Hers the Kingdom (71 page)

     "That's wonderful, absolutely wonderful." Sara could barely contain herself, and I thought for a minute that she would choke laughing. "Of course, that is it. We'll simply wait for a bit and have Willa politely give him his way, and remove the burden of capital."

     "Do you think we can, without raising an alarm?"

     "I don't see why not. Willa would be seen as the hero, giving her socialistic son what he deserves."

     "But he's such a child . . ." I began.

     "We'll wait until he's thirteen. Four more years."

     "Are you going to tell him about your legacy?" I asked.

     "Not until he reaches what I consider to be an age of reason."

     "Which is?" I wanted to know.

     "Oh, twenty or twenty-one. Then he can do as he likes with his inheritance."

     "At this point I believe he would turn it over to the Wobblies."

     "So be it," Sara said, and she was serious. "But tell me about the two of them—Kit and Porter. That always cheers me."

     There followed a lively conversation that went far into the night. I was terribly proud of the children, I must admit. The details of their lives filled mine. As we had guessed, Sally had prepared them well for their entry into formal education. Their teachers would have advanced them two full grades had I not objected. As it was, they were with children a full year older than they.

     Neither Kit nor Porter objected to the move to Los Angeles. Kit did not want to leave Willa, but she was content to come when Willa agreed to spend a few days of each month with us. And of course, we went out for weekends quite often.

     I visited with Arcadia every day, since the Señora made it difficult for her to leave the house.
Difficult
is too mild,
impossible
is closer to the truth. Joseph worried so about Arcadia's isolation.
I do believe my visits helped him as much as Arcadia. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed our hours together. Cadie has never lost her gift, which is, simply, to make others feel good. The Señora complains about my visits, I know. Almost as soon as I arrive, she begins to ring the bell she keeps by her bed to summon Arcadia. She continues ringing it throughout my visit, but I am obstinate. I will not bend to the old woman who uses her age as a weapon.

     "Her age and her station and, not least, her
fortune
," Sara reminded me, yawning. "God save the wicked queen. Let's go to bed now so I can go with you tomorrow to visit Arcadia."

Sara insisted on driving her motorcar, a dazzling cream-colored monster which had arrived on the train with her. I was thoroughly shaken when we arrived at the Señora's big house, so much so that I didn't see the doctor's carriage right away.

     Joseph met us at the door, and his face told us everything.

     "Shall we leave?" Sara asked.

     "No, no, don't do that. Come in, if you will . . . if you don't mind . . ." He was stumbling in the way he did when he was particularly upset, which is to say, not purposefully. Clearly, the Señora's time was close.

     Arcadia joined us in the dark, old drawing room. She kissed each of us in turn, holding us to her for a long moment. Her face was lined. For the first time I looked closely at her, to see that the girl had become the matron. Cadie was no longer young. The thought came to me, as well as the knowledge that it was quite out of place, that I could never think of Arcadia as anything but a girl. I wondered why that was. Perhaps because she had never married, never had children when it seemed so right that she should.

     At that moment the doctor appeared, motioned to Arcadia, and she left.

     For the next half hour no more than a dozen words passed between us. There was nothing to say, we could only wait.

     When Arcadia appeared in the doorway she had a strange, dazed look on her face. She started to walk toward us, but it was as if she had trouble finding the floor. Joseph was at her side in an instant, his arm around her as he directed her to a chair.

     "Is it over, Cadie?" Sara asked.

     Arcadia blinked and looked up at Joseph. In a voice amazingly free of emotion she told him, "Her words to me—her last words—were 'Never have children. They steal your beauty.'"

     We sat in stunned silence, Sara and I. I heard myself saying, "Come home with us, Cadie, now. Right now. Get out of this house."

     Joseph and Sara, in unison, said, "That's right." And we had her in the motorcar before she knew what was happening.

Arcadia Bandini Stearns was given the kind of burial usually reserved for heads of state, for royalty. She was that, in a way—the last of the great Californios, a symbol of an era gone long enough to be romanticized. For some, her passing signaled the end of Los Angeles' beginning. They mourned her for her beauty that was lost, for the legend she symbolized. Those of us who knew the price she had exacted from her niece, the pretty blonde namesake who had come to visit twenty-five years before, did not mourn. We felt, instead, relief.

     And yet, Cadie's grief was genuine. She had spent so much of her time tending to the old woman, her schedule had been so tied in to the invalid's, that at first she could not adjust to the freedom, the time to herself. Sara stayed on to help. Together, we talked Cadie into her new life.

     It was on a Thursday that old Mr. Kimble came to call on Cadie. I remember precisely the day, for no good reason other than it was late in the week following the Señora's death. He had been the old
woman's solicitor for half a century. She was, I suspect, the last of his clients. He climbed our porch with difficulty, crippled as he was by arthritis. Joseph knew he was coming and was waiting for him. He helped him into the house and led him to the library, where Arcadia, looking pale in her mourning dress, waited.

     After no more than ten minutes, the old man came limping out again, making small groaning sounds under his breath, as if to help the aches and pains of age escape.

     Sara and I watched silently as Joseph helped the old man out of the house and into his carriage. When Arcadia did not emerge, we went to see what was wrong.

     We found her sitting, bolt upright in a chair, an amazed look on her face.

     "What is it?" I blurted. "Tell us!"

     She began to laugh then, a terrible, hysterical laugh.

     Sara strode past me and grasped her by the shoulders. She shook her, but Arcadia would not stop. Sara slapped her then. Once. Hard.

     Cadie blinked; her eyes focused and filled with tears.

     "Do you know . . ." she whispered gulping to keep the sobs back, "do you know what it means to die
intestate?
"

     Not believing, not wanting to let myself believe, I said, "It can't be. No."

     "Oh, yes, oh, yes," Cadie said, her voice quivering. "She didn't leave a will . . . and she meant not to leave a will."

     "That means . . ." I began, but I hadn't the heart to finish. We all knew, at any rate. We all knew it meant that Cadie would get nothing at all from the Señora's estate. There were too many relatives with closer ties.

     Sara held Cadie to her, hard. I listened to the sobs wrenching out of Cadie and tried not to think. Joseph was with us by then, and I could see that he knew. The old man would have told him. He looked at Cadie, and I wish I had not seen the look on his face.

     We left them together, then. But not before Cadie had managed to tell us why she was crying. It was not the inheritance, she said. "It was that she could have despised me so . . . to want me both childless and penniless . . ."

     I avoided looking at Sara for a time. I knew her well enough to know that she would not see Arcadia as the victim of the Señora so much as she would see her as the victim of her own conflicting loyalties—her distorted sense of duty, confused by what once might have been greed but had been transformed, over the years, into guilt.

     I was not so sure. I did not think it quite so easy as that, quite so simple. All I knew was that something had been lost. At the very least, time. Youth. A chance for . . . what? I wasn't sure.

     "Cadie simply couldn't believe the old woman could be so perverse," Sara interrupted my thoughts, "that's all." It wasn't all, but I could only sigh and say that I wished there was not so much venom in the world.

     Later we would talk about it together—Joseph and Arcadia, Willa and Sara and I. Joseph would say that they were better off free of the old woman's money, that it never need taint them. And we would nod in agreement because it was the kind thing to do.

Arcadia and Joseph were married in a private ceremony in the garden at the Malibu. The wisteria was at its height, the heavy lavender blossoms formed a fragrant arch under which they said their vows. Willa and Philip stood as witness for this long-awaited day. None of us could believe it was, at last, to happen.

     I watched through a shimmer of tears. Kit held my hand, squeezing it to give me courage. Then she and Porter sent the newlyweds off in a shower of rice and rose petals. Sara had arranged a tour of Europe for the two as her wedding gift. As we waved them off, I tried not to notice how portly Joseph had become, or how faded Arcadia's prettiness.

     Late that afternoon I did what I have always done when I need solitude—I settled into a quiet little nest behind a bank of flowers in the pergola. I had been there no more than ten minutes when I found myself in the embarrassing position of overhearing Willa and Philip in the grove, close by. They were laughing—the soft, urgent laugh of lovers. I was about to clear my throat to signal my presence when I heard—or perhaps felt—the sounds of passion. It silenced me. Willa, breathless, said, "You can't have marriage fever, Philip—I won't allow it. Tell me you're not a sentimentalist after all."

     "But think of all we could do if we were married," he answered.

     "What that we can't do now?" she wanted to know.

     "Travel. We could travel together if we were married."

     "We can travel together now, Philip," she told him. "You can tell everyone I'm your old Auntie."

     "Damn you," he said as clear as day. "Damn you, Willa, for being a silly woman after all."

     "Not silly," Willa told him. "Never silly. Impulsive, perhaps. Mistaken, often. Practical, sometimes. But not silly. My life is set, Philip. I belong here, right here on this ranch. So long as you want to be here with me, so long as you want to share my bed, you will. And when you want to go, you will go."

     "Not 'whither thou goest' then?" Philip said.

     "No," she answered.

     And he said, "I see."

THE YEARS BETWEEN 1912 and 1919 saw us in the townhouse I had purchased in West Los Angeles. I selected this location because it was close to a very good private school. Fortunately, as it turned out, it was also close to the public high school, which Porter was to insist upon attending.

     My journals for those years are filled to overflowing with the mementos of growing children—piano recitals and school plays, letters written from a trip East with Willa one summer, notes included in birthday and Christmas gifts . . . and photographs, many of them out-of-focus, of the twins in front of the Ferry Building in San Francisco, the twins on horseback in Yosemite Valley, the twins at the beach . . . all the happy litter left over from their growing years. Good years they were, too. The children were at the center of my world and I reveled in being their guide on the journey through childhood.