The LeBaron Secret (6 page)

And so you see that in the fifth generation there are only Eric's two daughters. That is why Eric's actions and behavior are important to his mother, why nothing must go wrong at this point. Of the two girls, Kimmie is her grandmother's favorite. Why? Probably just because Kimmie is the prettier, livelier, more popular of the two.

Sari would like to carve Kimmie in her own image.

As for everything else, pay no heed to the stories you will hear, hereabouts, about the family. They have been called “rich as Croesus.” Well, how rich
was
Croesus, anyway? Did anyone ever count his wealth? Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, did the ancient, ignorant, downtrodden Lydians even know their king that well? Baloney, says Sari LeBaron. Baloney and bull-do. They also like to talk here of the LeBaron “family curse.” Do we still believe in curses and witchcraft and spells? More baloney and more bull-do. Pay no heed, either, to various versions you will hear of the circumstances surrounding Sari's crippling accident, or of the circumstances of Peter LeBaron's death, et cetera, or that there is “something funny” about Melissa, based on Switzerland, and all that gossip that still goes on.

There is only one truth about the way things happened, and only Sari LeBaron knows it all.

She, and perhaps two other people.

One of them is me.

Two

Today is the day for the boys from Madison Avenue to come out to San Francisco, as they do twice a year, to present their advertising campaigns, the television commercials and so on, for Baronet wines. Sari has heard along the grapevine that the Madison Avenue boys live in terror of these semiannual trips, that they spend weeks beforehand not only pulling together their layouts and storyboards, but also planning what they all will wear, in order to make the best impression on the old lady. She has heard that the entire trip between La Guardia and San Francisco International is spent not only in going over notes and market-research reports, but also on straightening trouser creases, hitching up socks, and checking neckties for spots. She can imagine them, getting on the airplane, carefully turning their jackets inside out and folding them, flatly and neatly, in the overhead storage bins so that they will arrive unwrinkled.

The boys always manage to dress much the same—in dark gray or dark blue three-button suits that bear the unmistakable stamp of Brooks Brothers, with white or pale blue button-down shirts, ties with tiny paisley patterns on them, and slip-on shoes with gold-colored bits clamped across their tops. It is the way they suppose San Francisco businessmen dress (which it really isn't quite), and Sari is certain that they don't dress that way back home in New York. San Francisco, they have been told, is a quiet, elegant city (which it really isn't), where the women wear mink jackets and hats and short white gloves, even in summer (which they haven't done for years), and where anything that would smack of Hollywood must be painstakingly eschewed. But this is all right. And it is all right, too, that they dread these San Francisco meetings. After all, there is that $20,000,000 in annual billings to take into consideration, a sum that, in Sari's opinion, is not to be sneezed at. And even though LeBaron & Murdock might be considered something of a family agency, there would be nothing to prevent Assaria LeBaron from—if she took a notion to—firing the lot of them and taking her business to Benton & Bowles. Benton & Bowles would be only too happy to take on Baronet. Only too happy.

There are three Madison Avenue boys—Sari knows them well—and they have names. One is Mike Geraghty, thirty-fivish, a redheaded and freckled Irishman with a pleasantly open face. He is the account executive and, as such, he is the highest in their pecking order. It is Mike who assumes the privilege of standing closest to Sari's desk—not over her shoulder, mind you, for that would be too presumptuous, too intimate; no one in the organization would have the temerity to do that. Mike stands, instead, just a little to the front, and a little to the side, of where Sari sits, with the newspaper-advertising proofs spread out in front of him for Sari's inspection.

The other two young men are from the agency's Creative Department. One is Bob Petrocelli, the art director who designs the ads. The other is Howard Friedman, the copywriter who writes the words. These two sit, a little apart from each other, in straight chairs in front of Sari's desk. An Irishman, an Italian, and a Jew, the three are a carefully calculated ethnic mix. Also at the meeting, seated on the big leather sofa at a short remove from the others, is Sari's son Eric.

The five are gathered in Sari's office now, and the meeting has begun.

The corporate headquarters of Baronet Vineyards are located in one of the older buildings on Montgomery Street, and the office that Sari LeBaron now occupies was originally designed to reflect Papa Julius LeBaron's notion of what a winery executive's office should be—grand and appropriately baronial, with decorative touches borrowed from both California and medieval Europe. The walls and high ceilings are paneled in lustrous dark walnut, embossed with heraldic shields and escutcheons, and the polished marble floor is laid out in an egg-and-dart design of white and gold. Sari's desk is framed by immense windows of stained glass that depict, in their various panels, sword-bearing conquistadores in tight-fitting cuisses and kneepieces, golden breastplates and épaulières, and ostrich-plumed helmets, as well as tonsured monks in cassocks and surplices bearing jugs and pitchers of wine. The chairs and sofa are all large and vaguely Spanish in design, covered in a rich black leather that gives the room its own smoky, waxy, male smell; and tall brass column lamps support heavy, fluted parchment shades that are painted with more heraldry—shields and crests and other armorial trappings.

The room is also boldly self-congratulatory. Set into a wall above the sofa, in an illuminated glass case, are displayed examples of Baronet products over the years in their various forms, shapes, and sizes—half-pints, pints, fifths, quarts, liters, half-gallons, and gallons—and varieties: the whites, the reds, the roses, the golden Angelicas, and so on. On the opposite wall, in an identical case, there is a collection of wineglasses of various origins and vintages. And the wall that faces Sari's desk is what Papa liked to call his Trophy Wall. Here, in frames, are all the awards, medals, tributes, and citations—both civic and industrial—along with the signed photographs from United States Presidents, every one from Calvin Coolidge through Ronald Reagan (with Franklin Roosevelt excepted), that the LeBarons and their company have amassed over the years. These are grouped around a gold-framed portrait of black-mustachioed Grandpa Mario Barone, painted from an early photograph. But even here the hand of the crafty revisionist of history has been at work. The plaque below the portrait of the man responsible for all this gives him a name he would never have answered to: “Marc LeBaron,” and, below this, the words “Founder: 1830–1905.”

Since Julius LeBaron's day, only one decorative detail of the office has been changed: the removal of the two brass cuspidors that used to flank the desk. Sari saw to that.

Now, in Papa's big swivel chair, she sits behind the walnut partners' desk. Her wheelchair has been put away in a closet, since none of the Madison Avenue boys is supposed to be reminded of her handicap. Mike Geraghty lays out the proposed ads, one by one, for her to consider, contemplate, study. He places each new glossy page on top of the last in the order in which—if Sari approves—they are to make their appearance to the wine-drinking public. The backs of his well-manicured fingers are downed with a light peach-fuzz of pink hairs.

“Now, let's go through the whole lot again, Mike,” Sari says at last.

“Certainly, Mrs. LeBaron.”

The other two young men say nothing, merely sit stiffly in their chairs in attitudes of attention and profound respect. Months of work are at stake here, and everything hangs on Sari's approval or disapproval. Thus far, she has registered neither emotion, and the brow of Howard Friedman, the copywriter, has begun to glisten slightly. The proposed new slogan is his.

“Well, I see what you're trying to say here,” she says at last. “‘Baronet—The Wine You Can Trust.' You can trust the Leaning Tower of Pisa not to fall down. You can trust the Statue of Liberty not to drop her torch. But—”.

Anxiously: “Yes, Mrs. LeBaron?”

“But what are we doing with all these pictures of
banks?
What does a bank have to do with wine?”

“You see, Mrs. LeBaron,” Howard Friedman interjects quickly, “the idea is that you can trust Baronet wines just the way you can trust your bank to take care of your money. You notice, in the copy, we've used the phrase ‘The wine you can bank on.'”

“I see that. But what I can't see is why anyone would want to bank on a wine. Am I missing some subtle point?”

“Banks,” says Mike Geraghty, “are trusted American financial institutions. The very bedrock, you might say, of our American capitalist system.”

“Don't forget—I'm pro-Communist!” She says it with a wink.

“Ha-ha, yes. Well, Americans feel very strongly about their banks. The dream of every young American man or woman is to be able to walk into a bank and cash a check, his or her own check. That couldn't happen in Russia or your other Iron Curtain countries. We've done some very deep-level psychological research stuff on this, Mrs. LeBaron, on Americans' deep-seated feelings about their banks, and—”

“I'm sure you're right, Mike,” Sari says, waving her hand impatiently, “but I still don't see the connection between people's feelings about their
banks
and the
wine
they drink. That's what I don't get about all of this.”

“Banks,” says Mike Geraghty, “are solid. They can be trusted. They're like an old friend. Who is more trusted in any town or city in this country than the local banker?”

“The local doctor, perhaps?” Sari suggests.

“But that raises health issues, doctors,” says Mike Geraghty, “and of course we don't want to go into anything like that, we really can't get into an area like that, Mrs. LeBaron, saying that wine is good for you, good for your health, nine out often doctors, that sort of thing. Why, the government would—”

“I'm not suggesting that,” Sari says. “All I'm saying, Mike, is—why banks?”

“We're trying to give Baronet a more upscale image, Mrs. LeBaron,” Howard Friedman says. “The bank, the banker—conservative, trustworthy, the person in town everyone loves—”

“Well, I certainly don't love my banker,” Sari says. “He happens to be a horse's ass. But what do you mean by this upscale business?”

“The banker. The town's most upright citizen, the pillar of the community.”

“Are you trying to say that bankers drink Baronet wines?”

“That's implicit, yes, in the copy. A subliminal message. Upscale.”

“But that's bull-do, Mike. Bankers
don't
drink Baronet wines—not in this town or any other. They drink a Beefeater martini with a twist, or Johnnie Walker Scotch. Or something equally respectable.”

“Of course, that's only a very minor copy point, Mrs. LeBaron. That's the subliminal, the upscale part. The main point is—”

“Yes, let's get back to the main point,” Sari says. “The main point of all this is ‘Baronet—The Wine You Can Trust,' as I see it. So let me ask you this: Is there any reason why anyone should
not
trust Baronet wines? Is there any reason why anyone should trust Baronet more than any other wine? Trust Baronet to do what? Not get you tipsy? Not make you upchuck, or give you cirrhosis of the liver if you drink too much? Not give you a hangover? Face it, Mike, our wine is cheap jug wine, always has been. It's not champagne, and it's not Scotch or bonded bourbon. Baronet is blue-collar stuff. Kids drink it in fern bars that can't afford a liquor license. They drink it at fraternity-house parties. They buy it by the gallon to spike the punch. We're not trying to be Beaulieu or Paul Masson or even Almaden. We're just a plain old honest wine with a low sticker, and people drink it because they get a pleasant buzz. We're the house wine, seventy-five cents a glass in some of your not-so-better restaurants. That's what
we
are, and always have been.”

“But with the taste emphasis changing these days, Mrs. LeBaron, and the—”

“Bull-do! If the public were turning away from our wine, we'd see it in the bottom line, wouldn't we? If we're doing something wrong, we'd see it in the sales figures, wouldn't we? But we don't. So why are we changing our ad approach, with this upscale business? Next thing you know, you'll be suggesting I buy ad space in
Town & Country
, or
Architectural Digest
, or la-di-da books like that! If you want to give me something new, give me something lighthearted—something that's about good, inexpensive
fun
. Are
banks
lighthearted? Banks are about interest rates.” She spreads the palms of her hands flat on the desktop and looks at each of the three young men in turn. “If you ask me, gentlemen, if there's one thing Baronet wines are not about,
it's banks
.”

There is silence now, and all around the room the Madison Avenue boys' faces are crestfallen and disconsolate, and all at once Sari feels almost sorry for them. They are so very young, and their young hopes look so very dashed. “Tell me,” she says in a gentler tone, “has my sister-in-law approved any of this stuff?”

Their expressions grow even more morose. It is difficult for them, after all, to hear all their hard work dismissed as “this stuff.”

“Miss LeBaron reviews every agency presentation very carefully before it is presented to the client,” Mike Geraghty says rather stiffly.

“Well, Joanna must be losing her marbles,” Sari says.