Adam's Daughter (10 page)

A facade of fidelity and happiness. It was a small price to pay. So he gave in to Lilith’s demands that he appear with her in public and endured the costume balls and charity events.

B
ut then, five years ago, something happened to rekindle a small spark inside him. It was the opening of the new opera house. Adam had dutifully taken his seat next to Lilith in the grand new house, dreading the dreary evening. Lilith complained bitterly that they had been issued seats in a marginal orchestra section, and peered covetously up at the box seats.

Then, the performance of
Tosca
began and Adam, who had never heard live music before, sat transfixed. He heard something in Puccini’s music that spoke to his soul as nothing ever had.

A week later he surprised Lilith by purchas
ing a lifetime box subscription. He began collecting recordings and when Sally Stanford’s women failed, the music was able to dull the ache of his emptiness.

Now, a
s he drove to the bridge, Adam began to hum a segment of Cavaradossi’s “E luceum le stelle” from
Tosca
.

The traffic
suddenly slowed to a crawl. And then as they approached the Presidio, it choked to a stop. Thousands of people had abandoned cars and trolleys and were walking to the bridge.

“We’ll have to walk
the rest of the way,” Adam said, pulling the car to the curb.

“I can’t walk in these shoes,” Lilith said.

“I told you to dress sensibly.”

“We have seats in the reviewing stand. I couldn’t go looking like some housewife.”

Adam was already out the door with Ian. “Lilith, you can stay here if you want. We’re walking.” Pouting, Lilith joined them, tottering along in her new platform shoes.

Suddenly Adam stopped, transfixed by the scene before him. Hundreds of thousands of people were milling on the bridge, a long crescent that curved out across the water. And there above
them all, two towering orange spans rose up through the wispy morning fog, framed against the green hills of Marin.

“Look, Ian
,” Adam said.

“It’s really big,” Ian said.

Lilith caught up to them. Adam turned to her, smiling. “God, Lilith, have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

“It’s lovely,” she said flatly. She clutched her turbaned head against the breeze. “I can’t stand all these people. Let’s go
to our seats.”

The parade was five miles long, snaking through the city and ending at the viewing stand at Crissy Field.
In the viewing stand, Ian sat on Adam’s shoulders, watching the bagpipers, cowboys, mounted police, and motorcyclists. A stagecoach went by, followed by people dressed as cavemen, decks of cards, pencils, and paint tubes. A silent group in white passed by, all members of Blindcraft, paying homage to the new marvel they could not see. Overhead, a squadron of silver-winged airplanes swooped over the bridge’s towers. Then a slight figure stepped out of a black limousine and the crowd roared. It was Joseph Strauss, engineer of the bridge that everyone said couldn’t be built.

Lilith tugged on Adam’s arm. “I see Enid,” she shouted over the din. “I’m going over to talk to her. Do you think you can keep an eye on Ian?” Adam nodded and watched her wend her way up the grandstand.

Finally, the last of the parade divisions went by and it was over. The police nudged people back from the parade line and the crowd began to disperse.

“Did you enjoy it?” Adam asked Ian.

“I liked the motorcycles.” The boy’s face was more animated than usual. “Can we go walk across?”

“Well, I don’t know
.” Adam had to get back to work but he saw a light in the boy’s eyes. “I guess we can,” Adam said with a smile. “Let’s go find your mother.”

They walked along, Adam scanning the grandstand
for Lilith. Then suddenly he froze.

“Elizabeth,” he whispered.

She was standing in the front row at the far end of the grandstand. She was wearing a conservative black dress, holding her hat, and her hair was like a blazing red beacon in the sunshine.

Without taking his eyes off her, Adam took Ian’s hand and he made his way toward her. When he finally reached her all he could do was stand there staring up at her. Around him, the restless crowd pressed close. With a flourish of cymbals, a band began to play. Adam heard none of it. He didn’t feel Ian, tugging on his hand. He could see only Elizabeth, standing there above him.

Suddenly, as if she sensed the weight of Adam’s gaze, Elizabeth looked down. She saw him immediately. A look of shock crossed her face. It gave way quickly to an odd expression of joy and then sadness. He saw her mouth his name and he pushed his way to her. She bent down. For a moment neither of them could say anything.

“Elizabeth...how...why
?”

“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said.

“I knew I would see you again,” he said quickly, without thinking. “I didn’t know when but I just knew.”

Elizabeth noticed Ian, standing behind Adam
. “Is this your boy?” she asked.

Adam
pushed him forward. “Yes, this is Ian,” he said. “Ian, this is...a friend of mine. Her name is Elizabeth.”

Her smile was wistful. “You said you wanted a son.” There was an awkward pause. “Is your wife here, too?”
she asked.

“Yes, somewhere.”

They stared at each other. All around them, people were moving toward the bridge, a tide that threatened to carry Adam off in its wake. He gripped the railing.

Elizabeth
began to search the crowd, as if looking for someone. She seemed disoriented.

“Are you here with someone?” Adam said. It was no time for small talk, yet he was afraid she might vanish somehow if he didn’t keep her here.

“Yes, my aunt. I seem to have lost her.”

Adam reached up and grabbed her hand. “Come with us.”

“What? Where?”

“Across the bridge. Let’s walk across the bridge.”

“Oh, Adam, I can’t.”

His grip tightened. “Come with us.”

She stared down at him for a long moment. Suddenly, she smiled and the melancholy dissolved from her face. Then she laughed, the same magical deep laugh Adam remembered. “Oh, what the hell,” she said. “Help me down from here.”

Adam hoisted Ian onto his shoulders and the three of them joined the human mass that was moving slowly toward the towering orange spans. A stiff wind was blowing up from the ocean as the crowd trekked north. Adam and Elizabeth walked along silently, side by side.

Adam didn’t know what to say. He felt out of sync with the buoyant crowd around him. He looked up at the fog pressing close and then he looked down over the railing, down to the green waters. He felt dizzy with wind and space.

When t
wo girls whizzed by on roller skates Elizabeth grabbed Adam’s arm. Her touch made him pull in his breath. It brought him immediately back to earth.

“How far across is it?” she asked.

“We can go back,” Adam said.

“No
, it’s wonderful out here.” She wove her arm through Adam’s, and they walked on.

Adam had millions of things he wanted to ask, things he wanted to say but he didn’t know where to start. So many years had passed
-— had it been only eleven? It seemed much longer and he was different now, not the same young man who had sat at her feet and confessed his dreams. Not the same man who had been told by Charles Ingram that he had nothing to offer. He glanced at Elizabeth. And she was different, too. Still so beautiful, but subdued somehow, even sad.

Perhaps, he thought, it was only the black dress she wore. It was not a good color for her. She belonged in pinks and whites and silver.

Finally, they reached the northern end. Adam found a spot on the grass and left Ian and Elizabeth, returning with sandwiches from a lunch wagon. Ian sat in silence slightly away from Adam and Elizabeth. He nibbled on his sandwich, glancing at Elizabeth and Adam, who sat with their shoes off, barely touching their food.

“How long are you here?” Adam asked.

“A week or two,” she said. “My father thought the change of scenery would do me good.”

Adam stared at her, realizing suddenly she was very pale. “Have you been ill?” he asked.

“I’m in mourning,” she said. “My husband died three weeks ago.”

Adam was stunned. He had heard nothing about Willis Foster Reed’s death. Surely it had been in the newspapers. How had he missed it? He seldom had time to read every item in the news these days and his ongoing battle with the pressmen’s union lately demanded all his attention. He had missed the story. Willis Foster Reed was dead.

Adam glanced at Elizabeth. The words “I’m sorry” formed in his head but he couldn’t say them. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t sorry. He was...astonished, confused. Elizabeth was free. She was free and she was sitting here beside him.

“Why did you marry him, Elizabeth?” The words were out before he could think.

Her green eyes turned strangely opaque. “I had no choice, really,” she said softly.

“Yes, you did. There was me. There was us.” The words spilled out without thought.

“Oh, Adam. That was only one night, a long time ago.”

The sad finality in her voice made him fall silent for a long time. “It could have been us, Elizabeth,” he said finally. “We could have been together.
I was in love with you. I wanted to marry you.”

Her eyes grew wide with astonishment. Then, abruptly, she looked away. After a moment, her eyes brimmed with tears. “Then why didn’t you fight for me?” she
said.

For a moment, Adam was too stunned to say anything. “Fight for you?
I did. I tried to reach you. I tried for so long to reach you, Elizabeth. I called you. I went to your aunt’s house. I followed you to Atlanta. Your father threatened to have me arrested if I didn’t leave you alone. I wrote you letters, dozens of letters. You never answered any of them.”

“I never got them, Adam,” she said softly. She looked out over the crowd, still coming across the bridge toward them. It
was a long time before she spoke. “When I didn’t hear from you,” she said, “I started to think that my father was right. That you were like all the others, that you were only after my money.”

Adam’s eyes dropped to the ground. He plucked a handful of grass and watched the blades sift through his fingers and drift away on the wind. When he looked up, he saw that Elizabeth was crying.

“Why are you crying?” he asked softly.

“Because it might have been different,” she said. “If I had known that you really cared if I hadn’t listened to my father, it might have turned out different.”

In all the moments he had dreamed of her he had never imagined her crying. It was unsettling. His own emotions were a tumultuous mix —- joy over seeing her again, sadness over the lost years, and a piercing pang of guilt. The money —- it had been a factor then. He had never been able to separate what he felt for Elizabeth from the fact that she was wealthy. And even now, as he looked at her, he couldn’t separate it. Her incredible beauty still stirred him physically. But still, in the back of his mind, was the money. He stared at her, still the symbol of everything he wanted.

“It wasn’t the money,” he said. “It was you, Elizabeth.
Just you.”

Her eyes were
cautious, waiting. “I should have trusted you,” she said. She pulled a handkerchief from her purse and wiped her eyes. “I was so young,” she said with a sigh. “My father always said I was just a wild thing, with no sense. He wanted me to get married. He said I had to marry someone who didn’t need my money. He said it was for my own protection.”

She
frowned slightly. “He kept after me, threatening to send me off to some women’s college. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get out. So I did what my father told me to do —- I protected myself. I married Willis. Needless to say, my father was very pleased with my choice.”

He stared at her. The wind whipped her red hair into a fan around her profile. “Were you happy with him?” he asked.

She brushed the hair from her eyes. “Protection can be very expensive,” she said softly.

The light had left her eyes.

“I love you,” Adam said suddenly. “I never stopped loving you.”

She turned to him. “You have a son and a wife. It’s too late, Adam.”

“No,” he said. “I gave you up once. I won’t give you up again.”