Family Secrets (35 page)

Herman was a good father. He would sit down with Richie and talk to him man to man.

“Here’s a hundred-dollar bill, Richie,” he would say, handing it to him. “See, it has my picture in the middle of it. Someday you’ll have lots of these, real ones.”

Richie would look at his father solemnly, taking in every word, although it was hard to tell if he understood.

“Your stocks went up again today, Richie,” Herman would say. “Wartime makes good business. You have steel stocks, and they’re booming. You’re going to be a very rich young man someday.”

Sometimes Herman would take Richie in the car and show him places in and around Miami Beach. “See that hotel, Richie? Your daddy built that hotel, and he owns it. People pay rent to us for using that hotel. See that land over there, all empty? I own that land, and that means you own it too. Real estate is good business, Richie. I’m in real estate, and someday you’ll be in real estate too.”

Richie would listen to all this solemnly. Four years old, and so smart! Herman liked to take Richie on these car trips and show him everything they owned, and he liked to talk to Richie about business. He didn’t know how to talk to Richie about little kid things, and he didn’t like to play sports, so he treated Richie just like a good friend. Hazel knew he was very proud of his son.

From the start Herman had complained about the house Papa was building for Hazel at Windflower. He didn’t see why he and Hazel had to share a house with Rosemary and Jack, why they couldn’t have their own house. Hazel told him patiently that it was so she could have company and wouldn’t be lonely. If Herman was away so much, then she would have Rosemary to talk to. Herman complained that the house was too small, and that there was no place for him to entertain his business friends when he came up north.

“How does it look if I invite my friends to a two-family house?”

“It’s big, Herman.”

“It’s not big enough. Our house here is just as big, and we live here just the three of us. We should have had a house like The Big House.”

Hazel didn’t argue with him, but she knew Papa was always right. They had sent her photos of the houses when they were nearly finished, and of the rest of the place, with the lake and the pretty waterfall, and it looked very big and very nice. It was nicer than the house in Brooklyn. It didn’t matter if Herman didn’t like it; he would hardly ever be there anyway. What was he talking about, entertaining business friends? They never entertained at home, except once a year when they had a cocktail party and a lot of caterers did the whole thing. They always entertained Herman’s business friends out, at restaurants and night clubs, and they went to all those charity dinners. Their house was scary at night, when Herman had to go to a meeting without her and she had to stay alone with Richie. That was the only time she was glad they had the nurse. There was always a sleep-in maid, but she was downstairs so far away. Herman liked everything to be the best, he said. He didn’t go out to business meetings without her more than once a week, so Hazel didn’t really mind, and she could always do her crossword puzzles to pass the time.

In the spring, when it stayed light longer after dinner, Hazel liked to take Richie in the car and drive down the road alongside the beach hotels so they could look at all the people dressed up. There was always a new hotel, and always so many people to look at. Richie liked to ride in the car. He would go, “Brrr, pup-pup-pup,” and pretend he was turning a steering wheel. He was so smart. Hazel would just rubberneck along, driving slowly, having a good time. When Herman was out at one of his business meetings Hazel would have her little adventures, but she never told Herman because she knew he worried about her going out alone at night. He didn’t think women should go out at night without their husbands. But if their husband was out without them, why couldn’t they go out without him? It was just for fun, and if he didn’t know it wouldn’t hurt him.

One evening in late spring she was driving along with Richie beside her and she was sure she saw Herman. He was just getting out of a big chauffeur-driven limousine in front of a night club, with another man she had seen before with Herman and two young girls she had never seen. The girls were pretty and had good figures, but they had on too much makeup and she was sure they bleached their hair. One of them had lemon-yellow hair and the other one had her hair all piled up on top of her head and it was pink. Hazel knew nobody had pink hair. It really looked strange. Herman put his arm around the waist of the girl with pink hair and said something to her that made her laugh, and then the four of them went into the night club.

Richie pointed. “There’s Daddy!”

“Is that Daddy?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Then it must have been Herman if they both thought so. But Herman had told her he had to go to a business meeting. She didn’t know they took girls to business meetings. She didn’t like it, either. He could have taken her along if he was going to let girls come too. She didn’t have to stay in the house alone. It wasn’t fair. She had always thought a business meeting meant just men, smoking cigars in a room and talking about things she wouldn’t understand. If Herman had a business meeting in a night club, why couldn’t she come? She would be quiet as a mouse and watch the floor show and never interrupt. Who were those girls, anyway? That man was married too, and he hadn’t let his wife come along.

That night Hazel waited up until Herman came in. It was two o’clock in the morning. He tiptoed into their bedroom and she said, “Herman.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised, “did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“Oh?”

“Who was that girl with pink hair?”

“Who?”

“I saw you with two girls and Mr. Levee.”

“Where?” he asked.

“In front of the Flamingo Club. You went in.”

“What were you doing in front of the Flamingo Club, Hazel?”

“I went for a ride.”

“I told you never to go out alone at night! Why did you disobey me?”

Hazel pouted. “You went out. Why can’t I?”

“Because you’re a woman! Women should never go out at night alone! What would people think about me if my wife goes gallivanting around all alone at night? How does that look?”

“Who was that girl?”

“What girl?”

“The girl with the pink hair.”

“Oh, her,” Herman said, as if he had just remembered her. “She’s Hy Levee’s niece.”

“Who’s the other one?”

“His other niece.”

“I thought you had business.”

“I did,” Herman said. “You know I do business with Hy Levee. His nieces came to town and he wanted to take them to a night club, and he didn’t want them to go out with strange boys, so we took them.”

“Oh,” Hazel said. “Why couldn’t I come?”

“Because the girls are very shy.”

“You know boys for them,” Hazel said.

“He won’t let them go out with boys. They’re too young.”

“They didn’t look so young.”

“How could you tell in the middle of the night, from a car?” Herman said, very angry. “Is that how you drive? Looking out the window and not watching the road? Do you want to get killed? Do you want Richie to be an orphan?”

“I had Richie with me.”

“You took Richie?” Herman yelled. His face was red. “You took that little baby out at night when he should have been in bed? What kind of a mother are you? Where is your sense of motherhood?”

Hazel started to sniffle. She didn’t want Herman to be mad at her and have his face so red it looked like he was going to explode, and he had no right to tell her she was a bad mother. She was a good mother. He was mean. But she also knew he was right. Other mothers didn’t take their babies for rides in the car at night. A four-year-old should have been asleep in bed.

“Don’t cry,” Herman said. His red face started to fade until it was its normal shade of pink. “You’ll never, never do that again, will you Hazel? Do you promise?”

She nodded.

“You are my wife and the mother of my son,” Herman said. “You represent me. You must always be a model of perfect behavior. The community respects you. I want you to stay home at night when I have to go out.”

“Okay,” Hazel said. She blew her nose into a tissue from the box on the night table between their beds.

“I don’t enjoy going out with Hy Levee and his two boring nieces,” Herman said. “But that’s the sort of thing I have to do in order to do business. That’s what a man does. He’s nice to people, he entertains visitors and strangers. That’s business.”

“Oh.”

“Go to sleep now, Hazel.”

He turned off the light and she could hear him getting into his bed. She was glad Herman wasn’t mad at her any more. She wasn’t mad at him any more either. He probably didn’t like going out with Hy Levee’s two boring nieces. It must have been hard to talk to them. They didn’t look like the nice girls other people she knew had for nieces. They looked like two floozies. Herman must have been very ashamed to be seen with them.

THIRTEEN

The family was going to move into Windflower in May. Etta’s kitchen had finally come: the stove, the refrigerator, the new linoleum floor, the big country kitchen table and chairs to set around it. All the wallpaper had been put up in Lavinia and Melissa’s house except for the large downstairs center hall, and in the middle of putting it up the decorator announced that the store had run out of paper in that pattern and they would have to wait six months for more to be made. Melissa was delighted, because she had decided when the first strip of paper was glued on that she hated it. Now she said to Lavinia, “The heck with the expense, let’s rip it all off and get something else.”

So they chose another paper that they both liked much better, and put it on instead. The inside of the house would be dignified but warm, like a gracious English country estate house. There were soft sofas and dignified but gay floral wallpapers, lovely antique reproduction furniture, and some real antique silver pieces put here and there on tables. Melissa had to have a piano, and Lavinia wanted a lot of plants. It was a house you could be comfortable and happy in.

Rosemary had decided on modern for her house. She was young, and modern was young. She was so sick of living in that tacky furnished room, cooking sneakily on a forbidden hot plate, that she wanted an airy, stark, modern home. Although she was the pianist in the family, Jack didn’t have any money at the moment, so she decided to play Melissa’s piano until they could afford one of their own. She would be stuck here in the sticks until the war was over, and who knew when that would be?

Jack had managed to get a weekend pass for the opening of Windflower, and Papa was going to have a big dinner party at his house, for just the family of course, and it looked as if all of them would be there. Hazel would take the train from Florida with Richie and his nurse and her housekeeper (whom Hazel kept calling the maid) and Herman would fly because he couldn’t spare the time to take the train. Herman would hire temporary help in Miami Beach for the summer, probably just a cleaning woman, because he ate out every night anyway.

Lavinia and Melissa had investigated the shops in town where they would buy their food, and had opened a charge account, in Lavinia’s name because she was the older. At the Winsor-Nature house the charge account was opened in the name of Winsor. Before the families moved in, the larder was stocked with all the canned goods that could be found, and at least two year’s supply of toilet paper. The tradespeople in town didn’t know what to think of them. Wartime hoarders, of course. But who hoarded toilet paper?

Everett’s junk had been banished to the country. Melissa and Lazarus certainly weren’t going to have it cluttering up their nice new hotel apartment. His room was full of electrical equipment, rolls of wire, tools, a soldering iron, who knew what else? It was all a mess, and what he couldn’t jam into his room he put into the garage. This precipitated a fight, because everyone thought his junk was unsightly in the nice new garage next to Papa’s limousine, and Everett said if he put it into the tool shed the weather would ruin it. Finally Everett won, only because he convinced Lazarus that his junk cost money, and Lazarus didn’t like to waste money.

Paris was going back to the camp she’d loved last year. Lavinia had to move all their things from Brooklyn to New York, and she didn’t want to have to worry about the child underfoot. But this would be Paris’ last year at camp. She would stay at Windflower from now on. There was enough for her to do: tennis, swimming, and walks, and she could even ride her bicycle. Paris didn’t mind. To her this meant that they had discovered that she was no longer a child, and was too old for camp. She had been accepted at both the New York schools, and had chosen the all-girls one because it was more permissive. The other one was little and the teachers looked like fuddy-duddies. At the girls’ school the math teacher let one of the girls throw an eraser at him, and he just laughed and tossed it back. She could just imagine her father letting one of his students get away with that! She didn’t tell her parents about the incident, however; she said she liked the school because the facilities were better (they even had a swimming pool). It had always been intended that she would go to college so that she could make something of herself. She wanted to work on a magazine and then be a writer. She was the only one of all her friends who knew what she wanted to do when she grew up, except of course for the girls who knew they wanted to get married. She had gone over the possibilities in her mind—painting, drawing, acting, writing—and had decided that writing was what she had the best chance of succeeding at. The important thing was to have something to do that she loved. In order to be a writer she would have to go to college, and that meant she would have to do well in high school, so that meant no boys. Big deal. She couldn’t stand boys anyway.

Lavinia had found a nice apartment only a block away from Paris’ school. That had two advantages; Paris could walk to school and perhaps, for once, wouldn’t be late, and also Lavinia could watch her from the window and see that she was safe. She couldn’t walk a high school student to school, but she didn’t want her wandering around the city either.