Green Ice (13 page)

Lillian hadn’t been planned.

She was a sort of penalty for, anyway a consequence of, an impetuous moment on the way home from a party in Scarsdale. If Evelyn had kept her hands to herself, if she’d had two or three rather than six or seven champagnes. If they’d left the party earlier, or hadn’t gone at all. If there hadn’t been a place to pull the car over. If, when he was into it, his coming had happened on an out- rather than an in-stroke, he might have been able to withdraw.

It seemed ironic to Laurence Holbrook II that Lillian, as imposing and complicating as she was, should have resulted from such simply avoidable circumstances.

He would never forget doing ninety on icy roads, trying to get Evelyn home in time. A race against sperm.

Only child Lillian.

If Laurence resented her, it was a feeling too unnatural for him to admit, especially to himself. Any such feelings were coated with demonstrations of just the opposite. Inconsistent doting. Overplaying his role. He would take her to see the sea, get his feet wet with her, let her have anything she wanted for dinner, tuck her in and goodnight kiss her forehead as though it were fragile.

Then, practically ignore her for a month.

Evelyn’s constant caring made up for that, as much as it could. From the moment Lillian was toddling, Evelyn took her everywhere, time after time, even to places most mothers went to retreat from their children. With her while she had a facial, had her hair done, shopped at Saks, lunched at the Plaza, went to galleries, auctions at Parke-Bernet. Over the years they were together so much that Lillian took on Evelyn’s mannerisms, duplicated her gestures and ways, every nuance exactly. There had been considerable resemblance to start, but by the time Lillian was ten she was like a miniature Evelyn. People said it was remarkable.

Lillian was ten that night at the huge summer house in Seal Harbor, Maine, when she overheard the quarrel between Evelyn and Laurence. She had overheard and even witnessed other such quarrels, many. Usually they happened at night. Sometimes Lillian pretended what she was hearing was a television program. That night they were having a long bad one.

The next morning when Lillian went down to breakfast, Evelyn was already up and out, gone sailing.

Why hadn’t she taken Lillian along?

Lillian ran down to the dock. The boat with its red sail was not yet too far out. Lillian shouted, but Evelyn didn’t seem to hear, didn’t look back. It was a heavy sunless day with a slapping breeze. Lillian sat on the dry, slivery wood of the dock, watched Evelyn sail away, headed directly out to sea. The smaller the red sail got, the thicker dark the sky became, and the breeze turned into a wind and blew windier. The sea, a disturbed color, all chopped up and spitting. Evelyn was a mere speck of red on the horizon that Lillian’s eyes tried not to let go.

Evelyn’s body washed up five miles down coast. Three days later the ashes of her, in a solid silver urn, were placed in a crypt at St. James Cemetery in Greenwich, Connecticut.

She left everything that was hers to Lillian. Though her social credentials had been less than those of Laurence Holbrook II, Evelyn Mayo had been worth more. The base chunk of the Mayo fortune was made in the mid-1800s by an Irish immigrant, Daniel Mayo. A glib, go-lucky gambler who won some Pennsylvania land with three nines. Found coal on it. The coal also got him into steel, which got him into a number of other profitable things. He died in 1908 at the age of fifty-four, bequeathing some twenty millions to his son Arthur. Arthur Mayo multiplied that. He cleaned up during the Depression. Sensed it coming, liquidated, transferred huge amounts to Europe. Thus, when practically everyone else was going under, willing to sell for next to nothing, Arthur Mayo had the capital. He acquired various large businesses that needed merely his financial transfusion to make them healthy. He pressed his cash advantage mercilessly when it came to real estate, especially choice properties in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. For a while there, even Arthur Mayo lost track of what he owned and how much all of it was worth. And by the time he got everything in order, World War II broke out to offer other money-making opportunities.

Arthur Mayo never stopped expanding. In 1953 he died at his desk in the Mayo Building, just minutes after finalizing the takeover of a major insurance company. He not only knew how to make money; he knew how to keep it. He had organized the Mayo holdings in such a complex way that it was impossible for the government to eat them up with taxes. The government took its bite, but by comparison it was a mere nibble. There were all sorts of generating funds legally structured around other funds. Like giant boxes containing boxes containing boxes and so on, until it came down to very little. What’s more, it was the sort of fortune already set up with excellent management, thereby leaving its principal beneficiary free to enjoy it.

All that went to Lillian—upon her maturity. Laurence Holbrook II wasn’t even named executor. He considered that a slap in the face, but for the sake of his social-macho pride, the less made of it the better.

Lillian was enrolled in a nice school located outside Philadelphia. It was said it was good for her to be away, distracted from hurt by having to contend with new surroundings and strangers.

Over the next six years Lillian went to five such schools. In that same time, Laurence was married and divorced twice. He was perpetually involved with women, although never more than one at a time. Each affair was entered into with the same attitude of new, utmost importance. The only difference among them was it took longer for some to dissipate.

That was another reason Laurence was disappointed that Lillian didn’t come home from her Swiss school in the spring of 1966. He had wanted to tell her about the young woman he was now serious about, might marry. He hadn’t asked for Lillian’s approval before, but she was old enough to appreciate such thoughtfulness. Besides, the previous summer Lillian had let him off the hook. Her last day home they had walked together in the woods around the estate.

“Fatherhood isn’t natural,” she said. “Did you ever consider that?”

He hadn’t.

It was something she’d recently read that stuck with her.

“Not long ago there was no such thing,” she said.

“Everyone had a father.”

“Yeah. But back in those days no one realized the connection between screwing and having a baby. Simply because the two happened nine months apart.”

“How did they think the woman got pregnant?”

“Some mysterious, divine way. Screwing was strictly for fun.”

“Millions of years ago, perhaps.”

“Only twenty thousand.”

His impulse had been to say they knew better now, of course, but just then he was in no mood to defend himself. Seeing that he was willing to let it go at that, she put her arm around him, perhaps consolingly, and as they walked on he thought she was starting to understand him.

Anyway, Lillian would not be home for spring vacation. That left him free to be with Patricia, whom he had met two months ago. Patricia with something in her eyes that he refused to believe was dollar signs. She wanted to go with him to his house in Palm Beach, and now that wouldn’t have to be sacrificed.

He took up the phone, dialed half of Patricia’s New York number, then pressed the cradle down to get a fresh dial tone. It would be an easy enough point in his favor to express his disappointment to Lillian. He called the school in Gstaad. The headmistress told him that, no, Lillian was not there and, no, Lillian was not in Rome or Cairo. She had departed for home, as allowed by Monsieur.

He called Swissair. Flight 110 had landed on time. The airline night supervisor confirmed that Lillian Holbrook had been a passenger.

He called the police. Kidnapping was assumed. The newspapers and television played it up, milked the story. But gradually
Where is Lillian Holbrook?
gave way to more current issues and misfortunes and crimes. The kidnapping was briefly mentioned in the press eight months later when Laurence Holbrook II married twenty-three-year-old fashion model Darlene Casey.

During the first few weeks Lillian often thought of going home. She felt guilty for causing so much commotion, and according to all the accounts she read and saw, her father seemed sincerely concerned. Ambivalent, restless, she took long late-night walks alone, until she was chased for her body and nearly caught by four studded leather types. From then on, she went up and sat on the roof to think things out.

She decided in her own favor.

She was living then with Charity in a one-room sixth-floor walkup on East Eleventh Street, near Avenue B. A pair of bedrolls, three plates, four mayonnaise jars for glasses, a few odd knives and forks. Stapled to the tops of the windows was heavy brown wrapping paper that could be rolled up and let down. A Swedish ivy plant, overcared for, on the sill. No refrigerator. For fifty dollars a month. They earned about a hundred a month stringing beads, sewing headbands and making simple silver wire jewelry that a guy sold to tourists at his head shop on MacDougal Street.

Lillian stayed home more than half the time, didn’t hang around St. Mark’s Place or take up with anyone except Charity. She was afraid she’d be recognized. And there were plenty of bounty hunters around, guys and a few girls who turned in runaways for whatever they could get from parents. One or two of the free crash pads were actually operated for such profit.

Lillian, because of her worth, had to be especially careful. She kept her hair trimmed short and wore plain wire-rimmed glasses.

By August she was confident enough to march. Up Fifth Avenue, with ten thousand others. She and Charity carried a sign they had water-colored the night before. Delicate curlicues and pretty swirls around the request:
PEACE PLEASE
.

She felt on display, intimidated by the onlookers, but after twenty blocks those feelings were stirred away. Never mind the ridicule from those on the sidewalks, the obscenities, or even the more active contempt of construction workers who threw garbage—she was in the stream of love, part of a gentle, invulnerable defiance.

She practically skipped up the rest of the avenue, and on into Central Park to the Sheep Meadow, where the energy of the day was pooled on the grass in the sun. The word
love
was everywhere. Most beautiful slogan. Hers now.

Lillian really listened to most of the speeches, contributed her cheers. She mingled, exchanged tender gazes, got kissed and hugged by strangers, kissed and hugged other strangers, helped sing a wistful song and had white daisies rained upon her from a helicopter.

It was, she thought, the most wonderful day of her life. She felt changed by it, as though she had passed from confinement to an openness where she joined a happier part of herself that had been waiting.

From that day on Lillian was in the thick of it.

She fell in young love twice. First with Michael and his poetry. Hitchhiked across the country with him. She didn’t like Haight-Ashbury. He did. One morning she left him sleeping. Caught rides to L.A., crashed around there, ran out of money, worked making beds in a big motel on Cahuenga.

Hitched her way back east.

Her second love was for Dennis and his intensity. He left her to join the Hare Krishnas. She saw him one summer Saturday, bald, barefoot, with a white stripe smeared down his forehead and the bridge of his nose, chanting and shaking bells near Rockefeller Center. Too busy with God to say hello.

She concentrated then on being a better revolutionary, liked the designation.

Fuck the Establishment!

Stopped up pay toilets in Grand Central and elsewhere by flushing down tennis balls that lodged in the pipes.

Carried a pocketful of four-inch flat-headed nails that she placed under the tires of any police cars and limousines outside the Waldorf.

Was proud she’d been busted ten times.

Knew how it was to have Mace in her face.

The Chicago convention, fight night in front of the Hilton: She jumped on the back of a cop who was clubbing someone down. Rode, clawed, kicked for his groin. Came to a few hours later at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, stitched thirty-two times in various places on her skull and with a very puffy upper lip. She asked for a mirror, grinned at herself and made sure she still had all her teeth.

She was around a lot of drugs, of course, but never got into them. Early on she gave everything one try for experience. When a joint was being passed, she passed. Relied on her natural highs and persevered her natural downs. Even at the Woodstock festival she stayed straight. Saturday night up on the fringe of People Hill, a mile from the stage, she climbed a large maple tree and sat out on a branch with a jug of Gallo red while Creedence Clearwater performed electronic chaos. Lillian met up with Charity again that day. Seven-and-a-half-months-pregnant Charity. The young man with her was not the father. They were living on a commune in Massachusetts, near Pittsfield. Did “Penny” know where that was?

She told them maybe someday she’d find it.

“Lots of people rap about you,” Charity said. “Did you really shove a hardhat down a Con Ed hole?”

“He started it.”

“Better not fuck with you, right?”

Lillian shrugged modestly.

“I love you, Penny.”

For the next year Lillian drifted with the action. About the only thing she missed out on was the People’s Park hassle in Berkeley. She seemed to have a knack for being wherever there was trouble. Sometimes she brought it.

Money was a problem. She didn’t need much but had to scuffle for it. Waitressed, washed cars, tie-dyed T-shirts which she sold on the sidewalk outside Bloomingdale’s. Also picked apples, did Tarot readings, learned to cut hair, pasted outdoor posters. Nothing steady.

Soon as possible after the Kent State killings she got a guy, a Nam vet sharpshooter, to teach her guns. The noise bothered her, but there was something agreeable about the smell of it. She only flinched the first time she fired. Not even a blink after that. Some people were naturals, the guy said.

She heard about an abandoned farm in Bethel, New York. A small place. She went there, moved in. Cleaned it up, painted it fresh. Put silver cardboard in place of the broken windowpanes. Couldn’t stop the roof from leaking but got the wood stove going after she’d figured out the damper. Grew her own vegetables out back. Corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, lima beans. Five days a week, succotash. She’d never felt so self-sufficient. The ground around the house was overgrown. She let it be. Thigh-high grass with tassel tops, dotted with buttery-yellow flowers and anemic black-eyed Susans. Better than any big manicured lawn any day. Out back in dappled shade she put an old iron bed, springs and mattress. It was a marvelous place to lie with nothing on and just feel good. On hot nights she slept out there, tented in gauzy fabric that kept out some mosquitoes.