An Independent Woman (38 page)

Read An Independent Woman Online

Authors: Howard Fast

Tags: #Historical

BOOK: An Independent Woman
6.88Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Barbara, for all her good spirits, felt strangely tired, more tired than she had ever been after a walk of only a mile.

They were at Hawthorn now—signs of construction everywhere, piles of lumber and stone, a concrete mixer; the main house being enlarged, the bottling plant being reconstructed. “If it were not a holiday, there'd be a dozen trucks here. Harry is plunging in on this,” Freddie told them.

Small Danny ran out to meet them, followed by May Ling and Harry, who appointed himself tour guide. Evidently the move to the Valley had overcome Danny's objections to his new father, although he ran to Freddie for hugs and kisses. Harry, totally enthralled with his new life, appointed himself guide, explaining that while some of the crop had already been sold, most of it would be turned into wine. He pointed out the mechanical crusher, which, he noted, would be replaced; it was too old. Only the juice of the grapes would be used, since this would be white wine. He explained, in spite of Freddie's presence, that for Chardonnay, the skins were discarded. “Fermentation begins,” he said knowingly, “when wine yeast comes in contact with must—and of course, since the yeast is on the skins, we have to add yeast.” Freddie remained silent as the lecture on winemaking went on and on—which Barbara regarded as a considerable improvement in Freddie's tolerance, since he had overseen the whole process of renewing the equipment.

Barbara slipped away, leaving Philip to be enlightened, and joined May Ling in the house, which was in utter disorder due to the presence of paint cans, wallpaper, and wood. “I have never been so happy,” May Ling told her. “Oh, Barbara, San Francisco may be the most beautiful city in the world, and I'm sure it is, but I can't live in a city. I grew up in the Valley, and I want to spend the rest of my life here. I'm pregnant, and Daddy says that I'm doing fine and that I'm still young and strong, and that if I want another baby, I can have one. I'm only thirty-seven, and Daddy comes by every few days. I think he's the best doctor in the world. And Harry's an angel. Can you imagine giving up a practice like his to make wine? They wanted him back on some special case, but he simply won't leave the place. He says he has enough money.”

“You're happy,” Barbara said. “That's the main thing. I've never seen you so pleased before.”

“When I tell Harry that it won't hurt a bit if he goes into the City for a day or two, he comes back with the story of his grandfather who would never dream of going back to Europe for fear that they wouldn't let him back here again. I think he has this strange feeling that if he goes into the City, they won't let him back into the Valley.”

“He'll get over that. But Judith—in every case I've ever heard of where a woman goes through that kind of trauma, she loses the child.”

“Except when she doesn't.”

“Yes,” Barbara agreed, “except when she doesn't.”

“You see, she took it for granted that the pregnancy was over—never told the doctors about it. That woman's wonderful,” Eloise said. “The newest thing in advertising is the pregnant woman. The unmentionable has become big business, in childbearing clothes, and now Frank Halter—he's the number-one fashion photographer in the City—can't wait for her to bulge properly. He has a job for
Vanity Fair
, and they want him to do four pages of her. They want one of them to be a nude from the side, and the money they want to pay her is sinful. But she talked it over with her father, and he put his foot down, and the magazine agreed that she could wear something diaphanous—but she says that Halter is getting impatient because she isn't bulging enough.”

“Give her time. She'll bulge.”

“She's so tall and strong—you know, she's six feet.”

“She could be seven feet,” Barbara assured her, “but you can't do it without bulging. Is the child all right?”

“As far as they can tell at this time.”

“And the wedding's next week. It seems that I can't go away for a few days without the world turning topsy-turvy. How is Adam taking all this?”

May Ling smiled. “He's an old dear. He wanted to have another mammoth party here after the wedding, but Freddie and Judith wouldn't hear about it. We're having only family at the wedding— it's a small church. Adam has done a complete about-face. Well, everyone thinks it's wonderful, and Adam feels he's a pathfinder into a new world, as if this were the first interracial marriage that ever took place. Do you know, Bobby darling, my only fear is that they won't be content to live on a farm and will go back to the City.”

“Highgate is hardly a farm, and the City's only an hour away. She hasn't given up her house, has she?”

“No. She has a pool there, I'm told, and believe it or not, Adam talks about building a pool here.”

“I'll believe that,” Barbara said, “when I see it.”

“But, darling, I never even asked you how you are? And poor Philip, with that short thatch of new hair.”

“I'm all right,” Barbara replied. “I seem to have gotten so tired during the trip, and it's so hard to shake it off. But Philip's made of steel. He never complained about his burns. It's that damn Christian lust for flagellation; the more it hurts, the more he smiles and bears it.”

“And how goes the marriage?” May Ling asked.


Comme ci, comme ça
—marriages are made not in heaven but by ordinary mortals. Sometimes I adore him, sometimes he drives me up the wall.”

“But he's so decent and kind.”

“That's it.”

“I'll never understand,” May Ling said.

“No, darling. Don't even try to understand. The very fact that this family can live so close without shredding each other to pieces is a miracle of sorts—you and Freddie, for example.”

May Ling shook her head. “I never will understand Freddie. Never mind. I must show you the kitchen.” She led Barbara through the half-deconstructed house and into a big square room. “The kitchen was the size of a snuffbox, Barbara. So I tore down the wall between the kitchen and what was the dining room, and now I have a, room twenty-two feet square. Harry was all for it. I think he believes that every winery must have a kitchen the size of Highgate's. I threw out everything that was in there. We're going to do it all in Mexican tiles. Next week I'm going into San Francisco to pick out the kitchen stuff. Will you come with me?”

“I'd love to go with you. I'm sure you know by now that I will grasp any opportunity not to write. Writing is like a man you adore and hate at the same time. Very perplexing. All my books until now were out of some part of my own experience—but now I'm trying to write about the family. Very frustrating. Sarah and Mark, Jake and Clair Harvey, my brother Tom, my father and mother, all the agonies and pleasures and deaths, three wars—it's impossible. But I'm not that good at shopping anymore. After half an hour, all I want is to sit down and rest.”

“Then we will.”

“Try to find a chair in some of those stores! And won't Sally be hurt? I mean, if you don't consult her.”

“Then let her be hurt,” May Ling said in a rare display of independence.

Barbara looked at her approvingly. Tall, slender, her skin a pale brown, her eyes almost black, the one-quarter Chinese so marked and beguiling—this was a new May Ling, happy and assured.

“No, I don't mean that,” May Ling said quickly. “I love Mother, but this is my life and my place. I will have a lovely room for her and Dad whenever they want to come. But it's my house.”

Barbara threw her arms around her and kissed her.

I
F THERE WERE A STAR
or at least a focal point for that Thanksgiving Day at Highgate, it was without question Judith. As she had promised, she turned up shortly after noon. Barbara was in the kitchen with Eloise and Cathrena, helping to set the big table, which had been extended three feet by a wooden frame that Candido had hurriedly knocked together. Eloise had found two identical tablecloths that would cover the length of it. Eloise was consulting with Barbara about the place cards when Freddie appeared with Judith. A fire was already burning in the big fireplace, and by dinnertime it would be a bed of hot coals with a single large log glowing above the coals. The room was warm with the smell of good food—the enormous turkey in the oven, the cranberries turning into sauce on the stove, the great pot of sweet potatoes simmering, the vegetables being cut, five pies getting their crusts, dough rolled out for dinner rolls, and Cathrena scolding one of her helpers for cutting the dinner rolls too small.

It was at this point of both confusion and activity that Freddie appeared with Judith. Barbara's first reaction was that Judith had lost weight, the strong bones of her face more prominent, and that there was something different about her nose, a certain sharpness; yet she was the same Judith, easy and graceful. She wore blue jeans and a blue work shirt, but she explained to Eloise that she had “fancy clothes,” as she put it, in her car and would change before dinner. “I'm here to help, Mrs. Levy,” Judith said. “These jeans, they're a badge of work willingness.”

“First of all, call me Ellie. Everyone else does. Secondly, Barbara and I are trying to work out the table, and then we'll set it. Can you make twist rolls?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then take over from Rosa, who can't. That will release Cathrena for other things. Adam, my husband, insists on twist rolls; and then we'll have a large challah—that's the Jewish festival bread—and Cathrena will give you the measurements.”

“You'll want eggs in that, won't you?”

“Oh yes, probably six eggs for the large loaf. Cathrena knows—I'm not sure. But how do you know that?”

“Jewish friends, Jewish bakeries—one right down the street from where my mom lives.”

“Your folks will find their way here, won't they?”

“Oh yes, they'll be here.” She rolled up her sleeves and went to work quickly, expertly, as if she had been making bread all her life. “We've been to the Valley so many times. They know just where Highgate is. I love to make bread,” she assured Eloise. “I've done it before.”

A
N HOUR LATER, HAVING FINISHED
the seating and setting the table, Eloise and Barbara betook themselves to the living room with mugs of coffee, and Eloise lit one of her infrequent cigarettes. The living room at Highgate was a bit larger than the kitchen—twenty-two feet by thirty feet—with a large fireplace that backed the kitchen fireplace and fed into the same stone chimney, encircled by three sofas: two seven-foot couches and one eight-foot couch. There was a grand piano that both Eloise and Freddie played, a television set in one corner, bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, a long table backing the big couch, an eighteen-foot grospoint Portuguese rug with a pattern of pink roses, and armchairs scattered about. The ceiling was beamed, and above a wooden wainscoting, the walls were painted stark white. On the walls were paintings from Jean Lavette's gallery, given to Eloise and Adam as wedding gifts: one a Renoir and another a Picasso; plus a large painting of a Levy— Lavette freighter and a painting of Adam's brother, Joshua, who had died in World War II. There were also groups of family photographs and a glass breakfront containing medals and awards won by Highgate wines.

Barbara loved the room, its comfortable old-fashioned look and its fireplace—lit that morning and now full of glowing embers, as in the kitchen.

After they had collapsed onto a sofa and Eloise had lit her cigarette, Barbara said, “Well, what do you think?” It was obvious to whom she referred.

“I think I'm in awe of her. I suppose it's my own fault that I've known so few black people. To be perfectly honest, it is my pleasure to embrace her as a prospective daughter-in-law and take her to my heart. I almost accused Adam of being a racist, and I was very angry with him for no good reason at all. Do you think I'm a racist?”

“No more than we all are. Give it time. There are thousands of people who are racist about Chicanos, but we've lived with them all our lives. The important thing is that Freddie loves her.”

“He adores her.”

“Yes, he does,” Barbara agreed.

“I can see that part of it,” Eloise acknowledged. “I often ask myself whether I'm not the major reason Freddie has never married successfully. He's a brilliant businessman and manager, and if truth be told, we would have failed long ago were it not for Freddie. We can't produce enough of his dry Sauterne—and if it were up to Adam, we'd have no white wine at all—and his partnership with Harry is exactly what we needed, a Chardonnay that we'll sell like hotcakes. But so long as I'm around—well, he's forty-three in January.”

Barbara smiled. “Darling,” she said, “don't go psychological on this.”

“Barbara, would you call me a martinet?”

“As far in the other direction as one can get.”

“But for years I ran this house and the guesthouse. I can't let her walk all over me.”

“What on earth makes you think she would? That performance in the kitchen was introductory, for our benefit. They'll have their own home. And believe me, she's not interested in housekeeping. You'll probably never see her in the kitchen.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Of course,” Barbara assured her, reflecting that the appearance in the Highgate household of a woman as young and good-looking and robust as Judith could not help but shrink Eloise's self-image. How little the young knew about the old—and especially of that inner self in women like Eloise that retains its image and sense of youth. Barbara understood that completely. There had been a day when she and Philip were walking on the Embarcadero and a sight-seeing boat was about to pull away from the dock, and on impulse they bought the last two tickets and leaped onto the boat just as it was beginning to pole off, and they stood at the rail laughing like a couple of kids—to the curious looks of chronological youngsters on the deck…. She still brushed her hair as her mother had taught her to, twenty strokes at night, twenty strokes in the morning, and she would still stare at her mirror and deny the wrinkles. When her son, Sam, informed her that they had a new substance that when injected into a wrinkle would make it disappear, she indignantly assured him that she had earned every wrinkle and meant to keep them—her usual defense to Birdie MacGelsie, who had had a face-lift and urged Barbara to do the same. No, she, Barbara Lavette Carter, would never have a face-lift; yet she brooded over the notion.

Other books

Accidental Reunion by Carol Marinelli
Careful What You Ask For by Candace Blevins
Oklahoma's Gold by Kathryn Long
Your Big Break by Johanna Edwards
Impact by Rob Boffard
Murder in Piccadilly by Charles Kingston
Dark Obsession by Amanda Stevens