Eleven

“Here is the menu, Madam, that Cookie proposes for tonight’s little dinner,” Thomas says. “She suggests a cucumber velouté to start, followed by turbans of sole with crab stuffing. Then potted squabs, with peas, mushrooms, and onions, and wild rice. A salad of Bibb lettuce and mandarin oranges, and, for dessert, a dacquoise.” Sari’s current Cookie is somewhat fancier and Frenchier than others have been.

“Oh, good,” Sari says. “A dacquoise. What is that, anyway?”

“I believe it’s a light almond layer cake with buttercream filling.”

“Well, it sounds fine. In fact, it sounds quite elegant. It almost sounds like one of those grand dinners we used to have before Peter died. Now let’s work on the seating. Do you have the place-cards?”

“Right here, Madam.” He wheels her chair across the hall, and into the formal dining room, where Gloria Martino—who has a touch with such things—is already working on the flowers.

“Do you like these tulips?” Miss Martino says. “They’re the first I’ve seen in the markets this spring, and I thought they were awfully pretty. I thought I’d do everything in white, yellow, and green, and then we could use your white, green, and gold Spode.”

“Very nice, Gloria.”

“I’m wiring the tulips, so they won’t flip-flop.”

“Now, let’s see,” Sari says, studying the dining-room table. “I think I’ll put Joanna on my right, since she’s come from the farthest away. And I’ll put Eric at the other head of the table. That should please him, don’t you think?”

“Did Melissa tell you she’s bringing a friend?” Miss Martino asks.

“No! She most certainly did not. Who is this friend?”

“It’s a Mr. Littlefield.”

“Littlefield—the name rings a vague bell. But she wasn’t supposed to do that. Tonight’s dinner was supposed to be just family.”

“It does help balance the sexes a little better, Mrs. LeBaron,” Miss Martino says. “Otherwise, it would have been five women and only three men.”

“But nine is an awkward number. Well, I suppose we just have to chalk it up to Melissa’s perverseness. Besides, we’re trying to be nice to Melissa these days, aren’t we?”

“That thought also crossed my mind,” Miss Martino says.

“Well, then, let’s do it this way,” Sari says. “We’ll put Alix on Joanna’s right, then Peeper, then Melissa, who will be on Eric’s left. That way, we use Melissa as a kind of buffer zone between Eric and Peeper. Then”—pointing to the other side of the table—“let’s put Mildred Tillinghast on Eric’s right, then Mr. Littlefield, and then Harry Tillinghast, who will be on my left.” Though they are certainly old enough to conduct themselves properly at a dinner party, Sari has decided against inviting her twin granddaughters. She wants this to be an adult dinner party, and, besides, she does not want the gentlemen at the party to feel overwhelmed by members of the opposite sex.

“Do you think white candles or ivory, Mrs. LeBaron?”

“Ivory, I think, Gloria. The smart decorators all over town are making their clients use black candles. But I’m old-fashioned. Is Joanna up yet, Thomas?”

“Oh, yes, Madam. Up and gone. She’s having breakfast downtown with Mr. Eric.”

“Hm. Well, I guess we’ve got to allow members of the opposite team to go into their little huddles.”

“Do you think the lime green damask—?”

“No, I think the white with the gold monograms—”

And so it has gone, throughout the day, as the White Wedding-Cake House at 2040 Washington Street prepares itself for an evening’s entertainment and festivity such as it has not seen for some time. Out of the vault in the cellar comes the best and the heaviest silver, the pistol-handled knives and the three-pronged dinner forks, the matched silver epergnes that will be filled with flowers, the heirloom silver candelabra with their candles fitted into flared crystal bobeches, the Baccarat wineglasses, the enameled place-cards and their silver holders, the white damask napkins with the fan-shaped gold monograms, “ALLeB,” the looping serifs of the letters artfully intertwined, the silver service plates, followed by the Spode. It is decided that Thomas will wear his dinner jacket tonight, instead of his customary white coat, and will announce the courses. This, naturally, is all to impress the Tillinghasts. Sari selects a dress of green watered silk.

And now they are all here, all of them, all gathered in the drawing room before dinner, for cocktails, with all the lamps lighted, with the candles in the sconces lit, with bowls of fresh flowers everywhere, and a cheerful blaze in the fireplace with its high marble mantel.

From her command post at the center of the room, Sari surveys her dinner guests. Mildred Tillinghast, as usual, is wearing too much jewelry—a diamond dog collar, diamond chandelier earrings, a diamond bracelet, and her famous emerald-cut diamond solitaire, which is so heavy that it inevitably slips downward into the palm of her hand, and has to be twisted back into a position where it can be displayed. It is Harry, Sari thinks, who likes to see his wife go out in the evening decorated like a Christmas tree; as a self-made man, he believes in showing off what he has made. “You look very pretty tonight, Mildred,” Sari says. “I like your dress.” Lifting one fold of her skirt slightly, Mildred says, “Jimmy Galanos. Your house looks beautiful, as always, Sari. You have such good taste. I’ve always said that about you—Sari has such innate good taste.” Was there something a little condescending in that word, innate? Never mind.

Melissa is wearing a very simple, long black belted sheath, which flatters her, and has also kept her jewelry simple—two jet clips at her ears, nothing more. Melissa does have innate good taste. But Sari does not know what to make of her young man, Mr. Littlefield. He seems very young indeed. He seems not even to have begun to sprout a beard, and is a rather underfed-looking creature with frightened-looking eyes, wispy hair neither long nor short, and a manner of not seeming to want to talk at all. He is not the least bit attractive, not the least bit sexy, though Sari has learned from Thomas this afternoon that Mr. Littlefield appears, at least temporarily, to have moved into Melissa’s apartment downstairs. What Melissa sees in him Sari cannot imagine, and all Melissa has said about him is that he has “tremendous talent.” Talent at what? Not talent at dressing, surely, for though he is wearing a dark blue suit that looks brand-new, it looks as though it had been tailored for a somewhat larger person, and his black wing-tip shoes are of a style Sari has not seen men wear for years. The shoes look somehow familiar and so, all at once, does the suit. Melissa has outfitted this young man in Peter LeBaron’s old clothes! Clothes that have been packed away since 1955 in the basement storage caves! Though he is standing a little distance away from her, Sari can suddenly smell the distinctive scent of mothballs. Melissa, Melissa, what are you up to now?

“Hey, man,” she hears the young man say to Peeper, “you look just like that other guy over there.”

“Eric’s my twin brother,” Peeper replies with a smile.

The twins, handsome as always, have not yet to Sari’s knowledge greeted each other. In fact, they are standing at opposite sides of the room, Peeper chatting with Littlefield and Melissa, and Eric in conversation with Joanna. And yet, looking at both boys, Sari is struck by an oddity that she has been aware of all their lives. Even though they had never been dressed alike as children, somehow they always turned up looking as though they had—almost as though an extrasensory sartorial message passed between them. If Eric came down for breakfast wearing a brown tweed jacket, Peeper would appear a few minutes later from his own room, in brown tweed. Tonight, though the two had dressed for dinner miles apart—Eric in Burlingame and Peter on Russian Hill—it is their neckties that are not quite, but almost, identical: dark red, with small, darker, figured patterns. It was a riddle Sari would never solve. Now she watches as—ah, good for him!—Peeper takes the initiative, and crosses the room toward his brother. “Hey, Facsi,” she hears Peeper say, “remember me, your old facsimile? I haven’t heard from you in days. You’re not sore at me for something, are you?” Good old Peeper.

But with dismay she watches as Eric spurns Peeper’s outstretched hand, and sees Peeper’s open, handsome face fill with an expression of deep hurt. “So you are sore at me,” he says.

“Not sore at you, you ass. Just amazed at your goddamned insensitivity.”

“Why? What’ve I done, Facsi?”

“You seemed to expect me to do handstands over your being made co-marketing director. Did it occur to you that it meant taking half my job responsibilities away from me?”

“But Mother said—”

“Mother said. That’s our little mama’s boy. And I suppose you’re going to take her side in Harry’s bid for the company?”

“I wouldn’t go for anything she didn’t want.”

“Well, I’m sick and tired of working for my mother. And so would you be, if you were half a man.”

“I’m half of you, Facsi,” she hears Peeper say quietly. “We were a split cell.”

“Oh, cut the crap,” Eric says. “If you ask me, you got half a brain.”

Now Peeper’s face is red. “Well, bugger off, Eric!” he says sharply.

“Boys! Boys!” Sari cries. “We’re not going to have that sort of talk in my house tonight. This is to be a pleasant little family dinner.” She thinks that the evening is getting off to a somewhat rocky start, and she signals to Thomas. “More drinks! More drinks for everybody.”

“Of course, we’re all dying to know what you think of Harry’s offer,” Mildred Tillinghast says. “That’s the burning question on everyone’s lips.”

Overhearing this, Harry says, “And maybe you’ve heard I’m prepared to sweeten it a bit, Sari.”

“No business talk tonight,” Sari says firmly. “Tonight is for fun. Tonight is just party.”

“Of course, you have wonderful business sense, Sari,” Mildred says. “I’ve always said you have an innate business sense.”

Raising her glass, Sari says, “I’d like to propose a toast—to Joanna, who’s come all the way from New York to be at our little family gathering tonight. Welcome home, Jo.”

“Hear, hear … welcome home, Aunt Jo.”

Alix LeBaron, languishing on one of the long sofas in front of the fire, wearing a white knit caftan of nubbly wool and many gold chains and bracelets, looks as though she is waiting to be photographed by Town & Country. She is also clearly trying to catch Peeper’s eye. When he finally turns to her, she says, “Well, Peeper, it’s about time you said hello to me.”

“Oh, hi, Al,” he says easily, and she rewards him with a sulky smile.

It is clear to Sari that Alix is trying to make some sort of play for Peeper. “Alix,” she says, “how is Sloanie coming along with the orthodontist?”

“Oh, it’s endless, Belle-mère,” Alix says.

“Mother,” Peeper says, “didn’t there used to be a beautiful Baccarat millefiori paperweight on this table?”

“It had an accident,” Sari explains, careful not to look in Melissa’s direction.

“Ah, that’s a shame,” he says. “I loved that little piece.”

“Maids,” Alix agrees. “They break everything.”

Of all the expensively dressed and coiffed and groomed people in this room, Sari thinks—with Mr. Littlefield something of an exception—it is Joanna who is the wonder of the world. Though her blonde hair is now silver, the famous dark blue eyes still flash, and the dark double eyelashes, aided now no doubt by mascara, still create an extraordinary effect. The skin, for a woman of Joanna’s age, is still remarkably smooth and clear, and the voice is even deeper and richer. A truly beautiful woman, Sari sometimes thinks, never really ages to the point of losing her beauty. It has something to do with the facial bones, the cheekbones in particular, and of course the eyes. It doesn’t matter what Joanna wears—one hardly notices clothes on her—because one so quickly becomes caught up in Joanna’s face, and the way her hands move. She is a toucher—always reaching out to touch, with just a dab of a gesture, the person she is talking to. She even sits youthfully, legs crossed at the knees, leaning forward, her chin in her hand, listening to what the person she is talking to has to say. She is, Sari is forced to admit, nothing short of miraculous, and she is weaving her spell now as she always did, holding the room with her famous charm. “Wheel me a little closer to Joanna,” Sari whispers to Peeper, who is standing closest.

“Now, I want to propose a toast,” Joanna says. “To Sari, my oldest and dearest friend. Sari, I just want to say that whatever the outcome of all this is, you’ll always be that to me.”

“Hear, hear … to Mother … to Sari … to Belle-mère …”

“The old wine barrel in the portrait gallery,” Joanna says. “That was what touched me most, when I came into this house again and saw that there. Grandpa had it in his house in Sonoma, and Daddy kept it on California Street, and then Peter brought it here. It’s a symbol of continuity, isn’t it, but not a monument. It’s still simple, still a simple, classic example of the cooper’s art. When I walked into this house yesterday—your beautiful house, Sari—and saw the old wine cask, I thought for a minute I might burst into tears. And everything else—the portraits of the children, all of us, in the long gallery. It would keep the house young, Daddy used to say. And it has, Sari, it has, and of course Peter carried on that tradition, too. This house is so full of so many memories for me—my brother’s pipe collection, the Roman bronzes in the front hall, the elephant’s foot with all his walking sticks, all the things he loved—I finally felt home again. I finally felt that some things don’t need to change. That’s what you’ve maintained here, Sari—an island of continuity, of permanence and tranquillity in a sea of change. But the old wine barrel said it to me most.”

There is a silence, and then Eric says, “Lovely. I’d like a copy of that little speech, Aunt Jo.”

“But it’s not a speech,” she insists. “It’s what I feel, and what I mean. You know what I mean, don’t you, Sari?” She laughs. “Or is the old advertising copywriter coming out in me? I always wanted to find some way to use that barrel in Baronet’s advertising, but was never clever enough to figure out how. Of course, we don’t handle the Baronet account anymore.”

“It was you who resigned it, don’t forget,” Sari says. “That wasn’t my idea.”

“But we’re not to talk about business.”

You see? That is Joanna’s cleverness. She knows that they are not to talk about business, and yet she steers the talk around to business anyway.

“I’m still getting calls from agencies who want to pitch for the account,” Eric says. “But of course, since I’m no longer with the company, I refer all those calls to Peeper.”

“Hey, I was wondering how those guys got my private number,” Peeper says.

“No business talk, remember?”

“But, Sari,” Mildred Tillinghast says, “what do you think of Harry’s offer? Don’t you think it’s exciting?”

“No business …”

“Just give us a tiny little hint of what you think of it!”

“The old wine barrel. People who come to the house for the first time think it’s a very peculiar thing for me to keep—and an even more peculiar place to put it!”

“The portrait gallery …”

“Sometimes it weeps. In certain kinds of weather.”

“And when I was a little girl, Sari, on California Street, I used to put my ear up to it, like listening to a seashell, and sometimes there would be little gurgling sounds. Grandpa’s wine was trying to talk to me.”

“Wine keeps changing. It never dies.”

“Sometimes the barrel feels warm to the touch.”

“Just think. Over a hundred years old.”

“Nearly a hundred and thirty …”

“What would we find, I wonder, if we were to open it?”

“At every party, there would be someone who’d want to open that barrel!”

“The bung’s so calcified into the bunghole now, it would take a sledgehammer to open it …”

Thomas is moving about the room again, taking more drink orders, and a housemaid is passing hors d’oeuvres, mushroom caps filled with sour cream and caviar. “What’s this stuff?” Sari hears Mr. Littlefield ask Melissa.

“That’s caviar, dear. Sturgeon roe—salmon eggs.”

“Fish eggs?”

“Don’t eat it if you don’t want to, dear.”

“The portraits,” Joanna says. “How was yours done, Sari? I forget.”

“Your father had it painted from a photograph of me that was taken when I did that play.”

“Oh, that play! That’s how we met, of course, when you brought your play to Burke’s. How I loved that play!”

“Oh, it was an awful piece of claptrap.”

“But you were what made it wonderful! If you hadn’t married Peter, you could easily have gone on to Hollywood and become a great film star. That’s what I always thought.”

“Where’s the john?” she hears Mr. Littlefield ask Melissa.

“Out the door there, down the hall, and to your right.”

“Just think—everyone in this room is hanging out there in that gallery,” Joanna says, and Sari thinks: You have to hand it to her. She tries to keep the conversation bubbling on, even through the rocky patches.

“Well, I’m not there,” Alix says. “My children are there, but I’m not, and neither are Mummy and Daddy. Because we’re not considered family.”

“Well, we’ll have to rectify that, won’t we, Sari?”

And Athalie isn’t there, either. Where is Athalie? Forget Athalie, forget she ever existed. But she did exist. She did.

Mr. Littlefield has returned from using the facilities, and Sari cannot help but notice a change that seems to have come over him. His face is flushed now, and his hands are twitching, his head bobbing up and down in strange little jerking motions. He is trying to light a cigarette, with a match, and it takes him four matches before he can get the flame and the tip of the cigarette to come together. He looks all at once quite unwell, and Assaria LeBaron propels her chair toward him, determined to discover what this allegedly tremendously talented young man does for a living, and what his relationship might be with Melissa. “I hope all this family talk doesn’t bore you, Mr. Littlejohn,” she says.

“Littlefield,” and with more little jerks of his head, he says, “Nice place you got here. Like, man, this is a real mansion.”

“Well, yes, I suppose—”

“I mean, like, thanks for asking Melissa and I up,” he says. And then, “I gotta go to the john again,” and he steps out into the hall once more, the cigarette clenched between his teeth, and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his borrowed suit jacket. Sari thinks that surely he is ill, and that perhaps among his problems is one to do with his bladder.

“Did you know my brother, Harry?” Joanna is saying.

“Only slightly. But of course, everyone knew him by reputation.”

“A good reputation, I hope.”

“Oh, the very finest.”

“Together, he and Sari made an unbeatable team.” Then, in a quieter voice, she says, “Tomorrow, I’d like to go out to the Sonoma vineyard and see Mother and Daddy’s graves, see the trees. Peter always thought it was barbaric, the way they wanted to be buried, but I always thought it rather—poetic. Would anyone like to go with me? Sari? Melissa?”

And now Mr. Littlefield has returned from the bathroom again, and this time his appearance is almost alarming. His face is now very flushed, and his eyes are quite large, and the twitching of his hands and the jerking of his neck muscles are more pronounced. Surely this young man is very ill, Sari thinks. Melissa has noticed something, too, for she sees Melissa whisper something to him, an anxious expression on her face. Then Sari notices another extraordinary thing. Mr. Littlefield has an erection! Its unmistakable size and contours are quite obvious against the trouser leg of Peter LeBaron’s old blue suit. She wonders if others in the room will notice it, or whether, since now the others are all standing, while she, of necessity, is seated and therefore at eye level with his condition, it will escape their observation. To Thomas, who has just handed her a fresh drink, she whispers, “Is dinner nearly ready? You know I dislike a long cocktail hour.”

“I’ll speak to Cookie, Madam.”

“After Mother and Daddy died, Peter and Sari and I went out into the fields,” Joanna is saying to Harry Tillinghast, “and we got down on our hands and knees with the field hands, and started planting vines …”

“Remarkable.”

This, of course, is one of the annoying things about Joanna. She tends to take over and start controlling the conversation, which Sari herself should be doing. If Sari is not careful, she will have surrendered the hostesship of her dinner party to the tyranny of wit and beauty, but she is so busy trying to keep her eyes from traveling back to Mr. Littlefield’s aroused state that she can think of nothing to say. Interrupting Joanna, she makes a statement that even embarrasses her with its banality. “Well, I hope everybody has a good appetite because we have quite a nice dinner planned,” she says. “Cookie has worked very long and hard …” And she finds herself blushing, thinking: Very long and hard.

There is a little laugh from Joanna, and Sari knows that Joanna has noticed the Littlefield situation, too—Joanna, who notices everything. Joanna winks at her, and then turning to the young man, says, “Are you from San Francisco, Mr. Littlefield?”

He stares at her dumbly, as though he has not understood the question. Then he repeats, “San Francisco?”

Melissa says, “Maurice, I think—”

Joanna laughs brightly again. “Melissa, dear,” she says without a trace of sarcasm, “where do you find such interesting young men?”

“Maurice is—” Melissa begins, but she is interrupted by Thomas, who has stepped into the room to say, “Dinner is served, Madam.”

Thank goodness, Sari thinks, as the group makes its way through the portrait gallery toward the dining room, with Thomas propelling her chair. At least Mr. Littlefield’s peculiar problem will soon be concealed under the folds of the table linen.

The dinner begins smoothly enough. Sari has memorized her seating chart, and directs each guest to his place, and Thomas has stationed himself just slightly behind the hostess’s chair, where, in his role as her majordomo, he will supervise the service. Mr. Little-field has picked up one of the white napkins and is scrutinizing, farsightedly, the heavy gold embroidery. “What’s this?” he says.

“It’s your napkin, Maurice,” Melissa says a little sharply.

“No, I mean what’s this? It says Alleb on it. What’s that mean, Alleb?”

“That’s my monogram,” Sari says. “A-L-Le-B.”

“A cucumber velouté,” Thomas says, as the soup course arrives.

While the soup is being served, Sari notices that Mr. Littlefield has managed, with difficulty, to light another cigarette, and she also sees that he has lighted the end with the filter tip. She whispers to Thomas, “An ashtray for Mr. Littlefield, please.”

Beside her, on her left, Harry Tillinghast is saying in a low voice so that the others cannot hear, “You made a very serious mistake, Sari, when you fired Eric the way you did. I’ve always admired you as a businesswoman, but that was a mistake.”

“Well, what would you have done, Harry, if your marketing director had decided to organize a palace revolution against you? Pin a medal on him?”

“In my opinion, that was a mistake in judgment, Sari, and counterproductive.”

“Well, it was my decision to make. Besides, we’re not going to talk about—”

“Did you drop your napkin or something, Allie?” she hears Peeper say to Alix, who is seated on his left, and she looks down the table in time to see Alix’s hand quickly withdraw from where it must have been touching Peeper’s knee. Oh, dear, she thinks, what can be done to divert this evening from what suddenly threatens to become a disaster? She takes her first spoonful of soup, and the others follow her lead, except for Mr. Littlefield, who is still smoking his cigarette with the wrong end lighted. This creates an acrid smell, like burning rubber, that mingles unhappily with the gardenia perfume from the scented candles. “A toast,” she says, a little desperately. “To all of us! To long life, peace, and happiness!” And lifts her glass.

“Is this Baronet wine?” Mr. Littlefield asks, and the room falls silent. It is a question that, somehow, has never been asked at Assaria LeBaron’s table. “Well, is it?” he asks again.

“No, actually it is a Monbousquet, nineteen seventy-nine,” Sari says at last. “French. Our wines are inexpensive jug wines. Vins ordinaires.”

“But of course they wouldn’t always have to be,” Harry says. “Baronet possesses the vines, and the capacity, to produce truly noble wines. Under a different label, of course. Have you ever thought of that, Sari?”

“Yes, thought of it and immediately dismissed it. I know my market, Harry.”

“But there’s a whole new upscale market that could be tapped. Young urban professionals—”

“I know all about yuppies,” she says. “But I also know my market. What do you know about wines, Harry?”

“Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. I’ve had my office do a study on it. Demographic profiles—”

“Yes. Studies. Demographic profiles. But I’ve learned this business from the ground up, as Joanna says. I’ve fought off the larks—”

“Larks haven’t been a problem for years, Sari. Pesticides took care of them.”

“Yes, and do you know I miss them? They were beautiful birds with a beautiful song. Beautiful, voracious birds.”

Turning to Mr. Littlefield, on her right, Mildred Tillinghast says, “I hope you’ll forgive all this talk about the family business, Mr. Littlefield.”

Sari cannot let this comment pass. “It’s not your family business, Mildred,” she says sharply. “At least not yet!”

“But, Sari, Harry and I own stock!”

Down, down, she can feel her evening descending, ineluctably, into the widening whirlpool of discord she had so hoped to avoid, and the downward descent seems to be gathering a momentum that she can no longer control.

Turning back to Mr. Littlefield, Mildred says, “What business are you in, Mr. Littlefield?”

“Business?”

“Yes. What do you do?”

“I’m a rock star.”

“A rock star. How very—”

“Oh, my God!” Sari cries, because she has just realized who Mr. Maurice Littlefield is. “You’re the one who killed the snake!”

“Bugger bit me!”

Once more, the table falls silent.

“Tell me,” Sari says, trying, if it is still humanly possible, to rescue the evening, “how did you and Melissa meet?”

“We didn’t meet, exactly,” he says. And then, his face still hotly flushed and his eyes wide, still not having picked up his soup spoon, he begins, “Listen, let me tell you a story, lady, a story about that snake that will knock you off your feet!” The silence at the table becomes one of shock at the enormity of this gaffe. But, unaware that he has committed one, he repeats it, and in a much louder voice. “I mean, this will really knock you off your feet!”

“Maurice,” Melissa says in a low, warning voice from across the table.

“Wait! Let me tell it. The snake’s name was Sylvia. I mean that was its name, Sylvia, and there was this girl in the group named Marty, in I think Omaha, and this Marty she really loved that snake. She used to tie it around her, she used to wrap it around her, you know, her neck, and she used to even stick it down under her dress to make it look like, you know, she had these big tits, and she’d play with that snake—crazy, man!—like she really loved it, and it was like that Sylvia really loved this Marty, and she’d wrap herself around this Marty like she really loved this Marty, and Sylvia never done nothing to hurt this Marty, see? So in I think Omaha we had this gig, and this Marty was out on the stage with Sylvia and I—Sylvia, who was this snake—and Marty was wrappin’ the snake around her, stuffin’ it inside her dress to make it look like these big tits, you know? You know? You know? And—whee!” He is shouting now, and he flings his head back, and the cords of his thin neck stand out. “Whee! There goes my head! Hold me down, Major! Hold me down, Captain Marvel, ’cause I’m up on the ceiling, I’m up in the stars, I’m out in space, man! Whee! I’m climbin’, man, climbin’ to the fuckin’ stars, man! Ace me out! Ace me out of a fuckin’ sp-i-i-i-n! Sing to me, sugar! Sing to me, Lucius! Dance on the head of my dick, Lucius! W-o-o-o-o-o-o! This is Star Wars, baby, and here comes Darth—”

“Maurice!”

“W-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo! I’m trippin’, man!” And all at once his head topples forward, his whole body sags, and his head falls into his soup bowl, sideways, with a soft splash.

“My dress!” Mildred Tillinghast cries, half rising and gathering the folds of her Galanos skirt about her knees.

“My Spode!” says Sari. And yet, miraculously, the soup bowl from her treasured set of porcelain, so thin that through it you could see the outline of a bird’s foot, remains unbroken from the apparently inconsequential weight of Maurice Littlefield’s head. Meanwhile, all the men at the table are on their feet to assist the young man out of his velouté.

Melissa has also risen. “I’ll handle this,” she says in a taut voice. “Stand up, Maurice!” she commands. “Stand up! I’m taking you downstairs.” She pulls him slowly to his feet, and soup dribbles from his face down across his shirt and jacket and necktie while Sari and Thomas exchange looks of mutual consternation.

“I’ll be right back,” Melissa says, and there is silence from the rest of the table as, with one hand firmly grasping the young man’s elbow, she steers him on an unsteady course out of the dining room.

“Well!” Sari says at last. And then, determined not to lose control of the gathering, she says to Thomas, “Just remove his place setting, Thomas. Mildred, you and Harry can move a little closer together. I know it means husband next to wife, but the circumstances are a bit—unusual, I guess you’d all agree. Mildred, is your dress all right?”

“Yes—I think so. Was it something I said, Sari, that made him do that?”

“I doubt it,” Sari says. And then, “Tell me—I want to know what each of you thinks—is Claus von Bulow guilty? I think he’s innocent—either innocent or stupid to have kept the hypodermic needle. Peeper, what do you think?”

“I think …” And for the next few moments, everything is a forced babble of chatter, as everyone tries to put behind him or her the Littlefield episode.

“I’m prepared to sweeten my offer, Sari,” she hears Harry Tillinghast, on her left, say to her. “Thirteen point two five shares per.”

“I thought it was thirteen a little while ago.”

“I’m sweetening the sweetener, Sari.”

“It’s still chickenfeed. My company’s shares are worth a damn sight more than thirteen point two five of yours.”

“Your company, Mother?” Eric says.

“We’re not here to talk business! This is not a business dinner. How often must I remind you?”

Now Melissa has returned to the dining room, and takes her seat at the table again. “I’m terribly sorry,” she says. “It’s entirely my fault. I was trying something, an experiment, and it didn’t work. It’s really a tragic story. It has all the classic ingredients. Born and raised in some dreadful little East Texas town—an alcoholic mother, and a father who was a wife beater and a child abuser. Ran away from home when he was ten. Got into drugs. But underneath all the sordidness, there is this really remarkable natural musical talent. That’s what I hope to rescue somehow. But the problem is shyness—a terrible shyness. It affects him in front of audiences. So he’ll take an upper to feel better, and then a downer to bring him down from the high, and then he’ll snort a line of cocaine to bring him up again, or sniff some amyl nitrate. I’m trying to rehabilitate him, that’s all, because of the very real talent that’s there—trying to let that talent come out. I thought, perhaps, if he could join a normal family for a nice, normal little dinner party—”

A normal family, Sari thinks.

As though reading her thoughts, Melissa adds, “A supposedly normal family, anyway. But obviously he wasn’t ready for it. I even dug out an old suit of Daddy’s for him to wear, so he’d look at least halfway decent. But he wasn’t ready. He just wasn’t up to it. Anyway,” she says, looking around the table for reassurance, “he’s my little project right now—to try to rehabilitate him, to try to get him to stay off the drugs. And it’s only because of the—I assure you—really extraordinary natural musical talent that he has, talent that it would be such a shame to see wasted. I’m going to keep trying. I’m not going to give up yet. But tonight was a mistake, and I apologize.”

From the others at the table, she sees only looks that express varying degrees of skepticism.

“The child has been hurt, damaged, all his life,” she says. “I can’t help it, but my heart always goes out to the damaged children of this world!” There is silence as each person at the table thinks, in his or her own way, of Melissa’s troubled childhood. “They need so much, and receive so little,” she says. “All they ask for is a little love, and faith, and kindness, and reassurance and understanding. Anyway, that’s all I’m trying to provide for this poor, lost little boy.” Then, almost defiantly, she adds, “And I don’t care what any of you think!”

Finally, Joanna says, “Melissa and her little projects. You’ve always had them, haven’t you, dear? Well, I for one think it’s very Christian of you. I say bravo, Melissa.”

“Anyway,” Sari says with unnecessary enthusiasm to fill the silence that follows, “let’s not let any of this spoil our dinner.”

“Turbans of sole, with a crab stuffing,” says Thomas quietly, announcing the next course.

By the time the dacquoise has been served, it is almost possible for Sari to believe that the peaceful, pleasant gathering she had imagined is actually occurring. But then it is Harry Tillinghast—Harry, who will not let go of a subject until he has wrestled it to the floor—who feels he must go back to his favorite topic. Remarking on the sweetness of the buttercream filling in the dessert, he finds an occasion to make a bad pun about the sweetness of his stock offer. “We all know how Sari feels about it,” he says, “but what about the rest of you?”

“Personally, I find it quite generous,” Joanna says.

“Dammit,” Sari says sharply, “my company is not for sale!”

“Your company, Mother?” Eric says again.

Sitting forward in her chair, Joanna says, “Sari dear, just tell me one thing, and then I promise we’ll get off the subject. Just tell me why you care so much about all this. I think that’s the thing that none of us quite understands.”

“Care?” Sari says. “Why do I care? You’re a fine one to ask me that! How would you feel if someone were trying to take your ad agency away from you?”

“Actually,” Joanna says, “I plan on retiring in another couple of years. I’m really rather looking forward to it, and I’ve got my successor all picked out.”

“You, “Sari says. “You, of course—but you were different. You were born with a golden spoon in your mouth, but I wasn’t. I used to run twelve blocks to school to save the nickel streetcar fare! I care because this company is the only thing I’ve ever owned.”

“But don’t you think you’re being a bit melodramatic, Sari? I mean, after all, you do own other things. You have children, grandchildren, all the money in the world, a beautiful house—”

“Children are a duty and a responsibility. So is money, and so is a house. All those things need to be nourished and cared for. But work—work is where the nourishment comes from. It’s what keeps you alive while you take care of the other things. You—you all had your Catholic faith, which I never really understood, but which I know helped you through the bad times. This company has been like a faith to me—a spiritual support—a comfort through all the disappointments and disasters—the larks—” And now tears—real or feigned, who can tell with Sari?—have welled in her eyes, and she dabs at them with a corner of her monogrammed napkin. “I named it, you know. I named it Baronet. When the larks destroyed our first harvest in nineteen thirty-three, Peter said to me, ‘We’ve lost it. It’s gone. We’re finished.’ And I said to him, ‘We’re not finished! The grapes are gone, but not the vines! We’ll try again, we’ll take the gamble. All farming is a gamble—the rain, the sun, the elements, the birds. It’s all a gamble, but if you’re going to be a gambler you have to stay in the game to win. We’ll win,’ I said. ‘Wait and see. Let’s give ourselves a new name. Let’s call ourselves—Baronet Vineyards! Baronet! It has a lucky sound. With a new name, maybe we’ll have new luck,’ I said to him. And we did. We won. They’ve called me a tough old broad—I’ve heard them—but it’s only a life of work that’s made me tough. How can you ask me why I care? How can you ask me to give it all up without a struggle?”

Sari LeBaron lowers her face into her cupped hands. “You see,” she says, “all I am asking is to be allowed to die with my boots on.”

While she has been speaking, Peeper has risen from his place at the table and moved to stand behind his mother’s chair. He places his hands on Sari’s shoulders, and squeezes them tightly.

She covers his left hand with her right one, and whispers, “Thank you, Peeper.”

Only what you can accomplish with your personal powers of persuasion, her lawyers, Baines and Rosenthal, had said to her.

Eric is the first to speak. He clears his throat, and then says, “Harry, I think we should call this whole thing off. It’s just not worth it, Harry. It’s not worth what it would do to our mother. Let’s call if off.”

There is a brief silence, and then Alix LeBaron shrieks, “Call it off? You mean you’re changing your mind? You mean you’re backing out? You do that, you son of a bitch, and I’ll slap a separate maintenance suit on you so fast you won’t know what hit you!”

“Now, Buttercup—” Harry Tillinghast begins.

“I mean it! I’ll slap a separate maintenance suit on him so fast he won’t know what hit him! Because I know what he’s been up to! He’s been getting it on with that little bitch Jap secretary of his!”

“That’s a goddamned lie, Alix!”

“It’s not! I’ve got the proof! A canceled check for ten thousand bucks!”

“That was for—”

“Aunt Grace in the nursing home? I know all about that one, too—the old nursing-home line!”

“Alix, you’re ruining my party,” Sari says.

“You stay out of this, Belle-mère! This is between Eric and me.”

“And stop calling me Belle-mère while you’re making nasty accusations to my son! I see now that it’s not your father who’s behind this whole takeover scheme—it’s you!”

“None of this is true, Alix,” Eric says. But Sari can see that the small forceps scar on his left temple has begun to redden, which only happens when he is angry or upset. Or frightened.

“It is true! She admitted it to me! I confronted the Jap bitch with what I knew, and she admitted it!”

“I don’t believe you,” Eric says, but the forceps scar is now quite red, and his eyelids are twitching.

“Tell it to the judge!” Alix screams.

“Alix, I’m taking you home,” Eric says.

“No!” She is sobbing now. “I don’t want to go home with you! I want to go home with Mummy and Daddy! Mummy … Daddy … please … take me home!”

“Now, now, Buttercup …” Harry Tillinghast says, as between them he and Mildred Tillinghast support their loudly weeping daughter, and escort her to the door.

When they have gone, Peeper turns to Sari and says, “I wouldn’t worry too much about what she says, Mother. These adultery things are damned hard to prove. I mean, unless she’s got photographs or something. She doesn’t have photographs or something, does she?”

“Goddamn it,” Eric says, flinging his napkin on the table. “So you believe her too!” He pushes his chair back hard and jumps to his feet. “I’m getting out of this goddamned fucking rats’ nest!” And he, too, is gone.

Now the number at the dinner table is reduced to four—Sari and Joanna at one end, and Peeper and Melissa at another, with empty chairs separating the participants. Their dacquoise has been barely touched, nor will it be, and Sari’s Cookie will forever wonder what was wrong with it, nor will she ever prepare it in her life again for anyone.

Thomas, who has been waiting in the vestibule just behind the kitchen door—waiting for a moment of peace to descend upon the hostess’s table—appears now to say, “Coffee is served in the drawing room, Madam.”

“Thank you, Thomas.” And, when he has gone, she says to no one in particular, “Well, a new little wrinkle has been added to our problem.”

Peeper looks at his uneaten dessert for a moment or two, and then mumbles, “Better be on my way, too. Early golf date in the morning.”

“Of course,” Sari says. “Good night, Peeper. Give me a kiss.”

And now, as the three women move toward the drawing room, and the promise of coffee and a nightcap—which Sari suddenly very much needs—Joanna, still trying to rescue something from the ruins of the evening, says, “Oh, good. A hen party! Now we can really gossip.” But her heart is clearly not in this suggestion, for she adds, “I keep wondering, if Peter were alive, would he have been able to prevent all that? He was always such a wonderful … peacemaker. I’ll never understand why Peter did what he did.”

In the room they are now entering, right there in front of the marble fireplace, stands the little Regency games table, with a top that flips about on a swivel to reveal all sorts of little secret compartments where one could hide one’s chips, like cards up a sleeve, an early nineteenth-century device for cheaters and charlatans and crooks. And Sari could swing the tabletop open to reveal the place where a square of green blotting paper lies … And there, too, suddenly—there is no correlation—is the vision of Peter eating his breakfast roll above the tennis courts at Saint Moritz, eating his breakfast numbly and automatically, a kind of passive eating, as though there were nothing of importance left in the world to do. Peter, trying to face the consequences of his actions, but unable to do so, and responding only with emotional emptiness, the life drained out of him, a vacuum whose depths she kept trying to explore, and plumb, and fill somehow, but always—almost always—without success.

Peter. The peacemaker? Well, hardly that, unless with peace you assume defeat. King Croesus of the Lydians consulted the oracle at Delphi, and the priestess told him, “You will cross a river, and a great nation will be defeated.” And so, when the neighboring Persians were giving him trouble, Croesus crossed the river into Persia, where his armies were totally destroyed by the enemy. When he returned to the oracle for an explanation, she replied, “I didn’t say which great nation would be defeated when you crossed the river.”

In the drawing room, over the coffee cups, Joanna is saying, “If you retired, you could travel, Sari. You could take a cruise. You used to say you wanted to go to China. You could do all that now, things you never did because Peter hated to travel …”

Sari says nothing. Melissa says nothing. Thomas appears to collect the finished coffee service, and to place a fresh bucket of ice on the drinks cart. Melissa goes to fix herself a drink.

“Fix me one, too,” Sari says. “Scotch. Rather stiff, I think.”

“Will there be anything else this evening, Madam?” Thomas asks.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, Thomas,” Joanna says, as he is about to leave the room, “you know what a stickler I am for detail. Will you remind Cookie for me that I’d like my breakfast egg cooked for exactly three and a half minutes?”

Thomas looks quickly at his mistress, and their eyes meet, and lock briefly, and then they look—very briefly—toward Melissa before Thomas decides that this is the moment to nod to Joanna’s request, and to withdraw.

Melissa sits back on the small Empire sofa, her legs crossed at the knees under her black sheath. A touch of ankle shows. With her drink in her left hand, she fishes with her right for a cigarette from the silver cigarette box and lights it with a small cloisonné lighter. Exhaling a thin stream of smoke, she says, “Aunt Joanna. Or should I call you Mrs. Mary Brown? Or should I call you Mother?”

Joanna leaps to her feet. “You broke your promise!” she cries at Sari. “You broke your solemn oath! I should never have trusted you!”

“I did not!” Sari says. “Melissa, tell her that I didn’t tell you this!”

“She didn’t tell me,” Melissa says. “I found out. With the help of a man who remembers when I was born in Switzerland. And under the terms of the will, I believe this means I am entitled to half of Lance’s shares—not just five percent, but seven and a half percent more, or twelve and a half percent all told. ‘Fifteen percent of said shares in said company shall be divided, equally, among any and all living issue of my aforesaid sister, Joanna,’ is the way the will reads. And so, Joanna, you and Lance and Eric and Harry don’t control fifty-five percent of the vote, do you? You only control forty-seven and a half percent. The swing vote belongs to me, doesn’t it? Which way will I vote, I wonder? For one of you two bitches or the other? Of course, I will have to ask myself, how would my father have wanted me to vote?”

The other two women say nothing.