An Independent Woman (22 page)

“That's great. Poor Eloise was worried so about the wine. Everyone who knows Adam will drink red, but I imagine a good many will want white. Seventeen thousand—”

“You can check with other caterers.”

“We already have. You have a deal, Mr. Cohen.”

“Just give me the date, and I'll send the contracts out tomorrow. I'll need a five-thousand-dollar advance.”

Barbara couldn't wait to call Eloise, and when she told her the details, Eloise sighed with relief. “But do you trust him?”

“If I'm any judge of character, yes. Call Glen Ellen or Mondavi—I'm sure they've used him. And tell Freddie I'm paying the five thousand deposit. He has enough with everything else. And, Eloise, if I'm not wrong, you don't have to lift a finger. They'll even move the chairs and tables.”

T
HE LUNCH AT
H
ARRY'S OFFICE
the following day was another matter entirely. When Eloise objected to Barbara's paying for any of the cost, Barbara won easily. Eloise was never a good contender, and Barbara showed up for the lunch still glowing with her successful arrangements. The glow spread only to Philip, who always glowed when he saw her. Harry was glum and apologetic. “I don't know how I had the nerve to drag you over here. I charge three hundred an hour for stupidities not worth listening to, but I'm desperate. You don't mind talking while we eat?”

He had put out a platter of corned beef and pastrami, Jewish rye bread, and a bottle of wine.

“Of course we'll talk while we eat,” Barbara said.

“It goes the other way in business meetings, but this isn't a business meeting. It's about Danny.”

“Danny?” Barbara asked, puzzled.

“Small Danny. May Ling's four-year-old son. I never had children of my own when I was married. It broke my wife's heart, but she had a condition that prevented conception. I always wanted children, and when Freddie agreed to my adoption of Danny, I was delighted. May Ling wants to have another child, and I can't tell you how happy that would make me. But Danny hates me.”

“Oh, come on,” Philip said. “Four-year-old children don't hate.”

“I've tried everything,” Harry said. “Toys, the circus, icecream sodas. Every time I try to take his hand for a street crossing, he pulls it away and says—” Harry shook his head.

“Go on,” Barbara said.

“I don't want to offend you.”

“We can't be offended, Harry,” Philip said gently. “We're here to help—in any way we can.”

Harry sighed and said, “He pulls his hand away and says, ‘Fuck off, you creep.'”

A long moment of silence, and then Philip asked, “Those words?”

“Exactly.”

“Have you discussed this with May Ling?” Barbara asked.

“How could I? The child is the center of her life. How could I repeat those words to her?”

“He's in nursery school?” Philip asked.

“Yes. And he watches television.”

Philip nodded. “It's 1984,” he said. “I can offer one thing, Harry. Children of that age don't hate. Not in the sense that we understand hatred.”

“Then what is it?”

Philip looked at Barbara inquiringly, and she said, “Go ahead, Philip. You're better at this than I am.”

“All right. I can offer two guesses, anger and fear. The anger because he thinks you're taking his beloved mother away from him, as well as his father. He can't understand divorce, and I wouldn't try too hard to explain it. Does he know that you intend to move him to San Francisco?”

“I imagine he does.”

“Then that's the fear part—to be separated from the house he knows and the children he knows.”

“He's not happy here in San Francisco.”

“Those words he uses are meaningless. He picked up the phrase somewhere—it's everywhere today. Does he ever say it in front of his mother?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“At least he knows that it's forbidden.”

“Then, for heaven's sake, what do I do?”

“The first thing I'd do is discuss it with May Ling. Then don't press too hard. Listen to what May Ling says; that's important. I would suggest that both of you take him to Highgate as much as you can. Let May Ling, if she agrees, stay with him at Highgate until the wedding. He can see Freddie whenever he wants to, and let him see you and Freddie together as friends. That should change things and help with his fears. May Ling, I think, should explain about the phrase as much as she can. It's amazing how much a four-year-old can understand. Give it time.”

They went on with their lunch and talked more about the problem, and when they left, Harry was a less troubled man. Outside, Barbara said to Philip, “You're very wise about some things.”

“Not all things, believe me.”

“I didn't say ‘all things.' I don't want to boost your ego out of sight, now that I'm beginning to love you. But you never had children.”

“No, we never did. We wanted them desperately, but it was no use. We could have adopted children, but we felt that childlessness was our punishment, and we accepted it.”

“Oh, come on, Philip. You're a Unitarian minister.”

“So I am. Not a very good one, but still I am. Does that mean I shed my belief in God?”

They were at the garage now. Barbara handed over her tab for the car, and while they waited, she studied Philip thoughtfully. He was a handsome man, she decided, in spite of the sharp Irish nose—the Kennedy nose, she called it—and his lined sunken cheeks. He walked with no stoop, and his hands were untouched by the brown spots of age. Did she love him, or was she simply grateful that she would not have to spend the last years of her life alone? Love was to be felt for children and men—and most men remained children until they were worn and old. He was not worn and old, and she felt a great tenderness for him. She often thought of his wife, the nun who had left the Church for the love of a man, and she wondered whether she could have done that, whether she was capable of that kind of love. She was firm in her beliefs; all her life she had fought against oppression and human degradation—spitting into the wind, she called it, a phrase that she got from her father. Two nights ago she had spoken to a group of women, a newly formed group of Bay women in support of Geraldine Ferraro, trying to convince them that the choice of Ms. Ferraro for vice-presidential candidate was the most important event in the feminist struggle, pleading with them to understand what this choice meant, and wondering why there were so many faces unmoved and unchanged.

Philip had said that he was not sure what he believed. Barbara knew what she believed.

When the car emerged from the garage, Philip reached into his pocket to pay the fee. Barbara did not protest. She had decided that, meager though his funds were, she must allow him to pay for their restaurant meals and whatever other expenses they incurred. A decent man was a decent man, but still a man. As for going abroad for their honeymoon, as they planned, she would deal with that when the time came.

In the car, she said to Philip, “Why have you never asked me whether I believe in God?”

“That's a deeply personal question. I don't ask people whether they believe in God.”

“I'm not people. I'm going to be your wife.”

“For which I thank God. You see, Barbara, the Buddhists have a saying: If you see the Buddha, kill him. That's not to be taken literally, but to Buddhists the Buddha was a man—no different than other men, only wiser—and if you think you see the Buddha, you are a victim of illusion, because God—or what we call God—is ineffable. I believe that all human beings believe in their own definition of God, and for me it is not definable.”

“And for most of us here in America, the definition is money,” Barbara murmured.

“If you want to be cynical. I don't think you're cynical.”

“I don't know,” Barbara said. “My father, who was careful never to set foot in a church except when he went to a funeral, believed in decency, and that was enough for him. I was baptized in Grace Church, and every time I took communion after that, until I was sixteen, I could only think of the musty smell. When I was doing the story in El Salvador, where I saw men and women and children murdered by the death squads the CIA had set up and trained and armed, the same death squads that had murdered Jesuit priests and nuns and a Catholic bishop on the altar of his own church, I said to myself that God is for others but not for me. I've lived my life very well believing in the decency of most people and the indecency of the few.”

“Then that's your worship,” Philip said after a moment. “I would not try to convince you otherwise.”

“But you still think I believe in God?”

“It doesn't matter what I think. I'm absolutely content with you just as you are.”

T
HE WEDDING FINALLY CAME ABOUT
—not in a month, as Sally had planned, but early in September. The day was cool and clean, a day made to order for a festival in the Valley. Barbara, who almost never wore white, had only one white pleated skirt and two white dresses, one of them being her wedding dress from her marriage to Carson Devron. It was a lovely and expensive dress, and it still fit as well as the day she first wore it; but it brought too many memories with it, and she could not bring herself to wear it. She tried the pleated white skirt, but it was silk and to wear it with a blouse was simply wrong, and anyway, it was too short. The other white dress was of cotton, made in India, and she had bought it a decade ago for forty dollars; the cotton was fine and full, and the skirt was double, and the simplicity of it pleased her. Certainly she had no desire to distract from May Ling's beautiful bride's dress. She decided for the India cotton, rejecting any thought of buying another wedding dress that she would wear only once. Even if she could not predict the future, she was absolutely certain that she would never marry again; and Philip, seeing her in the white cotton, decided that she and the dress were absolutely wonderful. Philip wore a white jacket and a black bow tie, as did most of the men who were present. The female guests, sheltered under broad white hats, presented a dazzling display of color.

The parking lot was overwhelmed, and cars were parked for a quarter of a mile up and down the Silverado Road. It was the beginning of harvest time, and the vines were loaded with ripening grapes. The two pavilions, striped in pink, stood on the spacious lawn—two full acres that Eloise had successfully fought for and prevented from being plowed up for vines. A forty-by-forty dance floor had been put down, and Candido's gift to the bride was a seven-piece Mexican band. Instead of flowers each table had a centerpiece of ripe, luscious grapes. Mr. Cohen and his crew and his two trucks had arrived at ten, and by the time the guests began to appear, 420 chairs had been spaced on the dance floor, with an aisle in the center for bride and groom. The chairs overflowed onto the lawn, which Eloise did not mind at all. May Ling and Sally, who was in lemon yellow and white and very much the former film star, were properly secluded in the main house, but Barbara, who had no intention of playing the bride's game in this, her third marriage, was part of the reception team; and for the first time she met Judith Hope.

Afterward, when Freddie asked what she had thought on meeting Judith, Barbara replied that Judith was magnificent—and that this description was not an exaggeration. Wearing flat, silver-embroidered shoes and wrapped in a pale pink sheath, under a broad white straw hat, she stood a trifle more than six feet, escorted by Freddie in a white dinner jacket, his blond hair making a dramatic contrast to hers. Eloise, wearing her best light blue, felt dwarfed, speechless for a moment, but then pulled herself together and said, “Welcome to Highgate, my dear,” and then went up on her toes to kiss her, an arrangement that Judith thoughtfully helped by bending and embracing Eloise.

Freddie was relieved. It went better than he expected. Adam, in a jovial mood, stood tall enough to kiss Judith's cheek, while Eloise was thinking that Judith was wearing the same perfume Freddie always gave
her
at Christmas, and which he must have bought for her.

“And this,” Freddie said, “is my aunt Barbara, who writes books and gets involved in wars and revolutions, and who runs Gloria Steinem a close second in the women's movement—”

“Freddie,” Judith said, “I know very well who your aunt is, and I'm delighted to meet her.”

“And I've heard a great deal about you, Judith, and I'm glad to finally meet you”; and with that, Barbara kissed Judith and embraced her. Philip, standing beside Barbara, nodded in agreement and gave his hand to Judith, and said words to the effect of how good it was for all of them to be here on this happy occasion.

Birdie MacGelsie couldn't wait to get Barbara away from the receiving group. “This is more important,” she declared. “Who is she, and where did Freddie find her?”

“I believe he found her in the Fairmont Hotel. Her name's Judith Hope.”

“Well, what is she? Come on.”

“She's a woman. Isn't that obvious?”

“Barbara, don't play games with me. I've known you too long. She's gorgeous. Is she in films?”

“She's a model, Birdie. I can't stand here talking. I'm a hostess here. Poor Eloise is overwhelmed.”

“I should think so. Is Freddie going to marry her? Is this for real?”

“You'll have to ask Freddie.”

“I must meet her. Hello, Philip,” she said belatedly. “Congratulations.”

But it wasn't easy. Judge Horton had already staked out his ground, as a companion in color, and others moved in around Judith and Freddie.

Barbara sighed and turned back to the arriving guests, and Philip wondered whether they shouldn't seek the same seclusion that was granted to May Ling.

“Absolutely not. You have a dozen people from the church whom Eloise does not know, and there are others, and I will not leave her to this alone.”