IN THE AFTERMATH OF the Murrow show, the cards and letters and gifts had poured in for the coming baby. Exactly five months from the date of the Murrow show, the Kohles heralded the birth of a darling baby girl: Cadeau Kohle. In reality, Cadeau was now six months old, but she had been two months premature. She was still very small. Within a few weeks, when they began to receive callers, it was impossible to tell that she had not been a newborn. She was simply a baby, an unusually pretty, alert baby, with a little fuzz of silky red hair and perfect, rosy little lips.
“Isn’t she just like a little rosebud!” cooed their guests, as Harry and Lily, looking on, nearly burst with pride.
The weather was now growing cool and so, as soon as Lily was “recovered” from the rigors of her confinement, they closed The Meadows for the season and went back to Manhattan.
The tiny “gift” was put down in a Directoire cradle padded in white satin and tufted with tiny pink roses. A graceful swan held aloft a drift of sheer white organdy tied with an enormous pink bow, from which cascaded slender ribbons.
On the day of Cadeau’s naming ceremony, Lily was filled with excitement as she dressed. Before, the ceremonies for the children had somehow been so forlorn, with Harry still a pariah from his family; the elder Kohles attended but seemed distant and grim. The wound of her parents’ loss had still been new then, and despite their neglect she had felt intense sadness that they were not there to see their grandchildren.
But this day she felt wholly joyous. When Harry walked into her dressing room and saw her standing in front of the mirror, he stopped short, overcome. She wore a stunning green silk suit which brought out the color of her eyes, and a small satin toque adorned with violets. A delicate veil hung from the brim.
Holding her at arm’s length, he said, “Lily, you look magnificent.”
Then he took a box from his inner pocket and opened it, revealing a shimmering double strand of pearls with a diamond clasp whose facets caught and splintered the early-morning light.
“Darling, how lovely!” Lily cried. “They’re exquisite!”
“Not as exquisite as you are, Lily.” Taking her into his arms, he said softly, “Nothing is too good for you.” They held each other for a long moment before going out to greet Harry’s parents.
Benjamin and Elise Kohle had been overjoyed at the news of a new grandchild and felt this to be an extra blessing bestowed upon them in their advanced years.
They looked very distinguished today. Benjamin was slightly bent with age, but his silver mane was still magnificent, and his dark suit, though of an old-fashioned cut, impeccable. Elise looked regal in a blush-rose silk dress, along with matching accessories and her heirloom pearl-and-diamond jewelry. A small cloche hat covered with egret feathers set off her snow-white hair and a sable coat protected her against the cold.
Françoise brought in Cadeau, clad in the same silk and lace robes Harry himself had worn. The naming ceremony was not private, as those of Jeremy, Drew, Randy, and Melissa had been. It was held at the cathedral-like Temple Ben Israel, with its beautiful stained-glass windows and mahogany pews, where generations of Kohles had worshipped.
There were myriad guests, but somehow the ceremony itself remained touching and intimate. As Lily stood with the baby, she could not help but offer up a silent prayer of thanks to Melissa. At the same time, she felt an intense sadness—her daughter had deprived herself of the pure joy of this baby.
As quickly as they came to her, she dismissed those thoughts. This was a day to rejoice and be glad.
The reception overflowed the Kohle home, and what Harry and Lily felt was indeed for the world to see.
They were so busy accepting congratulations and best wishes that there was little time for them to talk, but in the late afternoon there came a moment when they found themselves together in a quiet corner. Looking at her with love in his eyes, Harry clinked his champagne glass with her. “To you, darling. The greatest gift God ever sent me.”
Standing nearby, Ellis observed the scene. His expression remained unchanged, though his heart was pained. He could not hear Harry’s words, but it didn’t matter. The way Harry looked down at Lily, the gesture of homage, their obvious closeness said it all. Their new intimacy had little to do with any pretense they had concocted for Cadeau’s sake.
Ellis didn’t know why this new turn in the Kohles’ relationship surprised him; after all, he had seen this coming all along. Lily’s deep sense of loyalty was easy to revive, it seemed. After all, he thought bitterly, this was the second time Harry had strayed, only to beg forgiveness, and be forgiven.
The advent of Cadeau seemed to seal the Kohles’ fate. Ellis’s chance to have Lily to love and cherish was probably forever gone.
You’re a bloody fool, Ellis Knox, he thought bitterly. The only chance you had was when Harry and Lily were living apart. And what the hell did you do with that opportunity? You bided your time; you didn’t romance her; you were a chivalrous goddamned gentleman—and look where that chivalry has gotten you!
Harry Kohle had the devil’s own luck; he had needed no magic wand. This baby who just appeared at the critical moment without Harry’s having to lift a finger. No, all Harry had done was come up with his zany plan. And even then, Ellis had done absolutely nothing to intercede.
Unable to bear the sight of the two of them together any longer, he turned away, flagged a passing waiter, and said curtly, “Bring me a double Scotch—straight up.”
After Cadeau’s momentous “birth” into the world, Harry and Lily’s lives began to settle into a new pattern. For the first time ever, they were completely one. Harry began work on a new novel, but he felt no great urgency or passion about it. Meanwhile, Lily continued with her charity work, and although it kept her busy, she was not nearly as involved as she had been at the times of the Spring Balls she had chaired before. More than anything, she devoted herself to Harry and little Cadeau.
Harry and Lily did not try to recapture their old relationship; instead, they forged a new companionship tempered by mutual respect as well as love. At the same time, in the back of their minds dwelt the memory of their past mistakes. They trod softly in reminiscing. As well as joy, there was still much pain in their past. But one thing—if unspoken—remained clear: Nothing was more important than what they now had—not a book or a prize or a lecture tour or a committee. And neither would go anywhere without the other.
It seemed that finally there was no blight on their happiness, no fatal flaw that would doom them when they felt more sure. Having come through all the hills and valleys, Lily would never have believed that life could reach such a blissful mode.
They talked of Cadeau’s future. They would enroll her in a girls’ school in New York—she was not to be sent to boarding school. They would take her to see the lions at the zoo. If she liked them, perhaps they would take her on a safari in Africa once she was a little older. She seemed musically inclined—they must find a piano teacher for her.
And they went on and on, dreaming their happy dreams, little suspecting the next turn in their fortunes.
Harry’s cough had improved slightly after his return from Paris, and he had decided not to see Dr. Simon after all. Summer had come and the warmth had helped him breathe more easily. By the next winter, when he had begun to hack again, he told Lily that it was just his chronic bronchitis. But the next summer had brought little relief. Harry had taken to drinking bottle after bottle of cough syrup to quell the persistent sound. In the fall, however, the violence of the paroxysms was such that he could no longer hide them from Lily.
“See the doctor, Harry!” she commanded. “You sound terrible—surely there’s something he can prescribe.”
“Don’t worry about it, Lily. I know that it sounds bad, but there’s nothing really wrong.”
Once in a while, he wondered if that was true, or whether he simply disliked the thought of the stern lecture he would certainly get from Doc Simon. Three years ago, the doctor had flatly ordered him to give up smoking, but he certainly wasn’t going to give it up, no matter what. He had simply smoked for too long. The truth was that these medicos loved to give orders. No one had ever proved that smoking was bad for you.
But one night, long after Lily had fallen asleep next to him, he was overcome by such a fit of coughing that he got up and lurched into the bathroom so as not to disturb her. And there it was that he stared in disbelief into the basin, where bright red blood and sputum spattered the porcelain. Hanging on to the rim, hardly able to catch his breath, he squeezed his eyes shut as the implications hit home: cancer.
Beads of perspiration rolled down his back. Lung cancer—inoperable, incurable, the wasting away, the helplessness, the intolerable pain at the end. And the timing, so incredibly bad.
When he had lost Lily before, he would have said that life was hardly worth living—but now, when he was on top of the world, he wanted to live more than ever before.
God damn it! Why now? he raged. And how on earth was he going to break the news to Lily?
Harry didn’t sleep anymore that night, and by nine o’clock the next morning, he was in Nate Simon’s office.
By noon, after his battery of exams, he was dressed again and was sitting in Nate’s well-appointed office, smoking one cigarette after another.
“Well?” Harry blurted put anxiously, as the other man seated himself behind his desk.
Nate Simon took off his horn-rimmed glasses, folded them onto his desk, and looked at Harry. It was always difficult to tell a patient news like this, even harder when it was a man you had known all your life. But there was no way around the harsh truth: There probably wasn’t one damned thing he could do to save Harry’s life. Harry was his age, not even fifty, with everything to live for: beautiful wife, new baby, all the success anyone could dream of.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Harry, I think you already know what I have to say.”
Harry nodded.
“I’m going to schedule you for surgery tomorrow morning at seven-thirty. I’ve got a top man in thoracic surgery to operate.”
“How bad is it, Doc? Give it to me straight.”
But Harry knew even before Nate Simon spoke by the way he shook his head. “It’s bad, Harry, I won’t lie to you. There’s a large mass on the chest X ray in the left lung.”
“And my chances?” Harry asked, knuckles white as he braced himself, clutching the chair.
Nate hesitated. “Well, they won’t know for sure until they go in, but it’s right at the base of the lobe. It looks as if it has invaded the mediastinum. We’ll know more tomorrow.”
But if it was, he was going to die.
Even though Harry had thought he was prepared for the worst, Nate’s words were a blow. Harry realized that for however much he’d steeled himself for the worst, he had still been hoping against hope that he didn’t have cancer.
“God, Nate,” he asked unsteadily, “how am I going to tell Lily? Everything’s going so well, we have a new baby. Things are better than they have been in years.”
“Do you want me to tell her?”
“No—no … I’d better do it.”
After he had left Nate’s office, he walked aimlessly until he finally came to Central Park. He sank onto a bench and looked around him. The Great Lawn was so green, the first crocuses and daffodils were in bloom. Harry ruefully thought of the opening words of The Redemption of Archie Sanger: “If I could know the day before I die …”
All his life, he had been a winner. With few exceptions, his had been a charmed life. Not only had he been blessed with a host of natural talents, he’d been lucky enough to be blessed with such people in his life as Lily and Ellis. Grudgingly, he had to acknowledge he was even lucky to have had the parents he had.
The only tragedy that had ever made him think he had lost God’s favor was Jeremy’s death. As the years had passed, time had helped heal the wounding memories, and the advent of Cadeau had somehow given him a new chance.
What a fool he had been to think that he had gotten away with it all; gotten away with betraying Lily, believing that despite his terrible breach of faith he had a second chance for a wonderful life with her.
Now he knew that his sins had not been forgiven; they had been saved up to chastise him in one shattering blow—now, when he had the most to lose. Six months from this moment, all the things around him, everything he could see from this bench, would still be here, but he would not.
Cadeau would grow into girlhood, then young womanhood. And he would miss it all.
Almost instinctively, he fumbled in his pocket for his Pall Malls, struck a match, and lit a cigarette. He drew in deeply, then exhaled in a sigh as he looked out over the expanse of green, his mind seemingly blank. Then, quite suddenly, he was racked by sobs. Passersby glanced curiously at him as he cried on, not even trying to gain control of himself.
But finally, exhausted, he could cry no more. Sitting up slowly, he took out a handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose. Somehow the tears themselves had helped purge him of his fears. He returned to Sutton Place shaken and resigned.
Late that afternoon, he sat with Lily in the lengthening shadows of their magnificent salon. It had all been said. More tears had fallen—Lily’s this time, not his—and the disbelieving protests had been spoken.
Lily looked about her at all the beautiful things they had acquired over the years, at all the hard-won bits and pieces of wood and silk and canvas. What happiness could they bring now if Harry couldn’t be there to share them with her? Just when it seemed they had hit upon the happiness that had eluded them for so long, it was being snatched away. But still there was hope. Harry was young, he had been in robust health before the recent troubles. And medical science these days would work miracles. The prognosis couldn’t be as grim as Harry had said. She couldn’t believe it.
But from the very moment he had said the dread word “cancer,” she became afraid. And now, as she looked at him, silhouetted in his chair, he suddenly seemed very frail. Harry could die. Already she felt the terrible loss looming. She was afflicted by the same knot in her stomach that she had felt in Jeremy’s room at Exeter that awful day. The haunting memories came back.
Oh, Jeremy, she thought, if you sit at the right hand of God, please pray for your father.
But in spite of her own grief and torment, she knew she must be strong for her husband as he faced his time of trial. He had to be admitted to the hospital that evening. As soon as he had packed his things, they clung together in a long embrace, as though by holding on to each other they might somehow put off the inevitable.
Lily went to the stereo and put on a record. A moment later Harry heard the strains of “My Blue Heaven.” A reminiscent smile crossed his lips.
“You always loved this, didn’t you?”
“I suppose it’s a little corny,” she murmured.
“No, it’s beautiful,” he said, curving his arm about her. “It reminds me of our first date. Would you like to dance?”
They circled for a moment, silently remembering that time when they had been so young, so willing to toss all to the wind for each other. But even dancing seemed too much of a strain. Lily suggested he sit down, she would make them drinks.
Over the years, Lily had acquired Ellis’s taste for bone-dry martinis. Standing at the bar cart, she kept her back to Harry as she tried to hide the tears fighting to be shed. She mixed a pitcher with unconscious precision. Plunking two olives into the glasses, she took a deep breath, fixed a calm expression on her face, and brought the tray over to the coffee table. Harry took a sip, leaned over and kissed her, and said, “Perfect—like everything you do.”
They sipped slowly, making a staunch effort to pretend that everything would be all right. They each blotted out the thought of what the morrow would bring.
Harry said, “I’m going to take my two best girls to the Bahamas for Christmas this year. Would you like that?”
“Sounds wonderful,” Lily replied, trying to keep her chin from quivering.
“I can just see Cadeau running on that beach. Do you think she’ll have freckles, Lily?”
“I have a feeling she will. We’ll have to get her a hat.”
“Matching ones for the two of you.”
Then, in an altered voice, he suddenly cried, “Oh, Lily—just hold me.
She held him tightly as he murmured brokenly, “It’s not even so much dying, Lily, it’s the thought of losing you. God, I love you so!”
But then it was time to drive to the hospital.