The Café, Santa Barbara, 1996
Maddie was feeling excessively glum when she arrived at the Café to meet her sister for dinner. The weather did not cheer her. “The good ole Santa Barbara weather forecast,” she muttered as she stood outside the side entrance of the restaurant and gazed up at the slow but relentless moisture moving in from the gray ocean beyond. “Coastal fog and low clouds during the night and morning hours, followed by hazy sun in the afternoons. Repeat over and over.”
The Café was not yet crowded. The after-work folks were departing and the dinner crowd had not yet arrived in force. Maddie settled into her favorite cushioned corner table, and was somewhat cheered when her favorite waiter, Enoch, promptly appeared to take her drink order. She had traveled a great deal and known many good service professionals, but this handsome young man with his careful grooming and charming accent was a standout.
“I’ll have a SKYY vodka martini. Up with a twist,” she ordered with a smile. Enoch nodded as if he entirely approved of her selection, and hurried off to fill it at the crowded bar across the room.
Maddie surveyed the room with interest. An assorted group of middle-aged men dressed in everything from fine business suits to old T-shirts from septic system service companies were settled at a large table, drinking red wine, gin, and exotic cranberry vodka mixtures. They were arguing about California’s Workman’s Compensation laws in vigorous, loud voices. Their arguments quickly shifted to arrangements for a weekend golf game and somebody’s birthday trip to Catalina Island.
A very famous writer with his signature red curl hanging down from a leather cap sat quietly at a table near the window with his blonde wife. Maddie knew this man slightly from many conferences, but decided not to intrude on them tonight. She really, really wanted to ask him why he wore several strips of newspaper binding material on his wrist. “I’ll write that one off for a mystery,” she thought. “He probably wouldn’t tell me anyway.”
Four somewhat tipsy but elegant matrons gossiped with animation at a round table by the bar. They waved their abundantly jeweled fingers and patted their silvery bobbed hair to emphasize some of their better pronouncements regarding morality in this terrible day and age.
Enoch delivered her martini. “Will you be having dinner tonight?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes—my sister will be joining me.”
Enoch nodded thoughtfully as if she had just said something meaningful, and went to get glasses of water, salsa, and chips for her. “God but he’s good,” thought Maddie with an inward smile. “He makes me feel more important than the publicist for the Letterman Show!”
Kate came in the front door of the restaurant, pausing briefly to chat with an elderly, ragged-faced man seated at the end of the bar. Maddie was always amazed with her sister’s ability to strike up conversations with absolutely anybody she encountered.
“He does voice-overs for cartoons. I love hearing him talk about filmmaking,” Kate explained, dropping wearily into the chair across their table. “I am sorry that I am late, Mad. Too many phone calls and too much traffic.”
“No problem. I was checking out the locals,” Maddie laughed in reply.
“Hmm … this place is often like a private club. Except, of course, that almost anybody can come in here and feel comfortable.” Kate smiled when Enoch approached, and ordered a glass of Chardonnay.
“I talked with Geoff just before I left the office. He gives you his greetings and says that the bouillabaisse recipe is on your email!”
“Ah, good. Someday I actually might cook again,” admitted Maddie. “Too bad that he broke up with that—er, what was his partner’s name? The one who ran the restaurant?”
“Sheesh, Mad … I don’t remember now. Must be getting old. I do wish that Geoff would move back home to Santa Barbara. Aunt Bette and I go up to visit Geoff when we can, but she’s not really up to it—and I can’t afford the time …,” mourned Kate.
“Maybe he doesn’t think this is home. There are lots of things in Santa Barbara that are hard to take at times.”
“Such as?”
“Family,” said Maddie. “I can’t solve everybody’s problems here. Then again, God only knows what the girls are doing in San Diego. And Alistair spoils Diana and Winston sooooo badly in London.”
They spent a few minutes catching up on offspring stories before the shadow of their brother, Geoff, came back. “Geoff is dying and we can’t do anything about that—we have to make his time as pleasant as possible,” mused Maddie. “I’ll get to San Francisco next week. I know—I’ll take him the stuff you wrote about our family … and by the way, that was some decent writing, little sis. Even though these folks are pretty boring. They didn’t do anything memorable. Are you sure that they’re the right ancestors?”
“Alas, yes,” replied Kate. “Don’t feel too depressed about it, Maddie. Most of the people who have ever lived—no, almost all of the people who have ever lived left nothing remarkable about them. Maybe they were interesting folks, but time erases most of what they were.”
“So, we just have us,” sighed Maddie. “We just have who we are to remember who they were. Hey, I like that. Must incorporate it into the book …”
Kate suddenly sat up straighter and groaned. “Don’t look just yet, but James is here.”
Maddie immediately turned to gaze at the rear entrance of the restaurant. Sure enough, it was their brother, James, who stood surveying the room. She had not seen him in nearly a year, and although he had grown rounder and lost some hair, he still exuded a restless vitality. He was dressed casually but expensively in khaki designer slacks and a dark green polo shirt, and his expression changed from one of composed indifference to unpleasant shock when he saw his sisters. It took a moment before he began to walk toward their table.
“Maddie, when did you get here?” he demanded. Maddie rose and placed a quick kiss on his cheek.
“Dear James, nice to see you too!” she giggled. “Put on weight, have we?”
James frowned and looked at Kate accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me that our sister was coming? I could have arranged something …”
“Yeah—speeches for me to give at your clubs! You know, the ‘my sister the best-selling author’ bullshit,” sneered Maddie. “C’mon, James, sit down and have a drink with us. Tell me about Eleanor and the kids.”
“I’m meeting some people,” said James quickly, scanning the room again. “But they’re not here, so I guess that I have time for a quick one.” He sat down next to Kate on the cushioned bench. Enoch, ever attentive, appeared immediately to take James’s order for Gentleman Jack whiskey on the rocks.
“Katie, I’ve scheduled a meeting with the attorneys for next Tuesday. If you’re still here, Maddie, you might want to come. You know that Katie wants to dissolve the trust and distribute the assets.”
“She knows,” said Kate wearily.
“What do you think about this?” asked James. “Egad Maddie, lay off of the martinis for a while. You’re looking old.”
“Dear James, always so supportive,” said Maddie with forced sweetness, signaling Enoch for another drink. “Actually, I think that it is time for the trust to be dissolved. Besides, Geoff—I mean, you do know about your brother?”
“I know,” said James shortly. “Damned, stupid fags … spreading disease with their weird sex stuff—”
“James!” snapped Kate quickly. “Don’t start this.”
“My, my brother, but you have become more of a bigot than I remembered,” sighed Maddie. “Never try to teach a pig to talk. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
James glowered at her. “So how are your husbands, Mad? Where are your kids?”
“Let’s not do this now,” suggested Kate wearily. “Look, our brother is dying and the three of us are sitting here getting blasted and chewing on each other.”
“Aren’t families wonderful?” said Maddie sourly. “So, James, what do you think of our family history? Has Kate told you about her work seeking our ancestors?”
James took a long drink of his whiskey. “She has. Kind of a waste of time, actually. They’re all dead.”
“Nope,” responded Kate. “They’re all right here.” She lifted her hand and surveyed it solemnly. “They are right here in the cells of our bodies, James. What they were is here.” She poked him lightly in his ample stomach.
“Hmmmph,” he responded. “You girls have gone nuts. Too bad that these ancestors didn’t have the knack of hanging on to their property.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Maddie declared.
“Well, gosh, Mad, I’m sorry that I’ll never live up to any of the studly heroes in one of your pieces of literature!” snapped James, glancing around the room again and silently praying for his business appointment to arrive. He loved his sisters in an absent sort of way, but was not in the mood to deal with them right now. Maddie began to explain about their something great-great ancestors, who had struggled on tobacco lands and didn’t have a lot of money.
“Can’t you throw in some noble ancestors? So why didn’t the family hang on to the lands?” he asked after listening for longer than he wished.
“Things were different then, James. The rich people were buying up the big tracts of land and with the population expansion, many sons had to leave the state,” explained Kate. “Or province, I should say since Maryland wasn’t actually a state until after—”
“Spare me,” interrupted James quickly. He finished his drink in one gulp. “My friends are here … gotta go. Call me tomorrow, girls, and we’ll arrange a family dinner or something.”
James was gone as quickly as he had arrived. Kate and Maddie looked at each other and laughed. “Some things never change,” said Maddie.
“Exactly my point,” replied Kate. “Okay, we have to make a decision now, Mad.”
“And that is?”
“Food. Let’s order.”
James Cobham was meeting two men from New York who were visiting Santa Barbara with an eye to buying one of the major beachfront hotels. James was having dinner with them as a special favor to one of his partners. He was wondering how long he would have to spend with them before breaking the unpleasant news that nothing was for sale on any terms that they might find acceptable. Even if something were for sale, the special perils of doing business in Santa Barbara would probably be too discouraging.
They ordered drinks—Rob Roys and Manhattans. Eastern drinks, thought James. Santa Barbarans tended toward wines, martinis, good beer, and premium liquors taken straight. As usual, the conversation began with a discussion of Santa Barbara’s beauty, strategic coastal placement, and expensive real estate prices. James could have this conversation in his sleep.
He found himself watching Kate and Maddie as they consulted the waiter in ordering their dinner. Maddie’s glowing, blonde, pastel self was such a contrast to Kate’s small, dark, and intense demeanor. They didn’t look like sisters. They thought that they knew so much, especially Katie with her high-flying ecological morality.
James was not as ignorant as his sisters thought about his family’s history. When living with his Aunt Bette, he had overheard her discussing it with their Aunt Blanche. He had, in fact, written a lengthy paper in college about the tobacco business in early America. Although his paper was centered on merchandising and oceanic trade, fragments from the documents of that time and the difficult lives that were described in them had intrigued him. The early settlers lived in a very rough world filled with hard work, brutal manners, a lack of solid social structure, and high rates of disease and death.
James wondered if his sisters ever realized how difficult it was to be a man. In their ancestors’ days, men performed the endless physical labor, had responsibility for supporting the family, and put their bodies on the line for the honor of family and country. The men who came to the Chesapeake in the seventeenth century wanted to get rich and return to England. The way to do that was to obtain land and grow tobacco, Sir Walter Raleigh’s gift to and curse on the western world.
Land was easily attained in the early years of the century. Kings and lords gave grants to their favorites or people that they owed money. They sent ships and settlers to America with the express purpose of making money and ensuring that the Spanish and French would not be able to do so. The hardships were many, and most of the early settlers died of fevers, dysentery, and Indians.
James, now quite bored with his companions, found himself wondering about those people who were crazy enough to come to a new continent in small wooden sailing ships. He also mused about the present-day value of the acreage that his ancestors once held in Maryland. “We’d be billionaires,” he thought.
Land in Maryland became scarcer as more people arrived from England and Scotland and France and Germany prior to the Revolution. Tobacco was a difficult crop, requiring endless attention from planting in February and March, keeping insects and animals from eating the sprouts, and protecting the sprouts from freezes. Seedlings of tobacco were transplanted in April—often three thousand or more seedlings per acre of land. The growing plants were hoed, pruned, picked clean of worms and insects—endless hours of backbreaking work. Perils such as molds, droughts, and hailstorms could ruin a crop while the planter watched helplessly. If all went well, the plants were cut in August, and carried to shade structures to dry in the warm autumn air. By October, the leaves would be stripped from the plants and finally pressed into great hogsheads weighing over a thousand pounds each for transportation. This was preferably done by water, and most plantations had their own docks on the many creeks and rivers in the Chesapeake.
After all of the planter’s labor, he would send his product off to England, and the British merchants would decide what price to pay for the tobacco. By November, the planter might have enough money to pay some of his debts and even buy necessities for his family, indentured servants, and slaves. Wealth begat wealth if used wisely, and the acquisition of more land and more servants was a necessity.
But my ancestors weren’t wise, thought James, heartily damning three hundred years of careless heritage. Only Grandpa Cobham had any financial sense, but I was just the younger son. Old Geoff was the chosen heir.
Tobacco wore out the land quickly, and prudent, fortunate planters acquired vast tracts of land with an eye on future development. Poorer men and younger sons had to seek out new regions to farm and other means of supporting themselves.
James wondered if these men of early America ever had a night of sleep without worry. How did they ever find time to court girls, marry, and raise families? How did they have the courage to take these families into regions where no white people had ever lived? James himself was not lacking in courage, and rarely knew a full night’s sleep these days. However, he was not generally worried about a tainted water supply or some indignant native taking his scalp.
“I’m a younger son,” he thought. “I tried to make my own way in business, and I haven’t done too badly. Sure, the trust that Dad left us is in a mess, but part of that is because he left so much of it tied up in silly conservative investments.” James glanced again at his younger sister, who was drinking another glass of wine and talking rapidly to Maddie.
“Katie is a good woman,” thought James. But she was too involved in intellectual head-trips and fighting losing battles to make it in the world. Maddie, well, Maddie was too much in the world to really understand it. As for elder brother Geoff … well, he took himself totally out of their world when he came out many years ago. James, the younger brother, had been left with all of the responsibility. He both enjoyed and resented it.
He had been the one who paid all of the bills and saw to the sale of his father’s property. He made decisions about moving money when bonds matured, and worried about inflation. True, he had taken some very bad advice from golf partners on investments abroad and those commodity futures … James winced at the memory of watching hundreds of thousands of dollars simply vanish in the wild swings of the financial markets, which might have made them rich if—
“As somebody once said, there are no ‘what ifs’ in history,” he murmured. His two companions looked up from their menus inquisitively. “Just thinking out loud,” he said genially. “We have a particularly rich past here in Santa Barbara. As you know, we run the gamut of Chumash Indian, Spanish and American settlement …” James began his discussion of Santa Barbara’s history, something that he could recite from memory. They had never grown tobacco here, and his ruminations on the past moved firmly back to modern California.
Maddie was caught between ordering broiled fish and salad, which were on her diet, and a sizzling plate of enchiladas, chile rellenos, rice, beans, and guacamole—which was definitely not on anybody’s diet. “The hell with it,” she said, dropping her menu. “Give me the number four combination plate with corn tortillas. Add a Corona to that.”
Kate shook her head with an amused smile. “Madeleine, m’ dear, not good for us at our age.”
“Bull,” said Maddie. “I don’t get here very often. Now order yourself some ice water and celery or whatever you usually eat.”
Kate laughed. “I’ll have the broiled salmon, and add an enchilada onto the plate.” She paused, trying to ignore her tight skirt. “With refried beans and corn tortillas.”
“Look at our brother over there—playing Mr. Jovial Businessman. He probably wouldn’t know a tobacco leaf from an asparagus fern.”
Kate shrugged. “James is smarter than we give him credit for. Not everybody is terribly interested in his or her ancestors. He had lots of things to worry about with the dissolution of the trust and running his own business. I hear that our sister-in-law, Eleanor, is also pushing to build a bigger house for entertaining. You can’t be too lavish in Santa Barbara, though—it must be tasteful and understated and hideously expensive.”
“Give me good old New York excess every time. Maybe there is somebody in our past who is responsible for me,” she said with a brief sad smile. “God knows that I don’t understand myself most of the time.”
“I think that I wrote you as Rebecca,” said Kate.
“Nope. I always know what I want to do. She really doesn’t.”
“Rebecca led a pretty confined existence. You might have been more like her if you’d live in another time.”
“Possibly—” sighed Maddie. “Thank God that I don’t.”
“You’re a verb, Mad,” replied Kate with a smile.
“What?”
“You just keep moving, dear one. You avoid life’s pitfalls by constant motion. Ergo, you’re a verb. Never mind …”
“You’re getting head-trippy on me again, Katie. So Rebecca found true love and they lived on and on …,” said Maddie. “That ole black magic, which forces us to reproduce ourselves, caught up with them. What a nasty trick!”
“Sixty million years of primate evolution is hard to ignore,” said Kate, pulling the lemon from a fresh glass of iced tea.
“Pathetic. Give us a warm strong man who smiles at us just right with flowers in his hand and we’re on our backs before we know it!”
“Madeleine!” cried Kate in mock outrage. “How dare you speak of something as sacred as true love in this fashion!” she giggled. “It’s a good thing that I’ve switched to iced tea or I’d have to pick up some fellow at the bar to drive me home.”
“Katherine!” retorted Maddie. “How shocked our patrician family would be if you did such a thing. Then again, if you picked up somebody at the bar, our dear brother might have to defend your honor.”
Kate could not imagine James challenging anyone to a duel, especially not to defend her honor. “A lot of men died defending their family’s honor.”
“How stupid,” sighed Maddie. “Even though I write about duels in my books, I still think that they’re dumb. I know, I know, women are property and have to be defended. Check out gang warfare … That old primate instinct again—what sad creatures we really are.”
Both sisters were suddenly silent and morose when their dinner arrived.
“Not eating, ladies?” James slid into the seat next to Kate, holding a glass of red wine in his hand. “All forlorn?”
“Your vocabulary has improved, James,” said Kate sourly.
Maddie picked up her fork and stabbed at her refried beans. “We’ve been talking about stupid primate mating rituals.”
“Well, let’s see … you’ve had several husbands and quite a few kids between the two of you. I don’t have to explain the facts.”
“You’re in a remarkably good mood tonight, brother. Did you close the deal?”
“Nope. Didn’t even try it on this one. I’m too involved with the Baccarat Hotel. Looks as if they’re gonna let us build it,” replied James with a satisfied smack of his lips, thinking of the lavish billion-dollar resort shortly to rise on the coast north of Santa Barbara. “Here’s to me! The right parties, the right donations, just working the system. You’ve gotta make the politicians feel important, and I’m just the person to do it.”
“Humble to the end,” sighed Kate. She lifted her iced tea glass and clicked it against her brother’s wineglass. “Let us all drink to the pathetic nature of the human race.”
“Well, if you two aren’t the damnedest downers in Santa Barbara tonight. I think that I’ll just wander over to the cemetery down the road and cheer myself up.” James began looking around the restaurant, now crowded with diners. Seeing no one that he knew, he turned back to his sisters.
“C’mon ladies, cheer up. I’ll buy you a drink.”
“How generous of you,” mumbled Maddie, her mouth full of chile relleno.
“Just trying to take care of my sisters.”
Kate and Maddie looked at each other and widened their eyes simultaneously. Maddie swallowed, and fanned herself with her red cloth napkin.
“I don’t think that he takes us seriously,” she said with a laugh. “James, do you know that your sister, Katherine, is showing some serious writing talent?”
“Hmmm—all of those old ancestors again,” he said with a sly smile. “Would you believe that the blood of heroic patriots flows in my veins?”
“No,” said his sisters in unison.
He sniffed and pretended to be offended. “I’m going to order some cheesecake.”
“Order some for me, too,” said Kate. “Now, I want to explain about how Samuel and Rebecca might have gotten together.”
“I can’t wait,” said James desperately.