The LeBaron Secret (54 page)

“Lawyers are paid to be upset,” she says.

“That's a rather cavalier attitude to take. But typical. As it turned out, the business at hand was carried out in a matter of minutes—after we'd all cooled our heels for nearly an hour, waiting for you.”

“I know. Eric telephoned me and told me what happened.”

“I see. You'll take telephone calls from Eric, but you won't come to the phone for me, or even answer my letters. I can see which side my bread is buttered on, as far as Miss Melissa is concerned.”

“I'm sorry, Mother. I was certain that there'd be ugliness at that meeting, and I just didn't want to get involved in it.”

“Well, it's water over the dam now. I notice that you still call me ‘Mother.'”

“Force of habit,” Melissa says.

“I see,” Sari says. “Well, state your business. I have a busy day ahead of me. Turning over the reins to Eric isn't going to be a simple matter. What can I do for you? But if it's mothering you want, remember you've got a new mother now.”

Melissa uncrosses her legs. “Yes,” she says. “Just as I've suspected for years. I've suspected she was my mother for years.”

“What made you so suspicious, pray?”

“Oh, little things. The resemblance in the portraits, for one thing. The way she used to try to take over the mothering of me from you when I was a little girl, for another. Little hints and hunches. The way she sometimes used to look at me, for instance.”

“I see.”

“Now, of course, I'd like to know who my father was. Do you know?”

Sari hesitates. “Joanna never told me,” she says. In a literal sense, this is the truth.

“I know there was a Flood boy she used to date—Jimmy Flood. But he's dead now. Could it have been him?”

“Joanna would never tell me,” she says again. “This is a matter you must take up with her. But if she wouldn't tell me, I doubt she'll tell you.”

“Then I thought it might be Lance's father. But then I found out she didn't even meet him until after I was born.”

“That's true. He was from Pasadena.”

“Perhaps I'll never know.”

“Perhaps—not,” Sari says.

“Of course, she may not even know herself. If she was sleeping with more than one man at the same time, how would she know for sure?”

“If that were the case, she probably wouldn't.”

Melissa sighs. “Well, if you don't know, perhaps nobody knows.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Well, the other thing I wanted to tell you is that I'm going to be moving out,” Melissa says.

“Moving out?”

Now, this is something that Sari is totally unprepared for, and at first she is not certain that she heard Melissa correctly. “Moving out from where?” she asks.

“From here. From this house. From my apartment downstairs.”

“But—why? That apartment is to be yours for the rest of your life. It's in my will. Whatever happens to this house after I die, that apartment is to be yours for as long as you like.”

“I don't want to live here anymore. After all, we're not even related to each other.”

“That's not true! You're—” But she stops herself. “Are you planning to move in with Joanna—is that it? Because I'm quite sure Joanna won't take kindly to having a middle-aged spinster daughter move in with her, no matter what her legal—”

“I'm not planning to move in with Joanna. I've found a lovely apartment on Telegraph Hill—a view of the Bay and both bridges, terraces—Michael Taylor is going to do it for me.”

“But you've always lived with me, Melissa!” Sari says. “Why are you doing this to me now? Why?”

“I'm not doing anything to you, Mother. I'm doing it for myself. It's time—”

“Time for what?”

“Time for me to move on. To be out on my own. My life is more than half over, and it's time I figured out what I'm going to do with the rest of it. The first thing I'm going to do is have a house of my own.”

“Do these plans have something to do with young Mr. Littlejohn?”

“No. Maurice Littlefield was a lost cause, I'm afraid. He'll be leaving San Francisco tomorrow.”

“Then why? I don't understand.”

“It's just something I have to do.”

“Something you have to do. That's not a reason. Is it something I've done or said to upset you? The rent you pay—a hundred dollars a month—you could never find anything as cheap as that anywhere else in the city. Where else could you—”

“It has nothing to do with money. I have plenty of money. And when I get my share of Lance's stock—”

“You may have to sue him to get that, you know!”

“No, I won't have to sue him. Lance and I have talked, and he wants to do the right thing. There's no disagreement between us. It's just a matter of transferring shares from one account to another.”

“What about the dividends for all those years? Dividends since nineteen fifty-five. You're entitled to those, too, you know! Those—plus interest.”

“I know. But I'm not going to ask for that.”

“But that's foolishness! You're throwing away millions and millions of dollars! Your lawyers are fools if they let you do that!”

“I don't want to send Lance to the poorhouse, Mother.”

“Why not? To hell with Lance! It's your money. You're entitled to half his dividends since nineteen fifty-five, plus interest.”

“Well, I don't want any of it. I happen to be rather fond of Lance.”

“Rather fond! Rather
too
fond, if you ask me—if you recall a certain episode a number of years ago!”

“Oh, Mother,” she says wearily. “That's another thing, another reason. I'm tired of all that.”

“Tired of what?”

“Tired of Thomas spying on me, and reporting back to you on every move I make. Tired of having my letters steamed open and read.”

“I don't know what you're talking about!”

“Don't you? A letter that's been steamed open, and then sealed again, looks a little different from a letter that's never been opened. I've seen letters like that often enough to know what's going on here.”

“That's ridiculous! If Thomas has done anything like that, I shall speak to him and have him put a stop to it.”

“And having people like Archie McPherson sent out on fishing expeditions with me, to find out how much I know about this or that. I'm tired of all that, Mother. Tired of it, and ready to make a life of my own.”

“It's just that you were always a special child, Melissa. We always felt that you needed to be treated with special care. Please don't go, Melissa …”

But what, you may well ask, is going on here? Over the years, Assaria LeBaron—to close friends and confidants such as Gabe Pollack and Thomas—has managed to convey the impression that having Melissa living under the same roof with her has been something of a burden, a personal cross she has had to bear. You might think that Assaria LeBaron would heave a great sigh of relief that Melissa wants to move out, and yet here she is begging her to stay. Is it possible to become dependent on one's burdens? This is a tricky question, but the answer is yes.

“Special,” Melissa says. “For years I knew I was special, but I didn't know why. I didn't know who I was, and no one would tell me. Now that I know who I am, I want a life of my own. It's as simple as that.”

“It won't work,” Sari says. “I know you, Melissa. You'll be terribly lonely. Before you know it, you'll want to come back. In just a few weeks, you'll begin to miss this house and want to come back. Wait and see.”

Melissa smiles. “We'll see. But meanwhile I'm not going that far away.”

“Then why go at
all?
If you know you're going to come right back?”

“I don't think I
am
going to come right back, Mother.”

Now Sari hesitates again. She is running out of arguments with this difficult child. Finally, she says, “This house wants you to stay. It was built for you, you know—built for me to raise you in.” But on this issue the White Wedding-Cake House, which sometimes seems to speak to Sari, remains noncommittal, ambivalent. Then Sari says, “But what about me? I'll be all alone, rattling around all alone in this big house, with no one to talk to, nothing to do—not even an office to go to anymore. All alone, getting older, all by myself—”

“Am I such fun to be with, Mother? Every time we're together, it seems we end up in a fight.”

“Does it always have to be that way?”

“It's like a bad habit that can't be broken. We're like positive and negative electric charges.”

“But do we
have
to be like that? Couldn't we try to be friends?”

“Maybe a little distance between us will help.”

“Oh, please don't go.
I'm used to you, Melissa
.”

“Used to poor, difficult, temperamental Melissa? I should think you'd be glad to see me go.”

“I'm not. I'm devastated.”

“I know I'm no rose to live with, and I know I was an exceptionally difficult child.”

“No. Not always. Sometimes, perhaps. But not always.”

“And I know why I was. Would you like me to tell you?”

“Yes!”

“After all those head-shrinkers over the years, I think I finally learned something. I know exactly what was behind that brattish, monsterish, nasty little girl who insisted on wearing funny glasses, who pretended to be frightened of the Sutter Buttes, who wouldn't eat—”

“You lacked self-esteem, someone said.”

“It wasn't that. It was because of you and Daddy. I always knew that there was something terribly wrong between you and Daddy. But I didn't know what it was. Now, of course, I do. But I used to think to myself, if Melissa LeBaron is a good little girl, and does everything she is supposed to do, and is always Little Miss Merry Sunshine, there'll be no reason for Mother and Daddy to stay together, will there? If Melissa is no problem, it will be easy for them to go away from each other, get a divorce, and then I'll lose them and be all alone—sent to a foster home or an orphanage. But, I thought, if Melissa is a bad little girl, if Melissa is a
horrible
little girl, their worry about that horror will hold them together like a kind of glue.”

“When you were little, and would ask me to tell you a story, I'd always say, ‘I have two stories—one about a good little girl, and one about a bad little girl.' You always wanted the one about the bad little girl.”

“I got very good at being a bad little girl, didn't I? I'd think: Whenever they think of separating because of whatever is so wrong between them, one of them will say to the other, ‘But what will we do about Melissa? Melissa is such a problem to herself that she can't be left alone.' And so I made myself the problem, the unsolvable problem, that would force you to stay together, and the minute one problem was solved I'd think up a new one for myself. And it seemed to work. And all the time I told myself: If Melissa is a good little girl, they'll say to themselves: ‘We can separate, we can divorce, because Melissa is no problem.'”

Sari reaches out now and touches Melissa's hands, which are folded in her lap. “Now, look, Melissa,” she says. “We're not quarreling now, are we. We're talking like two sensible adults about things we should have talked about for years. We're talking like two friends. So don't move out. Stay with me. I need you.”

“And then you had your accident, and I thought: Good, he can never leave her now. He's responsible for what happened to her, and his guilt will make him stay. She's too dependent on him now—he'll have to stay. You see, he was the one I was afraid would go away and leave us. I loved him so—this father who turns out not to have been my father at all. Perhaps that was why he never seemed to love me back. Who was I? Nothing but his poor sister's illegitimate child, whom you and he had been forced to raise.”

“I think Peter loved you very much,” Sari says.

“And then he killed himself.”

“A hunting accident—that was the coroner's verdict.”

“Nonsense. He never hunted. In fact, I think I killed him.”

“What in the world makes you say that, Melissa?”

“I think I killed him as surely as if I'd pulled the trigger. Do you remember how he never seemed to like to look at me? Do you remember how he never seemed to want to speak to me? He seemed to treat me as though I were some sort of terrible family mistake—and I guess I was. My presence almost seemed to embarrass him. That summer of nineteen fifty-five we were all at Bitterroot, and the twins were coming home from camp in the East, and we were all excited—at least I was. It was only two weeks after your accident, and the doctors were still saying that they thought you'd be able to walk again. Everyone was trying to be optimistic—why did I choose that moment to be hateful? I was a grown woman then and should have known better than to do what I did, but perhaps my badness had become a habit. He was going out one morning, to cut down more of his trees, I supposed, and I said to him, ‘Daddy, are you excited that the twins are coming home?' And without looking at me he said something like, ‘Of course I am.' And then I said to him something like, ‘Why are you always so happy and excited to see the twins, but never happy and excited to see me?' He said nothing. Didn't answer me, and wouldn't look at me. And so I asked him the question again, and still he wouldn't answer me. And then I suddenly got angry, lost my temper, and I said to him, ‘What kind of a father are you, anyway? You tried to kill her, didn't you? Even if she's not my real mother, you tried to kill her. What kind of father would try to kill a person? I hate you.' And that was the day he did it.”

Sari says nothing. There is, of course, a piece of green blotting paper in the Regency games table that she could show her, the handwriting on it so faint and faded as to be almost illegible. But Sari decides to keep that secret to herself.