Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  I lived mainly in one room, the den, which had been described by the realtor as the library. It was a large sunny room and I had furnished it with my favorite recliner, a gooseneck reading lamp, and an old leather couch which my mother had tried to give to the junkman after I had bought her a three-piece suite some years ago. I had no books in the room except for twenty years of The New Yorker bound in leather, but I had my record collection, two phonographs, three tape recorders, a television, and a radio. In the closet, which I kept locked, were my German memorabilia: my cousin Kristina’s watercolors of the Siebengebirge, the albums of photographs taken at the little house in Düsseldorf, the souvenirs of visits to Berlin and Bavaria. On the walls hung framed photographs: my parents, the dog I had once owned, two turn-of-the-century shots of Wall Street, and a panoramic view of Ocean Drive near Bar Harbor.

  I loved my den. I kept it very neat and very clean all by myself, since I liked to think that there was at least one part of my home where the servants were never allowed to go. I used to vacuum the carpet on Sunday mornings when my housekeeper was at church. Cornelius had laughed at this eccentric behavior, but I liked vacuum cleaners—in fact, I liked all machines, and the more efficient they were, the more I enjoyed them. At that time my favorite hobby was dismantling and reassembling my television set. I liked the little wires and the gleaming metal and the system’s exquisite logic and precision. When I was working with my hands and using the electronic knowledge I had acquired over the years, I could tune out the rest of the world and forget the pressures of my life at Willow and Wall.

  The rest of my apartment had been furnished by a fashionable interior decorator and was exactly the kind of home a man in my position has to have to impress his clients, his friends, his enemies, and all the other people who know he started life as an immigrant in a blue-collar home. I was not snobbish, merely practical. Since I dealt continuously with influential men, it was essential that I could present a domestic front they could respect. It was a fact of life which my benefactor Paul Van Zale had taught me long ago at Bar Harbor.

  “Darling, what a heavenly apartment!” exclaimed Vivienne as I led her into the living room. “And what a marvelous jungle you’ve managed to grow on that enormous terrace! Oh, I just love modern paintings—is that one over the desk by Picasso?”

  “No, it’s by some guy called Braque. Neil gave it to me on the twentieth anniversary of our partnership. He said it would be a good investment.” I thought of Teresa gasping: “Jesus … a Braque!” and subsiding weakly onto the couch. With an abrupt movement I opened the cocktail cabinet. “Drink, Vivienne?”

  “Darling, I’d adore a martini. The very mention of Cornelius’ name makes me want to hit the bottle in the biggest possible way.”

  As I mixed her drink she told me she had taken the first train to New York from Florida as soon as she had read in the press of Vicky’s elopement, and had made repeated efforts, all unsuccessful, to gain admittance to the Van Zale mansion to see her daughter.

  “I’ve called and called on the phone, of course,” she added, “but all I ever got were the aides and the secretaries. Then finally I remembered you. You’re the one man in all New York who can always get Cornelius to the phone, and I was wondering …”

  “Vivienne, forgive me, but would it really serve any useful purpose if you spoke to him? It seems to me—”

  “Sam, I’ve got to talk to him—it’s for Vicky’s sake, not mine! Do you think I’d give a damn if I never spoke to Cornelius again? My God, when I think of the way he treated me! Oh, I know I married him for his money, but I was very fond of him and I’d been a good wife, and there I was, pregnant with his child—”

  “I remember, yes.” I had been trying to restrict myself to soda water, but the occasion was just too much for me. I got up to add a shot of Scotch to my glass.

  “… and then he finds out he’d been married for his money … Okay, so I was stupid to let him find out, but if he hadn’t been eavesdropping …”

  “Vivienne, believe me, I remember all this much too well!”

  “I’ll bet the little bastard never told you how he cut me off afterward! ‘It’s finished,’ he says, cool as dressed crab, ‘it’s over. I have nothing else to say.’ Can you imagine! What a way to terminate a marriage to an affectionate, faithful, pregnant wife! And then he even had the nerve to complain when I sued the pants off him for divorce and got total custody of Vicky!”

  “Well, that’s past history now, Vivienne. I know you had custody of Vicky originally, but Cornelius has had complete custody since she was ten years old, and he’s not going to welcome any interference from you either now or at any other time.”

  “Of course he won’t welcome it, but the hell with him! I can’t just sit back and let him mess up my little girl’s life! Look, Sam, I want Vicky to come and live with me while she gets over this disaster. I know Cornelius thinks I’m poorer than white trash just because I had the guts to remarry and turn my back on all his million-dollar alimony, but my husband—my last husband, I mean—left me a little money when he died, and I’ve got the cutest little house in Fort Lauderdale now. Oh, I know it’s not Palm Beach, but it’s nice, Sam, and I know some lovely people there. Don’t you see—I could give Vicky a normal home! Oh, Sam, you know what happens to all these heiresses—the fortune hunters, the gigolos, the fake Russian princes, the drink, the drugs, the breakdowns, the suicides …”

  “Vivienne, Neil’s just as anxious as you are that Vicky should have a normal, happy life!”

  “Cornelius,” said Vivienne, “has lived for twenty-three years in a Fifth Avenue palace with fifty million dollars for pin money, his own Wall Street bank, and all the aristocracy of the Eastern Seaboard sashaying up his driveway in their Cadillacs to tell him hello. He wouldn’t even recognize normality if he met it eyeball to eyeball at high noon.”

  “Nonsense! The Van Zales have the quietest, happiest, and least pretentious family life of any people I know!”

  “Well, if that’s true,” said Vivienne fiercely, “why does Vicky run away from home at the very first opportunity she gets? I’m not calling you a liar, darling, but I think there’s a screw loose in that household somewhere, and I want my little girl back.” To my amazement she began to weep, and her bosom, which Cornelius had once confessed had given him more wet dreams than any other piece of anatomy he had ever encountered, rose and fell with mesmerizing precision. It was miraculous how well she had retained her figure, almost as miraculous as her success in looking younger than I was when she was fourteen years my senior.

  “Have another drink,” I said, wishing I was in bed with Teresa, and tried to think clearly. I had the strong feeling that despite my reluctance to be involved, the situation could be turned to my advantage. The fact was that I was already involved; if I wanted Cornelius to grant me that leave of absence from Van Zale’s, I had to persuade him to abandon his matrimonial pipe dream, and in order to achieve that, I had to provide him with an alternative solution to Vicky’s problems. Beneath Vivienne’s stagy weeping and phony mannerisms I sensed a genuine concern for her daughter, and I thought it could be argued, not unreasonably, that Vicky would benefit from a long vacation in Florida. Whether Cornelius would accept this argument was debatable, but I could try. What did I have to lose? I rose to my feet, moved to the phone, and picked up the receiver.

  “Okay, I’ll get him on the line.”

  “Oh, Sam … darling …” Vivienne, trembling with gratitude, was teetering across the floor to kiss me on the cheek.

  A Van Zale aide answered the phone.

  “Keller,” I said. “Is he there?”

  “Darling!” breathed Vivienne again, stretching out her hand to take the receiver, but I stepped backward away from her.

  “I’ll handle this, Vivienne, if you don’t mind. … Neil? Yes, it’s me. Can you take some upsetting information without getting upset? I’ve got Vivienne here with me. She wants to invite Vicky down to Fort Lauderdale for a whi
le to give everyone a breathing space, and personally, I don’t think that’s such a bad idea.”

  “Are you out of your mind? She hates the bitch!”

  “Maybe, but what’s the harm in letting Vivienne at least talk to her to issue the invitation? The world won’t fall apart any farther than it’s fallen already, and who knows, Vicky may even be grateful to you later.”

  “Let me have a word with Vivienne.”

  “No. You’d fight. I’m staying on the line until you transfer this call to Vicky’s room.”

  “Oh, shit!” said Cornelius, but I heard him tell his aide to transfer the call.

  I waited. Eventually I heard the bell ring again, but nobody answered. “Neil?” I said tentatively at last.

  As I had guessed, he was listening in.

  “Yes, I’m here,” he said heavily. “Well, you’ll just have to tell Vivienne that Vicky’s not picking up the phone.”

  “Would it be too much to ask you to go up to her room and let her know her mother’s on the line?”

  “Yes. It would. But maybe I’d better check on her anyway to see if she’s okay.” He set down the receiver and I heard a door close in the distance.

  While I waited, I told Vivienne what was happening.

  “My God, Sam, do you think she’s all right? She hasn’t been suicidal, has she?”

  “Just mad at the world in general.”

  We went on waiting. I tried not to think of Teresa in her cheap turquoise dress with the gold cross slipping into the hollow between her breasts, but the next moment I was remembering when we had last made love. I had had a shade too much to drink and the occasion had been only moderately successful, although Teresa had sworn everything had been fine. Later, when I was working for the ECA in Germany and my problems had been straightened out, I was going to give up cigarettes and hard liquor and drink only the occasional glass of wine.

  The line clicked. The pristine future dissolved, leaving me enmeshed in the clouded, chaotic present. “Sam?” gasped Cornelius. “She’s gone!”

  “What!”

  “I had the guys force the door. The window was open. She’d let herself down onto the terrace by knotting some sheets into a rope. Oh, Christ, Sam …”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yeah, keep that bitch Vivienne off my back,” said Cornelius, voice shaking, and hung up.

  I stood looking at the receiver in my hand while Vivienne demanded to know what had happened. Finally I recovered sufficiently to say, “Vicky’s run away again.”

  She looked first shocked, then incredulous. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” she demanded furiously. “That little bastard’s just spinning you that yarn to get rid of me!”

  “Not this time! This was genuine. My God, I hope I never have an eighteen-year-old daughter!” I slumped down exhausted on the couch.

  “Well, what’s he going to do, for God’s sake?” Vivienne shouted at me in a frenzy of frustration. “What’s he going to do?”

  By this time I knew I had had as much of Vivienne as I could take. Ringing the bell briefly twice, my signal which indicated that I wanted my chauffeur to have the car waiting at the curb, I said shortly, “Neil has an army of people working for him, and the police commissioner’s a personal friend. He’ll find her. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Vivienne …”

  “But I can’t go now! I must wait for him to call you back with further news!”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”

  “ ‘Anything to get rid of the old bag,’ he thinks! Why the great rush to get rid of me, darling? Are you expecting some one?”

  “No.”

  “Sure? Incidentally, are you still dating those fluffy little blondes who live in outrageous places like Brooklyn, or do you feel less socially inferior nowadays and set your sights a little higher?”

  “My chauffeur will drive you back to your hotel, Vivienne. I’ll see you to the door.”

  “I guess that’s why you’ve never married,” she said idly. “You only feel at home with that kind of girl, but that kind of girl wouldn’t feel at home here. Or would she?” Her glance flicked cynically over the living room. “Rich men can make a girl so adaptable.”

  “You married for money,” I said before I could stop myself. “You should know.”

  She laughed. “Yes, darling,” she said without a second’s hesitation, “but I’m not the only one in this room who knows how it feels to be owned lock, stock, and barrel by one of the richest men in town.”

  There was a silence. Then without a word I walked into the hall and held open the front door for her.

  “You’ll call me, won’t you, as soon as there’s any news?” she said after telling me the name of her hotel, and the question reminded her that it was in her best interests to part from me on a friendly note. When I remained silent, she somehow managed to produce a smile and a seductive tone of voice. “Come on, Sam! What happened to that nice all-American boy I used to know with the innocent smile and the Down East accent and the cute old-fashioned manners? I’m sorry I was so bitchy—I was just so disappointed not to talk to Vicky. I’m sure you make out just fine in your private life! All that success, all that money—so sexy!” She sighed, took my hand in hers, and eyed me mistily. “We are friends, darling, aren’t we?” she murmured, applying a light pressure to my palm with her fingers.

  “Why, of course, Vivienne!” I said, matching her insincerity ounce for ounce, and finally managed to get rid of her.

  I went back to my den and sat down. Presently my housekeeper knocked on the door to say that dinner was waiting for me on the serving cart in the living room, but I went on sitting on my couch in the den. Vivienne’s jibe was still drifting deeper and deeper into my consciousness like a feather falling from a great height, and for the first time in my life I was wishing I had never met Cornelius, wishing Paul Van Zale had passed me by when I had been clipping that hedge in his garden long ago.

  I could so clearly visualize the life that might have been. By this time I would be living in a new split-level house on the outskirts of Bar Harbor, or maybe Ellsworth, but no, the sea at Bar Harbor would be nicer for the kids—for of course I would have kids, probably four or five, and a pretty wife who was a wonderful cook, and we’d have barbecues on weekends and be friends with all our neighbors and go to church on Sunday. There would have been no visits to Germany, because naturally with my growing family I couldn’t have afforded the trip to Europe, so I would have remained the all-American patriot, someone who would have volunteered for the army in 1941 without waiting to be drafted, someone who would have despised the German-Americans who secretly angled for exemptions, someone who could not have conceived of a situation in which a millionaire had arranged an exemption for his best friend by making a single phone call to someone in Washington who owed him a favor. …

  The doorbell rang.

  Looking out of the den in surprise, I found my housekeeper hovering uncertainly in the passage. “That’ll be Miss Vicky, Mr. Keller,” she whispered, troubled. “The doorman just buzzed from the lobby to say she was on her way up. He said she ran straight past him into the elevator before he could stop her.”

  “Miss Vicky?”

  “Yes, sir, Miss Van Zale.”

  The doorbell rang again, and this time did not stop. Abandoning the den, I moved swiftly past my housekeeper, crossed the hall, and pulled open the front door.

  “Vicky … Jesus Christ!”

  “Uncle Sam!” cried Vicky as if I were the last man left on earth, and hurtled across the threshold into my arms.

  Chapter Three

  I

  “UNCLE SAM, I’VE COME to you because you’re the only sane person I know,” said Vicky, clasping my hand as if it were a piton riveted to the face of a cliff. “In fact, you’re the only person who can save me, so please don’t just pat my head and send me back to Daddy as if I were a stray poodle. If you do, I think I’ll jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.”<
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  “Gee whiz,” I said, “excuse me while I get out my suit of armor and my shining white horse. Have a drink of mead or something—or better still, how about something to eat? I haven’t had dinner yet, and if I’m going to save you, I’ve got to be well-fed.”

  I took Vicky into the den, rescued the serving cart from the living room, and asked my housekeeper to bring an additional place setting. Back in the den I found a tape I had made of several Glenn Miller records and threaded it into my recorder. The music, dreamy and soothing, filtered into the room as I offered the wine decanter to my guest. “Do you want to try some of this?”

  “Is it like that California Kool-Aid Daddy serves at home?”

  “No, this is French wine from Bordeaux.”

  “Oh, Uncle Sam, you’re so wonderfully European and civilized!” She smiled at me radiantly, a schoolgirl on a disagreeable but not unexciting spree, and it occurred to me that although her troubles were genuine, she was unable to resist the adolescent urge to dramatize them. I smiled back, trying to see beyond the schoolgirl to the woman she might one day become, but all I saw was the teenage uniform of pleated skirt, bobby socks, and the sloppy pink sweater. Her long thick wavy golden hair was brushed back from her face and secured at the nape of her neck with a pink bow. She had her mother’s pert nose and Cornelius’ brilliant black-lashed gray eyes, her mother’s neat oval chin and Cornelius’ stubborn mouth, which looked so deceptively tranquil in repose, and as I wondered how I would have dealt with her if she had been my daughter, I came to the uneasy conclusion that I would probably have coped with the responsibility no better than Cornelius.

  “Do you want some sauerbraten, Vicky?” I said, after my housekeeper had brought the extra place setting.

  “Gee, I don’t think I could possibly … Well, yes, it does smell kind of good. I haven’t eaten for ages.”

  With the food and drink liberally distributed, we settled ourselves on the leather couch.