Too Much Too Soon

by Jacqueline Briskin

  Fortunately the Tasi project was ahead of schedule and under budget so she did not have to pay attention to drawn-out reports and agitated eight-millimeter films of progress. She meted out praise with automatic smiles and spent the time brooding how to sever the relationship between Gid and the hefty, khaki-clad female whom she visualized meeting that night.

  * * *

  The bash was held on the blacktop. The lights strung between trailers dimmed and pulsated whenever the makeshift combo stationed on a flattop truck became unbearably loud. The amateurish, overamplified musicians served one useful purpose: they drowned out barks and alien cries emerging from the jungle. In Crystal’s honor, the few women (secretaries, office workers, the wives of the three top men on the project) wore dowdy formals while the engineering and administrative staff had donned dark suits. The “outdoor guys” sweated into checkered sport jackets. Locals padded around barefoot to offer paper plates of tiny, charred hot dogs, Velveeta cheese melted on Ritz crackers and a spicy local concoction made with pork and coconut.

  The roar of a Talbott helicopter had announced the arrival of Anne Hunnicutt, who slipped unseen into Gid’s trailer to change. Crystal, a pro at such large employee gatherings, permitted everyone to admire her diamonds and black organza Lanvin—her soignée perfection juxtaposed against the primitive site—while she pretended to listen to the booming of Ian Ramsay, the project manager. Her glance kept wandering to the light that glowed behind the curtained windows of the trailer.

  Then the girl was in the doorway, glancing around.

  Anne Hunnicutt was quite small, and dressed Berkeley style in a Mexican blouse and floor-length patchwork skirt that looked shapeless enough to be homemade. Crystal tightened her mouth, grudging her son’s beloved one minor point. Good hair. In this light it gleamed a rich auburn and fell thick and straight almost to her waist.

  Gid had gone over to the steps. His back was to Crystal, but she could see his big hand reach out delicately to the girl’s narrow waist, where she had tucked the orchidlike bloom from the Pepsi bottle. They stood that way, the lights flooding over them like a benediction, for a few moments before they linked arms, laughing together as they circled the bar table and came across the blacktop. Crystal saw that Anne’s left foot came down with eccentric force. The girl limped.

  Crystal knew she had a major battle on her hands.

  From the beginning Gid’s friendships invariably lacked in some dimension—the child was Chinese or Jewish or orphaned or on scholarship—and no matter how Crystal had tried to sway her son, he had stubbornly kept these inappropriate attachments even unto today.

  Anne had the inevitable redhead’s lavishment of freckles, lighter on her straight nose, sprinkled heavily across her cheeks almost like rouge, an apricot conglomeration on her shoulders and arms.

  “Mrs. Talbott, how terrific to finally meet you,” she said. Her smile had a warm immediacy. “You’ve got a great press agent.”

  “You mustn’t believe all you hear,” Crystal responded stiffly.

  “Oh, I didn’t,” the girl said, reaching for Gid’s hand. “With a son like this, I never believed for a minute that you were gorgeous?”

  Gid laughed.

  “Gid tells me you’re an anthropologist,” Crystal said.

  “Humbly following in Margaret Mead’s footsteps.”

  “Aren’t these New Guinea tribes terribly primitive?”

  “I know it looks like that from the outside, Mrs. Talbott, but their social structure’s elaborate and quite sophisticated. In our village, which is quite small, the men have a ceremonial clubhouse, and none of the younger men are allowed in until after their initiations—it reminds me of the Faculty Club back home.”

  “It must be fascinating.”

  Anne laughed. “Mrs. Talbott, you sounded exactly like my mother just then. She thinks I’m insane to be here in New Guinea. If I’d listened to her, I’d be in law school at Berkeley—my father taught at Boalt—picking off a bright young lawyer.”

  “Instead of a bright young engineer,” Gid said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the girl.

  “I hate to admit it, Talbott,” Anne retorted, “but sometimes Mother’s right.”

  They both chuckled.

  Crystal asked, “When’re you going home?”

  “In a few days.” Anne blinked, suddenly looking far softer and younger. Gid reached for her hand. “My grant’s run out,” she went on, “and my job at the Bancroft Library starts the first of April. While I’m working on my thesis I’ll need every cent I can earn.”

  Couples had begun dancing. Ramsay strode over and in his capacity as big cheese at the Tasi begged Crystal to do him the honor. As he bounded her across the blacktop, Crystal caught glimpses of Gid and Anne facing each other and gyrating, her not ungraceful swoops flaring the patchwork skirt against his gray flannel trousers.

  * * *

  Two mornings later Crystal was getting ready. The company Boeing 727 would take her to Tokyo.

  “Mother,” Gid said, coming into the trailer bedroom. “You haven’t commented.”

  “I’ve made so many flattering remarks my throat’s sore.”

  “I meant about Anne.”

  “You always choose bright girls, dear.”

  “Go on,” he said doggedly.

  “She’s leaving in a day or so.”

  “I’ll be home in three weeks.” Gid’s broad, wrestler’s shoulders hunched forward, the same stance Gideon had showed when his mind was closed.

  And at this moment Crystal understood her unreasonable jealousy. Her husband and her older son had given her the unqualified adoration that provided a seldom noticed but omnipresent substructure to her life. Gideon had deserted her by dying, and now Gid was switching his allegiance. She fought an urge to weep and plead with him to give up the freckled creature, but she was hardheaded enough to accept her tears would serve no purpose other than to make her pitiable in his eyes.

  “Gid, have you stopped to think that you’re an immensely rich young man?”

  “Anne didn’t know that until a few weeks ago. And so far the showering of gifts extends to this.” He held out the wide, tanned wrist with the new silver identification bracelet.

  “Do you really believe that who you are doesn’t make any difference to her?”

  “Mother, our kind of money has to make a difference to anyone. But money’s not everyone’s measurement.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Gid.”

  “I’m happy, Mom, that’s all.”

  “With your father gone somebody has to play devil’s advocate,” she said. “No matter how admirable Anne is as a person.”

  “Then you do like her?”

  “Of course I do,” Crystal lied staunchly.

  They went out into the pulsing heat, where Anina was already waiting in the jeep that would take them to the muddy airstrip.

  55

  Mitchell, climbing aboard the plane on the runway of the Tokyo Airport, was accompanied by a beaming, bowing official who stamped Crystal’s passport. As usual, Anina stayed behind to get the baggage through customs.

  The Cadillac moved like a majestic liner in the tight-packed river of little Japanese cars, and Crystal closed her eyes, that last defeating conversation with Gid running through her mind. Mitchell did not intrude on her silence until they were inside her Okura Hotel suite.

  “Was it a rough flight, Crystal?” he asked sympathetically.

  She shook her head.

  “You seem tired,” he said. “Or worried. I thought the Tasi project’s running like clockwork.”

  “Everthing’s fine.” Though she trusted Mitchell’s discretion implicitly, she never discussed family problems with him. “A case of the blues, that’s all.”

  “Is it anything I can do?”

  “You’re nice, Padraic.” She managed a wan smile. “Outside of Mr. Talbott—and my sister when I was young—you’re the only real friend I’ve ever been able to count on.”

 
; “Nothing you’ve said to me has ever made me prouder. Crystal, are you positive there’s no way I can help?”

  “It’s just a mood,” she said, unable to repress her sigh.

  He sat on the sofa next to her. The bland scent of his cologne comforted her, and after a minute, she rested her head on his shoulder. At this, the first personal physical contact between them, he quivered and his arm encircled her. “I hate to see you unhappy,” he said in a low rumble. “You’re beautiful and the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

  Here again was the unseeking adoration that was an invisible bolster. The Gid/Anne situation had weakened Crystal’s confidence and in her desolate need to reaffirm her worth as a woman it seemed the most natural thing to curve his bony hand around her breast. Mitchell’s thin body shivered ecstatically. Kneading her softly firm flesh, he snaked his fingers toward the large pearl buttons of her navy Halston. His caresses on her bare flesh aroused nothing physical, yet memories of necking in parked cars and her youthful desires came dimly to her, like quasars from a long-dead star. All at once Mitchell began breathing asthmatically. His body curved against her side, his fingers gouged into her breast. She tugged at the wrist with the steel Rolex, unable to dislodge the hand. He wheezed, gasping. His body arched in a spasm, then went limp.

  She did not realize what had happened until the moisture seeped through her dress to her thigh.

  Pulling away, she glimpsed the sickly humiliation on his thin face. Through her horror-struck revulsion came the certainty that she must somehow have this incident blow away like smoke; she must leave Mitchell his dignity, otherwise she would lose him. And how could she run Talbott’s without his quiet efficiency, his loyalty, his catholic knowledge of the company?

  “Padraic, you’re right, I am tired, very tired,” she said quietly. “But before my meeting we need to go over everything you’ve learned about the airport commission’s plans. Why don’t we meet downstairs for breakfast?”

  “Nine thirty?” He didn’t look at her.

  “Ten would be better.”

  He pushed stiffly to his feet, keeping his back to her as he let himself out of the suite. She ran unsteadily to the bathroom, throwing off her clothes, crushing hosiery, slip and never-before-worn couturier dress into the wastebasket. She showered, scrubbing at her rounded thigh until the white skin was a vivid pink.

  By the time Anina arrived with the baggage, Crystal, wrapped in the hotel kimono, was putting in a call to San Francisco.

  On hearing Alexander’s voice she felt the hoped-for solace, and quickly invented an excuse for ringing, inquiring again about the Tokyo airport commissioners. Since Alexander’s official entry into Talbott’s eight months ago he had filled his office wall safe with dossiers on clients and prospective clients. Mr. Okubo’s son, he reminded her, was at Harvard: with the stringent government regulations that restricted Japanese from taking money from the country, Okubo would respond favorably to an offer to exchange yen in Tokyo for dollars in Boston. Mr. Kurihara, possessed of a flamboyant Italian mistress, would be swayed by a loan of the Taormina house or the Mamounia suite or the New York apartment at the Sherry Netherland—or all three.

  She could contain her unhappiness no longer. “Gid’s found the most impossible girl!” she cried.

  “Gid? No kidding? One of New Guinea’s prettiest highland pygmies?”

  “This is nothing to joke about. The girl’s a cripple and works as some kind of anthropologist; she’s poor as a churchmouse and as much as admitted to me that she’s a gold . . . digger . . . .” Crystal was unable to hold back her sobs. With a hasty goodbye, she hung up and buried her face in her pillow.

  She wept a long time before she fell asleep.

  * * *

  “It’s depressing how impossible this Anne Hunnicutt is, Alexander,” Crystal said, shifting her pretty legs, which were cramped from being curled under her.

  It was the following evening and they were alone in a private, paper-screened room of the Ishibashi Restaurant, which had been on this site for two centuries and accepted reservations only from former clients—or those introduced personally by them. To Crystal’s delighted shock, her younger son had strolled into her suite around six, whisking her off to dine here.

  “Did you expect old Gid to choose Princess Anne?” Alexander asked.

  “I told you! This girl’s after his money.”

  “Somebody has to get it.” A thin vein of disbelief crept into Alexander’s jocular tone. “Mom, I’ve never seen you shook like this on Gid’s behalf.”

  “He’s never given me cause.”

  Alexander shifted on his cushion, taking off his dark glasses to assess her while the young waitress knelt holding back her kimono sleeve to serve him the last of the enormous strawberries. He ate the berry then glanced at the waitress. “Okanjo o shite, kudasai.”

  Crystal couldn’t control a faint smile of pride in his linguistic skill. “What was that?”

  “Nothing—I asked for the check.”

  Crystal returned to her woes. “The worst part is she’ll be in Berkeley while he’s in the home office.”

  “Mmm,” Alexander said, yawning.

  “I do wish you’d take this seriously.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  He paid, their shoes were returned and they were bowed out over the little humpbacked stone bridge that gave the restaurant its name.

  It was an unusually warm night for March, and the nearly full moon floated like a great freshwater pearl above the throngs of businessmen in badly cut black suits, younger women in Western clothing and old ladies in kimonos clattering along on getas. Alexander, ordering the limousine to trail them, took her arm, guiding her through the crowd.

  “Why not,” he said slowly, “put Gid in charge of the Tasi?”

  She jerked away from him. “I never heard anything so ridiculous! Gid? For one thing he doesn’t have the experience. The Tasi’s huge and complicated. Everything’s going so smoothly because of Ramsay. While he was on the Kennicott Copper job he learned the ins and outs of this kind of project.”

  “Didn’t you ask my advice?”

  “Alexander, I understand what you’re getting at: keep Gid away from the little tramp. And you’re on the right track.” She jumped as a man on a bicycle sped out of a narrow alley in front of them. Alexander took her arm again. She went on. “You know I can’t let Gid take over the Tasi. It’s a ten-year job.”

  “Time’s in your favor.”

  “You know exactly what I mean,” she said irritatedly. “The next few years you’re both moving around. That’s how you’re learning to run Talbott’s.”

  He beckoned for the car: it pulled up smoothly and the second chauffeur bounced out, opening the door with deep bows.

  When they were seated, Alexander continued with his infuriating denseness. “You’re worried Gid’s too young for the Tasi? What’s a bit of chronology when you’re talking about the boss’s son?”

  “You know as well as I the idea’s impossible. Stuck in New Guinea, how’ll he learn what makes the company tick?” She broke off abruptly.

  A shiver was running through her.

  That’s exactly what Alexander is aiming for, she thought. To cut Gid out.

  The Cadillac was easing along the brightly lit park that runs parallel to the eastern grounds of the Imperial Palace, and she looked out at the feudal moat and looming fortress walls. He wants Talbott’s for himself.

  She had always known Alexander coveted Talbott’s, but had brushed away the thought. Her mind was cluttered with the long, involved clauses in Gideon’s will that left his business empire in trust for both boys, with the knowledge that Alexander wasn’t a true Talbott, with her own ofttimes embattled sense of fair play. Now, gazing at the gray Oriental walls, she accepted her younger son’s simple, inexorable logic.

  He had flown across the Pacific to suggest she park Gid in New Guinea while he took over.

  Why not?

  Talbott’s rig
htfully belongs to Gid but so what? Alexander is the heir I want.

  What did her rapidly beating heart care for legalities, genetics, ethics, morality? She adored Alexander. (How she had raged at Curt two years earlier, when, after ascertaining his paternity, he had made monstrous pronouncements against their son! A warped psychotic, he’d called Alexander—oh, hadn’t she just gloated with uninhibited joy when Honora had left him!)

  “Do you really think if he’s separated from this Anne that he’ll forget her?” she asked. The quaver in her voice was a signal of capitulation.

  In this shapeless moment of illogic and emotion she had joined Alexander in a tacit conspiracy to propel him to undisputed leadership of Talbott’s.

  “Absolutely. It’s pure bullshit that absence makes the heart grow fonder. He’ll be too busy to give the gimpy anthropologist a second thought.”

  “. . . can he really manage a project this large?”

  “He’s a really bitchin’ engineer, you know that, Mom. With the Tasi under his belt, he’ll be a brilliant one.”

  “It might not be such a bad idea . . . .” she whispered.

  Alexander lounged back, his long body curving into the Cadillac’s upholstery as he let out a sighing breath. Crystal realized the tension he’d been under. For all his subtlety at gauging reactions, he hadn’t been positive she’d go along.

  “What about Ramsay?”

  Alexander smiled. “Simple. Promote him.”

  The following morning he caught the JAL flight back to San Francisco.

  * * *

  Three days later Crystal’s meetings with the airport commission were ended. Her time in Tokyo had been rigidly scheduled, so her conversations with Mitchell had of necessity been brief, businesslike.

  On the flight home she rectified this. Above the sunstruck clouds she discussed her interest in having Ian Ramsay on the board.

  “Who would head the Tasi?” Mitchell asked.

  “Gid seems the logical choice, don’t you agree?”

  She spoke quickly. Mitchell had been aware of Gideon’s educational plans for the boys, and what the executive secretary lacked in personal ambition he made up for in intelligence. He squinted down at brilliant clouds, his wary expression proving that he had immediately grasped Gid’s future.