Adam's Daughter (16 page)

He
sat, terrified, for three more hours, trying desperately not to think about the last time he had been in the same room, waiting.

Finally, a nurse approached
and he jumped to his feet.

“Your wife had a very difficult birth,” she said, “but she is resting now.
Congratulations, Mr. Bryant, you’re the father of a beautiful little girl.”

Adam had to
grab the chair to steady himself. When he went in to see Elizabeth, she looked so still and white that for a moment Adam was afraid some terrible trick had been played on him and that she was dead. He approached the bed and looked down at her. Finally, she opened her eyes.

“You’re here,” she
whispered. “I’m glad.”

“I’m here.” He sat on the edge of the bed. He brushed the hair from her forehead. “I love you,” he
said.

“I know.” She was struggling to stay awake. “You look terrible,” she said. “You aren’t eating or sleeping right, are you?”

“No, maybe I should come home.”

“Good. I need you to come home.” She closed her eyes and it was a moment before she opened them.

“It’s a girl,” she murmured.

“I know.”

Elizabeth was soon asleep. Out in the hall, Adam slumped against the wall, giving in to his fatigue. He saw Josh coming toward him. The lawyer looked concerned when he saw Adam’s slack face.

“Is there something wrong?”
Josh asked quickly, looking at Elizabeth’s door.

“No, no, everything’s fine, Josh. I’m just tired. Thanks for being here with her.”

Josh smiled. “Say, have you seen the baby yet? I was just down at the nursery. Come on, I’ll take you there.”

Adam followed Josh down the hall to a large window. Inside, there were a dozen bassinets tended by two nurses. Even through the glass, Adam could hear the squalling.

“That’s her, third from the left,” Josh said.

Adam looked to where Josh was pointing. Inside the bassinet was a churning baby in a tangle of pink blanket. It had a bright red face, and it was flailing around so much it had kicked one plump leg free of the blanket.

“She’s beautiful, Adam,” Josh said.

Adam laughed at Josh’s romantic observation. There was no way the little creature was remotely beautiful. It was a scrunched-faced, howling thing, just like all the others in the nursery.

“She sure looks to be a fighter,” Josh said.

Adam continued to stare at the baby.

“Well, how does it feel to have a daughter?” Josh asked.

Adam glanced at Josh then turned back to the window. He pressed his forehead to the glass and stared at his daughter for a long time.

He smiled slightly. “She has red hair,” he said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Elizabeth decided to name the baby Kellen, in honor of her favorite grandmother’s maiden name. “I know it’s a bit unusual," she said. “But I have a feeling she’s going to need something a little different.” She told Adam to pick a middle name. He chose Elizabeth.

After a few weeks, Adam
renewed his commute between San Diego and Seattle. Now that his path seemed clear, he was driven to make progress as quickly as possible. He had spent years watching other men amass fortunes and power by linking newspapers into chains, men like Frank Gannett, E. W. Scripps and James Cox. John Knight had strung together papers in Miami, Detroit and Akron before he was thirty-nine. With just a grammar school education, Samuel Newhouse was making his first newspaper investments by age twenty-five. Like all the men, Adam understood that newspapering had entered a new era, and that it would be governed by the same law of economics as any business: small competitors had to give way to big ones. And he had every intention of being one of the biggest.

He was also looking into buying a radio station in Oakland. There was money to be made in radio, and Adam also wanted to be in a position to take advantage of what a few visionaries were
predicting would be the next boom medium, something called television.

When he
told Elizabeth about his plan, she bought the station. “If nothing else,” she told him, “it will keep you closer to home.”

Not long after Kellen’s birth, Charles Ingram died suddenly. His death threw Elizabeth into a minor depression, and she told Adam she felt guilty that she hadn’t been able to end the estrangement that her marriage had created. “I wish he could have known you as I do,” she told Adam. “I wish he had at least consented to see his granddaughter.”

Elizabeth went to Atlanta for the funeral and stayed with her mother and sister for a week. She returned home in a better frame of mind, and talked about going back when Kellen was old enough to travel.

“My mother and I have old wounds that still need healing,” she said. “I’d like you to come back with me when I go.”

“We’ll see,” Adam said. But he knew that he would never be accepted into that forbidding brick mansion.

Soon after Elizabeth’s return from Atlanta, her father’s will was
read. He had divided his estate, totaling nearly $30 million, equally between his wife and two daughters. Only Elizabeth’s share was tied up in a trust, to be administered by the family lawyer. Again, Elizabeth could use the trust payments for whatever she wanted, but Adam could not touch the money.

“He’s still trying to run my life, even from his grave,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sorry, Adam. I’d hoped it would have been able to be our money.”

“I don’t care, Elizabeth,” Adam said. But deep down, he did. He had more money at his disposal than he had ever thought possible. But it was not his money and it never would be. His newspapers were owned by his wife. He would just have to live with that somehow.

After Kellen’s birth, the house on Jackson Street seemed suddenly too small. The baby and the nanny had already taxed things, but whenever Ian came to visit the tension was almost palpable.

“It’s time we had our own home, Adam,” Elizabeth told him one night.

“We’re doing all right,” Adam said, though he knew she was right. He had been reluctant to think about moving because he knew it could be done only if Elizabeth paid for it. He had taken pride in the fact that he had managed to pay for the house so far.

“But I have my father’s money now. Let’s use it,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s use it to create the grandest house this city has ever seen.”

Fi
nally, wanting to see Elizabeth happy, he relented. It took Elizabeth only two weeks to find their new home. It was an old mansion on the corner of Divisadero and Broadway, high on a hill, with a panoramic view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The nineteenth-century house had thirty rooms spread over four stories. The house had been vacant for years and needed complete refurbishing, but Elizabeth had fallen in love with it and could not be deterred.

The first time Elizabeth brought Adam to see the house he was so stunned he could say nothing.
It was an old monstrosity of dark mahogany, marble, and creaking oak parquet floors. It still had its original Otis hydraulic cage elevator and an electric converter that was once used to draw house power from the streetcar system. Even some gaslight fixtures were still in place.

In the living room there was a
massive marble-and-wood fireplace with its carvings of cherubs, shells, and bears romping around a Medusa head. There was a music room, a second parlor and a smoking room done in Oriental style, complete with a Turkish liquor cabinet.

Adam
went slowly and silently through each room, with Elizabeth trailing behind, pausing in a room off the foyer that was empty except for walls of bookcases. The tour complete, he returned to the staircase in the entrance hall. He noticed, for the first time, that there were strange little faces carved in the balustrade, set at even intervals up the staircase. The bottom face was set in a grimace, and the others were gradated expressions leading up to the top-most face, which was creased up in a big smile.

He had not said a word during his entire tour, but now, as he stared as the silly carved faces, his own mouth pulled up in a small smile.

“Does that mean we take it?” Elizabeth asked with a tentative smile.

“Only if I can have that study as my own room,” he said. “If I’m going to live in a place like this, I’ll need a place to retreat to.”

Elizabeth paid for the house in cash, just under a half a million dollars. In a delighted frenzy, she then set out to make it a showcase. The only room Adam had any say about was his study. He chose some comfortable antiques and, to Elizabeth’s chagrin, brought home a monstrous oak desk from the office. When the mansion was finished, even Adam had to admit it was the most exquisite home he had ever seen. The gloom was gone, replaced by warmth, a sense of humor, and an almost bittersweet mood of bygone splendor. The old house on Divisadero, so long just a neglected relic of the city’s past, had been magnificently reclaimed.

Elizabeth hired a full staff of servants, including a Japanese gardener, who immediately set out to restore the mansion’s grounds. Soon, Elizabeth’s hallmark, art
ful vases of fresh flowers, began to appear in the rooms.

She also lavished care on Ian’s room, hoping that when he came for his visits he would feel more at home.

But Ian’s behavior toward Elizabeth remained aloof, much to Adam’s annoyance. He was the only dark spot in the otherwise joyful house, and though Elizabeth still tried to befriend the boy, Adam finally gave up trying to penetrate his wall of indifference.

Then, unexpectedly, Ian struck up a friendship with the
gardener’s daughter Chimmoko. She was a quiet pretty girl, two years older than Ian. Adam watched Ian’s growing infatuation with concern but Elizabeth suggested it was good for Ian to finally have a friend.

Just before Thanksgiving, the Bryants held their first party. It was meant as a housewarming, a dinner party for fifty people. Everyone who was invited came, even Enid Atherton. Elizabeth somehow corralled opera star Marian Anderson as a dinner guest and, to Adam’s delight, the beautiful contralto sang after dinner.

The house and the party had an energizing effect on Elizabeth. Any vestiges of pride Adam had about using her money to acquire it were gone. He didn’t care what anyone thought about him. Elizabeth was happy, and she was already trying to get pregnant again. He was proceeding full force with his newspapers. Even Ian, with Chimmoko as his friend, seemed more content.

Life in the house on Divisadero was calm, grand, and filled with promise.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was a few weeks before Christmas. Adam was sitting in his office, looking at a picture of Elizabeth he kept on his desk. He still had not decided what to get her as a present. She had so much. She could buy whatever she wanted. But it was their fourth wedding anniversary, and he wanted to get her something special.

The phone rang. It was Josh. “I’m in the newsroom,” he said. “Get down here right away.”

Adam went quickly downstairs. Nearly everyone was crowded around a radio in the editor’s office, intent on the broadcast.

“We repeat
, Japanese planes have bombed Pearl Harbor,” the announced said. “The full extent of the damage is still unknown. Witnesses claim that ships have been sunk and thousands are feared dead.”