Rich White Americans

by Virginia Dale

  A long silence ensued. I felt like I was in a sarcophagus. Finally, my mother said, “Oh, Innocence, how could you!”

  I lowered my head at her disapproval.

  “Here. You can have a Valium.”

  “What’s a Valium?”

  “It’ll make you sleep.”

  Too stunned by my narrow escape earlier in the evening to protest, I said okay. My mother got out of her twin bed next to my father, who seemed to still be sleeping, and put on her bathrobe. I waited behind her as she shuffled through a drawer full of scarves, gloves, and pill boxes and caught the glint of a revolver. I knew they kept a gun because they were always sure someone was about to harm them. I’d never met stranger people than my parents. Their paranoia contributed to my love of wild, devil-take-the-hindmost times. Mother found the Valium and gave it to me. I withdrew from the room, pill in hand.

  I found a glass in the kitchen, looked at the pinkish pill in the palm of my hand, hesitated for a second, and swallowed it. I knew my parents wouldn’t discuss this with me, nor I with them. We never talked about anything personal, such as our feelings. Then, I went to my bedroom and slept a long time, determined never to date a rich, cocksure ass again. I’d double down on my studies in the Psychology Department at the University of California at Berkeley and accomplish things I’d be proud of, not that I wasn’t proud of using my wits and fists to escape rape.

  Chapter 2

  The next day dawned sparkling bright, a typical day in the woodsy area called Montecito, in Santa Barbara. I got up and had breakfast. I didn’t see my parents, but I did feel unusually happy, except when I tried to brush my long hair. I felt like I’d almost been scalped from all that hair-pulling last night. That pill my mother gave me had had an agreeable effect on my brain, plus I had outwitted a violent young man. I felt happy as I looked up at my little sister, who ran about.

  “Let’s play badminton!” She larked about, full of teenage energy, plus her own natural verve.

  “Later on,” I replied.

  “Oh, all right, party pooper.” We laughed and looked into one another’s eyes. I adored my little sister.

  She was seven years younger and knew nothing of the events of the night before. I wouldn’t tell her until she was older. Nonetheless, I felt proud that I’d fought off Andronicus. What a horrible brute. How did men get that way? I’d learn more about wealth and entitlement as the summer progressed.

  My mother came into the kitchen, a striking natural brunette beauty worshipped by my father. She still looked youthful with her unwrinkled porcelain-white skin. I waited for her to say something. She glanced at me without seeming to see me. She’d always appraised my outward appearance with a frown on her normally smooth brow; she’d criticize me if I didn’t meet her standards.

  She’d made it clear that she didn’t approve of showing emotions and made fun of people who cried at relatives’ funerals. Early on, I’d learned to ignore her as best I could and make lots of nice friends. Often, they had mothers who sensed I needed mothering, who took me under their maternal wings.

  It was Grandma, my maternal grandmother, who loved me without reserve. Born into her house with my father fighting in the Pacific, in World War II, she helped my mother raise me until the end of the war in 1945. She was the one who got up at 5 a.m. to build a fire in the fireplace of her spacious home in Arlington, Virginia, so I wouldn’t cry and awaken my mother. She rocked and cradled me. My mother married my father right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. She didn’t expect to become a mother in nine months, but she did. Known for her striking beauty, as well as my grandfather’s substantial wealth, her maternal instincts… I don’t know if she had any because mothering must not have come easy to her, but my grandmother stretched out her arms to take up the slack. She was my soul mother. Today, my mother directed her attention to the woman who helped clean our house once a month. I knew we’d never talk about what happened to me last night.

  “Make sure you polish my silver this time,” she said to Rosa, who nodded. She looked up at my mother almost as if expecting a blow. “If you don’t do a better job, I’ll have to hire someone else.”

  “You might be a bit kinder to someone who works so hard,” I interjected. My mother’s imperious lack of tact, which amounted to cruelty at times, had become unbearable over the years. I always took the side of the underdog. I knew my parents were wrong. I’d especially hated their racist views since I was eleven, which is unusual, but I’d told our whole neighborhood. Eleven-year-olds don’t lie. My girlfriends’ mothers started treating me with extra kindness because they felt sorry for me.

  “Inny, I’m paying her. Valerie Hasting’s silver always sparkles.”

  I gave her a furious look and started to say something. I couldn’t stand the way she treated Rosa, who worked hard and took my mother’s cruel remarks without comment. I wondered if she always received this rude treatment.

  “I’ll help Rosa!” I jumped up and grabbed the silver service tray. Rosa tried to take it back.

  “No, no…” she said. We grappled over it until I started to laugh. It was comical, in a sad way. I saw Rosa’s confusion. I’d bet she never dared complain for fear of losing a job. I yanked the silver tray harder.

  “Inny, stop that! You’re insolent.” My mother glared at me, her eyes pierced my soul.

  “I was almost raped last night. I could’ve been murdered!” The words flew out of my mouth like a hawk, guarding my right to be indignant.

  My mother raised her hand to slap me. I dodged and ran to my bedroom to calm down. I started to write a letter to my best friend to alleviate the trauma and tell her of my ordeal. I had fought that devil off. I had escaped intact. The words riveted themselves to the page. I couldn’t stop my flow of thoughts. I was still reeling from Andronicus’ attempt to violate me, to have his way with me, no matter what.

  Before I could finish the letter to Karen, the doorbell rang. It was nearly 11 a.m. I walked out of my room to see my younger sister run to open it. To my surprise, there stood Jim, asking if I was all right.

  “Inny’s fine!” said my sister. My mother swished by and Jim introduced himself. She peered outside; after spotting his new convertible, she smiled her best company smile. “It’s always nice to meet Inny’s friends,” she said, suddenly all charm.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Johnson,” said Jim.

  I put my pen down and bounded toward him, happy to see my gallant ride home, someone who sympathized with me and who knew I wasn’t ‘just fine.’

  “I just woke up.”

  “You had a late night.”

  “It was a memorable evening.” We started to laugh.

  “Are you going to press charges?”

  “What?”

  My mother turned and walked onto the patio, where a burst of hydrangeas lit up the scenery.

  “He’s already being sued by the president of the Theta House at Amherst for rape.”

  “Yes, you told me last night. I don’t think my parents would…” Jim smiled at me. “Would what?”

  My sister walked by, looking at Jim with curiosity. I wondered when I could tell her what had happened last night. Kendra and I might discuss intimate events and feelings, but my parents never would. It was all about rank and status, which I’d begun to abhor. My poor father suffered miserably from the humiliation of having been passed over for captain by his superiors in the Navy. They’d announced the names of the twenty percent of his class who hadn’t made captain, the equivalent to colonel in the Army. Yet, he’d fought in the Pacific in World War II and was an Annapolis graduate. He and my mother considered him a failure for not making captain, but he still had us. My sister adored him without reservation.

  “Aren’t your parents upset?” Jim smiled a deep crinkly smile of encouragement. He was tall and, trite but true, quite handsome. And, I’d later learn, rich.

  “They gave me a Valium last night after I told them.”

  “That was all?”
<
br />   “They’re afraid to talk about… um… you know.” I smiled, thinking everyone must have parents like mine. “Would you like some orange juice?”

  Jim chuckled. He said no to my offer of orange juice. He had a warm demeanor that I liked. We talked about last night and Andronicus a bit more. He stood about six feet tall. I just looked up into his warm brown eyes and accepted his kind words with gratitude. Not everyone was so nice.

  “Do you want to go to a party tomorrow night?” he asked as my mother opened the patio door and swished by in one of her prettier below-the-knee dresses. She smiled at him.

  “I’d love to!” I loved parties, after all, and he was nice-looking and sweet. I’d soon learn that he was the last child of the three marriages of John Hopman, the Pullman Freight Train heir. Jack Smith’s family owned mansions in Montecito and Ojai, where they cultivated vast tracts of lemon orchards. All of these people came from families with fabled fortunes, and many of them were from the second or third or fourth wife and had already developed an unhealthy attachment to alcohol. I gathered that divorce and alcohol were related.

  I drank at parties, but never elsewhere, plus my father had a tough time supporting us after he got passed over for captain. We weren’t rolling in dough. I always worked whenever I could and kept my grades up. I loved Berkeley and planned to graduate in psychology. I liked to party, but Berkeley had changed me. I had developed a love of ideas and original thinking. I loved just walking through its lush grounds, full of trees and lovely green grass. I often lolled in the grass for the sheer pleasure of it. And I studied hard.

  As the daughter of a naval officer, I’d moved with my family every time Daddy got new orders. Arlington, Virginia, remained our home base until I was thirteen when I left my best friends, and worst of all, my grandmother and cousins pretty much forever.

  West Point brats and Navy juniors, as people called us, suffered the trauma of constant relocation, which usually resulted in our becoming either insecure or tough, sometimes radical. I had developed a tough independent streak, plus I was impetuous. Nothing much impressed me other than genuinely nice people, like the relatives I’d left behind in Arlington, Virginia. I found that these wealthy families made an interesting story, but that was all.

  Hadn’t I just turned down Rock Hudson’s producer’s offer to be in the movies at a party at his house in Laguna Beach a couple of months ago? A fellow had poured a drink all over my raw silk dress because I wouldn’t dance with him, and I’d slugged him. Rock Hudson’s producer, who was infatuated with my handsome, straight boyfriend, saw the scuffle and ran over with a kaftan and a movie offer. I told him I just wanted to be happy, not a movie star. The idea had never crossed my mind. Stacey Lord intervened and said, “She has no voice.” The producer nodded sagely and respected my decision. I knew being in the movie business was glamorous, but I was more interested in psychology and literature. I wanted to live my life on my own terms. I was a budding egghead disguised as a glamour girl, through no fault of my own. It was hereditary. My boyfriend and Stacey wanted to be in the movies, not me. My boyfriend Robin left the United States to work on a trawler in the waterways of Europe that summer. I never saw him again. I never saw any of them again or gave the episode much thought. Now, I was in Montecito with my family and a nice boy who’d solaced me after a very close call.

  Jim and I began to go out together. He impressed my parents with his good manners and expensive convertible. The party he’d invited me to was held in a spacious home in Montecito with a lot of people who’d gone to school together. I loved meeting new people and dancing, so Jim and I had a grand time. Someone remarked that he was more popular on the West Coast than the East, indicating that West Coast women fancied him more. I smirked at the girl who made the remark. There was a lot to eat and drink, small talk, dancing, and there was a spectacular view of the Channel Islands.

  “My father lives in a house that Frank Lloyd Wright built especially for him,” said Jim.

  “Frank Lloyd Wright? It must be spectacular!”

  “I’ll have you over for dinner sometime and introduce you, if you like,” he said as we admired the view from the terrace.

  “I’d love to meet your father!” Jim was so sweet. Perhaps Andronicus Wyland’s opposite, if that were possible.

  When I told my parents I was having dinner with Jim’s father, John Hopman, my own father threw one of his fits. He rarely spoke to me unless angered. “That man’s a Communist!” he said.

  “He owns the Pullman Freight fortune. He lives in a house Frank Lloyd Wright designed especially for him,” I replied. “He’s no Communist.”

  Daddy turned bright red, his blue eyes sparkling with pique. “He’s a Communist! I’ve read about him! He champions the poor! He contributes to the NAACP and… he’s a Socialist!”

  “That sounds very generous to me. I don’t think it makes him a Communist. Why do you think everyone is a Communist, Daddy?”

  My father continued to rant and rave about John Hopman’s unorthodox beliefs, which only increased my interest in this worldly elderly gentleman. I looked forward to meeting him.

  Daddy was a midshipman at Annapolis when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. My mother stayed with my grandmother, a singing lark of a woman who adored children and hadn’t an inhibited bone in her body. This embarrassed my mother, but nonetheless, we stayed at Grandma’s house until my father returned when the war ended in 1945.

  It was my grandmother who got up at five in the morning to stoke the fire and rock my cradle so I wouldn’t waken my mother. It was with my grandmother that I fed the magnificent, giant gold fish in the stone aquarium in the sunroom. A room full of tropical plants and sun and light and magic to a tot. She even took me to the movies in Clarendon when I was not yet three, sang lullabies to me and mothered me a lot more than my biological mother, her daughter, who was a bit chagrined to have a child instead of being the belle of the ball in the fancy Washington, D.C. office where she’d worked and dated several of the men. Grandma loved me unconditionally, lavishly, without reserve, and taught me to love life as she did. And, Grandma never spanked me.

  When my father finally came back from the war and met me for the first time, we looked at one another like two strangers. He took me to an amusement park and I cried on one of the rides, embarrassing him in front of the onlookers, especially as he was in his naval uniform. Me, all of three years old. We failed to bond, although he tried a couple of times. So, when Jim invited me to meet his father, I was impressed that he had a father who invited his friends to dinner. My father always had his head buried in The Scientific American or a newspaper. He rarely spoke to my friends. In his defense, I must admit that he was a sweet-tempered, witty man who would do anything for his family.

  He and my mother tried hard for a second child, and seven years later, my younger sister was delivered right into his waiting arms. She became the apple of his eye, ‘Daddy’s Little Helper,’ as he called her, or his little angel. I was branded the devil. Why? I’ll never know, but I began to hate my parents for giving me such a nasty image to live up to. Of course, I did my best. Grandma noticed that my sister was the preferred one, and she did her level best to make up for it, making chicken sandwiches for me and my girlfriends when we visited and lavishing attention on me. I loved her all the more dearly.

  I put on my favorite Lanz magenta dress, sleeveless, with eyelets tracing a lovely neckline, which wasn’t of the plunging variety. Dressing for myself, rather than for others, had been my natural choice, plus I didn’t care to show off my breasts. Most women dressed conservatively in the early sixties.

  I glanced at my face in the mirror as I brushed my long, dark blonde hair, wondering what the movie producer had seen that made him offer to put me in his films. My cheekbones were more prominent; I had less of a baby face now that I was almost twenty-one. An oval shape with deep blue eyes gazed back at me, and I had to laugh for being so vain. Looks were so superficial. It was your brains that counted, in
my opinion.

  Jim picked me up for dinner in his convertible. After he made polite conversation with my parents, he whisked me out to his convertible, which was parked in our semi-circular driveway, banked by large ferns and Eucalyptus trees. The rest of our street curved towards a bluff above a large field of wildflowers and untended grass. As Jim pulled out of the driveway, I saw a red sports car out of the corner of my eye. It sped away. A shiver went down my spine.

  Putting my shock at seeing a sports car that resembled Andronicus’ aside, I asked Jim how his father came to live in a house designed by such a famous architect.

  “They were friends,” said Jim.

  “Oh,” I replied, nonplussed. It occurred to me that I had distinguished relatives, too, only in academia or in the government, like my maternal grandfather, who had been president of the post office in Washington, D.C with a handsome salary. He was thought to be next in line for postmaster general; however, he quit at age fifty, saying, “If you haven’t made it by fifty, you never will.” He turned down the social security benefits he had coming, too. A. T. Davis was a tough old bird.

  Grandma put up with him and raised me, along with my mother, until we left Arlington. A.T., as he was called, had given my Uncle Jimmy a job as mailman for the post office back east. Married to my mother’s only sibling, Aunt Edna, he’d delivered mail with a handsome smile that belied his Irish heritage. Uncle Jimmy was as genial as he was handsome, and so were my two cousins, Jimmy and Billy.

  They’d moved to California to further my cousin’s aptitude in kayaking, as he hoped to participate in the Olympics. High expectations were the name of the game for us kids, and we were trying hard to fulfill them.

  Jim’s Frank Lloyd Wright house was hard to distinguish, as it was behind a very high wall of concrete with a high, handsome redwood gate. It bespoke the privacy that John Hopman, no doubt, cherished. Most of it was on several levels, each lower than the last, although I wouldn’t see Jim’s sunken bedroom until much later. I was much more interested in meeting Jim’s father than in the house’s architecture.