The Legacy (49 page)

“What a place!” he said to May Ling. “I never knew you had anything like this going. And you run it?”

“Never. We all run it. Oh, maybe Aunt Barbara mostly, and those two ladies over there, Shela Abramson and Ruth Adams, and I try to be here as much as I can, but with college next semester, I don't know.”

“Where are the men and boys? Or don't you allow it?”

“Crying in their beer, I suppose. We allow it. Absolutely. Oh, one or two showed up, but they don't have staying power. Sammy was here for a few days, but this is the first time I've seen you around.”

“I'm a working man. Higate Wineries pay me ten thousand a year, except that the take-home is a lot less, and for that they get a pint of blood and eight hours a day. Old Jake is a tough coot, and either you produce or you're out on your can.”

“Not so. Grandpa is an old darling. Let's get out of here or we'll be late.”

“I left my car in the garage. We'll take a bus.” Fred studied her as they waited for the bus. Somehow, where May Ling was concerned, he had retained the image of a skinny, attenuated, flat-chested adolescent. The reality — although this was not the first time he had seen her in recent months — startled him, perhaps because this was the first time he had actually looked at her as a woman. She was by no means flat-chested, and hardly skinny. Not an ordinary-looking girl; he had never met anyone who looked quite like May Ling, with her height, her straight shoulders, her tiny features and her black hair, banged and cut square to frame her face. He couldn't decide whether she was very beautiful or very odd-looking. “Somewhere between the two,” he told himself.

When they reached Market Street, the parade was already in progress and May Ling and Fred fell into line between two marchers who made room and linked arms with them. The demonstration was not as large as some had been and others would be, but they filled a whole lane of Market Street, stopping the traffic and shouting through at least a thousand throats, “Hey, hey, L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?” and again, “Hell, no, we won't go! Do you hear us, L.B.J.? Stop the killing, now, today!” At the Federal Building, the crowd was larger, more disorganized. The police had set up barricades and there was some scuffling, and then a woman's voice from the speaker's stand begged for order. “We are a demonstration against violence,” the voice told them. “Let's keep it that way.”

“Hey, it's Aunt Barbara,” Fred said. “What do you know about that?”

“She's great.”

Shouting their names, Sam pushed through to join them, explaining that he had been trying to catch up with them since he spotted them at 5th Street.

“That's your mother,” Fred said.

“Damn right. Look, children, I'm distributing leaflets and looking for mothers. See you later.”

Barbara was saying, from the platform, “We'll sing now.”

The voices swelled up, brokenly at first, and then merging into a wave of sound: “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? Yes, and how many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned …”

When the demonstration broke up, Fred and May Ling walked back down Market Street toward the garage where he had left his car. Fred had his arm around May Ling's waist. They were both euphoric, feeling the excitement of the demonstration and full of a sense of having been a part of something meaningful. The evening chill was just taking hold, the afternoon fading benignly and gently. They moved down Market Street, through the crowds hurrying home from work, almost absently, both of them unwilling to arrive anywhere specific, content to drift along. Close to the garage, unwilling to let the moment or mood end, Fred said, “I have a great idea. We're both all dressed up, me with this suit and white shirt and tie, no less, all in honor of the winegrowers, and you ——”

“Oh, Freddie,” May Ling protested, “this is mom's old gray flannel suit. Just a hand-me-down. I look dreadful.”

“You look great. Will you listen to me? Let's stay in town and have dinner here in some real stodgy posh place, like the Top of the Mark or the Fairmont.”

“Freddie, that's a bundle. You're out of your mind.”

“Come on. I can afford it. I'm not dating anyone these days. I'm filthy rich.”

“Pop was supposed to pick me up at Larkin Street at six, on his way home from the hospital.”

“Then we'll call Larkin Street and leave a message.”

“If anyone's there.”

“And if no one's there, we'll get there and wait for him.” They were standing on the sidewalk, facing each other. Suddenly May Ling grinned, her whole face lighting up. “Yes, absolutely. I haven't had any real fun in ages. And I'm going to be merciless. I'm going to have oysters and steak and floating island for dessert — the whole, entire bundle, which you have now let yourself in for.”

“Right on, and champagne with the oysters, and French Cabernet with the steak, which is treason on my part, but who's going to know, and if that silly restaurant has it, we'll have an Imperial Tokay with our dessert. And I shall buy a fifty-cent cigar, if you can stand the smoke.”

“Freddie, it's elegant and we'll be as drunk as lords, but what are we celebrating?”

“Us, you and me, the last of the Lavettes.”

“Heaven forbid. You forget my brother, Danny. But it's good enough. Let's find a telephone.”

The Top of the Mark was booked full, since it was a tourist month, but they found a table at the Fairmont and everything else appeared as projected except the Imperial Tokay, and they had to make do with a very ordinary Tokay, a single glass of it being all that either of them could manage. “Of course, I knew that,” Freddie assured her. “There is no Imperial Tokay in San Francisco, or in most other places either. When Grandpa Jake and Grandma Clair were in Paris, before World War Two, they managed to sell a few cases of our wine to a French wine firm called Lebouche and Dume. A very big deal then. In return, Monsieur Lebouche gave Jake four bottles of Imperial Tokay, the real thing from the vineyards of the Emperor Franz Josef. I was just being a smart-ass and trying to impress you by ordering it here.”

“You did impress me. You always have.”

“You're laughing at me.”

“Just a little. I love you, so it doesn't matter.”

“What kind of love?”

“Did you ever taste it?”

“Love?”

“No, you dumbbell, the Imperial Tokay.”

“Absolutely. When I returned from Europe, Jake opened the last bottle. Liquid sunshine. You know, it's almost impossible to make a good sweet wine. In the whole world, there are only four that are really good, a couple of sherries, the best Hungarian Tokay, and a Chinese wine that I've read about but never tasted — and why are you laughing at me?”

“Because I'm just a little tight.”

“I'm a little tight, and I'm not laughing at you.”

“That's what mother calls the male infirmity.”

“What?”

“Not having eyes in the back of your head.”

“You're putting me on.”

“Yes.”

Driving back to Napa, May Ling said dreamily, “I do wish we weren't cousins.”

“I've had the same thought. But then we're not — I mean not entirely.”

“How do you take that?”

“We only share a grandfather. It's true that old Dan Lavette was our grandfather, but your father's mother was May Ling and my father's mother was Grandma Jean.”

“But Adam is my mother's brother.”

“He's my stepfather. Tom Lavette's my biological father, as they put it. So we're not exactly first cousins. You might say semi-first cousins.”

“Why are you fussing so about it?”

“Because tonight has been so damn wonderful. I'd like to do it again. And again.”

“You can, even if we're cousins.”

“I'd also like to go to bed with you.”

“Sammy says you've been to bed with half the pretty girls in France.”

“Sammy has a big mouth.”

“He also says you fall in and out of love as easy as taking off your shoes.”

“That's why I didn't tell you I think I'm falling in love with you.”

“Nobody falls in love with me, Freddie. I'm too tall and too weird-looking.”

“Good God, I'm six one. You're not that tall.”

“Not quite.”

“And I don't mind you being weird-looking. It's very refreshing.”

“Thank you.”

“I also think you're beautiful.”

“Why didn't you say that first?”

“The real question is, what kind of kids would we have? I wouldn't mind them being Chinese, but genetic freaks are something else.”

“Freddie, you're dreadful and you're crazy. What makes you think I'd ever marry you?”

“I'm twenty-five. It's time I got married.”

She was silent for the rest of the ride, sitting with her head against his shoulder. When they reached her home in Napa, she reached up, turned his face to her, and kissed him gently on the lips.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said.

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About what you said. And the next time we talk about it, Frederick Thomas Lavette, you are to be serious or leave the subject alone.”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Nothing. Reading a book. Watching television.”

“I'll be here around eight.”

“You can come for dinner if you wish. I won't tell mother I have a new boyfriend. I'll just say that my silliest cousin wants to dine with us.”

“Your mother's no fool.”

“Oh, I know that. And neither am I, Freddie, as you'll learn.”

“What the hell! I'll be there.

What time?” “Seven,” she said as she got out of the car. “And tonight was just too special. You're a dear.”

“I'll be there.”

Brooding over his books after dinner, trying to rearrange a pattern of thinking in Hebrew into the chemical, biological, and medical terms necessary to the examinations he would soon be taking, Sam reached out for the telephone, listened, and then said, “Sure. In a moment.” Rather than shout, he went down the stairs to where his mother was reading. “It's your brother on the phone.”

“Joe?”

“No.” He hesitated. “Thomas Lavette.” He couldn't say Uncle Thomas. He had met his uncle only once in his life, at his grandfather's funeral.

“Tom?”

He nodded, and then went upstairs and returned the phone to its cradle, dwelling only moments on the oddity of this singular telephone call from a man almost as remote and mysterious in his world as Howard Hughes. He was concerned with no thoughts of anger, like or dislike. Thomas Lavette was simply a shadow at the edge of his vision.

Tom was a good deal more than that to Barbara. They were only twenty-one months apart in age. They had grown up in the same house on Russian Hill, plotted to outwit the same governess, made their first childish sexual explorations together, belonged, as adolescents, to the same riding club in Menlo Park, eaten at the same table for years. The first years are never erased, and even though for twenty years they had only the most formal and intermittent contact, Barbara could never erase the picture of the slender, handsome young man in blue blazer and white flannels who, as she thought of him, appeared to have stepped directly out of the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She had never been capable of hating him, and tonight, hearing his voice, she found herself responding with pleasure. It was not until after she had spoken to him that she considered the fact that the last time they had seen each other was at her father's funeral nine years before.

“I want to see you and talk to you,” Tom said.

“Yes, of course.”

“Tonight? Or would that be imposing?”

“No, not at all. Has something happened?”

“Can I see you alone?”

“Certainly. I'm just sitting here reading. Sam's here, but he'll be in his room. Are you all right, Tom?”

“I suppose so. I'll be there in half an hour.”

Barbara put down the phone. “Well, I'll be something or other,” she said softly, and then she sat and stared at the past. Sam came down the stairs.

“Everything all right?”

“That was my brother.”

“I know.”

“Sammy, stay in your room. I don't think he wants to see anyone but me.”

“I can live without seeing him.”

“I don't want to have that kind of talk,” Barbara said sharply. “This man is suffering.”

“I'm sorry, mom. I really don't know him.”

The man who came into Barbara's living room half an hour later was hardly the young aristocrat out of the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald. At fifty-five, Tom Lavette looked ten years older, and the change from the last time they had met took Barbara aback. He had gained weight; there were bags under his eyes and folds on his cheeks; his thinning blond hair had turned white and it was carefully combed sideways across his skull. Entering the room, he looked about him in astonishment.

“It's incredible.”

“Thanks to Mr. Kurtz.”

“Charley Kurtz, the contractor?” He was nervous, standing tightly, clenching and unclenching his fists. Barbara made an effort to keep it light; be amusing; relax him. Here was a man ready to explode or disintegrate.

“You sent him to me, Tom, for which I can thank you and he will probably hate you to his dying day. He says I took ten years off his life. I made him put it back the way it was. It took him eight months, but here it is.”

“Can I have a drink?” Tom asked.

“Sure. Bourbon — if I remember?”

“Just straight with some ice.”

She went into the kitchen for the ice. When she returned, he was staring at the wallpaper, touching it.