Santa Barbara, 1998
Winter in Santa Barbara is always unpredictable. Sweating, velvet-clad Victorians sing Christmas carols about frosty air beneath hot bright sunlight. Warm “Sundowner” winds might roar down from the Santa Ynez Mountains at night, tearing down decorations and tossing patio furniture about, much to the annoyance of those who have to rise at 2 AM to find their deck chairs floating in the swimming pool. Occasional cold storms from the Aleutians drop temperatures and bring biting rain, adding seasonal ornaments of white snow on the surrounding mountains for a few hours. In an “El Niño” year, tropical moisture from Hawaii might combine with the colder northern air to produce seemingly unending downpours that cause street flooding, landslides, and artesian springs in unlikely places—such as the floor of somebody’s garage. Veteran Santa Barbarans know that if you live anywhere with those nice, rounded sandstone boulders in your yard that you might be in a creek bed, which filled only once every fifty years or so.
Blanche Cobham had always disliked the unpredictable weather in Southern California winters. She complained a great deal about never knowing whether the Christmas turkey would be served fresh from ovens in the great dining room of the Cobham mansion or from a barbeque on a shady area of the patio. When she had her near-fatal heart attack in October, she advised her family that no extreme measures were to be taken to prolong her life. “I want to avoid the uncertainty of another holiday season in Santa Barbara,” she said.
Bette Cobham held her sister’s hand, clutching the cold fingers as if to transfer some of her own life into this fading body. “It wouldn’t be a holiday without you,” she said, somewhat hoarsely.
“Piffle,” said Blanche. “Look at this—I must be dying. James and Kate are both here. If I saw Maddie and my sons, I’d be certain that I was at my own funeral.”
“Your boys were here yesterday,” said James. “You don’t remember?”
Kate kicked him gently. “Let’s not remind her … they upset her.” She pulled James off to a window out of her aunt’s hearing.
“Yeah, because she told them that they were out of the major portion of her will and that most of the money was going to the ‘Happy Corral Horse Rescue Foundation.’ They were livid when they left,” continued James.
“Assholes,” she muttered.
“They’ll challenge the will and probably get some of the cash anyway. Not as if they need it,” added James. “I’ve got to get going.” He moved over to his aunt’s bedside. “Aunt Blanche—I’ve got to leave for some business right now. You rest well and Eleanor will be here later.” He kissed her forehead. “Hope you feel better,” he added lamely.
“You don’t look well, nephew,” responded Blanche with some of her old spark. “You drink too much.”
“Of course I do. Bye, dear.” James kissed Bette on her forehead, but she said nothing. Kate followed James into the hall.
“Did you hear from Maddie?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to call her …”
“Maddie is on her way home from New Orleans. She left a message on my office machine this morning. Said she had trouble using her cell phone from that river cruise that she took with her kids.”
Kate nodded solemnly. “I’ll try to get her tonight. The doctor isn’t sure how long …” She bit her lip. “Can’t believe this.”
James hesitated for a moment. “Did you call our brother?”
She looked at him with some surprise. “That’s an odd question for you to ask. Maybe you should call him.”
“I don’t know what to say to him,” James admitted.
“You say ‘Hello, Geoff.’ This is James and I have to tell you that our Aunt Blanche is dying. I know that you can’t come down to see her right now, but I wanted to tell you and wish you well.” Kate turned away from him to stare out the window at the lavishly landscaped grounds of Casa Dorinda’s nursing facility.
“You call Geoff,” he snapped, and walked away. “I’ve got nothing to say to that queer.” Kate shook her head wearily. She had never understood James’s distaste for Geoff, and their estrangement since Geoff’s homosexuality was revealed. James always felt so responsible for everything—even his brother’s sex life. He anguished over the things that he couldn’t control.
Kate looked back at the door to her aunt’s room. She thought of Aunt Blanche as she told jokes, baked bread, cared for her horses, and argued with her husband and sons. But she had not been too busy to love the two little Cobham girls in the years after their mother died.
“It all ends like this,” Kate thought miserably. “Whatever we are ends like this …” She straightened her shoulders and went back to her aunt’s bedside. Aunt Blanche opened her eyes and peered at her niece in the dim light. “Katie. I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Are you feeling a bit better, Aunt Blanche?” she asked hopefully.
“No. Don’t feel much of anything right now. Probably best that I don’t. This old body is worn out. Bette’s been reading to me—the stuff that you and Maddie and Geoff have been writing about the family. It occurs to me that I’m going to go join them now. So you see, this isn’t just a farewell to you folks here. I’m off to meet those old ones …”
“Not yet, Aunt Blanche. I love you.” Kate had tears brimming and ready to begin the slow slide down her pale cheeks.
“I love you too. Never liked to travel much, not like Bette and Maddie. They’re always off somewhere gadding about.” She closed her eyes for a moment and her breathing paused. “The horses … maybe they’ll be there too. You know, those old folks should know how to take care of my horses, and they should be there waiting for me too. Always thought that it would be the end, you know … dying. No faith.” She sighed and closed her eyes again, drifting off to sleep.
“Oh please, please let her have good dreams. Let her go home to the people she loved. The horses too, I think … mostly the horses,” Kate whispered to nobody in particular.
Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, 1998
“Who is dead? This connection is so bad …” Maddie was shaking her cell phone angrily. She stood in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, buffeted by rushing passengers and assaulted by garbled background announcements.
“Aunt Blanche,” said James. “She died this afternoon. Kate was with her.”
‘Oh no—” moaned Maddie.
“Mom—we’re gonna miss our flight if we don’t get over to gate B-10!” Her son, Winston, tugged at her. Winston was fifteen, bored to tears with this vacation and anxious to get back to Seattle. His sister, Diana, at nineteen, was involved in refreshing her eye makeup and paying no attention to anything around her.
“When is the funeral?” Maddie asked. “Winston, shut up!”
“Two days …,” crackled James through the phone.
“I’ll drop the kids in Seattle … no, maybe we’ll just book a new flight from here.”
“Mommmmmmm …,” whined Winston. She glared at him with her blue eyes flashing. He subsided with a sullen look.
“I’ll get back to you. This is chaos,” said Maddie. “Take care.” She pressed the end button on her phone and regarded her children with impatient eyes. They had spent ten days traveling on a lavish Mississippi riverboat. She wanted her English-born children to see something of America and learn about the past. They had been bored to tears with no television, no telephones, terrible (to them) food, and geriatric entertainment. These tall, fair, and all-too-sophisticated Europeans had many graces and advantages in their lives—but the manners were truly teenage America.
Winston was dressed in slouchy black slacks and a T-shirt with the logo of some obnoxious trendy rock band. He had removed his nose ring at her insistence but kept the piercings in his ears. She hadn’t had the courage to ask about his other body jewelry. Generally, his only other wardrobe was a portable CD player and headphones. Lately he had developed the curious habit of carrying a video camera in front of his face and pretending that the world was a movie that he was directing.
Diana was elegant, even in the skimpy skirt, bared legs, platform shoes, and leather jacket that she wore. The heavy makeup didn’t cheapen this young aristocrat. She was a pretty girl who knew her own mind. When she went back to her university next week, she would slip right into an effortless academic routine and decide which of the many males buzzing around would be allowed to approach her flowering self. “She’s me all over,” thought Maddie idly. “But with more self-confidence and sense of worth than I’ve ever had.”
“So what’s happening? Win is right—we’re going to miss our flight,” Diana said, observing the sudden strange look on her mother’s face.
“My Aunt Blanche died,” Maddie’s voice was flat.
“One of the old ladies in Santa Barbara?” asked Diana, without much interest. “Are we going to catch the plane or not?” she added, stuffing her makeup bag back in her backpack. “I really need to get back to the U.”
Maddie stood silently, blinking and wondering why she felt so numb. “No,” she said at last. “We’re going to the American Airlines ticket window and change our plans. We’re going to Santa Barbara.”
“Mo-ommmmm,” whined Winston. “Why? Because some old lady died …”
“Mother, I really need to get back to start on those term papers …,” began Diana.
“Shut up. Both of you. I’m grieving,” snapped Maddie, lifting her carry-on bag and shoving people aside as she started off toward the ticket offices. Her complaining gifts to posterity followed her, astonished and protesting.
Santa Barbara, 1998
Eleanor Cobham knew how to manage things. The funeral and subsequent reception in honor of Blanche Cobham were events that fit very well into Eleanor’s life. Her house was large and beautiful. Her caterer was efficient and only moderately expensive. She looked well in black. The only problem in this smooth exercise was her husband, James. He was drinking too much and becoming sloppily sentimental.
The funeral itself was very simple and would have been held out of doors if weather permitted. However, a cold rain was falling, and the service was held at the mortuary since Blanche had followed no particular religion.
The bad weather made for a bit of inconvenience—after all, in Santa Barbara, people rummaged through their closets for old umbrellas and raincoats that had not been worn since somebody’s last trip to Scotland. They all landed on furniture in Eleanor’s elegant entry hall. She ordered extra rugs on the tiled foyer. Heaven forbid that somebody should slip and sue them. She had fireplaces going to give the rather sterile rooms a bit of cheer. Brandy and rum were served with coffee and tea to give the guests some inner comfort. She admitted that, with the exception of James, the Cobham family was acquitting itself well.
Aunt Bette looked frail and weary, but she sat erect in an armchair near the fire, holding her dead sister’s silver-headed cane. Madeleine stood beside her, looking absolutely elegant in a black suit with her blonde hair severely twisted on top of her head. She was wearing pearls that looked extremely expensive. Diana and Winston Smythe were standing behind their mother, dressed properly in new black clothes and showing the traditional British “stiff upper lips” amid all of these American strangers. Both Aunt Bette and Maddie were attended by a steady stream of interested well-wishers and folks anxious to meet the somewhat famous Madeleine Cobham.
Kate wore dark gray, and Eleanor could glimpse a flash of green when she tossed her shining dark hair. “Those must be Anne Gowan’s emerald earrings,” she thought enviously. James told her that his sisters had inherited a couple of valuable family jewels. Eleanor had to admit that Kate’s green eyes would be greatly enhanced by the jewels if she just styled her hair more becomingly
Kate’s ex-husband, Jerome, sat beside his former wife, sipping brandy. He was really a very handsome man, impeccably dressed in black and still tanned from his Spanish sojourn. Beside them stood their son, Christopher, looking uncomfortable in a dark suit and tie. He could be a handsome kid when he filled out a bit, thought Eleanor.
James hung around in the dining room, ostensibly to serve guests. Eleanor knew that he wanted to be handy to the liquor, but her fears were somewhat eased when she saw that he was talking with the first district supervisor of the county and two members of the Santa Barbara City Council. James would probably maintain some dignity with those folks. He very much wanted their approval of his development project on the beachfront.
She was glad that brother, Geoffrey, had not come to the funeral. It would have been simply awful to have a skeletal AIDS victim in this room. He would make people very uncomfortable, and she herself wasn’t too sure that AIDS might not be transmitted if she allowed her children near their uncle. Geoffrey was much better off in his hospital in San Francisco, although she had heard that he was improving with new treatments.
Eleanor was not entirely happy in her marriage. James had been everything she thought she wanted in a husband—reliable, attractive, rich, educated, and well-connected in Santa Barbara. He had aged into a husband she really didn’t want any more—reliable, overweight, rich, well-connected, and depressed. Well, the children were almost grown, and she had her charity work, real estate business, and golf tournaments. James didn’t care too much what she did, and that suited her very well.
Aunt Bette was a Santa Barbara legend, rich and opinionated. Eleanor always wondered what she was going to do with her money when she died—but it seemed a bit trashy to inquire. She and James really didn’t need money, but then again they would never make it into the echelon of the very rich in Santa Barbara.
Aunt Blanche’s sons had left right after the funeral. Eleanor thought them unpleasant and boring. She wondered if Aunt Blanche had really left no money to anybody or anything other than her beloved horse charities. Eleanor had not been born into a rich family, but she was a Santa Barbaran by birth. She understood money, and the first rule of money in this city was to pretend that it didn’t matter. Of course it did matter, it mattered terribly. But concerns with wealth made one appear cheap. That is one reason why James and Eleanor had taken on the entire expense of this reception. Bette, of course, could easily afford to contribute to the costs of the caterers and valet parking, but it never occurred to them to ask her. After all, the old lady was grieving for her sister, but she might think again of her own mortality and remember these classy relatives in a will.
Eleanor finished surveying family members, noted that the caterers were doing a competent job, and decided that the mood was sufficiently enhanced that she could begin discussing a golf game tomorrow with some of her friends. The Weather Channel said that there would be no more rain.