Family Secrets (16 page)

Lazarus had decided that for their honeymoon he and Melissa should go to Dr. Kellogg’s Health Farm in Battle Creek, Michigan, a veritable winter wonderland, where he could hopefully gain a few pounds and Melissa could lose a few. She had rather dreamed of seeing Niagara Falls, but they could do that some other time, and after all the work of preparing for the wedding she supposed she would need a nice rest.

It would be a beautiful wedding, a glamorous reception, a sensible honeymoon, and then they would come home and move into their very own apartment, within walking distance of Papa and Mama’s house. What girl could possibly ask for more?

EIGHTEEN

Adam was well satisfied with Melissa’s marriage. She had always been a giddy girl, too pretty, too wild and immature, and he was glad she had chosen an older man who would take care of her and help her settle down. Other fathers were sometimes jealous of the men their daughters married, but not Adam Saffron; he was too secure in his position of patriarch of the family. A family was like a pyramid, with the father at the top. Since Adam believed much more in the equality of women than most men did, he did not feel that the husbands of his daughters should be higher on the pyramid than their wives; no, they should be equal. But of course his sons should be ahead of the daughters, for the simple reason that they would run the family business and carry on the family name, thus if any of the daughters should remain unmarried, or marry a man who turned out to be a disappointment, the brothers would always have the responsibility and the means to take care of her. This was natural. The sisters would love each other and care for each other and for each other’s children, as sisters should, but the boys would bear the burdens of the outside world.

Adam had been watching Jonah Mendes paying court to Lavinia, and it amused him. He liked the young fellow. Jonah had guts, he would not give up even when Lavinia flaunted her other boyfriends in his face, but Adam knew that Lavinia liked Jonah the best and was simply making up her mind. She was like him: she tested things and people, she knew what she wanted and how to get it, but she was patient, stubborn, and careful. She was also unlike him, because she was a girl: she did not trust her own instincts in a split second as he did. She felt something, but had to make sure. This was not a bad trait. Adam knew that once Lavinia had decided, she would be as a rock. Like him.

It did not disturb Adam that Jonah Mendes was poor. The young man was intelligent, and he had a future. It was no disgrace to be a school teacher; it was an honorable profession. It was to the disgrace of the school board or whoever was in charge that teachers were so poorly paid. Scholars never made money. They were supposed to eat air, and feed their children air. Never mind; if Jonah was serious about Lavinia, and if she decided to accept him, then Adam could take him into the family business. He would do well. It would be good to have three sons to help him instead of two. He was doing better every year, and there would be plenty for them to do.

Jonah was so persistent it was funny. He telephoned Lavinia every time she had a date with someone else, and kept her on the phone while the other fellow waited. And then, of course, Jonah took Lavinia out every time she would let him, even though he had no money to spend on her. Adam was sure Lavinia liked Jonah the best, because she seemed happier just taking a walk with him or sitting in the living room talking with him than she was going out someplace fancy with anyone else. Young people today thought they were so intellectual. They could sit for hours talking about themselves, their plans and dreams. In his day you didn’t waste time telling a girl about those things. Genug! Who had to sit and talk? Talk was cheap.

Well, his Lavinia was a special girl, and she deserved a special man. Adam hoped she and Jonah would get on with it.

“Papa,” Lavinia said finally, “Jonah wants to talk to you.”

“So? Then I’ll talk.”

“But first I want to talk with you.”

“All right,” Adam said pleasantly.

“I would like to marry him.”

Adam nodded. “Good.”

“I wouldn’t do it without your approval.”

“You want my approval?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“You love him?”

She actually blushed. “Yes, Papa.”

“He loves you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I approve.”

Lavinia beamed. “I’ll send him in.”

Jonah entered Adam’s study and Lavinia tiptoed out, shutting the door behind them. Jonah was respectful but not frightened. He had—this was strange, Adam thought—a kind of great affection about him: a warmth, almost a love for him just because he was Lavinia’s father. Most young men were ready to respect a father-in-law, or even fear him, and sometimes to hate him and fight with him, but this young man was ready to give his love. He was too good. He would learn hard lessons in life. He was lucky to have Lavinia, for she would protect him with her caution, just as he would warm her with his recklessness.

“I would like your permission to marry Lavinia,” Jonah said.

“Yes, I know. But you will have to understand a few things first.”

“Yes?” Eager, earnest, he would understand anything, even the impossible to understand.

“Lavinia is a very stubborn, strong girl,” Adam said. “She has to have her way. If you marry her and you don’t give her her way you will never be happy. She’ll drive you crazy.”

“Then I’ll give her her way,” Jonah said.

“There is the matter of religion,” Adam said. “You know Lavinia is not religious. Not
without
religion, you understand, but not religious. She will not be Orthodox.”

“I know.”

“She will not keep kosher.”

“I know.”

“You are ready to accept these things?” Adam asked.

“If it makes her happy.”

“Will it make you unhappy?”

“I can accept it,” Jonah said.

“Then you have my permission and all my good wishes,” Adam said.

Ah, how the boy beamed! He looked impatient to run out of the room and tell his beloved the good news. Adam was not ready to let him go yet. “I have a proposition for you,” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Give some thought to coming into the business with me. There would be a place for you. I can use a man who is good with figures.”

“Thank you. I’ll think about it.”

“You don’t accept right away?”

“No, sir. I’ll have to think about it, and discuss it with Lavinia.”

“Good, good. And call me Papa. Sir, it’s for the Army.”

“Thanks, Papa. I
was
in the Army, you know.”

“Oh? You fought in Europe?”

“No, I was lucky. They kept me here. They said: ‘Oh, you’re a school teacher? Then you must be smart. So you can drive the Colonel around on his motorcycle.’ That’s their idea in the Army of what to do with a smart man.”

Adam laughed. “You knew how to drive?”

“No. But I learned on the motorcycle.”

Then they both laughed, and Adam shook Jonah’s hand. “You’ll have dinner with us tonight.”

“Thanks, Papa.”

“You don’t have other plans?”

“No.”

“It’s Friday. You don’t have to go to temple tonight, go home to your parents and light the candles?”

“I have to, but I won’t,” Jonah said. “I want to be here.”

“Consider us your family too,” Adam said.

“Thanks, Papa. I do already.”

“So go, go. What are you doing here with me when a pretty girl is waiting for you?”

Jonah fairly ran out of the room. Adam smiled. Love … well, it was good. Lavinia had chosen well. It might seem a strange choice to someone else, but he knew better.

He sat at his huge desk and took a key from the top drawer. Then he unlocked the bottom side drawer, the one where he kept secret papers of a financial nature which were no one’s business but his own. Among them was a folder, and he took it out, his fingers holding it tenderly. It was Adam Saffron’s dream.

Adam had had this dream for many years now, kept it to himself, planning to make it come true some day. All his life, ever since he was a small boy in Russia, there had been two needs battling each other in him: the need to seek out new frontiers and the normal need for family love, companionship, and security. The need to find new frontiers had triumphed. When he had gotten a ride on a farmer’s wagon to the big town when he was only nine and small for his age, to live with strangers just so he could go to the good school there because he was already beyond his own small village school, his parents had been as proud of him as they were concerned. They knew he was different and they accepted it. They understood man’s need to better himself through education. And when his education had shown him even finer frontiers, across the ocean, Adam had gone to America. He was eighteen, and he knew that he would never see his parents again, that the moment he stepped on the ship he would be swept into the next generation, a man. A man … and alone. When he married and his family grew, and he busied himself with his work and later what became his financial empire, Adam still remembered the sad pain of loneliness he had felt as a child, always driven to succeed, to find, to build, and yet longing for closeness and home. The two seemed so incompatible, but Adam determined that someday he would have it all, the frontiers conquered, the warm family all around him. The All was in this folder he held in his hand.

In the folder were the blueprints for four elegant, comfortable houses, to be built someday somewhere deep in the country, near enough to New York so that he could drive to work every day, but far enough away so that there would be peace, quiet, and beauty. Four houses. One for him and Lucy and any of their yet unmarried children. One eventually for the boys and their wives and children. Two eventually for the four girls and their husbands and children. Little Rosemary was only sixteen, but she wouldn’t be sixteen forever. A family should stay together. Please God he would have the money to make this dream come true. Someday they would all be together forever, in such a place of beauty and bliss that it could truly be called a paradise.

Adam took out a fountain pen and carefully, on the plan for one of the houses, he inked in four names. Melissa and Lazarus. Lavinia and Jonah.

In a week or two, when the excitement died down over the engagement announcement and a date was being discussed for the wedding, he would suggest that Lavinia be a June bride. Jonah would have the whole summer off, being a teacher. He wouldn’t be able to afford much of a honeymoon. Perhaps a weekend in the mountains somewhere. So Adam would suggest that Lavinia and Jonah take a small cottage with Melissa and Lazarus, for the summer. He, of course, would help, if needed. It would be nice for the four of them to get to know each other better as couples and it would make the finances possible. Lazarus could go back and forth to the city, and then he could take the month of August off. Doctors could do anything they wanted to.

He put the blueprints back into the folder and locked the folder away in the drawer. Dreams should not be exposed too soon. They had to be handled gently.

NINETEEN

That summer the two couples had their first beach house together: Melissa and Lazarus, Lavinia and Jonah. It was actually a cottage, tiny, with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a minuscule porch surrounded by screens and shaded by awnings. On the porch were heavy white wicker chairs with flowered cushions, and outside the house purple and violet hydrangeas bloomed. A sandy path led the four blocks to the beach and the ocean. But you could hear the ocean from the house, and if you stood in front of the house you could see it. Lazarus and Jonah braved the icy water—Lazarus because it was good for him, Jonah because he enjoyed it. Lavinia and Melissa hated both the sea and the sun. Melissa’s skin was too fair and delicate to bear even five minutes on the beach, and she had never learned how to swim. Lavinia had learned to swim at college, but she was afraid of jellyfish, the undertow, and whatever mysterious creatures or castaway garbage lurked out there in the waves.

Besides, Melissa was pregnant. She was doing well, only a minimum amount of morning sickness, and she felt secure with Lazarus around to protect her and her own obstetrician in the city less than an hour away. She spent her days lolling on the cool porch, taking care of herself and the unborn child. She had hardly gotten used to the idea of herself as a wife, and now she had to get used to the idea of herself as a mother. It seemed funny now that only six months ago she hadn’t even known where babies came from. Oh, she knew how a pregnant woman looked, she’d seen enough of that. But what did men and women do together to make babies anyway? She hadn’t known until her wedding night, when she and Lazarus had gone to their bridal suite, and as she was sitting there, quite nervous, Lazarus had sat down next to her and told her gently that there was nothing to worry about. He knew that she hadn’t the faintest idea of what people were supposed to do on their wedding night.

“Now, Toots,” he’d said, “I’m not going to jump on you. First I’m going to tell you everything you ought to know. Now, you mustn’t be embarrassed, because I’m a medical doctor as well as your husband.”

And then, slowly, simply, patiently, he had told her everything he felt she ought to know. And then he showed her. Melissa was very happy. She’d had no idea it was so nice. No wonder no one ever told her anything. They were obviously afraid she might go out and do it! And of course, if she’d done it, she might have had a baby, which would have been dreadful with no husband. So here she was, a woman of the world, and a mother-to-be, rocking on the little front porch of her summer beach cottage, thinking up names.

Adam and Lucy had taken a larger house four blocks away, right on the ocean front. Hazel and Rosemary were with them, and Basil, and Andrew commuted with Papa every day in the car to his summer job in the family office. It was a huge, white, airy house, good for Mama’s lungs with all that ocean breeze blowing in the open windows and a fine, big lawn to sit on, protected from the wind by a sea wall. They had brought the two maids, Lena and Letty, twin sisters from Poland. Lena cooked and Letty cleaned, and both of them were trying to learn English.