Family Secrets (52 page)

There was the Winsor-Nature house, and there through the picture window Frankie could see Richie wearing his skullcap, lighting the candles. He was so solemn and serious, such a little old man. The candlelight made a soft glow on his face and it looked like a religious picture. There was so much about being a Jew that Frankie didn’t know, and she would have liked to know, but Everett didn’t seem to know anything either, or else he didn’t want to talk about it. Everett seemed to resent his heritage. Frankie wasn’t too crazy about hers either, but you were stuck being what you were and at least you should be able to talk sensibly about it if someone asked you questions.

In the lower field the horses were frolicking. They always played before dinner, in the quiet, cool hour when the mist began to rise. That Valley was really weird, like a Gothic novel. At night the fog seemed to close everything in and the family seemed more isolated than ever. Frankie was lonely at Windflower. She felt trapped.

She had gone into this marriage with Everett with her eyes open, planning to get him, and getting what she had gone out for, and now it was her own fault. First of all, he wasn’t rich; it was all his parents’ money and he got an allowance. Second, he spent everything on himself because he was selfish. Third, he worked like a dog and never seemed to make any money of his own. She was still working for him, answering the phones in the TV repair shop, having nothing better to do with her time. At least she made him pay her the same salary she’d gotten when she was single. She wasn’t slave labor even if she was his wife.

They had nothing in common. Everett hated sports. He had wheedled some money out of his mother to buy some stocks he’d heard about, and the stocks had gone up and he’d made a big profit. Frankie wanted to put a down payment on a better house, and Melissa said Everett ought to ask Jonah about stocks and start building up a portfolio, but no, Everett had gone out and spent every damn cent on a private plane. It looked like a toy. He’d taken flying lessons and he went up in it every day after work. He’d taken Frankie up a few times, but she didn’t see any reason to get killed just to prove to him she wasn’t chicken. Then Etta’s son, Stanley, the airlines pilot, had come to visit with his own private plane, and Stanley had started taking Etta up in it and giving her flying lessons. Old Etta, with her blue hair, flying a plane! Frankie had to give the old gal credit. It really looked jazzy, the lawn with the two little planes sitting on it. Etta said she’d never have the courage to fly all by herself, so she only went up with her son on the dual controls. When Stanley went away there was Everett’s plane, but Etta wouldn’t fly with him. She said she didn’t trust him, he wasn’t a professional. But Everett had a license. Frankie didn’t like it the way everybody around Windflower treated Everett like a jerk, and he took it.

The plane was too small to fly back to Florida unless they planned to take a year doing it, so Everett was toying with the idea of either selling it or storing it. He was really stupid about money, even Frankie could see that. Everything he did was wrong, a waste, a mistake.

Frankie liked to go bowling; Everett refused. Frankie liked to drink; Everett thought it was a waste of time except at a party. Frankie liked to go to the movies; Everett said he was too tired. Everett never read any kind of book he could discuss with Frankie, just those magazines about mechanical things. What Everett wanted was to go to bed with Frankie and take advantage of his marital rights. And Frankie hated that.

She’d always known she wouldn’t care for it, but she hadn’t realized that every night would be a battle; the “headache,” the “stomach ache,” the “cramps,” the period that she managed to invent a couple of extra times because Everett was too dumb to count. It wasn’t that giving Everett his marital rights made her sick or anything; she just didn’t like it, it was boring, messy, and she felt used. She didn’t want any man getting that close to her. He didn’t own her. He was rough, but by the clock it didn’t take so long that she couldn’t have put up with it; it was just that she was stubborn and she didn’t feel like getting started in the first place. She told him once a week, Saturday night, that was it. That was what he would get. And if she didn’t feel well on Saturday night then he’d get a raincheck. Thank God Everett was so nervous sleeping in his parents’ house that he never jumped on her at all when they were at Windflower. If the rest of being at Windflower wasn’t so boring Frankie would have liked to stay all summer just for that reason alone.

And, oh boy, was it boring here! Paris sat in her room all day writing; a book, she said. She was always writing some kind of a book, or rewriting it. Frankie could hear her portable typewriter going click-clack all day long, whenever she passed in the hall. Paris had put a big sign on the outside of her closed door with a skull and crossbones drawn on it: “Do Not Disturb!!!” The only person who was anywhere near Frankie’s age and she never emerged except for meals.

This estate was the most beautiful place Frankie had ever seen, just right for a party. But did this family ever give a party? Ha ha. Fat chance. If somebody in the family had a birthday they’d get all dressed up as if they were going into the city or someplace, and then they’d all go to the house of the person whose birthday it was and have a big, fancy dinner with roast beef and creamed sweetbreads in a rice ring, and two kinds of cake, birthday cake and ice cream cake, and cookies, and then they would all sit around and eat candy and talk about how they had to go on a diet. That was the worst idea for a party that Frankie had ever heard of. She’d been to a wake that was more fun than that.

She started drinking before lunch (right after breakfast, actually, but she considered it before lunch, which it was too), and then she kept on freshening her drink all day long, keeping just that nice edge on so that she could stand it here. She knew none of them liked her. She wasn’t sure they liked Everett. It was hard to tell. You were In or you were Out around here. She knew she was definitely Out. She was an outsider. All her dreams about making a rich marriage and having a lot of money seemed meaningless when she considered that she was sitting here in the middle of more wealth than she’d ever seen in her life and nobody was having a good time, least of all her.

Everett must have complained to his mother about Frankie rejecting him in bed, because one day Melissa had gotten her aside for a walk in the garden and had the gall to conduct the following conversation.

MELISSA:
I hope you and Everett are getting along all right.

FRANKIE:
Sure, why shouldn’t we be?

MELISSA:
I mean … I mean, uh, you do sleep together, don’t you?

FRANKIE
(
Very coldly
): I do my duty.

Frankie told Everett for that little caper he wasn’t going to get anything for a whole month. What did he think she was, telling his mother their own private business? They had a big, screaming fight about that, but not so much bigger or louder than the fights they often had. It was easy to fight with Everett. He really got on Frankie’s nerves. She liked the dog, Daisy, the best of anyone in their whole household. Everett had promised to bring Daisy to Windflower, but at the last minute he’d chickened out. He was afraid his mother wouldn’t pay for their plane tickets if they brought the dog. Daisy had been trained as a guard dog, and she was capable of killing an intruder, but she would never hurt Frankie or Everett. You could take a piece of meat right out of her mouth, and even though she could bite your hand off if she wanted to, she’d just look at you and wait to see if you were playing a game or what. Of course, if a stranger tried that trick he would be minus a hand. Frankie felt a kinship with Daisy. They were both alike in a way: tough, strong, loners, but trapped in life as possessions. They both belonged to Everett because he had bought them. They could both kill him if they wanted to, but they wouldn’t.

THREE

When little Hervé had just started to run around, getting into everything, Nicole had her second child: a girl, Geneviève Lucy. Geneviève was an exquisite baby, like the drawing in the baby food ads, with dimples and curls and huge eyes. Basil and Nicole brought her to Windflower that summer, to stay in their suite at Papa’s house. Hervé and Geneviève were in cribs, the nurse had the bed which had replaced the sofa last summer, and of course Basil and Nicole had the adjoining room. It was nice, everyone thought, that Geneviève and Rosemary’s little Buffy were so close in age that they could play together when they were old enough, more like sisters than cousins.

“It’s too bad poor Buffy is so homely,” Nicole said. “My Geneviève looks like a little princess. Buffy looks like a monkey. I suppose she’ll be jealous.”

“Why don’t you just shut up about it?” Rosemary snapped.

“Truth is truth,” Nicole said calmly. “She’ll find out when she’s older.”

“Maybe when they’re older Buffy will be the beauty and Geneviève will lose her looks,” Rosemary said.

“There’s always plastic surgery,” Nicole said. “In Europe they do miracles.”

“Oh, Europe, Europe,” Jack grumbled. “Why doesn’t she go there?”

That was, in fact, what Nicole was planning to do. As soon as the children were a little older she and Basil would take them on many trips to France, give them culture, keep them from being crass Americans. In the meantime, as far as summers were concerned, Windflower was beautiful, but there was no excitement there. Nicole wanted Basil to buy a house in East Hampton, on Long Island, near the beach, where they could hobnob with intellectuals: writers, painters, people in publishing and theater and the television business. Nicole would give cocktail parties for all the local celebrities and have a chance to exercise her mind, as well as take long walks on the beach and invigorating swims in the cold ocean and exercise her body.

Basil had driven with Nicole and a couple she knew, a psychiatrist and his wife, to East Hampton, where they looked at houses. Basil knew there was a piece of land waiting for him at Windflower, on the hill overlooking the lake, where he was expected to build his house whenever he was ready. But he did not want to build his house there, never had wanted to. The houses in East Hampton really appealed to him. He loved the beach, the smell of the salt water and the feel of the hot sun, the social life, so many parties, and all the small restaurants. He didn’t mind the drive. Nicole and the children could stay there all summer and he would take long weekends. Whatever made her happy made him happy, if only because it kept her from nagging him. When Nicole wanted something, she got it. But then, he wanted what she wanted; he just sometimes didn’t realize it until she had pointed it out to him. But the problem was, what would Papa say?

While Basil was working up his courage to broach the subject to Papa, Papa surprised him by bringing it up himself. Papa and Basil were taking a little stroll around the property after lunch on a balmy Saturday afternoon. The babies were napping, and Nicole was swimming her afternoon mile.

“How blue is the sky,” Papa said, looking up.

“Not a cloud,” Basil said.

“A paradise here, isn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question. “Here is your hill, Basil, where I hope someday you’ll build your house.”

“Er …”

“It takes a long time to build a house,” Papa went on. “You should be making plans. My house, it’s a big house, but it’s not big enough for two babies and a nursemaid. It’s not good, shushshush all the time. I’m an older man, I’ve had my children, now I want quiet in the daytime and cheerful noise at night, but with babies in the house it’s just the opposite. In the daytime they cry, they run around, at night they have to sleep; there’s not enough room.”

“We saw a house in East Hampton we want to rent,” Basil blurted out.

Papa nodded. He looked pleased. “So? You can stay there while you’re building your house. A good idea.”

“I … I might not build the house for a while,” Basil said.

“No?”

“Nicole likes East Hampton.”

Papa nodded again. “She might like to stay there and you wouldn’t build here?”

“How would you feel about that, Papa? Tell me the truth.”

“I think East Hampton would be good for Nicole. But you, Basil? Where do you want to live?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you’ll rent in East Hampton, you’ll see, and if you like it maybe you’ll buy there?”

“That’s what we thought we might do,” Basil said. He was surprised at how easy it was. Papa, as always, seemed to anticipate what he was going to say, and actually seemed to be encouraging him. “We’ll visit you, of course. Very often. And we hope you’ll visit us.”

“I went to the beach many years,” Papa said. “I’ve had enough with the beach. You can visit me.”

“Oh, we will!”

“Of course, if you want to live there, you’ll have to become a part of the community, make friends.”

“We already know some people who have houses there,” Basil said.

“Good. It’s a long drive, isn’t it, for you every day?”

“Nicole and the children would stay there all summer and I would take four-day weekends, or three-day weekends if you need me at the office.”

“If I need you? Of course I need you. You’ll take three-day weekends.”

Papa needed him! Basil smiled his gratitude and pleasure. “I’m always here for you, Papa,” he said.

“So, this house you like, when can you have it?”

“We were hoping for next summer.”

“It’s gone already this summer?”

“I don’t know. It was still available last week, but now it’s the beginning of June so I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong with it, they can’t rent it?”

“It’s expensive.”

“Is it worth it?”

“We think so.”

“We! We! What about you, you? Do you think it’s worth it?”

“Yes, Papa, I do.”

“You’re not poor, you can afford it.”

“Do you think I should take it this summer if it’s still on the market?”

“Why not? So late in the season maybe the price has gone down.”

“Let’s walk back to the house. I’ll call them!”