The Last Princess (22 page)

Harry didn’t know what to say, what to do, where to look. Jennifer walked toward him seductively, wrapped her arms around him, and held him close.

In spite of himself, he felt himself harden. Then, before he knew it, Jennifer had pushed him to the bed. She kissed him all over with desperate passion.

Harry couldn’t restrain himself. Few men, at that moment, could have resisted Jennifer’s wily charms.

When their gymnastics had finally subsided, Jennifer straddled Harry. “You’re going to make me a star, aren’t you, Harry?”

Harry smiled weakly. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do anything after tonight.”

“Oh, yes you are,” she said, stroking him gently. “Come on, roll over.”

But the magnitude of his folly was beginning to sink in. Harry got out of bed and put on his robe. He lit a cigarette and walked to the window, filled with deep self-loathing, as well as disgust. How could he do this to Lily? Lily, whom he loved and had so recently left.

He looked back at Jennifer, lying suggestively on the bed. The tempting blonde-bombshell starlet. The successful novelist and Hollywood novice. God, even the cigarette was cliché. Yet here he was, living the whole thing.

Jennifer broke his reverie. “Well, what will it be tomorrow? My place or yours?”

The suggestion riled Harry. “Look, Jennifer. You’re a very lovely, desirable young woman. But I am a married man. Anything between us, aside from work on the movie, ends here.”

“Married man—ha!” she laughed. She got out of bed and tried to wrap herself around him.

“No.” The vehemence in Harry’s tone was directed more toward himself than at her. “No, I mean it. I am a married man. I don’t play around.”

Jennifer eyed him quizzically. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

He nodded silently.

Shrugging, she smiled insouciantly. “Well—it’s been fun. See you at the studio.”

After she had gone, Harry drained the cold bathwater. He turned on the shower, as hot as he could stand, and stood under it, scrubbing himself as though he could wash Jennifer’s touch away.

A
T LONG LAST THE
script was done. The studio was ecstatic with the first rushes which had been shot even as Harry was completing the script. He had adeptly transferred the impact of his prose to the screen. The moguls planned to have the film ready by December. It would be their biggest release. The buzz in the industry was that the studio had a blockbuster in the making. All the signs—stars, script, direction—pointed to a record success.

At long last Harry returned to The Meadows. The day after he came home, he sat at breakfast with Lily. It was a beautiful morning and he felt at peace with the world. The recollection of the night with Jennifer had faded to a benign memory. He assuaged his guilt by telling himself that her advances had been utterly unsolicited. She had seduced him, and after that night he was as good as his word: The only relationship he had with her was a professional one.

Retreating from the memory of that fateful evening, Harry embraced his family all the more. “Darling, it’s wonderful to be home,” he told Lily. “I want you to cancel the kids’ summer camps. I don’t want them to go away. And I especially want Jeremy home.”

“But Harry, you said that he needed to go to summer school.”

“Well, forget it. I want him home this summer. I haven’t seen the kids in six months and I want to try to make it up to them a little.”

But when Lily called Jeremy, she was startled to hear him say, “No, Mom, I really need this extra tutoring.”

“Oh, no you don’t, honey! As far as I’m concerned, you’re doing just fine in school. And your father is very anxious that you come home.”

“Dad wants me home?”

“Of course he does, darling. He hasn’t seen you for months and he misses you.”

After struggling through a few years at Deerbrook, Jeremy had managed to get into Exeter. He well knew he needed summer school to give him a head start. And although deep down he still loved his father and craved his approval, the long years of striving in vain to meet Harry’s expectations had chastened his feelings. Since going to Deerbrook, Jeremy had retreated into himself. He had turned from an open, confiding child, to a quiet, withdrawn boy who kept all confidences to himself, not even sharing his fears with his mother or with Drew.

Drew, for his part, was extremely unhappy at having his plans for summer camp scotched. He had been headed for a special baseball camp and was hoping that with the extra practice he might make pitcher.

But of the three of them, Randy was the most disgruntled. Cousin Randolph had invited him to spend the entire summer with him, and now Harry’s insistence that they spend the summer as a family had dashed his hopes and plans.

Melissa was almost as upset as Randy.

Pouting, she complained, “All my friends will be at camp, having loads of fun. I’m going to miss everything.”

Lily tried to soften the blow. “We’ll have a lot of fun here, too, Melissa. It’s not too often that we have Daddy around.”

At that, Melissa brightened a bit, a plan beginning to form in her mind. “Will he take me to New York for lunch at Delmonico’s, and buy me a doll house as big as Amy’s?”

“I’m sure he will if you ask him, darling.” Lily smiled. She was so thrilled at the prospect of having Harry and the children all together at home for the summer that she would have promised anybody anything at this moment. At last her dreams were coming to fruition and the family life she had dreamed of for so long was becoming a reality. But as the summer began, Harry and Jeremy started things off on the wrong foot by arguing about his grades from Deerbrook.

“You say I’m right,” Harry shouted, “but you don’t ever seem to do anything about it!”

Lily put a cautioning hand on Harry’s arm. “Don’t badger him, Harry.”

Impatiently he shook it off. “Lily, this is between me and Jeremy. All right, son, what do you have to say for yourself?”

By the time the evening was over, the tone of the summer was set.

Drew was livid over Jeremy’s distress, while Randy retreated to his room and Melissa was in a sulk because Daddy hadn’t yet promised to take her to Delmonico’s.

Harry had been full of plans for excursions and outings, but the sullen atmosphere dimmed his own enthusiasm and the children’s as well. They didn’t want to go on any family picnics, or even out to Coney Island. And they rebelled against every other suggestion Harry made.

Still, remembering Lily’s admonition, Harry persevered. He held his tongue even at the times he was sorely tempted. Come July, the family set off in the big Chrysler station wagon for two weeks in Nantucket, full of high hopes.

But the trip fast turned to fiasco. After two days of constant bickering, Harry exploded. “This is it! We’re going home; pack your bags.” The moment they arrived home, he went straight to his round tower study, and closed and locked the door.

Lily was sick with disappointment. What would it take to get this family together? After wrestling with the subject for days, resisting the urge to face Harry with recriminations, she could hold back no more.

“Harry, I want to talk to you about the situation between you and the children.”

“What about it?”

“You were the one to disrupt their plans, just so that you could see them—but after a few tries at being Daddy, you shut them out and went back into your ivory tower—all because you couldn’t stand the stresses and strains of fatherhood.”

“You’re blaming me for the fact that they answer back to me and argue?”

“Harry, you’re half the problem.”

“How so?” he asked angrily.

“You have to try to interact with the children. They’re not just to be ordered about and controlled. You have to show a little understanding.”

“When have I not been understanding, for God’s sake?”

“Well, you weren’t very kind to Jeremy.”

“Oh, so we’re back to that again.”

“You must have noticed how withdrawn he’s become.”

“Because of me? Lily, you have a problem—you don’t understand that your children are growing up. You’ve indulged them so much that they expect the world to cater to them!”

“Harry, you’re far too hard on Jeremy. You always have been.”

“Jeremy’s starting to become a man. He’s quiet because there are things he doesn’t care to share with us.”

“Doesn’t that trouble you?”

“Not at all. I didn’t run home with every little thing to Mom and Dad when I was that age.”

“You and he are different people, Harry!”

“Lily, you’ve always had this idea that children need constant love and attention. Well, maybe what they need is a little more discipline and a little less coddling!”

“It doesn’t help to criticize them constantly.”

“Dammit, I try to be the best father I know how. And if that doesn’t suit you, Lily, then that’s just too damn bad!”

Abruptly he switched off his bedside lamp, pulled up the covers, and shut his eyes.

By the time Lily woke up the next day, Harry was in his study, working with a feverish compulsion, and the door remained closed for virtually the rest of the summer.

After Labor Day, Drew and Randy were off for Deerbrook Academy. It came as no surprise to Lily that, unlike poor Jeremy, the younger boys were actually eager to leave home.

Lily was apprehensive about the coming departures but she comforted herself with the thought that Melissa would still be hers. But to her utter shock, her daughter had other plans. “Amy is going to Miss Parker’s, and I want to go, too!”

“But Melissa, darling, you don’t want to leave Daddy and me, do you?”

Melissa was defiant. “The boys get to go to boarding school. I should too.”

Lily was saddened to the point of depression by the prospect of losing all her children at once, but the three younger ones headed off to their new schools without so much as a backward glance. Only Jeremy seemed to share his mother’s unhappiness. His somber face haunted her as he stood on the steps at Exeter, his arm forlornly upraised in what she took to be his wave farewell.

Inwardly Lily wept. This should have been the most memorable summer of his life—the last of his childhood—and he had spent it knowing himself to be a failure in his father’s eyes.

No, Lily could not forgive Harry, and there was cold silence in the car as they drove back from New Hampshire.

A
S THE FALL TURNED
to winter, Lily gradually fell into a state of resignation. Harry remained his sometimes cantankerous self; life with him was the way it had always been. Lily resolved to make the best of it. At least the children weren’t around for Lily and Harry to quarrel about.

Harry began a new novel, one that obsessed him with the same passion he’d given the Archie Sanger trilogy. The plot was complex because of its generational and geographical sweep, but for Harry the key to its appeal was its Israeli setting. He had never overcome his guilt for marrying outside his religion, and the idea of describing the birth of the new Jewish state haunted him day and night. It was all he thought about from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep. The deeper he became involved in developing the plot, the more he realized that he would never succeed without help. Until now, though he had occasionally tried hiring researchers, he had never been satisfied with their work, or so he said. In truth, researching was a feature of his writing that he cherished, and he never trusted anyone to do as thorough a job as himself. But this new project was of such epic proportions, he was forced to concede that he could not do it alone. Reluctantly he hired Gloria Williams, a middle-aged woman, to serve as his typist, and Rafi Jacobs and Anthony Bart as researchers. These two had worked on De Mille’s
Cleopatra,
as well as the film version of
Archie Sanger
.

With the children gone, Harry found the peace and tranquility he had so often longed for. He looked forward to delving into his work and relished the thought of a quiet house.

But Lily found the silence oppressive. With no career and no real hobbies of her own, she had little to occupy her time. And with Harry locked up with his new novel, she found herself lonelier than ever. She began to wonder if she’d made a mistake in devoting herself exclusively to her family for so many years.

One evening, when Harry asked if they might invite Ellis up for the weekend, she was thrilled at the prospect of a guest. The next Friday afternoon found her waiting in the driveway for Ellis’s Bentley.

“Oh, Ellis! I’m so glad to see you!” she cried when at last he arrived.

Ellis beamed. “God, Lily, it’s been too long. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t seen you all summer. How have you been?”

“Just fine, Ellis,” she said, mustering a smile.

“The boys got off all right, I presume. I understand that Melissa put up a fuss to get to go away to school, too.”

“How did you know?”

“Harry told me.”

“I wasn’t sure he’d noticed,” she said, stopping herself before she said something she’d regret. “Just leave your bags and I’ll have Joe come out and get them. Let’s sit on the terrace and have a drink.”

Cocktails in hand, they watched the lengthening shadows in silence. Now that Ellis had a chance to look at her more closely, he was a little concerned.

Lily seemed to have lost a good deal of weight, but more than that, her enthusiasm seemed to have vanished, the light in her eyes had dimmed. She was still beautiful, still charming and gracious—but some of her old spark, that electricity he’d felt the first time he’d met her, was gone.

Ever since that night of the housewarming, he had suspected that there were problems. But whenever she spoke of Harry, she never hinted at what the trouble might be.

Ellis decided to broach the subject. “You miss the children, don’t you?”

“Terribly,” she sighed.

“But it’s more than that. I can tell.”

“Oh … I hate to burden you with my problems.”

“Lily, I told you a long time ago that if you need a friend, I’m always here. Now what’s troubling you?”

“Well, Ellis … I don’t know. It’s just that Harry works so hard. He’s so consumed by what he’s doing—”