The LeBaron Secret

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Part of the pact. More champagne?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  And, a little later—her voice a little low and woolly from the wine, and her speech a little rambling and discursive—Joanna was saying, “… and so there’s this boy here in San Francisco, this Jimmy Flood.… My parents have him picked out … for me. They say the Floods are as good as the Crockers and the deYoungs, and the Floods are Catholic. Anyway … where was I? He’s this boy, who goes to Stanford. Did I tell you his name is Jimmy Flood? Well, anyway, I said no … I said no, I won’t. I said … free spirit. I said … love someone else … not Flood, not Jimmy Flood. That happens to be his name, you see. But … love someone else … unacceptable. We … this was in Woodside, and oh, my God, it was years ago. We—did you ever do this? We dressed up, pretended to get married … found my mother’s old confirmation dress … white. Wildflowers for my bouquet … did you ever do that? I was only six or seven, seventh or third grade. I mean second or third grade. We dressed up. It was only make-believe, of course, but I wore my first lipstick. It came off all over him when we kissed. But this was another boy … this wasn’t Jimmy Flood. Jimmy Flood is Jimmy Flood, who’s an altogether different person …”

  “Who is the boy you really love?”

  “Unacceptable. By the way, have you gone to bed with Craig Pollard yet?”

  “Gabe Pollack. No, not yet.”

  “Shouldn’t wait too much longer,” she said, swirling the wine in her glass. “Strike while the iron is hot.”

  “Hot.”

  “Or he’ll lose interest.”

  “But when?”

  “Must plan this very carefully,” Joanna said. “What does he do when he comes home at night?”

  “At night?”

  “Yes. Had your dinner. Everybody’s gone off to their room to bed. What’s he do then? ’S important.”

  “Sometimes—he reads in bed.”

  “Ah,” Joanna said. “’S the perfect moment. Reading in bed. You tap on his door. Some excuse why you need to see him. Into his room, close the door behind you. Sit on the corner of his bed. ’S he got hair on his chest?”

  “Hair?”

  “On his chest, yes.”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Good. Touch him there. Then say, ‘How curly your chest hair is.’ Something like that. Can’t resist that sort of thing—men. Tickle him a little there. Then let your hand slide down, under the sheet, and tickle him a little more … there. Then on, everything takes care of itself.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Won’t be able to control himself. Wild. With passion. Lust. At least if he’s normal. He is normal, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Still madly in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then watch this.”

  And then, in the candlelight, as though in an erotic dream, she had watched as, at the other end of the sofa, Joanna lay back against the cushions and began to lift and turn her hips in slow, undulating rhythms, and, in her husky, throaty voice, to murmur, “Oh, my sweet … oh, my sweet … tickle me there … oh, yes … oh, oh, oh Oh, yes … more … yes …”

  But hypnotic as this performance was, Assaria was suddenly stricken with a problem of far more urgent proportions. She had just lighted her second cigarette and immediately stubbed it out. “Oh, Jo!” she cried. “Jo—I think I—I feel so—”

  Joanna quickly sat up and looked at her. “Oh, God!” she said. “You’re green! Wait! Hold on! Cover your mouth with your hands!” And she jumped up and ran a little unsteadily in her stocking feet—she had long since kicked off her shoes—to a corner of the room, and ran back with a galvanized pail. “Here,” she said, and held Sari’s head over the pail while what remained of Sari’s lunch, and a good deal of champagne, came up.

  “See?” Joanna said. “Club caters to members’ every need.” She was stroking the top of Sari’s head. “Don’t feel bad. Happens to the best of us. Happened to me, even to Peter. Who has an absolutely hollow leg. Champagne should’ve been iced. My fault.”

  When she was able to look up from the pail that was gripped between her legs, she was instantly sober again. But her face was streaming with perspiration now, and she could feel locks of her damp hair hanging stickily across her forehead.

  Joanna handed her a handkerchief. “Nurse Jo to the rescue,” she said. Then she said, “I’ve just decided what I’m going to do with my life. I’m going to work for you, and you’re going to work for me. I don’t know how we’re going to do that yet, but that’s what we’re going to do.”

  It was an apt enough prediction, as things worked out.

  But it was at that moment that Sari realized the two of them were no longer alone in the room. A tall and slender young man was standing there, staring at them, his expression a mixture of confusion and anger and disbelief, and she immediately recognized the face she had seen upstairs in the portrait gallery that very afternoon, though the face was now more mature.

  “Peter!” Joanna cried, running toward him. “What in the world are you doing here? You’re supposed to be thousands and thousands of miles away in New Haven, Connecticut.”

  “I was expelled,” she heard him say.

  “Will you have another drink?” Archie McPherson asks her. They are sitting in the bar at Ernie’s, and it is afternoon.

  “No, thank you,” Melissa says. “I’m really not sure why I accepted this invitation of yours, you know.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Because I don’t trust you,” Melissa says.

  “Oh?”

  “That story you wrote, about me paying the rock group for their date. Where did you get it from?”

  “I have my sources,” he says with a smile.

  “Oh, I’m quite sure you do. But what was your source for that one—in which I was quoted, without being interviewed or asked for a quote?”

  “It was accurate, wasn’t it?”

  “More or less. As accurate as any newspaper stories ever are. Who gave it to you?”

  “It could have come from any number of people.”

  “Name two.”

  “It could have come from one of the Odeon’s board of directors.”

  “Impossible. Since I did what I did without consulting or informing the board.”

  “Or it could have come from Maurice Littlefield himself, or someone else in the group.”

  “Hardly likely. None of the group is what you might call smart. And Maurice is—sweet. But,” and she taps her forehead with the tip of her index finger, “again, not clever enough to find a newspaper reporter to give his story to—particularly since I’d made it clear to him that what I was doing was a purely personal and private gesture. No, Archie McPherson, there’s only one person who could possibly have given you that story.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t think me stupid, too. My mother, of course. She’s the only one I told about my plans, and the quote you attributed to me was substantially what I’d said to her. So I don’t trust you, Archie. But I also feel sorry for you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’ve chosen to play the role of double agent—working for Gabe’s paper, and working for my mother as well. When Gabe finds this out, as my mother will make sure he does as soon as your usefulness to her is over, he’ll give you the boot. Which is just what she is planning to have done. And that will be the end of you in San Francisco.”

  He looks uncomfortable. He is frowning now, and is bending his red plastic stirrer into little zigzag parallelogram patterns. “Where do you come off with this double-agent stuff?” he says at last.

  “I know my mother. I know how she operates. She never approaches a problem directly. There has to be deviousness, and backstairs intrigue, and people have to be pitted against one another until they’re at the breaking point, and she gets what she wants. Then she washes her hands of them. I feel sorry for you, because I can tel
l you’re now coming very close to the last of your usefulness to Assaria LeBaron. Soon the Bay Area will see no more of you. How much is she paying you for your little services, anyway?”

  “This is very insulting, what you’re saying.”

  She waves her hand. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s pitifully small potatoes. Just enough to make you feel that you’re playing some important role in the future of the LeBaron family, and Baronet Vineyards, and that you’re playing it on the side of the Big Enchilada.”

  “I thought we were friends, Melissa.”

  “You’re right. We were. Which brings us to today. Why did you invite me for drinks today?”

  “For drinks. And dinner, I hope.”

  “I’m not sure about dinner. That will depend upon whether or not you start telling me the truth. Let me guess. She suggested that you ask me to dinner to try to find out how I intend to vote. Correct?”

  “To vote?”

  “Yes. There’s quite a juicy takeover bid for Baronet in the works, as I’m sure Mother told you, and Eric’s spearheading it, with a lot of Tillinghast money behind him. Dear little Alix’s father. Apparently Daddy doesn’t want his little Buttercup’s husband to be crucified for taxes when Mother dies, so he’s offering to swap his stock for ours. Very clever of him. So, sooner or later, we’re going to have to put Harry’s offer to a vote. Already Mother’s marshaling her forces for the battle, trying to find out who’s on her side and get a head count of the enemy. We’re in the Cold War phase now, but wait until Mother brings in her big guns! And your job is to find out which side I’m going to be on—right?”

  “Honestly, Melissa, she didn’t mention any of this to me.”

  “I don’t believe you. And why, you may well ask, doesn’t my mother simply ask me how I’m going to vote on the proposal? We live in the same house. Because that would be too simple, and that’s not Mother’s style. That would be like Hitler asking Czechoslovakia if he could have the Sudetenland. No, Mother prefers to gather her information through spies and secret agents. And by threats, real or implied. And by bribing border guards, like you.”

  “Melissa, believe me. The subject of a takeover—the whole subject of Baronet—never once came up between your mother and me. I swear it. If there were a Bible in this restaurant, I would swear that, on the Holy Bible.”

  “Then why this invitation? Then why this latest story in your paper?”

  “Honestly,” he says, “I think she told me what you’d done because she was proud of you. You’d been outvoted by the Odeon’s board, and so you simply took matters into your own hands and paid the group’s fee out of your own pocket. I think she felt you did the right thing, the decent thing, and I think readers felt the same way when they read the story. I think she thought you were too modest to publicize this personal charity yourself, and that she thought you deserved some sort of public credit for what you’d done.”

  “Hmmm,” she says. “I don’t believe that, either. It doesn’t sound at all like the mother that I know and have been dealing with for more than fifty years. No, that story was designed to make me look either like an empty-headed Lady Bountiful—to a rock group, after all, not even a recognized tax-deductible charity—or like a damn-fool spendthrift. Either way, the story could be used to suit her purposes, you see. It could be used to illustrate the point that Melissa is a crazy airhead whose voice—or vote—should not be taken seriously in any shareholders’ battle. You see, I know my mother very well. I know the Byzantine way her mind works.”

  “I honestly don’t think that’s it,” he says. “I don’t think it had anything to do with any takeover offer, or with Harry Tillinghast, or with any of this, which is all news to me.”

  “Ah,” she says, with a little smile. “Then that’s it. News to you. Perhaps she hoped I’d spill this can of beans to you, which I’ve just done, and so she’s already succeeded. See how clever she is? She’s even cleverer than I thought! And why wouldn’t she simply give this story of the proposed takeover to you directly? Simple. So that when you scoop the entire country with this story, her hands will be clean! ‘Who leaked this story prematurely to this reporter?’ the others will all want to know. ‘Not I!’ she’ll say. ‘It was Melissa! Melissa’s to blame, as usual! Old, unstable, unreliable Melissa, who should probably be placed in a loony bin. They don’t let people out of the loony bin to vote at shareholders’ meetings, do they? Well, when you next see my mother, give her my congratulations. Her little plot worked, as usual.”

  “Melissa,” he says, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll promise you, I’ll swear to you, not to write a word about anything you’ve told me here this afternoon. I’ll treat it as a matter of strictest confidence between us. How’s that?”

  “Actually,” she says, “I don’t suppose it really matters all that much. The lid’s going to blow off this story in a few days, anyway. Wall Street has been full of rumors about it for the past week. Why so much sudden heavy trading in Kern-McKittrick stock? Have you been watching it? I have. So I don’t suppose what you write about it will have the slightest effect on the final outcome of things. Except to discredit me, of course, which is part of her plan.”

  “You’re awfully hard on your mother, Melissa.”

  “Hard on her? The truth is that I adore her, and always have. I often wish I had her strength, and her courage, her guts. I adored my father, too, worshiped him, but that was different, because I never knew him. He was never there. I worshiped my father in the abstract, as an idea, as a loving father who could never come close to me. I adored them both—my father in the abstract, and my mother in the essential reality. In religious terms, it’s a little like the difference between the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Son was real, Jesus existed, but the Holy Spirit is only a theory, an idea, a ghost. I loved the fact that was my mother, and the ghost that was my father, but adoring her doesn’t mean that I trust her. You see, my mother is a very rich woman, and she thinks—knows—that she can buy people. Most people. People like you, for instance. How much does a reporter like you make? Eighteen, twenty thousand a year? Don’t tell me, I don’t really want to know. But someone like you she can buy at bargain-basement prices. You’re not the first she’s bought, and you won’t be the last. But she can’t buy me. Not just because I have plenty of money of my own, but because I won’t let her buy me until she levels with me. So all she can do is try to manipulate me, through agents like you, but meanwhile she’s stuck with me. That’s why I feel sorry for you. When she’s through with you, she’ll dispose of you very quickly—like a used Pamper! But now she needs my vote. Even from the loony bin, she’s going to need my vote.”

  “Incidentally, how do you plan to vote? Not that it’s any of my business.”

  “No, it isn’t. But the fact is I haven’t decided, and you can tell my mother that. A lot depends …” She hesitates, and gives him a calculating look. “A lot depends on whether my mother finally decides to come clean with me. And a lot depends on how many Baronet shares I discover I am actually legally entitled to vote. And you can tell my mother that, too.”

  “Dammit, Melissa, I’m not going to tell your mother any of this! I’ve already promised to keep all of this in the strictest confidence.”

  “It will be interesting to see whether you keep that promise.”

  “A promise is a promise. Now, will you stop being so suspicious and have another drink with me?”

  “No. Was that Mother’s suggestion, too? Get Melissa a little drunk, and maybe you’ll get her tongue wagging. I can just hear her saying that. Did she also say, get Melissa a little drunk, and then maybe get her to bed down with you? Melissa has healthy sexual appetites—don’t we all? A little roll in the hay might get her to unbutton her lip. I can just hear her saying that, too.”

  He lowers his eyes. “That’s not why I invited you to dinner,” he says.

  “Then why did you?”

  “For one thing, because I find you a fasc
inating woman.”

  “Oh, I am, I am. Fascinating.”

  “And because I find the LeBarons a fascinating family.”

  “We are, we are. Quite fascinating.”

  “And because, to be honest with you, someday I might like to write the LeBarons’ story.”

  “Well, you won’t do that as long as Mother is around. If you found a publisher, she’d buy the publishing house.”

  “To me, it’s a very romantic story. The young Gold Rush immigrant … the story of a fortune made off the land in California … the special conditions of climate that produce the grape, warm sunny days and cool, dry nights … the romance of the wine business. You see, I’ve done a certain amount of homework already, Melissa.”

  “Romantic, yes. But there are a few rough edges to the LeBaron story, some pretty ugly and dirty undersides that you’re not going to learn about from me. Plenty of dirty linen, plenty of family skeletons, believe me.”

  “Anyway,” he says, “let’s stop talking about mergers and acquisitions and family skeletons. Let’s have a pleasant evening, and change the subject to something pleasant. Okay?”

  “Very well,” she says. “What shall that pleasant subject be?”

  “You,” he says easily. “Tell me about your holiday in Switzerland last winter, for instance.”

  “Switzerland,” she says. Then she lifts her napkin from her lap, folds it carefully, and places it on the tablecloth in front of her. Then she reaches for her Gucci bag, which she had placed on the floor, just beside her chair. “So that’s it. I might have guessed. Sometimes I’m not as clever as I like to think. Switzerland. I’m going home. Thank you for the drink, Archie, but you’re a shit. You’re a shit, but I still feel sorry for you. I feel terribly sorry for the shits of this world. The stakes they are playing for are usually so pitifully small. My stakes are somewhat larger. Good-bye.” She rises, with her bag, to go.

  He starts to rise. “Let me drop you at your house,” he says.

  “No, thank you. I’ll take a taxi. Taxis are cheap. Like this date.”

  Half-standing, he watches her as she turns and moves quickly across the restaurant toward the door, her thin Delman heels leaving brief impressions in the thick green carpet on the floor of Ernie’s bar, small, resilient dimples that lose their shape immediately her heels have left them.