The LeBaron Secret (28 page)

Baronet will be interviewing for new agency representation over the next few months. No new appointment will be announced until these interviews have been completed.

And now, having done that, Sari has another idea. Why not, in this new spirit of honeyed friendliness, telephone Joanna and read the press release to her, and ask her what she thinks of it? The idea appeals to her, because it contains an element of surprise. Joanna won't be expecting to hear from Sari on a conciliatory note at this juncture. She'll expect Sari to be mad as hell. As of course she is.

“I just wanted to see if you approved of my wording, Jo,” she says when she has her on the phone, “before I ask Miss Martino to dictate it to the
Times
.”

“Why, I think it reads very
nicely
, Sari,” Joanna says. “It's certainly kind of you to give us all the credit for your wonderful figures. You had an awful lot to do with that yourself, you know.”

“No, I believe in giving credit where credit is due.”

“Sari, I'm really terribly touched, darling.”

“Of course, I was a little hurt that you didn't give me any advance warning that you were doing this,” Sari says.

“But I thought I was just going through the proper channels, telling Eric. After all, Eric is your advertising director.”

“
Was
.”

“Oh. Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Sari. But I'm not going to tell you how to run your company.”

“I can't have him on my payroll while he's plotting to sell my company to someone else, can I? I presume by now you've had his letter to the shareholders.”

“Yes. This morning.”

“May I ask you what you think of his proposal?”

“Well, I must say I find it very tempting,” she says. “Harry's offer seems generous, and Eric seems to think he might sweeten it by a point or two when we get into negotiations. It would “mean a lot of money for all of us, and there's also another thing.”

“What's that?”

“As you and I get older, Sari, it's been on my mind. You and I are now the senior stockholders, in terms of age. With a privately owned company like Baronet, if something should happen to either of us, the government could come in and place whatever price they wanted to on the stock. Our heirs could be taxed to the moon. We'd have no control. But if we were to become part of Kern-McKittrick, that's a publicly owned company, and the price of its stock would be established in the marketplace. We'd be providing much more security for our children, and your grandchildren. That's the point my lawyers have been making to me. What do your lawyers say?”

“I haven't met with them yet.”

“What I think we ought to do,” Joanna says, “even before we start listening to what lawyers think, is all of us sit down together, like civilized human beings, and talk this whole thing over. It doesn't have to be a
High Noon
shoot-out. After all, we're connected by blood as well as wine.”

“And speaking of that,” Sari says, “in any shareholder vote, we are going to have what I call a Lance problem. Or it could also be called a Melissa problem, if you remember the terms of Peter's will.”

“Yes. I know exactly what you mean.”

“Things could get very—unpleasant, couldn't they.”

“Yes. But that's if there's a
High Noon
shoot-out. First let's meet and talk about it. Why don't I clear a few things off my desk, and fly out for the weekend? How would that be? Besides, it's been ages since I've seen you.”

Sari is silent for a moment. Then she says, “But what about me?”

“Hm?”

“What about me? If you and Eric and Lance all vote against me, and if Melissa finds out she's legally entitled to vote more shares than she knows she owns, and votes it all against me—”

“Melissa must not be told. That would be—”

“But suppose I were to tell her?”

“You wouldn't do that, Sari. You'd do a lot of things, but you wouldn't do that.”

“I would, if I thought she'd vote on my side!”

“You're still talking about a
High Noon
shoot-out. It hasn't come to that.”

“And if she voted on my side, that would put the kibosh on you and Eric, wouldn't it? Because I'd also have Peeper on my side.”

“Sari, we're quarreling. Let me come out to San Francisco for the weekend, and we'll meet and talk—like civilized—”

“Of course, Melissa could decide to vote against me. It would be just like her! Then where would I be?”

“Sari,” she hears Joanna's voice saying, “you've worked so hard for the company all these years. I should think, at this point, that you'd be ready to slip out of your girdle, relax—maybe travel, take a cruise—relax, and enjoy your life.”

“This company
is
my life! This company is my entire life! It's the only life I've ever had. You, Jo, of all people ought to know that. Jo—remember I did you a big favor once, long ago. Why don't I hear you saying that you'll take my side in this? Do you remember a pact made in blood? Whatever became of that, my fair-weather friend? Let me just say this—if you side with Eric in this thing, it
will
turn into a
High Noon
shoot-out, and I will tell Melissa everything she needs to know.
Every
thing.”

“Sari dear,” Joanna says. “Please relax. I'll come out for the weekend. We'll talk.”

Eight

“Tell us more, Joanna dear,” Constance LeBaron said, “about this new little friend of yours.” They were sitting in the red-plush breakfast room of the old LeBaron house on California Street.

“She is absolutely the cat's pajamas,” Joanna said through a mouthful of fresh grapefruit. “She's small and dark, and absolutely beautiful, and she's the most divinely talented actress who's obviously going to become a simply famous movie star. Her name is Assaria Latham. Isn't that the most divine name?”

“Where does she go to school?”

“Public school.”

“Public school! Really! Not Burke's or Hamlin's.”

“Don't be a snob, Mother. Not every nice girl in San Francisco goes to Burke's or Hamlin's.”

“And you say she lives on Howard Street. I didn't think people
lived
on Howard Street. Isn't that a little peculiar?”

“All struggling artists have to starve in garrets, until they achieve fame and recognition.”

“Have you seen the neighborhood where this girl lives?”

“Nope,” Joanna said, gouging out another grapefruit section. “But I'm going to. She's invited me.”

“When you see the neighborhood around Howard Street, I think you may be in for a rude awakening,” her mother said. Constance LeBaron was a woman who pronounced a word like “neighborhood” as though it were spelled
neighbourhood
. “It is not one of our more desirable residential districts. In fact, I'm not sure I should want you to go there alone.”

“Oh, don't be such a snob, Mother. She's such a snob, isn't she, Daddy?”

“Joanna's always our little free spirit, isn't she, Mother?” her father said.

“And tell me again where you met this girl?” her mother said.

“At school. They did her play at school. It was a wonderful play, and she was the best thing in it.”

“But don't forget,” her mother said, “that next year is to be your debutante year. And with everything that will be going on for you then, this new friend of yours might not quite—fit in, if you see what I mean.”

“Why not, I wonder?”

“What I mean is that she might not—feel comfortable with some of the other people we know.”

“You don't know Sari,” Joanna said. “She'd be at home in the humblest hovel or in the mightiest millionaire's mansion. You haven't seen her on the stage. I have.”

“I assume that Mother and I will have an opportunity to meet this paragon,” Julius LeBaron said.

“Yep. I've invited her here for tea next Sunday.” She was intently squeezing her grapefruit into her spoon, determined to extract every last juicy polyp from the fruit.

“It is acceptable,” her mother said, “when dining
en famille
, to pick up the chicken leg with one's fingers, or the chop at the end. It is also acceptable to squeeze a grapefruit into a spoon, as you're doing now, but only
en famille
. Never when dining out, or at a public restaurant.”

“Oh, Mother!”

“It's important to remember these things, dear, as your debutante year approaches.”

“This coming Sunday?” her father said.

“Yep. That's her day off.”

“Day off from
what?
” her mother said.

“She works as an usherette in a movie theatre,” Joanna said. “Did you hear the one about the nervous usher at the wedding? He said, ‘Mardon me, Padam, but you are occupewing the wrong pie. Please allow me to sew you to another sheet.' Isn't it a screech?” She tossed her napkin on the breakfast table. “Well, I'd better be off or I'll be late. I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep!”

And she was off.

“An usherette in a movie theatre,” Constance LeBaron said after her daughter had left. “What next, I wonder?”

With a chuckle, Julius LeBaron said again, “Well, she's always been our little free spirit, hasn't she, Mother?”

Assaria's first impression of the house on California Street was of red plush—red plush everywhere, toy plush, cut velvet, and red damask window hangings. And gilt. Whatever was not coverable by plush or velvet was gilded—little gilt tables and uncomfortable-looking little gilt straight-backed chairs with velvet seats, and the walls were overwhelmed by huge mirrors in gilded frames. It was the kind of Nob Hill house you used to see a lot of in San Francisco in those days, but now see only rarely. It dated from San Francisco's earliest era of affluence, the Victorian age, and it had managed to escape the fire. And as Joanna took her around the house, it seemed to Sari quite literally a palace. She had never seen anything remotely like it, not even in the movies.

These were some of the things she marveled at that first day: The brass rods that gripped the crimson carpets to the stairs, thin from polishing; the heavy embroidered bellpulls in every room that were used to summon servants; these, she was told, were called “annunciators.” There was one whole room called “the Library,” lined floor to ceiling with books in identical morocco bindings, in cases with heavy glass doors, locked and secured by tiny keys. In a silver bowl in this room were what appeared to be nothing but dried petals—indeed, they were, dried tea roses, pikake and jasmine flowers and bits of vetiver root, Joanna explained—that, when stirred with one's fingertips, threw a sweet odor into the air. “A perfectly ordinary potpourri,” Joanna said. Perfectly ordinary! In another bowl, a chocolate apple, which, when tapped, fell apart into perfectly shaped little slices.

Later, she would learn more about this wondrous house. The mirror gloss of the mahogany of the dining-room table was achieved by its being rubbed daily by the palms of the hands of Negro servants. (“White people's hands can't do it,” Joanna said.) The creamy luster of the heavy silver chandeliers and tea sets could be maintained only by daily polishing. On a sandwich plate, there appeared to be a rosebud, but when Sari picked it up it unraveled into a thin strip of tomato peel that had been artfully fashioned to resemble a flower. (“Only decoration, silly! Not to
eat
it.” Only decoration!) In this house, real flowers were never permitted to die. Unseen hands replaced them. Candles were not permitted to burn down to stubs, but were replaced at each new occasion for lighting them. Nothing was permitted to wear out, or to break or to disappear or to grow old or to lose its gleam, in this wondrous house, run by elves and magicians.

Order—that was what it was. It was order that arranged everything here, order that moved automatically about this house like shuttles across a loom, establishing precedence, sequence, consequence, giving every symbol of the house its place, and making all the symbols coherent and interrelated, smooth and finished. This, Sari decided, was what luxury meant—order, order everywhere. If the coverlet of a bed were to be turned down, it inevitably revealed a monogrammed satin blanket cover, and clean white linen sheets and pillow slips with deep embroidered hems. In this house, with its order, rude surprises were ruled out.

That first day, Joanna had taken her into the portrait gallery, with all the LeBarons, in order, painted as they looked, or may have wished that they had looked, when in their early teens. In front of one portrait of a strikingly handsome youth, Joanna had paused. “That's Peter,” she whispered. “Isn't he just the cat's pajamas?”

In that other gallery, too, was the same wine barrel that now reposes in Sari's house on Washington Street, and Joanna had read the inscription on it, and explained its significance to her. “My grandfather's,” she said. “They say if you were to drink it now it would blow your head off.”

Then Sari was led into the red-plush drawing room, to be introduced to Joanna's parents—to Constance, a short, plumpish woman with a wide poitrine and blonde, marcelled hair, wearing a black dress and pearls, and to Julius LeBaron, a tall, pleasant-looking man with a high, balding forehead, who wore an open shirt with an ascot and a tweed Norfolk jacket. Immediately Sari decided that she liked the father better than the mother, who seemed a little nervous and distracted, and sat stiffly in her gilt chair, twisting and untwisting her long rope of pearls, and touching her hair. “Joanna tells us you are Jewish,” she said. “How very interesting.”

“It's true that my parents were Jews,” Sari answered very carefully. “But I remember very little about them, and I've never had any religious training. I've never been inside a church or synagogue.”