Judith Krantz (71 page)

“Oh, shit,” Valerie said, flinching at the validity of Jazz’s words.

“Jazz, you’re so horrible!” Fernanda wailed.

“Oh, I know, Fern, there’s something almost … almost irresistible about so much money. It’s hideously tempting. It’s practically impossible to turn away from it. Or rather from the
idea
of having it. The reality would make freaks out of us. Father loved us all too much to allow that to happen to us … but he made an absolutely awful will, his love didn’t protect him from that.”

“But I thought that … 
more
 … would mean something wonderful!” Fernanda wailed.

“Like what?”

“Oh, damn it, Jazz, I haven’t been sitting around planning how to spend it. I just think it’s so thrilling and glamorous to finally really be an heiress, and now you’re trying to take that all away from me.”

“No, no! I’m not. We
are
heiresses … we’re the only Kilkullens left. Nothing can change that, Fernie. In his will, Father said he believed that we’d know what to do with our inheritance. He must have had faith in our wisdom—even though that will certainly didn’t make it easy for us.”

Jazz looked from one of her sisters to the other, forcing them to make eye contact with her, to hear her words and know the truth of them.

“When I think of how anxious he always was to tempt you to come out here to visit, when I think of how much he missed both of you while you were growing up, so far away, and how sad he was when you had to leave each time, it breaks my heart. The only time he ever felt justified in insisting that you come out was for the Fiesta. Otherwise he could never beg; he was too proud to show you how he really felt, and it was exactly that same stubbornness that made him refuse to sell a single acre. Because of Dad’s particular character, difficult as he could be at times, we’ve inherited a big, beautiful stretch of California … a part of the country that has become valuable beyond belief, simply because of its location. What matters … desperately … is how we decide to use it, what we do with it.”

“Jazz, you’re making a speech,” Valerie said, almost sighing, “and I hate having speeches made at me.”

“I can’t help that, Val. I have to say my piece now because there’ll never be another chance. Listen to me a little bit longer. Remember, I said that if it didn’t mean anything to you, I’d sign any papers you wanted. O.K.?”

“I don’t seem to have a choice.”

“We can be greedy and selfish and act without any respect for our heritage and what we know Dad would have wanted, and sell out to the highest bidder,” Jazz continued. “In a few months the bulldozers will get to work and we’ll be three
unnecessarily
rich women. Each one of us will have so much more money than we can ever find ways of spending that we’ll be
ruled
by it—an ultimately meaningless glut of money making more money until it ceases to have the slightest relation to any human life or any human desire. That’s one option.”

Jazz stood up and threw her arms wide as if she were trying to gather in the sky and the ocean and the
mountain and the newly green mesas in one enveloping sweep and present them to her sisters in all their primeval beauty.

“We can tell the world that our heritage isn’t for sale,” she cried. “We can decide that we don’t have to exploit it to the maximum to have enough. We don’t have to sell to anybody, we can exercise the power we possess right now to protect this land that has protected seven generations of our family. We can use it wisely and well. Don’t you both see it? Can’t you both feel it?”

“Look, Jazz,” Valerie said reluctantly, “I can’t maintain that when you get on your soapbox you don’t make a certain amount of sense—but we don’t know anything concrete about those things you mentioned, new towns or urban villages. You’re no city planner, we aren’t either, none of us has experience in these areas. You’re just an idealistic dreamer who talks a good game.”

“Valerie, Fernanda, both of you, stand up and tell me if you can see that huge boulder way off to the south?” Jazz pointed to an enormous rock that a glacier had left behind, too large to be removed by man, clearly visible five miles to the south, a rock that lay much closer to the ocean than the sycamore under which they sat.

Fernanda and Valerie both stood, peered toward the rock and nodded.

“From that rock,” Jazz said, “there are mesas out of your field of vision that are exceptionally large and well wooded. They roll toward the ocean and form a generous, gentle slope, perhaps ten thousand acres all told. That’s where the new town could be built, from the big rock down and out in every direction except north.”

“But, Jazz, that’s way off in the middle of nowhere!” Fernanda exclaimed. “You’d never even know it was there.”

“It just seems that way, Fernie. At the far end of the slope, you’re almost on the Pacific Coast Highway, and yet it’s protected from the road by a wide
band of oaks and brush. I’ve been riding this ranch for years, and I haven’t gone that far more than a few dozen times. Even if it was all built up, we’d still conserve over fifty thousand acres for ranching.”

“What kind of income would we get from a town down there?” Valerie’s question was unvarnishedly practical.

“Right away, nothing. But eventually, many, many millions a year. As more housing is built, as more commercial buildings go up, our income will grow steadily. The people who live there won’t have to spend hours every day on the highway getting to work—there’d be enough jobs for everybody who wants one.”

“It sounds sort of … ordinary, if you ask me,” Fernanda said in disappointment. “You said something about an urban village, and you come up with something typically Orange County; suburbs and business buildings.”

“It’s Orange County, unquestionably,” Jazz said. “But typical—no, Fern, not typical at all.”

“Not typical in what way?” Valerie inquired, unable to restrain herself.

“I’m glad you asked. Even if you hadn’t, I was going to tell you.” Jazz’s laughter rang exultantly. It had been harder to get that question out of Valerie than it had been to get a belly laugh out of Woody Allen, but now that she’d opened that door …

Jazz spoke rapidly, the words crisp and positive. She talked with the bold strokes of a master draftsman, with a concise grasp of the essentials, and a choice of the precisely vivid detail. After Jazz had finished telling her sisters about her ideas for the new town, they fell into an obdurate silence that seemed to hum with the working of their minds. They were lost on the rush of images she had conjured up, bewildered by an utterly unexpected excitement; they didn’t even exchange glances. At last, Valerie spoke.

“I can tell you one thing, Jazz, you haven’t thought this thing through the way I would. For instance, it’s impossible not to plan gift shops, with so
many people living there—any decent gift shop would be a gold mine, particularly with all the babies that will be born sooner or later. And you need a few good cheese stores and gourmet stores and some decent florists, for heaven’s sake. People like to celebrate, you know, and entertain. And did you ever stop to think that not everybody wears tennis shoes? If you don’t have a reliable shoe-repair place, you’re going to have people walking around with run-down heels and flapping soles.”

“Oh, Valerie, you’re absolutely right!” Jazz threw her arms around her sister and hugged her tightly. “We could never do it without you!”

“You didn’t mention a single tea shop, just all those cafes and espresso bars,” Fernanda sniffed. Jazz was smart, but she certainly hadn’t thought of everything. “There’s nothing like a good cup of tea when you need it. And I insist that there absolutely has to be a marina, for all the people who love to get away from the land. I don’t care what you say about leaving the beach untouched … we simply can’t build homes with a gorgeous view of the ocean and not expect everybody to want to get out there and sail.”

“No, Fernie, we couldn’t possibly do that, could we?” Jazz hugged the two of them, squeezing them to her and jumping up and down in joy, and all three of them laughed and laughed and then wept a little together, partly in excitement and partly because, for the first time in their lives, they felt like sisters.

“Who’s going to break the news to Mother?” Fernanda asked, as they drove out of the gates of the hacienda.

“I nominate you,” Valerie said, laughing. “You’re always in trouble with her anyway. A little more won’t make any difference.”

“The hell I will! You’re older. You should take the responsibility.”

“We’d better do it together. Or we could just write her a little note and leave the country for a
month,” Valerie said, giddy with an interesting combination of fizzing emotions she hadn’t begun to analyze.

“Or a year.”

“Shit, I’m not afraid of Mother, even if you are. I’ll do it,” Valerie announced.

“I’m not either! I’m going to do it.” Fernanda blew the hair out of her eyes defiantly.

“Good. I’ll watch.”

“Oh, you bitch. You trapped me.” Fernanda leaned over and kissed Valerie on the cheek. “I should have remembered how you always used to do that.”

“It’s my secret and you’ll never figure it out. But listen, Fernie, seriously, we’re going to have to give her some kind of allowance. We always knew she expected it when we inherited.”

“But we’re not going to turn a penny’s profit for years and years,” Fernanda objected.

“Still, we’ll have to do something for her now. A little something.”

“A very, very tiny something. A token. Anyway, she loves Marbella and she’s had that villa forever, it’s not as if she needs a lot of money. The notion of moving to San Clemente must have been some sort of aberration.”

“You’re right,” Valerie agreed. “Of course, it means that she’ll still have to come to New York to shop at the sales. Only she’ll be forced to stay with you.”

“What do you mean, ‘forced to’?”

“I won’t be there. I’ll be in Philadelphia.”

“Valerie! That’s a dream right out of never-never land, a fantasy you like to trot out whenever you get fed up with New York. You can’t possibly mean it!”

“Oh, but I do
. I do, Fernie, with all my heart. I finally realized that I truly wanted to go when I knew I could move to Philadelphia without—oh, without … losing face in New York, I guess you’d have to call it, disgusting as that sounds. But that fear of losing face has vanished along with the Hong Kong billions.
It was something I imposed on myself. It’s sort of a contagion. You get it out of the air in New York. Or maybe it’s in the water.”

“You know who else said ‘I’d rather be in Philly,’ don’t you?”

“No, but whoever it was, I agree totally.”

“W.C. Fields. On his tombstone,” Fernanda giggled.

“Fernie, the poor man probably didn’t have family and nice friends there,” Valerie said with a serene and happy smile that transformed her into a lovely woman.

“But I’ll miss you, damn it! What’ll I do without you?”

“We can telephone all the time, just as often as ever, and you can come to visit, and I can come to spend a few days … it’s only an hour and a half away, remember.”

“It’s a million miles in attitude.”

“That’s exactly why I’m moving. Oh, it’s going to be heaven to relax in Philadelphia. It’s so divinely
cozy
. As soon as the apartment in New York is sold, I’ll take the money, find a
perfect
house—I know just what I want it to look like—put my feet up, let down my hair, and see all my old friends again, before I even start to redecorate. Or maybe I’ll never redecorate, just re-slipcover. That would be more Philadelphia. Bliss!”

“Aren’t you forgetting about Billy?”

“He’s just going to have to accept it. I’ve done it his way long enough. He can change if he has to, and if Billy wants to stay married to me, he does. If he doesn’t—I’ll live without him and manage very well. Who needs a man who won’t move out of that sinister,
toxic
city?”

“Right on!”

“Actually, Billy’s been telephoning twice a day. The poor creature is helpless without me, and he knows it. I don’t think he’ll give me a problem once he realizes that I’m totally serious. I’m feeling very sure of myself, Fernie. Isn’t it amazing how the fact
that we’re going to be so much richer someday, even though it’s way down the road, makes it seem as if we’re rich now? Rich and powerful?”

“Attitude again. It’s all in your attitude,” Fernanda said thoughtfully.

She realized, listening to Valerie, that there was nothing in the world she wanted that she didn’t have already. She’d been desperate to be immensely rich only because she’d been terrified of growing older without capturing an elusive satisfaction. How could she ever have believed that a young man could provide it? Or any kind of man? Georgina. Her Georgina … she wished she could tell Val, but she knew she couldn’t. At least not yet, not for years, possibly never.

“I’ll announce the news to Jimmy and Sir John,” Fernanda volunteered, out of her sudden silence.

“Ah, no—I’m not going to miss out on that! We’re going to tell them together. I can’t wait to confront Jimmy with his lies and deceptions. I wonder how big his cut of the pie must have been to make him so anxious about this deal? The worst part is that he almost got away with it. When I think about his plan—Fernie, I’ll admit it to you, and no one else, I always disapproved of his version of Monte Carlo, but I let him talk me into it. We were so gullible—it’s unforgivable.”

“Of him or of us?”

“Both,” Valerie answered wholeheartedly.

“Hmmm.” Fernanda’s mischief-loving, pussycat smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. Jimmy Rosemont was so infinitely, incurably detestable! She couldn’t wait to see his face when they told him that they’d all decided not to sell, that they’d agreed to petition the court immediately to dismiss the temporary administrator and turn the ranch over to the three of them. Georgina had always hinted that she thought Jimmy’s plan was … vulgar … at best. She’d be thrilled that they’d decided against it, and the massive disappointment of their news should dull even Jimmy’s libido for a few months.

“Val, would you think I was crazy if I told you that … oh, never mind.”