Chapter 25

I

When Donald turned up on my doorstep at exactly one o’clock, carrying a large bunch of expensive-looking flowers wrapped in cellophane and tied with pink ribbon, I was immediately suspicious. I had to curb the impulse to snarl at him.

Did he think I was a fool? Didn’t he realize I saw through this ruse, this sudden loving gesture, the first one in years? Flowers, indeed.

He underestimated me if he thought I hadn’t twigged that he was cozying up to me, being sweet and ever so friendly because I had suddenly become vital to his future.

But somehow I managed to swallow the acerbic words that had leapt to my tongue. I might as well be pleasant; I had nothing to lose. I laughed inside. Sex with Jake for breakfast was infinitely more satisfying than coffee with bagels for breakfast; our unexpected and wonderfully fulfilling lovemaking on the overstuffed study sofa had put me in a generous mood. And so I allowed Donald to get off unscathed.

Smiling sweetly, I offered him my cheek to kiss, thanked him for the flowers, and told him to throw his coat on the bench in the entrance foyer. After putting the flowers on the kitchen counter, I led him into the paneled study overlooking the East River.

“Where’s the Costner clone?” he asked, glancing around.

“Having lunch with Gwyneth Paltrow,” I said in a snippy voice, knowing that this would make him crazy. Donald the Great had always groveled at the feet of female movie stars.

“Is he really?” my brother asked, impressed, his eyes widening.

“Donald, come on! Don’t be daft. I was kidding. Jake’s gone to have lunch with the publisher. At the Four Seasons.”

“You’ve got a publisher?”

I nodded. “Sure do. He apparently gave a terrific presentation, and the deal’s made. They’re drawing up the contracts now.”

“Congratulations, sis.”

“Donald,” I said threateningly, glaring at him.

“Sorry, Val.”

I pointed to the sofa where earlier Jake and I had enjoyed our delicious sexy romp and said, “Sit there and start talking. What did she tell you?”

He did as I said as I stood hovering over him, my eyes riveted on his face.

“She didn’t tell me much—”

“What!” I exclaimed, cutting across his sentence. “You come here with no information, expecting me to welcome you with open arms. Is that why you brought the flowers? As a peace offering?”

“No, no. And you didn’t let me finish!” he whined.

“Okay, shoot.”

“Listen, Val, you don’t let me get the words out. You’ve certainly reverted to your old self. You’re so fucking bossy and bullying again, I can’t stand it.” He started to get up. “I think I’m going to leave and you—”

“You’re not leaving, Donald,” I snapped. “So put that idea out of your head. And please refrain from using bad language. You know it irritates me.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s get back to Mom. She didn’t say much when I first got there. Just sat like Elizabeth the First on her throne, looking regal and imposing. Then she eased up after I’d stroked her ego and yabbered at her for half an hour. I finally managed to establish that there’s no legal document. About The Tradition thing.” He sat back, looking pleased with himself.

“That’s good to know,” I exclaimed, and beamed at him, hoping to encourage him to keep talking. “What else did she say?”

“She explained about The Tradition. And that’s all it is, Val, a tradition started by Amy-Anne, who wanted to give the women in the family the power, not the men. But even though there was—is—nothing in writing per se, Mom says the Lowell women have taken it very seriously for a hundred years. It’s kinda . . . like . . . well, I guess it’s like their Bible.” Leaning forward slightly, Donald looked up at me and confided, “Mom says that the women descendants of Amy-Anne believed that it would bring bad luck to the family if a woman stopped being the head of Lowell’s. Maybe she believes it too?”

“Goodness me, Donald, where does that leave you?” I asked sweetly, and walked across the room, stood leaning against the fireplace, trying to hide the amused smile that had sprung to my lips.

“I’m getting engaged. To Alexis. She accepted my proposal.”

“How fortuitous for you, Donald,” I purred sarcastically, thinking what an opportunist he was. He wasn’t wasting any time or taking any chances. But what did I care. It suited my purpose to give him the family business. I certainly didn’t want anything to do with it. Nor did I want anything from her.

He said, “I think Mom wants to see you again, Val.”

“What for?” I demanded, turning frosty with him.

“I don’t know, she didn’t say.”

“God, Donald, you are dim at times! Why didn’t you ask her?”

“I did. And stop being a bitch!”

I ignored this and said, “And how did she answer you?”

“She didn’t, at least she wouldn’t tell me her reason, except that she said something about owing you an explanation.”

“No kidding,” I murmured, wondering what had prompted this sudden need for truth-telling on my mother’s part.

Donald nodded and sat back against the pillows.

I softened my attitude toward him and said in a pleasant tone, “Well, Donald, this is really good news for you. About there not being a legal document. That makes it so much easier for me to give you the company.”

“I told her you wanted to do that, and she says she won’t let you.”

“I don’t inherit Lowell’s until she dies, Donald, and when she’s dead she won’t be able to stop me handing the business over to you. Now, will she?”

“Mmmm. Yes, that’s true, I guess.”

“No guessing. It is true.”

“You’re going to have to see Mom again, Val.”

“No way, brother mine.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I bet you would, under the circumstances,” I said.

“Please, Val. Be nice. You used to love me, and when you stopped, I was really hurt. You damaged me when I was a child because you dumped me, withdrew your love.”

“Cut the crap, Donald, you know she took you away from me the moment it suited her.”

“Bad language, Val, really!”

“Donald, tell me something, why the hell do you want Lowell’s anyway?” I asked, truly perplexed by this and genuinely wanting to know.

“Because you don’t want it and it should stay in the family.”

“But would you work there?”

“Sure as hell I would.”

“But you’ve got your dream job on the magazine. You always wanted to be a gossip columnist. After all, you cut your teeth on gossip in the family.”

“There you go again, being a bitch.”

“Oh, stop using that word. You’re getting monotonous. So tell me, why would you want to give up your column? Which, I hear from Muffie, is very influential, to go and work in an office every day, making and selling cosmetics that nobody’s ever heard of or really cares about.”

Donald looked at me alertly, his eyes narrowing slightly, and after a split second he said, “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” I asked swiftly, noting the sudden change in his demeanor, and wondering what bombshell he was about to drop.

“About Lowell’s, and what’s happened to the company?”

I shook my head. “How would I know? I spend most of my life shooting pictures of the dead and dying on the battlefronts of the world.”

Donald stood up. “Let’s go to lunch,” he said, suddenly becoming authoritative, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

II

He had intrigued me with his comment about Lowell’s and I tried to pump him as we walked across Beekman Place and out onto First Avenue. But he wouldn’t be drawn, and insisted on telling me about his fiancée, Alexis, whom he wanted me to meet before I returned to Paris.

To shut him up, I finally agreed to this, and hoped Jake wouldn’t mind that I’d invited them to have dinner with us on Friday.

By the time we arrived at Billy’s, a place I liked for its fish and chips and great hamburgers, Donald was all over me like chicken pox, being sweet because of the dinner invitation, no doubt. And everything else I was doing for him.

After hanging up our coats, we were shown to a table in the second room, which I preferred. The restaurant had a warm, attractive publike atmosphere, with bare wood floors and tables covered in red-and-white-checked cloths. Its informality and good food made it a favorite of mine, especially when I was in a hurry and wanted to eat well without a lot of fuss.

Donald said, “Let’s have a glass of white wine to celebrate.”

Frowning, I asked, “Celebrate what?”

“My engagement to Alexis,” he answered, staring at me. “What did you think I meant?”

“I didn’t know,” I said, although it had just struck me that perhaps he was counting his chicks before the hatching, if he was now celebrating his entry into the business world.

When the waitress showed up at our table with the menus, Donald ordered two glasses of dry white wine and took the menu from her, as did I.

Once she had departed to fill the drinks order, he leaned across the table and said, “A lot of siblings wouldn’t tell you this, Val, they’d let you go back to Paris in ignorance. But I’m not like that, and whatever you think, I’ve always loved you. I may not have always liked you, but loved you—yes.”

I stared at him but made no comment. Let him hang himself, I thought, and sat back in the chair, wondering why he was suddenly making these protestations of love for me.

He said, “Don’t look so suspicious. And doubting. I know you think I’m like Mom, but I’m not.”

“Let me go back to Paris in ignorance of what?” I demanded.

“Lowell’s amazing success. The company’s become a gold mine.”

“Lowell’s?”

He started to laugh. “Yes, Lowell’s. They’ve had an amazing success in the last ten years, thanks to Mom. The products are in all of the best stores in New York, and across the—”

“What stores?” I asked, leaning closer, pinning him with my eyes, now riddled with curiosity.

“The best . . . like Bergdorf’s, Saks, Barney’s New York, Neiman Marcus, in fact, Lowell’s products are distributed across the country. The line has become very popular with women in every city in America. Going to take Europe soon.”

“Those little dinky bottles, the homespun creams and lotions,” I exclaimed, totally taken aback by this news.

“Oh, yes, Val, and you shouldn’t sound so disparaging about those dinky bottles and homespun creams, as you call them. That’s part of the success, according to our mother.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.

At this moment the wine materialized, and the waitress asked if we wanted to order. I selected a hamburger medium rare with French fries, and so did Donald. With the lunch order out of the way, he lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said.

“Cheers,” I answered, touching my glass to his. “So, Donald, tell me more.”

“I was just saying that the dinky bottles, as you call them, are not really so dinky. And they haven’t changed much since Amy-Anne started Lowell’s. They’re actually a modern version of the apothecary jar, in miniature of course, with the glass stopper and the plain printed label. And that’s where the homespun bit comes into play. Did you know the labels on the Lowell products haven’t really changed in a hundred years, Val?”

“How could I possibly know that?”

“I guess you couldn’t, and I didn’t either until quite recently.”

“Been doing your research already, then, have you?” I asked, endeavoring to curb the sarcasm that frequently crept into my conversation when talking to my brother. But he missed it, as he so often did; or maybe he merely chose to ignore it.

He replied, “No, I haven’t. But Mom sometimes talks to me about business when I go over to dinner, and she was telling me about a Japanese company recently that wants to import the products to Japan. And the president of this company told her that Japanese women love the plain old-fashioned apothecary bottles and simple printed labels that merely state the product, its purpose, and give the ingredients.”

“You’re kidding me!”

“No, I’m not. It’s funny about the Japanese—do you know hundreds of thousands of them love Early American furniture?”

“What’s that got to do with Lowell’s cosmetics, Donald?”

“Nothing, I was merely making an analogy. But it’s the old-fashioned apothecary bottle and the old-fashioned label that appeals to millions of women here too. Call it nostalgia, confidence in something that looks homemade, whatever . . . it’s part of the secret, Mom says. The old-fashioned packaging apparently works better than ever, and by keeping to the simple bottles and simple labels, she’s managed to keep her costs down. It’s the same with the products . . . by limiting them, she’s kept production costs down too.”

“What do you mean when you say limiting them? I’m not actually following you,” I said.

“Mom told me that when Dad was alive he wanted her to make a lot of other products . . . lipsticks, eye makeup, nail polish, that sort of stuff. But she wouldn’t, she remained faithful to the line created by Amy-Anne. You know, the face, hand, and body creams, shampoos and bath products. That decision has played into the success of Lowell’s today, because her costs have remained fairly reasonable. Also, she hasn’t had to cater to fashion and its changes.” Donald paused, took a big swig of his wine, and finished, “Where she has spent money is on marketing.”

“How the hell did she suddenly turn this company around?” I exclaimed, and shook my head, totally baffled. “When we were little, there were always money problems, money struggles, as I recall.”

“Things weren’t that bad, were they?” Donald muttered, and looked at me questioningly over the rim of his glass.

“I think money was very tight at times,” I responded. “But the only really nasty problem I can remember was when they wanted to let Annie go, and we both became so hysterical in the end, she wasn’t fired. But I have a feeling our grandfather paid her salary for a while.”

“Annie loved us, didn’t she, Val? She was the best nanny.”

“Yes, she was. . . .” I let my sentence trail away, thinking that without Annie Patterson looking after me from birth, I would have probably never survived in that household.

“Anyway, Val, to give you a final definitive answer about Lowell’s success today, let’s say it’s all been in the marketing. Apparently Mom sent it to every top model, every Broadway actress, every movie actress, and every female celebrity she could think of. She had an old-fashioned carpetbag made, filled it with products, and enclosed a handwritten letter on Victorian-style note-paper. It worked, everybody fell for . . . the carpetbag, the dinky bottle, and the homespun products, as you just called them.”

“So she’s making millions?” I said, grinning at him. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

He nodded. “She sure is. She has a mail order catalogue. She’s on the Internet. And Lowell’s has a Web site too. And in about eighteen months, after she’s launched the product in Europe and Japan, I think she’ll go to Wall Street and do an IPO.”

“My God, Donald, our mother’s a veritable tycoon, and I never knew it!” I hoped he’d get my sarcasm, but I could tell he hadn’t.

“I had no idea either. I’ve picked up stuff from her from time to time, but Alexis is a financial journalist, and she’s the one who’s filled me in with a lot of information lately.”

“Do you mean in the last week, Donald?” I asked, eyeing him speculatively.

He shook his head, “No, I don’t. I mean ever since Mom got sick, you know, had the first heart attack.”

“Well, congratulations, Donald darling, I think you’re going to inherit a great company and be very rich.”

“You really mean that, don’t you, Val? I can see you’re not leading me on.”

I stared at him and frowned. “Of course I’m not, why would I?”

He took a deep breath. “When Mom does the IPO next year, or in the year 2000, Lowell’s could bring in between five hundred million to a billion dollars, give or take few hundred thou.”

I gaped at Donald, unable to speak. Taking a deep breath, I said at last, “I’m gobsmacked, Donald, utterly and completely gobsmacked!”

He laughed, but I think more from the expression on my face than the words that left my mouth. When he stopped laughing, he said, “But I don’t know what gobsmacked means, Val.”

“Smacked in the mouth, in the parlance of the British,” I explained.

III

It was after lunch that Donald broached the subject of seeing our mother. “Please, Val, let’s go and visit her now. Get this worked out properly, before you go back to Paris.”

“Donald, I’ll give you the company when I inherit it, I’ve already told you that half a dozen times. I don’t wish to see her.”

“She said she wanted to see you again, to explain something, to come clean with you, I guess. So let’s go up to the apartment. And at the same time, maybe you can reiterate your feelings about Lowell’s. And me, I mean.”

I looked across the table at him and saw him very objectively for a split second. He really was a handsome young man, twenty-six and very virile-looking. He has movie-star good looks, I thought, just like our mother. He wasn’t so hard to take. If I were honest with myself, I guess I’d always been jealous of him because she had favored him above me and spoiled him. And he was a bit devious and gossipy, but not a bad young man, just human, really, like all of us.

I sighed and shook my head, and then I said slowly, “Donald, you can’t imagine what a hardship it is for me to go and see her, really you can’t.”

“I guess I can,” he answered swiftly. “I admit she wasn’t always . . . loving with you, Val.”

“So, at long last you’re finally admitting that, Donald.”

“I’ve always known it,” he said, sounding defensive. “But we haven’t really had a heart-to-heart conversation since we’ve been grown-up, have we?”

“Only too true.”

“Look, I realize what a pain in the ass she can be,” he said, “and how painful it is for you to see her, but surely it’ll help if I come with you.”

“Actually, Donald, what do you want me to say to your mother when we get there?”

“Our mother,” he corrected me. “And I want you to ask her to have some sort of paper drawn. A paper that says if you want, you can give the company to me and that I, a man, can inherit it.”

“You mean a legal document, is that it?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Don’t you trust me?” I asked, swallowing a smile. I was playing with him now, and that wasn’t really fair.

“Yeah, sure I do, that’s one thing about you, Val, you’ve always been straight. But don’t you think there ought to be a document? Look, God forbid something happens to you in your job, then what? I mean, who gets the company?”

“You have a point there,” I said, leaning back in the chair, sipping my coffee. If I got killed covering a war somewhere, my mother would have to leave the company to Donald. “You,” I said at last. “You would, Donald, or, rather, your wife.” I paused and looked into the distance, then muttered, “Gee, I wonder how they work that out when there’s a divorce?”

Donald said, “I guess there’s never been one. Maybe we should ask Mom.”

“No,” I said, coming to a decision. “Let’s not ask her anything. Let’s go up there to see her, present a united front, and explain that we think there should be something in writing about me wanting you to have the company. Just in case I die in the line of duty as a war photographer.”

“Okay,” he said, and looked at me curiously. “I wonder what it is she wants to explain to you.”

“I don’t really need to hear what she has to say, Donald. I’m just going up there to make sure she does right by you.”

“Why? Why do you care about me, Val?” he asked, looking at me intently, frowning.

“Because you’re my little brother and I loved you a lot when you were a small boy, and besides, it’s your right. We’re almost in the year 2000 and we’ve got to move on from a rule made in 1898. It was a good rule, I’m certainly on the side of women, but it needs—”

“Updating,” Donald volunteered.

IV

Donald took out his cell phone and called our mother, asked if we could come over, made a date for three-thirty, and then clicked off.

“That’s all set,” he said, slipping the phone into his jacket pocket. “Let’s have another coffee.”

“Okay.” I glanced at my watch. “We do have a little time to waste. So tell me some more about Lowell’s.”

“Such as what?”

“Well, you’ve talked about the packaging and the marketing, but what about the products? I guess they’re good, that people do like them.”

He nodded. “According to Mom, they do, and I guess the success of the company proves that. Alexis loves them; she says the creams are very rich and very effective.”

“You said Lowell’s will be launched in Europe. Where exactly?”

“London and Paris to begin with. Mom hasn’t really said. Listen, I don’t know as much as you think I do. She’s never said anything about Lowell’s to me in the past, I’ve only just found things out since she had the heart attack, I told you that. Plus Alexis has filled me in a bit, since she’s studied the financial side of all the cosmetic companies for her job.”

“I realize all that, Donald. When we get there I want to get straight to the point with our mother. You know, let’s talk about the legal document for you right away. I don’t want to start discussing other stuff.”

“I understand. We’ll go in and out. And there’ll be no discussions, no explanations from her.”

“Correct. I don’t want to hear anything at all. And if she starts yammering at me, I won’t listen.”

But how wrong I was about that.

V

My mother was still under doctor’s orders to take it easy, so she wasn’t spending as much time at her office as she usually did.

When we arrived at the Park Avenue apartment, the door was opened by a maid in uniform.

“Hi, Florina,” Donald said, nodding to her as he struggled out of his overcoat. “This is my sister, Valentine Denning.”

The young woman stared at me with interest, smiled, took my coat, and said, “Pleased to meet you, Miss Denning.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Florina.”

A moment later my mother was walking into the foyer, looking staggeringly beautiful in a black wool jumpsuit trimmed with velvet with a large pearl pin on one shoulder. She was wearing very high heels, which made her even taller, but then, so was I today, and I matched her in height.

Her jet-black hair was pulled back in a chignon, and her face looked all cheekbones and eyes, and I wondered unexpectedly how she had ever coped with this amazing beauty. Had it been a burden? Had it ruined her life? I had no idea. It suddenly struck me that I knew so little about this woman who had given birth to me.