Two

Today is the day for the boys from Madison Avenue to come out to San Francisco, as they do twice a year, to present their advertising campaigns, the television commercials and so on, for Baronet wines. Sari has heard along the grapevine that the Madison Avenue boys live in terror of these semiannual trips, that they spend weeks beforehand not only pulling together their layouts and storyboards, but also planning what they all will wear, in order to make the best impression on the old lady. She has heard that the entire trip between La Guardia and San Francisco International is spent not only in going over notes and market-research reports, but also on straightening trouser creases, hitching up socks, and checking neckties for spots. She can imagine them, getting on the airplane, carefully turning their jackets inside out and folding them, flatly and neatly, in the overhead storage bins so that they will arrive unwrinkled.

The boys always manage to dress much the same—in dark gray or dark blue three-button suits that bear the unmistakable stamp of Brooks Brothers, with white or pale blue button-down shirts, ties with tiny paisley patterns on them, and slip-on shoes with gold-colored bits clamped across their tops. It is the way they suppose San Francisco businessmen dress (which it really isn’t quite), and Sari is certain that they don’t dress that way back home in New York. San Francisco, they have been told, is a quiet, elegant city (which it really isn’t), where the women wear mink jackets and hats and short white gloves, even in summer (which they haven’t done for years), and where anything that would smack of Hollywood must be painstakingly eschewed. But this is all right. And it is all right, too, that they dread these San Francisco meetings. After all, there is that $20,000,000 in annual billings to take into consideration, a sum that, in Sari’s opinion, is not to be sneezed at. And even though LeBaron & Murdock might be considered something of a family agency, there would be nothing to prevent Assaria LeBaron from—if she took a notion to—firing the lot of them and taking her business to Benton & Bowles. Benton & Bowles would be only too happy to take on Baronet. Only too happy.

There are three Madison Avenue boys—Sari knows them well—and they have names. One is Mike Geraghty, thirty-fivish, a redheaded and freckled Irishman with a pleasantly open face. He is the account executive and, as such, he is the highest in their pecking order. It is Mike who assumes the privilege of standing closest to Sari’s desk—not over her shoulder, mind you, for that would be too presumptuous, too intimate; no one in the organization would have the temerity to do that. Mike stands, instead, just a little to the front, and a little to the side, of where Sari sits, with the newspaper-advertising proofs spread out in front of him for Sari’s inspection.

The other two young men are from the agency’s Creative Department. One is Bob Petrocelli, the art director who designs the ads. The other is Howard Friedman, the copywriter who writes the words. These two sit, a little apart from each other, in straight chairs in front of Sari’s desk. An Irishman, an Italian, and a Jew, the three are a carefully calculated ethnic mix. Also at the meeting, seated on the big leather sofa at a short remove from the others, is Sari’s son Eric.

The five are gathered in Sari’s office now, and the meeting has begun.

The corporate headquarters of Baronet Vineyards are located in one of the older buildings on Montgomery Street, and the office that Sari LeBaron now occupies was originally designed to reflect Papa Julius LeBaron’s notion of what a winery executive’s office should be—grand and appropriately baronial, with decorative touches borrowed from both California and medieval Europe. The walls and high ceilings are paneled in lustrous dark walnut, embossed with heraldic shields and escutcheons, and the polished marble floor is laid out in an egg-and-dart design of white and gold. Sari’s desk is framed by immense windows of stained glass that depict, in their various panels, sword-bearing conquistadores in tight-fitting cuisses and kneepieces, golden breastplates and épaulières, and ostrich-plumed helmets, as well as tonsured monks in cassocks and surplices bearing jugs and pitchers of wine. The chairs and sofa are all large and vaguely Spanish in design, covered in a rich black leather that gives the room its own smoky, waxy, male smell; and tall brass column lamps support heavy, fluted parchment shades that are painted with more heraldry—shields and crests and other armorial trappings.

The room is also boldly self-congratulatory. Set into a wall above the sofa, in an illuminated glass case, are displayed examples of Baronet products over the years in their various forms, shapes, and sizes—half-pints, pints, fifths, quarts, liters, half-gallons, and gallons—and varieties: the whites, the reds, the roses, the golden Angelicas, and so on. On the opposite wall, in an identical case, there is a collection of wineglasses of various origins and vintages. And the wall that faces Sari’s desk is what Papa liked to call his Trophy Wall. Here, in frames, are all the awards, medals, tributes, and citations—both civic and industrial—along with the signed photographs from United States Presidents, every one from Calvin Coolidge through Ronald Reagan (with Franklin Roosevelt excepted), that the LeBarons and their company have amassed over the years. These are grouped around a gold-framed portrait of black-mustachioed Grandpa Mario Barone, painted from an early photograph. But even here the hand of the crafty revisionist of history has been at work. The plaque below the portrait of the man responsible for all this gives him a name he would never have answered to: “Marc LeBaron,” and, below this, the words “Founder: 1830–1905.”

Since Julius LeBaron’s day, only one decorative detail of the office has been changed: the removal of the two brass cuspidors that used to flank the desk. Sari saw to that.

Now, in Papa’s big swivel chair, she sits behind the walnut partners’ desk. Her wheelchair has been put away in a closet, since none of the Madison Avenue boys is supposed to be reminded of her handicap. Mike Geraghty lays out the proposed ads, one by one, for her to consider, contemplate, study. He places each new glossy page on top of the last in the order in which—if Sari approves—they are to make their appearance to the wine-drinking public. The backs of his well-manicured fingers are downed with a light peach-fuzz of pink hairs.

“Now, let’s go through the whole lot again, Mike,” Sari says at last.

“Certainly, Mrs. LeBaron.”

The other two young men say nothing, merely sit stiffly in their chairs in attitudes of attention and profound respect. Months of work are at stake here, and everything hangs on Sari’s approval or disapproval. Thus far, she has registered neither emotion, and the brow of Howard Friedman, the copywriter, has begun to glisten slightly. The proposed new slogan is his.

“Well, I see what you’re trying to say here,” she says at last. “‘Baronet—The Wine You Can Trust.’ You can trust the Leaning Tower of Pisa not to fall down. You can trust the Statue of Liberty not to drop her torch. But—”.

Anxiously: “Yes, Mrs. LeBaron?”

“But what are we doing with all these pictures of banks? What does a bank have to do with wine?”

“You see, Mrs. LeBaron,” Howard Friedman interjects quickly, “the idea is that you can trust Baronet wines just the way you can trust your bank to take care of your money. You notice, in the copy, we’ve used the phrase ‘The wine you can bank on.’”

“I see that. But what I can’t see is why anyone would want to bank on a wine. Am I missing some subtle point?”

“Banks,” says Mike Geraghty, “are trusted American financial institutions. The very bedrock, you might say, of our American capitalist system.”

“Don’t forget—I’m pro-Communist!” She says it with a wink.

“Ha-ha, yes. Well, Americans feel very strongly about their banks. The dream of every young American man or woman is to be able to walk into a bank and cash a check, his or her own check. That couldn’t happen in Russia or your other Iron Curtain countries. We’ve done some very deep-level psychological research stuff on this, Mrs. LeBaron, on Americans’ deep-seated feelings about their banks, and—”

“I’m sure you’re right, Mike,” Sari says, waving her hand impatiently, “but I still don’t see the connection between people’s feelings about their banks and the wine they drink. That’s what I don’t get about all of this.”

“Banks,” says Mike Geraghty, “are solid. They can be trusted. They’re like an old friend. Who is more trusted in any town or city in this country than the local banker?”

“The local doctor, perhaps?” Sari suggests.

“But that raises health issues, doctors,” says Mike Geraghty, “and of course we don’t want to go into anything like that, we really can’t get into an area like that, Mrs. LeBaron, saying that wine is good for you, good for your health, nine out often doctors, that sort of thing. Why, the government would—”

“I’m not suggesting that,” Sari says. “All I’m saying, Mike, is—why banks?”

“We’re trying to give Baronet a more upscale image, Mrs. LeBaron,” Howard Friedman says. “The bank, the banker—conservative, trustworthy, the person in town everyone loves—”

“Well, I certainly don’t love my banker,” Sari says. “He happens to be a horse’s ass. But what do you mean by this upscale business?”

“The banker. The town’s most upright citizen, the pillar of the community.”

“Are you trying to say that bankers drink Baronet wines?”

“That’s implicit, yes, in the copy. A subliminal message. Upscale.”

“But that’s bull-do, Mike. Bankers don’t drink Baronet wines—not in this town or any other. They drink a Beefeater martini with a twist, or Johnnie Walker Scotch. Or something equally respectable.”

“Of course, that’s only a very minor copy point, Mrs. LeBaron. That’s the subliminal, the upscale part. The main point is—”

“Yes, let’s get back to the main point,” Sari says. “The main point of all this is ‘Baronet—The Wine You Can Trust,’ as I see it. So let me ask you this: Is there any reason why anyone should not trust Baronet wines? Is there any reason why anyone should trust Baronet more than any other wine? Trust Baronet to do what? Not get you tipsy? Not make you upchuck, or give you cirrhosis of the liver if you drink too much? Not give you a hangover? Face it, Mike, our wine is cheap jug wine, always has been. It’s not champagne, and it’s not Scotch or bonded bourbon. Baronet is blue-collar stuff. Kids drink it in fern bars that can’t afford a liquor license. They drink it at fraternity-house parties. They buy it by the gallon to spike the punch. We’re not trying to be Beaulieu or Paul Masson or even Almaden. We’re just a plain old honest wine with a low sticker, and people drink it because they get a pleasant buzz. We’re the house wine, seventy-five cents a glass in some of your not-so-better restaurants. That’s what we are, and always have been.”

“But with the taste emphasis changing these days, Mrs. LeBaron, and the—”

“Bull-do! If the public were turning away from our wine, we’d see it in the bottom line, wouldn’t we? If we’re doing something wrong, we’d see it in the sales figures, wouldn’t we? But we don’t. So why are we changing our ad approach, with this upscale business? Next thing you know, you’ll be suggesting I buy ad space in Town & Country, or Architectural Digest, or la-di-da books like that! If you want to give me something new, give me something lighthearted—something that’s about good, inexpensive fun. Are banks lighthearted? Banks are about interest rates.” She spreads the palms of her hands flat on the desktop and looks at each of the three young men in turn. “If you ask me, gentlemen, if there’s one thing Baronet wines are not about, it’s banks.”

There is silence now, and all around the room the Madison Avenue boys’ faces are crestfallen and disconsolate, and all at once Sari feels almost sorry for them. They are so very young, and their young hopes look so very dashed. “Tell me,” she says in a gentler tone, “has my sister-in-law approved any of this stuff?”

Their expressions grow even more morose. It is difficult for them, after all, to hear all their hard work dismissed as “this stuff.”

“Miss LeBaron reviews every agency presentation very carefully before it is presented to the client,” Mike Geraghty says rather stiffly.

“Well, Joanna must be losing her marbles,” Sari says.

With that, Eric LeBaron clears his throat softly, leans forward on the sofa, and makes a steeple of his fingers. “Excuse me, Mother,” he says. It is the first time he has spoken.

Sari throws him a quick look. “Yes, Eric?”

“Excuse me, Mother, but I think I see what these fellows are trying to do.”

Now there is a collective, if inaudible, sigh of relief in the room. All is not yet utterly lost for the boys. Another opinion is at least being offered, and there is a fleeting chance—a fleeting one—that the day may be saved, even though the boys know from long experience that it is Sari who tells her son what to do, and not the other way around.

“I’m not saying I’m one hundred percent in favor of this particular campaign,” he says carefully, and the briefly hopeful looks on the other men’s faces fade quickly. “But I see what they’re trying to say, and I think I should tell you that what they are showing us today is based on a suggestion of my own a while back.”

“Of yours?”

“Yes,” he says. “You see—the idea of an upscale campaign for Baronet is based on a very definite national trend that has been going on for the last ten, twenty years.”

“What trend is that?”

“Wine has become a fashionable drink. It has become the drink of choice for upwardly mobile people, particularly young people—young urban professionals, the people who—”

Sari waves her hand impatiently. “I know all that,” she says. “Are you trying to tell me something I don’t already know? That trend started in the late nineteen sixties. Are you trying to tell me I’m behind the times?”

“Of course not, but the point is—”

“The point is that those people, those yuppies you’re talking about, don’t drink our wine. Why, they wouldn’t touch a bottle of Baronet with a ten-foot pole! You won’t see our wine being served at any Park Avenue parties, Eric. On the Bowery, sure. Why, every wino they pick up on skid row is lugging a pint of Baronet Thunder Mountain Red in a paper bag!”

“But what I am trying to say,” he begins slowly, and Sari can see the small forceps scar on his left temple beginning to redden, as it often does when he is angry or upset. No one else notices this, but she does. Good, she thinks, let him squirm a bit. “What I am trying to say,” he continues, “is that we don’t have to direct our entire marketing effort toward skid-row winos and Bowery bums.”

“You want to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse—is that it?”

“There is another market, Mrs. LeBaron,” Mike Geraghty interjects.

“I know there is! But it’s not our market.”

“But is there any reason, Mother, why we shouldn’t also try to tap this other market, with an advertising campaign designed to make the Baronet name just a little bit respectable?”

“And turn our backs on the market we’ve got already? Kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? I tell you, our market doesn’t read Town & Country. It reads the National Enquirer and the girlie magazines. It doesn’t watch the ‘MacNeil-Lehrer Report,’ it watches ball games and prizefights. Our research shows us that. We’re sold in supermarkets, Eric, to men and women who drive home in pickup trucks.”

“But do we have to concentrate on that market exclusively? While this other market is—”

“Don’t change horses in midstream—did you ever hear that piece of advice? Don’t take your money off a winning horse—that’s another.”

“And, while we’re exchanging clichés,” Eric says, “there’s another about putting all your eggs in one basket.”

“Bull-do!”

The three other men in the room are now all extremely uneasy. It is painful for them to have to witness a member of their own sex being taken to task by a member of the opposite one, particularly when that member of the opposite sex happens to be the man’s own mother. Eric, they know, is talking marketing. That is supposed to be his bailiwick, and to talk marketing is supposed to be his right. A marketing vice-president is supposed, at least from time to time, to offer marketing suggestions and advice, and that is all he is doing.

There is a silence, and then Mike Geraghty says, “You see, Mrs. LeBaron, what we have been proposing is some sort of advertising campaign that would begin to add some respectability, some dignity, to the popular image that the Baronet label now has, in preparation—”

“In preparation for what?”

“In preparation for the possibility of introducing a new line of higher-priced wines. Of château quality. With new packaging, with a new label—retaining the Baronet signature, of course. ‘Château Baronet,’ in fact, is one of the labels we’ve been tossing about.”

“Who’s ‘we’? Is this some new idea of Joanna’s?”

“No, actually it was mine,” Eric says.

“Only a suggestion, of course,” Mike Geraghty says, “in an effort to capture a share, at least, of this upscale market.”

“Belatedly,” Eric adds.

“What do you think of the name Château Baronet, Mrs. LeBaron?” Mike Geraghty says. “We rather like it.”

Sari makes a face. “Château Baronet,” she says. “Sounds kind of pansy to me. Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think this is all a terrible idea. I think it’s worse than terrible. I think it’s a lousy idea, I think it stinks.”

Now the sighs are audible.

“Let me tell you something about wine,” she continues, folding her hands across her desk and adopting the attitude of an all-wise mother superior in a convent addressing a group of unschooled novices. “Wine is crushed from grapes, and grapes grow on vines, and vines grow in soil, in earth. In the earth, they depend on rain and on sun—on nature—on sunny days and cool, dry nights. In some of our northern vineyards, like Napa, we let wild mustard grow between the vines in spring. Why wild mustard? No one knows exactly, but wild mustard seems to nourish grapevines in certain areas. Up in the foothills, weeds like clover and vetch seem to work better—no one knows why, but they do. Nature again. Later, closer to harvest time, these weeds are all plowed under, and this also seems to help the vines. Provides soil texture. You see, that’s what I think all you boys sometimes seem to forget—you, in your Madison Avenue offices, Joanna in her duplex on Fifth Avenue, even Eric here in his office in the city. You’ve forgotten the wild mustard, and the clover, and the purple vetch. How many of you have ever watched the bees, the way a hive of bees will attack a vineyard? A single bee can suck a grape until it’s as dry and empty and wrinkled as a dead balloon. I’ve watched this, watched with tears in my eyes, and watched as those bees fell, one by one to the ground, drunk from their drinking on our vines.

“And the larks! ‘Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,’ you think, but larks can be some of our worst predators. Those pretty songbirds can be some of our most voracious scavengers—insatiable!—and a summer of larks for us is a summer of disaster. As a girl, I used to watch the Chinese field hands chanting, shouting, flapping their arms, beating gongs, trying to frighten off a flock of larks from the vines. Did no good at all! Forces of nature, you see.” She pauses for effect. “That’s what I think you’ve all forgotten, sitting there in your ivory towers. We’re not Park Avenue aristocrats. Hell, we’re farmers. We work the land. We study the sky and sniff the air for signs of rain. We battle nature every day. We’re real people, and we’re ordinary people, and those are the people who drink our wine, and that’s how we’ve made our reputation.” And she brings down her fist, hard, on the top of the walnut partners’ desk. “And that’s how we got rich.”

After a moment, Eric says dryly, “Well, thanks for the lecture, Mother.”

“That wasn’t a lecture,” Sari says. “That was a sermon!” She pauses, and then smiles. “Well,” she says, “how about some lunch? I don’t know about any of you, but I’m starving.” She presses the button on her desktop and rings for her secretary, Miss Martino.

Eric rises. “Sorry,” he says, “but I can’t join you. I have an engagement.”

He can do this. He can escape, with an excuse, but the others cannot. As long as the Madison Avenue boys remain in San Francisco, they belong to Assaria LeBaron. Sari nods a curt farewell to Eric, and Gloria Martino appears at the doorway, notepad and pencil in hand.

“Something to drink before lunch, boys?” Sari asks.

Mike Geraghty speaks first. “I’ll have a nice chilled glass of Baronet Chablis,” he says.

“Good!” says Sari. “I’ll have a touch of Baronet vermouth”—she winks at them—“mixed with a couple of jiggers of Beefeater gin.”

Eric LeBaron strides into his office on the other side of the building and flings himself into the chair behind his desk. Marylou Chin, his willowy Eurasian secretary, has followed him into the room. “Well,” he says, “she did it again. Let me have it, in front of the whole Madison Avenue gang. Shit!”

Ordinarily, Marylou would have simply made clucking noises with her tongue, murmured something noncommittally sympathetic, and then asked him if it was all right if she took her lunch hour. But just in the last few weeks the nature of their relationship has changed, and so, instead, she closes the office door behind them, takes a seat in the small chair opposite him, crosses her legs, and carefully lights a long filtered cigarette, studying his face. “How much longer are you going to let her treat you like this, Eric?” she asks at last.

“Shit, I don’t know,” he says. “Until they carry me out of here with a ruptured, bleeding ulcer, I suppose.”

“It’s—it’s intolerable, is what it is.”

“I know.”

“You work so hard, you give her so much, and she rewards you by treating you like some sort of galley slave. Like shit, as you say.”

“I know.”

“You’re the one who should be running this company. Not her.”

“I know I could run it a damn sight better,” he says.

“Of course you could.” She shapes the ash on her cigarette against the rim of his ashtray. “Was it—was it the same sort of thing today?”

“Of course. She simply refuses—refuses to consider anything that even remotely smacks of a new idea. Refuses.”

“You’ve offered her so many good ideas.”

“The Madison Avenue guys had come up with a new campaign that was, frankly, shit. But they were on the right track. But she, of course, derailed them before they could even get the train out of the station. Refused to listen to anything anybody else had to say.”

“Poor Eric.”

“You should have heard her little speech today. All about larks and honeybees and wild mustard and purple vetch—whatever the hell that is.”

Once more she shapes the ash on her cigarette. “You know,” she says, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Thinking what?”

“There was an article a couple of weeks ago in Newsweek. In fact it was the cover story. It was on Alzheimer’s disease, that thing old people get. It’s like senility. They can remember something that happened fifty years ago, but they can’t remember whether they opened the refrigerator door to put something in or to take something out. She’s what now—seventy-four? Do you think that might be what she has, Eric?”

“Ha! I wish it were.”

“I mean—well, that thing she did with the plane. That was really pretty crazy. I know how embarrassed you were by that. We were all embarrassed. ‘Is that the woman you work for?’ friends said to me.”

“No, she was just acting up. Just being cute. Just seeing how much she could get away with—she and George Hessler. And I’m sure as hell George had something to do with it. Must have. She let him do it because she thinks he’s cute.”

Marylou Chin laughs softly. “Well, he is pretty good-looking,” she says. “But after all.”

“No,” he says, “she’s always been like this, I’m afraid, M’lou. As long as I’ve known her. Which of course is all my life.”

“What about when your father was alive? Was she the same way with him?”

He frowns. “That was a little different. They were more like a working partnership. In business together. Dad was a smoothie, Mother was the toughie. When heads needed to get banged together, that was Mother’s job. They came to Dad to apply the Band-Aids. That was what he did best, smoothing over the hurt feelings Mother left in her wake.”

“Poor Eric,” she says again. “It just hurts me so to see what she’s doing to you!”

“A working partnership, that’s what that marriage was. You know, sometimes I’ve tried to imagine my mother and my father fucking, and I just can’t. I just can’t picture the two of them—you know, making love. Fucking. And yet they must have, two or three times at least.”

They sit in silence for a while, and very slowly Marylou Chin stubs out her cigarette. “Well, I know what I think you ought to do,” she says finally.

“What’s that?”

“Confront her. Tell her exactly what you think. It’s wrong for you to keep your thoughts and feelings bottled up like this. I think you should go to her and tell her that you don’t intend to take this kind of treatment anymore. Give her an ultimatum.”

“Ha,” he says. “What good would that do? She’d just say, ‘Fine, get out.’ And then where’d I be? Out on the street, without a job.”

“But she’d be a fool—an absolute fool—to let you go!”

“But don’t forget, I know her, M’lou. I know her much better than you do, and I’ve known her much longer. I know her, I tell you.”

“Well, even if she were foolish enough to let you go—why, there are dozens of companies that would be just dying to snap you up, all over town!”

“You don’t understand,” he says. “This is my career. I’m nearly forty years old, and I’ve worked for this company for half my life. I’ve made this company my career. Even summers, home from college, I was out there with the braceros, picking grapes, getting paid by the box lot, working for Baronet. It’s the only job I’ve ever had.”

“But there are plenty of other—”

“If she were mad enough, and she might well be, she could see to it that no other winery in California would hire me—ever. She has that kind of power, M’lou. I’ve seen her use it.”

“It’s—inhuman, is what it is!”

“That’s my mother. No, I’m afraid that isn’t the solution.”

“But even without a job, you’d have—”

“Money, you mean?”

She hesitates, biting her lower lip. She is skating on thin ice here. As his secretary, she manages his personal checkbook, makes periodic deposits and withdrawals for him. But of his overall financial picture she knows little, and she is, after all, only his secretary. She decides to make light of things. “Well,” she says easily, “the newspapers always include you in the list of San Francisco’s wealthiest men.”

“A regular Gordon Getty, eh?”

“No, I simply mean that—considering who you are, with your talent and brains—you could do anything you wanted in this city.”

“Yeah.” He is frowning now, looking not at her, but hard at the surface of his desk. “Yeah, well, one of the things I’d like to do right now is my alleged job as marketing director of Baronet.”

“But she won’t let—”

“She does happen to be the president of the company, M’lou.”

“It’s just that I can’t stand seeing her use you as her—whipping boy!”

“Are you calling me a pantywaist?”

“No! You’re one of the brightest, most talented men I’ve ever known. But that woman—”

“That woman also happens to be my mother.”

“Of course! And of course you love her. But any mother who loved her son wouldn’t treat him this way.” The ice beneath her feet grows ever thinner, but she plunges on. “It’s just—it’s just that I wish you’d let me take you to my Assertiveness class, Eric. We’re into some consciousness-raising stuff now. We meet every—”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think I need your Assertiveness class, M’lou. Thanks, anyway.”

“I’ve made you angry, haven’t I? Oh, Eric, I’m sorry! But it’s just—it’s just that I thought you were asking for my opinion.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll handle things. Don’t worry about me, M’lou.”

She laughs unhappily. “It’s my Assertiveness class, I guess. It’s made me too assertive. I’m sorry.”

“I just don’t want you getting any gray hairs over this. Leave things to me, okay?”

“Of course, Eric.”

They sit in silence for a while. Miserably, she thinks: I have made him even more upset.

He thinks: This is all my fault for bellyaching to her in the first place.

“Well—” she says, and with the fingers of her right hand she flicks an imaginary ash from the skirt of her blue silk suit. Then she uncrosses her long legs and stands up. “Well, I’m skipping lunch today, so I’ll be right outside if you need me for anything.”

“Thanks, M’lou.”

“Can I order a sandwich for you?”

“Uh—no, thanks.”

She hesitates. “Will I—be seeing you tonight?” she asks him.

Still frowning, he shakes his head. “I think—not,” he says. “I’ve been getting some grief on the home front, too. So I think I’d better say not.”

“Poor Eric.”

He looks up at her.

“Tomorrow, maybe?”

“We’ll see,” he says.

“I’m sorry if I made you angry. Really sorry.”

“No, not angry.” He smiles at her faintly. “Skip to M’lou,” he says. “Skip to M’lou, my darling. Skip to M’lou, my dear.”

She tries to return the smile. Then, slowly, she turns away from him and moves across the room on her slender high heels. At the door she hesitates again. “Shall I leave your door open or closed?”

“Closed, I think.”

She opens the door, lets herself out, and then very quietly closes the door behind her.

Alone in the office, Eric thinks: Skip to M’lou. And then thinks: In this direction lie only frustration, confusion, and despair. He has just decided to give her up. For the third time this week.

He sits for a long time in the empty office, staring at the hunting prints (pink-coated hunters pursuing the fox) without seeing them, avoiding with his eyes the low table against one wall, where, in three matching silver frames inscribed with his initials, the photographs of a blonde wife and two pretty daughters smile at him with expressions of remarkable self-assurance and confidence, none of them in need of an Assertiveness class.

Finally, he reaches for the telephone on his desk, lifts the receiver, and presses a short series of musical numbers. When a woman’s voice answers, he says, “Gloria, may I speak to my mother, please?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. LeBaron, but Mrs. LeBaron has left for the day. May I help you?”

“Then connect me with the house, please.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. LeBaron, but Mrs. LeBaron left instructions that she would be receiving no calls.”

“Thank you, Gloria.” He replaces the receiver in its cradle. Then he looks at his watch. What time will it be in New York? He mentally adds the three hours. Not quite four. He picks up the phone again and taps out a longer series of numbers. Very well, he thinks, I am now ready to play exactly the kind of game, Mother, that you will understand.

“Aunt Joanna?” he says when she answers. “I think I need to come to New York to see you.”

Assaria LeBaron has ordered her driver to take her directly from lunch with the Madison Avenue boys to Candlestick Park, where her ball club, the San Francisco Condors, is in spring training. There is a great deal of fuss and to-do and general consternation when her motorized chair materializes through the entrance of the temporary field house and makes its way across the linoleum of the foyer. Harry Olsen, the team’s manager, rushes up to her, and says, “Mrs. LeBaron, the boys have just come in from the field—they’re in the showers right now!”

“That’s all right, I just want to have a few words with them, Harry.”

“They’re looking just great, Mrs. LeBaron,” he says as he hurries behind her chair. “But we had no idea you were coming, Mrs. LeBaron, and right now, right at the moment, the boys would love to see you, I know—but right now—if you could give them a few minutes, Mrs. LeBaron, I’ll tell them you’re here—but right at the moment, the boys are in the showers, Mrs. LeBaron! Mrs. LeBaron!” Hurrying behind her, as she propels herself down the long corridor, around the corner, past the massage tables and the piles of exercise mats, past the weight machines and the row of urinals, where the air smells of a mixture of camphor and winter-green oil and rubbing alcohol, toward the locker room and the sound of showers running.

“Don’t worry, this won’t take a minute,” she says.

“Boys!” Harry Olsen shouts ahead into the sound of running water. “Mrs. LeBaron is here!”

Around one last corner, and into the big room full of steam.

There is a series of sudden yelps as the players recognize their visitor, and there is a collective grab for towels, and jockstraps that have been lowered to below the knees are hastily hoisted into position as the showers are, one by one, turned off.

“Boys, I know you’re busy,” Sari says cheerfully, “and I know you’ve got plenty to do this afternoon. But I wanted to drop by while I was in the neighborhood and have a few very brief words with you. There’s a little matter I’d like to clear up, and I thought you ought to get it from me, personally—straight from the horse’s mouth, as the fellow says. Now I know there’ve been published reports in the press—you’ve read them, I’ve read them—to the effect that I bought this club as a tax shelter. That, of course, is what reporters always do: speculate. Nobody knows what I do with my taxes besides myself, my accountant, and the IRS. So much for that. But that sort of speculation leaves the impression that I don’t give a tinker’s damn whether this team wins or loses. Boys, I’m here to tell you personally that that’s not the truth. Not only do I care, but I care deeply. I bought this club because I thought it was a club that had it in it to win ball games! That’s what I have faith you can do, and that’s what I want you to do, and that’s what I expect you to do. I want you all to give this club your best, and I want you to know that I’m behind you all the way. I want a team that will go into the World Series—if not this year, the next, and if not the next, then the year after that. Boys, I want a pennant, and I think you’ve got what it takes to give me that. You’ve got the right stuff, and that’s why I bought this club. I want you to know that while you’re out there, sweating and fighting and playing great ball on the field, I’ll be up there in the stands sweating and rooting and praying—yes, praying—for you. I want you to know that I’m not going to be some kind of absentee landlord. I’m going to do my best for you, and I know you’re going to do your damnedest for me, and someday we’re going to be going to the Series together—and when we get there, we’re going to win! Meanwhile, Harry here tells me you’re training great, and you’re looking great. Good! That’s what I want to hear. Keep it up! We’re in this together, all for one and one for all, and I’m behind you all the way and I know that you’re behind me. That’s all I wanted to say—good luck, good work, and God bless you all. You’ve got what it takes, and I love you for it. So now get out there—and play ball!”

Just as quickly as she arrived, she is gone.

In room 315 at the Marriott, the one out by the airport, the five members—four male, one female—of the group that calls itself The Dildos are snorting cocaine. At this very moment.

“So what the fuck are we going to do?” says Maurice Littlefield, who calls himself Luscious Lucius; who, without his makeup, is badly acne-scarred; and who, though he may be its lead singer, is not the group’s brainiest member.

“Zip-dee-doo-dah,” says one.

“Hey, man, listen to this,” says another. He strikes a chord on his guitar. “Man, is that fuckin’ cool?” He lies back on one of the two queen-size, unmade beds, his legs spread apart, his eyes staring at the ceiling, the guitar across his chest. He is the tallest of the group. Their respective names don’t matter here.

“But what the fuck are we going to do?” Littlefield says again.

“Fuckin’ board of directors won’t pay us for the gig,” says the tall one to the ceiling. “They’re saying we ‘presented material that was offensive to the public taste.’ They had that in the contract.”

“So what the fuck do we do? Fuckers owe us five thousand dollars.”

“What the fuck did you have to kill Sylvia for? That was what did it.”

“The fucker bit me!” Littlefield cries. “What the fuck do you think this is?” And he points to his bandaged upper arm.

“But did you have to do it right on the fuckin’ stage? That was what did it. Fuckin’ snake.”

“I told you we should’ve took our money up front,” says the female member. “Remember I said that?”

“Maybe we should hire a lawyer.”

“Yeah, and pay him with what? Lawyers cost fuckin’ money, man, and they want their money up front.”

“What I want to know is how do we pay for this fuckin’ motel room? How do we do that?”

“That’s easy. We wait for dark, load our shit into the RV, skip town, and try to line up another gig.”

“Yeah. Like we did in Topeka, and look where that fuckin’ got us. Now we can’t work anywhere in the whole state of Kansas.”

“Is that where Topeka is—Kansas?”

“Fuckin’ city.”

“What we need is a hit single. That’s what we really need. A hit single. A gold record.”

“Yeah, and meanwhile how do we eat? What do we do?”

“Like, maybe, rob a bank?”

“You mean it—rob a fuckin’ bank?”

“Only kidding, asshole.”

“So what do we do?”

Still gazing at the ceiling, the tall one says, “What about that broad? Someone told me she was loaded.”

“Loaded with what?”

“Money, asshole. Loaded with money. C-A-S-H—cash money.”

“Which broad?”

“The one that came to hear us in Modesto. Shit, man, she was the one who got us last night’s gig.”

“Where was Modesto?”

“Shit, man, Modesto, California. A few months ago, remember? Came to hear us, and came backstage after. She got us this gig. She lives here.”

“Oh, yeah. But wasn’t she kind of old, man?”

“What the hell? She said she liked our sound. She said could we do this gig, remember?”

“Lucius’d have to fuck her to get the money out of her.”

“I’m not fuckin’ some old broad!”

The tall one sits straight up on the bed. “What the fuck difference does it make, asshole, how old she is, if she’s got money? If she’s got money, she can roll us out of here, and keep us rolling for a few more weeks till we get another gig.”

“Yeah, Lucius should fuck her. Lucius got us into this fuck-up to begin with.”

“Right! You get to fuck her, Lucius!”

“Fuck her, Lucius!”

“Shit, man, I don’t even remember her name.”

A silence.

“She was real thin. Brownish-colored hair.”

“Oh, wow,” says the tall one. “That’s going to make her real easy to find. There can’t be more than one thin broad with brownish-colored hair in San Francisco. We’ll find her easy. You’re an asshole, Lucius.”

“She told me her name. McLaren?”

“No!” the tall one says.

“McCarran?”

“No, asshole! Her name is LeBaron—Melissa LeBaron. They make wine. You are a total asshole, Lucius.”

“I’ll fuck her! I’ll fuck her!” Lucius says.

It is night now, and the big White Wedding-Cake House at 2040 Washington Street is quiet, its curtains drawn and closed against the night. We are a contented house, the curtained windows seem to say from under their carved marble eyebrows, the windows that address the quiet street. We are the sleeping eyes of a house at peace. There are no bad dreams, no scandals, to disturb our sleep, no unquiet memories to jar us from our slumber. This, at least, is what the south facade seems to be saying, but the north facade, invisible from the street, tells a different story. Here the house is wide awake, the curtains on the big windows of the north-facing drawing room kept fully open at her behest, because Assaria LeBaron never tires of her view, and wants it spread out for her inspection instantly, at whatever moment she might choose to admire it. The fog has lifted now—almost lifted—and only the very tops of the twin towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are obscured in clouds, and the orange lights that adorn the bridge’s cables glitter like chains of stars. One can also see a few faint lights from Alcatraz, as well as from Tiburon and Belvedere, and the hills of Marin beyond.

From here, the waters of the Bay seem calm, but this is deceptive. The Bay is filled with tricky tides and dangerous crosscurrents, as prisoners who used to try to escape by swimming from Alcatraz soon discovered, and these tides and crosscurrents never sleep, and only drowned bodies ever made it to the shore.

The south facade of the house is dark, but from the north bright lights shine from all the windows, and at times like this the house seems all eyes and ears, and there are whispers that only Sari hears. Is love important? I mean, is it important to be in love?

In the drawing room, Thomas has filled the silver ice bucket and the Baccarat decanters, and everything is in readiness for Assaria LeBaron’s cocktail hour—the monogrammed linen napkins (ALLeB), the silver jigger, the silver martini pitcher, the long-handled silver spoon, the ice tongs. But Sari has not entered the drawing room yet, and there is no one there to admire the expanding view as the fog continues to lift, and she has not yet mixed her first cocktail. Instead, for some reason, she is still in the long central portrait gallery, where the old wine cask sits. She touches this.

At times, though not tonight, the wine cask is warm to the touch, indicating that some sort of chemical activity, some form of fermentation, is still going on inside. The wine has not turned to vinegar but is still living, growing, changing. Also, there are times, under certain atmospheric conditions, when the wine cask will weep. Tiny beads of moisture will gather along the tight seams of the staves—more proof that Grandpa LeBaron’s wine is still very much a living, breathing thing. Sari looks for these little beads—they sometimes appear on chilly nights like this one—but finds none.

There is another feature of the portrait gallery that some people never notice, but that others find peculiar. All the portraits on the walls, except for Grandpa’s, which is an exact duplicate of the one hanging in Sari’s office, are of children. This was Julius LeBaron’s whim. “It will make the house stay young,” he said. And so all the members of the family were painted at around age fourteen or fifteen, which Julius considered the perfect years between childhood and adulthood. It has become a family tradition, and it has been carried on. Though the clothes they wear vary according to the period, all the portraits contain certain details in common. All the boys are painted with hoops and dogs, the girls with birds and musical instruments.

There is Sari’s husband, Peter, dressed for his first year at Thacher. And there is Sari herself, painted as the artist imagined her at that age—for she did not meet Peter until she was some years older—seated at a piano. (Sari LeBaron cannot play a note.) And there, a certain distance away from these two, is the extraordinary Joanna, in her Miss Burke’s School uniform.

There is Melissa. “When did she get to be a beauty?” Peter once asked. She’s always been a beauty, you silly man. And there are the twins, Eric and Peeper, dressed by Robert Kirk, about to set off for Choate together. They were inseparable then, and even though Sari refused to dress them alike, they somehow always managed to do so. Athalie should be here too, but of course she isn’t. Where is Athalie?

“Forget Athalie, Sari. Forget she ever existed.”

But she did exist. She lived in my body for nine months. She had a name.

A girlish portrait of Alix, Eric’s wife, is not there, for she has no business being there. She is not family. But Eric and Alix’s twin daughters are there—Kim and Sloane—twins, but so unlike. One, Kimmie, is so pretty, while the other, Sloanie, is so … not unpretty, really, but plain. The phenomenon of twinning—no one really understands it fully. It is commoner in certain countries and cultures than in others, quite a rarity among black people. At the time her own twins were born, Sari was told that her age might have had something to do with it.

There is young Lance, Joanna’s son.

The voices crowd in now, filling the long gallery.

“Pick a card, any card.” This is Melissa.

Her mother picks a card. It is the jack of spades.

“Look at it, but don’t show it to me. Now slip it back into the deck. Now we shuffle them.” Melissa shuffles the cards, then fans them out, face up. “Your card,” she cries triumphantly, “was the three of hearts!”

“No, Melissa, it was the jack of spades.” Why hadn’t she lied and let the trick succeed? Why, in a game of checkers with Melissa, had she never let Melissa win? At best, the game would end up as a draw—a black king and a red king, endlessly pursuing each other across the board, the story of their lives.

And now, in front of Joanna’s portrait, Sari is listening to herself and Joanna, giggling, giggling and whispering together in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park as girls. “You’ve seen a man’s thing, haven’t you?” Joanna asks.

“Oh, of course,” Sari half-lies. “But how does it start?”

“It starts with”—more giggling, more whispering—“it starts with—tickling.”

“Tickling?”

And then she hears, imagines she hears, Joanna’s throaty-husky voice, slurry from champagne: “Oh, my sweet … oh, my sweet … tickle me there … and there … and there … oh, yes … oh, my sweet.… Oh, oh, oh.… Oh, yes …”

But this erotic fantasy is interrupted by a voice from a long-ago maid who says, “Mrs. LeBaron, it’s Mr. LeBaron senior on the telephone. He says it’s urgent.” And there is, in a secret compartment of a Regency games table in the drawing room, still a piece of green blotting paper on which, if held up to a mirror, can faintly be read the words, “I can no longer face this life …”

All these voices and messages inhabit the picture gallery tonight. Mama LeBaron, drunk in church, cursing the Host.

“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis …”

Mama, staggering toward the altar, pushing aside the hands that reach out to try to restrain her, screaming, “Where is the mercy for me?”

And then, an outside voice, from one of her many admirers: “Isn’t Sari remarkable? What she’s had to put up with from that family! Isn’t she simply wonderful? She can manage anything!”

Except human beings. Who said that? Where did that disloyal voice come from? How dare such a statement be made in this house tonight!

“Pick a card, any card.”

The trick fails again. “No, Melissa …”

They switch to a game of tic-tac-toe. No one wins it. The way Assaria LeBaron plays it, no one ever succeeds in drawing a straight line through their X’s or their O’s.

Would it have been different, Sari asks herself, if I had not made the decision that I did long ago and once upon a time? There is no point in asking. Sari makes her way out of the portrait gallery and into the lighted drawing room with its wide view of the lighted bridge, of Alcatraz and the other islands and, beyond these, the lights of Marin; away from the voices. In the drawing room are the makings of her customary martini. This is her evening ritual.

This house is my Alcatraz, she thinks, this house I never asked for, never said I wanted. I have been made a prisoner here, surrounded by objects I never chose. You will have eleven servants at your beck and call. But I’m not sure, Peter, how good I’ll be at becking and calling!

Sari moves toward the drinks cart and the martini preparations. But no, first there is a small matter of business to attend to. She goes to a small French writing table, finds a sheet of her crested stationery and a pen, and writes:

My dear Archie:

Thank you so much for the story in this morning’s paper.

And—ho-ho-ho!—weren’t we lucky that the snake “misbehaved”? We hadn’t expected that, but that made it “front-page stuff!” Anyway, I think this will help produce the precise results I’m after.

Call me when you receive this note. I have another small favor to ask of you.

Fondly, and, as always, in strictest confidence,

A.L.LeB.

She folds the letter, tucks it into an envelope, addresses it and seals it, then places it in a drawer for Thomas to hand-deliver in the morning.

Then she picks up the telephone and dials. “Melissa, dear,” she says when there is an answer. “I’m about to have a cocktail. Would you like to come upstairs to join me?”

Outside, on the dark street, the guards at the Russian Consulate are changing. Facing them, the curtained windows of the house across the street say: We are a contented house. There are no secrets here, no uneasy ghosts to rattle our sleep. We are at peace.