Property of a Noblewoman (6 page)

She went to a movie alone on Sunday night, a French art film she’d been wanting to see, which wasn’t as interesting as she hoped, and that night she went to sleep and dreamed of Marguerite. She was trying to say something to Jane, and explain something to her, but through the entire troubled night, Jane never figured out what it was. John didn’t come home again on Sunday night and had texted her he’d slept on someone’s couch. She got up Monday morning, feeling drained and frustrated, and got ready for another week in surrogate’s court. At least she had the Christie’s appraisal to look forward to the next day. It was a welcome change. And with all that spectacular jewelry, Marguerite’s estate was anything but boring. It was the only excitement and bright spot in her life for now.

PHILLIP LAWTON LEFT
his apartment in Chelsea at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, as he did every week, to rendezvous with the love of his life. Her name was
Sweet Sallie
, she was an old wooden sailboat he had owned for eight years, and he kept her in a small harbor on Long Island. He spent every weekend on her, no matter what the weather, and when it was decent, he spent all his time sanding, cleaning, painting. She was immaculate, and no woman had ever given him as much joy. He was fiercely proud of her, and he usually spent Saturday night on her, and Friday night too whenever possible. It was a prerequisite that the women he went out with also loved
Sweet Sallie.
Some did more than others. Most women got tired of the boat after a while, and Phillip’s passion for her. She was the possession he was most proud of. He had loved sailing since he was a boy, even more than he loved art. He was a good sailor, and would often take her out in rough seas or summer storms. But at those times, he went alone and didn’t expect anyone to go with him.

At thirty-four, he had been involved in numerous relationships over the past years, but none either serious or long-term. A few had lasted a year, but most of them ran their course in a few months, and by then he or the woman or both had figured out that it was going nowhere and never would. Phillip had high ideals about what he wanted in a long-term relationship, and particularly a wife, and his role model was his parents’ marriage, which had seemed perfect to him. He compared all relationships to theirs and wanted nothing less for the long haul. His parents had been crazy about each other, until his father’s death three years before. They had been the ideal complement to each other, and fit together seamlessly. The whole relationship had always been characterized by humor, kindness, compassion, tenderness, a profound love for each other, and deep mutual respect. Phillip had no sense of how rare that was in today’s world and thought it was normal. His father was ten years his mother’s senior. They had met when she took one of his art history classes at NYU. His mother was a serious artist, for whose work his father had the greatest admiration.

They had been unable to have children for the first fifteen years of their marriage, despite many attempts and several miscarriages, and had finally given up and decided that their relationship was so strong and meaningful to both of them that perhaps they would be happier without children, and had finally accepted their inability to have them. And six months later, when his mother turned forty, and his father fifty, she had gotten pregnant with Phillip, and this time the pregnancy went effortlessly to a successful end. They called him their miracle child, doted on him, and included him in the magic circle of their deep affection for each other. He had grown up bathed in the warmth of their love and approval, and every relationship he had as an adult fell short of the generosity of spirit and sheer joy he had seen between his parents, and he wasn’t willing to accept less. And unless he had a relationship like theirs, he had no desire to settle down, and was comfortable alone. Maybe too comfortable.

His mother had been concerned, for several years now, that his standards were so high, and his idealistic vision of them so strong, that he would wind up alone when no one measured up to his parents’ marriage. He didn’t seem worried about remaining a bachelor and often said that he would prefer to be alone than with a woman who was less than what he wanted. And his mother had suggested to him that he was looking for a female with a halo and wings, which was certainly not who she was. But it was how Phillip viewed her, and he stubbornly refused to tolerate any woman’s flaws. And by now, he liked his own habits. Adjusting to someone else was not his strong suit. As a result, he spent a lot of time alone on his boat, working diligently on it during the weekends. For now,
Sweet Sallie
was enough for him, or so he claimed. And solitude didn’t scare him. He liked it.

On Sunday afternoon, after two good days of sailing in bright sun and strong winds, he drove into the city, to have dinner with his mother at her apartment, as he often did on Sunday nights, when neither of them had other plans. She liked to stay busy. She readily admitted that she was a terrible cook, and reminded him regularly of one of her many human failings that he chose to overlook. When he came to the apartment to have dinner, she would go to a nearby delicatessen and buy all the things he liked, and they would sit at her kitchen table, talk about her current work, her next gallery show, his discontent with Christie’s, or anything else of interest to him. She was more like a friend than a mother to him now, was seldom critical of him, made intelligent suggestions, and at seventy-four was the most youthful person he knew, with an open mind, a deep knowledge of art she had always shared with him, and fascinating creative ideas. She was never afraid to tackle difficult or controversial subjects, and sometimes preferred them. Valerie had always encouraged her son to think outside the box and explore new concepts and ideas. She hoped that he would meet a woman who would challenge him, enough to conquer his own fears of winding up with the wrong woman, but so far he never had. She thought his expectations of a woman were unrealistic, but she hadn’t lost hope for him yet, and hoped the right one would come along and shake him up a little. And he was young enough that there was no rush. But she was also well aware that he had gotten set in his ways, and enjoyed his own company too much. Lately, he had gotten lazy about dating. And his obsession with his boat didn’t appeal to many women, as she pointed out to him.

“Why don’t you go skiing, or take up some sport where you’ll meet women?” she prodded him occasionally, and he just laughed at her. She didn’t like interfering in his life, but was sorry to see him alone, and didn’t want him to stay that way forever.

“I’m not trying to meet women, Mother. I meet women every day.” The kind who sold the gifts men had given them when the marriage or affair ended, and had little respect or affection for the sentiment behind the gifts. They were only interested in the money they would get from selling them at auction. Or he met women who worked in the other departments at Christie’s, who were sometimes a little too serious for him. He had gone out with one who was extremely knowledgeable about gothic and medieval art, and his mother had thought she seemed like a member of the Addams family when she met her, but didn’t comment. Phillip had come to that conclusion too and stopped seeing her shortly after. He had been without a relationship for a year now, since the last one. And most of his friends were married by now and having first or second children. He preferred women his own age to younger ones, and many of them were married.

In the meantime, he had Sunday-night dinner with his mother whenever she wasn’t too busy to see him. He enjoyed her company, and they often laughed at the same things. And he always relaxed in the comfortable chaos of her apartment. All her life, she’d had the ability to turn her surroundings into a magical world. She and Phillip’s father never had a lot of money but were comfortable enough and had never lacked for anything; nor had their son. They were satisfied with what they had. Her circumstances had altered considerably three years before, from the insurance policy her husband had left her that she had known nothing about. It had dramatically changed her bank account, but not her life. She still enjoyed doing all the same things, and had never felt deprived by their lack of fortune. She intended to leave most of the insurance money to Phillip one day. She was careful and responsible with it, and hoped it would be useful for him, perhaps to start an art consulting business or a gallery of his own. She had mentioned it to him several times, but he wanted his mother to benefit from the money first. He thought she should travel, enjoy herself, and see the world. But she was too busy painting, and still studying, to venture far from home. “I’m having too much fun to go anywhere!” she would say, laughing at him, with her big bright blue eyes, and nearly unlined face.

She was still energetic, lively, and beautiful at her age. She was blessed with a youthful look and spirit. It was easy to see why her husband had been in love with her till the end. She was an enchanting woman full of mischief and charm, with a mane of once pale blond hair that was now snow white, and she often wore it loose down her back, as she had all her life.

By contrast, her older sister by four years, Winnie, was her opposite in every way. They were the yin and yang of life, but best friends nonetheless. While Valerie had never been concerned with the absence of luxury in her life, Edwina, Winnie, had thought of nothing else, and, like their parents, had worried about money and the possible lack of it, since she was a young girl. Born the year after Pearl Harbor, Valerie came into the world on the cusp of a more prosperous time. Winnie was born in 1938, nine years after their family had lost everything in the stock market crash, and she was a child in the years of the Depression and remembered their parents’ constant discussions about money. Their family had had a considerable fortune, and both their parents came from aristocratic ancestors, but lost almost everything they had. Winnie’s answer to their financial insecurity was to marry a young man from a wealthy family, and she had lived in extremely comfortable circumstances all her adult life. And when her husband died ten years before, he had left her a considerable fortune, and she still worried. Valerie had simply never cared about money, and always thought that whatever they had was enough.

Winnie and Valerie both remembered their father as a kind, though serious and somewhat chilly and austere man. He was a banker and was conservative about money. Losing their fortune had sobered him, and Valerie’s recollection of him was of his being at the office most of the time. And her memories of their mother were of an ice-cold woman, whose approval she could never win, no matter what she did. They had had an older sister who died of influenza in Europe at nineteen, whom Valerie didn’t remember, as she had died a year after Valerie’s birth. Winnie, on the other hand, insisted that she had some vague memories of her, and made excuses for their mother’s coldness by saying she had never recovered from their sister’s death. She would never speak of her first daughter as the younger girls were growing up, and they had rapidly understood that the subject was taboo, it was just too painful for her.

Winnie had been born when her older sister was fourteen, and her arrival had come as an awkward surprise to her parents, which her mother had grudgingly adjusted to. But Valerie’s birth four years later was simply too much for their mother. She was forty-five years old and seemed embarrassed to have a baby at that age, rather than pleased. Valerie had felt unwelcome in their midst all her life, until she married Lawrence and escaped the family she had nothing in common with. But Winnie was just like them, serious, austere, nervous, humorless, critical, and most of the time cold. She was a dignified woman, always concerned with doing the right thing, but never a warm one. There was nothing spontaneous about her, and she had grown up to be just like her mother. Valerie loved her sister anyway, and had managed to forge a strong bond with her. Valerie spoke to Winnie almost every day, and listened to her complain, often about her daughter Penny, who was more like Valerie than her own mother.

Penny was an attorney, with three children of her own, who Winnie thought were rude, unruly, and undisciplined, and she had never liked her son-in-law either. Winnie needed an orderly, peaceful life, unlike her younger sister Valerie, who was open to all possibilities and led what Winnie considered a bohemian life, as their mother had said about her too. But Winnie was more tolerant of her than their mother had been. Valerie had never been able to scale the walls her mother built around her, and eventually gave up, long before she died. She had never approved of her youngest daughter and made that clear. And with a husband and child she adored, Valerie had stopped caring about her mother’s disapproval years before. She didn’t miss her when she died, although Winnie had mourned her for years, and spoke of their mother as if she had been a saint. And Valerie understood even less, when she had her own child, how her mother hadn’t been able to view her arrival as an unexpected blessing rather than a curse.

Valerie’s family had been a mystery to her all her life, even Winnie, of whom she forgave much even now, and she often made jokes about having been switched at birth at the hospital with some other family. The greatest difference between them was that Valerie was a warm, loving person, and her parents and even her sister were ice cold. She thought of it as unfortunate for them, and was grateful that her son had inherited none of their traits. Nor had her niece Penny, who was a very sweet girl and a very successful lawyer. She was ten years older than her cousin Phillip, and they were good friends, more like sister and brother since both were only children, and she often called her aunt Valerie for advice, rather than dealing with Winnie, which was always a no-win for her, in the face of her mother’s criticism of everything she did, including a law degree from Harvard, which her mother thought was inappropriately ambitious for a woman. Penny was a better mother than Winnie claimed. Her philosophies about childrearing were similar to her aunt’s. Winnie was hopelessly old-fashioned in her outlook, whereas Valerie was full of life and always willing to embrace anything new.