The LeBaron Secret (40 page)

“Hey, man,” she hears the young man say to Peeper, “you look just like that other guy over there.”

“Eric's my twin brother,” Peeper replies with a smile.

The twins, handsome as always, have not yet to Sari's knowledge greeted each other. In fact, they are standing at opposite sides of the room, Peeper chatting with Littlefield and Melissa, and Eric in conversation with Joanna. And yet, looking at both boys, Sari is struck by an oddity that she has been aware of all their lives. Even though they had never been dressed alike as children, somehow they always turned up looking as though they had—almost as though an extrasensory sartorial message passed between them. If Eric came down for breakfast wearing a brown tweed jacket, Peeper would appear a few minutes later from his own room, in brown tweed. Tonight, though the two had dressed for dinner miles apart—Eric in Burlingame and Peter on Russian Hill—it is their neckties that are not quite, but almost, identical: dark red, with small, darker, figured patterns. It was a riddle Sari would never solve. Now she watches as—ah, good for him!—Peeper takes the initiative, and crosses the room toward his brother. “Hey, Facsi,” she hears Peeper say, “remember me, your old facsimile? I haven't heard from you in days. You're not sore at me for something, are you?” Good old Peeper.

But with dismay she watches as Eric spurns Peeper's outstretched hand, and sees Peeper's open, handsome face fill with an expression of deep hurt. “So you are sore at me,” he says.

“Not sore at you, you ass. Just amazed at your goddamned insensitivity.”

“Why? What've I done, Facsi?”

“You seemed to expect me to do handstands over your being made co-marketing director. Did it occur to you that it meant taking half my job responsibilities away from me?”

“But Mother said—”

“
Mother said
. That's our little mama's boy. And I suppose you're going to take her side in Harry's bid for the company?”

“I wouldn't go for anything she didn't want.”

“Well, I'm sick and tired of working for my mother. And so would you be, if you were half a man.”

“I'm half of you, Facsi,” she hears Peeper say quietly. “We were a split cell.”

“Oh, cut the crap,” Eric says. “If you ask me, you got half a brain.”

Now Peeper's face is red. “Well, bugger off, Eric!” he says sharply.

“Boys! Boys!” Sari cries. “We're not going to have that sort of talk in my house tonight. This is to be a pleasant little family dinner.” She thinks that the evening is getting off to a somewhat rocky start, and she signals to Thomas. “More drinks! More drinks for everybody.”

“Of course, we're all dying to know what you think of Harry's offer,” Mildred Tillinghast says. “That's the burning question on everyone's lips.”

Overhearing this, Harry says, “And maybe you've heard I'm prepared to sweeten it a bit, Sari.”

“No business talk tonight,” Sari says firmly. “Tonight is for fun. Tonight is just party.”

“Of course, you have wonderful business sense, Sari,” Mildred says. “I've always said you have an innate business sense.”

Raising her glass, Sari says, “I'd like to propose a toast—to Joanna, who's come all the way from New York to be at our little family gathering tonight. Welcome home, Jo.”

“Hear, hear … welcome home, Aunt Jo.”

Alix LeBaron, languishing on one of the long sofas in front of the fire, wearing a white knit caftan of nubbly wool and many gold chains and bracelets, looks as though she is waiting to be photographed by
Town & Country
. She is also clearly trying to catch Peeper's eye. When he finally turns to her, she says, “Well, Peeper, it's about time you said hello to me.”

“Oh, hi, Al,” he says easily, and she rewards him with a sulky smile.

It is clear to Sari that Alix is trying to make some sort of play for Peeper. “Alix,” she says, “how is Sloanie coming along with the orthodontist?”

“Oh, it's endless, Belle-mère,” Alix says.

“Mother,” Peeper says, “didn't there used to be a beautiful Baccarat millefiori paperweight on this table?”

“It had an accident,” Sari explains, careful not to look in Melissa's direction.

“Ah, that's a shame,” he says. “I loved that little piece.”

“Maids,” Alix agrees. “They break everything.”

Of all the expensively dressed and coiffed and groomed people in this room, Sari thinks—with Mr. Littlefield something of an exception—it is Joanna who is the wonder of the world. Though her blonde hair is now silver, the famous dark blue eyes still flash, and the dark double eyelashes, aided now no doubt by mascara, still create an extraordinary effect. The skin, for a woman of Joanna's age, is still remarkably smooth and clear, and the voice is even deeper and richer. A truly beautiful woman, Sari sometimes thinks, never really ages to the point of losing her beauty. It has something to do with the facial bones, the cheekbones in particular, and of course the eyes. It doesn't matter what Joanna wears—one hardly notices clothes on her—because one so quickly becomes caught up in Joanna's face, and the way her hands move. She is a toucher—always reaching out to touch, with just a dab of a gesture, the person she is talking to. She even sits youthfully, legs crossed at the knees, leaning forward, her chin in her hand, listening to what the person she is talking to has to say. She is, Sari is forced to admit, nothing short of miraculous, and she is weaving her spell now as she always did, holding the room with her famous charm. “Wheel me a little closer to Joanna,” Sari whispers to Peeper, who is standing closest.

“Now, I want to propose a toast,” Joanna says. “To Sari, my oldest and dearest friend. Sari, I just want to say that whatever the outcome of all this is, you'll always be that to me.”

“Hear, hear … to Mother … to Sari … to Belle-mère …”

“The old wine barrel in the portrait gallery,” Joanna says. “That was what touched me most, when I came into this house again and saw that there. Grandpa had it in his house in Sonoma, and Daddy kept it on California Street, and then Peter brought it here. It's a symbol of continuity, isn't it, but not a monument. It's still simple, still a simple, classic example of the cooper's art. When I walked into this house yesterday—your beautiful house, Sari—and saw the old wine cask, I thought for a minute I might burst into tears. And everything else—the portraits of the children, all of us, in the long gallery. It would keep the house young, Daddy used to say. And it has, Sari, it has, and of course Peter carried on that tradition, too. This house is so full of so many memories for me—my brother's pipe collection, the Roman bronzes in the front hall, the elephant's foot with all his walking sticks, all the things he loved—I finally felt home again. I finally felt that some things don't need to change. That's what you've maintained here, Sari—an island of continuity, of permanence and tranquillity in a sea of change. But the old wine barrel said it to me most.”

There is a silence, and then Eric says, “Lovely. I'd like a copy of that little speech, Aunt Jo.”

“But it's not a speech,” she insists. “It's what I feel, and what I mean. You know what I mean, don't you, Sari?” She laughs. “Or is the old advertising copywriter coming out in me? I always wanted to find some way to use that barrel in Baronet's advertising, but was never clever enough to figure out how. Of course, we don't handle the Baronet account anymore.”

“It was you who resigned it, don't forget,” Sari says. “That wasn't my idea.”

“But we're not to talk about business.”

You see? That is Joanna's cleverness. She knows that they are not to talk about business, and yet she steers the talk around to business anyway.

“I'm still getting calls from agencies who want to pitch for the account,” Eric says. “But of course, since I'm no longer with the company, I refer all those calls to Peeper.”

“Hey, I was wondering how those guys got my private number,” Peeper says.

“No business talk, remember?”

“But, Sari,” Mildred Tillinghast says, “what
do
you think of Harry's offer? Don't you think it's exciting?”

“No business …”

“Just give us a tiny little hint of what you think of it!”

“The old wine barrel. People who come to the house for the first time think it's a very peculiar thing for me to keep—and an even more peculiar place to put it!”

“The portrait gallery …”

“Sometimes it weeps. In certain kinds of weather.”

“And when I was a little girl, Sari, on California Street, I used to put my ear up to it, like listening to a seashell, and sometimes there would be little gurgling sounds. Grandpa's wine was trying to talk to me.”

“Wine keeps changing. It never dies.”

“Sometimes the barrel feels warm to the touch.”

“Just think. Over a hundred years old.”

“Nearly a hundred and thirty …”

“What would we find, I wonder, if we were to open it?”

“At every party, there would be someone who'd want to open that barrel!”

“The bung's so calcified into the bunghole now, it would take a sledgehammer to open it …”

Thomas is moving about the room again, taking more drink orders, and a housemaid is passing hors d'oeuvres, mushroom caps filled with sour cream and caviar. “What's this stuff?” Sari hears Mr. Littlefield ask Melissa.

“That's caviar, dear. Sturgeon roe—salmon eggs.”

“
Fish eggs?
”

“Don't eat it if you don't want to, dear.”

“The portraits,” Joanna says. “How was yours done, Sari? I forget.”

“Your father had it painted from a photograph of me that was taken when I did that play.”

“Oh, that play! That's how we met, of course, when you brought your play to Burke's. How I loved that play!”

“Oh, it was an awful piece of claptrap.”

“But
you
were what made it wonderful! If you hadn't married Peter, you could easily have gone on to Hollywood and become a great film star. That's what I always thought.”

“Where's the john?” she hears Mr. Littlefield ask Melissa.

“Out the door there, down the hall, and to your right.”

“Just think—everyone in this room is hanging out there in that gallery,” Joanna says, and Sari thinks: You have to hand it to her. She tries to keep the conversation bubbling on, even through the rocky patches.

“Well,
I'm
not there,” Alix says. “My children are there, but I'm not, and neither are Mummy and Daddy. Because we're not considered
family
.”

“Well, we'll have to rectify that, won't we, Sari?”

And Athalie isn't there, either. Where is Athalie? Forget Athalie, forget she ever existed. But she did exist. She did
.

Mr. Littlefield has returned from using the facilities, and Sari cannot help but notice a change that seems to have come over him. His face is flushed now, and his hands are twitching, his head bobbing up and down in strange little jerking motions. He is trying to light a cigarette, with a match, and it takes him four matches before he can get the flame and the tip of the cigarette to come together. He looks all at once quite unwell, and Assaria LeBaron propels her chair toward him, determined to discover what this allegedly tremendously talented young man does for a living, and what his relationship might be with Melissa. “I hope all this family talk doesn't bore you, Mr. Littlejohn,” she says.

“Littlefield,” and with more little jerks of his head, he says, “Nice place you got here. Like, man, this is a real mansion.”

“Well, yes, I suppose—”

“I mean, like, thanks for asking Melissa and I up,” he says. And then, “I gotta go to the john again,” and he steps out into the hall once more, the cigarette clenched between his teeth, and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his borrowed suit jacket. Sari thinks that surely he is ill, and that perhaps among his problems is one to do with his bladder.

“Did you know my brother, Harry?” Joanna is saying.

“Only slightly. But of course, everyone knew him by reputation.”

“A good reputation, I hope.”

“Oh, the very finest.”

“Together, he and Sari made an unbeatable team.” Then, in a quieter voice, she says, “Tomorrow, I'd like to go out to the Sonoma vineyard and see Mother and Daddy's graves, see the trees. Peter always thought it was barbaric, the way they wanted to be buried, but I always thought it rather—poetic. Would anyone like to go with me? Sari? Melissa?”

And now Mr. Littlefield has returned from the bathroom again, and this time his appearance is almost alarming. His face is now very flushed, and his eyes are quite large, and the twitching of his hands and the jerking of his neck muscles are more pronounced. Surely this young man is very ill, Sari thinks. Melissa has noticed something, too, for she sees Melissa whisper something to him, an anxious expression on her face. Then Sari notices another extraordinary thing. Mr. Littlefield has an erection! Its unmistakable size and contours are quite obvious against the trouser leg of Peter LeBaron's old blue suit. She wonders if others in the room will notice it, or whether, since now the others are all standing, while she, of necessity, is seated and therefore at eye level with his condition, it will escape their observation. To Thomas, who has just handed her a fresh drink, she whispers, “Is dinner nearly ready? You know I dislike a long cocktail hour.”

“I'll speak to Cookie, Madam.”

“After Mother and Daddy died, Peter and Sari and I went out into the fields,” Joanna is saying to Harry Tillinghast, “and we got down on our hands and knees with the field hands, and started planting vines …”

“Remarkable.”