“He doesn’t say much to me either.”
“No,” she said quickly, “it’s different with you. No hostility with you.”
“Hostility?”
Agitated, she was tapping on the table. “I don’t know what else to call it. I guess I’ve never been much of a mother. Never home. Loved my work too much. He noticed.”
“Nonsense.”
“No, it’s not. My mother was always meddling, and I figured—Maggie, too—that I’d let my kid grow up as he wanted. But that doesn’t seem to work either.”
“You did it the way you wanted. Robby’s the same way. He’ll turn out the way he wants. We all do. So what’s new?”
“What do we do?”
“Send him to Bel Air?”
“He doesn’t get along with Didi—or Nelly, for that matter.”
“Sounds vaguely Oedipal. Anyway, Bel Air is University High. At twelve—they’d kill him.”
“Private school?”
“Every decent boys’ school in Los Angeles is a military school: Black Foxe, Harvard, California Military Academy. I’ve checked. Cold War phenomenon.”
“So what about that?”
“Hey, I’m supposed to be a pacifist.”
“I wonder about military school. He already seems so . . . so . . .” She had to think a minute. “Hostile is the word that keeps coming back.”
“There’s always boarding school back East. The British built an empire that way. Theory is that schools are better than parents at raising children. Less emotional. More professional. I’d miss the little bugger. Did some of my best writing with him banging on his crib.”
She smiled. “Why did you have to make him so smart?”
“Me? He scores on math tests, not English.”
“A complete genetic aberration. Two literary parents who can’t balance a checkbook.”
“So what do we do?”
“Send me away!”
Lizzie jumped, turned and saw him standing on the porch. He’d slipped through the house without a sound and been listening, how long they didn’t know.
“Shame on you!”
“Why shouldn’t I listen?”
“It’s not listening, it’s spying,” said Joe. “You want to listen, you come to the table.”
“Then you’d stop talking.”
He looked twelve, with the delicate face bones and smooth, pink cheeks of pre-puberty. He was scrawny, but had the kind of frame that would fill out. The face was Lizzie’s, more girlish than boyish, but with Joe’s foxy eyes, watchful, myopic, a little dangerous. The nose was pug but would grow out, and the eyebrows too thick for his face. Another boy might have come bursting outside with tales from the night’s sleepover, but not Robinson Morton. He didn’t like showing emotion, didn’t like others to know what he’d been doing and didn’t like finding his parents at breakfast discussing his future without him.
“Sit down,” said Lizzie, calmer now. “Did you have a good time at Tommy’s?”
He didn’t answer.
“You want to go to the beach today?” said Lizzie.
“Nah, stuff to do.”
“Like?”
“Just stuff.”
Joe stood up. He didn’t like one-word conversations. “I’ve got stuff, too.”
“Why are you talking about me?” demanded Robby.
“We have to find you a school,” said Lizzie.
“Do I get a vote?”
“Of course you do,” said Joe.
“It didn’t sound like it.”
“No,” said Lizzie, “we were just thinking out loud.”
“Just so it’s not Uni High.”
“No,” she said, “not Uni High.”
“Which means going away,” said Joe. “Somewhere.”
“Tommy’s brother’s at Harvard Military.”
Joe and Lizzie exchanged a glance, which Robby instantly understood.
“What’s wrong with military school?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Joe.
“As if I didn’t know.”
“There are other options,” said Lizzie.
He turned to leave. “Be sure and let me know.”
Chapter 36
They agreed to meet at Jack’s at the Beach and hash it out. They’d been sitting on the estate money like Mother Goose on her precious eggs. So far, the only ones getting any use from it were Nelly and her dance studio and the bankers, whose fees kept climbing, though neither sister was clear about what they did to earn them.
The marine layer had hung around longer than usual that morning, but by the time Lizzie threw on a skirt and sweater, picked out a beige scarf and set out down Wilshire the sky was a brilliant blue. Joe was at Culver Studios for the day, Robby away at boarding school, it was her day off and she was looking forward to lunch with her sister. They talked on the phone more than they saw each other, though they tried to get together with husbands every few weeks, usually in the bar at the Westport. Despite their differences, Terry and Joe were amiable men who enjoyed each other’s company. They spoke in a kind of male code that used little nods and frowns more than actual words. Joe was deeply political but kept his views in his writing. Terry was apolitical. Didn’t matter that one was a war ace and the other a pacifist. So they drank and smoked and kidded each other and talked about old times and basked in the good fortune of being married to talented and attractive sisters who were suddenly rich. Life could be worse.
Lizzie was waiting when Maggie handed the keys of her silver Porsche to an eager valet at Jack’s and started up the steps. Beneath them, waves sloshed against pylons sunk deep in the Ocean Park sand. Farther out on the pier, they heard the swoosh of the roller-coaster.
Lizzie watched her coming. “Silk, n’est-ce pas? You look gorgeous.”
She wore a jade silk blouse over cream slacks and a Hermès scarf in turquoise and beige showing a Paris bistro. She’d let her dark hair grow out into a medium updo. No jewelry, just a Rolex. To their mother’s chagrin, the sisters had never cared for jewelry. Maggie’s diamond ring from Arnaud stayed in its box. Lizzie felt almost disheveled next to her elegant sister.
“You tend to overdo things when you get out of a jumpsuit.”
With wrap-around windows looking out across Santa Monica Bay, Jack’s was as popular for lunch as for dinner and already nearly filled. Lizzie knew a little cove above Paradise Cove beyond Malibu and searched the horizon as they were led to a window table. Joe was not a beach guy, but enjoyed the isolation of the cove. They would park a mile or so back, trek across sand and ice plant and down a steep hill to the water. They’d never run into anyone. Joe would take out his notebook while Lizzie sunned and swam. The cove was her day off.
The waiter, whose platinum blond hair and Indian skin showed he was a surfer, offered menus and filled water glasses.
“What if we ordered a half bottle of some nice little white wine,” said Maggie. “I’m not flying today.”
“I recommend a Sonoma Sauvignon blanc, ’56, in half bottles,” he said, staring at Maggie. “Slightly chilled. Perfect with the abalone, which is fresh today.”
“I’ll have the abalone,” said Lizzie, closing the menu.
“Sautéed,” he said, “fresh from Catalina. Might have caught it myself. Comes with a light oyster-ginger sauce.”
“Since you caught it yourself, make it two,” said Maggie, smiling nicely for the young man. “And green salads.”
“And so how is everything?” Maggie asked when they were alone.
“You’ve heard we have a new boss.”
“On the front page, how could I miss it—the golden boy, the dauphin.”
“Otis has been well brought up. Extremely polite. Scared to death of his mother.”
“So Mother will be running the paper.”
&n
bsp; “As if she hadn’t been.”
The waiter poured the wine. Maggie raised her glass. “Here’s to Otis.”
They clinked. Maggie smiled, happy she’d come, happy to be alone with her sister, happy to be out of overalls and jumpsuits and jeans and feeling elegant again. It didn’t happen often. “I gather we’re here to discuss business. So what’s on your mind?”
“Money. Do you know that except for Robby’s school, which the bank handles directly, we’ve not touched one cent of the estate. Joe thinks there’s something evil about it.”
Maggie smiled. “Does he know how Dad made it?”
“Do we know how Dad made it?”
“Oil and real estate.”
She laughed. “And . . . and . . .?”
“We don’t talk about the other stuff. We haven’t touched it either. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Terry has no interest in money, just planes.”
“Anyway, here’s what I’ve been thinking. It’s silly to leave all this money sitting in the bank. We have husbands who don’t want it and children who don’t need it. So what if we set up a foundation?”
“What’s a foundation?”
“Like Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie—foundations that give money for good causes.”
“Oh, come on . . . Dad was never in that league.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Together, we have about $40 million—and that’s before the Venice sale.”
“Do foundations even exist out here?”
“In San Francisco they do, where all the gold rush money settled. People in Los Angeles like to hold on to their money. Like Dad. We might be the first.”
“A foundation to do what?”
“That’s what we’re here to discuss.”
The waiter dropped off salads and French bread. Starting away, he spun back to Maggie. “Excuse me, I have to ask: Are you a stewardess?”
Lizzie smiled. Maggie fought an impulse to tousle his pretty blond hair. “Now what makes you think that?”
“I heard you say you weren’t flying today.”
They burst out laughing.
The waiter’s tan darkened a notch. “Did I say something funny?”
“Dear boy,” said Maggie, “did anyone ever tell you that you are darling? Now bring us that abalone before I do something I shouldn’t.”
“You’re such a flirt,” Lizzie said when he was gone.
“Stewardess? Might be fun, no? Maybe Howard can get me a job at TWA, which he owns. Cute red dresses and little hats with feathers. Paris with long layovers. Pilots who look like our waiter. Anyway, back to business. You’ve been thinking a while about this foundation thing, haven’t you?”
Lizzie was looking across the bay, letting her eyes run up into the Malibu hills. “I have a question for you: Have you ever heard of May Rindge?”
“I read your story.”
“It was Joe’s idea to do something on the dowager queen of Malibu, the little lady who put up fences and hired goons on horseback to keep people off her beaches and out of her ocean. It was hers, damn it, bought by her dead husband from some Mexican back in the good old days and she wasn’t going to share it. Took the US Supreme Court to stop her.”
“Good story.”
“Anyway, Larry had to get approval from Otis himself to run that. The Chandlers own land from here to Owens Lake and don’t like the idea that some court—even a supreme one—might tell them what to do with it. Otis doesn’t mind so much.”
The platinum waiter returned with their main course, the strange Pacific mollusks whose fleshy feet can be pounded until tender as chicken breasts and whose taste is to chicken as caviar to carp. Fingerling potatoes and parsley were on the side, along with oyster-ginger sauce in little bowls. He smiled down on them. “You can’t get abalone like this anywhere but Jack’s, though I do know a special place in Avalon if you ever go over.”
“Let’s get the name of the place,” Lizzie said when he’d left. “Might be fun to go to Catalina. I imagine Terry knows how to sail?”
“Terry can navigate anything.”
“And Joe almost nothing, including cars. Took the trolley when we had one. Now walks.”
“Safer.”
“Still hates the Times. Thinks the Chandlers are part of the problem.”
“And Otis?”
“Nobody knows what he’ll do. He wouldn’t just be taking on the establishment; he’d be taking on his own family, the family that didn’t want him, that wanted Phillip, Norman’s brother, the John Bircher. Mom got him the job.”
“Which is why he’s afraid of her.”
“The only person not afraid of Buff Chandler is Miss Adelaide.” She sipped her wine. “Anyway, back to May Rindge. After the Supreme Court ruling, the county started building roads over the Malibu mountains to the Valley and the state started the coast road to Ventura. Poor May became depressed and insolvent and started selling off her land.”
“What does any of this have to do with a foundation?”
“Because the people buying beach land today, up and down the coast from Mexico to Monterey and farther north for all I know, are a lot of little May Rindges. They build fences and hire guards to keep people off their land, off their beaches and out of their ocean.”
“They can do that?”
“Joe and I go up to this place past Paradise Cove, beyond Malibu. You trek over hills and down a steep drop to the beach. Golden sand, maybe twenty-five yards across, hidden on both sides by hills. The ocean laps in soft and blue and almost warm. Like a little atoll in mid-Pacific. We’ve never run into a soul; it’s like we discovered it.”
“And?”
“Should someone have the right to ride down on a horse and tell us it’s theirs and we’re trespassing and to get the hell off their beach and out of their ocean? That’s what May Rindge’s goons were doing.”
They’d finished their lunch and hadn’t noticed the waiter standing behind them. “Nobody asked me,” he said, “but I’d say the answer is no.”
“Bravo,” said Lizzie. “A supporter.”
“You two are sisters, aren’t you?”
“You have a good eye, honey,” said Maggie. “Most people don’t see it.”
“I do have a good eye,” he said, smiling, looking from one to the other. “Now what if I bring you some dessert and coffee?”
“Just coffee,” said Maggie. “No desserts. And write down the name of the special place in Avalon. We may be going over.”
“Nobody can own the ocean,” said Lizzie when he’d left. “And if you can’t own the ocean, how can you own the beach that gives access to it?”
“But the Supreme Court stopped May Rindge.”
“Because the state and county needed to build roads. It was a legal taking, said the court, in the public interest, fairly compensated. What’s happening now is people trying to shut off public access to the beaches and ocean in their private interest. It’s insane, but it’s legal. My idea is to create a foundation that buys up coastal land for a public trust, like a state park. Make sure the beaches stay open to everyone, forever.”
“We have enough money to do that?”
“Why wouldn’t others join in? The Sierra Club, for instance. Their job is to protect natural resources. Why do you think Cal wants that letter from Hughes? To make sure the Hughes’s land never turns into a slab of concrete stretching to the beaches.”
“Have you talked to Cal?”
“He thinks the money could be used to sponsor a campaign for a state constitutional amendment that permanently protects the entire coastline.”
“Would he be involved in the foundation?”
“He wanted to hear what you had to say first.”
“I love the idea of the three of us doing something. Preserve the stables. You know, I go riding some mornings, still lo
ve the feeling of sitting on a horse, letting that big beast under me stretch out. They still have a horse called Dynamite, though it’s not my Dynamite.”
“Speed is your thing. Funny, isn’t it? Speed makes me nauseous.” She hesitated a moment. “You know, speaking of Cousin Cal. The last time I talked to him he was meeting Sister Angie for dinner.”
“For dinner . . .”
“That’s what he said.”
“It’s the way you said it.”
“I don’t think it was the first time.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t.”
They fell silent, both women staring out over the cobalt blue bay toward the green mountains in the distance, lost in their own thoughts.
“You know, I asked Cal once if he’d ever been in love. We were in Paris. He was trying to talk me out of marrying Arnaud.”
“And . . .”
“He wouldn’t answer. I wonder what he’d say now.”
The waiter was back. He put down a stub of paper with an Avalon address on it. “I’m not eavesdropping, but I’ll tell you this: You do what you’re talking about and I’ll bring a hundred friends to work with you.”
Maggie pushed the paper back to him. “Write your name and number down.”
Lizzie watched her sister drop the paper into her purse when he was gone. She was smiling.
Maggie looked up. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m not sure I trust you with that boy’s number.”
Chapter 37
“Page Terry before you go, Clara,” Maggie called out to the receptionist who was getting ready to leave. “He’s probably in hangar three. Have him call me.” She stood, hands on hips, looking out over the airfield toward the sinking sun over the Ballona marshes. She saw a flock of birds rise up and head off over the oil derricks toward the ocean. Godwits? No, terns. She was getting to know the birds. The office line buzzed.
“Howard just called,” she told him. “He wants me ASAP. I want you to come.”
“See you about what?”
“He wouldn’t say. Just ‘Maggie get on over here.’”
“Over where?”
“He’s at the Flamingo.”
Blood and Oranges Page 27
