Second Generation

by Howard Fast

  “I don’t think they do it by age, Mother. How does Eloise feel about him?”

  “Eloise is older, probably four years older.”

  “Mother, I don’t care whether she’s older or younger. How does she feel about him?”

  “How would you feel? Apparently the only person who ever gave her a shred of sympathy or understanding is myself, and I’m Tom’s mother. I don’t delude myself about my son, but he is my son. The poor child is torn to pieces, and just to make it nicer, she’s a migraine sufferer. And this Adam Levy is like an attenuated Jewish leprechaun, if you can imagine such a thing. He’s absolutely charming and gentle, and he worships the ground she walks on.”

  “Mother, he’s only half Jewish, which doesn’t matter, and I don’t see him as a leprechaun, and he has been through the worst war in human history. He was awarded the Silver Star for extraordinary courage and decision in action, and he was very severely wounded.”

  “Bobby, don’t lecture me,” Jean begged her. “I’ve really become quite civilized.”

  “You still haven’t told me how Eloise feels.”

  “How can she feel? She has a kind, charming man who desires no more than to be her faithful slave and servant, and she’s married to a man who hasn’t had intercourse with her in seven months. They have separate rooms, Bobby. And believe me, if your brother hasn’t slept with his wife in seven months, then sure as God, he’s sleeping with someone else.”

  “Then why doesn’t she leave him?”

  “My dear Bobby, you are a liberated woman. Eloise is a frightened little rabbit. She lives in terror of Tom, in terror of his fits of temper, in terror of having her child taken away from her, and in terror of her migraine headaches.”

  “He can’t take the child away from her. Mother, Tom isn’t a monster. He’s no Sir Galahad, but he’s always been reasonably decent.”

  “To you and me. We don’t see him too often, and we’re not married to him, and we never ask him for money. Those are three good conditions for decency. Also, this Adam Levy hasn’t a bean.”

  “The Levys aren’t rich, but they’re not poor. It’s one of the best wineries in the Napa Valley, and making wine is all that the boy wants to do. It’s not the money that holds Eloise there, is it?”

  “Oh, no. It’s the whole complex of circumstances.”

  “I think you ought to help her,” Barbara decided.

  “I try.”

  “I mean, you should help her leave Tom.”

  “I don’t think anyone can help her do that.”

  With some feelings of guilt, Barbara realized that she had more or less ignored her sister-in-law, and later that same afternoon, she telephoned and invited her to have lunch at her house. The house, her home and refuge, had become very much a passion with Barbara. She knew that it was a reaction to the years she had spent abroad, and she also knew that it was in a sense a retreat from reality. It was, as she had said, a cave, a shelter, but the actual cave was herself. She had drawn into herself. Writing required only her own participation. She met no one whom she cared for particularly. The girls of her own age whom she had known were all of them married now and with children. She would soon be thirty-two years old, and for a thirty-two-year-old woman, there were only divorced men and that singular species called bachelors, a word that fit a variety of neuroses. She had overheard a very attractive single woman, only a few years older than herself, referred to as a “fag-hag,” and the term had chilled her blood.

  At least she had some constructive work in her life—aside from her writing—and the more attention she paid to the Lavette Foundation, the more she realized that in her moment of petulance and rebellion, she had created something very important indeed. A home for unwed mothers had been funded. A clinic had been opened in San Diego, which catered to the needs of Chicanos, and seventeen scholarships for postgraduate work, medical and otherwise, had been awarded. A grant had been made for research into the history of the Plains Indians, and six additional grants were devoted to research in antibiotics, pneumonia, sickle-cell anemia, and cancer. It had been slow in starting, but to Barbara the results were marvelously satisfying.

  Meanwhile, she was successfully operating as an independent person, earning more than enough from her writing to support herself and maintain the house. She loved housekeeping. She had purchased a dozen cookbooks, regretting the fact that during her years in Paris she had never taken advantage of the Cordon Bleu, and she found that it was both pleasant and exciting to have guests to a lunch or dinner that she had cooked and served herself. Today, for Eloise, she had prepared eggs Benedict and fresh spinach, and had baked biscuits, and the two of them ate in the tiny breakfast room, with its bay window from which one could just glimpse the harbor.

  Eloise was delighted with the house. “It’s so small and warm and wonderful,” she said. “We live in such a huge barn of a place. Oh, I would be so happy with a house like this! And the food is so good. To me, it’s absolutely a miracle when people cook things and have them taste good. I mean, the cooking is one thing, but to have them taste so delicious. And of course, making bread—well, I can’t even fry an egg properly.”

  “It’s not real bread. One buys a biscuit mix. It’s almost cheating.”

  “You couldn’t cheat,” Eloise said earnestly. “You can’t imagine how much I’ve always admired you, Barbara. I read both your books, and they were simply wonderful, especially the one about the war. How any woman could go through all that and experience all those awful things, and then just remain as simple and nice as you are, I don’t know.”

  Barbara was overcome with guilt. To be so admired and praised by someone she had considered to be an empty-headed doll was mortifying, and for a moment she disliked herself intensely. However, she could not let the opportunity pass, for she had invited Eloise for a very specific purpose. “Your friend, Adam Levy,” she said, “has been through a great deal more than I, and he’s quite nice, I think, and very gentle.”

  Eloise looked at her without responding. Barbara understood Adam’s infatuation with her. She was utterly defenseless. The blond ringlets, the baby blue eyes, the peaches-and-cream skin, the openness. This is a child, Barbara told herself. It’s not a mask or an image she wears. She is actually what she appears to be—and married to a barracuda.

  “Do you know?” Eloise whispered.

  “My mother told me that Adam is in love with you,” she said bluntly.

  “She shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Why? To be loved by a decent man is a good thing.”

  “When you’re married? I’m married to your brother, Barbara.”

  “That means nothing. If we’re going to talk about this, my dear, you must forget that Tom is my brother. Or perhaps you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “Barbara, if I don’t talk to someone, I’ll go out of my mind. I’m so unhappy. I guess I was unhappy before, but that was different. I was married to Tom, and I never looked for anything to change it. My father and mother were never happy. I often felt that they hated each other, but they stayed together and remained married, and I simply accepted my own position. I didn’t want this to happen. It just happened. And no one ever treated me the way Adam does. He makes me feel that I’m worth something, that I’m important. He lets me talk, and he listens to what I say. He insisted that I take the course in art history at the university, and Tom was so furious at me for doing it, and I just don’t know why. And Adam never asks anything of me. I’ve never slept with him. But I feel so guilty and so unhappy—” She shook her head dumbly. “What am I to do?”

  “Does Tom know?”

  “I don’t think so. He only notices how I feel when I have a headache, and then he’s angry with me. We’ve had separate rooms from the time we moved into the house on Pacific Heights.”

  “How do you feel about Adam?”

  “I don’t know. Be
fore we were married, I was so much in love with Tom, and I thought he was the handsomest man in the world, but I never really liked him. Do you understand?”

  Barbara nodded.

  “And then I stopped being in love with him. I feel so dreadful, telling all this to you.”

  “But you still haven’t said what you feel about Adam.”

  “I don’t know. He’s all I think about. I like him so much, and he makes me feel so good. Whenever I go to the gallery now, all I wish is for him to come in. When he does, he takes me to lunch. Jean has been very good about it, but I feel good, and I feel wretched too. That’s the only time I see him, except for one afternoon when we went to the Japanese gardens—” She paused. “Barbara, he wants me to leave Tom. He asked me to marry him.”

  “Do you want to leave Tom?”

  “How can I?”

  “Tom won’t take Freddie away from you. He can’t.”

  “Barbara,” said softly, “there’s one thing I don’t think you understand. Tom Lavette and John Whittier are the two most powerful men in this city. They can do anything they want to do.”

  ***

  Most of Tom’s evenings were spent away from home. Since his discharge from the navy, he had gradually become increasingly involved in Whittier’s company, the name of which had now been changed to Great Cal Shipping. Aside from their vast shipping interests and their interlocking relationship with the Seldon Bank, they owned and operated the West Coast airline that Dan Lavette had pioneered years before, and while still in uniform, Tom had made several trips to Washington, where he obtained franchises into several western states. His evenings—with the exception of those occasions where an attractive wife was necessary—were spent at business dinners or at his club. He felt no necessity to explain to Eloise what the nature or circumstances of those dinners were, nor was she prone to inquire. She was quite content to spend her evenings alone, reading or listening to music—or, now and then, with Jean and Dan.

  In Dan, she found the father she had never actually had, a very large, strong man who gave her a sense of being protected and the feeling of security she needed so desperately. On his part, Dan was absolutely enchanted with Eloise, as if some strange good fortune had given him and Jean another child at this point in their lives. In addition, Dan suddenly realized that he was a grandfather, and he lavished the love and attention on Freddie that he had withheld from his own children—at least, until Tom found out and stormed at Eloise, “No more! I do not want that man in the company of my son!”

  “Tom, he’s your father.”

  “I haven’t seen him or spoken to him in sixteen years. He’s no more my father than he’s yours.”

  “He’s still Freddie’s grandfather.”

  “I don’t give a damn. Now you listen to me. This ends. I know damn well that he’s living with my mother, and I think the whole thing is cheap and disgusting. I don’t want him seeing my son.”

  When Eloise told this to Jean, Jean’s reaction was very calm. “I’ll talk to Tom,” she assured Eloise. “For the time being, do as he says.”

  Freddie was four years old, a very quiet and strangely knowledgeable little boy. Since Eloise was alone so often in the evening, she fell into a pattern of eating early with her son. During these dinners, they discussed the events of the day—their visit to the zoo, to Fisherman’s Warf, their ride on the cable cars, their investigation into the mysterious cable house, where the great master cable spun on its huge wheel, their excursion to the gallery to see grandmother Jean, their ride across the Golden Gate Bridge—or whatever the high point of the afternoon had been.

  Eloise was sensitive enough to realize that she was turning to the little boy because there was nowhere else to turn, and she also understood the danger of making a four-year-old child the focal point of her existence. Adam had pointed this out to her when he had asked her to marry him. “You can’t substitute a small boy for life. You dear, lovely Eloise, you are destroying yourself—and in the end you’ll destroy the boy too.”

  “How can you say that?” she had pleaded.

  “Because it’s true, and I must say it. Don’t you think the boy will know, that he’ll come to understand that you exist only for him? What a burden to lay on that poor kid, and what a way to live your life, married to that bastard and pretending that your son can take the place of all the joy and goodness that life can give you! You’re a fine, wonderful woman, and I love you. I loved you, I think, the moment I saw you in the gallery. Oh, I’m no great shakes, but I can give you love and care, and I can give the boy a father. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  The day after she spoke with Barbara, Eloise finally accepted the fact that it meant everything to her. The dinner she would share with Freddie was still half an hour away. The child was downstairs, playing in the garden, and Tom was dressing to go out. Trembling only a little, Eloise went into his room and said, “Tom, I must speak to you.”

  “Shoot,” he said. Facing his mirror, folding the collar of his shirt down over his tie, he appeared to be in a good mood.

  “I want a divorce,” she said quietly.

  He finished with his collar and turned around to face her. “You want what?”

  “A divorce. I’ve had enough. I can’t face anymore.”

  “What in hell have you ever faced, you silly bitch?” he said, turning toward the closet where his jacket hung. When she stepped into his path, he pushed her aside with such force that she stumbled and fell against the bed. Taking his jacket, he turned to her. “Are you crazy, coming in here like this and telling me you want a divorce?” He put on the jacket.

  She got back on her feet. Her head was beginning to throb. In just a few minutes, it would explode with a surge of pain that was like no other pain in the world. The forewarning, the knowledge that the pain was on its way, that it could not be stopped, that it would have to run its terrible, nauseating course, filled her with a dread that equaled her dread of her husband, and she fairly shouted at him, “I am very serious! I will not live with you any longer! I will not!”

  “Until death do us part. Those are the words, baby.” And he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  ***

  At a half-hour past noon, munching a sandwich and sipping a cup of coffee, Barbara sat in her kitchen, correcting a set of proofs. It was a process she disliked intensely, since it always reminded her that the second half of her college education might have been of some small use to her, and when the doorbell rang, she welcomed the interruption. She was not expecting anyone, and she wondered vaguely whether this was the time of the month that the gas and electric meters were read. She opened the door and stared blankly at the man who stood there. He was a big man, dressed in a suit of brown tweed, his face burned ruddy brown by the sun, his eyes pale blue. He stood in the doorway, regarding her questioningly, and she stood facing him, staring at him, and for a long, long moment, neither of them spoke. Then, unable to make her voice do more than whisper, Barbara said, “Please come inside.” Neither of them spoke. Then, unable to make her voice do more than whisper, Barbara said, “Please come inside.”

  He walked into the house, closing the door behind him, and very tentatively held out a large hand to her. She took it.

  “May I kiss you?” he asked uncertainly.

  She nodded.

  He bent and kissed her cheek. Then she turned away abruptly, went into the living room, dropped into a chair, and began to cry, covering her face with her hands. He followed her and stood there awkwardly, watching her.

  “Do you have a handkerchief?” she asked him.

  He took out his handkerchief and handed it to her, and she wiped her face. “I haven’t cried in years,” she mumbled. “I used to cry at the drop of a hat.”

  “Are you married?” he said.

  She stared at him.

  “Well, I had to ask. I got yo
ur address out of the telephone book. B. Lavette, so I figured that had to be Barbara Lavette. But then, you’re a famous writer, so you might use your maiden name.”

  “I’m not a famous writer. I’m just a writer.”

  He nodded seriously. “Are you married?”

  “No. Why do you keep asking me that? If you cared about my being married, you might have written me a letter. You might have told me whether you were alive or dead.”

  “I sent you a letter.”

  “That was years ago.”

  “I wrote other letters, but I didn’t mail them. I decided you were married.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. “You’re a wonderful woman. Why shouldn’t you be married?”

  “I thought you were dead. I’m not married.”

  “I’m not dead. Thank God you’re not married.”

  “Shall I say thank God you’re not dead? Bernie, sit down and let’s talk sense to each other.” She got up and grasped him by the arms. “You’re real and solid, and you have both arms and both legs, for which I thank God. Oh, I’m so glad to see you. I wanted so much to see you again.”

  “Did you? Truly?”

  “Yes, truly. You’re different.”

  “Six years.”

  “Closer to seven.”

  “Whose house is this?”

  “Mine. I bought it after Sam Goldberg died. It was his. Did you know him?”

  “Sam Goldberg the lawyer? Yes. And he’s dead, you say?”

  “Years now.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where to begin. Seven years since we saw each other—ten years since you left San Francisco. I wandered all through North Africa, India, Burma, asking for you. I found one man who knew you, an American reporter.”

  “What on earth were you doing in North Africa and India?”

  “Writing.”

  They both began to talk at once, then they stopped and began to laugh. “Did you really write to me?” she asked him.

  “I saved the letters. They’re my whole history.”