.”

Barbara rose and poured herself a second drink. She had never been a drinker, a glass of wine, a cocktail now and then for a special occasion. Recently, in Beverly Hills, the occasions were more numerous.

“When the board made its decision, how did you vote?” she asked Carson.

“I abstained. They understood that.”

“I suppose,” Barbara said, “that I could be caustic, nasty, clever. The occasion calls for it. Only I don't feel clever, only sad. So damn sad.”

“Aren't you making too much of it?”

“Perhaps.” She dropped into a chair again, staring at the drink. The drink was a pretense. She had never solved anything by getting drunk. The few times she had been drunk were mostly happy times. Words were a pretense too. They floated around without ever touching the crux of it. And what was the crux of it? She was in a strange place in a strange house with a strange man. Dreams had the same quality of strangeness. In a dream, you reached out to touch something and it dissolved.

“I wonder,” she said, “just to satisfy my curiosity, whether you'd tell me something. In the course of things, as this presidential campaign develops, would you be expected to entertain Norman Drake here in this house?”

“That's an odd question. It's conceivable, either in my father's house or here.”

“Here, which means in my house. I don't exactly think of it as my house. But I live here.”

“That's anger!” Carson said. “You're sore as hell at me, and you sit there calm as a damn Buddha. If we're going to talk, let's talk. Don't just sit there and have me make a fool of myself. You're a lovely woman, Barbara, a very gifted woman, but you're not the only person on earth who ever had a principle and lived by it. I'm not a monk and I'm not some damn saint, but I am not a bastard. If you don't know where the Devron money came from, you sure as hell know where the Lavette money came from. I try to run an honest paper——”

“What is honest?” Barbara exclaimed. “To sell out your country and your people?”

“Bullshit! God damn it, no! I won't stand here and accept that. I've sold out nothing — and if you want to run a contest in honesty, let's start at the beginning. I haven't looked at another woman since we married, since I met you. Were you honest about that day with that Italian gigolo or whatever the hell he was?”

“I was, if you call that honesty. But I don't think I'm so honest. I'm as frightened as you are to look at myself and find out what I really am. But I'm a woman and you're a man. You're the mover, and I'm the one who's moved. Since I've been here, my soul has shriveled. It's not your fault. It's the way things are. It's not that our marriage has failed; it's just that I don't know how to make any marriage work. My whole life, I've been a stranger who kept looking for some place where she belonged. And now this city, this house — oh, my God, Carson, it's all tangled up and I don't know how to untangle it. We're married, but we haven't any marriage. Two weeks ago, when I was in San Francisco, I had dinner with an old friend and then we slept together.”