The Last Princess (19 page)

“Harry, he did the best he was capable of.”

“That’s what you say, but I don’t buy it. The issue is closed, Lily.”

For once, Lily refused to capitulate. The arguments raged all through June and July, invariably ending with Harry’s shouts and her tears. The tension in the house grew unbearable. The dinner hour was strained, the children silent, asking to be excused as soon as they had finished. Even their celebration of VJ Day, when all America was welcoming a new era of peace, was marred by their quarrels.

Lily ached as she watched Jeremy grow increasingly tense and unhappy. Why couldn’t Harry be content to let him develop at his own pace? He wasn’t a Drew or a Randy, but he would eventually find his own niche in life. But it seemed that was impossible for Harry. Nothing she could say would convince him that Jeremy was not simply lazy.

Finally, as she sat in the kitchen alone after another stormy session with Harry, Lily suddenly knew that it was hopeless. Even if she won she knew that Harry would never allow Jeremy to be happy at home again. Every report card would bring another battle, and her son’s wavering self-confidence would eventually be battered again. She had always been convinced that staying at home was best for any child. Now she was not so sure. One evening after dinner, she said, “All right, Harry. I give up. Pick out a school for Jeremy.”

Startled, Harry said, “Well, there are several we should consider—”

Lily interrupted curtly. “It was your idea, Harry; you pick it.”

“You’re not happy about this, are you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No.”

“But you do agree with me that it is for Jeremy’s own good?”

“No, Harry!” She suddenly blazed. “It’s to keep you from destroying the rest of your family.”

When they told him that he would be going away, Jeremy’s face was expressionless, but Lily caught the flash of anguish in his eyes. In the next month, she watched him with deepening apprehension. He had always been open with her, but now he retreated to his room, where he sat for hours staring into space. All Lily’s efforts couldn’t draw him out; he simply would not talk about his feelings.

If Lily had known the truth, her torment would have been as great as his. The prospect of leaving home for the unknown terrors of boarding school petrified him. His self-control finally broke on the September morning they left the house to drive to Deerbrook Academy. Through tears which threatened to spill over onto his cheeks, he choked out, “You’ll come to visit me, won’t you, Mom?”

“As much as I can, darling,” Lily said.

When they reached the school, Jeremy got out of the car without speaking.

“Good-bye, son,” Harry said gently, holding out his arms for a hug. Jeremy looked so small and lost on the huge stone steps, that even though he was convinced this was for the boy’s own good, at that moment Harry felt terribly guilty. And that guilt was heightened when Jeremy turned away, ignoring his father’s proffered embrace.

Lily was silent the whole way home. When they reached the farm, she went straight to her bedroom, leaving Harry to cope with dinner. It was the first time he’d ever had to fix a meal for himself and his offspring.

The hamburgers were raw inside, the buns were cold, and the beans were burnt.

Melissa waved her burger in the air. “Warm this up a little, Daddy.”

“It’s warm, Melissa. Eat it.”

“But it’s raw, Dad,” Drew complained.

“No, it’s not. Eat it.”

“They are too raw!” the children chorused defiantly.

He took a closer look, then gave an exasperated sigh. The meat was clearly inedible.

Abruptly he grabbed the plates and tipped the contents into the garbage, then took down a jar of peanut butter and slathered some on slabs of bread.

Melissa frowned at him defiantly. “I’m not going to eat this! Mommy doesn’t make us sandwiches for dinner.”

“Mommy’s not feeling well. Now I don’t want to hear another word from you, Melissa.”

Staring back at him with injured dignity, Melissa crossed her arms and refused to touch her sandwich.

Harry sank into a chair. Were they always this bad? How did Lily put up with this, day after day?

“Drink your milk,” he ordered curtly.

Melissa began to storm. “I want Mommy!”

She slipped from her chair and ran toward Lily’s room, but Harry caught her before she could leave the room. As he lifted her into his arms, his heart softened, despite the stormy look in her violet eyes.

“You’re not my friend!”

“Of course I’m your friend, sweetheart. Please don’t bother Mommy. Listen, I’ll make a bargain with you.”

Lip quivering, Melissa demanded, “What will you give me?”

“I’ll take you all to Neilsen’s tomorrow, and you can have hot dogs and chocolate milkshakes.”

She sniffed and said, “And I want Randy’s harmonica.”

Suiting action to words, she abruptly leaned over and made a swipe at it, but Randy quickly held it away out of her reach and Melissa began to wail.

Feeling more harassed than ever, Harry ordered, “Randy, give it to her.”

“But it’s mine,” Randy said resentfully. “Why should I?”

“I said, give it to her!” Harry exploded. “You’re a big boy, and she’s only a baby.”

Without further ado, he plucked the toy from Randy’s hand and poked it at Melissa. “Here. Now stop crying.”

It was like a miracle. Melissa demurely climbed back onto her chair, picked up her sandwich, and took a dainty bite. Finally they were all in bed. After years of telling Lily she was too soft with the children, no sooner was he in charge than he was resorting to bribery to keep the peace. But it was somehow different when the ball was in his court.

He walked into the living room, poured himself a double Scotch, and sank into a chair. When he had finished his drink he felt a little better. He realized there had been no sound from the bedroom for hours. Lily must be hungry. Perhaps he should fix a tray for her. There was a piece of cold roast chicken in the refrigerator, and some tomatoes and lettuce freshly picked from the garden. After adding bread and pale pink quince jelly, he took the tray down the hall.

“Are you awake, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” she answered tonelessly.

“Would it bother you if I turn on the light?”

“No.”

When he looked at her, he was shocked. Her eyes were red and her face distorted from weeping.

“I’ve brought you something to eat,” he said uncertainly.

Glancing at the tray, she shook her head. Obviously, she blamed him for sending Jeremy away, but Lily had to learn to cut the umbilical cord sooner or later. Watching her as she lay motionless with her eyes focused on the pastoral print on the opposite wall, he urged her again, “Lily, you really should eat something.”

“No, thank you.”

“At least have some milk.”

“Later, Harry.”

He removed the tray, pulled up a chair, and sat down near the bedside.

“You’re upset with me, aren’t you, Lily?”

“Yes,” she said flatly.

“Look, Lily, I know that you’re feeling terribly bad today, and it’s perfectly understandable, but children have to grow up.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say, Harry. You weren’t abandoned as I was as a child. And now you’ve made me do the same thing to my son. Jeremy would have done just fine at the local school, and he and I would both have been so much happier.”

“Lily, the local schools were no good, or he wouldn’t have done so poorly. Obviously they weren’t teaching him properly.”

“Jeremy is no genius, Harry. Aren’t you ever going to accept him for what he is?”

“I didn’t say he had to be a genius; he just has to work up to his potential. And as for leaving home, I went away to school when I was Jeremy’s age, and it didn’t do me any harm. As a matter of fact, I loved it.”

“I found it detestable,” Lily flared.

Harry gave up. “I’ll leave the tray for you,” he said curtly. “Call if you need anything else.”

He fully expected that Lily would resume her usual routine the next morning, but that day passed, and then the next, and she showed no inclination to get out of bed. He was left to cope with the task of getting Drew, Randy, and Melissa off to school in the morning, and fed and bathed at night. Worse than that was his concern over Lily. She seemed to have entered a sort of decline. He had always thought of her as a tower of strength upon which he could depend unquestioningly. But now her strength seemed to have disappeared, and he was beside himself with worry. It was impossible to comfort her—she still seemed to blame him for exiling Jeremy, even though she hadn’t alluded to it after that first day.

Occasionally in the afternoon she would get up, put on a wrap, and walk out to her garden, but instead of working she would simply stand and stare at it, tears gathering slowly in the corners of her eyes.

At those times, Lily was remembering Jeremy as a small boy, helping her plant seeds and popping them in his mouth when her back was turned.

“Spit those out!” she could hear herself saying.

When she went back into the house to lie on the bed once again, the images that came to her mind were even more tortured. How was Jeremy doing at school? He was one of the younger boys; and she hoped and prayed that the older children weren’t teasing him. She remembered only too acutely the misery of her own days at boarding school.

His first letter was far from encouraging. Lily seized it with a trembling hand and rapidly read the lines, then reread them, tears welling up in her eyes. There was not a word of complaint. Dutifully he listed his classes and his sports. But he didn’t mention a single friend or teacher that he liked. She could hardly sleep that night for worry.

The next day she would have driven up to see him, but Deerbrook discouraged visits from parents, and Harry flatly forbade it.

“You’ll make him a laughingstock if you hover over him, Lily,” he said. “Schoolboys have a very rigid code about these things. You know, you’re already preventing him from adjusting, with your constant phone calls. I’d like to talk to him too, but I know it’s not good for him.”

So Jeremy was now denied even the comfort of his mother’s voice. The only things that kept him going were the letters and calls from Drew, which Harry allowed, though if he had known the emotions the calls produced he might not have been so generous. Each time the brothers hung up, Jeremy was in tears while Drew slammed down the receiver, filled with resentment against his father.

Meanwhile, Lily still spent most of the time in her room, leaving the house untended and the children to run wild. By the end of a month, Harry was at his wits’ end. For the thousandth time Harry tried to understand why her reaction to Jeremy’s leaving was so extreme. He finally decided it was the result of being sent to Switzerland after her brother’s death. Lily couldn’t separate her parents’ banishment of her with their sending Jeremy away. Elated with his new insight, he got up early the next morning and fixed her a breakfast tray. Noting her pallor and the dark shadows under her eyes, he said gently, “Good morning, darling. How did you sleep?”

With a listless shrug, she replied, “Oh, the same as usual.”

He handed her a cup of tea and said, “Lily, dear, we need to do some talking.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she replied expressionlessly. But Harry persevered.

“Please hear me out, darling. I’ve been very concerned about you. All month I thought you were being stubborn about sending Jeremy away to school, but last night I realized that his leaving must remind you of when you went to boarding school after little Charles died.”

“That has nothing to do with my reaction now—”

“Lily, I think it does. At least subconsciously. You’ve created a false parallel. Your parents sent you away because they wanted to get rid of you. We’re sending Jeremy so he can get a good education. He’ll be home every summer, and for all holidays. Please, darling, don’t let the ghosts of the past poison what we have together.”

For a moment Lily wanted to deny Harry’s words, but she could not ignore their undeniable truth. Suddenly she felt a surge of love and warmth toward him; she had been terribly unjust. He loved their son as much as she did. Why should she assume that she was the only one who cared about him?

Seeing the change in her expression, he said quickly, “Darling, the children are at school and we have the whole day to ourselves. Why don’t we drive over and see what progress they’ve made on the house?”

Nodding, she reached out her arms to him. “I love you, Harry.”

D
URING THE FOLLOWING MONTH,
they drove to Greenwich almost every day. By the end of October, the construction was sufficiently advanced that for the first time they could walk through the rooms and visualize how they would look when the workmen were done.

Secretly, Lily was dismayed. The living room was even worse than she had feared—huge, austere, cold. Standing in the vast octagonal foyer, she looked up at the vaulted cantilevered ceiling and shuddered. She supposed that the bold stained-glass clerestories were striking, but they were suited to a cathedral, not a home.

With a sinking heart, she knew that she was going to hate this house. But she determined not to say one word to Harry. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize the new harmony between them. What did a house really matter, anyway? The important thing was that it made Harry happy. He seemed much less driven and had drawn closer to the younger children, obviously trying hard to be a better father. She was not about to do anything to rock his new equanimity.

Lily even went along with Mies van der Rohe’s recommendation of Douglas James as interior designer, biting her lip when she saw the uninviting functional built-ins of teak and birch. Perhaps the furniture wouldn’t seem so alien when it was in place.

But when Mies van der Rohe’s chosen landscape architect unveiled his plan for flat terraced lawns punctuated by ultramodern sculpture by the likes of Henry Moore and Marino Marini, she didn’t even try to hide her dismay.

Harry intervened firmly. “The garden is my wife’s domain, and I don’t believe that this is quite what she had in mind. Perhaps you can work with her and come up with something more to her taste.”