Where Love Has Gone (14 page)

“But the Robinson house isn’t my kind of thing. I’ve been over the whole layout. The land.

Everything. It’s nothing special. No matter what you do it’s just another house.”

“It’s not just another house. They’re willing to spend a couple of hundred thousand on it. That means at least ten thousand in fees and commissions for what amounts to a few weeks’ work.”

“It’s not the kind of house I want to build,” I said stubbornly.

“That’s why I want you to have a department. You’ll be able to concentrate on what you do want to do. But the client will be happy, too, just knowing that you’re around.”

I reached for a cigarette. His idea had merit. Maybe it would work. There was something I wanted to try. More in my line. “What do you want me to do?”

“First, call Mrs. R. and let her know that you’ve found time in your busy schedule to work on her house.” He got to his feet, he had what he come after. “Then check with my secretary and we’ll set a date for lunch to talk over your plans.”

I watched the door close behind him. I knew that if I waited to eat lunch with him I’d be lucky if I didn’t starve to death.

I walked over to my drawing board. I’d been working on a sketch for a giant-sized bathroom and dressing room, off the master bedroom. The house was for the president of a local bank. I’d sketched out a Finnish style bath with a sunken tub six feet wide and eight feet long.

It was big enough for the whole family at one sitting and I wondered if that was what the lady of the house had in mind. There were two of everything—his and her shower stalls, washbasins and toilets, all complete with gold hardware. All that was missing was a sterling silver bidet and the only reason for that was that no one had thought of it. Yet.

Yet. That was the key word. Suddenly my whole life rolled out in front of me. Years and years of bathrooms like this. My claim to fame. Carey builds the greatest bathrooms.

It was too much. I pulled the sheet from the drawing board and crumpled it up and went down the hall to George’s office. There was no point in waiting for a lunch that would never take place to find out what would never happen.

His secretary held up a warning hand as I came into the outer office. “Mr. Hayden’s on the

telephone.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, walking past her into his inner office.

George was just putting down the phone. He looked up in surprise. “What is it, Luke?” he asked testily. He didn’t like anyone walking in unannounced.

“Did you mean what you said?” “Of course, Luke.”

“Then why can’t we talk about it now?” He smiled at me. “This isn’t the time.”

“How do you know?” I asked. “You don’t even know what I have in mind.”

He looked at me steadily. He had no answer for that. After a moment he waved me to a chair. “Exactly what do you have on your mind?”

I dropped into the chair opposite him and fished out a cigarette. “Low-cost homes. Mass production on a basic design that could be used three ways to vary the monotony of a large-scale development. The houses would sell in the ten-, eleven-thousand-dollar range.”

He nodded slowly. “You’d need a lot of acreage to make a thing like that pay off.”

I had thought of that. “There’s eighty acres off 101 near Daly City. It would be just right for it.” “Sounds like a good idea,” he said. “Have you got a builder for it?”

I looked at him. “I thought it might be something we could do.”

He was silent for a moment, his fingers playing with a pencil on his desk in front of him. “You’re forgetting one thing, aren’t you?”

“What’s that?”

“We’re architects, not builders.”

“Maybe it’s time we branched out. Others are doing it.”

“I don’t care what the others do,” George said. “I don’t think we should. As architects we’re reasonably free of financial risk. We collect our fees and we’re out. The builder has all the other headaches.”

“The builder also makes the big money.” “Let him,” George said. “I’m not greedy.” “Than I take it you’re not interested?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said that under the present circumstances we shouldn’t do it. Of course, if you should come up with a builder who was willing to underwrite a project like that, we’d be more than happy to accommodate him.”

I got to my feet. I knew the score. He did too. There wasn’t an architect in the country who would turn down a job like that. It would be worth a hundred and fifty thousand in fees alone. “Thanks,” I said. “I kind of thought that would be your answer.”

He stared up at me. His voice was deceptively soft. “I just had a thought, Luke. I think you should make up your own mind exactly what you’d like to be—an architect or a builder.”

It was as if the lights suddenly came on in a dark room. George was absolutely right. I remembered the reason I had studied architecture in the first place. Because I wanted to build things. Then I became so involved with the practice that I forgot the purpose. To build. That was it. To build homes that people could afford to live in.

George didn’t understand my sudden happy smile. Maybe he even thought I was being sarcastic, but if he did he was completely wrong. I had never been more sincere in my life. “Thank you, George,” I said warmly. “Thank you for making everything so simple.”

The news made it home before I did. My mother-in-law and Nora were waiting for me. “I see George didn’t waste any time,” I said.

Nora’s face was frosty. “You might at least have discussed it with us before you quit.”

I walked over to the sideboard and poured myself a bourbon. “What was there to talk about? I’d had it. Up to here.”

“How do you think it will look?” Nora asked.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, taking a sip from my drink. “How do
you
think it will look?” “They’ll think it’s an outright insult to Mother and me,” Nora said angrily. “Everyone knows

what we’ve tried to do for you.”

“Maybe that’s why it didn’t work.” I looked at Nora’s mother. “I didn’t intend it as an insult. It was my fault. I let myself be rushed right into it when I got out of the Army. I should have taken a little time, looked around, decided what I really wanted to do.”

She looked at me calmly. “Was that why you refused the stock?” “Perhaps. Though I didn’t know it then.”

“What are you going to do now?” Nora asked.

“Look around. Get a job with a builder and learn something.”

“What kind of a job do you expect to get?” she asked sarcastically. “Seventy dollars a week driving a bulldozer?”

“I have to start someplace.” I smiled at her. “Besides, what different does it make? We don’t need the money.”

“So all you want to be is a common laborer? After all the trouble I went to to get this house just right, so you could make a reputation.”

“Let’s stop kidding ourselves, Nora. It wasn’t my reputation that you were considering. It was your own.”

She stared at me for a moment, then raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “I give up.” She turned awkwardly and stalked out of the room.

I watched her leave. Despite her pregnancy she hadn’t gotten very big. She had watched her diet carefully; she wasn’t going to allow pregnancy to ruin her figure. I turned back to the sideboard and

freshened my drink. When I turned around, my mother-in-law was still standing there.

“You mustn’t pay too much attention to Nora. Pregnant women are apt to be more emotional than logical.”

I nodded. That was as good an excuse as any. But I knew my wife well enough by now. Pregnant or not, she wanted her own way.

“George mentioned that you had some idea about a building development,” she said. “Tell me about it.”

I dropped into a chair. “What difference does it make? He won’t do it. It’s against policy.” She sat down opposite me. “That doesn’t mean you won’t do it.”

I stared at her. “I’m not kidding myself. I don’t have that kind of money.” “How much do you have?”

That was easy enough to answer. After I paid out the seven thousand for the boat I’d bought in La Jolla, I had exactly nineteen thousand left. Fifteen thousand was from the insurance on my father, the rest I had saved from my Army pay.

“Would you put all your money into a project like that?”

“Sure. But it would be only a drop in the bucket. The land alone would cost two thousand an acre. That’s a hundred and sixty thousand dollars right there.”

“The money is unimportant,” she said quietly. “I could arrange for the money.”

“Uh-uh.” I held up my hand. “I don’t want your money. I’d only wind up in the same boat.”

“Now it’s you who are being foolish, Luke. You’d take the money if it were a total stranger’s, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s different. That would be pure business. Personal relationships would never enter into

it.”

“Our relationship has nothing to do with it,” she said quickly. “You believe in what you want to

do, don’t you? You’d expect to make a considerable profit.”

I nodded. “If it works out the way I think, there could be as much as half a million profit.” “I don’t object to making money.” She smiled. “Why should you?”

Her logic was faultless. Besides how could I argue against my own desires? I bought the land the next day. Two days later Danielle was born.

I had a few bad moments because she arrived almost two months ahead of schedule. But the doctor told me there was nothing to worry about, the baby was absolutely perfect.

I hadn’t seen many babies before but I had to agree with him. Dani was the most beautiful baby in the world.

12

__________________________________________

The sounds of night were different now. There was always the soft whisper that seemed to come from the baby’s room next to our own. Occasionally she would cry in the small hours of the morning and we could hear the shuffle of the nurse as she gave her a bottle and then the soft crooning of her voice as she held Dani while the baby drank herself back to sleep.

Unconsciously I fell into the routine and began to listen for the sounds in my sleep, finding reassurance in their regularity, knowing that everything was normal. It was different for Nora.

Nora came home from the hospital tense, high-strung and nervous. The slightest sound in the night would wake her. I knew something was going to happen but I didn’t know what. I could sense it in her mood. Something in her was lying just below the surface, waiting for the final provocation, and I was wary, determined not to give it to her.

I moved through the days carefully, hoping that in time the mood would pass. But I was only kidding myself and I realized it the moment the lamp on the night table flashed on one morning at two o’clock.

I had been out in the field all day with surveyors. The air and the excitement had slugged me to sleep but suddenly I was wide awake behind my closed eyelids. I came up, still pretending sleep. “What’s the matter?”

Nora was sitting up in bed, her back propped against the pillows, staring at me. “The baby’s crying.”

I looked at her for a moment, then, still not letting her see I was fully awake, swung my feet off the bed. “I’ll go see if everything’s all right.”

I got to my feet into my slippers, pulled on my robe and went through the door into Dani’s room. The nurse was already there, holding Dani in her arms, giving her a bottle. She looked at me, her eyes startled in the soft nightlight of the nursery.

“Mr. Carey.”

“Is everything all right, Mrs. Holman?”

“Of course. The poor little thing was just hungry.”

I walked over and looked down at Dani. Her eyes were already closed and she was sucking on the bottle contentedly. “Mrs. Carey heard her cry,” I said.

“Tell Mrs. Carey not to worry. Dani’s just fine.” I smiled at her and nodded.

“Dani was just hungry,” I said as I climbed back into bed and turned off the light. I turned on my

side and lay there for a few minutes, waiting for her to speak. But she was silent and sleep was heavy on my eyes.

Then the light came on again. I climbed up the tricky ladder of wakefulness again. “Now what’s the matter?”

Nora was standing at the far side of her bed, a pillow and blanket clutched in her arms. “You’re snoring.”

I stared at her without answering. I felt like a punchy fighter who has been congratulating himself on avoiding his opponent and suddenly finds himself on the wrong end of an opponent. There was no way of avoiding the fight now. Suddenly I was angry. “Okay, Nora,” I said. “I’ll give up sleeping. What else do you want?”

“You don’t have to get nasty.”

“I’m not being nasty. You’ve been looking for an argument for a long time. Now, what do you want to hang it on?”

Her voice rose. “I was not looking for an argument!”

I glanced toward Dani’s room. “You’ll wake the baby.”

“That’s just what I thought!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “You always think about the baby before you do me. Every time the baby cries, you’re in there worrying about her. You never worry about me! I don’t count, I’m only her mother. I’ve served my purpose!”

There was no arguing with that kind of stupidity and I made the mistake of telling her so. “Don’t be stupid! Turn off the light and go to sleep.”

“You’re not talking to a child!”

I raised myself on one elbow. “If I’m not,” I said, “then stop acting like one!”

“That’s what you’d like, wouldn’t you? You’d like nothing better than having me here all day to wait on you both hand and foot whenever you chose!”

I laughed. The whole idea was so completely ridiculous. “I know you can’t cook,” I said. “So how would you wait on us? I’ve never seen you do so much as warm the baby’s bottle, much less feed her.”

“You’re jealous!” “Jealous of what?”

“You’re jealous because I’m an artist and an individual. All you want to do is subjugate me, have me play second fiddle to you like an ordinary housewife.”

I lay back wearily. “There are times, I must admit, when I find the idea appealing.” “See?” she crowed triumphantly. “I was right!”

I was exhausted. “Put it out and come to bed, Nora. I’ve got to get up early and go out to the project.”

“I’m going to bed all right,” she said. “But not in here! I’ve had all I can stand of your snoring