The LeBaron Secret (48 page)

During Sari's pregnancy with what would turn out to be the twins, Melissa seemed even more disturbed than usual about what was going on. “Do you
have
to have this baby, Mother?” she asked her again.

“Have to? Well, the fact is that I'm going to,” Sari said. Though Melissa was now eighteen, Sari had been advised by the doctors and other experts whom she consulted that this appeared to be a classic case of sibling rivalry, albeit an inappropriate one for a girl of Melissa's age. “Her place and position, as the baby in the family, are being threatened with usurpation by the new infant,” one of these experts had explained.

“Do you
have
to, Mother?”

“I'm very happy about it,” she said. “Don't you think it will be fun to have a new little baby brother or sister?”

(“Try reassuring her that, as the firstborn, she will always occupy a special position in the family,” the same Expert had advised.)

“You'll always be special, Melissa,” she said. “You're our firstborn. In fact, I'm going to count on you for a great deal of help with this baby.”

“I don't want you to have it!”

“Why not?”

“I'm frightened, Mother.”

“What's there to be frightened of? The doctor says I'm perfectly healthy.”

“You're not my real mother, are you?” Melissa said.

“Melissa, we've gone over this hundreds of times. Of course I am.”

“I'm adopted, aren't I?”

“No, you are not adopted. Please, no more of this silly talk.”

“Then why am I different?”

“Different? Every person is different from every other.”

“Was I a difficult birth, Mother?”

A pause. “You were a beautiful baby,” she said. And then, “Giving birth to a baby is never exactly easy.”

“I'll never know that, will I? If I want a baby, I'll have to adopt one. The way you adopted me. Adopted people only get to adopt their babies because their blood is bad. I read that.”

“Well, that's absolute nonsense, Melissa. Now please let's—”

“Don't have it, Mother. I'm frightened. The Sutter Buttes.”

“What about the Sutter Buttes?”

“I'm afraid this baby is going to be a monster. Like the one I saw at the Sutter Buttes.”

“The Sutter Buttes are nothing but a bunch of brown old hills.”

(“I would recommend, Mrs. LeBaron, that when your baby is born you be very attentive when the baby is in Melissa's presence,” the Expert had said. “She should not be permitted to be alone with it. There is a possibility that she might try to harm it.” And then, “I think I detect two heartbeats.”)

But then, when the twins were born, the Expert was proved quite wrong. Melissa was overjoyed with the babies, as overjoyed as if they had been her own. Soon she was helping to feed and dress and diaper them, taking them out for walks in their twin carriage, lifting them in and out of their cribs and playpen, and lavishing so much obvious love and attention on them that all Sari's apprehensions quickly evaporated. In fact, the twins seemed to make Melissa happier and more relaxed than she had ever been in her entire life. It is a miracle, Sari thought, as within six months Melissa announced that she no longer wanted the various tranquilizing drugs that had over the years been prescribed for her by Experts. On her own, thanks to the advent of the twins, Melissa seemed at last to be growing up.

The only symptoms that remain of what was once diagnosed as “neurasthenia” are a certain tenseness of manner, a shortness of temper, a tendency to embrace sudden, short-lived, and sometimes inappropriate enthusiasms, and a periodic drinking problem.

Then, just before Christmas of 1945, Peter telephoned Sari at the Montgomery Street office. “Something terrible has happened,” he said in a choked voice.

“What is it?”

“Joanna. She's just been rushed to Mercy Hospital.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“Her maid found her. They think she tried to—tried to commit—”

“Oh, God. How is she?”

“They say—they say she's going to live.”

“Thank God. You must get over there right away, Peter.”

“I can't—can't face it, Sari.”

“Then I'll go,” she said quickly, and hung up the phone.

“I'm her sister-in-law,” she said to the nurse at the desk outside the Intensive Care Unit. “How is she?”

“We had a close call,” the nurse said. “But we're going to make it. We pumped her stomach out. Sleeping pills.”

“Intentional, do you think? Or an accident.”

“We don't know. They tell us there was no note left. She's awake now, if you'd like to go in to see her.”

“Yes.”

“Just for a few minutes. We're still a little uncomfortable.”

“Joanna dear,” she said in as tender a voice as she could muster. “It's me.”

“Oh, Sari,” she said, turning her head toward her. Joanna's still-beautiful face was gray, there were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was damp and matted about her forehead. “I'm so sorry.”

“What happened, Jo?”

“I was so discouraged and depressed. There seemed nothing left for me to live for.”

“Jo, don't say that. You have everything.”

“No. It's you who have everything. You have Peter—”

“Nonsense. You also have Peter, and you have me. We love you.”

“You have the business. Years ago, when we used to go out and work with the field hands, I used to feel a part of things, a part of your lives, a part of the business. But now we're all becoming rich again, and there's nothing for me to do. Lance is off at school in the East, growing up. I'm all alone, turning into a bored, useless, middle-aged rich person. You have your job. You have your adorable little twin babies … I have nothing. Even our friendship doesn't seem what it was.”

My adorable little twin babies, Sari thought. Is there possibly a connection between them and this? In Joanna's plan, perhaps I was not supposed to have any adorable twin babies. But instead she said, “Would you
want
to do something for the company, Jo?”

“What could I do? I have no talent. I have nothing.”

“Perhaps we could think of something,” Sari said.

“In school, my teachers used to say I was creative …”

“If you're interested, we'll think of something.”

Joanna closed her eyes. “Peter … why didn't he come?”

“He's in Sonoma today,” she lied. “We're still trying to reach him.”

With her eyes still closed, she smiled a wan smile. “I have a saint's name,” she said. “I'm bound to be martyred.”

That afternoon, Sari dictated an interoffice memorandum to her husband. He was, after all, the president of Baronet, and this was a matter of company business that she was proposing.

TO
: P.P.LeB.

FROM
: A.L.LeB.

I spent some time with your sister at the hospital this morning.

One of the things that seems to be on her mind is her feeling of being “out of things” in terms of Baronet, whereas in the 1930s we all worked together in the vineyards, etc. Joanna feels that now that her son is nearly grown she is in danger of becoming an indolent woman of leisure, and she expressed an interest in being given something to do.

You may recall that several years ago your sister made an astute suggestion on how we might advertise our wines to servicemen during the war. This suggestion was never followed up, but it was a good one. And I think you will agree with me that Joanna has a keen creative mind.

You also know that you and I have both expressed dissatisfaction with our present advertising agency in New York, and that those fellows on Madison Avenue sometimes seem to have no idea of what goes on in our vineyards and wineries in California. Joanna, meanwhile, grew up in the wine business and knows it well.

My proposal is this: that Joanna be placed in charge of our advertising for at least two years, on a trial basis, and that funds be set aside for her to open her own New York agency, with Baronet as her principal account. This would of course require her relocation in New York, but that should present no problem.

I believe this would give your sister the “shot in the arm” she appears to need so much at this point in her life. And I believe she'd do the job well. A further advantage of such an arrangement might be that, whereas advertising agencies charge commissions of 15% of billings, Joanna might be persuaded, as a “family,” or “in-house” agency, to charge a lower percentage.

Please let me know what you think of this suggestion, and whether we should put the proposal to her when she has recovered from her current illness.

And so that was how Joanna LeBaron became the Media Maven of Manhattan.

“Melissa has found out,” Joanna is explaining to Eric on the telephone from New York. “This is exactly what I was afraid would happen.”

“How did she react?”

“Angrily. Bitterly. Bitter at me, bitter at your mother.”

“Who told her?”

“Your mother, of course. Who else?”

“That was a shitty thing to do.”

“Yes. Shitty. But typically Sari. She denies it, of course, but obviously she felt she had nothing to lose by giving Melissa the facts—and everything to gain. So there we are.”

“Well,” he says, “now that she has the facts, what's she going to do with them?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Eric. I've been trying to reach her on the phone for the past two days. Obviously, she's not taking or returning calls.”

“Obviously.”

“Do you think you might have better luck getting through to her, Eric?”

“When she's in one of her moods, I'm not sure.”

“Will you try? It would be helpful if we knew how she intends to vote.”

“I'll try, Aunt Jo. It's just that I'm not very hopeful.”

“Otherwise, I guess we'll just go into our meeting on the thirtieth and let the chips fall where they may.”

“Yes.”

“And, frankly, I'm not hopeful about any of this, Eric, now that this has happened. Unless you can somehow manage to persuade her otherwise, I'm terribly afraid that Melissa is going to take your mother's side.”

“What makes you think that, Aunt Jo?”

“Sari LeBaron has been trying to poison Melissa's mind against me for years,” Joanna says.

This last, about poisoning Melissa's mind, is a damned lie, and Joanna knows it's a damned lie. But, Sari sometimes thinks, in the years since Joanna has become the Medusa of Madison Avenue, the Hecate of Hucksterism, she has built a very lucrative career on lying—on exaggerating and inflating the merits of her clients' products, and falsely denigrating and ridiculing the claims of her clients' competitors: “Nine out of ten hematologists recommend Bonzo Mouthwash …” “Are you still using old-fashioned Grippo for flu symptoms, when you could be dancing under the Miami moon after one dose of doctor-recommended Flu-Go?” “Kills Lice by the Millions on Contact!” Lies. Garbage. Lies are Joanna's stock in trade. At least, in Baronet's advertising, Sari has never pretended that her wines were anything other than what they were: plain, old-fashioned, no-frills wines for the working man. And when it comes to Joanna's claim that Sari was trying to poison Melissa's mind against her, the truth is the exact opposite. One example will suffice.

It was in the summer of 1955, when the twins were ten, and were spending the month of July at a boys' camp in Maine. Soon they would be on their way to Bitterroot, where the whole family was to spend the month of August, and Melissa—so changed, so improved—was helping Sari plan a homecoming party for them. Melissa was twenty-eight now, and Sari had begun to wonder whether she would ever marry. And yet, at the same time, she had grown accustomed to Melissa's presence in the household, and enjoyed her companionship. That morning on the Montana ranch had been clear and golden. The sun was reflected in silver half circles on the lake and, while Peter worked outside at clearing his trees, the mood of the two women in the ranch house was buoyant and expectant as they planned the little family party. “I wonder if they'll have changed much, after their month at camp,” Melissa was saying, and Sari said, “They're probably brown as berries, and grown another inch or two.”

Then she suddenly laughed and said, “Melissa, do you remember years ago, when I found out I was pregnant again, you were so upset about it?”

“Of course I remember.”

“Why was that, I wonder?”

“I was frightened, Mother. Of course, when the twins were born, and everything was all right, I saw I shouldn't have been, but at the time I was terribly frightened.”

“Frightened of what?”

“Frightened that the baby would be born a—monster. Deformed. And frightened that you were going to die.”

“Whatever put that notion into your head?”

“It was something Aunt Joanna said.”

“Joanna?”

“She told me that if you had another baby, it would be born deformed. She told me that if you had another baby, it would probably kill you. I used to have nightmares about it.”

“Why in the world would Joanna have said a thing like that?” she said.

“She said you were too old. She said you were past your child-bearing years. She said it would be like Athalie. But even worse.”

“I was only thirty-five …” But suddenly she was so angry that she could no longer speak, and her anger had a color—crimson—that seemed to spring up in a swordlike shaft from her groin to the ceiling of her brain. Finally, she said, “I'm going out to pick some wildflowers for the table.”

She followed the sound of Peter's ax-strokes until she found him where he was laboring at his clearing in the woods, and she paused a little distance from him to watch him—bare to the waist, still tall, arrow-straight, muscular, and slender. The drops of perspiration flew from his forehead and shoulders in the same arcs as the pearly chips from the tall pine he was felling. A thought floated across her mind. He was fifty years old. From the early 1930s until after the war, they had not visited the ranch at all, and during those years much of the land he had cleared previously had turned into forest again, and in the years since he had managed to clear perhaps eighteen acres of the four hundred he planned for his sheep range, along with the new undergrowth that sprang up inexorably year after year. He always insisted on working alone, refusing the help of Mr. Hanratty, the ranch superintendent. Even though old, Hanratty was an excellent woodsman. “I want the feeling of personal accomplishment,” he would explain to her, “and I want the exercise.” But now, as she watched him, she saw that there would never be a sheep range, that he could never possibly live to finish the project he had undertaken, not if he lived to be a hundred. She saw it all as his delusion, his obsession, another form of his self-punishment, and she saw it all as somehow connected with Joanna.