Portraits (92 page)

Picking up the magazine, she turned the pages until she came to the image of herself which stared back. It belied her forty-nine years, although today she felt as if she were a hundred. The lonely silence was more than she could bear. Quickly she got up and put on a record, “Au Clair de Lune,” and sat back on the couch, still staring down at her picture. The caption was black and bold:
MODEST AFTER HUGE SUCCESS
.

A small voice within her whispered,
It’s all a travesty, isn’t it? I’m no more prepared to handle my life now than I was when my mother died.

As though a veil had lifted, Ann looked back to her childhood and saw herself clinging to her father after the funeral. She had been six then, and oh, how she had loved him. She was all he had left—or so he had said. And Ann had believed him, until two years later, when he had met Stella Burke. The pain of her mother’s death had hardly faded, and Ann could still hear her own pathetic sobbing as she sat alone in her room the night he’d married Stella.

All through her teens she’d continued to feel as if her father had betrayed not only her mother’s memory but Ann herself. No wonder that when Phillip had come into her life she had been so eager to escape home.

T
HE YEAR WAS 1941
, the month was March, and the world was alive with the sounds of spring. It seemed as though fate had directed Ann to the right place at the right time. She was the maid of honor at the wedding of her dearest friend, Ruthie, and Phillip was best man for the groom, Kenny Newman. Ann’s first glimpse of Phillip made her believe in the refrain to “Love in Bloom,” which Jack Benny sang every Sunday on the radio. His tall good looks were exactly calculated to sweep a romantic, lovely, and very vulnerable girl off her feet.

It was all so simple back then. There were three rules: one fell in love, got married, and had children. Listening to the strains of
Lohengrin
as Ruthie came down the aisle, Ann dreamed of becoming Mrs. Coulter. Those were heady times for romance. America was on the brink of war, and Hollywood had taken a firm grip on the national imagination. Ann had grown up seduced by the silver screen with its instant romances and promises of happily ever after.

Whether or not Phillip Coulter resembled Robert Taylor, Ann saw him as a hero. His hair perhaps was not as dark, and his eyes not quite so blue, but she was convinced that his beautifully molded lips, which she longed to feel against hers, and his strong chin with the heartrending cleft, were identical to her idol’s.

She felt as though she’d melt as she danced in his arms the night of the wedding. He was her prince charming who had come to take her away, make her happy, transport her to a vine-covered cottage to the tune of “Tea for Two.”

But once the wedding was over and Phillip escorted her home, standing facing him at her front door she no longer felt quite like Cinderella. Her violet eyes misted over.

She prayed that Phillip would not sense that she was on the verge of tears. She had hoped, wished, that he would take her in his arms, kiss her lingeringly. But instead, he stood rather awkwardly, not quite knowing what to say. Finally he blurted out, “Well, it’s really been nice getting to know you.”

Ann wanted to cry. He made it sound so final. During the rehearsals and the little suppers after, she’d gotten the feeling that Phillip liked her quite a bit. At the wedding, he had danced with her more than with anyone else. Yet now, he was leaving without any mention of seeing her again.

Ann went to bed that night wondering what she’d done wrong. If only she looked more like Veronica Lake! But she didn’t, and Phillip didn’t like her enough even to ask for a date. She scarcely shut her eyes that night. When the alarm went off the next morning, she wanted to throw it against the wall.

Exhausted, she dressed with more reluctance than usual for her job at the stocking counter at I. Magnin’s. She envied Ruthie safely launched as a bride. Well, Ann thought, cheered somewhat by the soft spring morning, maybe he’d call. Maybe.

But a week came and went, and the phone didn’t ring for her. She cried into her pillow every night. It was obvious that Phillip just didn’t like her. The only comfort was Ruthie, already back from her honeymoon on romantic Santa Catalina Island. Sitting across from her at Townsend’s Restaurant, Ann found some comfort in being able to pour out her misery.

“I guess I’m just awfully dumb, Ruthie, to have fallen in love with someone who doesn’t even know I’m around. But I really thought he liked me.”

“I’m sure that he does, Ann. Who could help liking you?”

“Well, my stepmother for one. I don’t think I’m all that lovable. And obviously I’m not very desirable, or Phillip would have called.”

“Don’t put yourself down. So what if he doesn’t call? There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”

But at that moment, Ann thought that no one could ever love her, least of all Phillip Coulter. And he was the one she wanted.

But Ann was quite wrong. After Phillip had said goodnight that evening, he crossed the street and stood watching as the light went on in her bedroom. He leaned against a lamppost and lit a cigarette, hoping she might come to her window. When the cigarette burned down to his fingers without a glimpse of her, he turned and walked away.

Although Ann couldn’t know it, she had completely misread Phillip. Not only had he wanted to kiss her, he had become infatuated with her in the brief time they’d known each other.

The reason he had tried to remain aloof was precisely because he liked her so much. And he couldn’t possibly think about becoming seriously involved with a woman, not with his present—and future—obligation to support his parents. Although he’d been lucky enough to get a position after law school graduation working for Levin, Cahn and Smith, one of the most prestigious firms in the city, in reality he was nothing more than a glorified clerk. His salary was so pitiful that there was almost nothing left after the rent and bare necessities were paid. So how in the hell could he think of getting married? And girls like Ann expected marriage. No, he had only one choice—to put her out of his mind.

But every night for the next six weeks he lay in the dark and ached to feel her in his arms. All he could see was her face, those lovely violet eyes, that clear, porcelain skin. The harder he tried to forget her, the more difficult it became. As time passed, he decided he wanted Ann more than anything else in the world.

The truth was that there had been little time for girls in his life, since he had been so busy earning enough to put himself through college and law school. Until he’d met Ann, his celibacy had been annoying, but not a serious problem. But she had evoked a desire he could not extinguish. Where he had gotten the strength to refrain from kissing her the night of Kenny’s wedding, he would never know.

Although it wasn’t apparent to Ann, Phillip was very unsure of himself. He had become almost obsessed with the idea that he would never amount to anything, and as the notion of marriage continued to haunt him, he became convinced that he would never be able to offer Ann anything. For him to have to struggle financially was one thing, but to ask her to share his poverty seemed impossible.

The dilemma that Phillip found himself in was not of his making. His father had been born to a wealthy family, and as a child Phillip had every reason to expect an easy life. He had been a change-of-life baby, and after years of longing for a son, his parents had lavished attention on him and indulged him to the extreme.

It was the roaring twenties, and America was on a spending spree. Few could resist the lure of greater fortunes. One could buy stocks on the slenderest of margins. And Simon had plunged along with the rest, recklessly pledging his stores as collateral. Of course, he should have seen the gathering clouds, but he preferred to leave his investments to his broker. Then, when the dam broke, he bitterly blamed the broker as he was forced to sell his luxury shops at a fraction of their worth. By November 1929, he was wiped out, and like many other victims of the crash, he never recovered from the blow.

Phillip had only been fourteen, but he would never forget the day his father had learned that he was bankrupt. He’d seemed to age all at once and afterward could never face his son with pride. Phillip had always displayed an interest in the business, and Simon had frequently boasted that he was a born merchant.

But now all that was gone. And, without realizing it, Phillip had been emotionally scarred almost as deeply as Simon. Phillip’s ambition, his zest for life, would never recover. He decided he never wanted to be rich again; it made you too damn vulnerable. It made no difference that a fortune could be made again. He had seen what its loss had done to his father—and to others, friends of the family who had killed themselves rather than try to start over. No amount of money guaranteed security, he decided. Better to accustom yourself to living without it.

Almost immediately; the house in Sea Cliff had gone on the auction block. Phillip had been shattered watching the eighteenth-century antiques, the china and paintings, being snatched up for next to nothing. Since birth he’d been taught to cherish them. They were his legacy. Try as he might, he could not keep from blaming his father for his lack of foresight. As Phillip withdrew into sullen silence, his mother’s heart ached to see the rift between the boy and her husband. Eva knew Simon was already racked with guilt and prayed that he was unaware of Phillip’s resentment.

But her prayers were in vain. Simon recognized his son’s anger and despised himself for throwing away the legacy his family had entrusted to him to protect for the next generation. How could he have been so blind as not to see that the market could not expand forever? He almost welcomed Phillip’s silent fury; it was a fitting penance.

The burden of Simon’s folly was not only in what he owed to the future, but to the past. Visions of his grandfather’s fury haunted him, and his sleep was frequently interrupted by dreams of the old man describing his long struggle to establish his fortune.

Israel Coulter and Phillip Coulter, his great-grandson, were the same age, fourteen, when their respective worlds shattered—except that Israel had used the blow as a stimulus to create a new life.

During an even more than usually bloody and widespread Russian pogrom, Israel Coulter’s entire family had been massacred by a drunken mob. He was the only survivor, and he realized that if he remained in Russia he too would eventually be destroyed like the rest. Even in the depths of his rage and grief, he knew that God must have spared him for some reason.

With little to aid him beyond his own wits and a few miraculously salvaged coins, the boy made his way from the Crimea to Turkey, and, finally, three years later, to the shores of America and then across the country to San Francisco. At seventeen, he was already a man. With a small box of pins and needles, he set out to make his living as a tailor, a trade he’d been taught since early childhood. In a city where gold was god, he soon prospered.

He was lucky in that first year to meet a lovely Jewish girl, Sarah, whom he married, and luckier still a year later when she gave birth to a son, Daniel. Israel never forgot the vow he made at his parents’ grave that their seed would never die.

Watching Daniel grow tall and unafraid in the new world, Israel thanked his God. His happiest day was when he and Daniel watched the sign go up over the first store:
COULTER AND SON, 1870.

That was only the beginning. By the time Simon was born, there were over a dozen prosperous shops. America was booming, and Israel was a shrewd and prudent businessman. He lived to ninety, surviving his son, Daniel, by nearly a decade. Simon always remembered the day when Israel called him to his bedside and said, “This is your legacy, Simon. I leave it to you with my blessings. Guard it. Keep it safe, for your sons.”

Israel could not have foreseen that the word prudence would disappear in the postwar boom of the twenties. If you had money, why not triple it, and Simon, like most of his generation, gambled recklessly and lost. He would never recover his pride. He envisioned Phillip finishing high school no closer to knowing what he was going to do without the family business than he had been on that tragic day in 1929.

It hadn’t been an easy task, but somehow Simon had managed to salvage a little money from his collapsed empire. After dinner one evening, he sat across the kitchen table from Phillip and asked, “What are your plans, Phillip, now that you’re graduating?

Phillip lowered his eyes. “I really don’t know.”

“Well, Phillip, I’ve thought a great deal about your future.”

For a moment, Phillip wanted to say,
Why didn’t you think about me while I still had a future?
But instead he asked, “And what have you been thinking?” hoping that his anger didn’t show.

“The one thing no one can take from you is a profession. I’ve been able to scrape up enough money so that you can start premed at the University of California.”

It had been decided for him, Phillip thought resentfully. But he said nothing, and only stared at his father’s worn face. Over the past year he had been able to view his father’s failure with more compassion. He did love both his mother and father deeply, in spite of everything, and lately he had begun to realize that he himself was to blame for not having been able to accept the devastating change in their fortunes. He had made his parents doubly miserable by letting them see his resentment. Like his father, Phillip realized he too lacked Israel Coulter’s ambition and iron will.

Looking at Simon, Phillip knew that he could not deny his father’s attempt to make amends.

“I’ll do it, Dad,” he forced himself to say. “Thanks.”

And with that, the die was cast. Phillip enrolled at U.C. But his future as a doctor was cut short the first morning he confronted a cadaver. Ice-cold perspiration rolled down his back, and his stomach heaved uncontrollably.

Although he knew that his father would be terribly hurt, Phillip knew that he had to drop medicine. As he suspected, Simon took the decision badly. He had wanted Phillip to become a doctor as much for his own sake as his son’s. If Phillip were a success, Simon would not be a complete failure, so when he saw Phillip was adamant, Simon suggested law.