The LeBaron Secret

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  It is past midnight, and Sari is alone in her quiet house, trying to put her noisy thoughts in order. What will happen now, she thinks. It is no use. She cannot think. She could, if she chose, summon Thomas for company—for consolation and, perhaps, advice. He would get out of bed and come down to be with her. All she needs to do is push a button, ring a bell, and he will appear. But she will not do that. It would not be fair to him. He and all the others have worked too hard this evening—and for this.

  And it is not Thomas’s problem, is it? It is her own. Whatever happens, she thinks, this is going to be my last hurrah.

  In her chair, she propels herself through the empty rooms of her house. Ah, it is all so pretty, flowers everywhere and still so fresh! In the drawing room, the satin draperies are pulled closed, and there is all her French furniture and the intricate needlepoint rug, handmade for an Irish viscount, and that lady there in the portrait over the cream-colored sofa was a courtesan of some French king or other, and was painted by Jean-Marc Nattier, very valuable, it has been said. The hems of the satin draperies sweep the floor, and between those two windows is a Louis XIV escritoire, very rare, and lacy with giltwork, and against the opposite wall stands the seventeenth-century coromandel screen, fourteen folding panels. The rosewood piano in the southwest corner of the room is by Bösendorfer, and has ninety-two keys instead of the customary eighty-eight, a piano built for the Austrian concert stage. There, on the Louis XVI commode, is the collection of jade—boxes, animals, and bibelots.

  In the dining room, the rosewood paneling of the walls serves as a backdrop for the mahogany Biedermeier table that will expand to seat thirty-two, and the Biedermeier chairs are covered in plum-colored watered mohair. On the dining-room mantel is a pair of Chinese Ming yellow vases, considered priceless. And then into the portrait gallery: Melissa.… The wheels of Sari’s chair move silently across the polished parquet. Possessions—the Sevres candlesticks, the Flemish tapestries, the half-dome of leaded glass above the elevator cage, the pair of Second Empire commodes—money bought only possessions, and very soon the possessions possessed you; you could not give them up. The LeBarons had bought her, and now she possessed them, or at least part of them. And that of course was another part of Joanna’s secret. She wanted to possess things, and to possess people, too. Looking about her, Sari thinks, oh, the greatness of my possessions! Oh, the greatness of this house! And how can I be unhappy in the midst of all these things, all this luxury, when all I have to do is push a button, ring a bell, and what I want will appear as if in a miracle. Gabe Pollack, giving her away at her wedding, had said to her, “This almost seems a miracle. But this is America, where anything is possible. Only in America could this happen.”

  “MacDonald brings ladies of the evening into the house.” This is Joanna speaking. “Sometimes two at a time! One of them died here, and he had a devil of a time getting her out. Peter found out about it, and that’s why MacDonald lets us have our secret cellar …” Was any of this true? Or was it all a fantasy? Did any of these things really happen?

  “I Want to Be Happy!” It was the song playing on the phonograph in the LeBarons’ wine cellar, and the song Peter had played on his harmonica on the deck of the Baroness C. It was a song she had often heard him whistling to himself when they were together, but these were not the words she had wanted to hear him say. She had wanted him to say, “I love you, Sari. I love you with all my mind and soul and heart and body. I want to run away with you to China, and walk along the Great Wall with you. I want to spend my life with you, to be with you always, to make you happy. I want to love you always, to share everything with you. I love you so much that I want to shout it from the rooftops, and tell the world how much I love you. I want to marry you … will you marry me?”

  But he had not said these things, not even while, not even after, they committed the act of love together. He had remained bright and cheerful—oh, sometimes moody, of course, when he complained about how hard his father was being on him—but at the same time detached and elusive and somehow unattainable. “This is Sari Latham,” he would say, introducing her to one of his friends. “My sister Joanna’s friend.” Was that all she was to him? His sister’s friend?

  Oh, sometimes he would throw her a sly, private wink, acknowledging that he and she shared a little secret from Joanna, but was a wink enough?

  “What do you want to do with your life, Peter?” she had asked him.

  “Oh, I want to be happy, of course. I want a good life, with a good job—probably in the family business. I have to finish college first, of course …”

  And love? He did not speak of love.

  One night, when Joanna was off at one of her subdebutante parties—“kids’ parties,” he had called them—he had driven her to Half Moon Bay, and they had climbed up across the dunes and down to the beach, and he had spread a blanket for them, and played his bright show tunes on his harmonica. They had had the beach to themselves, and Sari had begun tickling him again, and, laughing and wriggling under her persistent fingers, they had found themselves making love again, under the stars with the surf crashing behind them. But that was the way it always seemed to happen. Love was something they found themselves doing. It was unplanned love, love without desperate secret meetings in carefully planned places. It was something he enjoyed doing, it seemed, when the time and circumstances were right, but he also enjoyed sailing and playing his harmonica and driving fast in his red car. Did all men make love in this disengaged fashion? She really didn’t know the answer. Were all lovers like this? She had no one with whom to compare this idle, handsome, virile, and uncommitted lover she had found.

  “I love you, Peter,” she had whispered to him when it was over. “Very much.”

  “You’re very sweet,” he said.

  “Will we get married, do you think?”

  “Married? Huh. Well, who knows? Perhaps. But I have to finish college first. And my father’s even threatening not to send me back to college if I don’t get a job this summer.”

  “Are you looking for a job?”

  “Well, I can’t just get any job, can I? I can’t just get a job pumping gas. Can you see that? Peter LeBaron pumping gas? My life is really a bit messed up these days …” And they were off again on another subject.

  And then, one day, on another beach—it was Stinson Beach this time—they had all three joined hands and run across the beach and into the waves. And as their running feet splashed into the surf, Sari had thought: This is the moment. He will release Joanna’s hand now, take me in his arms, and shout, “Jo, Sari and I are in love! I’m in love with Sari! We wanted you to be the first to know!”

  But that hadn’t happened, and their hands remained joined as they dove together into the ocean. And he remained that bright, golden blur of boy on the top of the mast, his outline indistinct against the sun behind him. And she was still the loosely draped lady on the top of the Dewey Monument, poised, ready for flight, her chin up, on tiptoes, waiting to be kissed.

  “Is it your friend Joanna who interests you so in the LeBaron household?” Gabe Pollack asked her. “Or is it the son? I hear he’s very good-looking.”

  “Gabe! Jo is my best friend,” she lied to him.

  “You’re moving in pretty fancy company,” he said. “But this is America. In America, there are no social barriers between the rich and the poor …”

  In early July of that year—1926—Sari and Joanna met at their favorite place, the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, and Joanna had immediately said, “I have something very serious to talk to you about, Sari,” and from the expression on her face Sari knew that it was indeed serious. For a terrifying moment she had thought that somehow Joanna must have found out about her and Peter. But how could she have? Unless he—

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’ve—I’ve gone and gotten myself gravid,” Joanna said with a forced little laugh.

  “Gravid?”

  “Preggers. Pregnant,”
Joanna said.

  “Oh, my God,” Sari whispered. “Who?”

  “Enceinte.”.

  “How many periods have you missed?”

  “Four. As of this week.”

  “Oh, my God, Jo!”

  “It sort of blows my debutante year into a cocked hat, doesn’t it?” she said. “Not that I care about that, of course. It’s just—” But there were tears in her eyes now, and a little sobbing sound came involuntarily from her throat. “Oh, Sari, what am I going to do?”

  “Who is the boy, Jo?”

  “I can’t tell you. I won’t.”

  “I thought there were never going to be any secrets between us,” she said, knowing even as she said it that she had already broken her side of that promise.

  “This is different. I can’t tell you.”

  “Is it the Flood boy?”

  “No! I told you I’m not going to tell you who it is!”

  “Why not? He’ll have to marry you.”

  “No. He won’t. He can’t. It’s my problem. I’m going to have to solve it some other way.”

  “You mean he’s already married?”

  “No! Stop asking me these questions! I told you I can’t marry him, won’t marry him, don’t want to marry him.”

  “Well, tell me this. Does he know?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe he suspects, but it doesn’t matter because I can’t marry him.”

  “But he’ll have to marry you, if—”

  “Stop talking about getting married! I told you I can’t marry him!”

  “If you’ve told him, then what does he offer to do about this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No, because I haven’t told him, not in so many words. But as I say, maybe he suspects.”

  “Then you must tell him, ask him what—”

  “I can’t tell him!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I say I can’t, that’s why!”

  “Then what—what are you going to do, Jo?”

  “I don’t know!” she sobbed. She made balls of her fists and pressed them hard against her eyes. “Oh, Sari, please help me … I don’t know … I tried … I never thought, from just a few little times … I never thought … afterward, I thought I was being so careful, with the douching and everything.… They said douching with vinegar, that was supposed to do it, wasn’t it?”

  Sari had never heard this and experienced a flutter of panic over her own situation. Vinegar?

  “Oh, Sari,” Joanna said. “Just say you’ll help me. Please say you’ll help me. I’m so frightened, Sari!”

  She put an arm around her friend’s shaking shoulders. “Of course I’ll help you, Jo,” she said. “Any way I can. But how—?”

  “My debutante year,” she said. “That was supposed to begin right after Labor Day. That’s a joke, now, isn’t it? Labor Day?”

  “Tell me this,” Sari said. “Have you told your parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do they say?”

  “Frantic! Frantic. They want to send me away, give the baby up. But I won’t, I won’t do that! Oh, Sari, just say you’ll help me. We made a solemn pact—a pact in blood! Just let me hear you say you’ll help me, Sari!”

  “I’ve already said I’ll help you, Jo,” she said quietly. “I’ll help you in any way I can. Now tell me everything your parents said.”

  Joanna had made the mistake of telling her mother first, and Constance had immediately become hysterical. Monsignor Quinn had been summoned to the house, and Julius LeBaron had been called home from the office. “Is it Jimmy Flood?” he had demanded. “If it is, I am going to the telephone this minute and call his father, and—”

  “Oh, no!” Constance LeBaron had wept. “Not the Floods, Father—please! We’d never be able to hold our heads up in this town again. Oh, please don’t do that!”

  “It’s not Jimmy Flood!” Joanna had cried.

  “The thought of abortion may have crossed your minds,” Monsignor Quinn had said. “But you must not let it. That is against the written word of God and the Holy Church, and is out of the question.”

  “I don’t want an abortion!”

  Monsignor Quinn had crossed himself and repeated, “It is out of the question. Do not utter that word, Joanna.”

  “Tell us who the father is!” her father had said.

  “I won’t!”

  “Please tell us, Joanna,” Monsignor Quinn said. “That is the only way any of us can help you. We want to help.”

  “No.”

  “She must be sent away,” Constance LeBaron had said. “She must be sent away as soon as possible, and as far away as possible. She will have the baby, and it will be put up for adoption. Can the Sisters of the Good Shepherd help us there, Quinn?”

  “I won’t put the baby up for adoption!” Joanna had said.

  “You will damn well do what we tell you to do, young lady!” her father had roared. “You’re a minor, and we are your parents, and you will do as we say!”

  “I won’t!”

  “You will!” her father said, raising his arm as though to strike her.

  “Her debutante season,” Constance LeBaron had sobbed.

  “If you try to make me give my baby away, I’ll go all over town—right now—and tell everybody that I’m pregnant with an illegitimate baby! How will you hold your heads up in this town after that? I’ll tell them I’m pregnant by Immaculate Conception!”

  Monsignor Quinn crossed himself again.

  “You wouldn’t do that to us!” her mother had said.

  “Oh, wouldn’t I? Just wait and see!”

  “Oh, Father, Father,” Constance LeBaron had sobbed, and it was not clear whether she was talking to her husband, or to the Holy Father, or to Father Quinn, who had only recently been made a monsignor. “What are we going to do?”

  “First, let us pray,” Monsignor Quinn said, raising his hand to offer the Benediction. “In nomine patri …”

  “I think her parents have offered her the best advice,” Gabe Pollack said when she told him all of this. “Their faith prohibits abortion, and abortions are very dangerous anyway—particularly, I’m told, at this late stage in her pregnancy. I think you should try to persuade her to do what her parents propose.”

  “But she says she won’t give up the baby. She says the baby is going to be a LeBaron, and she wants it raised as a LeBaron.”

  “Which does she want to be—a mother or a debutante? She can’t have her cake and eat it, too.”

  “Joanna is very stubborn,” Sari said.

  “I think your parents are right,” Sari said when they met the following day. “I think you should go away, have the baby, and then let it be placed out for—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I won’t do that. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “I just don’t see any other solution, Jo.”

  “I do,” Joanna said. “I have another plan.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll agree to part of their plan. I’ll go away for a while. And you’ll go with me.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You and Peter.”

  “Me … and Peter …”

  “Yes. You could marry Peter. Why not? He’s crazy about you, I can tell. Then you’d go off on your honeymoon, to some faraway place—Europe, perhaps. A week or so later, I would join you there, wherever it is, and have my baby there. The baby is due in December. After it’s born, I could come home. I’d miss the first half of the deb season, but I’d be back here for the second half. You and Peter could stay on in Europe for a few months longer—long enough so that it would seem as though the baby could be yours and Peter’s, conceived and born on your long honeymoon.”

  “That’s a crazy idea, Jo!”

  “Is it? I don’t think so. You’d raise my baby as your own. My baby would still be in the family, raised by the two people I love the most, you and Peter. It wouldn’t be like g
iving up my baby to strangers, which I won’t do, anyway.”

  “Marry Peter …”

  “Crazy about you. I can tell.”

  “Oh, no, Jo.”

  “You promised to help me. Won’t you help me?”

  “But—has anyone spoken to Peter about this?”

  “Yes. I have.”

  “And what does he say?”

  “He agrees. Peter,” she said, “will do anything to ensure my happiness.”

  “Well,” she said almost angrily, “if Peter wants to marry me, he could at least ask me!”

  “He will. As soon as he’s sure you’ll say yes.”

  “And what about your parents?”

  “They’ll agree. I’ll handle them. They’ll agree, if I can tell them that you’ll say yes.”

  “Let me think” she whispered. “Let me think …”

  Joanna reached out and covered her hand with her own. “You see,” she said, “I want to keep my baby near to me, even if my baby never knows who I am. Is that so strange, Sari—to want to keep this little new life that’s growing inside me close to me, always, even though it never knows that I’m its mother? But I’ll know, and you’ll know, and Peter will know—but that’s all. It’ll be our secret, Sari, our wonderful little secret, a little baby that will belong to all three of us. No one else will ever know.”

  “But your parents—”

  “They’ll know, of course, but they’ll never tell another living soul.”

  “No, I suppose they wouldn’t.”

  “Help me, Sari. You promised to help me. Help me now.”

  “Let me think.”

  “Yes, but there isn’t much time to lose. Please.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Gabe Pollack said when she had explained Joanna’s proposal to him. “She does get to have her cake and eat it, too! That little girl is smarter than I gave her credit for. She gets to keep the baby, more or less, and gets to be a debutante as well!”

  “But what do you think of it, Gabe?”

  “It’s a quid pro quo situation, isn’t it,” he said. “You do her this favor and, in return, you get to marry one of San Francisco’s richest and most attractive young men. It’s almost like a business deal, isn’t it? But then, this is America, land of the deal.”