DURING THE PAST SIX MONTHS, perhaps, half a dozen times, Philip Carter, minister of the First Unitarian Society on Franklin Street, had noticed a tall white-haired woman at the Sunday service. He knew all the members of the congregation, but there were always a few new faces, friends of members and often people who came of their own accord, some out of need and some out of simple curiosity; and when it was possible, he tried to say a few words to the newcomers. But this particular woman usually arrived only minutes before the service began. She would take one of the rearmost seats, and she would leave as soon as the service concluded.
He asked Reba Guthri about her. Reba was the assistant pastor, fiftyish, stout, encyclopedic in her knowledge of the congregation, and Carter’s barrier against total confusion.
“Have you ever spoken to her, Reba?”
“Once, yes. No desire to become a member; curious-spectator species. I thought you would recognize her.”
“Should I?”
“She’s rather notorious—no, no, that’s the wrong word. I don’t know what the right word is. She’s one of a kind. Her name’s Barbara Lavette. As a matter of fact, she was headlines last week, but of course you don’t read the interesting stuff. You recognize the name?”
“Dan Lavette’s daughter?”
“The same. I made a very gentle pitch to her.”
“And what did she say?”
“Perhaps—someday.”
“Interesting,” Carter said. “When we have time, you must tell me about her.”
“We never have time,” Reba Guthri said, and turned to the small circle around her and their endless questions and needs.
But Carter found his own answers. Two Sundays later the tall white-haired woman remained standing at one side of the entryway until most of the congregation had drifted away. Then she approached him and said, “Could I talk to you, Mr. Carter—somewhere private?”
“Yes, certainly. Come into my office.” He led her into a rather plain book-lined room: a desk, some chairs, and a few portraits and paintings on the walls.
“My name is Barbara Lavette.”
He nodded and smiled slightly. She appeared to be ill at ease, and he wondered what he might do to relax her. “Won’t you sit down, please?”—pointing to a chair facing his desk. He was a tall, lean man, long faced, with iron gray hair and dark eyes.
“I’ve been here half a dozen times,” Barbara said. “I’m not a Unitarian—well, in terms of religion, I don’t know exactly what I am. I was baptized at Grace Church, but I haven’t been there for years.” She shook her head and smiled. “I must admit that I came here first on a Sunday when it was raining cats and dogs, and I ducked inside and sat down in the last row. I liked what I heard, and I came back several times. I guess you noticed.”
He nodded. “Yes, I noticed. As a matter of fact, I asked Reba Guthri about you. She’s my assistant, and she knows everything about everybody, more or less. She holds that I never read the interesting parts of the Chronicle. We keep a file of the paper, so I went back and read the story.”
Relieved that she wouldn’t have to go through the details, Barbara said somewhat apologetically, “I know you don’t have anything in the way of confession, but I have to talk to someone about it—and I know I have no right to come and beard you about this—”
“You have every right. Please.”
“Thank you. I won’t bore you with all the details. This is what was not in any of the stories.”
“Would you like something to drink, Barbara? May I call you Barbara? No one here calls me Mr. Carter. I’m Phil to everyone.”
“Certainly.”
“I have coffee or Coke or plain water.”
“I’ll have water, if it’s no trouble.”
He rose from behind his desk and took a cup of water from the cooler. “Please go on.”
“Well, as I said, this was not in the papers. The man—Robert Jones is his name—he’s a black man, a college graduate and a civil engineer who hasn’t worked at his trade since graduation for reasons that are more or less obvious—well, he turned to burglary. He picked the lock of my front door and woke me at two in the morning. No rape or any threat of rape. We talked. I told him where the jewelry was, in my bedside table.”
She paused, and Carter said, “Why not in a vault?”
“I suppose I don’t care enough about things,” she replied, and Carter reflected that she certainly did care about clothes, dressed as she was in a longish pleated beige skirt and an ivory-colored cashmere sweater. “I always felt that if someone needed the jewelry badly enough to steal it, then let him have it or anything else in the house.”
She paused again, and Carter waited.
“He said something.”
“Yes?”
“I have to use his words. Please forgive me. He said, ‘You liberal do-gooders give me a pain in the ass. It’s burning out there, and you sit here with your fuckin’ jewels. So thank you for nothing.’”
Carter did not react at all to this, and Barbara sighed. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “I have no right to lay this on you.”
“You have every right.” She was silent for a long moment, and then Carter said, “But you didn’t call the police.” There was something in her gray eyes that Carter felt was searching him for what was inside of him.
“No. That’s the crux of it. He took everything I had in the way of real jewelry, and that included a heavy gold signet ring. It had a sort of leopard carved on it, which was Pop’s corporate seal, and his name was engraved inside the ring. It was left to me in my father’s will. I told him—”
“Jones?”
“Yes, I told him that if he left me the ring, he could have the rest.”
“You actually told him that?” Carter asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he threaten you? Hurt you in any way?”
“No. He had a gun. At least, I thought it was a gun, but it was a plastic toy. You don’t think very clearly under such circumstances.”
“And the jewelry was actually worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, as the paper said?”
“I suppose so.”
“And he left you the ring?”
“Yes. He flung it on my bed.”
Carter was silent for a while, and Barbara started to rise. “No,” Carter said. “Stay a bit. I think we have more to talk about.”
“I’m taking up too much of your time.”
“That’s what my time is for. You’re a rich woman, Barbara, and you can afford the gift—if that was your intent.”
“I’m not that rich. My grandfather left me a great deal of money, but I put it into a foundation, and while I’m on the board, I can’t use any of it for myself. I earn my own living, books, screenplays occasionally, and my newspaper and magazine work. My house on Green Street was a gift from a dear friend of my father. I live modestly, and I am not an idiot who has delusions that would lead me to give a hundred thousand dollars to a thief. I didn’t call the police or make any charges because I could not live with sending a black man like this Jones to prison. I have been in prison, as I’m sure you know. I couldn’t sleep or have a day of contentment knowing that I had taken fifteen years of a man’s life. The jewels are not worth fifteen years of a human life. But I lied. He stole the jewels, that’s the long and short of it. He whimpered that the only work he could find was washing dishes and cleaning toilets. For six months in prison I cleaned toilets!” Barbara’s voice choked up. “And I damn well didn’t whimper!” she managed, and then stood up to leave.
“Oh, sit down!” Carter said with some annoyance. “You wanted to talk, let’s talk. You lied—everyone lies. Without lies, human existence would be intolerable. What troubles you: being a liberal, being decent, losing your jewels? What troubles you: letting down your defenses, talking to a stranger? Would I have surrendered a hundred thousand dollars for fifteen years of a man’s life? I don’t know; but what you did was an act of decency and morality, and that should end it. On the other hand, there is a hole in your thinking. You would not have taken fifteen years of his life if you had called the police. It was his act to steal the jewels, and his moral responsibility. But that doesn’t lessen the decency of your action. So you lied. Have you never lied before? Tell me.”
Her eyes brimming with tears, Barbara nodded. “I’m sorry, I cry very easily. I cry at animal pictures. Thank you. I have to go now.” Carter handed her a tissue, and she dabbed at her eyes. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Carter.” And with that, she fled from his office.
IT WAS STILL EARLY IN THE DAY, and she hadn’t been to Highgate since the robbery. When Barbara got home she called Eloise, who was delighted. “Can you come for dinner? We’re having someone you’ll be pleased to meet.”
“Who?” Barbara asked.
“No. Let that be a surprise.”
Barbara changed into jeans, a pullover, and walking shoes, packed a dress and a pair of black pumps in a bag, and climbed into her Volvo for the drive to Napa. It was little more than an hour’s drive, and she would be there by two, in time for a visit with Eloise before dinner. Thinking about her talk with Philip Carter, she felt a weight had dropped from her shoulders. It was not simply what he’d said, but the practical matter-of-fact manner of his approach to her problem. She had not been to Highgate since the theft, fearing the barrage of questions about the incident.
It was a beautiful July day, cool and crisp, with a clean wind blowing from the Pacific and small white cumulus clouds sailing across the sky; and here she was, sixty-nine, and hale and hearty and looking forward to being with people she loved. It was by no means the worst of all possible worlds.
Eloise, still round and pretty in her sixty-sixth year, was waiting for her. She had confessed to Barbara that she was tinting her blond hair. “Adam won’t let me grow old.” Now she embraced Barbara and admired her jeans. “I can’t wear jeans. I’m too fat.”
“You’re not fat.”
“I am, and I will not worship at this American altar of diet. You eat like a horse, Barbara, and you never gain an ounce.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, my dear, you know what I mean. You’re not dainty. I grew up with the curse of being dainty. ‘Oh, what a dainty child! Oh, what a beautiful little dainty child!’ I was wearing those damn Mary Janes until I was sixteen. No one ever called you dainty.”
“That’s true,” Barbara admitted. “I was all long bones with a bony face and freckles.”
“You should bless the bones. Everyone wants them. Good bones and all that nonsense. We’ll put away your things, and then we’ll walk and talk. Are you hungry?”
“After what you said?”
In the kitchen Cathrena was making tortillas, rolling the dough into little balls and then patting them out in the old manner.
“I offered to buy her a tortilla machine. She wouldn’t have it.”
“Because they are no good.” Cathrena snorted. “Did God want tortillas to be made in a machine? How many for dinner, señora?”
Eloise counted on her fingers. “Eight, I think.”
“You think, but you don’t know. I cook for twelve.”
“She always cooks for twelve,” Eloise said as they went outside. “Put this on. The sun is strong today.” She handed Barbara a wide-brimmed white straw that she had in her hand. “Now, what is all this about you making a gift of a hundred thousand in jewels to a black thief? I never knew you had a fortune in jewelry. You never wear jewelry.”
“Just what you read in the papers. Who’s coming to dinner?”
“You tell me the inside story of the great jewelry caper, and I’ll tell you who’s coming to dinner.”
“Darling,” Barbara assured her, “there is no inside story. I had a choice between sending a man to jail for fifteen years or insisting that I gave him the jewelry. That left me no choice in the matter.”
“But why can’t he give them back to you?”
“We’ll discuss that another time. Meanwhile, let’s walk. It’s a glorious day. I want to breathe this air and look at the vines and count the grapes.”
“Count the grapes, indeed.”
“And who is the mysterious guest?” Barbara asked.
“First we’ll go to the bottling plant. I have to ask Adam about dinner tonight. He’s been in the bottling room all day—can you imagine, on a day like this? Last season, under the influence of Freddie, he agreed to buy a truckload of Sylvaner grapes—you know what Sylvaner is.”
“I think I know—is it Franken Riesling? My dear, I didn’t grow up with wines as you did.”
“Forgive me, Barbara! But few people know what Sylvaner is. Adam has such prejudice against white wine—he keeps tasting and tasting. The wine is delicious, but he feels that it’s humiliating to buy grapes from another grower. But we have to. The business is growing, and our acreage isn’t.”
THE WET CHILL OF THE BOTTLING ROOM made Barbara shiver. Adam kissed her and offered a glass of wine. “Taste it,” he said moodily.
“I’m not a good judge of Riesling, Adam.”
“Sensible, but taste it anyway.”
The wine was very good, fragrant, with a delicate flavor, just dry enough to favor the appetite. Barbara nodded.
“About tonight and dinner, Adam,” Eloise said firmly, “we must talk.”
“All right, talk.”
“Shall I ask Joe and Sally? It’s not too late.”
“Absolutely not! May Ling is a big girl—how old? She’s thirty-six, isn’t she?”
“Thirty-seven, poor child.”
“What do you mean, ‘poor child’? She’s beautiful and old enough to handle anything. None of Sally’s damn business.”
“Adam, Sally’s your sister.”
“I know who Sally is. Let Harry and May Ling have this night to themselves.”
“Whatever you say, sir,” Eloise agreed, and then led Barbara out into the sunlight.
“What’s all this mysterious business about Sally, and who is Harry?”
“Look at it,” Eloise whispered. A butterfly whose wings were a splendid assortment of color had alighted on a vine. “Isn’t it marvelous? They are coming back since we stopped spraying and introduced counter-culture. Is there anything so beautiful? And since when do you not know white wine? Every time we have dinner out, you order white wine.”
“I met a remarkable man today who convinced me that small lies are entirely permissible. Who is Harry?”
“Freddie’s lawyer.”
“Come on.”
“There’s Candido,” Eloise said. “He’s dying to see you. The local Spanish rag devoted a whole page to Barbara Lavette and the thief. You are something in the Valley.”
Candido was laying down the law to two men who were cultivating. He glanced up from his harangue and broke into a wide smile. “Señora,” he said with pleasure, “buenas tardes, mi alegro de verla!” Then he and Eloise engaged in an exchange in Spanish that amounted to his plea to be allowed to talk to Barbara for the sake of his wife. His wife lived on gossip.
“Mañana, mañana,” Eloise said.
“They work on Sunday?” Barbara asked as the women moved away.
“Only at this time of the year. But they have the morning off for church and all day Saturday. It’s Adam’s one bow to his being Jewish.”
They walked on, moving almost instinctively toward the bower on the hillside.
“So Harry is Freddie’s lawyer. What has that to do with Sally?”
“He wants to marry May Ling.” With no response on Barbara’s part, after a few moments Eloise asked, “Did you hear me?”
“Yes—of course, but my mind slipped, and I told myself that May Ling is dead, so how could she marry anyone? I’m getting old, I suppose.”
“May Ling dead? Barbara!”
“No, no, but for just a moment, the name meant her grandmother. It’s a tangled web, isn’t it? May Ling—May Ling my niece is her namesake. The first May Ling was this wonderful Chinese lady, my dad’s second wife. I don’t think you ever met her, but I knew her very well. She was as delicate and as beautiful as some ancient ivory carving, and my brother Joe is their son. She was killed in the Hawaiian Islands—during Pearl Harbor. I don’t think my dad ever got over it. She was the daughter of my father’s business manager, Feng Wo, who was also an important Chinese scholar who translated the Natural Way of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, which I have been rereading and trying to understand. You know, for the past six months or so I’ve been writing the history of the family, starting with my grandparents and with Dad’s father and mother, who died in the earthquake—”
“Barbara, hold on, take a deep breath, you’ve lost me. I’ve been married to Adam for thirty-six years, and I still can’t get the family relationships straight.”
“Then you’ll have to read my book. My grandparents on Dad’s side were northern Italian, and Dad’s grandfather was French, whereby the name Lavette. Adam’s father was Jewish. Adam’s mother, Clair, was raised by her father, who was a Protestant of some sort. His family name was Harvey, but she never knew who her mother was. My brother Joe is half Chinese, and he married Adam’s sister, Sally; and so their daughter, May Ling, is part Chinese and part Jewish and part all sorts of other things—but you should know all that after all these years—”
“Enough!” Eloise cried.
“All right. Now tell me about this Harry, who is Freddie’s lawyer and in love with May Ling.”
“That was to be the surprise. His name is Harry Lefkowitz.”
Barbara stared at her and asked slowly, “Did you say Harry Lefkowitz?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Not at all. That was the surprise. You’re surprised.”
“I certainly am.”
“Why? A little new blood wouldn’t hurt this family.”
“How long has this been going on?” Barbara asked.
“Almost a year.”
Barbara dropped onto the bench and shook her head dumbly. “He never said a word.”
“He’s a lawyer. What would you expect?”
“Oh, you’re deceitful, Ellie. Totally deceitful, asking me what was the inside story of the theft.”
“No. We haven’t seen him since then. Freddie saw him and invited him here tonight to meet you.”
“Isn’t he married?”
“No. He was His wife died seven years ago.”
“But he’s old!” Barbara protested.
“No, my dear. He’s fifty. You and I are old. May Ling is thirty-seven.”
“Let me digest this. You say this has been going on for a year—but you never told me word one about it.”
“I’m not a gossip.”
Barbara burst out laughing.
“Thank you.”
“We’re both gossips, Ellie. We love gossip. Gossip is everything personal, sensational, or outrageous, and everything else that’s politically incorrect.”
“What’s happened to you today?” Eloise wondered. “You’re actually happy.”
“Sort of.” She paused and thought about it. “Harry Lefkowitz… At first I thought he was a bit slippery—you know, Abner Berman says he has a reputation for defending big corporate thieves—but on the other hand, there’s something about him—”
“Freddie thinks he’s the smartest lawyer in San Francisco. He doesn’t look like much—I mean, when you first meet him—but he grows on you.”
“How did it happen? I mean, how did he meet May Ling?”
“Oh, we were being sued over some acreage that Freddie bought—an open tract between Highgate and Spinnaker’s place, an acre or two that Spinnaker had no use for and Adam wanted, and then someone called Hernandez turns up with a claim that goes back to 1842—and Harry was here, and he and Freddie began to climb over the disputed land, and Harry fell and sprained an ankle. He was in a lot of pain, and Freddie got him into a car and took him to Joe’s surgery in Napa. You know, May Ling acts as his receptionist and nurse—she got her degree last year—and since Joe was at the hospital, she X-rayed the ankle and bandaged it, and lo and behold, Harry was in love. When he learned she wasn’t married, he began turning up at Napa every weekend. He takes her into the city on her days off or meets her here. He’s been showering her with gifts, and whether he’s proposed or not, I don’t know. They’re both very private people.”
“And how does Freddie feel about it?”
“Grateful. He’s been avoiding May Ling since the divorce, full of guilt. Anyway, they’re second or third cousins, and Freddie is just not made for being a husband, so it’s just as well. Or are they first cousins? I simply can’t keep it straight.”
“But Freddie feels he’s off the hook?” Barbara asked. “People are very interesting. And what’s Sally’s objection?”
“And what makes you think Sally objects?”
“Just the few words between you and Adam.”
“You know Sally as well as I do. Mostly the fact that he’s a lawyer. Not sensitive enough, not charming enough, and May Ling’s two inches taller than he.”
“Yes, of course. Sally never got over being a film star.” Barbara shook her head. “I’ll have a word with her.”
They sat and talked until the sun touched the top of the hill. There was a tracery of long, slender clouds that turned the sunset into a mass of shimmering color, pink and azure, with streaks of scarlet that fought the pale pastels.
HARRY LEFKOWITZ COULD NEVER QUITE get over his awe at the Levy—Lavette family. He had never before encountered anything like it, a group of people of so many diverse ethnic origins, and a family history, wealthy without doing as the wealthy do, and all connected by long or short strings to a winery that was more like an antique Mexican—Californian hacienda than the American style of big business. Not that Highgate was big business or comparable to such giants as Gallo or Mondavi, but it did gross more than five million in a good year and it hewed to a good quality of red wine that by now was recognized and valued in every wine-drinking country.
Harry had been born in 1934, at the nethermost point of the Great Depression, one of five children of an unemployed garment worker who struggled to feed his children and pay the rent on a miserable flat on Orchard Street, in New York City’s Lower East Side ghetto. Harry and his two brothers had worked at every conceivable way to earn money since they were children, gathering and selling old papers, delivering whatever there was to deliver, making pennies for hours of work while his mother and his two sisters took in washing and sewed piecework whenever they could get it. He had graduated high school with honors, had been admitted to City College, which was then free, graduated with top honors, and had gone on to Harvard Law on scholarship. Offered a job in California, he took the California bar and passed easily.
During the years since then, he had married, suffered the death of his wife, opened his own firm, and bit by bit, as so many immigrants to California do, he lost touch with his family. His mother and father died; one sister died of pneumonia; the other sister married and moved to Alpine, New York, and one brother taught philosophy at Tulane in New Orleans, while the other became an auto salesman in Utica, New York. The family was shredded beyond repair.
Sitting this evening at the big table in the kitchen at Highgate, with a lovely woman who was one-quarter Chinese and the rest portioned out of Jewish, Italian, and white Protestant, and all of it combined into very considerable beauty, he felt that this was the most pleasant moment of his life. Adam sat at the head of the table, Freddie at the other end, Barbara and Eloise on either side of Adam, and Lefkowitz facing May Ling and Barbara.
“You never said a word about May Ling,” Barbara was complaining to Lefkowitz. “You could have told me. It would have made it so much easier.”
“I was being a lawyer. I knew who you were. May Ling gave me your books to read, and I think she told me most of your life story, but I never met you. I like Abner Berman. I didn’t want to put him in the middle.”
As always, Cathrena had cooked for twelve, the table piled with mounds of the ever-present tortillas, a huge poached salmon, bowls of rice, beans, and broccoli—the continually blooming broccoli that renewed itself day after day—hot bread, and salad greens picked that afternoon from the kitchen garden.
Eloise, heaping the plates, demanded to know what was going on.
“We haven’t seen Harry since the theft of the century.”
“Not a theft,” Harry said shortly.
“I still can’t believe you’d defend him against my aunt,” May Ling said, “and you knew she was my aunt.”
“I was defending him against the state. Barbara—if I may call you Barbara—was not a complainant. It was the cops who wanted to get their grubby hands on Jones.”
“The papers said he was a murderer,” Adam said. “That’s hard to wash away.”
“Will you all please listen to me?” Barbara demanded. “Harry took on the man’s case pro bono. That means—”
“We know what it means,” Freddie interrupted.
“Let me explain what it means. Everyone is not as wise as you, dear Freddie. It means he took the case without payment. And this man, Robert Jones, is not a murderer. He’s a college graduate with a degree in civil engineering. A white guard at the university insulted him and then slapped him, and they got into a fight and Jones hit him, and the man went down and cracked his head on a concrete path, and Jones would have sat for fifteen years of his life in prison then if Harry had not taken his case, and that was also pro bono. Am I right, Harry? Since he had no money, how could he have paid you?”
“Harry, why didn’t you tell me that?” May Ling said.
Harry, who was an excellent litigator, appeared tongue-tied. He swallowed uneasily, started to speak, and then stopped.
“You should have told me,” May Ling said gently. “You tell me about these dreadful corporate swindlers, but you never said a word about Barbara’s case.”
“And one thing more,” Barbara added. “In the true sense of the word, I gave him the jewelry. You know that I never wear jewelry. I didn’t even keep the pieces in a vault, for all they meant to me. I had them in a drawer next to my bed. But there was one thing that I did want, Daddy’s ring. Perhaps you remember it, Adam. My mother gave it to him when your dad and he formed the shipping company and bought the Ocean Queen. It’s a heavy ring, and with gold selling for five or six hundred dollars an ounce these days, it must be worth a great deal. I said that if I could keep the ring, he could have the rest.”
“Oh, come on,” Freddie said. “You were robbed. How can you say you gave him the stuff? That’s putting the cart before the horse, Aunt Barbara.”
“Not quite,” Lefkowitz said. “Abner Berman was willing to go along with Barbara’s story, and we had a talk about that. Abner said that if he returned the jewels, there would be no charges. I must say that I sort of agreed, if silence could be taken as acquiescence, but then when Abner and I finished our meeting, I double-crossed Abner and asked Barbara to let him keep the loot. She agreed.”
“Not quite that way,” Barbara protested. “I had intended to let him keep it.”
“This grows stranger and stranger,” Adam said. “What did Sam say?”
“He thinks I’m crazy.” Barbara shrugged. “His exact words were, ‘Mother, if I didn’t love you, I’d file papers to commit you.’ It was nice to hear him say he loved me. But to expect children to understand one’s quirks—well, that’s a bit much.”
“Hardly a quirk,” Eloise declared. “It’s simply Barbara.”
“And a hundred thousand dollars is a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Is it?” Barbara wondered. “According to Abner, Harry has defended more minority defendants pro bono than any other lawyer who isn’t a public defender. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars does that add up to?”
“I’ve been thinking about Getty,” Harry said, in an obvious attempt to shift the conversation. “Nobody reads Veblen anymore and his theories about the conscience of the rich, but did you know that Getty left his whole stake, a billion-point-one, to that museum of his? Based on that sum the law requires that to keep its status as a foundation, the directors must spend at least fifty-one million a year on works of art. Every auction house here and in Europe is dancing with delight. But somehow, in this year of 1984, it doesn’t wash. Not with me. Can you imagine how many turkey dinners this billion-point-one would buy for poor kids? He could have wiped out that rotten L.A. ghetto and rebuilt it from scratch.”
“I don’t see where there’s any conscience in that,” Eloise said. “The paintings would survive, no matter who owns them.”
“Veblen didn’t care for the rich,” May Ling put in. “He questioned whether they had a conscience. And some of us do read him, Harry.”
“I like to think that all people have a conscience,” Eloise said gently.
“They keep it in a small pocket, Mom,” Freddie said. “Let’s go back to this Jones character. He had a gun.”
“A toy gun.”
“Still, the cops could have gone to the grand jury and indicted him for intent.”
“It wouldn’t wash, Freddie,” Lefkowitz said. “If they did anything that foolish—and I don’t know that they could—I’d have six blacks on the jury and laugh them out of court. They were content to call it quits.”
“Yet we eat and we drink,” Eloise said, “and we’re rich.”
“If the crop is good,” Freddie admitted. “If we don’t have a drought. If the price of bottles doesn’t go up. If the grape pickers don’t go on strike, and if the vintage doesn’t turn on us, and if we don’t get sued because some crazed kid gets picked up with a bottle of Highgate after he’s killed someone—because essentially, Mom, we’re farmers, and few farmers get really rich. I know a guy in L.A. who has eight thousand acres in one-crop barley, and with that one crop he has a house that would put the White House to shame, and he owns a dozen high-rises in L.A. But Adam wouldn’t go that way, and he’s absolutely right. There was a time when I thought of battling Gallo, but Pop sat on me because you don’t make good wine that way. We grow our own grapes and the wholesalers plead for our stuff. And what did the old poet say? You were always quoting him, May Ling—”
May Ling smiled. How could she ever dislike Freddie? “‘I wonder often what the Vintners buy/One-half so precious as the stuff they sell’?”
THE SUNDAY DINNER WAS OVER. The sound of the piano came from the living room, Eloise playing Gershwin. Adam would be sprawled in his armchair, listening to the music and counting his many blessings. May Ling and Harry were either there or off somewhere to be alone; Barbara was still at the table, taking a seat next to Freddie, both of them with mugs of strong Mexican coffee. Cathrena had cleared the table, stowed away the uneaten food in the huge refrigerator, and gone off.
“She has Saturday off,” Freddie said defensively.
“I know. Tell me, Freddie, how is it with my favorite nephew?”
“Your other nephew, young Danny, is very successful.”
“All the glories of the Lavettes. He’s dull. Scientists, God bless them, are dull. My brother Joe is utterly dependable but dull.”
“And myself?”
“Never dull, Freddie. But you’re forty-two years old.”
“Meaning, Why don’t I get married?”
“More or less.”
“And why don’t you get married, my dear aunt?”
“I’m sixty-nine years old, and I’ve been married.”
He looked at her with interest. “You’re still beautiful.”
“I’m not beautiful, Freddie, though flattery will get you everywhere. I never was.”
“That’s not a majority opinion. And I love you with white hair. It’s simply great, and it goes with your eyes. Let me try to answer your very personal question.”
“It’s my right to ask, by seniority.”
“Good enough. It’s not that I don’t like women, Aunt Barbara. It’s just that I love women too much. For me, the greatest thing on God’s earth is women. I look at women with joy—almost any woman; you, for example. I find myself walking behind a strange woman on the Embarcadero, for instance—any woman—and I find myself enthralled with the movement of her legs, the way her hips move, the slope of her back—it doesn’t matter that I don’t see her face, the vibrations are the same. And unfortunately I have no particular preference—it’s all-embracing. I watch the Mexican women working in the bottling plant. Mexican women are beautiful. They’re passionate, they’re joyous—”
“I know all about that, Freddie. You never learn.”
“What is there to learn? I think Chinese women are beautiful. I love blond women and brunette women, and the other night I had a drink at the Fairmont with a black woman who stepped right out of H. Rider Haggard. Do you remember the Zulu queen? What was her name?”
“Freddie, that’s enough. I don’t know any Zulu queens, and I don’t have the foggiest notion of who H. Rider Haggard is.”
“He was. He isn’t anymore. Good God, what did they teach you there at Sarah Lawrence?”
“Not much, except that you don’t ask personal questions. I should have learned that simple bit of manners, but since I stepped over the boundaries, I will say one thing more. I want you to find a nice girl and marry her and try to be decently faithful to her. And now I think we should go into the living room.”
“That’s not Barbara Lavette speaking.”
“Rest assured, it is.”
IN A PART OF THE NAPA VALLEY where the darkness of night was not diffused with any electric light, Harry Lefkowitz pulled off the road and cut the ignition. May Ling turned to him inquiringly, and he explained that he wanted them to step out of the car and to look at the sky.
“I’ve seen the sky, Harry.”
“I want to look at it with you.”
“Then why not roll back the top, and we can sit right here?”
“That never occurred to me. Certainly. I haven’t put down the top since I bought it. Let’s see if it works.” He pressed a button, and the top lifted and came down.
“The toys of the rich,” May Ling murmured.
“Not at all. I don’t have a Rolls-Royce. My friends tell me that you have to have two, one that you drive when the other is in the shop being fixed.”
“I’m sorry, Harry. I say awful things.”
“Look at the sky,” he whispered.
It was a moonless night, and the stars were as bright as if they had exploded with delight at not having to compete with the moon.
They sat for a while in silence. The air was clean and cold, and May Ling shivered. “Do you ever think, Harry, of how many billions and billions of stars there are? We are so small, so insignificant, tiny bits of matter on a little planet.”
“I try not to. My ego is small enough. Every time I go into court to litigate, I shrink with horror, and I ask myself, Who the hell am I, Harry Lefkowitz from Orchard Street, to stand up in court as if I owned the place and spurt stuff that actually means something to anyone?”
“No, Harry—you don’t!”
“I’m afraid—”
“Harry,” she interrupted, “I think you’re one of the best men I’ve ever known. I think what you did with Jones was noble and good. Why don’t you ever speak of those things? I don’t understand you. And why don’t you ask me to marry you?”
“Because if you say no, that’ll be the end of it.”
“Stop looking at the sky and ask me. Or must I ask you to marry me? I’m thirty-seven years old. Don’t you want to marry me? You’ve never even made a pass at me,” she said plaintively.
“Oh, Jesus!” he exclaimed. “Do you really mean that?”
“Try me.”
“Yes—tonight.”
“Harry, we can’t get married tonight. You’re a lawyer—you should know that. And it would break Mom’s heart if she didn’t have a month to prepare a wedding and send out a thousand invitations to Highgate. But it’s only ten o’clock, and you can turn the car around and we can drive back to Highgate and whisper to Eloise that we want to stay overnight, and she’ll call Mom, and there is a guest house, and you can crawl into bed with me and put your arms around me and tell me that you love me.”
Harry couldn’t think of anything to say appropriate to the moment. She leaned over and kissed him, and then he turned on the ignition, swung the car around, and drove back to Highgate.