EARLY IN THE MORNING five days after Barbara’s discussion with Philip, Eloise telephoned, a note of panic in her voice. “Barbara,” she said, “what are you doing today?”

“What I do every day, working on this damn book.”

“I need you. I am going out of my mind.”

“Ellie, calm down. What is happening?”

“The wedding. Please come down today.”

“We have two weeks before the wedding, and I must work.”

“Why must you work?” Eloise asked plaintively. “You don’t have a boss. Your pay won’t be docked—and it’s not only the wedding, which would be enough, but Freddie.”

“What’s happened to Freddie?”

“I can’t talk about it over the phone. Please.”

“All right, Ellie. I’ll drive down. I don’t know why, but I will.”

Actually, Barbara was not displeased. It was a beautiful summer day, cool and sunny, and the wind from the Pacific was sweeping gently over the City. Barbara had been sitting at her typewriter for an hour, writing nothing and trying to decide whether a walk on the Embarcadero might refresh her mind or at least relieve the guilt she felt whenever she stayed indoors on a day like this. The memoir she was writing was the most difficult task she had ever attempted, heartbreaking when she wrote of the dead, puzzling and embarrassing when she turned to herself, and facing her with knife-edge decisions when she wrote of the living. She had started out to tell everything, and having no reservations in talking about sex, she did not hold back in the first hundred pages. Her publisher read the pages and decided that while sex usually did not hurt sales, she should remember that she was an icon. To this, she replied furiously that she was not an icon and that she had never sought to be one and that she had no intentions of being one; nevertheless, his warning gave her pause and made the work even more difficult. She’d been rereading the page she had written the night before:

I don’t brood about death or fear it, but the deaths of the men I have loved were so senseless, so futile. I tell myself that if Marcel had died fighting for the Spanish Republic, I might have felt different. But he was a newspaperman; he took no sides, except the side of love and life and beauty. He was as gentle as Bernie was hard and intractable—

She stopped there and fiercely crossed out the sentences that followed, and then she crossed out the words hard and intractable. That was not Bernie. Why was it so difficult to explain a man she had married and taken to her bed and to her heart? Bernie was not hard, he was gentle as a lamb; yet his profession was war. He had fought in Spain, in Africa during World War II, in Europe; and then when war broke out in Israel in 1948, he had taken a flight of C54s to Czechoslovakia and bought arms and died in Israel. It was death that she could not forgive—and that made no sense…

Let it wait, she said to herself. I’ll think about it, and then—who knows—then I may begin to understand. It’s just too hard to write about people you loved, easier to write about strangers.

The drive to Highgate would give her time to think. She had called Eloise and told her that she would be there in an hour and would stay for lunch but not for dinner and not overnight.

A distraught Eloise was waiting at the parking lot when Barbara pulled in. She embraced Barbara and led her to a table on the terrace, where coffee and sandwiches were set out.

“You must be starved,” Eloise said. “You never eat breakfast. You should. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

“Ellie, did you drag me out here to lecture me on nutrition?”

“Oh no, no. I’m in trouble, Barbara, and Adam won’t listen to any of it. Sally is his sister, so you’d think he’d show some interest in it, but no. He has this damn winery”—her use of the word damn was an indication of her distress—”and nothing else matters. When I mention Freddie, he simply turns off.”

“Let’s leave Freddie for later and talk about the wedding.”

“Very well—and I don’t blame Adam. Do you know what Sally has done? She has invited over four hundred guests, and that doesn’t include Candido and his family, and Cathrena and her family, and three of the process supervisors and their kids—and, good heavens, where am I to put four hundred and fifty people?”

“You ordered a tent?”

“There are no tents big enough.”

“Then use two large pavilions open at the ends. Put them together.”

“The worst is yet to come. Sally forgot about the growers in the Valley. All right, they’re not overnighters, but we have at least sixty people whom we must lodge. Where can I put them? I can’t scatter them around in the villages.”

“Why not?” Barbara asked. “Take Saint Helena and Rutherford and Oakville and Yountville and Napa—all within short driving distance. Reserve the rooms. We’ll make maps for each group. I’ll help you.”

“Oh, Barbara, would you? I’d be so grateful. But we’re up to seventeen thousand dollars already—everything’s so expensive.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you and Adam are paying for this?”

“Well, Sally says she can’t afford—”

“Oh, come off that, Ellie. Joe has a good practice, and they do have money. What about Harry?”

“He offered to pay for everything, but I’d die first.”

“Yes, I suppose you would.” Then she added, “I can take half of it.”

“Never!” Eloise declared.

“Then I’ll speak to Sally. It’s her daughter. As a matter of fact, I’ll talk to Joe.”

“Joe doesn’t live in this world.”

“Then I’ll drag him back into it. He is my brother,” Barbara said.

“And there’s no way we can cook for such a mob, so I made a deal with a caterer. Twenty-five dollars a plate—without wine. Sally says she wants our best Cabernet, and she wants to buy ten cases of white wine. Adam hit the ceiling. He was already grumbling about giving away his best red. You know how he is.”

“I do. I also remember the sweet boy you married.”

“He grew up,” Eloise said ruefully. “Oh, sometimes I hate this place and the whole ideology of wine. We’re already over seventeen thousand without the wine.”

“Darling, we’ll work it out. I have more money than I know what to do with, and Joe is my brother and May Ling is my niece, and let me whisper something else to you: There’ll be another wedding—oh, a month or two from now, and it won’t cost twenty cents.”

“Barbara, tell me! Philip?”

“Yes.”

“And he proposed it?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t just keep saying ‘yes.’ How old is he?”

“Seventy-three.”

“I mean, how did it happen? Why don’t you just live together?”

“He regards sexual intercourse as a sacrament. Oh, don’t ask me to explain, Ellie. I’m old and lonely. He’s old and lonely. And we both live in a world that’s damn strange.”

“And where will you be married?”

“In his church. Just a simple ceremony with a few members of the family.”

“And we’ll have a big party here,” Eloise said cheerfully.

“Have you lost your mind? It will be at least a year before you recover from this one. No, we’ll go away. He’s lived like a monk and hasn’t gone anywhere. I think we’ll go to England and perhaps to France.”

“And to Australia?”

“Australia? Why Australia?”

“Barbara, you’re wonderful. And thank you. If it weren’t for Freddie, I could relax a bit.”

“Yes. What’s the problem with Freddie?”

“He’s in love.”

“But Freddie’s always in love with someone.”

“Yes—but this time he wants to get married. He sounded me out yesterday. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘how would you feel if I married a black woman?’”

This time Barbara had to catch her breath. “Not the lady from the Fairmont?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I hear things.”

“She’s a model; according to Freddie, the highest-priced model in the San Francisco area. He showed me a picture of her in a magazine—in Vogue. Very good-looking and six feet tall—can you imagine? I’m five-foot-three.”

“And how did you react when he told you that?” Barbara asked.

“I didn’t react. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Mother, are you all right?’ I wasn’t all right. I told him to let me think about it.”

“And what have you thought?”

“I telephoned you and asked you to come out here.”

“Were you shocked?”

“Suppose Sam came home and told you he was going to marry a black woman?”

Barbara shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose I’d be a little concerned at first. But it would depend on the woman. Can you deal with it, Ellie?”

“I don’t know. I never believed I was prejudiced. Do you think I’m a racist, Barbara?”

“No more than I am, and I don’t think I am. Anyway, you know Freddie.”

“I thought I did,” Eloise said hopelessly. “This time I think he’s serious.”

“And if he is, would it be so terrible?”

“I don’t know. Joshua is dead. I’ve been thinking about him and that terrible Vietnam War. I shed some tears last night. Freddie’s the only one left, he’s all we have. For God’s sake, Barbara, tell me what I should feel, because I don’t know.”

“Ellie—Ellie, darling, how can I tell you what you should feel? If we go by Freddie’s record, he won’t marry this woman, but suppose he does? Julian Huxley said that the world’s future lies in miscegenation, or maybe the world’s hope. It can be either frightening or exciting. I have lived by Eleanor Roosevelt’s maxim that it’s better to light just one little candle than to sit and curse the dark. I don’t think that what we do in this little corner of the earth matters very much—but just think of the wedding: May Ling, who is part Chinese and part Wasp and part Italian, marrying Harry, who is Jewish. A hundred years ago this would have been unthinkable, or it would have spurred the vigilantes into action. Now it’s a blessing. In those hundred years a gang of roughneck Irish and Jews and Italians have built us the most wonderful and beautiful city on the face of the earth. The point is that anything is possible if we have the courage to make it possible.”

Eloise wiped away her tears. “I’m doing it again. If only I were like you, Barbara.”

“You are. We’re as close as two people can be. What has Adam said to this?”

“I haven’t told him yet. Freddie wants to bring her to the wedding.”

“Good. We’ll have at least a dozen other black people. Let me talk to Adam.”

Suddenly Eloise’s face brightened. “Barbara, I have a wonderful idea.” She paused and regarded Barbara thoughtfully. “You are going to marry Philip?”

“Yes—it would seem so. He asked, ‘Will you,’ and I answered, ‘I will.’ I always thought that age would take care of desire, but it doesn’t, and I have no talent for celibacy.”

“Now listen, Barbara—listen to me and don’t say a word until I have finished. Here we are talking about May Ling’s wedding, and the money we’re going to spend and all the difficulties we’re facing, and all the good people we never see except when there’s a wedding or a funeral—”

“No!” Barbara exclaimed. “I know what you’re getting at. No. Absolutely not.”

“Barbara! Will you please let me finish, and think about it? The people are the same. You told me Philip has practically no family, and all your ideas about the two pavilions give us the space we need, and it would make me the happiest woman in the world, and why should you be married in some somber church when we could do both weddings here, since all the preparations have to be made—and, oh, it would make me so happy—so why not?”

“No, no, my dear. I don’t even know—I mean, I’m not entirely sure that I want to marry Philip.”

“But you said—”

Barbara sighed. “Yes, I said—but, Ellie, it’s not even two months since I met Philip. I want to know him better. You don’t rush into things at my age, and I’ve been married twice before, and this will be May Ling’s day, as it should be.”

“Then you don’t know May Ling. It would make her so happy—believe me. She loves you, and everyone you would want to invite to a wedding will be there, and I can’t imagine anything more delightful, and if your mother were alive—Barbara, your mother was the closest thing I ever had to a real mother—Barbara, please, please consider it. Think about it. You don’t have to decide this minute.”

“I would have to talk to Philip. It would mean more guests, at least a few from Philip’s church.”

“Does that mean you’ll agree?”

“No, Ellie. It means I’ll talk to Philip.”

“I do hope he agrees.”

Eloise rose and embraced Barbara, who said she had to get back to the City but would like a word with Freddie before she left. Eloise said he was in his office, and she walked there with Barbara.

“I. would prefer you didn’t mention our talk about Judith Hope,” Eloise said. “He spoke to me in confidence, but I keep nothing from you, Barbara.”

“Of course not,” Barbara agreed.

FREDDIE WELCOMED HER WITH A BEAR HUG. “Now, what on earth are you doing here at Highgate? What a good surprise!”

“Freddie, do you have fifteen minutes to spare for me?”

“I have all the time in the world to spare for you. Has Mother been talking to you about Judith Hope?”

“No, about the wedding. Freddie, I’ve never spoken about this, but what did you do with the twelve million your father—my brother Tom—left you in his will?”

Freddie stared at her curiously. He had not changed much since Thomas Lavette’s will was read, still tall and slender, his blue eyes as clear as a child’s, his blond hair only touched with gray. “Please sit down, Aunt Barbara,” he said. “Are you broke and coming to hit me up for a loan?”

“I’m not broke—no.”

“The money’s invested, some in Highgate, some in other places.”

“What about Adam? What is his financial condition?”

“Stranger and stranger,” Freddie said. “Adam is land rich and equipment rich. I’m sure you have a reason for asking, but I’m damned if I know what. Highgate is like a great ducal estate, but it’s no money machine. We have a good business—but Adam? Adam has no money to speak of; he plows it back into the land.”

“That’s what I wanted to know,” Barbara said. “Freddie, I’m going to put this bluntly. May Ling’s wedding is going to cost at least twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“You’re kidding! That’s crazy.”

“So are most of the things we do.”

Freddie shook his head. “Joe can’t afford that. He’s the pro bono doctor of the Valley. I know. I take care of what little money they have. If you’re thinking of that million my father left him in his will, most of it went into his surgery. Do you know what those machines of modern medicine cost?”

“I have a good idea, yes.”

“So how the hell did Sally fall into this?”

“Freddie, where do you live? Sally’s not paying for this, your mother is.”

“What?”

“Yes. Don’t blame Sally entirely. Ellie wanted the wedding here, and Sally’s invited half the population of San Francisco—over four hundred people. Now listen to me, and I’m going to be very blunt with you. You owe this to May Ling. You owe a lot more than this to May Ling. You married one of the finest women I ever knew, and you didn’t have the heart to stay with her.”

Freddie dropped into the chair behind his desk. The telephone rang and he ignored it. When Ms. Gomez opened the door, he snapped, “No calls—no one!” Then he said to Barbara, almost pleadingly, “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

“Freddie, I think the world of you. I love you, you know that. You’re like my own son. It’s simply that when it comes to people, you have both feet firmly planted in midair.”

“You want me to pay for this wedding?”

“If you don’t, I will.”

“No, you don’t have to. I’ll pay for it. It’ll take a bit of arm-twisting with Mother and Adam, but I’ll pay for it.”

Driving back to San Francisco, Barbara reviewed her actions and motives, wondering whether she had done something worthy or not. She was not given to interfering in the lives of others. But here she had interfered, and grossly, and it worried her.

She had made arrangements to meet Philip at the church and have dinner with him. It was seven o’clock before she parked her car at Franklin Street and entered the church. For the first time she saw Philip distraught and worried. “Thank God,” he said as he embraced her. “I’ve been calling your home since noon—you did say you would be home working all day?”

“Yes, dear Philip, and it’s my fault. Eloise telephoned from Highgate and begged me to drive out. There was no way I could refuse her.”

“Is something wrong there?”

“I’ll tell you all about it. We’ll talk about it at dinner.”

“Just let me wash up, and I’ll be with you.”

They had dinner at a small Italian place on Geary Street, and after they had ordered and Barbara had taken her first sip of wine, she sighed with relief. “Do you know, Philip, I haven’t been this content in a long time. Just to know you were waiting for me. But you must never worry about things happening to me.”

“But things do happen to you, my dear. You have a penchant for things happening to you. What was it that took you off to Highgate this time?”

She told Philip the story of her day, and he listened attentively. And then she asked him, “Did I do something wrong?”

He shrugged. “There’s no question of right or wrong. You did what you had to do, being yourself. As for Freddie, this will help him. He needs every bit of good karma he can amass.”

“Karma—karma. For heaven’s sake, Philip, what is this karma thing? I’ve never gotten into this California cult mania.”

“It’s not a cult thing. In Buddhism it’s a belief that what you do in this life controls your destiny. It’s a process of creating your own soul and destiny. In reincarnation it determines your next existence.”

“Philip, you don’t believe in reincarnation—or do you?”

“My beliefs have nothing to do with it. Many people do believe in it. For me, karma is a way of keeping score. You do a decent or charitable thing, and it changes you. Is that so strange? Think of the way you were fifty years ago. Are you the same Barbara Lavette now as you were then?”

Barbara thought about it. The food came, and she burrowed into the pile of pasta and clams on her plate. The wall facing her was covered with a poorly painted mural of maidens in diaphanous dresses dancing in front of an ancient pillared temple; it reminded her of a wall painting she had seen in Pompeii on her honeymoon after she had married Carson—forty years ago, fifty years ago? How many lives had she lived? And why had she told Philip everything about the day except Eloise’s suggestion that they be married on the same day?

“I would have to know who Barbara Lavette is, and I’m not sure that I do,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I was answering your question, Philip. I don’t talk very well when I’m stuffing myself with pasta. You asked me whether I’m the same person I was fifty years ago, and I have to say that I don’t really know.” It occurred to her that she wouldn’t have done very well with Philip half a century ago, when he had been a Jesuit priest.

He nodded.

“The food here is good.”

It was difficult to entice Philip into a judgmental statement. She had never loved a “saintly” man, and she had loved many men and fought and scrapped her way through her life. She was Dan Lavette’s daughter, and now she found herself becoming irritated at Philip’s talk about karma. She didn’t do things for self-gain, and she prided herself on doing what she thought was right, regardless of the consequences; and the events of her life had given her a deep suspicion of religion and religious people. A trifle truculently, she asked Philip whether he was religious.

“That’s an odd question, Barbara.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know what you mean by ‘religious.’”

“Of course you do.” Now she was irritated, and she said to herself that she must get off this kick, or it would develop into a real fight. This morning she had crossed out a page of her memoir because she felt she was incapable of understanding people she had loved. Listen to him, she told herself.

“Well, put it this way,” Philip said, smiling slightly. “You abhor every religious institution—even my own Unitarianism—yet I think you are the most deeply spiritual person I have ever known.”

“And how did you come to that conclusion, Philip?”

“Ohhh”—stretching the word—“by knowing you, loving you, being with you, and experiencing you.”

“ ‘Experiencing’ me?”

“Exactly. You love people, you’re filled with love—you have such a capacity for love. That’s what my faith consists of. If Unitarianism means anything, it’s that.”

“I was all ready for a scrap,” Barbara said. “You’re beguiling.”

“I don’t intend to be.”

“And you’re impossible to fight with.”

“Oh no. Just wait and see.”

She abandoned what remained of her huge mound of pasta. “I was sitting here and stuffing myself and trying to decide whether I loved you.”

“I’m patient.”

“Oh, damn it, Philip. I’m an old lady. Do I really want to get married? I’ve loved and lost so much—what is left?”

“More than I ever dreamed of.”

“Do you really love me that much?”

“I won’t say I love you more than I’ve loved any other woman. I loved my wife enough to leave the Church, and she loved me enough to do the same. I thought I was through with love, that it would never happen again. But it has happened, and I want to live with you and be with you the rest of my life—for whatever time we have.”

“I wish I could say that, but I do love you, Philip, and I will marry you because it’s better to be with you than without you. I’m no good at marriage and I’m no good at living alone.” She paused—then decided to change the subject. “I have to tell you about Eloise’s proposal. But remember that Eloise is all emotion and romance, even at sixty-six… Everyone I know, more or less, will be at May Ling’s wedding, and Eloise suggested that we be married at the same time, and I said I would discuss it with you.”

He considered it for a few moments, and then he asked, “How do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know. At first I rejected it, but—”

“But what?” Philip asked. And when she did not reply, he said, “I think it’s a wonderful idea—if you agree.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Barbara said. “Why not? It will certainly be a great party. How many guests must you invite?”

“Not many—three or four.”

“Then come with me, and we’ll work on invitations and scribble in the double marriage. But you can’t marry us?”

“No, but my assistant is a minister, and she’ll do it happily.”

AFTER THE PARTY ON RUSSIAN HILL, Freddie had four dinner dates with Judith Hope and she declined only two others—once when her photography session went well into the night, and a second time when, as she explained, a birthday party was being given for her father. Freddie considered four out of six a very good record indeed, but still he was limited to a sisterly kiss on the lips. It was a totally new experience for him, and he could not recall having dated a woman whom he had not taken to bed on at least the third night. Each time he took her to a very public place, in either the Fairmont or the Mark Hopkins Hotel. This was deliberate on his part; he knew a dozen good small restaurants in San Francisco, but he refused to let her think that he was hiding a relationship with a black woman.

At the fourth dinner she asked him abruptly, apropos of nothing they had been discussing, whether he was straight or a switch-hitter. As used as he was to her frankness, this took him aback.

He stared at her blankly, then pulled himself together and said, “My, God, I’ve never been asked that before. What makes you ask?”

“Because you’re so goddamn good-looking.”

“Well, thank you,” he said frostily.

“Come on, Freddie. This is a new world we live in. This city is high on the AIDS list, and you know that.”

“You can’t catch it with brotherly kisses or holding hands.”

“I know. But I had to ask.”

For the next few minutes, he sat silently, staring at his plate. Judith reached across the table and touched his cheek. “Freddie, Freddie, forgive me. I think I’m taken with you, and this is the first time it’s ever happened to me with a white man. I’m scared.”

“So am I,” he mumbled.

“Let’s get out of here and go home.”

At Judith’s door, he paused. She opened the door and then motioned him in and closed the door behind her. Inside, he turned to her, hesitated for a moment, and then took her in his arms and kissed her. It was not a brotherly kiss.

“The bedroom’s upstairs,” she said, pulling away from him. “There’s a guest bathroom straight ahead. You’ll find a robe and towels, and you can shower if you want.” With that, she started up the stairs without glancing back. Freddie walked to the indicated door. It was large for a guest bathroom, the walls, floor to ceiling, covered with bright tiles. He showered and then wrapped himself in a white robe and, barefoot, climbed the circling iron staircase to the balcony. The door to the bedroom was open: the floor of white tile; the great swan bed, king size, covered with a mauve quilt and a pile of pillows. She was sitting up against the pillows, naked, her small round breasts and her hair, cropped to the shape of her head, giving the impression of a bronze sculpture.

Freddie stared at her, thinking that he had never seen anything quite so beautiful in all his life. He felt awkward and not a little bit afraid, like an adolescent at his first encounter. She looked at him inquiringly. He dropped the robe to the floor and crawled under the covers, his heart pounding madly, and embraced her.

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING—the morning after her dinner with Philip—Barbara’s doorbell rang. Philip, who had spent the night with her, had already left for the church, and she couldn’t imagine who it would be.

It was her brother Joe, and after she had kissed him and welcomed him in, she asked what could possibly have brought him here to San Francisco at this hour.

“I had a bad emergency in the middle of the night, something I couldn’t handle, and I called Sam, and he said to bring her into the hospital here. It was one of those hopeless, godforsaken pregnancies—I don’t want to go into it, but it was a procedure I had never done.” He appeared to be totally tired. Three years younger than Barbara, he was older in every other way, a big man gone to weight, bags under, his eyes, and his day’s beard dark and heavy.

“Coffee?” Barbara asked. “I’ve never seen you look so tired. Did you have breakfast? Come in the kitchen and sit down. I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“Sure, thank you. I had some coffee at the hospital, that’s all. I’ll have to go back there and see her again. If I could lie down for an hour or so?”

“Of course.”

He sat in a chair at the kitchen table, watching Barbara pour coffee and put bacon up to render. “Just drop the eggs into the bacon grease. I like it that way, and I don’t dare ask Sally for it.”

“No, she wants you to keep alive. Like all doctors, you ignore every rule of nutrition.”

He nodded. She gave him the coffee. He put two spoons of sugar into it and as much cream as the cup would hold. “Barbara,” he said after he had sipped the coffee, “I have to talk to you about something serious.”

She had never seen him actually angry. A word like serious was as far as he would go.

“Go ahead.” She cracked the eggs and dropped them into the bacon grease, thinking that once more would not kill him.

Silent, he sat with his eyes half closed. Barbara felt that he would fall asleep at the table. Then he shook his head, like a shaggy dog freeing itself of water, and she thought of what Philip had said about karma. In a world where few doctors still made house calls, Joe drove up and down the Napa Valley and often over to the Sonoma Valley to deliver a baby or to put together a broken body. Time had not been good to him. His stomach bulged; his eyes were red from lack of sleep.

“Joe, go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind,” she said, filling his plate with bacon and eggs and taking toast from the toaster. She had anticipated what he was going to say.

“It’s about the wedding.” He was hungry, and he ate as he spoke. “I understand that Freddie is paying for the wedding. That hurts me. I can pay for my daughter’s wedding. I hear that you put Freddie up to this. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars plus. Joe, you can’t afford that. It’s good for Freddie’s soul.”

“I don’t give a damn about Freddie’s soul. It’s my daughter and my responsibility. I know how Sally blew this all out of proportion—well, Sally is Sally, and let it be. But I’m going to pay for it.”

“Don’t blame Sally. Eloise wanted it this way. And it’s not only May Ling’s wedding. It’s mine as well, and I don’t intend to allow you to pay for anything.”

He perked up at this. “What do you mean, your wedding?”

“I mean that it’s to be a double wedding. May Ling is marrying Harry, and I’m marrying Philip Carter.”

“No. When did that happen?”

“It’s been happening.”

“Why didn’t I know about it?”

“Because it was just decided. Are you going to pay for my wedding, Joe? I can understand how you feel—but this was never Eloise’s intention. Joe, let it be. You’ve been doctoring Eloise and Adam and everyone else at that winery for years and you never send them a bill, and when they send you a check, you return it.”

“Barbara, they’re family.”

“Then let them be family. What happened last night?”

“A third-trimester abortion. The child’s brain was outside its skull. God, I hate those things…”

He finished eating. She steered him upstairs to the guest room, pulled off his shoes, and loosened his tie. “One hour,” he mumbled. “Then wake me. Call Sally and tell her to cover for me.” He fell asleep even as Barbara stood there.

ONE EVENING A FEW DAYS LATER, Freddie drove Judith Hope to her parents’ home in Oakland. It came about in this manner:

He had said to her, “I want to meet your parents.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you why. You agreed to come to the wedding at Highgate. You’ll meet my mother and father. That’s perfectly normal and natural, considering the way I feel about you.”

“And how do you feel about me, Freddie?”

“I love you. That’s how I feel about you. If you were a white woman, I’d know your family by now. I don’t see why it should be any different because you’re black.”

“Suppose I feel it’s different? I’m not a white woman. Suppose I had no father and my mother did day work and she lived in the Oakland ghetto?”

“You would never permit your mother to do day work. I know you well enough to know that. You told me your father is a successful dentist. You told me you go there every week on Friday for dinner. I want you to bring me along and for them to expect me to be with you.”

Eventually she gave in, and now they were on their way to Oakland, Freddie bearing a package of four bottles of wine as his dinner gift. The house, a modest white front-hall colonial, was by no means in the ghetto, but on a pleasant hillside; and Judith’s mother, a plump woman in her fifties, opened the door and greeted them, kissing her daughter and taking Freddie’s hand with a smile. Dr. Hope, behind her, a large, full-bodied man, was unsmiling. He nodded when Judith introduced Freddie and he shook hands with him, murmuring something that Freddie did not get.

They went into the living room, simply furnished with a couch, two armchairs, and a television set. There were photographs and some prints on the walls, and there were more photographs on a small piano. A coffee table was loaded with chips and a dip and a bowl of crudités. Freddie offered his gift of wine without going into its origin. Mrs. Hope asked what he would have, and since she was pouring white wine, he agreed that he would have that, although he had no taste for white wine and had brought Cabernet with him. Judith suggested that he might like red wine, but he shook his head firmly.

Dr. Hope, his voice deep and throaty, asked where they had met, and lying smoothly, Judith said they had been introduced by Art Brown at the Fairmont. Dr. Hope said he had never been to the Fairmont, and Judith reminded him that she had taken him and her mother to the Fairmont on her mother’s fiftieth birthday. He grumbled that it was different, Judith being a celebrity. Freddie, trying to measure Dr. Hope by his denial that he had ever been to the Fairmont, against Judith’s declaration that he had been there, decided that, like his daughter’s, Dr. Hope’s thinking took two paths. Being at the Fairmont meant walking in with his wife, both black, whereas Judith lived with one foot in another world.

Mrs. Hope said, “Five minutes. I can’t have you late to the table,” and disappeared into the kitchen.

“She’s doing chicken with dumplings,” Judith explained. “She’s a wonderful cook. When she puts the dumplings into the boiling water, they have to be out and on the table to the minute.”

“Mrs. Hope’s from South Carolina,” Dr. Hope said, as if that were the final word on her cooking.

The food was delicious, tiny carrots and greens to go with the chicken. Dr. Hope opened a bottle of the Cabernet that Freddie had given them and said that he didn’t go along with this nonsense that you drank only white wine with chicken. “The chicken doesn’t know the difference, and in my world, wine is red.” He had finally opened up and was talking directly to Freddie.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Freddie said. “I thought the Chardonnay you served before was delicious, but for me, wine is red wine—especially a Cabernet.”

Judith watched Freddie and her father with interest. So far she had said little, except to reply to her mother’s questions about the food. “Mama, your food is delicious, the very best in the whole Bay Area. You always ask me, and I always tell you that.”

“But you eat in all those fancy foreign restaurants.”

“None of them can hold a candle to your cooking.”

Judith had become something Freddie had never seen before. The glamorous model was gone. Dressed in a pleated blue skirt and a white pullover, this was a child with Mama and Papa, behaving very properly. She had removed the bright fingernail polish that was a part of her usual costume and she wore no makeup. Her only jewelry was a small gold cross on a thin gold chain around her neck.

After dinner they returned to the living room, and Judith helped her mother bring in a tray with coffee and cookies. Dr. Hope opened a box of cigars, took one for himself, and offered the box to Freddie, who didn’t smoke cigars, though he was tempted to take one just to enhance the relationship. As the better part of valor, he refused.

“Not a smoker,” Dr. Hope rumbled. “Good thing. No good for the teeth. No good at all.”

“I have a matter of great importance to me,” Freddie said, “that I would like to discuss with you, Dr. Hope, and with Mrs. Hope, of course. It concerns your daughter, Judith—”

Judith was suddenly alert and waiting.

“—and my feelings for her. I would like to ask for her hand in marriage and your permission to do so.”

Judith sprang to her feet and shouted, “How dare you! How dare you come here with that idiotic speech without telling me! We’re leaving—right now!”

“Sit down, girl!” her father snapped. “Just sit down and keep a still tongue in your mouth. You’re not going anywhere. Just sit down and behave.”

To Freddie’s amazement Judith sat down, looking daggers at him.

“What this young man has done is perfectly proper. Proper, and I respect it. We live in a time when these small amenities of decency are forgotten. Now he and I are going to talk, and you will sit there and listen. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Papa,” she answered succinctly.

Mrs. Hope said nothing, only breathing deeply and trying to appear sympathetic to all sides.

“Now, son,” Dr. Hope said to Freddie, “how old are you?”

“Forty-two.”

“Old enough to know your own mind. I gather you’ve been married before?”

“Yes. I’m divorced,” Freddie said.

“Any children?”

“A little boy. He’s four years old. His mother has custody, but I see him frequently.”

“Was that a court decision?”

“No, sir, it was my decision. His mother’s a wonderful woman—it just didn’t work.”

“Yes, I can respect that. I don’t hold with this business of divorce; Mrs. Hope and I have been married thirty-nine years. But I suppose there are times when it’s necessary. Now, what do you do for a living?”

“I manage a winery in the Napa Valley. It’s called Highgate. The wine I brought you tonight is our product. We specialize in Cabernet Sauvignon, and we like to think that our Cabernet is the best produced in America. We’re not the biggest winery, but we do a substantial business.”

“You don’t own this winery, or do you?”

“No, sir. I have a share of the stock, but the winery is owned by my father, Adam Levy. He adopted me when he married my mother. My biological father was Thomas Lavette. I still use the name Lavette.”

“You mean Thomas Lavette the banker?” Dr. Hope asked.

“Yes, sir. He died five years ago.”

“And what is your religion, young man? I ask that personal question because your request is a personal one.”

“I’m Episcopalian, sir. I was baptized in Grace Cathedral”—not mentioning that he had not set foot in the church or taken communion since his father’s death.

“We’re Baptists, but I don’t hold any man’s religion against him. You understand that if my daughter should agree to your proposal, the ceremony would be held in a Baptist Church. You have no objection to that?”

“No, sir,” Freddie said, “absolutely none.”

Dr. Hope looked at his wife, who smiled and nodded and said, “I think he’s a very nice young man.”

“Well, Frederick,” Dr. Hope said, “I believe it’s up to my daughter, and I’m sure you will discuss it later. She’s a woman of sound judgment, and she knows her own mind. And now I suggest we pour some of that wine you make and drink to the happiness of both of you.”

Judith listened to all of this in stony silence, and when the wine was poured she barely touched it to her lips. When they rose to leave she kissed her father and mother, and when her mother asked her to please wear the warm wrap that had been her Christmas present and not walk around half naked just because it was summer, she said, “Yes, Mama, I will. I really don’t walk around half naked.”

In Freddie’s car, driving to San Francisco, she stated her feelings in two words: “You bastard!”

“That was pretty harsh.”

“You miserable, revolting bastard! You planned this whole thing. Don’t try to deny it. What a cheap, low-down trick!”

“Why, Judith? Because you let me know how much you love and respect them? I want to be your husband. I want that more than I ever wanted anything in my life, and I knew that if the doctor and his wife were against your marrying a white man, my case would be damn well lost. So there it is. Will you marry me?”

“No. Not now. Never.”

“Why? I love you. I think you’re the most wonderful woman I have ever known. I haven’t looked at another woman since I met you. I can’t live without you.”

“Freddie, stop it. I’m black, you’re white. Finished.”

“Never is a long time—and you know, I may be a bit flaky, but I noticed from the beginning that you are black and I am white. It makes no difference to me; does it matter to you? There’s no prejudice in my family. They will open their arms and embrace you. My mother’s the most open-minded gentle woman in the world, and my father will love you. Furthermore, I’m two inches taller than you are, and unless you decide to marry a basketball player, you’ll have a hard time finding someone who’ll top your height.”

She was laughing now. “Watch your driving, and don’t try to kiss me while you’re driving. My father warned me never to let a man touch me while he was driving. Freddie, I do love you. I can’t imagine why, but I do. Marriage is something else. I don’t know whether I’ll ever marry anyone.”

“I’m patient. I can wait.”

“My dear Freddie, we live in a world that’s divided into two parts, and they’re as separate as Europe and America. I’ve watched people try to cross into the other part, and I’ve never known it to work.”

“I can show you twenty marriages that I know of, white on white, that don’t work, either. My father divorced my mother for a woman he later came to hate. My mother married my stepfather, who is Jewish, and that’s the best marriage I’ve ever known. Some work, some don’t work. We have sex going for us, and I swear to God, I’ll make it all work.”

“Love isn’t something you can pick apart and analyze. I can appreciate the respect you showed my parents, and I think I may even be falling in love with you. But I won’t marry you.”

“All right. We’ll let that rest for the moment. But you’ll still come to May Ling’s wedding?”

“Not if I’m the showpiece nigger.”

“I hate that word,” Freddie snapped. “I don’t like it from your lips any better than you would like it from mine.”

“I’m sorry. You know what I mean.”

“Well, you won’t be. Judge Horton is coming, and he’s black. I invited the Cutlers, Larry and Jane. There’s Sam’s scrub nurse at the hospital—she’s black—and there’ll be others.”

“You win. Now let’s go home and curl up in bed.”

SINCE HER RELATIONSHIP with Philip Carter began, Barbara had taken to going to the Unitarian church each Sunday morning, after which she and Philip would spend the rest of the day together. On this Sunday his sermon was titled “The War Against the Women.” He spoke of the agelong struggle of women for equality, for the vote, for the right to be treated as persons instead of property. He spoke of the end of the eternal war against women, and he called Walter Mondale’s choice of Geraldine Ferraro a cause for celebration.

Barbara had always been an easy cry. She felt the tears in her eyes as Philip continued, “This is not a part of my sermon—or perhaps it is, since I think of you as an extended family, and the joining together of two souls is very much a sermon. I’ve asked a woman, who has been sitting among you for some weeks now, to be my wife. Her name is Barbara Lavette, and she has been kind enough to agree. We will be married soon.”

Barbara was terrified that he would ask her to stand, and grateful that he didn’t. The congregation broke into applause, and when finally they filed out, her anonymity disappeared. Birdie MacGelsie threw her arms around her and kissed her, and then when Philip did the same, the congregation pressed to meet her and offer congratulations.

Finally the entry had emptied out and they were free to go. As they walked down Franklin Street, Barbara said, “Now you’ve done it. I can’t back out, can I?”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t think so, Philip. I’m not only getting used to you, but I’m becoming very fond of you. Who is going to marry us?”

“Reba Guthri, our assistant minister. You met her back at the church, a small woman with close-cropped gray hair. She’s the one who told you how beautiful you are.”

“You want me to remember her? There were at least two hundred people there. And, Philip, under that Jesuit incorruptibility of yours, there’s a very deceitful person. No one ever said I look beautiful.”

“My word of honor.”

“All right, I accept, even if I don’t believe it. My mother always told me that if someone says a nice thing, never deny it. Just say ‘thank you.’ So thank you.”

As THE DAYS PASSED, Barbara began to wonder how she had ever allowed herself to be drawn into what she began to think of as the Mad Hatter’s wedding. Philip came to her with the suggestion that they be married twice, once at the church and again at Highgate. “Otherwise,” he said, “I’ll have to invite twelve people, and I don’t see any way out of that.”

“I only agreed to marry you once,” Barbara said, and Philip argued that this was no laughing matter. “Then I’ll give you twelve invitations,” Barbara said. “Stop worrying.”

“I think about Freddie,” he argued. “How, in all conscience, can I do this to Freddie?”

“Freddie’s rich. He’s loaded with Lavette money, which he did nothing to earn. You yourself said this would be good for his immortal soul. Invite your twelve people. Once is enough. I simply do not intend to be married twice.”

Then Eloise called, crying that she had lost the caterer. “He decided that he can’t handle four hundred people.”

Four hundred and twelve, Barbara thought.

“And I still don’t have the final list. Why can’t people understand that when they get a wedding invitation, they are under an obligation to reply to it? I told him that I must have at least one hundred portions of cold poached salmon for those who won’t eat chicken, and he said that was impossible. He’s terrified of being stuck with all that salmon, and it brings the cost up. He was up to fifty dollars each. That’s up to twenty thousand for just the food and serving. Oh, Barbara, how did I ever get into this?”

“My mother once got into the same thing,” Barbara said. “So she booked a room in the hospital and sent a note to everyone that she had pneumonia. She got at least fifty bouquets of flowers and saved a lot of money.”

“Barbara, how can you laugh at it? You have to find me a caterer. You’re there in the City, and I have no idea of what goes on in San Francisco.”

“Eloise, darling, when we give a party it’s always for a good cause and everyone brings her own pot of food. We don’t use caterers.”

“Barbara, you know I can’t do that. Why are you teasing me?”

“I think I can find you a Chinese caterer at half the price.”

“Barbara!”

“I’ll find one, Ellie. How about crab instead of salmon? The advantage with crab is that they can hold them in a refrigerated truck and cook them after the orders are in. That means the live crabs won’t be spoiled if the orders go short. And I’ll keep it under fifty dollars if it’s humanly possible.”

“Oh, thank you, my dear, bless you. How is Philip?”

“Brace yourself for a shock.”

“Oh, God—is the wedding off?”

“Oh no, it’s on. I think I’m falling in love with him. But he says he must invite twelve people to the wedding.”

A long sigh in reply. “Oh, well, what will be will be.”

Barbara was thumbing through the Yellow Pages when Harry Lefkowitz called and asked whether he could sit down with her and Philip for a half hour or so. He had a problem.

And who doesn’t? Barbara thought.

“Perhaps you and Philip could come to my office someday soon at one o’clock. I’ll have lunch for you. I don’t know who to turn to with this, and Barbara, believe me, I would be immensely grateful.”

“Tomorrow, Harry?”

“Yes, tomorrow would be fine.”

She put it to Philip, who agreed reluctantly. “The thing is, Barbara, that I’m not a father confessor.”

“I don’t think Harry goes in for confession. He’s Jewish, and if they need confession, they go to a shrink.”

“Then why me?”

“Because you’re a levelheaded, wise, and compassionate man.”

“Yes, and flattery will get you everywhere. When?”

“Tomorrow at one. He’ll give us lunch. It seems he likes to eat at his office in the Transamerica Building. And by the way, you may not be the father confessor, but I seem to have taken on the role of mother confessor. Eloise just lost her caterer, and I’m to find her another one.” She went back to the Yellow Pages.

The Absolute Caterers were high on the list, located on Detroit Street. She dialed their number, mentioned her problem to the woman who answered, and was switched to Mr. Sam Cohen. He had a cheerful voice, and he asked her what he could do for her.

“My name is Barbara Lavette.”

“Ah-ha!” which indicated that he recognized the name. “And what can I do for you, Ms. Lavette?”

“Do you cater as far away as the Napa Valley?”

“Once a month, at least. Are you talking about Highgate?”

“Yes, and I’m talking about four hundred people, plus. Can you handle anything like that?”

“Four hundred people? It’s a lead-pipe cinch. No problem. I just did three hundred for the Republican Women’s Committee. You want a reference? Call Mrs. Thatcher—not in England but here in San Francisco. That’s a joke, forgive me. Mrs. Elbert Thatcher. Where did you get our name?”

“I got you out of the Yellow Pages.”

“You should know how many times I’ve talked to my brother, Jerry, about expanding our ad in the Yellow Pages. Where do you live, Ms. Lavette?”

“I’m on Green Street.” He had a sense of humor, which Barbara liked.

“You’ll give me the number and I’ll come over for a talk. With a big proposition like this, we always have a talk with the customer. I’ll bring a lemon meringue pie, just a token. You’re free today?”

“Between four and. five, yes.”

She gave him her address and put down the telephone. Just like that, she said to herself. Now we’ll pray that Mr. Cohen can deliver.

Mr. Cohen was a large, stout man who bore a pie as if it were a treasure, and he arrived at exactly five minutes after four. “We’ll sit in the kitchen, yes? You’ll give me a cup of coffee and a pie knife, and you’ll taste something. Like a picture is worth a hundred words, a taste is worth a hundred claims of good cooking.”

Barbara contributed the coffee and agreed that she had never tasted anything as good in the way of pie.

“And the thing is, it doesn’t melt on the plate on a hot day. The reception will be outside, yes?”

“Under pavilions.”

“And you have chairs and tables and dishes?”

“No dishes, no. Chairs and tables and the pavilions.”

“No problem,” Mr. Cohen declared. “We’ll supply them. And the food—hot or cold?”

“Cold, if you can manage that.”

“No problem. We have two large refrigerated trucks, and we bring ice; if you need water, we bring water.”

“There’s a good spring,” Barbara said; “all the water you need.”

“Then there’s no problem. Tell me, Ms. Lavette, and forgive me for a personal question. Are you Dan Lavette’s daughter?”

“Yes, I am. Did you know my dad?”

“No. But my father, may he rest in peace, catered his wedding to your mother.”

“Wonderful!” Barbara exclaimed. “That makes us practically family.”

“And now the food.”

Barbara went into her thinking on crabs and chicken, but Mr. Cohen shook his head. “You’ll forgive me, Ms. Lavette, but cold chicken is always a problem, unless it’s chicken salad, which I don’t think you want.”

“Why is chicken such a problem?”

“Because you don’t know. The white meat can become hard and tasteless. Let me make a suggestion. I deal with a farm in Petaluma, and they can supply me with little rock Cornish hens, small birds so delicate they melt in your mouth. We cook them and mold them in a special aspic, my own invention. Delicious! Tomorrow I send you one, if you want. You serve a whole hen on each plate.”

“But that must be terribly expensive.”

“Wait with the expense until we finish. Now, about the crabs—yes, Bay crabs are the most delicious seafood in the world, but these crabs, you got to keep them alive and cook them as you serve them, and what I’m left with, I don’t know what to do with. You can’t keep them alive for too long. Now, salmon—that’s something else. I can buy the best salmon at a very good price. We divide them into proper portions, poach them, and set them in aspic molds. Beautiful. You serve them with sliced, slightly marinated cucumbers and a German potato salad—something fit for a king, believe me. And what’s not used will stay. I always have a call for poached salmon and we have good refrigeration in our trucks. And I bring you a sample of everything. You’re not buying a pig in a poke.”

“And what do you suggest to go with the Cornish hens?”

“Rice and little sweet peas. But with both dishes, first a salad. And then for dessert? You’ll have a wedding cake—or I can give you the lemon pie. And, of course, coffee and tea. Do you want wine?”

“No, we’ll take care of that.”

“Now, the wedding cake. We bake it, our own rum fruitcake. For this occasion, you need at least forty pounds. We age our cake for at least a month, so we always have it ready. Or maybe fifty pounds. I’ll have to do the arithmetic. We decorate it and slice it for you on the occasion. We top it with a small bridegroom and bride.”

“Two of them,” Barbara said. “Not only is my niece being married, but I am as well.”

“Congratulations. Who is the lucky man, if I may ask?”

“Philip Carter. He’s the minister at the Unitarian church.”

“Of course, a good man. I do a little for them sometimes. Mostly they do it themselves… Two brides, two grooms. I’ll take care of that. And we bring a crew of twenty for such a crowd. Now if you’ll let me sit here for half an hour, I’ll work out the price. A lot of older people?”

“I’d guess half are past fifty.”

“They’ll go for the salmon. I can tell you from experience, it will divide evenly, but we’ll have extras of everything. I’ll bring wineglasses, of course.”

“And you can give me a price now?”

“Of course. What will the timing be?”

“The ceremony will be at eleven.”

“Then we’ll be there by ten. Lunch at twelve. My crew will help you move the chairs. Nice men, nice waitresses.”

In her study, Barbara sat and waited. Her husband’s name—her first husband’s—had been Cohen. She was lost in thoughts of the past. Once, when they stood at Coit Tower, Bernie had said to her, “Look at it, the most beautiful city on the face of the earth, built by a pack of mongrels.”

Mr. Cohen exuded confidence, but then a good salesman always exuded confidence. Philip would now and then refer to guardian angels, and she once asked him flatly, “Philip, do you really believe in guardian angels?” “The trouble is,” he replied, “that I’m never sure what I believe in.” Had this been a guardian angel or the Yellow Pages?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Mr. Cohen’s voice, and she went into the kitchen. Mr. Cohen sat with a sheet of paper covered with numbers and scribbles. “Ms. Lavette,” he said, “before I give you a price, let me make a suggestion. We have been in this business since before the earthquake, and I never had a customer who complained about our poached salmon. Let me bring you four hundred servings of poached salmon. The price is the same.”

“I love cold poached salmon—but there are people who won’t eat fish. Can I take a chance?”

“Believe me, take a chance. For them, I’ll have a reserve of Cornish hens.”

“All right.”

“So we have that, and salad and bridal cake, and the dishes, and twenty in help, and when we leave, you won’t believe we were ever there. I’ll give you a flat price, and if it should be four hundred and twenty guests, the price is the same. Did I say coffee and tea? Absolutely. The price is sixteen thousand dollars, even. I know that Highgate specializes in Cabernet, so if you wish, I’ll throw in twenty cases of an excellent Chardonnay for only a thousand dollars more, and what you don’t use, I take back and refund the money. That’s a rock-bottom price for a good white wine. I always buy Highgate when I want a Cabernet, and I know how Mr. Levy feels about Chardonnay.”

“That’s great. Poor Eloise was worried so about the wine. Everyone who knows Adam will drink red, but I imagine a good many will want white. Seventeen thousand—”

“You can check with other caterers.”

“We already have. You have a deal, Mr. Cohen.”

“Just give me the date, and I’ll send the contracts out tomorrow. I’ll need a five-thousand-dollar advance.”

Barbara couldn’t wait to call Eloise, and when she told her the details, Eloise sighed with relief. “But do you trust him?”

“If I’m any judge of character, yes. Call Glen Ellen or Mondavi—I’m sure they’ve used him. And tell Freddie I’m paying the five thousand deposit. He has enough with everything else. And, Eloise, if I’m not wrong, you don’t have to lift a finger. They’ll even move the chairs and tables.”

THE LUNCH AT HARRY’S OFFICE the following day was another matter entirely. When Eloise objected to Barbara’s paying for any of the cost, Barbara won easily. Eloise was never a good contender, and Barbara showed up for the lunch still glowing with her successful arrangements. The glow spread only to Philip, who always glowed when he saw her. Harry was glum and apologetic. “I don’t know how I had the nerve to drag you over here. I charge three hundred an hour for stupidities not worth listening to, but I’m desperate. You don’t mind talking while we eat?”

He had put out a platter of corned beef and pastrami, Jewish rye bread, and a bottle of wine.

“Of course we’ll talk while we eat,” Barbara said.

“It goes the other way in business meetings, but this isn’t a business meeting. It’s about Danny.”

“Danny?” Barbara asked, puzzled.

“Small Danny. May Ling’s four-year-old son. I never had children of my own when I was married. It broke my wife’s heart, but she had a condition that prevented conception. I always wanted children, and when Freddie agreed to my adoption of Danny, I was delighted. May Ling wants to have another child, and I can’t tell you how happy that would make me. But Danny hates me.”

“Oh, come on,” Philip said. “Four-year-old children don’t hate.”

“I’ve tried everything,” Harry said. “Toys, the circus, icecream sodas. Every time I try to take his hand for a street crossing, he pulls it away and says—” Harry shook his head.

“Go on,” Barbara said.

“I don’t want to offend you.”

“We can’t be offended, Harry,” Philip said gently. “We’re here to help—in any way we can.”

Harry sighed and said, “He pulls his hand away and says, ‘Fuck off, you creep.’”

A long moment of silence, and then Philip asked, “Those words?”

“Exactly.”

“Have you discussed this with May Ling?” Barbara asked.

“How could I? The child is the center of her life. How could I repeat those words to her?”

“He’s in nursery school?” Philip asked.

“Yes. And he watches television.”

Philip nodded. “It’s 1984,” he said. “I can offer one thing, Harry. Children of that age don’t hate. Not in the sense that we understand hatred.”

“Then what is it?”

Philip looked at Barbara inquiringly, and she said, “Go ahead, Philip. You’re better at this than I am.”

“All right. I can offer two guesses, anger and fear. The anger because he thinks you’re taking his beloved mother away from him, as well as his father. He can’t understand divorce, and I wouldn’t try too hard to explain it. Does he know that you intend to move him to San Francisco?”

“I imagine he does.”

“Then that’s the fear part—to be separated from the house he knows and the children he knows.”

“He’s not happy here in San Francisco.”

“Those words he uses are meaningless. He picked up the phrase somewhere—it’s everywhere today. Does he ever say it in front of his mother?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“At least he knows that it’s forbidden.”

“Then, for heaven’s sake, what do I do?”

“The first thing I’d do is discuss it with May Ling. Then don’t press too hard. Listen to what May Ling says; that’s important. I would suggest that both of you take him to Highgate as much as you can. Let May Ling, if she agrees, stay with him at Highgate until the wedding. He can see Freddie whenever he wants to, and let him see you and Freddie together as friends. That should change things and help with his fears. May Ling, I think, should explain about the phrase as much as she can. It’s amazing how much a four-year-old can understand. Give it time.”

They went on with their lunch and talked more about the problem, and when they left, Harry was a less troubled man. Outside, Barbara said to Philip, “You’re very wise about some things.”

“Not all things, believe me.”

“I didn’t say ‘all things.’ I don’t want to boost your ego out of sight, now that I’m beginning to love you. But you never had children.”

“No, we never did. We wanted them desperately, but it was no use. We could have adopted children, but we felt that childlessness was our punishment, and we accepted it.”

“Oh, come on, Philip. You’re a Unitarian minister.”

“So I am. Not a very good one, but still I am. Does that mean I shed my belief in God?”

They were at the garage now. Barbara handed over her tab for the car, and while they waited, she studied Philip thoughtfully. He was a handsome man, she decided, in spite of the sharp Irish nose—the Kennedy nose, she called it—and his lined sunken cheeks. He walked with no stoop, and his hands were untouched by the brown spots of age. Did she love him, or was she simply grateful that she would not have to spend the last years of her life alone? Love was to be felt for children and men—and most men remained children until they were worn and old. He was not worn and old, and she felt a great tenderness for him. She often thought of his wife, the nun who had left the Church for the love of a man, and she wondered whether she could have done that, whether she was capable of that kind of love. She was firm in her beliefs; all her life she had fought against oppression and human degradation—spitting into the wind, she called it, a phrase that she got from her father. Two nights ago she had spoken to a group of women, a newly formed group of Bay women in support of Geraldine Ferraro, trying to convince them that the choice of Ms. Ferraro for vice-presidential candidate was the most important event in the feminist struggle, pleading with them to understand what this choice meant, and wondering why there were so many faces unmoved and unchanged.

Philip had said that he was not sure what he believed. Barbara knew what she believed.

When the car emerged from the garage, Philip reached into his pocket to pay the fee. Barbara did not protest. She had decided that, meager though his funds were, she must allow him to pay for their restaurant meals and whatever other expenses they incurred. A decent man was a decent man, but still a man. As for going abroad for their honeymoon, as they planned, she would deal with that when the time came.

In the car, she said to Philip, “Why have you never asked me whether I believe in God?”

“That’s a deeply personal question. I don’t ask people whether they believe in God.”

“I’m not people. I’m going to be your wife.”

“For which I thank God. You see, Barbara, the Buddhists have a saying: If you see the Buddha, kill him. That’s not to be taken literally, but to Buddhists the Buddha was a man—no different than other men, only wiser—and if you think you see the Buddha, you are a victim of illusion, because God—or what we call God—is ineffable. I believe that all human beings believe in their own definition of God, and for me it is not definable.”

“And for most of us here in America, the definition is money,” Barbara murmured.

“If you want to be cynical. I don’t think you’re cynical.”

“I don’t know,” Barbara said. “My father, who was careful never to set foot in a church except when he went to a funeral, believed in decency, and that was enough for him. I was baptized in Grace Church, and every time I took communion after that, until I was sixteen, I could only think of the musty smell. When I was doing the story in El Salvador, where I saw men and women and children murdered by the death squads the CIA had set up and trained and armed, the same death squads that had murdered Jesuit priests and nuns and a Catholic bishop on the altar of his own church, I said to myself that God is for others but not for me. I’ve lived my life very well believing in the decency of most people and the indecency of the few.”

“Then that’s your worship,” Philip said after a moment. “I would not try to convince you otherwise.”

“But you still think I believe in God?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m absolutely content with you just as you are.”

THE WEDDING FINALLY CAME ABOUT—not in a month, as Sally had planned, but early in September. The day was cool and clean, a day made to order for a festival in the Valley. Barbara, who almost never wore white, had only one white pleated skirt and two white dresses, one of them being her wedding dress from her marriage to Carson Devron. It was a lovely and expensive dress, and it still fit as well as the day she first wore it; but it brought too many memories with it, and she could not bring herself to wear it. She tried the pleated white skirt, but it was silk and to wear it with a blouse was simply wrong, and anyway, it was too short. The other white dress was of cotton, made in India, and she had bought it a decade ago for forty dollars; the cotton was fine and full, and the skirt was double, and the simplicity of it pleased her. Certainly she had no desire to distract from May Ling’s beautiful bride’s dress. She decided for the India cotton, rejecting any thought of buying another wedding dress that she would wear only once. Even if she could not predict the future, she was absolutely certain that she would never marry again; and Philip, seeing her in the white cotton, decided that she and the dress were absolutely wonderful. Philip wore a white jacket and a black bow tie, as did most of the men who were present. The female guests, sheltered under broad white hats, presented a dazzling display of color.

The parking lot was overwhelmed, and cars were parked for a quarter of a mile up and down the Silverado Road. It was the beginning of harvest time, and the vines were loaded with ripening grapes. The two pavilions, striped in pink, stood on the spacious lawn—two full acres that Eloise had successfully fought for and prevented from being plowed up for vines. A forty-by-forty dance floor had been put down, and Candido’s gift to the bride was a seven-piece Mexican band. Instead of flowers each table had a centerpiece of ripe, luscious grapes. Mr. Cohen and his crew and his two trucks had arrived at ten, and by the time the guests began to appear, 420 chairs had been spaced on the dance floor, with an aisle in the center for bride and groom. The chairs overflowed onto the lawn, which Eloise did not mind at all. May Ling and Sally, who was in lemon yellow and white and very much the former film star, were properly secluded in the main house, but Barbara, who had no intention of playing the bride’s game in this, her third marriage, was part of the reception team; and for the first time she met Judith Hope.

Afterward, when Freddie asked what she had thought on meeting Judith, Barbara replied that Judith was magnificent—and that this description was not an exaggeration. Wearing flat, silver-embroidered shoes and wrapped in a pale pink sheath, under a broad white straw hat, she stood a trifle more than six feet, escorted by Freddie in a white dinner jacket, his blond hair making a dramatic contrast to hers. Eloise, wearing her best light blue, felt dwarfed, speechless for a moment, but then pulled herself together and said, “Welcome to Highgate, my dear,” and then went up on her toes to kiss her, an arrangement that Judith thoughtfully helped by bending and embracing Eloise.

Freddie was relieved. It went better than he expected. Adam, in a jovial mood, stood tall enough to kiss Judith’s cheek, while Eloise was thinking that Judith was wearing the same perfume Freddie always gave her at Christmas, and which he must have bought for her.

“And this,” Freddie said, “is my aunt Barbara, who writes books and gets involved in wars and revolutions, and who runs Gloria Steinem a close second in the women’s movement—”

“Freddie,” Judith said, “I know very well who your aunt is, and I’m delighted to meet her.”

“And I’ve heard a great deal about you, Judith, and I’m glad to finally meet you”; and with that, Barbara kissed Judith and embraced her. Philip, standing beside Barbara, nodded in agreement and gave his hand to Judith, and said words to the effect of how good it was for all of them to be here on this happy occasion.

Birdie MacGelsie couldn’t wait to get Barbara away from the receiving group. “This is more important,” she declared. “Who is she, and where did Freddie find her?”

“I believe he found her in the Fairmont Hotel. Her name’s Judith Hope.”

“Well, what is she? Come on.”

“She’s a woman. Isn’t that obvious?”

“Barbara, don’t play games with me. I’ve known you too long. She’s gorgeous. Is she in films?”

“She’s a model, Birdie. I can’t stand here talking. I’m a hostess here. Poor Eloise is overwhelmed.”

“I should think so. Is Freddie going to marry her? Is this for real?”

“You’ll have to ask Freddie.”

“I must meet her. Hello, Philip,” she said belatedly. “Congratulations.”

But it wasn’t easy. Judge Horton had already staked out his ground, as a companion in color, and others moved in around Judith and Freddie.

Barbara sighed and turned back to the arriving guests, and Philip wondered whether they shouldn’t seek the same seclusion that was granted to May Ling.

“Absolutely not. You have a dozen people from the church whom Eloise does not know, and there are others, and I will not leave her to this alone.”

“She is beautiful,” Philip said softly. It was the first time she had heard him comment on another woman’s appearance, and he was not talking about Eloise.

“I’m glad you noticed,” Barbara said shortly.

Now the guests were flooding in, and Eloise, caught in that trap of amnesia that more than ten guests always brought upon her, was struggling with names. Abner Berman appeared with his ex-wife, Reda, who explained quickly to Barbara, “I couldn’t miss a double wedding, not even if it meant coming with Dracula.” And Abner grinned and shook his head and kissed Barbara and whispered, “What could I do? The dragon lady’s the dragon lady.” Carla, Candido’s daughter and now president of the Bay Area Chicano Union, turned up with her new husband and asked, “Where is the Black Beauty? No, I’m not going to make a scene. This is my husband, Diego. Freddie’s safe,” she assured Barbara. Barbara’s son, Sam, and his wife, Mary Lou (in a blazing designer dress), and their child, Jean, who immediately dashed away, kissed and hugged her; then Jean joined Danny and half a dozen other children whom Eloise and Barbara had not even counted on. Sam had to whisper, “Mother, marriage is a terrible habit.” And Father Gibbon, in full regalia, who turned out to be a former classmate of Philip’s, shook hands with Philip and insisted, “We must talk, Phil. We must.”

Consuela Gomez, Freddie’s secretary, sat at a small folding table, checking off the list of names, and she had reached a point of utter confusion. She pleaded with Barbara for a moment of attention and then said hopelessly, “They don’t even stop for me. Ms. Lavette, I have checked off two hundred names, and there must be twice that many here.”

“They feel at home,” Barbara said. “Forget the list.” She turned to Philip and begged him, “Take over, darling, please. I must talk to Mr. Cohen.” Adam, smiling benignly, his white beard giving him the appearance of an Old Testament patriarch, told Barbara not to worry. He and Eloise had everything in hand. Eloise had taken refuge in a continuous smile and had surrendered on the problem of names, and Adam simply smiled and nodded.

Barbara raced over to the trucks and found Mr. Cohen sitting on a folding chair, drinking a cup of coffee, and calmly smoking a cigar. “Do you see those kids?” she asked. “We should have put ‘no children’ on the invitations, but how could we?”

“On a Sunday,” Mr. Cohen said sagely, “baby-sitters are hard to find. We haven’t been in this business almost a hundred years for nothing. I always bring twenty folding chairs like the one I’m sitting on. I always bring a box of frankfurters and frankfurter rolls. They won’t eat salmon, anyway. We’ll make the kids a picnic on the side. They’ll sit on the grass and be happy, and meanwhile, my guess is that you got four hundred people at least and maybe more. So I have the folding chairs for an emergency. Please don’t worry. It’s ten minutes to eleven. Who is first, you or your niece?”

“We’re first, then my niece. Ours is a very simple ceremony.”

“All right. Now, you bring the minister or rabbi or whoever is doing it up to the lectern—”

“She’s a woman.”

“So she’s a woman. I got an open mind. When I see her there, I got a steam whistle on my big truck and I give three short blasts. That will stop the talking and moving around and then she can tell them on the microphone to take their seats. I see half of them are already seated. When the ceremony is over, Mr. Levy tells me, wine will be served at that long table. Three of my girls will serve the wine. The name cards are already on the tables, where Ms. Sally, placed them. Extra guests, extra chairs. We squeeze them in. Ms. Gomez, Mr. Lavette’s secretary, is going to help. So you go ahead now, and don’t worry.”

Philip and Barbara had chosen their marriage ceremony from those published in the church pamphlets, as had May Ling and Harry. When Philip told Reba Guthri, his assistant minister, what his and Barbara’s choice was, she was somewhat perturbed. “The Wine Ceremony is rarely used, Philip, and you are the minister.”

“It’s Barbara’s choice,” he explained. “The Highgate winery is the single thread that runs through her whole life. It has tied the two families, the Levys and the Lavettes, together for three generations. They’re somewhat like the old farm families used to be, yet different. I didn’t object, because in the Catholic Church, where I was trained, wine is venerated. So I can understand what she feels.”

Reba Guthri, a stocky woman of fifty or so with iron gray bobbed hair, was already at the rostrum, poring over some papers with Philip. Barbara told her about her talk with Mr. Cohen and took Philip’s arm. “You’re the groom this time, so let’s get back and get ready to march up the aisle.” She hurried Philip through the crowd, and they had barely gotten into place when the steam blasts sounded. As Mr. Cohen had said, there was a moment of silence, and Reba Guthri suggested that the guests be seated.

“As you know,” Ms. Guthri announced, “there are two weddings to be celebrated here today. I am Reba Guthri, Philip Carter’s assistant minister, and I shall perform the marriage of Barbara Lavette and Philip Carter. As soon as you are all seated, we will begin.”

Barbara had given Candido’s Mexican band severe instructions. During the ceremonies, only the guitars, two regular and one bass; no conga drums, no trumpet. Her bridal march was to be a moody Spanish love song called “Always.” To be sure that her instructions were understood, she delivered them in impeccable Castilian—which surprised the musicians. Now the soft Spanish music began, and Barbara and Philip walked down the aisle, Barbara hatless in her white cotton ankle-length dress, her straight white hair shoulder length and loose, and Philip in his white dinner jacket. She had rejected any thought of a bouquet or bridesmaids or anyone to give her away. She was senior in the family, and in two months she would be seventy; and Eloise, sitting with Adam, was already in tears, whispering to Adam, “How beautiful she is.”

Reba Guthri was holding a silver chalice of wine, and when Philip and Barbara stopped in front of her, she said, “Barbara and Philip, will you take each other as man and wife, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love each other and comfort each other in sickness and health, forsake all others, and be faithful to each other as long as you shall live?”

Both answered, “I will.”

Then, holding up the chalice of wine, Reba Guthri said, “The years of our lives are a cup of wine poured out for us to drink. The grapes, when pressed, give forth the good juices of the wine. So, too, under the winepress of time, our lives give forth their labor and honor and love. Many days you will sit at the same table and eat and drink together. So drink now, and may the cup of your lives be sweet and full to running over. From this time forth may you find life’s joys double-gladdening, its bitterness sweetened, and all things hallowed by true companionship and love.”

Reba handed the chalice to Barbara, who drank and then handed it to Philip, who drank and gave the cup back to Reba. Then he took Barbara in his arms and kissed her, and the audience applauded, and the trumpeter in the Mexican band, unable to contain himself, sounded a wild fanfare.

Adam was overwhelmed. There were tears in his eyes as he embraced Barbara, and then she took her seat between Eloise and Freddie, who was whispering to Judith that there could have been three weddings. Judith said to Barbara, “It was so beautiful—just so beautiful.” Philip, who kissed Reba and thanked her, called out, “Please keep your seats. You will have time to greet and kiss the bride after we are finished. By now I am sure you all know who I am. I am the minister at the First Unitarian Church, and I shall now celebrate the marriage of May Ling Lavette to Harry Lefkowitz.” The band struck up the Wedding March, and May Ling, tall and slender and lovely in her wedding gown, on the arm of her father, Dr. Joseph Lavette, walked down the aisle, and following her, Harry and Sally.

IT WAS OVER. At long last, the weddings were over. Freddie had written out a check and had handed it to Mr. Cohen. The salmon had been a great success, and the children had gobbled down the frankfurters and rolls. The wedding guests had gone, and Mr. Cohen’s crew had picked up the last bit of rubbish, and Mr. Cohen’s two catering trucks had departed, and the sun was dipping to the gentle slopes of the Valley; and Barbara was as forlorn and depressed as ever she had been in all her life. Philip, who had not slept the night before, had gone to their room for a nap; and alone Barbara was walking slowly through the vines, heavy with ripe grapes, on the path that led up the hillside to the little clearing where long ago—or so it seemed—she would sit with Eloise and talk about everything and nothing.

Where was the joy that a bride was supposed to have? But she was not a bride; she was an old woman who asked herself why on God’s earth she had allowed this to happen. She felt trapped and filled with hopelessness, and as she reviewed the last few months, she felt like someone caught in a hopeless morass. She recalled an incident years ago when a mouse had appeared in the big kitchen, and with a broom Cathrena chased the terrified little creature trying so desperately to flee from the giant foe.

Barbara was sick and tired of people telling her that she was still beautiful. She had never taken proper care of her skin, scorning the endless advertisements and persuasions for this or that cream that took twenty years off one’s age and miraculously made one young and beautiful overnight, and her face was covered with a network of fine wrinkles. Eloise had urged her to use a rinse that would turn her hair ash-blond, to which she replied that she had never been an ash-blond and had no intention of becoming one now.

Last month her son, Sam, out of his omnipotence as physician and surgeon, had told her that she must begin to take Premarin, and that he would give her the proper prescription; otherwise, he warned her, she would develop that bowed, hunched look that so many older women have. She resented this, even as she resented all of Sam’s warnings and commentary about her health, and she threw the prescription away—her own small assertion of independence. Was it all about independence? Then why was she lonely? Did she love Philip, and what was love? Where did it come from? She remembered her first love, Marcel, the newspaperman she had met when she was living in Paris, who had left to cover the Spanish Civil War and whose thighbone had been shattered by shrapnel; and she remembered the passion she had felt for him, the feeling that he was a part of her, the joy in their sex, her screams of pure rapture when she had an orgasm, and his pleas of “Quiet, quiet, my beloved, or the landlord will cast us out of here as depraved creatures,” and she remembered the utter desolation that had overcome her when he died.

She would never forget the day he died in the hospital in Toulouse. The world ended and hope passed out of her life. And this brought to mind the thought of how she would react if Philip died. She would weep, but she would also be free; and that thought turned her against herself and filled her mind with contempt for herself, as she felt herself to be utterly heartless.

She had reached the clearing and she sat down on one of the benches in front of the open fireplace, arguing with herself that she loved Philip, that Philip was the best man she had ever known, that there wasn’t a bone of hate or anger or resentment anywhere in his body—” And that’s the whole damn trouble!” she said angrily, “I don’t want a man to love me in spite of what I am. I want a man to love me because of what I am.” And after that small outburst, she felt somewhat better, and decided that she would tell Sam that she had lost the prescription for Premarin, and that she would begin to take it as he had suggested; and she took comfort in the fact that she would not be alone anymore. She recalled that on the nights when she had a dinner date with Philip, she would wait for the doorbell to ring and be anxious if he was delayed and came late. She told herself that she did love him; he was sweet and kind and gentle, and she remembered how delicious it was to have a warm body next to her at night, and when she woke at night to feel him there beside her and roll over and press her body to his; and he never resented being awakened at four in the morning by her embrace—and you don’t do that with someone you don’t love. Her thoughts wandered, and she shivered with the increasing chill of the night.

Suddenly Philip appeared, carrying a woolen serape, which he folded over her shoulders. He had changed into blue jeans and a sweater, and he told her that Eloise had suggested that he would find her here. “I looked everywhere else, and for a moment I thought you had fled. But your car was still here, so I decided that you were hiding. Not that I blame you.”

“I didn’t mean to hide, Philip. I wanted to be alone and think.”

“About our marriage being a great mistake?”

She stared at him in bewilderment.

“It’s a very common post-wedding feeling,” he said.

“Is that how you feel?”

“No, but I’m not Barbara Lavette. I’m the luckiest man in California, and that makes me nervous.”

She smiled. “Philip Garter nervous? That will be the day. I never told you how good you were with May Ling and Harry. It was an absolutely beautiful ceremony.”

“Thank you, my dear. It’s getting cold and in a little while it will be dark, and I have no confidence in being able to make my way down that path in the dark. Eloise told me that there will be supper in the kitchen—she and Adam, whom I have come to like enormously, and May Ling and Harry, and Freddie and that incredible woman of his, and you and me—if you can ever forgive me for leaving you and falling asleep. I only meant to lie down for a few minutes. Eloise promised to wake me, and she let me sleep for an hour.”

“I think I can forgive you, Philip.”

“Yes, bless you. Harry and May Ling are leaving for Paris tomorrow. Danny will stay here until school begins next week, and then he’ll be with Sally. You see, I’ve integrated myself with the family. Now all I have to do is to prove to you that our marriage is going to be a very happy one.”

Barbara rose and threw her arms around him, and he kissed her gently.

“No!” she said. “Don’t kiss me like that! Open your mouth and kiss me as if you want to crawl inside of me.”

He did, and then they walked down the path to join the others in the kitchen.

IT WAS A STRANGE DINNER that evening at Highgate, and Barbara was both the observer and the observed, intimately entwined yet apart from it, thinking that it was some sixty-five years ago that Jake Levy, newly discharged from the service, and Clair Harvey, his bride, had driven down the Silverado Trail and bought Highgate for a song from a bitter old Irishman who spent his days cursing the Volstead Act and staying drunk. Sixty-five years—what a long, long time! Her father, Dan Lavette, had brought her there for the first time at age eight—Jake was his partner’s son—and Jake kept a saddle horse. Dan had swung her up in front of him, and up the path to the hilltop they went, until the whole Napa Valley was spread out before them.

And now, after all the rejoicing, the family was strangely silent around a dinner table that always bubbled with sound. The toasts were over. They were confronting America’s agony, a black woman who sat among them. Barbara asked herself, If I were Judith, what would I be thinking?

Adam was carving a leg of lamb. Dinner was late. It was nine o’clock—but Barbara had only pecked at her lunch, and a glass of wine had given her a strange, heady feeling. Freddie filled her glass again, and she rose, glass in hand.

“Am I permitted another toast?” Barbara asked. “I will make it short because I am hungry. Somewhere in the Bible—which I must confess I have not read in more years than a duck has feathers—it speaks of the stranger within your gates. But there are no strangers here. When you break bread at this table, you are part of our family. Judith, I toast you and welcome you. I am the senior member of this gathering, and I thank whatever gods may be that I have lived long enough to welcome a beautiful black woman into our hearts.”

They drank and both Eloise and Judith wept. Freddie had never seen Judith weep before. He went around the table, embraced her, and kissed her. Barbara’s eyes were wet, and she said to herself, What a sloppy, sentimental toast that was. She wouldn’t dare put it in her book, yet it had worked, and everyone was talking and eating, and Adam even explained to Judith that this was not their best vintage, that their best vintage had disappeared into the bellies of the wedding guests.