The Legacy (50 page)

“I found it in an old hardware store in North Beach. It had been lying on their shelves for years, and I bought their whole stock for twenty dollars. Valid Victorian. It must have been printed before the earthquake. The black horsehair stuff came from a little shop in Napa. I must admit it became an obsession with me. I don't know why I had to put the whole thing together again, it's such a funny old house, but it's my cave and my refuge. A psychiatrist I know says it's my permanent reaction to the mansion on Russian Hill. Be that as it may. If it weren't for the heartbreak and shock and the loss of my books and pictures and letters, which I can never replace, I'd say it was all to the good. At least the plumbing is new. The old plumbing was always coming apart at the seams.”

Tom gulped his drink, looked around him and then sat down on the horsehair sofa, staring at his sister. “I burned it down,” he said slowly and distinctly.

Barbara had no response to this, wondering whether he was drunk or whether this was some kind of symbolic apology.

“I said I burned it down. Didn't you hear me?”

She sat facing him. “I heard you, Tom. I haven't the faintest idea what you mean.”

“A sonofabitch was sent here from Washington by our President, and he informed me that either I closed you down or they'd cut GCS out of the war boodle. I told Lucy, and she hired a torch to burn your house.”

For a few moments, Barbara did not react, and then she said, quite calmly, “That makes no sense, Tom. It sounds like something out of a bad film.”

“My whole life is something out of a bad film.”

“Are you telling me that Lucy hired someone to burn down my house?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know about it?”

“Only after it happened.”

The whole notion was preposterous; it made no sense. This was her brother; he was overwrought, harassed, troubled, but he was not a monster. His wife was an obsessive, angry woman, but Barbara had known her all her life. They had gone to the same private school; as young girls, they had met at dances and parties. Such people don't burn down houses — or do they? There was a war going on in Vietnam; whose war was it? Who made it, serviced it, continued it? Who was guilty and who was guiltless? She had to see this thing through, calmly, quietly. Her brother had come to her. The house had burned and been rebuilt. Other things had burned and would never be rebuilt. The dead were dead; there was no Mr. Kurtz to reproduce them from photographs. Her mind was wandering. If her house had not been photographed and included in a book of old San Francisco frame houses, it could never have been rebuilt. And suppose May Ling had been sleeping in the house when it burned down? She had frequently stayed there overnight.

“Say something. Don't just sit there.”

Yes, she had to say something, make some observation. You are a total bastard, my brother. Emphatic, but incorrect. He was not a total bastard. It was just possible that no member of the human race was a total bastard. They were all trapped in the same agony. What should she say to him? We are all part of the same agony, my brother? She was apart from herself, seeing herself as a character in something she was writing, contriving, and stopped, blocked, because no words could satisfy the moment.

“You said before,” speaking slowly, quietly, carefully, “that this man from Washington threatened to cut GCS out of the war boodle. What did you mean?”

“I meant that our profits from this stinking war are enormous. We sell oil and ship it to the services in Vietnam. We ship food and we ship munitions.”

“Why do you call it a stinking war, Tom? It's a good war. It's making you richer.”

“Don't go pious on me, Barbara. Our father, the great Dan Lavette, made his millions out of two wars. In World War One he did the same damn thing I'm doing, and in World War Two, he built the ships.”

“Then why call it a stinking war?”

“What do you want me to say, that I love this war, that I'm up to my elbows in blood and getting my jollies out of that? I didn't make this war.”

“Who made it, Tom? You burned my house. Tell me how many houses were burned in Vietnam, with no insurance and with no Charley Kurtz to rebuild them.”

“Is that all you've got to say to me?”

“What can I say to you, Tom? You come here after nine years to tell me that Lucy had my house burned. I'm trying to be sensible, not judgmental, but for God's sake, I'm a human being. I feel, I hurt. I've tried to forget other things that happened, and I suppose in time I'll be able to look at this dispassionately. Now I can't. I'm trying to sit here and convince myself that my brother is not a complete bastard, but it's not easy.”

“I'm trying to face up to things, for once in my life.”

“Admirable,” Barbara said coldly. “Do you love her, adore her?”

“Lucy? I hate her guts!”

“Why don't you divorce her?”

“I can't. Don't look at me like that. I can't. I'm trapped. If I divorce her, she can tear GCS to shreds. Don't ask me to explain that. It's a fact, as my attorney demonstrated to me at great length. If you want revenge, don't look any further. It's right here.”

“I don't want revenge.”

“It's free for the asking. I had to talk to someone or go out of my mind. Yesterday, I hired someone to kill her. It's what they call putting out a contract.”

“Oh, no! No!”

“You can rest easy. I had a failure of nerve and rescinded the whole thing.”

“God Almighty,” Barbara whispered, “what kind of a world do we live in where you can hire people to burn houses and murder wives?”

“The same lousy world we've always lived in.”

“What do you do? Do you look in the Yellow Pages under killers?”

“There are services. Damn it, Barbara, don't play the innocent. You've been around. You know what goes on.”

“I don't want to know what goes on. Why did you tell me this?”

“So I wouldn't be tempted.”

“Ah, yes. So you wouldn't be tempted to have your wife killed. God help us both, Tommy.”

He stood up. “Thanks for the drink.”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” Barbara said.

“About the house —” He shook his head hopelessly. “We all lose things we love. I lost Freddie. I lost Eloise, and tonight I lost you. That makes me quite a loser, doesn't it, Bobby?”

After he had left, Barbara could only think that at the end, each of them had used the childhood name of the other. She thought she knew why, but that was not helpful.

Dr. Milton Kellman always felt impressed when he entered the old Lavette mansion on Russian Hill, and this feeling annoyed him. He was impressed, not with the fact that the Lavette house was one of a half dozen of the great old houses left on the hill, but because it was the home of Jean Seldon, who long ago had married Dan Lavette and become Jean Lavette. And Jean Seldon was the daughter of Thomas Seldon, whose huge brownstone castle was one of a dozen brownstone castles that had crowned Nob Hill in the long ago and were the homes of the nabobs who ruled the city and plundered the new land of California. Like a good many San Francisco Jews, he had a special and very un-Jewish feeling of place and identity. He was not an immigrant to a place that was finished. His grandfather had come here at the beginning, when San Francisco was still called Yerba Buena and the town consisted of a few ‘dobe buildings and a scattering of lean-tos and tents. Yet in only a few decades, the nabobs and pashas had divided themselves from the rest; they were the hard-bitten, hard-nosed white Protestant Yankees who drove West with a sense of the divine right of conquest, greed, and rule as firmly implanted as the divine right of kings had been in old Europe. Seldon was of this small coterie, and among them, Jean Seldon had been a princess; and Dr. Kellman was old enough to remember, and this memory lingered, so that entering the Lavette house, he was both impressed with his presence there and provoked with himself for being impressed.

And he liked Jean. He liked the game they played, the way they fought each other and sniped at each other and the way Jean hooted at his medical advice. Yet in her eyes he had saved Dan's life when Dan had his first heart attack, and he knew that she was grateful and that she respected him enormously. He was very fond of her, and when Mrs. Bendler opened the door for him, he asked anxiously, “Where is she?”

“In bed.”

“Has she been eating?”

“Very little. She says she has no appetite. I've been staying overnight. I don't like to leave her.”

“That's good.”

He went upstairs. Jean's bedroom door was open. “It's Milton,” he said. “Are you decent?”

“I haven't been decent since I was a teenager. Come in, Milton. I suppose my daughter sent you here?”

He drew a chair up to the bed, where Jean lay propped against a mound of pillows, wearing a blue, lace-trimmed bed jacket, and opened his bag, remarking that if he had been invited to her house occasionally, there would be no need for Barbara to send for him.

“Ha! Invite a doctor indeed! You're all so busy making money you have no time for anything else. Anyway, I don't entertain these days.”

“More's the shame. It would do you good instead of lounging in bed.”

“I'm ill.”

“Oh?”

“Not your kind of ill. I just feel rotten. Don't want to do anything or go anywhere.”

He shook down his thermometer. “Open your mouth.”

“Nonsense. I don't have any fever.”

“Either you open your mouth or I'll insert it rectally.”

“You wouldn't dare. On the other hand, it would be the closest thing to sex that I've experienced in quite a while. And don't shake your head at me. I can't tolerate prudes.”

He held her wrist while the thermometer was in her mouth, and when he removed the thermometer, she said, “I told you. I don't need a doctor to tell me whether I have a fever.”

“How do you feel?”

“I told you. Rotten.”

“What is rotten? Any pains, specifically?”

“No, Milton, not really. I feel weak. No appetite. And when I get out of bed, I tire so quickly. I know I'm an old woman, but that's no reason to feel so weak and depressed. Or is it?”

“You're not an old woman. You're a woman, and still a very lovely one. I'll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to get dressed and I'll drive you to my office.”

“Why?”

“I want to give you a thorough examination.”

“Well, do it here.”

“I can't do it here. I want to go over your breasts and give you a vaginal. I want my nurse present.”

“Milton, I'm seventy-seven. In six months, I'll be seventy-eight. Don't be an old biddy.”

“I don't trust myself,” he said, smiling. “Did you ever read Ben Franklin on the subject of old women?”

“Yes. He was addressing himself to young men, not to silly old fools.”

“This old fool will wait outside until you get dressed. And don't be all day about it. I have other patients. And no makeup. You look fine just as you are.”

“I don't go outside without makeup.”

“I'll wait outside.”

Sitting in his car as they drove to Kellman's office, Jean said, “You're really worried about me, aren't you?”

“Just a bit.”

“You're a dear man, Milton.”

“That doesn't make up for the other things you called me.”

“I have no intention of wiping the slate clean. I still think you're a very dear man.”

“That doesn't alter my bill. Not one penny.”

“Of course not.”

The examination went on for over an hour. Kellman was nothing if not thorough. Then he told Jean to get dressed and instructed his nurse to bring her to his office. There, he asked her, gently, to sit down facing him. He sat behind his desk.

“It's nothing good,” Jean said. “You'd make a rotten poker player.”

“I'd rather not discuss it just yet, because I want additional tests and some other opinions. I've phoned Mt. Zion Hospital and reserved a room for you. I'm going to take you there now.”

“You're quite out of your mind,” Jean exclaimed. “If you think I'm going to the hospital without knowing what's wrong with me, you are crazy.”

“I told you we'll discuss the whole matter after I get the tests and some other opinions.”

“Milton, you just listen to me,” Jean said deliberately. “We've known each other more than twenty years. I know something about you. You're the smartest damn doctor in this town, and you know exactly what is wrong with me. Don't give me that nonsense about other opinions and tests. Now let me tell you something about myself, which I would hope you know already. Whatever it is, I want the truth. I don't want to be protected and I don't want to be lied to. And if you can't tell me the truth, I'll find a doctor who will.”

He stared at her thoughtfully, his elbows on the desk, his palms together, fingertips pressed against his chin — that way for a long moment, and then he spread his arms, sighed, and said, “All right. If I talk to you, will you promise to go to the hospital?”

“For an operation?”

“No, for tests. I am not lying to you.”

“You have a deal, Dr. Kellman. You spell it out for me, and then I'll go to the hospital with you.”

“All right. But your conviction that I'm the smartest doctor in town is emotional and has very little basis in fact. I want you to keep that in mind. I can be wrong. Any doctor can be wrong.”

“Come on, Milton. I don't want to expect anything but the worst. Then if it turns out to be better, I can be agreeably surprised.”

“Very well. This is rotten psychology, but I don't have any other Jean Lavettes among my patients, and we'll break the rules this time. I'm pretty sure you have cancer of the breast, Jean. You want the truth, and I don't know of any other way to put it. If we leave it there, I would raise a very strong possibility of doubt and stress the fact that we have no way of knowing whether what I felt in your breast is a malignancy or benign tumors. Then the biopsy would give us a definite result. But since you want the truth, I can't leave it there. I examined you not too long ago, and the rapid development of your condition appears to indicate something else. You will recall that I spent a good deal of time probing your abdomen, and insofar as I can determine, you have nodules, growths on your liver. That is insofar as I can determine with this kind of examination. That is why we must hospitalize you immediately.”