An Independent Woman (9 page)

“I'm not a good judge of Riesling, Adam.”

“Sensible, but taste it anyway.”

The wine was very good, fragrant, with a delicate flavor, just dry enough to favor the appetite. Barbara nodded.

“About tonight and dinner, Adam,” Eloise said firmly, “we must talk.”

“All right, talk.”

“Shall I ask Joe and Sally? It's not too late.”

“Absolutely not! May Ling is a big girl—how old? She's thirty-six, isn't she?”

“Thirty-seven, poor child.”

“What do you mean, ‘poor child'? She's beautiful and old enough to handle anything. None of Sally's damn business.”

“Adam, Sally's your sister.”

“I know who Sally is. Let Harry and May Ling have this night to themselves.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” Eloise agreed, and then led Barbara out into the sunlight.

“What's all this mysterious business about Sally, and who is Harry?”

“Look at it,” Eloise whispered. A butterfly whose wings were a splendid assortment of color had alighted on a vine. “Isn't it marvelous? They are coming back since we stopped spraying and introduced counter-culture. Is there anything so beautiful? And since when do you not know white wine? Every time we have dinner out, you order white wine.”

“I met a remarkable man today who convinced me that small lies are entirely permissible. Who is Harry?”

“Freddie's lawyer.”

“Come on.”

“There's Candido,” Eloise said. “He's dying to see you. The local Spanish rag devoted a whole page to Barbara Lavette and the thief. You are something in the Valley.”

Candido was laying down the law to two men who were cultivating. He glanced up from his harangue and broke into a wide smile. “
Señora
,” he said with pleasure, “
buenas tardes, mi alegro de verla!
” Then he and Eloise engaged in an exchange in Spanish that amounted to his plea to be allowed to talk to Barbara for the sake of his wife. His wife lived on gossip.

“Mañana, mañana,” Eloise said.

“They work on Sunday?” Barbara asked as the women moved away.

“Only at this time of the year. But they have the morning off for church and all day Saturday. It's Adam's one bow to his being Jewish.”

They walked on, moving almost instinctively toward the bower on the hillside.

“So Harry is Freddie's lawyer. What has that to do with Sally?”

“He wants to marry May Ling.” With no response on Barbara's part, after a few moments Eloise asked, “Did you hear me?”

“Yes—of course, but my mind slipped, and I told myself that May Ling is dead, so how could she marry anyone? I'm getting old, I suppose.”

“May Ling dead? Barbara!”

“No, no, but for just a moment, the name meant her grandmother. It's a tangled web, isn't it? May Ling—May Ling my niece is her namesake. The first May Ling was this wonderful Chinese lady, my dad's second wife. I don't think you ever met her, but I knew her very well. She was as delicate and as beautiful as some ancient ivory carving, and my brother Joe is their son. She was killed in the Hawaiian Islands—during Pearl Harbor. I don't think my dad ever got over it. She was the daughter of my father's business manager, Feng Wo, who was also an important Chinese scholar who translated the
Natural Way of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu
, which I have been rereading and trying to understand. You know, for the past six months or so I've been writing the history of the family, starting with my grandparents and with Dad's father and mother, who died in the earthquake—”

“Barbara, hold on, take a deep breath, you've lost me. I've been married to Adam for thirty-six years, and I still can't get the family relationships straight.”

“Then you'll have to read my book. My grandparents on Dad's side were northern Italian, and Dad's grandfather was French, whereby the name Lavette. Adam's father was Jewish. Adam's mother, Clair, was raised by her father, who was a Protestant of some sort. His family name was Harvey, but she never knew who her mother was. My brother Joe is half Chinese, and he married Adam's sister, Sally; and so their daughter, May Ling, is part Chinese and part Jewish and part all sorts of other things—but you should know all that after all these years—”

“Enough!” Eloise cried.

“All right. Now tell me about this Harry, who is Freddie's lawyer and in love with May Ling.”

“That was to be the surprise. His name is Harry Lefkowitz.”

Barbara stared at her and asked slowly, “Did you say Harry Lefkowitz?”

“Yes.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. Not at all. That was the surprise. You're surprised.”

“I certainly am.”

“Why? A little new blood wouldn't hurt this family.”

“How long has this been going on?” Barbara asked.

“Almost a year.”

Barbara dropped onto the bench and shook her head dumbly. “He never said a word.”

“He's a lawyer. What would you expect?”

“Oh, you're deceitful, Ellie. Totally deceitful, asking me what was the inside story of the theft.”

“No. We haven't seen him since then. Freddie saw him and invited him here tonight to meet you.”

“Isn't he married?”

“No. He was His wife died seven years ago.”

“But he's old!” Barbara protested.

“No, my dear. He's fifty. You and I are old. May Ling is thirty-seven.”

“Let me digest this. You say this has been going on for a year—but you never told me word one about it.”

“I'm not a gossip.”

Barbara burst out laughing.

“Thank you.”

“We're both gossips, Ellie. We love gossip. Gossip is everything personal, sensational, or outrageous, and everything else that's politically incorrect.”

“What's happened to you today?” Eloise wondered. “You're actually happy.”

“Sort of.” She paused and thought about it. “Harry Lefkowitz… At first I thought he was a bit slippery—you know, Abner Berman says he has a reputation for defending big corporate thieves—but on the other hand, there's something about him—”

“Freddie thinks he's the smartest lawyer in San Francisco. He doesn't look like much—I mean, when you first meet him—but he grows on you.”

“How did it happen? I mean, how did he meet May Ling?”

“Oh, we were being sued over some acreage that Freddie bought—an open tract between Highgate and Spinnaker's place, an acre or two that Spinnaker had no use for and Adam wanted, and then someone called Hernandez turns up with a claim that goes back to 1842—and Harry was here, and he and Freddie began to climb over the disputed land, and Harry fell and sprained an ankle. He was in a lot of pain, and Freddie got him into a car and took him to Joe's surgery in Napa. You know, May Ling acts as his receptionist and nurse—she got her degree last year—and since Joe was at the hospital, she X-rayed the ankle and bandaged it, and lo and behold, Harry was in love. When he learned she wasn't married, he began turning up at Napa every weekend. He takes her into the city on her days off or meets her here. He's been showering her with gifts, and whether he's proposed or not, I don't know. They're both very private people.”

“And how does Freddie feel about it?”

“Grateful. He's been avoiding May Ling since the divorce, full of guilt. Anyway, they're second or third cousins, and Freddie is just not made for being a husband, so it's just as well. Or are they first cousins? I simply can't keep it straight.”

“But Freddie feels he's off the hook?” Barbara asked. “People are very interesting. And what's Sally's objection?”

“And what makes you think Sally objects?”

“Just the few words between you and Adam.”

“You know Sally as well as I do. Mostly the fact that he's a lawyer. Not sensitive enough, not charming enough, and May Ling's two inches taller than he.”

“Yes, of course. Sally never got over being a film star.” Barbara shook her head. “I'll have a word with her.”

They sat and talked until the sun touched the top of the hill. There was a tracery of long, slender clouds that turned the sunset into a mass of shimmering color, pink and azure, with streaks of scarlet that fought the pale pastels.

H
ARRY LEFKOWITZ COULD NEVER QUITE
get over his awe at the Levy—Lavette family. He had never before encountered anything like it, a group of people of so many diverse ethnic origins, and a family history, wealthy without doing as the wealthy do, and all connected by long or short strings to a winery that was more like an antique Mexican—Californian
hacienda
than the American style of big business. Not that Highgate was big business or comparable to such giants as Gallo or Mondavi, but it did gross more than five million in a good year and it hewed to a good quality of red wine that by now was recognized and valued in every wine-drinking country.

Harry had been born in 1934, at the nethermost point of the Great Depression, one of five children of an unemployed garment worker who struggled to feed his children and pay the rent on a miserable flat on Orchard Street, in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. Harry and his two brothers had worked at every conceivable way to earn money since they were children, gathering and selling old papers, delivering whatever there was to deliver, making pennies for hours of work while his mother and his two sisters took in washing and sewed piecework whenever they could get it. He had graduated high school with honors, had been admitted to City College, which was then free, graduated with top honors, and had gone on to Harvard Law on scholarship. Offered a job in California, he took the California bar and passed easily.

During the years since then, he had married, suffered the death of his wife, opened his own firm, and bit by bit, as so many immigrants to California do, he lost touch with his family. His mother and father died; one sister died of pneumonia; the other sister married and moved to Alpine, New York, and one brother taught philosophy at Tulane in New Orleans, while the other became an auto salesman in Utica, New York. The family was shredded beyond repair.

Sitting this evening at the big table in the kitchen at Highgate, with a lovely woman who was one-quarter Chinese and the rest portioned out of Jewish, Italian, and white Protestant, and all of it combined into very considerable beauty, he felt that this was the most pleasant moment of his life. Adam sat at the head of the table, Freddie at the other end, Barbara and Eloise on either side of Adam, and Lefkowitz facing May Ling and Barbara.

“You never said a word about May Ling,” Barbara was complaining to Lefkowitz. “You could have told me. It would have made it so much easier.”

“I was being a lawyer. I knew who you were. May Ling gave me your books to read, and I think she told me most of your life story, but I never met you. I like Abner Berman. I didn't want to put him in the middle.”

As always, Cathrena had cooked for twelve, the table piled with mounds of the ever-present tortillas, a huge poached salmon, bowls of rice, beans, and broccoli—the continually blooming broccoli that renewed itself day after day—hot bread, and salad greens picked that afternoon from the kitchen garden.

Eloise, heaping the plates, demanded to know what was going on.

“We haven't seen Harry since the theft of the century.”

“Not a theft,” Harry said shortly.

“I still can't believe you'd defend him against my aunt,” May Ling said, “and you knew she was my aunt.”

“I was defending him against the state. Barbara—if I may call you Barbara—was not a complainant. It was the cops who wanted to get their grubby hands on Jones.”

“The papers said he was a murderer,” Adam said. “That's hard to wash away.”

“Will you all please listen to me?” Barbara demanded. “Harry took on the man's case pro bono. That means—”

“We know what it means,” Freddie interrupted.

“Let me explain what it means. Everyone is not as wise as you, dear Freddie. It means he took the case without payment. And this man, Robert Jones, is not a murderer. He's a college graduate with a degree in civil engineering. A white guard at the university insulted him and then slapped him, and they got into a fight and Jones hit him, and the man went down and cracked his head on a concrete path, and Jones would have sat for fifteen years of his life in prison then if Harry had not taken his case, and that was also pro bono. Am I right, Harry? Since he had no money, how could he have paid you?”

“Harry, why didn't you tell me that?” May Ling said.

Harry, who was an excellent litigator, appeared tongue-tied. He swallowed uneasily, started to speak, and then stopped.

“You should have told me,” May Ling said gently. “You tell me about these dreadful corporate swindlers, but you never said a word about Barbara's case.”

“And one thing more,” Barbara added. “In the true sense of the word, I gave him the jewelry. You know that I never wear jewelry. I didn't even keep the pieces in a vault, for all they meant to me. I had them in a drawer next to my bed. But there was one thing that I did want, Daddy's ring. Perhaps you remember it, Adam. My mother gave it to him when your dad and he formed the shipping company and bought the
Ocean Queen.
It's a heavy ring, and with gold selling for five or six hundred dollars an ounce these days, it must be worth a great deal. I said that if I could keep the ring, he could have the rest.”

“Oh, come on,” Freddie said. “You were robbed. How can you say you gave him the stuff? That's putting the cart before the horse, Aunt Barbara.”

“Not quite,” Lefkowitz said. “Abner Berman was willing to go along with Barbara's story, and we had a talk about that. Abner said that if he returned the jewels, there would be no charges. I must say that I sort of agreed, if silence could be taken as acquiescence, but then when Abner and I finished our meeting, I double-crossed Abner and asked Barbara to let him keep the loot. She agreed.”