The LeBaron Secret (39 page)

“He has nothing to confess! Peter is a saint, and we are in Saint Peter's church! It is my daughter who is to blame for all the sins of the world, she who is called Satana, the whore—”

“Mama, Mama, please.”

Peter stepped, just then, into the pew beside them, and Sari gave him a worried look, and the mass was about to begin. The priest was at the altar, and made a sign of the cross as high and as wide as his arms would reach, and a great hush of worship fell over the cathedral. “
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti
…” But now Constance LeBaron had begun to shout again, “Where is peace for me? Indulgence … absolution …
is there any eternal life for me?

“
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
—” while the other congregants in the church tried to resist turning in their seats to see what was causing this disturbance, tried to concentrate on the solemnity of the mass, and on the sanctity of the man, God's messenger on earth, whom He had selected to perform it. And now Mama LeBaron was on her feet, moving toward the center aisle, and Sari was reaching for her sleeve to restrain her. “Where are you going, Mama?” she whispered. “To Calvary! I am going to Calvary! It is because of my impure thoughts! This is why my daughter is known in heaven as a whore! I am going to Calvary to curse the Holy Ghost who entered me and caused me to give birth to a whore!” The priest stopped the mass and was staring at Mama LeBaron as she staggered toward the altar. “Mama, please!” Sari cried, starting after her. On the altar, someone, some generous-hearted parishioner, had placed a small bouquet of red paper roses. “A red rose!” Mama had cried. “The Blessed Virgin has heard my prayers and sent me a red rose. The Blessed Virgin, who has breakfast with my mother in heaven every Thursday, and sits on the right hand of God!
Give me my rose!
” But, reaching out for the paper flower, she stumbled and fell against the altar rail. Beside her, both Sari and Peter helped her to her feet again. “Come, Mama,” Sari whispered gently. “Mass is over, and it's time to go home.”

As they moved slowly down the aisle, the priest behind them raised his arms once more, and blessed the congregation, including the departing member, and began the mass again. “
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti
…”

Pacem
.

That night, a little after ten o'clock, there was a telephone call from the Sonoma ranch. A neighboring farmer, noticing the LeBarons' old Packard parked for hours in the drive, and no lights whatsoever coming from the ranch house, had gone out into the ruined vineyard with a flashlight to investigate. He had found them, lying roughly side by side, each with a gunshot in the temple, and Julius LeBaron's pistol lying on the ground between them. The instructions for their burial had been found on Julius's desk in the house on California Street.

And so, a murder and a suicide, and presumably ineligible for interment in holy soil, they had chosen a mode still employed by certain Ligurian peasants to this day, and had asked to be translated into walnut trees in the corner of the vineyard where they died. Church technicalities would not permit them to enter heaven together. But this way, perhaps their souls would wander into some less explicit universal landscape of stars and trees and harvests, and perhaps forgiveness, looking for peace and redemption and transfiguration in some distant Parnassus or Elysian Fields, or in temples of even more dubious design.

“We're ruined,” Peter said to her, looking hopelessly at the array of evil-worded legal documents that was spread out across his desk. “There's nothing left. Not even life insurance. He'd borrowed on that, too. All that we can find are a couple of savings accounts, in Mother's name, totaling about ten thousand dollars, to be divided between Joanna and myself. We're going to have to sell this house.”

“How can we sell it?” she said. “We don't even own it yet. And nobody wants to buy a house like this today.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“We still have the land, don't we? How much land do we have?”

“Thousands of acres,” he said. “Thousands and thousands of acres that no one will want to buy, either. We're land poor.”

“Then what we'll do is go out there and start planting grapes. Prohibition is going to end. It's only a question of waiting for enough states to ratify the new amendment. We'll go out and plant grapes, and within a few years we'll have a harvest. When Prohibition ends, we'll be back in the wine business. We're young, Peter, and we're strong, and we'll work hard, and Joanna will help us. That's what we'll do. It's what we must do.”

“All that will take money. Vines … labor … cooperage. Where will the money come from? We don't have the money.”

“Gabe Pollack will help us,” she said. “We did him a favor once. He'll help us now.”

This was true. Gabe Pollack is an old man now, and he doesn't like to boast or take more credit than is his due, or even like to talk about such things much. But it was true that, in 1928, when the LeBaron fortune had seemed well-nigh limitless, Sari and Peter had lent Gabe enough money to buy a struggling little newspaper in Menlo Park called the
Peninsula Gazette
, when it came up for sale.

And had it pleased Assaria Latham LeBaron, a wealthy matron all at once, wife of the millionaire, to play the role of Lady Bountiful to Gabe Pollack, whom, once upon a time, she had envisioned coming hat in hand to her Hollywood mansion, begging for forgiveness, begging for mercy, for having spurned her advances? Oh, more than likely. But Sari is not really a vengeful sort. Actually, it was Sari who had first learned of the newspaper that was for sale, and who suggested that she could lend him the money to buy it. You see, Sari had never forgotten her debt to Gabe.

And the older he got, the more thrifty and frugal Gabe became with his money, a regular magpie. In the summer of 1929, when no one had any notion of the disasters in the offing, Gabe had looked at his balance sheets and decided that enough was enough. “My stocks have more than tripled in value since I bought them,” he had said. “And that's good enough for me.” And so he had sold everything at the top of the market. For cash. Of course, you could argue that the actions of men like Gabe helped bring on the crash. True enough. But it didn't alter the fact that, as the Depression deepened, Gabe Pollack was a reasonably rich man.

That, however, is really not the point of all this. The point is that, though he and Sari would always have their differences over the years, he would always love her. And she would always love him. That love provided the core, the quick, of their relationship. They would always try to help each other out, through all calamity. Isn't that, after all, the simplest definition of love—the little sacrifices we make for one another day by day?

And so Gabe had lent them a hundred thousand dollars. Or maybe is was two hundred thousand. Gabe doesn't remember, doesn't want to remember, and it doesn't matter because his loans were all repaid in due course, years ago.

Eleven

“Here is the menu, Madam, that Cookie proposes for tonight's little dinner,” Thomas says. “She suggests a cucumber velouté to start, followed by turbans of sole with crab stuffing. Then potted squabs, with peas, mushrooms, and onions, and wild rice. A salad of Bibb lettuce and mandarin oranges, and, for dessert, a dacquoise.” Sari's current Cookie is somewhat fancier and Frenchier than others have been.

“Oh, good,” Sari says. “A dacquoise. What is that, anyway?”

“I believe it's a light almond layer cake with buttercream filling.”

“Well, it sounds fine. In fact, it sounds quite elegant. It almost sounds like one of those grand dinners we used to have before Peter died. Now let's work on the seating. Do you have the place-cards?”

“Right here, Madam.” He wheels her chair across the hall, and into the formal dining room, where Gloria Martino—who has a touch with such things—is already working on the flowers.

“Do you like these tulips?” Miss Martino says. “They're the first I've seen in the markets this spring, and I thought they were awfully pretty. I thought I'd do everything in white, yellow, and green, and then we could use your white, green, and gold Spode.”

“Very nice, Gloria.”

“I'm wiring the tulips, so they won't flip-flop.”

“Now, let's see,” Sari says, studying the dining-room table. “I think I'll put Joanna on my right, since she's come from the farthest away. And I'll put Eric at the other head of the table. That should please him, don't you think?”

“Did Melissa tell you she's bringing a friend?” Miss Martino asks.

“No! She most certainly did not. Who is this friend?”

“It's a Mr. Littlefield.”

“Littlefield—the name rings a vague bell. But she wasn't supposed to do that. Tonight's dinner was supposed to be just
family
.”

“It does help balance the sexes a little better, Mrs. LeBaron,” Miss Martino says. “Otherwise, it would have been five women and only three men.”

“But nine is an awkward number. Well, I suppose we just have to chalk it up to Melissa's perverseness. Besides, we're trying to be nice to Melissa these days, aren't we?”

“That thought also crossed my mind,” Miss Martino says.

“Well, then, let's do it this way,” Sari says. “We'll put Alix on Joanna's right, then Peeper, then Melissa, who will be on Eric's left. That way, we use Melissa as a kind of buffer zone between Eric and Peeper. Then”—pointing to the other side of the table—“let's put Mildred Tillinghast on Eric's right, then Mr. Littlefield, and then Harry Tillinghast, who will be on my left.” Though they are certainly old enough to conduct themselves properly at a dinner party, Sari has decided against inviting her twin granddaughters. She wants this to be an adult dinner party, and, besides, she does not want the gentlemen at the party to feel overwhelmed by members of the opposite sex.

“Do you think white candles or ivory, Mrs. LeBaron?”

“Ivory, I think, Gloria. The smart decorators all over town are making their clients use black candles. But I'm old-fashioned. Is Joanna up yet, Thomas?”

“Oh, yes, Madam. Up and gone. She's having breakfast downtown with Mr. Eric.”

“Hm. Well, I guess we've got to allow members of the opposite team to go into their little huddles.”

“Do you think the lime green damask—?”

“No, I think the white with the gold monograms—”

And so it has gone, throughout the day, as the White Wedding-Cake House at 2040 Washington Street prepares itself for an evening's entertainment and festivity such as it has not seen for some time. Out of the vault in the cellar comes the best and the heaviest silver, the pistol-handled knives and the three-pronged dinner forks, the matched silver epergnes that will be filled with flowers, the heirloom silver candelabra with their candles fitted into flared crystal bobeches, the Baccarat wineglasses, the enameled place-cards and their silver holders, the white damask napkins with the fan-shaped gold monograms, “
ALLeB
,” the looping serifs of the letters artfully intertwined, the silver service plates, followed by the Spode. It is decided that Thomas will wear his dinner jacket tonight, instead of his customary white coat, and will announce the courses. This, naturally, is all to impress the Tillinghasts. Sari selects a dress of green watered silk.

And now they are all here, all of them, all gathered in the drawing room before dinner, for cocktails, with all the lamps lighted, with the candles in the sconces lit, with bowls of fresh flowers everywhere, and a cheerful blaze in the fireplace with its high marble mantel.

From her command post at the center of the room, Sari surveys her dinner guests. Mildred Tillinghast, as usual, is wearing too much jewelry—a diamond dog collar, diamond chandelier earrings, a diamond bracelet, and her famous emerald-cut diamond solitaire, which is so heavy that it inevitably slips downward into the palm of her hand, and has to be twisted back into a position where it can be displayed. It is Harry, Sari thinks, who likes to see his wife go out in the evening decorated like a Christmas tree; as a self-made man, he believes in showing off what he has made. “You look very pretty tonight, Mildred,” Sari says. “I like your dress.” Lifting one fold of her skirt slightly, Mildred says, “Jimmy Galanos. Your house looks beautiful, as always, Sari. You have such good taste. I've always said that about you—Sari has such innate good taste.” Was there something a little condescending in that word,
innate?
Never mind.

Melissa is wearing a very simple, long black belted sheath, which flatters her, and has also kept her jewelry simple—two jet clips at her ears, nothing more. Melissa does have innate good taste. But Sari does not know what to make of her young man, Mr. Littlefield. He seems very young indeed. He seems not even to have begun to sprout a beard, and is a rather underfed-looking creature with frightened-looking eyes, wispy hair neither long nor short, and a manner of not seeming to want to talk at all. He is not the least bit attractive, not the least bit sexy, though Sari has learned from Thomas this afternoon that Mr. Littlefield appears, at least temporarily, to have moved into Melissa's apartment downstairs. What Melissa sees in him Sari cannot imagine, and all Melissa has said about him is that he has “tremendous talent.” Talent at what? Not talent at dressing, surely, for though he is wearing a dark blue suit that looks brand-new, it looks as though it had been tailored for a somewhat larger person, and his black wing-tip shoes are of a style Sari has not seen men wear for years. The shoes look somehow familiar and so, all at once, does the suit. Melissa has outfitted this young man in Peter LeBaron's old clothes! Clothes that have been packed away since 1955 in the basement storage caves! Though he is standing a little distance away from her, Sari can suddenly smell the distinctive scent of mothballs. Melissa, Melissa, what are you up to now?