The LeBaron Secret (14 page)

Fairy Ferris. Fairy Ferris must have had some other, ordinary name—John, George, Howard, whatever—but what it may have been has long ago been forgotten. He will always be remembered as Fairy Ferris.

At Choate, where they were sent at age thirteen, the twins were placed in separate classes whenever it was possible. This was supposed to encourage competitiveness and individuality, and their mother approved of this arrangement. By the time they arrived in Wallingford, Fairy Ferris had already achieved a certain reputation. He was an older boy, a fourth-former, and though nobody at Choate would admit to liking him, there were rumors that certain boys didn't mind doing certain things that Fairy Ferris liked to do with them.

In school, for some reason, Eric was excellent at math but terrible in English, while Peter was good in English but poor at math. For this reason, Eric would always do Peter's math homework for him, and Peter would write Eric's English compositions. Since their handwriting was virtually identical also, none of their teachers suspected the deception. For tests and exams, if it was to be a math test, Eric would slip into Peter's classroom and take his seat at Peter's desk. For English tests, Peter would do the same for Eric. In a vague sort of way, the boys knew that this was cheating, but it seemed to them like cheating of the mildest, most harmless sort.

One late autumn day in Wallingford, that first year away at school, Eric had just taken a math test for Peter, and was approached in the corridor by Fairy Ferris.

“You're Eric, aren't you,” Fairy Ferris said.

“No, I'm Peter,” Eric said.

“I know you're Eric,” Fairy Ferris said. “You have that little scar on your temple. Your twin brother doesn't have one.”

Eric had reddened. “So what!” he had said.

“I know what you've both been doing,” Fairy Ferris said. “What would you do if I said I'm going to tell Headmaster?” Eric will always remember the way he pronounced the word, “Head-
mahs
ter.”

Then Fairy Ferris had said, “If you'll both give me a blow job, I won't tell.”

That was when the twins had tried to call their mother in California.

Eric remembers Miss Curtin, who was their mother's secretary then, as an even worse dragon than Gloria Martino. “Your mother is in conference,” Miss Curtin had said. “I'll put you on her callback list.”

“But Miss Curtin, this is
important
.”

“I'm sorry, Eric, but all I can do is put you on your mother's call-back list. She will return each call in the order that it was received.”

“How many calls has she got to return before she returns mine?” Eric had asked, feeling desperate.

“Well, I don't know
exactly
,” Miss Curtin had said in a peevish-sounding voice. “Do you expect me to
count
them for you? But there are quite a few.”

“Miss Curtin—
please!
”

“This is an office, and this is office routine, Eric,” she had said. “My instructions are to make no exceptions.”

“Miss Curtin, this is an emergency!”

A pause. Then Miss Curtin had said, “Well, perhaps if you will state the nature of the emergency to me, I will see what I can do to help you.”

“Miss Curtin, I
can't!
I've got to talk to my
mother!
”

“I will put you on her call-back list.”

That night their mother had called them back, but by then Fairy Ferris had had his blow job.

“You said this was an emergency, Eric,” Assaria LeBaron had said. “What's the emergency?”

“Well, it isn't anymore,” he said glumly.

“I was sure the school could handle it, whatever it was,” she had said. “And don't ever say something is an emergency when it isn't. Don't forget the story of the little boy who was always crying ‘Wolf.' He cried ‘Wolf' so often that when the real wolf came, nobody paid any attention to him. Don't be the kind of boy who cries ‘Wolf,' Eric.”

Years later, the twins would try to make a joke of it, just between themselves. “Remember the time we had to blow old Fairy Ferris?” one of them would say.

“
Yuk!
”

But at the time it had been no joke. He had made them take turns, and they had both been in tears throughout the whole thing.

“Remember old Fairy Ferris?” one of them would say, throwing soft punches at the other.

“And we got put on her call-back list.”

“One of the things we were going to ask her was what a blow job was.”

“Wonder what she would have said?”

“Well, we found out.”

“
Yuk!
”

“But don't be too hard on her, Peep. Dad hadn't been dead very long. She was trying to run the company all by herself. And that damned Miss Curtin—”

“And it wasn't
that
much of an emergency. And we handled it.”

“
Yuk!
”

“Wonder whatever happened to old Fairy Ferris …”

“Probably in prison for child molestation.”

“No. Justice being what it is, that shithead is probably the president of the richest bank in Texas!”

Laughing, making a joke of it, exchanging soft punches, back and forth at each other's shoulders. At least it had been a shared experience.

But that had been before, when they were still friends.

“You are talking about driving a wedge between the members of my family.”

“The wedge is already driven. Assaria is the wedge.”

“My daddy calls me his little Buttercup.”

Was that all it was?

Buttercup …

And stripping the blossom of its petals, one by one. She loves me, she loves me not …

In her bedroom on the third floor of the house on Washington Street, Assaria LeBaron is also wide awake, though it is past eleven. The curtains have been drawn against the night, but both the bedside lamps are lighted, and Sari, in a marabou bed jacket, is sitting straight up in the center of the oversize bed, propped by many pillows of assorted sizes. All around her, on the satin bedspread, are scattered many objects—scraps of mail, newspaper clippings, a ledger book spread open, face down, pencils, ballpoint pens, an address and telephone book marked “Carnet d'Adresses,” a copy of the
Social Register
, many sheets of lined notepaper covered with scribbled notes, sheets of yellow legal foolscap, covered with figures, and sheets of graph paper on which she has been making pie charts. Other pieces of paper appear to be legal documents of one form or another—certificates with scrolly headings, contracts stapled between heavy covers—and at the edge of all this paperwork lie two sleeping Yorkshire terriers who live on this floor, except when Thomas walks them. The clutter on the bed also seems to consist of much, much more. On one of the bedside tables sit a glass of hot milk, untouched, and a banana, something Thomas brings her every night before retiring. With a pencil in one hand and another tucked behind her ear, Sari sits figuring and figuring, working on the pie charts.

Control, she thinks. I try to control you because you can't control yourself. This company is the family, and this family is the company, and that is all there is to it. If I am going to control the company, it follows that I must also control the family. I cannot control one thing without controlling the other, and so I control what I control. But, she thinks, I cannot seem to control what the pie charts inevitably reveal, no matter how I construct them. There, damnably, appears the name of Harry Tillinghast on every one of them as a minority, but unwanted, shareholder—the foot in the door with a thin slice of the pie.

“Why,” she had demanded, “would you have sold some of your shares to that man?”

“Quite simply, Mother,” he had said, “because I needed the money.”

“
Why?
Can't you get along on your salary and your dividends? Peeper seems to manage!”

“Peeper,” he had said, “doesn't have a wife. He doesn't have two children to educate and clothe and feed and send to the orthodontist. Peeper doesn't have a big house to keep up, with a pool and a tennis court, and a gardener to pay, and servants. Peeper doesn't have country-club dues to pay, or riding lessons and tennis lessons to pay for, and I could go on and on. I haven't even mentioned taxes.”

“You're supposed to have a rich wife!”

“Alix and I keep our financial affairs entirely separate. We agreed to that from the beginning.”

“You mean Alix doesn't pay for
anything?
”

“Alix believes that it's a man's responsibility to take care of his family, the way her father did.”

“Well, what does she
do
with her money, for heaven's sake?”

“She invests it. Someday, of course, it will go to the twins. Sometimes she'll buy something for herself—a piece of jewelry, that sort of thing.”

“Look at Melissa! Melissa manages very nicely on nothing but her dividends. She doesn't even have your nice fat salary.”

“
Melissa!
She has none of the responsibilities that I have. She doesn't even have any rent to pay—she lives in your house!”

“Oh, but I charge Melissa rent. Melissa pays me rent.”

“Yes—I know what Melissa pays in rent. A token hundred dollars a month for an apartment that's as big as a city block. She pays the lowest rent of anyone in San Francisco, Mother.”

“But if you needed money, Eric, why didn't you come to me?”

“Frankly, I didn't want to.”

“Why not?”

“Male pride, I suppose. Not wanting to ask for money from a woman.”

“Bull-do! I'm your mother, as well as chief executive officer of this company.”

“I've already given you my answer, Mother.”

“But why would you sell to
him
, of all people? A man who hasn't the slightest interest in—”

“He approached me, said he was interested in owning some Baronet stock. He made me a good offer, and that was that.”

“I suppose I'm not entitled to ask what that offer was.”

“I'll tell you—it was seven hundred dollars a share.”

“
Seven hundred!
You sold him two thousand shares for seven hundred a share? You
gave
it away, you silly fool! Why, the book value alone is—”

“I know it's difficult to put a price on the stock. But we both did some figuring, and seven hundred was a price that seemed fair to us both.”

“So you let him look at our books.”

“As a stockholder, he's entitled—”

“You let him look at our books
before
he became a stockholder.”

“Well—”

“That stock was left to you by your father for
you
. Not for Harry Tillinghast. Harry is not family.”

“He's Alix's father.”

“But he's not family. Let me ask you just one more question. Why did you do this without consulting me? No—don't answer that. I know why, and you know why. You did it without consulting me because you knew I'd disapprove. And so you did it the sneaky way. You went behind my back.”

And so, for what Eric did he must be punished. That is all there is to it. He must be punished, and brought under control. Divide and conquer is her theory, and so she is going to cut up his job and give part of it to Peeper.

And yet, tonight, she is not at all sure that her strategy is working. Is her plan about to backfire? Does she have a tiger by the tail? Why else would he be going to New York, unless it was to try to get Joanna on his side?

Nor does her strategy seem to be working well with Melissa—at least on the evidence of tonight's performance.

She goes back to the pie charts, and is confronted once again with what she has come to think of as the Lance Problem. The Lance Problem has always existed. She knows the terms of her husband's will by heart, and she knows Peter intended to be fair: Fifteen percent to be divided, equally, among his living offspring … and fifteen percent “shall be divided, equally, among any and all living issue of my aforesaid sister, Joanna LeBaron.” This was Clause 6 (a) of the Last Will and Testament of Peter Powell LeBaron. But the Lance Problem created an imbalance in share ownership among the four members of that generation, and gave Lance LeBaron what could be the swing vote in any sort of … confrontation.

Sari is on perfectly good terms with Lance LeBaron, although, in fact, she has not spoken to or laid eyes on him in several years. She is not even sure of his current address, though she could look it up right there, in the
Social Register
. Princeton, she thinks, is where he is living now. But the fact is that she has never really trusted Lance since that time, years ago, when she had caught him … but that is ancient history, water over the dam. That belongs to the irretrievable past, and has nothing at all to do with what seems to be threatening her now.

Of course … of course, she thinks, there is one solution to the Lance Problem. A very difficult and painful one, but it exists. Very painful, very hard, very sensitive, but it could be used. If it came down to the wire, in the end, in the final analysis, would she have the strength to use it and create all that pain, open up all those scars, cut into the scar tissue that has hardened into a thick cicatrix over all these years? She closes her eyes and considers this.

“Sari, darling, remember that you owe me a rather large debt.”

“And, Jo, you also owe a rather large debt to me.”

“Remember, Sari—we made a pact, a pact in blood.”

Her eyes fly open again. She tries now to make some sort of organization out of the piles of papers on her bedspread, and finally gathers them all together in one thick stack and places the stack down near the foot of the bed below the place where the two little dogs are sleeping, sleeping without a care in the world. Then, with a reach, she switches off both bedside lamps, lies back against the pile of pillows, and closes her eyes again.