The Legacy (4 page)

“I don't need anything. I'm all right,” Jean replied. She walked over to the bed and stood staring at her husband. She laid one hand against his cheek, held it there for a moment, then drew the sheet up over his face. “I'm all right now. We've had a long run of it, Danny and me. Three years more and it would have been half a century. Could you leave me alone with him for a little while, Milton? I know there are things you have to do. Use the telephone downstairs.”

“Of course. I phoned for an ambulance. Be here in a few minutes. I'll send them away. Should I call your son? Or Barbara?”

“Barbara's in Los Angeles. No, there's no use waking her in the middle of the night, or Tom either. I'll call Joe myself — later.”

What an extraordinary woman, Kellman thought as he left the room, what a thoroughly extraordinary woman — no tears, no hysteria, just completely contained. Being Jewish, he considered it incredible that a woman as devoted to her husband as Jean Lavette had been to Dan Lavette should show no emotion, or perhaps — as he preferred to think — be capable of concealing what emotion she felt. On the other hand, he knew that in some cases, a death like this was so traumatic that the mind rejected it, which meant that in due time he would have to deal with violent hysteria.

However, neither supposition was correct. Jean Lavette had spent a lifetime in perfecting a mask to conceal her emotions and fears, and for the past ten years, ever since her husband had his first heart attack, she had envisioned the possibility of his death. Being a highly emotional and imaginative woman, she had experienced his death not once but a thousand times. He was the only man she had ever loved, the only man she had opened herself to, the only man who had brought her great happiness and great misery. For almost half a century they had loved, fought, clawed at each other, torn each other's flesh and soul, divorced, married again to others, and then had finally come together because what had been for them at the very beginning still remained. Now Dan was dead and what she had imagined again and again had come to pass. She had known it would come.

After Dr. Kellman had left the room. Jean stood silently and motionless at the foot of the bed, looking at the sheeted object that had been her husband. Then she walked around the bed and uncovered Dan's face. “I'll be long enough without seeing you, Danny,” she said aloud, “ever again.” His face was burned brown from their long hours on the boat in the bay, the white, curly hair a stark contrast. There was no memory of pain in his face.

“Poor Danny,” she whispered, “poor Jean. What a stinking mess life is!”

She caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing-table mirror, and she realized what she had been unconscious of until this moment, that she was weeping. The tears must have begun the moment Kellman left the room. Until then, she had not cried. She was not a woman given to tears, and in her whole life she could count the times when she had wept, and now she could not stop. She dropped down onto the bed, running her hand down the dead man's leg, grasping his calf. Sobbing, “Oh, Danny, Danny, you bastard. What will I do now? What will I do? I can't stick it alone. I simply can't. I don't know how anymore.”

Before her marriage to Bernie Cohen, Barbara had written her books and articles under her maiden name, Barbara Lavette. After her husband died, as well as during his lifetime with her, she continued to write under her maiden name, and frequently, simply to avoid confusion, not because the name Cohen bothered her in any way, she used the name of Lavette. Or so she told herself, for it was in the nature of Barbara not to place any great faith in her subjective verities, and in all truth she was never wholly comfortable with the name Cohen, no matter how assiduously she sought for and rejected any trace of anti-Semitism in her character. Her son, Samuel, was reasonably comfortable with the name of Cohen until, almost twelve, he was sent to Roxten Academy in Connecticut.

Until a month before he left, Barbara had never heard of Roxten Academy, nor had she entertained any notion of sending Sam away to an Eastern school. For one thing, a great deal of her life revolved around her son — too much, as Jean frequently pointed out to her. Barbara had raised him herself, indifferent to all urging from her mother and others that she marry again, and, according to Jean, had spoiled him thoroughly. Barbara felt otherwise; to love was not to spoil; and she felt no unhappiness over the sensitivity and gentleness of her son. He was tall and slender, a head of curly sandy hair, a prominent nose, thin and hawklike, pale blue eyes, and a good mouth and a firm chin. If he had no father — dead in the second year of his life — he had a rewarding surrogate in his grandfather, Dan Lavette, whom he adored, and in turn Dan Lavette had taken the child to his heart. Almost as soon as Sam could walk, Dan introduced him to the art of small-boat sailing, and by the time he was eleven, Sam's happiest memories were of the hours he had spent on the San Francisco Bay with his grandfather. Dan at long last had found an apt student for all his lifelong knowledge of fishing and crabbing. It was a mutual joy. Dan had asked no more of life than to be out on the bay with his wife and his grandson, and for Sam it was his own form of earthly paradise.

It was this passion for sailing that had proven the deciding factor in the choice of a school for Sam. When Barbara signed the contracts to turn her first book into a film and realized that she would be spending as long as four or even six months in Los Angeles, she decided that at least a year in an Eastern school might be a rewarding experience for Sam and that there might be some important benefits in removing him for a while from the uncritical affection of his mother and his grandparents. Barbara's grandfather and her brother Tom had both gone to Groton, but she had developed an antipathy toward the place, in part because of a prejudice toward the Eastern establishment, and in part because of the coldness between herself and her brother. It was her lawyer, Harvey Baxter, who had recommended Roxten Academy — having been there as a boy — and the final persuasion was in the brochure, which showed the old ivy-covered buildings fronting on Long Island Sound, as well as a small marina which belonged to the school. It was only after Sam arrived there that he discovered that the marina was reserved for the upperclassmen and that he would have no chance to set foot on a boat or explore the sound.

He made other discoveries. Roxten was an Episcopalian school and advertised itself as a Christian Preparatory School. In his first interview with the headmaster, Dr. Clement, a rotund, pink-cheeked man with pale hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, Sam was informed that he was more or less an Episcopalian. “Your mother writes,” Dr. Clement said, “that you have had no formal religious training. This is not uncommon with the children of mixed marriages, but since your mother was raised as an Episcopalian and is widowed, as I am given to understand, this should present no difficulties in Bible studies and in chapel. I must tell you, Samuel, that your application was given very grave consideration. A child should not be made to suffer for his parent's action; nevertheless, a degree of felicitous behavior will be expected. As you sow, so shall you reap.”

He had endured three months of reaping between the time he had arrived at Roxten and this day in mid-December of 1958, when he had been awakened by his uncle Joseph Lavette, calling from San Francisco to tell him that his grandfather was dead. A few hours later, dressed, shivering with an unfamiliar chill called death, he had spoken to his mother, who had asked him to leave that same day for San Francisco instead of waiting a week until the beginning of the Christmas holidays. Now, at eleven o'clock in the morning, he sat on his suitcase in front of one of the ivy-covered red brick buildings, staring dry-eyed and bleakly at glimpses of the sound through the naked branches of oaks and maples, waiting for a cab to pick him up and carry him to the railroad station.

His grief was laced with guilt and tempered with relief, which only served to sharpen the guilt, for with the death of his grandfather, he was released from purgatory, from a place he hated and from people he feared and despised. Trying to remember his grandfather, trying to make pictures of the golden days they had spent together, trying to cope with the mysterious finality of death, trying to evoke some memory of his father, whom he did not remember at all, he succeeded only in evoking memories of his days and weeks at Roxten.

Reliving events, he reshaped them in his mind. He imagined heroic responses, as in the first time he was challenged by a group of boys, who demanded that he tell them, once and for all, whether he was Jewish. In his imagining now, he forthrightly told them that he was — something he was uncertain about - and that they could fuck off and take it or leave it. Instead, he had been speechless, and another time when they threatened to pull off his trousers to prove the point that he was circumcised - which he was — he had fought hopelessly while tears of rage and frustration poured down his face, instead of denouncing them with any of the searing epithets he thought of now. He had realized very quickly that he was the first Jew, whether he was a valid Jew or not, ever to be admitted to the sacred precincts of Roxten Academy. His belated decision to fight back provided the ultimate humiliation. He was an unaggressive boy, without any malice in his character, and totally unskilled and incompetent in the art of fighting. He was beaten, bloodied, and bullied - all of which he blamed on his own cowardice and ineptness. Yet he was possessed of sufficient will and pride not to reveal his condition at Roxten to his mother and never to succumb and confess himself defeated.

Now, finally, it was over. He would never return here, and when the taxicab arrived, he dragged his suitcase into it and closed his eyes, determined not to open them again until Roxten Academy was out of sight.

*

Joseph Lavette, Dan's son by May Ling, his Chinese wife, had been born in 1917, while Dan was still married to Jean, and in time, some of the wounds among the children had healed while others remained raw and livid. Tom Lavette, Dan's son by Jean, and Joe Lavette had never spoken to each other, not even to the extent of exchanging polite greetings; the few occasions when they had come face to face passed in stony silence; but on the other hand, Barbara and Joe, meeting for the first time in 1933, had become very close through the years, each eagerly accepting a sibling out of the other's deep necessity. Barbara and Tom had maintained a formal, polite, but unenthusiastic acquaintance, coldly proper on the occasions when they met, neither seeking the other out. Joe had accepted Barbara's mother uneasily, meeting her for the first time on the day of his wedding to Sally Levy, the granddaughter of Dan's partner, in 1946, but as the years passed, they had come to know and respect each other, if never entirely overcoming the barrier between them.

On this day, the barrier crumbled. It was about three in the morning that Dr. Kellman telephoned Joe to inform him of his father's death. Joe and his wife, Sally, lived in the town of Napa, across the bay and about forty-five miles from San Francisco, in a roomy, wide-verandahed Victorian house on Owen Street. From there, Joe Lavette conducted a family medical practice, which, since it included a good many Mexican families, gave him a decent living but not much more. He had two children, May Ling, named after his mother and now eleven years old, and Daniel, age three and named after his father.

For Joe, to be awakened in the middle of the night by the telephone was not unusual; it came with the practice, and his sleep had adjusted to grabbing the phone on the first ring, in the hope that it might not awaken Sally. It always did, and now she switched on her bed light and turned sleepily to look at her husband. He put down the phone and turned to her, his face full of woe.

“What happened, Joe? What is it?”

“Pop's dead.”

“Oh, no! No — not Danny. When? What happened?”

“Myocardial infarct —” He swallowed and controlled himself. There were tears in his eyes. Sally had never seen him cry; now it was almost more frightening than the word of death. “Very quick, Kellman said. There was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do.”

Sally put her arms around him. “Poor Joe, poor Danny.”

“He woke up and woke Jean. Just a little pain, Kellman said. Then he lay back and died. What in hell good are we anyway? Witch doctors!” He got out of bed. “I'll drive into town and be with Jean. She can't be alone now.”

“Let me go with you.”

“No, you stay with the kids. You'll have to cancel my appointments for tomorrow. You can come over later.” Joe stood by the bed, struggling with the buttons of his pajamas. A big man, he had put on weight lately. Looking at him, Sally could fancy she was seeing his father, big, indestructible Danny Lavette.

Bill Ackerman, who ran the city room of San Francisco's largest newspaper, gave the story to his best feature writer, Clancy Bullock, instructing him to give it the linage and class of a presidential obit, and then added, “No, the hell with that kind of approach. This is different. He's the last of the breed, the last of the old city. The city's gone anyway, shot to hell and up shit's creek with the high-rises and the freeways and the goddamn beatniks all over the place. With Dan Lavette gone — well, the old order passes and now we got the goddamn corporate executives with their briefcases — anyway, give it three thousand words and I'll do a sidebar on one or two items you're too young to remember.”

Under his arm, Bullock had a file folder two inches thick. “He certainly made news,” he said.

“You can say that again.”

“The thing I can't find is where he was born. No birth certificate.”

Ackerman grinned. “I'll make that my sidebar. He was born in a boxcar moving out West, ‘eighty-eight or ‘eighty-nine, I think. Story is, his father was a contract laborer on the old Atchison spur line.”

“You don't buy that?”