“I didn’t think so,” he murmured, then turned and left the room.
So the matter was settled. Gil invested in the electronics plant while his reelection campaign went full speed ahead. Though there were fewer parties at home, there were many at local restaurants or at the homes of supporters. Lenore resumed her place by Gil’s side, attending each and every one he asked her to. He took his reelection in November for the mere formality it was; the one man who stood a chance of giving him a run for his money decided to bow out of the race at the last minute, leaving a local entrepreneur who only halfheartedly campaigned as Gil’s opposition.
Little over a month after that victory Gil presented Lenore with the deed to a tract of land he had bought in Dover, a small blue-blood town some forty-five minutes southwest of Boston.
Simultaneously, Jack presented Natalie with the deed to a similar sized tract of land abutting Gil’s. In fact, the two men had been scouting the area together and had bought the land the fall before. Since it would have been too late for Gil to run for the House from a new district, they had decided to keep the sale quiet until Gil was safely reelected from Brookline.
Natalie was delighted. Jack took her and the children for a drive to see the site. It was a snow-covered winter wonderland, and Natalie fell in love with it on sight, which pleased Jack, who knew that she had been increasingly disturbed by his absences. He saw the purchase of land for a new home for his family as a statement of commitment that he hoped would gain favor in her eyes. It did. And when Jack told her that she would be able to plan the house from scratch, the excitement in her eyes told him that he had bought all the more free time for himself.
Lenore, too, was delighted … in her way. She couldn’t deny that the land, with its pine groves and apple orchard, meandering meadow and spreading chestnuts, maples and oaks was spectacular. She could even visualize just where she wanted the house to be, picturing a long driveway and an imposing facade. When Gil told her that the design of the house would be up to her, she felt challenged in a way that she hadn’t been since she had completed decorating the house in Brookline.
Oh, yes, she wanted to live there. Dover reeked of landed gentry; the thought that she could be part of it was like a dream come true. But … so expensive … the money … a mortgage … on top of everything else?
In the end she didn’t breathe a word of her doubts to Gil, because she wanted so badly to build a house on this prime piece of land that she let her desires override caution—which wasn’t to say that she didn’t worry, just that she did her best to reason those worries away. After all, buying land and building a house was a solid investment. They would have something that was worth something. Land didn’t go bust as a business could. Nor was a house up for reelection every two years. Moreover, the land and the house would be something she could enjoy. Lord only knew she didn’t find joy in Gil’s law office or the House chamber or Jack’s electronics plant!
Lenore spent the early months of 1951 with architects and builders. She was in many ways happier than she had been in years because she had something to work on, some semblance of power. She decided that her house should be a large Georgian colonial, which, in her vision, represented dignity and prosperity. There was to be a three-car garage connected to the house by a wide latticed breezeway, an ample gardner’s shed, and a cottage behind the house for the Morells.
When Cassie heard about the last she felt justified in having been so rigid about remaining with the Warrens. She would, literally, have her own house at no personal expense. Kenny, who was about to turn one and was on the verge of walking, would have acres to play in when he grew older, fine schools to attend, and, most importantly, high-standing friends and neighbors. She couldn’t have chosen a better environment for her child if she had been a Warren herself.
She wasn’t, of course, but Kenny might well have been. He was constantly with Deborah, treated as an equal by their nurse-turned-nanny—and as an equal by the other Warren children. Occasionally, as she had done at the first, Cassie wondered if Lenore was bothered by Kenny’s presence. He was, after all, the housekeeper’s son. But if Lenore was bothered she never said anything to Cassie, and if she had ever taken the matter to Gil Cassie never knew it.
Cassie did know that Gil was always incredibly kind to her. She could enter the room to bring coffee while he was in the middle of a heated discussion with Jack and he would look up at her with a sudden smile. He liked her. She clung to that knowledge with a swelling heart, knowing that there was nothing in the world that she wouldn’t do for Gil Warren if he asked.
There weren’t any special requests made of Cassie that spring or summer, not by Gil at least. But the prospect of moving had inspired Lenore’s instincts to clean house. She spent hours with Cassie going through each of the childrens’ drawers and closets, making piles of clothing to give to the Salvation Army. Cupboards were cleaned, stale staples and cracked dishes discarded. Cassie didn’t mind the extra work since Lenore was in better spirits than she had been in for months. She even opened up a bit with Cassie.
“Laura is becoming such a little lady,” she said as she held up a small dress for inspection. “I think that once we move I’d like to start her in ballet classes.” She placed the dress aside to be packed away for Deborah. It was a move based solely on habit; chances were that, come the time the dress fit tiny Deborah, Lenore would decide it was old-fashioned.
Cassie grinned, visualizing the feminine Laura spinning around a stage. “She’d make a beautiful dancer.”
“I think so. Did I tell you that we’re planning on building a stable? We have so much land, and I thought that riding would be a good outlet for the boys.”
Cassie visualized another picture, that of Kenny on the back of a horse. “That would be exciting!”
“Mmm. Dover is horse country. Have you ever ridden a horse, Cassie?”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed at the memory. “It was an old one, but it did love sugar. It belonged to one of my father’s friends, and Michel—my brother—used to take me for rides. There was no saddle, so Michel would lift me onto its bare back and it seemed so high at the time that I’d hold onto the mane for dear life until he’d thrown himself up behind me. Then he’d hold me around the waist, and I’d feel perfectly safe, and we’d amble along.”
“You loved your brother.”
Cassie stacked several undershirts and set them with the dress. “Oh, yes.”
“You have wonderful memories of him.”
“That’s about all I have of him. That and a picture.”
“It’s sad,” Lenore murmured, but she was thinking in more general terms than the tragedy of the Holocaust. “You loved your brother, have warm, wonderful memories of him, yet he was taken from you. I had a sister—still have a sister—but we were never close. We rarely see each other even now. It’s very sad.”
“Do you miss that contact?” Cassie asked.
“I miss the sense of kinship.”
“But you have your own family now.”
Lenore sighed. “True. But there isn’t that feeling of a common past. I wonder why it is that Lydia and I never bonded to one another as you did to your brother.”
Cassie suspected that Lenore’s personality simply didn’t allow for it. She knew that Lenore had lost her father abruptly and at an early age, and she wondered if that had affected her ability to form close relationships. She always seemed to place a certain distance between herself and others, as though afraid to risk anything more. Her relationship with Natalie was the one exception.
“You’ve always had Mrs. Whyte. Isn’t there a sense of history in that?”
“In a way, I suppose.”
“She’s like a sister to you.”
“I don’t know what I would have done without her. She’s a true friend. But still, it’s different.” She was quiet for a moment, then took a breath. “I hope my children always stay close. There’s security in a blood relationship. I’d like to think that if anyt
hing happens to one of them the others will come to his or her aid.”
“I’m sure they will. They do that now in their way.”
But Lenore was looking pinched. “Laura is different from the boys, and they’re different from one another. As for the baby, who knows what she’ll be like?”
“You wouldn’t want to have children who were carbon copies of one another. The excitement is in their differences. In time, when they recognize those differences, they’ll come to appreciate them. They’ll stay close. The experiences they’re having now, living and playing with each other, will stand them in good stead.”
But Lenore was momentarily distracted, her mind twenty years in the past. “I want them to be in control of their lives rather than having to live life in reaction to things that are beyond their control.”
“Is that possible? Are we ever free of circumstance?”
Lenore didn’t hear her, or, if she did, she chose to ignore the philosophical question. “I want them to be happy. Happy and secure.” She returned to the present with a blink. “What do you want, Cassie?”
“For my child? The same things you want for yours. Happiness and security.”
“For you. What do you want?”
Cassie had to consider that. The past ten years had seen astonishing changes in her life. For many of them she had thought only of the moment. But what did she want in the long run? “I’m really not sure,” she finally confessed.
“You’re too bright for this job,” Lenore blurted out. “You know that, don’t you?”
“No. Not at all,” she returned quickly and defensively, then grinned. “This job is a constant challenge.”
“But you could be doing something even more challenging, and handling it every bit as well as you handle our house.”
Again Cassie grew pensive. “Maybe what I like about working here is the stability of it. There’s the challenge, but there’s also a certain sense of … continuity. The children grow and do different things. You and Mr. Warren grow and do different things. But the family remains intact. There’s a kind of underlying confidence here that is reassuring.” She gave Lenore a contemplative glance. “At one point my life was a huge question mark. Maybe what I’m seeking is normalcy.”
“But you could be moving up in the world.”
“I guess moving up doesn’t mean as much to me as waking up in the morning knowing where I am and what I’m going to be doing, and that I can do it well. I’ll leave moving up in the world to Kenny.”
For a time Lenore said nothing, simply continued to fold the worn jerseys in her lap. “Funny,” she mused at last. “My mother sacrificed everything for the sake of Lydia and myself. I swore I’d never be that type of martyr, and I’m certainly not. I live well. But still I want more for my children. More and better. I want them to have a past, present and future. And I want them to be free of the fear that it could be gone in a minute.” The eyes she raised to Cassie’s held a subtle challenge. “You know what I’m saying. Don’t you.”
No question. It was a simple statement. For a split second Cassie wondered if there were more to it than the obvious. For that split second she felt guilty for all the times she had looked at Gil and dreamed. In the next split second, though, she decided to take Lenore’s statement at face value.
Putting on her most composed expression, she nodded. “I do, Mrs. Warren. Yes, I do.”
* * *
By mid-fall of 1951 the houses in Dover were finished and the families moved in. Cassie hadn’t underestimated the amount of work involved in moving, but it was another challenge that she met head-on. And, work aside, it was exciting. Everything was new and fresh, including the cozy four-room cottage designated as the Morell’s. Cassie had the time of her life decorating it, taking tips from what Lenore had done in the big house, translating them into what she considered affordable, then gradually implementing her ideas. Gil had given them a generous allowance for furniture, which, aside from the bed that they had ordered well before the move, Cassie took delight in searching for slowly. She had never before had such an opportunity, enjoying the shopping—she and Henry, pushing Kenny in his pram, through store after store—nearly as much as the final purchases.
Lenore, too, enjoyed the shopping, but the final purchases were her pride and joy. Indeed, by the time the house was finished inside and out she was convinced it was the finest for miles around. Of course, she never said as much to Natalie, who was every bit as proud of her own new home.
Natalie had chosen to build a replica of an old stone farmhouse, but there was nothing old or rustic about it. Boasting every modern convenience, it was clean and sparkling. It was far more spread out than Lenore’s colonial, cushioning well the thunder of six scampering feet. Rather than the high ceilings of Lenore’s rooms, it had lower ones that added to the feeling of warmth.
That was what Natalie wanted—warmth. She wanted a home that would reflect her ideal of a family setting. In this she was perhaps remembering the happy days of her early childhood, the closeness she had known with her father, the sense of togetherness. There had been just the two of them then, and they had had the shabbiest of furnishings, but there was a feeling … a feeling she wanted to recapture … a feeling that would be an enticement for Jack to spend more time at home.
For awhile it seemed to work. The house was a novelty to Jack, too, but more importantly, it was a source of pride. He wanted to entertain to show off his prize, and entertain he did. There was a post-Thanksgiving party and a pre-Christmas party and a mid-January party—all lavishly catered, with waiters and bartenders and flowers galore.
Natalie no longer asked whether they could afford it. She had decided that Jack knew what he was doing and that to question him would be to show a lack of confidence in him which, in turn, would evoke his ire, the last thing she wanted to do. She went along with each and every one of the parties, riding nearly as high as Jack so that she was totally unprepared for the scene that took place on the first day of April, barely six months after they had moved to Dover.
The tongue-in-cheek occasion for the party was April Fool’s Day, but in fact it was the kickoff for Gil’s election campaign in a new district. The Whyte house was packed to the seams. Jack had invited friends, neighbors and business associates, as well as friends of the Warrens, Gil’s clients and colleagues, and notable residents of the surrounding communities. Three separate bartenders—one each in the living room, the large heated sunroom and the library—dispensed liquor freely while white-tailed and gloved waiters moved among the crowds with silver platters filled with every hors d’oeuvre imaginable. A buffet dinner was served well into the evening, followed up by after-dinner drinks for those hearty enough to imbibe further.
One guest was, and did. Later, people would wonder who he was. He hadn’t been invited, and he hadn’t been a guest of a guest. It seemed that he had been present all evening, though no one knew him. But he knew his host.
“Ja-ack Whyte!” came his sharp cry late in the evening. He had to repeat it several times—in varying intonations—until Jack, who stood across the room with a circle of guests, looked over at the short, stocky man. “I want to propose a toast,” the man faltered, squeezing both eyes shut for an instant to clear his head. He raised his glass and held it wavering high in the air.
The busy chatter of conversation in the room had lessened when Jack had looked up, then petered out until now only an occasional murmur broke the silence. Several glasses were raised, but an odd kind of caution prevailed.
“To Jack Whyte,” the man began in a voice loud enough to attract attention in the other rooms as well, “who single-handedly choked the l-life out of what would’ve been a very prosper … prosperous business.…”
There was a soft gasp from somewhere in the room and the glasses that had gone up came down, but the man continued talking.
“Here’s to you, J-Jack Whyte. May you burn in hell, you son of a b-bitch.…”
“Who is he—”
“Who brought him—”
“He’s drunk—”
“Drunk?” the man bellowed. “Not drunk! Only Ja-ack Whyte c-can get drunk on ’nother man’s b-blood—”
Jack, who had been standing stock still, was suddenly moving across the room, as was Gil and several of their closest friends. Within seconds the glass had been taken from the man and passed to a waiting hand, and the man had been taken by both arms and nearly lifted off his feet as he was ushered to the door.
“Does anyone know this man?” Jack called over his shoulder. “He’s drunk and needs to be taken home.” When no one answered Jack called to Jonathan McNee, who came quickly forward. “I want you to drive this man—”
“Don’t want t-to go home,” the drunk man wailed.
Jack spoke gently, aware of his audience. “You’ve had too much to drink. My man will see that you’re delivered home safely. If you have a car here, we’ll see that it’s brought to you tomorrow.” His voice lowered. “Jonathan, take a look at his billfold. We’ll need an address.”
What Jack also needed was a name, which he had as soon as Jonathan fished identification from the man’s wallet. He looked silently at Gil, showed the address to Jonathan, then replaced the wallet in the breast pocket of the man’s jacket. Without another word two of Jack’s friends guided the man through the door, Jonathan fast on their heels.
By the time Jack turned back to his guests the conversation was slowly picking up again. Jack moved through the crowd, expressing his apology that the evening had been disturbed even for so short a time. By the time he had returned to the circle from which he had come the incident seemed to have been forgotten.
Its impact lingered, though, in Natalie, who was shaking so badly that she quickly excused herself and escaped to the powder room. Lenore, too, had gone so white that someone hastily fetched her a brandy.
The incident’s impact lingered in Jack and Gil as well; they retired to the library with their wives the minute the last of the guests had departed.
Twilight Whispers Page 17
