An Independent Woman (13 page)

“Oh no—no.” Barbara shook her head. “There are better books, believe me.”

“Don't sell yourself short,” he said. “Now, where shall we have dinner?”

“You leave it up to me?”

“Yes. You know such things better than I.”

“Then we'll go to John's Place, down on the Wharf, because I'm dying to have some fish and chips and crabmeat and beer. Do you like that kind of thing?”

“Very much.”

“And we can walk there, and you can tell me more about yourself on the way.”

“You're sure? I thought you might want to go to some—well, more elegant place.”

“Not a bit. I was hoping you'd agree.”

“And you want to walk?”

“Certainly,” Barbara said. “That's why I dressed the way I did. Flat heels.”

The sun was beginning to set over the Golden Gate as they started down the hill. “Downhill is worst,” Barbara observed. “It seemed I could fly down the hill when I was a kid. Now I realize that I have knees.”

He smiled. “I know about knees—knees and hips.”

“We won't talk about that. We're on a date—my first in heaven knows how many years.”

“My first ever, I suppose, and that's odd, isn't it?” He was talking more easily now. After all, he was a man who preached sermons. “I never had what you would call a date with Agatha. She was a nun and I was a priest. We worked together, and one day she said to me, ‘I think I'm in love with you,' and that's a frightening thing for a nun to say.”

“I suppose so. I never thought much about nuns”—reflecting that nunhood was the last thing she would ever try to unravel. She loved men too well. Holding his arm now, feeling the pressure of it against her breast, she realized how much she had missed this, the hard feel of a man's muscle, the strength of his body. She stumbled once and he steadied her.

They talked about the City and its hills. He had been born in Kansas, one of eight children, the youngest. Most of the others had died. “I am by eight years the youngest,” he explained, “a great surprise to my mother, a gift from God, as she put it. I never quite understood that, but I accepted it. I was too young to dispute her or anyone about gifts from God. I was educated by the Jesuits from the word
go
, and I never dreamed that there could be any other future for me. But when they sent me here—well, I knew I was home.”

“People feel that, way,” she agreed. She could not imagine living anywhere else. “They sent me east to a college called Sarah Lawrence. We had family in Boston. My grandmother was from Boston, and this was always an uncouth frontier town to her. I was sent east to learn the manners of civilization. My grandfather Seldon came around the Horn in one of those square-rigged three-masters, like the
Balclutha
—the old museum ship—and being a hard-nosed Yankee, he started a bank with the money he inherited from his father.”

How long it was since she had spoken about this to anyone! Suddenly the memories came floating back. Her father, Dan Lavette, was born in a boxcar full of Italian and Irish laborers sent west to build the Atchison spur line into San Francisco. No inheritance there.

Philip told her how he had worked as a carpenter after he left the Church, how much he and Agatha had wanted children, and how each time she had become pregnant, she lost the child.

Their verbal intimacy was explosive, bottled up for silent years, and now suddenly pouring out to each other.

They sat at a bare wooden table at John's Place and ate fresh crab and deep-fried fish and fried potatoes and drank beer, and Barbara, eating with a fine mixture of pleasure and guilt, quoted, “‘When all the rules of sloth and greed go down before the gut…'”
And the hell with it
, she thought.
I
am actually enjoying myself. I'm pigging out, and thank God I don't gain weight.

“And now you're a Unitarian pastor,” Barbara said, leading to a question she had been storing up. “How? Or have I no right to ask you that?”

“It came about. I learned to meditate, simple Zen meditation, when I was a Jesuit. I had a good teacher, and that's the great contradiction in the practice—that is, for a Catholic. The Vatican doesn't look kindly on meditation. God becomes ineffable, but both Agatha and I needed a church. You can take a Catholic out of the Church, but how can you take the Church out of a Catholic? I worked four years as a carpenter, first as an apprentice and then as a union man, basic stuff, building tract houses. I'm good with my hands, and my father taught me the art as a kid. Agatha worked on and off as a temporary, typing and office work. I got the job through Angus MacGelsie, a builder who was a member of our church. His wife, Birdie, is a Unitarian, and through her, we came to the Unitarian Society. Well, the rest followed. I had the theological background, and I took some courses, and when the minister left, they offered me the job. We're not a big order—only one church in town.”

“It's a small world,” Barbara said. “I'm glad we did this tonight. My first reaction to your letter was to say no. I couldn't face the thought of a date with anyone. Now…”

He smiled. “And now?”

“It's been a good evening.”

“Perhaps we can do it again?”

“Perhaps.”

T
HE GUESTHOUSE AT
H
lGHGATE
, to which Harry Lefkowitz and May Ling had returned to spend the night, was a small stone building, once a horse barn just large enough to hold two teams, and converted by Freddie into a pleasant home for himself and May Ling. When their child was born, a son whom they named Daniel, Freddie moved out. When May Ling took over her mother's job as Joseph Lavette's assistant at the Napa office, she took herself and her child to Sally's home in Napa. It was said that the local Napa paper had a chart pinned up with the various Lavettes and Levys, who could always be counted on for good copy; and Barbara, now the senior member of the family, had promised herself that one day she would check out this rumor, as a bit of color for her Lavette—Levy history.

Not today; today Sally had pleaded with her to come for lunch and to go over the list of wedding guests, and Barbara would have to be back in San Francisco by six, to address the Democratic Women's Club. Sally was more like a sister than a sister-in-law, turning to Barbara with almost every problem that confronted her. When Barbara entered the house Sally was in a royal rage, shouting into the phone and then slamming it down. May Ling came in from the surgery and said, “Mother, there are patients inside. For God's sake.” She saw Barbara and embraced her, and then vanished back into the waiting room.

With a perfunctory kiss on Barbara's cheek, Sally snorted. “That bastard! No time to talk to Sally Lavette. If I were Charlton Heston or Frank Sinatra, he'd slobber all over me!”

“Who, Sally? Who were you talking to?”

“Your president and mine, Mr. Reagan. When I met him at the studio, he did slobber all over me… You're so lovely, Ms. Lavette. Did you hear what happened?” she asked Barbara.

“To the president?”

“No, no. I mean at San Ysidro—just an hour ago. I heard it on the radio. Some lunatic, loaded with rapid-fire weapons, walked into the local McDonald's and killed twenty people and wounded sixteen others, and it's just the worst massacre of its kind that ever took place—can you imagine, thirty-six people shot down by one man. And I thought that if I called Reagan—my goodness, I had dinner with him, I know the man—he could go on the air and make this the end of those awful weapons. Barbara, do you know how many gunshot wounds Joe and I treated when he had his office in the barrio? Do you know what one of those weapons does at close range?” She embraced Barbara. “Oh, God, Barbara—what is happening to us? What is the world coming to?”

“Sally, Sally, whatever it's coming to, we can't do anything about it here and now. We can't help. San Ysidro is a long way from here.”

“That doesn't matter. It's all over.”

“Sally, calm down and don't eat your heart out over every obscenity. We do what we can. I'll find out about this, and I'll talk about it tonight. I'm speaking in the City—I have to leave here in two hours at the most.”

“At least you do something. You talk to people, and they listen to you. I'm locked up here in this damn house, and when May Ling leaves, I'll be in the office again.”

“You won't be. Sally, darling, you become concerned with every possible situation whether you can change it or not. Did you really expect Ronald Reagan, coming from a town where every frightened woman owns a gun, and himself the darling of the National Rifle Association, to go on the air and damn guns? No way; it's unthinkable. He just doesn't believe in gun control—or so I've heard. Now pull yourself together. What happened in San Ysidro happened.”

“I know. You're right. Let's have lunch.”

Lunch was a salad and coffee. Sally was still slender and beautiful, and like every aging film star, she lived with the hope that some producer with a long memory would call her back to work. At lunch she informed Barbara that May Ling desired to be married by a rabbi.

“Well, why not? Harry's Jewish.”

“He never mentioned it. I still can't get used to the idea that May Ling is marrying him.”

“It's time you did get used to it. And May Ling's Jewish, isn't she?”

“I really don't know how you come to that. My mother, Clair, was not Jewish, and Daddy never set foot in a synagogue. May Ling is one-quarter Jewish. I sometimes think that half of California is part Jewish, and I've heard that a rabbi will not perform an interfaith marriage ceremony. And Harry, from what May Ling says, just doesn't care, as long as she will marry him.”

“I have an easy solution,” Barbara said, smiling. “I know a Unitarian minister who will gladly marry any two people who love each other.”

“What on earth is a Unitarian?”

“Unitarianism is a religion, very open and easygoing. They say it was Thomas Jefferson's religion and Ralph Waldo Emerson's—and do you know, Sally, the man who invented the cable car system in the city was a Unitarian—and this minister is very sweet and very gentle.”

“And how do I sell that to May Ling?”

“Why don't you leave that to me?” Barbara said. “Isn't she going to join us?”

“She doesn't want to. She says the wedding is my affair. And here's the list”—pushing a sheaf of paper over to Barbara. “I have three hundred names, including couples counted as two; Harry gave me sixteen couples, which makes thirty-two, and eight more singles, forty in all.”

Barbara shook her head. “Sally, did you include the people working at Highgate?”

“Candido will take care of that.”

“Sally, you can't invite four hundred people to a wedding—you simply can't.”

“I don't have your list. I thought you would bring it with you.”

“I have twelve couples and six singles, and I haven't had a chance to ask Sam who he wants to invite. Suppose it rains?”

“It won't rain in August. You know that.”

“God knows that. I don't,” Barbara said, and added, “It did last year.”

“We'll have pavilions.”

“Did you discuss this with Eloise?” Barbara wanted to know.

“Eloise?” Sally asked innocently. “I thought I'd leave that to you.”

“Did you! Sally, when will you grow up?”

“That's an awful thing to ask me. I'm fifty-eight years old, and I think I'm quite mature.”

“Darling, I apologize,” Barbara said quickly. “I didn't want to hurt your feelings. Please forgive me.”

“Oh, of course. But you and Eloise are so close.”

“I love Eloise. She's my dearest friend. But Adam is your brother.”

“Adam washed his hands of the whole affair. He says he has enough to do running Highgate.”

“Well,” Barbara said, “if we can cut the guest list to three hundred, I'll try to sell it to Eloise.”

“Bless you.”

T
WO WEEKS AFTER HIS DINNER
with Judith Hope at the Fairmont, Freddie sat down to write a letter. He instructed his secretary, Ms. Gomez, that he was not to be interrupted with any calls or visitors.

“Dear Judith,” he wrote. “I am a wretched letter writer, so it has taken me some time to know exactly what I must say to you. To begin, what I did that evening was beneath contempt. I can't apologize, because no apology can cover or make up for my insensitivity and gross stupidity. So if you were to tear up this letter without reading any further I would understand and know that you were right to do so. I could plead for a chance to meet you for the first time all over again, but that isn't possible, is it? And I have been brooding over this part of the letter all week.” (He crossed out the last sentence.) “If only it were possible.” (He crossed that out.) “The more I think about it, the worse my behavior appears to me.” (He was going to cross that out, but after a moment's reflection, he allowed it to stay.)

“In spite of all that happened, I would very much like to see you again—if you can endure to see me. I know this is asking a great deal, and I will not blame you” (He crossed out the last six words.) “and I will understand completely if you ignore this letter. If, however, you should find it in your heart to at least” (He crossed out that sentence.) “In a few weeks we are having a family wedding at Highgate, and if I can bring you to Highgate, it will be a great thing for me. If you care to see me again, you can drop me a note as to where I can pick you up. I will of course send you an invitation.” (He felt those should be reversed, but was not sure. He tried again.) “I would not dare to ask you for another date, but we are having a family wedding at Highgate. There will be at least three hundred guests to check on my behavior. I will see that you get an invitation, because I think you may be curious to visit a winery. If I don't hear from you, I will accept that.” (He felt he had said that before, but he also felt that it might bear repeating.) “But if you are curious about the winery, you might drop me a note with your home address, so that I can pick you up for the wedding.”