Family Secrets (30 page)

After dinner the kids went back to their bunks to get ready for the evening’s activity. It was either a movie, skits presented by the camp’s dramatics students, a sing, a campfire, or (three times a week) Foreign Night. Foreign Night was Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, or a repeat of whatever had proved most popular, usually Chinese. The social hall would be decorated in the manner of the nation to be represented, the kids wore costumes supplied by the camp, and the highlight of the evening was a feast featuring the foods of the native country. Gorged, stuffed, bursting, nauseated, the kids would walk happily back to their bunks, where they would fall into their cots without brushing their teeth, a handful of Tootsie Rolls and sourballs and licorice sticks for a good night present clutched in their hands, and all would be silent and peaceful by nine o’clock.

When Paris came home from the eating camp in the fall she had fourteen cavities in her teeth, and had gained weight. She thought she would have to spend the entire winter at the dentist, getting drilled. Her mother said no more eating camp for her, so the next summer she went to a music camp.

The music camp was quite normal except that there were compulsory recitals every evening on the lawn, while a trio played classical music and the kids swatted mosquitoes and passed each other notes. The constant presence of her parents at all these camps was becoming a little embarrassing to Paris; she wished they would let her come to camp alone like the other kids and be grown up. She didn’t know exactly how they managed it—probably knew someone or had to pay—but they were the only parents allowed to stay all summer right at the camp. Maybe it was because her father had been a head counselor for so many years and had pull.

At the beginning of every summer you looked around your bunk to see who would be your best friend and who you would pick on. Then, when you had picked your best friend, it was time for the camp to put everyone on teams, and you and your best friend would pray that you wouldn’t be assigned to opposing teams, or else you would have to be enemies all summer in the color war, even though you really loved each other. The day you came back to the bunk and found the little colored string on your pillow telling what team you belonged to, and compared colors with the other girls in your bunk, was the happiest or saddest day of the summer. It was funny about friendships at camp. You never saw the girls all winter—they came from other places and went to other schools—but for the two months you were at camp they were your closest friends and allies. It was sad to have to go away and know you might never see them again. Their parents took them away and yours took you away, and that was that. Into your real life again. Maybe someone you really liked wouldn’t come back the next year, or maybe you wouldn’t came back, and then you’d never see each other again as long as you lived. At home, at school, in your own neighborhood, you had your real friends, the ones you would always have. But your camp friends disappeared because they had their real-life school friends too. Paris thought about some of the girls afterward, wondering what had ever become of them.

There was Annette, the refugee from Holland, which had been occupied by the Germans in their war, and she came to camp the first day with a foreign accent and a box lunch, so all the girls thought she would be the one they would pick on for the summer. But by the end of that first day they had discovered that she was the leader, the best one of any of them: strong, funny, brave, pretty, a good athlete, generous, so much more grown up than any of them that they all adored her. At the end of the summer Annette had been picked Best Camper of the Year. She was also captain of the White Team, and Paris’ best friend. But Paris went to another camp the next year, where athletics was not so important, and she never saw Annette again. She sometimes wondered where she was, what she was doing. She knew that Annette lived in some sort of suburb, Scarsdale or something, that was pretty far from Brooklyn. None of the girls ever wrote to each other, not more than just one or two postcards in September, even though they always promised faithfully to write when they parted. There was too much to do back home: school and your real friends, and your family, and homework, and then after a while you sort of forgot camp because it was winter.

It was nice to know that at least your school friends would be your friends forever. That was something you could count on. You missed camp terribly the first few weeks after you came back home, and you were so lonely for all the kids and the fun you had, and the one counselor you particularly liked, but then it disappeared like a dream. But your own friends at home, that was something you could count on. It never occurred to Paris that she couldn’t, or that she might move to another place, or go to a different school, and that they all might just go on with their lives without her and that she might never see any of them again.

SEVEN

That summer Adam took the beach house again. It was a smaller family group around him now: Etta, of course, and Basil and Rosemary, but Hazel was married and spending the summer in Florida, Lavinia and Jonah were at camp with Paris as usual and not coming until camp was over at the end of August, and Melissa and Lazarus were at the beach without Everett, who was at camp too. There was a young man hanging around Rosemary whom she seemed to like, Jack Nature, and Adam thought this one might be serious. The time was right to find his perfect piece of land for his permanent summer estate, to stop living in this damp beach house like a gypsy. The children could stop going to camp and have a decent place to live with the family. Yes, it was time. Adam had made one mistake with Andrew, losing him to that place of his, and he was not going to make another. Who knew what plans Jack and Rosemary might be cooking up on their long walks together down the beach? And it was enough of Lavinia and Jonah following Paris to camp every year as if there was something wrong with the child. If they were so afraid to let her go away alone then let her stay with them in the country. People shouldn’t run their lives around children. How could they stand hanging around a camp full of screaming children all summer?

The problem was, where was the piece of land? Adam had been looking all winter and spring, but whatever was available was not good enough—too small, not scenic enough, too far from the city, too near the city where it was apt to turn into a busy suburb, not quite right. And whatever he liked was restricted. If he had liked it enough he would have put up a fight, but he never really wanted the places he saw and so he went away tactfully. When he saw the place he would know it. He had decided only one thing in the course of his search: the place should be in Connecticut just over the New York border.

In the fall he began searching again, hearing of this place or that through friends in the real estate business, or agents, and finally he found it: Windflower. It was exactly what he wanted. He might have been imagining it all these years, so perfect was it. The only problem was, the area was restricted. This time Adam refused to let it be a problem.

It was an enormous amount of land, and it was expensive, but the man who owned it was known in the neighborhood as The Crazy Russian, and also known to love money. Adam knew he had a price. It was only a matter of time. In his limousine, driven by Maurice, Adam went to visit the Russian in his house. It was a mansion, really, set in a forest. The landscaping was not only haphazard, it was nonexistent. A narrow dirt road led from the main road to the house, and another narrow dirt road led from the house through the forest to a large, clear lake with a rushing waterfall. How could the man live in that house and not want to look at his waterfall? It was sheer stinginess. He should have cleared away the trees and made a vista. Beside the lake was a run-down little stone pavilion with some battered outdoor furniture in it, a fireplace that worked, and electricity that did not work. There was a ladder that let you climb into the deep lake, and a diving board. The water was cold and pure, and there were fish swimming in its depths. But how the pavilion was overgrown with bushes and poison ivy! Obviously the Russian took his baths in the bathroom.

Maurice parked the limousine in what passed for a driveway outside the mansion, and Adam rang the doorbell. He had an appointment, so there was hope. They were willing to see him. That meant it was possible to negotiate. There were no servants, but when the sound of the bell went through the house it was answered by the excited barking of at least a dozen dogs. Then the dogs themselves appeared, all sizes, from a Russian wolfhound to a Yorkshire terrier, and several mixed breeds that looked like accidents. Adam was not fond of dogs; they rather intimidated him. The dogs were followed finally by a tall, slender, beautiful woman of about fifty. The Russian’s wife.

She shooed the dogs away with affection and let Adam come in. She had a very slight Russian accent. Russian, but not Jewish. Neither she nor her husband were Jewish or they wouldn’t be allowed to live in this neighborhood, yet they were willing to see Adam to discuss selling their place. That was a good sign. They were either not anti-Semitic or else they were of the impoverished ex-nobility. The appearance of the inside of the house convinced Adam of the latter. There was not a chair or sofa in the huge living room that was not covered with dog stains. Right in front of his very eyes one of the dogs lifted its leg and added another. Mrs. Crazy Russian paid no attention.

The living room had a two-story-high ceiling with wooden beams, and a huge fireplace flanked by stone gargoyles. The walls were stone, covered with some sort of plaster in the Spanish style, and it was obvious that they were at least two feet thick. At one end of the enormous room there was a valuable-looking tapestry hanging on the wall over a battered piano.

“My husband will be with you in a moment,” she said, and offered Adam a dog-stained seat. He accepted, gingerly. When he bought this house he would have it fumigated immediately. “He’s on the property somewhere. He’s usually late, but don’t worry.”

“Thank you.”

“I know you’ve been all over the property, but I guess you’d like to see the house.”

“Yes, I would.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I’d love to sell,” she said. “We have seventeen rooms, and there are just the two of us. I’d like to get something smaller and easier to keep up. But we’re fond of this place. We’ve been here a long time. Still …” She picked up a spaniel, set it on her lap, and began to pick burrs out of its coat. Fumigate? Maybe he should gut the house and start all over.

The dogs set up their barking again and the Russian came into the room, dressed in jodhpurs and a tweed jacket. He had a large white moustache and clever little eyes.

“Oh, I was just going to show Mr. Saffron the house,” the wife said.

“Yes, yes, well, so you’re Mr. Saffron,” the Russian said. “I hope you like the place.”

“I do.”

“Forty years old, this house. Everything put in modern—plumbing, heat, electricity. And the land, of course, the most valuable land within fifty miles. Beautiful land. Those trees, hundreds of years old. A work of God, those old trees.”

So tell me how much, Adam thought, and nodded and smiled politely about the trees.

“The problem is,” the Russian said, “I can’t find anyone who can afford my price.”

“How much is your price?”

The Russian paused, looking at him, assessing him. He would make the price too high, outrageous, unthinkable, and the unwanted buyer would go away and no one would be offended. The Russian cleared his throat. “Two million dollars.”

“I’ll take it,” Adam said.

But that was not the end, no that was not the end. When the Russian had recovered from his shock and his greed began to take over it was easier, but it was far from the end. He had a lawyer and Adam had a lawyer, and daily the phone calls came, the changes, the demands, the concessions. There was no law that said the Russian could not sell to Jews. Everyone knew he was crazy anyway. But he would be a social outcast, and therefore he would have to move away. So it had to be worth his while to move away. He would miss his old trees. Therefore the old trees were numbered and discussed, and every day the Russian demanded another of his old trees, and Adam said the old tree would die if it were moved, and the Russian said he would miss it too much if he left it, and finally Adam said he could take it, knowing the man was as crazy as they all said. They hondeled and they argued. Adam came back to see the house, and liked it, and planned to do extensive changes. The Crazy Russian had built pieces onto the original beautiful old house, hit or miss, so that it resembled a toy put together by a clumsy child. There was a bathroom window looking out on an inside wall of the house because the Crazy Russian had closed up a balcony in order to make a hall leading to a new room he had built. A window looking at a wall! What kind of planning was this? Windows of some rooms looked directly into windows of other rooms, where once they had looked out onto the forest. But Adam would fix it. He just first had to get the papers signed.

Months went by, and then it was time to go to Miami Beach, so Adam went, as always, and left the problems to his lawyer and the telephone. And then, on December 7, war was declared, and the world fell apart. Adam was in the shipping business as well as the building business, and now there were more important things to think about than that estate. Ships were being sunk. The government needed ships to transport cargo and soldiers. Adam had ships. The world was at war. He was negotiating with the government to lease it his ships, and to manage them for it, and overnight had decided to come back to New York until this was all settled. When the phone call came from the Crazy Russian, Adam had almost forgotten about him.

But the Russian had not forgotten about Adam Saffron. A wartime economy was a treacherous one. Who would want to buy that big white elephant of an estate in the middle of a world war? The Russian was ready to sell.

“I’ll have the papers drawn up.”

“Good,” Adam said.

“If you want, you can start to fix Windflower up or do whatever you want to by this summer.”