The Legacy (52 page)

“Only two? My dear boy.”

“Well, my knowledge of art is limited. The rest of your paintings, Mrs. Lavette, are to go to the San Francisco Museum of Art.”

“Which, heaven knows, they need desperately, considering what they have there. Well, I'm changing that somewhat. I want to select two for the boys, one each for Freddie and Sam. We can get to that later. The main change has to do with a bequest to Sammy. I was going to leave him a considerable amount of money or stock or whatever, but if I do that, Freddie will be hurt, and to leave money to Freddie is ridiculous. I'm sure Tom will include him, since Barbara tells me Tom and his wife are no longer even on speaking terms, and aside from that, I hear that Higate is on the way to becoming one of the most important wineries in the state. So I want Sam's bequest eliminated. It is all to go to Barbara, with the exception of ten thousand dollars to Mrs. Bendler, who has been very good to me, and Barbara can decide what Sam should have. But —” She paused, observing Boyd thoughtfully. “Do you influence her?”

“Barbara?”

“Yes.”

“Not if she has her mind set on something. No one does.”

“I commend your honesty. My daughter is a most peculiar woman, to put it mildly. My father left her fifteen million dollars, which she gave away, and since she is a product of a Seldon and a Lavette, it proves that common sense is not hereditary. Can you make it impossible for her to give away the money I leave her?”

“Yes, that can be done. We can put it into a lifetime trust. But,” Boyd said, after a moment's pause, “that will give her only the income.”

“I'm sure that will be ample. It has been for me, and my tastes are more expensive than hers.”

“You will need executors for the trust.”

“I think you and Harvey are adequate.”

They continued to discuss the will and its details for another half hour, at which point Jean was completely exhausted. Boyd sat down at her dressing table to write in the changes, and Jean watched him, wondering idly what kind of a man he was, not his surface or his manner or his mind, but deep down underneath, where a human being may have an essence unknown even to himself. Not that it was too important to her at this moment; she had cast loose already. She had brought something into this world, not too much, but something that could be measured in the scale of mankind. Barbara would discover what kind of a man Boyd was, for better or for worse. To have a daughter like Barbara was not a small thing, not an inconsequential thing; it was the spinning of a thread that would go on, and even Tom was a thread that would go on, spinning through Freddie, as Barbara's did through Sam. It was all right; as Dan had once said to her, speaking of Barbara, “We must have done something right.” There was no happiness in the legacy of the rich, but that was a secret. Life was filled with secrets; death has only one secret.

She was dozing off, slipping into that warm space between sleep and waking, where flashes of the past assume a reality not totally dreamlike, when Boyd finished.

“Mrs. Lavette?” he asked softly. “You must sign this. Your housekeeper and I can witness it.”

“Oh, yes. I was dozing. I tire easily.” She managed to sit up, so that she could initial and sign her name. “My condition,” she said to Boyd, speaking slowly and painfully now, “is a confidence between myself and my attorney. You will respect it as such. I don't want Barbara to know — not yet.”

“Can I tell her I was here?”

“Not yet. No. And Boyd?”

“Yes, Mrs. Lavette?”

“My daughter is a remarkable woman. I think you are a fortunate man.”

“I know I am.” He bent over and kissed her, feeling her hand tighten on his with unexpected strength.

After he had left, she said to herself, “Let go. There's no reason to stay anymore.” There was pain, not too much, but pain. She took two of the yellow pills Dr. Kellman had left for her. They were very effective and made her drowsy, and she slipped back once more into that warm state between sleep and waking.

When she came to see her mother a few days later, Barbara knew, even though Jean still would admit to nothing more than weariness and weakness. An hour later, Barbara stormed into Kellman's office. “My mother is dying! Do you know that?”

“Sit down, Barbara,” he said. “Please, sit down.” Something in his voice broke through her anger. “Yes, your mother is dying.”

“And you know this? Milton, how could you?”

“Your mother believes that there are some things a person must do alone. Dying is one of them. Now if you will calm down and sit down, I will break my word to your mother and tell you what the situation is. It hasn't been easy for me.” Barbara did as he asked, and then he told her how it had come about. “It wasn't only my opinion, Barbara. I called in two of the best people at Mt. Zion. We had biopsies and X-rays. It is not operable and there is no treatment. Your mother is a very forceful and unusual woman, and she exacted a pledge from me that I would tell no one.”

Her face streaked with tears, Barbara nodded.

“When you see her again, please don't let her know that you know. This is something she is deeply sincere about.”

Barbara agreed. A week later, Jean died. Barbara was with her. Jean simply closed her eyes and whispered, “I'm very tired. I think I'll nap for a while.”

“Why,” Joshua wondered, “am I the one who has to build the fire?” He was tolerated. As Fred's younger brother, he had always felt that he was simply tolerated.

“Because it's cold,” Fred explained. He was sprawled out with his head on May Ling's lap.

“I'll build the fire,” Dan said.

“You will build nothing,” Joshua told him. “You are here on sufferance, permitted to be among your elders and listen to them. I build the fire because those two idiots” — nodding at Sam and Fred — “don't know how to build a fire, and if they did, they would be too lazy to do it.”

“Is it really an Indian fireplace?”

“Asking questions,” Joshua warned him. “You are being tolerated. No questions.” Finally Joshua had joined the elders.

“I'm thirteen years old.”

“Stop being a bully,” Carla told Joshua, and then assured Dan that it was not a real Indian fireplace. “Joshua's father built it when he was a kid, I guess about thirty or thirty-five years ago.”

“Do you remember the first time we built a fire here?” Sam asked Carla. “I couldn't have been more than ten years old, and that seems like an eternity ago — and thirty years ——”

“A time sense is a highly subjective thing,” Fred informed them. “For a child, a day is an eternity. At young Danny's age, a month is still a long, long time. At our age, we're dealing with years, but they still seem to be pretty long. But, you know, when I talked to Grandma Jean before she died, she said that when she looked back in her memory to half a century ago, it was as if only a moment had passed.”

“Half a century ago,” Sam said. “Nineteen eighteen. That's pretty heavy, to think of nineteen eighteen as only a moment ago.”

“It's very upsetting,” Carla said, moving closer to Sam. “I hate to think that way. It's frightening.”

Sam put his arm around her. “My dear child, fear nothing. You will be young and beautiful forever.”

“What is this dear child thing, Sammy? I'm three years older than you.”

“I know. That's why I never asked you to marry me.”

“You're absolutely an expert in bullshit, aren't you?”

“No, my dear. Freddie's the expert in bullshit.”

“Anyway, no marriage for me — ever.”

“Why?” asked May Ling.

“I have my reasons.”

“When it comes to women, Freddie's the grasshopper type. We're giving it a year. If he still wants it then, well, maybe. Otherwise, we part friends.”

The fire was burning brightly now. Fred rolled over, and then let out a yell. “Damn you, Josh, you didn't bring those lousy marshmallows up here again! You're not going to burn them black and pass them around! It's obscene.”

“Nostalgia,” Joshua said.

“I love roasted marshmallows,” Danny said.

“My brother's the only really nice person here,” May Ling said, “and you all treat him rotten. Poor Grandma Jean. What a crew of depraved descendants!”

“Oh, no,” Dan protested. “They're cool.”

“What did you mean, calling me a grasshopper?”

“I was only alluding to your polygamous tendencies.”

“Polygamy, my love, is a state of multiple marriage. I've never even been married, once.”

“By the grace of God,” Sam said.

“You, sir,” Fred told him, “are a sanctimonious fraud.”

“Among other things.”

“Do you want a marshmallow?” Joshua asked, holding out a flaming blob.

“Take it away. The sight of it sickens me.”

“Anyway, Carla,” May Ling said, “no marriage
ever
is a little extreme. How do you know?”

“If you had seen as many Mexican wives as I have being pushed around and beaten up on and knocked up every nine months, you might feel the way I do. I'm working with the Seaside Repertory Company, and they pay me sixty dollars a week, and I'm doing just fine. And if Hollywood ever decides to employ Mexicans, I might have a shot at that.”

“You're really hooked on the self-pity bit,” Sam said. “And why the devil do you keep calling yourself a Mexican? Your family's been here in Northern California seven generations. Maybe a Chicano, but you're no more Mexican than I am.”

“Chicano! Chicano!” Carla exclaimed. “You Anglos have everything down pat, except a little brains and sensitivity.”

Leaning over and kissing her, Sam said, “Forgive me, but I'm no Anglo. I'm a Semite, so how could I be an Anglo?” “Yes, like I'm Chinese.”

“I'm Chinese,” May Ling said.

“Not me,” Dan said. “I got freckles. Chinese don't freckle.”

“There speaks a voice of wisdom,” Freddie observed. “It's an interesting fact that the older we get up here around this fire, the more idiotic our conversations become. At this rate, in our forties, we'll be slobbering sheer gibberish.”

“So be it with the children of the pioneers,” Sam agreed. “The Levys and the Lavettes crossed this great continent and planted their seed in the green hills of California. Little did they know what fruit would come forth.”

“You two are absolutely absurd,” May Ling decided. “Of course it was to be expected. Anyone who would look around at the lot of us, noting our mutual characteristics say ten years ago, and then name us the wolf pack — well, he had to be a total idiot. Can you imagine — wolf pack.”

“Is that what you called yourselves?” Dan asked. “Fantastic. The wolf pack.”

“Who wants a marshmallow?” Joshua asked.

“Who did invent that name?” Carla wondered. “I don't remember.”

“I did,” Fred sighed. “I had a spell of reading Jack London then. Well, you live here and you read Jack London, what would you expect?”

“Freddie, that's very noble and honest of you,” May Ling said. “If you'll stop falling in love with every cute blonde you see, I'll marry you.”

“I haven't been in love with anyone else for six months. I'm becoming as sad and serious as Sammy. Will you stop eating those damn marshmallows,” he told Josh. “You'll blow up like a balloon.”

The setting sun now touched only the high lip of the hills facing them across the shadowed valley, and the gash of gold and red was so startlingly beautiful that all conversation stopped. The color lasted only moments. It was like turning off a great light switch that plunged the Napa Valley into darkness. Below them, lights twinkled on in the houses of Higate, and above them the stars began to appear.

“This is the most beautiful place in the world,” May Ling said softly.

“It's the only place I've ever been happy,” Carla said. “Out there it's them. It's always them. Here it's us, but we're a fraud. We come up here and pretend that out there doesn't exist. We try to pretend we're kids when we come up here, but we're not kids. Ruby stopped being a kid when they murdered him in Vietnam, and Sammy stopped being a kid in Jerusalem, and with Freddie it happened long ago down South. And when did May Ling and I stop? A long, long time ago, and now the three of you are registered for the draft and we count every lousy day before they decide to take you. And I work for that lousy Seaside Repertory Company, and every week it's: “Just be patient, Carla, and we'll be doing a Spanish thing one of these days, just be a good girl and type scripts and prompt actors. Spanish! Seven generations in this country, and I wait for a Spanish part!”

She burst into tears, and Sam drew her closer, stroking her hair. Carla was not articulate. Tonight was the first time he had ever witnessed an outburst of words and emotion on her part. He wiped away her tears, kissed her, and whispered, “Come on, baby. You are loved. You are deeply loved.”

“I heard,” Joshua said morosely, “that they're going to start calling up college kids.”

“Great,” Sam said. “That's the kind of thought we need right now.”

“Well, you got to think about it.” Then they were silent for a time, while the night darkness deepened. Joshua, feeling put upon, built up the fire and stared into it. He had already made up his mind that if he were to be drafted, he would go, but he felt it was no use to tell that to the others or to try to explain to them why he must go. He knew what it would do to his mother, but that couldn't be helped either; and far from being able to explain it to anyone else, he had trouble sorting out in his own mind the threads that might lead him into the army and conceivably to Vietnam. It had something to do with the fact that his father had taken part in the Normandy invasion, had fought his way through France, had been badly wounded, and had finished the war as a major in the United States Army, with all of his promotions field promotions. Adam never spoke of the war, but Joshua knew, just as he knew about Adam's brother, after whom he had been named, and who had died in the Pacific in the same war, just as he knew about his grandfather, Old Jake, who had fought in France in 1917 and 1918. It had nothing to do with any military or aggressive proclivities on his part; he was the most easygoing of all of them; it was simply deep-rooted in his mind as a matter of fate. If it was to be his fate, that was all right. He would follow it through. He didn't disagree with Fred or Sam; he just knew what had to be for him.