Family Secrets (65 page)

She wondered sometimes what good it did you to be a writer. If you stayed home and wrote books you never saw anyone, and if you went to Hollywood to write a movie a lot of stupid people with big egos tried to take your work away from you and make it theirs, destroying it in the process and so destroying you. And always at the back of this problem was the more basic one, the pull of her family, the phone calls, the letters, the demands to come home, the questions: What was she doing that she couldn’t do at home? It had been the same every time she went to Europe. There were her parents at the airport when she came back. “Well, I’m glad you got that over with,” her mother would say, as if she’d been suffering in London or Paris or Rome, instead of having a wonderful time. Her mother seemed to think that “they” were forcing her to go away, her wicked publisher, her wicked agent, all the “exploiters,” tearing her away from her family and sending her off to some foreign country to work too hard. She didn’t need the money. Fame only made life more difficult. Why did she go away? She couldn’t explain because she hated herself for having to defend something that shouldn’t have to be defended: her right to have a free adult life. So she let them think she was being overworked and exploited. It was easier for them to accept and understand.

There was no one at Windflower for Buffy to be with this summer, no one near her age that is, and she spent all her time training, sprinting down the long gravel driveway. Whenever there was a track meet on TV she watched it. She had a crush on a Russian Olympic star now, whose name was Yuri, and she bought everything written about him she could find. She wondered if he spoke any English. He was twenty-one; she was fifteen. He competed not only in the Olympics but also in the Nationals, and traveled all over the world. If she were a runner she might be able to meet him. She fantasized about this meeting, dreamed of him, and was relieved to read that he had no special girlfriend. Russian runners were allowed to compete for years, until they were too old. Yuri would always be somewhere where she could follow his triumphs, worship him, and know he might someday, somehow, be accessible.

Richie and Gilda were in Israel. He felt it was important to see the holy land of his people, every bit of it. He had wanted Gilda to work with him on a kibbutz, but she had refused, and so they were touring the country instead. It was very quiet at Windflower with them gone. No one had company. Everyone was subdued, sad. This big, beautiful place—it seemed such a waste that the young people weren’t here to enjoy it, to sit on the porch at night and watch the sunset, to swim in the pool, to make the tennis court ring with the sound of volleying balls and shouts and laughter. The Japanese gardener watered and rolled the en-tout-cas court regularly, hoping it would be used, and sometimes Rosemary and Jack went down to use it, playing more slowly now, not running around, hitting the balls directly to each other. Jack complained constantly about the expenses, but he and Rosemary were really the only ones who got any use out of the facilities. The family had finally given in and gotten a heater for the pool. But Jack kept turning it off to save money, so no one would go in, even Buffy. As for the electric bills, they stayed the same because Jack couldn’t seem to understand the principle of a thermostat that turned the heater off when the water was comfortable enough, and the amount of power needed to heat a pool from scratch. The Japanese gardener/caretaker was confused by all this turning on and turning off, so he stayed away from the heater entirely, confining his pool care to vacuuming the pool.

Herman came up for three days, looking grayish and not well. His doctor had warned him to diet and cut out his cigars, but he was not a good patient, preferring to enjoy himself. He refused to take a vacation and sit around Windflower, and rushed right back to Florida. As far as anyone knew, Herman had never taken a vacation. He and Hazel had never been to Europe, or even to the Catskills. When they were together in Florida they still went out every night. During the summers, it was Hazel who had the vacation, sitting in Windflower and feeling sorry for Herman, who was working so hard in the hot Southern summer. But Herman loved being in Miami Beach, going out, seeing his friends. Three days at Windflower was the most he could stand.

It was Rosemary who answered the telephone when the doctor called from Florida to tell Hazel that Herman had had a stroke and was in a coma. Hazel flew right down to Florida, Rosemary with her. You couldn’t let her go alone, and Rosemary as The Good Soul insisted it was her place. Jack stayed at Windflower with Buffy, waiting to hear what would be. Meanwhile, Lavinia and Melissa tried to find Richie, who was somewhere in Israel. They first tried all the big hotels, and luckily managed to find him registered at one of them. They had wanted to phone him, to spare him the full brunt of the shock, but he was never in. Now the doctor in Florida said Herman was dying. Poor Hazel! Poor Richie! What a mess! At last, in desperation, Lavinia and Melissa sent Richie a cable.

“
COME HOME. YOUR FATHER IS DYING
.”

And Richie cabled back: “
I CAN
’
T. I HAVEN
’
T SEEN MASADA YET
.”

Richie and Gilda came back in time to attend to Herman’s funeral arrangements. No one in the family could understand Richie, the religious fanatic, so cruel, so heartless. Slowly, they were turning against him, pushing him out. He’d better be nice to his mother now; he was all she had. Why couldn’t he stay put like a normal person?

Hazel was sad and bewildered by the speed with which her happy life had fallen apart. First her father had been taken away, then her husband. But she still had Richie, and she insisted that he and Gilda move into the big house in Florida with her. There was so much room, and it was so lonely. Richie agreed, but he was not pleased with the arrangement. He and Gilda went out to dinner nearly every night, and instead of spending time with Hazel they spent time with each other. He refused to sell the little house Herman had bought for him and Gilda to live in, which still was only partly furnished and not really half as nice as Hazel’s house. He went to his father’s office to attend to his business, and discovered that he was now even richer than he had dreamed.

The farmland which Herman had bought so long ago for Richie was now valuable real estate. Miami was expanding, bigger and bigger. Richie’s Farm was worth twenty million dollars. Richie was the richest person in the whole family. He didn’t see any reason why it should change his life. He had always lived well. Gilda went out and bought a set of plastic-upholstered living room furniture for their house. She said it was easy to keep clean. She didn’t demand a fur coat or diamonds. She wanted to travel, to have an interesting life. That was what Richie wanted too. He didn’t know what to do with his mother. She and his father had had a million friends when his father was alive, and now it appeared that they had only been business friends. The house was empty. No one came to visit Hazel. The wives had all been just wives of Herman’s friends; they had not been her friends. Day and night Hazel sat in her lonely big house and waited for friends to come to visit her, to console her in her bereavement, but only one or two came, and only once, as a courtesy. Letters poured in, but no one telephoned, no one invited her anywhere, no one came to see her. Gilda was getting annoyed with Hazel, who got on her nerves. She had never known anyone like Hazel before. Hazel kept following her around. That woman was going to drive her nuts!

Since they would be stuck here for a while anyway, Richie and Gilda decided to start their family. Gilda became pregnant more easily than she had expected, considering that she’d been on the pill and she thought that threw something off for a while, and as soon as she was pregnant she insisted that Richie let her live in her own house again. Richie agreed. He promised his mother he would visit her every day, or at least phone her, and he and Gilda moved back into their own small house. After all, a pregnant woman needed peace of mind, and his wife and future child came first. He was the man of the family and he had to take care of them.

That winter, after some thought, Paris asked her mother if she and Rima could rent The Big House at Windflower for the following summer. Lavinia called a family conference and they agreed. It seemed a waste to have the house stand empty, lonely and depressing, and as long as Paris was willing to pull her own weight in the financial department, why not? Lavinia bought sheets and blankets and towels and moved the furniture around, trying to make it more cheerful. She was so relieved to have her daughter back again that she would give her anything.

“Don’t worry about the laundry,” she told Paris, “I’ll pay for it. And I’ll get a cleaning woman to come once a week and I’ll pay her too.”

“She can come during the week when I’m not there,” Paris said.

“You’re only coming
weekends
?”

“I have to work.”

“You can work in the country. No one will disturb you.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“Ahh? Who is he?”

“Just no one.”

“But he must be someone.”

“I mean he’s no one to get excited about.”

“Then why can’t you come to the country?”

“I’m not that unexcited about him.”

“Oh, you!” her mother said, and laughed.

Paris had felt her grandfather’s presence with her ever since he had died. Sometimes, in California, she had wondered if he was there too, and she had talked to him in her head. Some people had told her she was living in James Dean’s bungalow and it was haunted. She knew that if anyone haunted it, it was her grandfather. She knew he was in his house, too. There was no Heaven. If someone died, he lived on if the people who lived on remembered him. She thought he wouldn’t mind that she was using his house. Her life style wasn’t exactly his, but he would understand. She hoped The Big House wasn’t jinxed. It was silly to be afraid. Still, there was a certain amount of respect due to it. She wondered what the dead expected of the living, and was glad her mother had moved the furniture around and that the family had taken so much of it away, because it helped the house to look different.

TWO

There were two sides of the pool again, one for the family and the other for Paris and her peculiar friends. Reports went back up the hill to the two houses—someone had taken the top off her bikini, they’re all wearing costumes and making a movie, someone went down to the deserted lake and took all his clothes off, there are motorcycles in the driveway. Jack bought a high-powered telescope and spent his weekends spying on Paris’ freaks. “She’s breaking her mother’s heart,” he told Rosemary again and again. “She ought to be sent back to her parents’ house and her friends kicked out. Poor Jonah and Lavinia. They’re prudes, but this is too much for anybody.”

The first summer there were just Paris and Rima and the nice Jewish boy Paris was trying to get to marry her, a thirty-six-year-old bachelor whose attention span never lasted longer than six months and whose interest in Paris was now purely platonic. He and Rima loathed each other. Rima told Paris he was a faggot because all Don Juans were repressed homosexuals, and he told Rima she was a trollop because she was going with a married man. Whenever he was in the room, Rima left it delicately, with her nose in the air, like a cat. The only place they were forced to be together was in the dining room at dinner, and it was there he told his same old funny stories over and over and neither Paris nor Rima laughed. Paris wondered what she had seen in him, and supposed it was just her own stubbornness. She still couldn’t stand to be rejected; she had been brought up to believe a girl was ruined forever if she had an affair, and even though she knew it was nonsense because she had seen so many of her friends first live together and then make it legal, she couldn’t shake off all the guilt even with the analyst’s reassurance, and so part of her felt she should marry every man she went to bed with. She’d seen those marriages too, the arranged-by-guilt ones, and she knew they didn’t work. It was difficult to be living in this time, to be a mature young woman in a time and place where everything was changing except your past indoctrination.

The second summer it was more or less open house. Paris’ friends were in the theater, or on the fringes of it. Actors whom Buffy recognized with delight played tennis on the court, and later got drunk in the kitchen. Hairdressers in black leather came roaring up on huge motorcycles, and as soon as they were in the driveway in front of The Big House they immediately dismantled their bikes and cleaned each part lovingly and then put them together again. It was not an uncommon sight to see a man all dressed in black leather roaring through the woods on a giant motorcycle, with a girl in a tiny bikini on the seat in back of him, her pale white skin gleaming in the leafy darkness of the woods, like some ethereal forest creature, all vulnerable. She usually got covered with scratches and poison ivy. She was never Paris.

One weekend a psychologist, two hairdressers, and an assistant district attorney all dropped acid in the living room and one of them freaked out for a few hours. Paris, who never touched acid, comforted him.

Paris was always cooking huge meals and Rima was always washing mountains of dishes, and no matter what the guests were or weren’t doing, no one was having the orgy the family suspected they were. Paris didn’t think it was strange that she hardly knew these people. Some of them she knew better than others, some were regular visitors, one was always her own special boyfriend. She liked having a lot of people around because it made it easier to entertain them. They could entertain each other. Every evening she played cards for hours, but never for money. They usually played Hearts. She had renamed it Hate. You could get all your hostility out by ganging up on one person, usually the one who annoyed you by playing the slowest. She had made a rule that if anyone brought strangers with them they also had to bring food. The house was filled with things like caviar and spaghetti. Sometimes someone brought a dirty movie up from the city and they rented a projector and showed it on a wall. Everyone laughed and made catcalls.