Possessions (27 page)

“And Calvin Klein blouses. You're still trying to figure out what happened?”

“We're pretty sure we know what happened. They were stolen. And maybe other things, too; we don't know yet how much. We did a couple of spot inventories without advance notice, and, in lingerie, we can't account for a box of Simone bras. Twenty-four, at seventy-five bucks apiece.”

Briefly, Katherine tried to imagine having enough money to pay seventy-five dollars for a brassiere. But then she concentrated on Leslie. “But if they were stolen, wouldn't they—?”

“They didn't show up as stolen. Look. We have a computer system that keeps track of all our merchandise, from the time we get a shipment in the receiving room to the time it's sold and paid for. Today, the computer says every Simone bra that we received has either been sold or is still on the shelves. If we hadn't individually counted every bra and sales slip in lingerie we wouldn't know twenty-four were missing. Don't you understand?
The computer's numbers all balanced.”

After a moment, Katherine said, “The computer. You're worried about Bruce.”

“One hundred percent.” Leslie sighed. “And, of course, me. I got him hired to work in that department without divulging his unruly past. And now something is going on—maybe a computer operator making a bunch of simple mistakes, maybe something a lot bigger—and if my brother is involved, I'm involved. All those beetle-eyed vice-presidents, you know, watching for me to make a mistake.”

In the silence, they heard Todd weaving a story about dishes that washed themselves or were set to self-destruct if they were not clean in five seconds. Leslie shook her head vigorously, like a pony tossing off a rainstorm. “I needed to talk and I feel
better, for which I thank you, but we're supposed to be celebrating your triumph. So tell me—what are you going to make for His Highness Herman Mettler?”

It took Katherine only a minute to decide. She went to her worktable for her sketch pad. This time she felt confident enough to share her ideas.

*  *  *

“Much, much better!” Victoria exclaimed when she saw Katherine waiting in front of Podesta Baldocchi, framed by the shop's lush jungle of flowers and plants. “Forgive me for being late, my dear—but let me look at you! Katherine, you are quite lovely. I knew it. I am never wrong about women. Of course I am never wrong about men, either. Ah, and when you laugh you are really quite remarkable.”

Laughing as much from happiness as at Victoria's firm judgments, Katherine turned on the crowded sidewalk and kissed her cheek. “Oh, my dear,” Victoria murmured. She stopped and looked about, as if unsure of where she was. “How quickly we forget—and then become greedy again.”

“You're thinking of Jennifer,” Katherine said as they walked to Maiden Lane. She felt a flash of jealousy, but then it passed. Jennifer was dead and it was Katherine, wonderfully alive, whom Victoria had asked to go Christmas shopping, and even the gray drizzle of the afternoon could not dim the way she felt when Victoria admired her—as if she had found both the mother and grandmother she had never known.

“Some time we'll talk about Jennifer,” Victoria said. “But not now. Now I am going to buy a new dress for Christmas dinner. Do you know it will be the first we've had at home in years?” They turned into Helga Howie. “Usually I am in Italy, or somewhere, but I thought, what a good idea, this year, for us all to be together. I hope I am not getting sentimental. At my age, it would look like senility. Renee, please,” she said to a saleswoman and in a moment the designer appeared and greeted her as an old friend.

After Victoria introduced her, Katherine browsed among Helga's designs and European imports while Victoria swiftly and decisively bought three knit dresses. “Done,” she said as they left. “I do not enjoy shopping. Such a waste of energy. I refuse to do it.”

“You just did,” Katherine pointed out.

“But I did not enjoy it. The only civilized way to shop is to have everything sent home. Why should I disrobe in a store when I have an excellent dressing room of my own? However, I wanted you to meet Renee. Someday you'll buy your clothes from her.”

Katherine laughed. “Do you know that you spent two months of my salary on those three dresses?”

Victoria paused. “Did I indeed? And yet you are not using the money that . . . arrives each month on things for yourself?”

“No. Only for the children.” She has trouble, Katherine thought, using Craig's name.

“Well. I want you to help me with my shopping. The last few years I've given money but this year I shall once again give gifts. More sentimentality, perhaps. And difficult. How do I know anymore what most of them want?”

“How do I know?” Katherine asked. “I hardly know your family.”

“Nonsense. You've spent time with all of us—a great deal of time with Derek, I gather.” They walked into Gump's and for the first time Katherine discovered the heady joys of shopping with unlimited funds. Victoria had been serious about wanting her help: she asked for advice and most often took it, and Katherine chose what she liked, without looking at price tags. For two glorious hours they delved into the world's finest treasures, buying hand-carved lapis lazuli figures from Chile, Venetian opaline glass, Aynsley cobalt and gold china, suede jackets lined in sable, and Hermes purses for Melanie and Ann. “Though God knows why,” said Victoria. “Ann won't use hers in the wilds of Maine and Melanie . . . well, Ross keeps his own counsel but it's my guess their marriage won't last out the year and if so, why am I buying that self-centered woman this magnificent piece of leather? Well, it doesn't matter. She can take it with her when she goes. We'll shop for the children on another day; they aren't ready for Gump's. But I am ready for tea. Come; I have a favorite place.”

It was a short walk, across Union Square. “Now,” Victoria said, seated on a velvet couch at The Compass Rose. “Do you like it?”

“It's amazing,” Katherine answered. She did not say she had been there with Ross and that the room reminded her of
his warmth three months ago and how different he seemed just this week when he abruptly ended their phone call. She did not even ask Victoria what she had meant about Ross's marriage.

“You need this room,” said Victoria, ordering Brie and fruit and tea for both of them. “You need a little eccentricity. Your taste at Gump's—impeccable, of course, or I would not have agreed with your choices. But, my dear, to be so proper—at your age—!”

“I don't understand. I thought—”

“You thought you were pleasing me.” Victoria fell silent, her eyes on a far wall. “I want to tell you a story. Fifty-six years ago, in 1925, a young woman discovered that the money she and her husband were living on was made by smuggling liquor into the country.”

“Prohibition . . .”

“Precisely. The young woman's husband was co-owner with his father of a small construction company, but he became obsessed with the thrill of defying the federal government. We will not discuss whether prohibition was good or bad; he was breaking the law and risking prison, and he continued to do so until Congress repealed prohibition. That was in 1933.”

Katherine nodded. Hugh Hayward, she thought. Tobias had told her. But he said Victoria never talked about it.

“The husband's father had died in 1930, leaving the company in the husband's hands. In his passion for smuggling, he had ignored it. By the time of repeal, when he began to pay attention to it, the company was almost moribund. Then he was struck by a new passion: to rescue the company that bore his father's name. It was not a simple task. The country was in a depression and construction companies were dying no matter how hard anyone tried to save them.” Victoria drank her tea and gazed through the great doorway that looked into the busy hotel lobby. “By 1934, when it seemed he could not revive the company, he went into his own depression in the midst of the national depression. Day after day, he sat in his room, looking through the window at the world passing by. You should have seen him, Katherine—tall and wonderfully handsome, with a smile that strangers turned to as if it were a beacon. When Ross smiles he looks exactly like him. He had broad shoulders and when he walked into a room he took
ownership of it just by being Hugh Hayward. I'll show you pictures of him, but they can't tell you how beautiful he was because you had to be with him to feel his magnetism. Then, to see him hunched in a chair, staring out the window, his fingers picking at his pants on his thigh—picking, all day long—and his mouth moving as if he were talking, but making no sound . . . It was so terrible I had to get away. I had to get out of that house.”

Katherine let her tea grow cold, afraid to break Victoria's reverie.

“In the fall of 1934, I went to the office of the Hayward Corporation and sat down in Hugh's chair. I had no idea what to do, but I knew that a construction company had to have something to build. So I called on the men who had shared Hugh's smuggling adventures and told them I would build them new houses. They laughed at me and patted me on the head. Never let a man pat you on the head, my dear; it means he is about to put you on a leash or kick you out. However, Hugh's friends were great fools. They had written letters about their business and sexual activities—can you imagine?
They wrote them down!
And Hugh kept them. And I found them. In his dresser, under his boating socks. Naturally, his friends preferred that the letters not become public, so they ceased patting me on the head and the Hayward Corporation, under my direction, with the help of two fine men who had started it with Hugh's father, built some very expensive houses in Tiburon and Sausalito and Berkeley—oh, but land was cheap, then!—and I tucked the letters into the safe.”

Victoria signaled for more tea. “And more fruit,” she told the waiter. “Katherine? More Brie?”

Katherine shook her head. “Please go on.”

Victoria smiled. “We also had help, indirectly, from money the government was spending. When schools and highways, and even post offices, were built by the WPA, people in the neighborhoods began to think about enlarging or repairing their homes. We could give credit because we had all that smuggling money. Once, we renovated an apartment building in Oakland. We stripped banisters and oak floors, rearranged walls and restored broken moldings, even replaced stained glass doors and windows. It took a year and a half. We finished on March 21, 1938.”

The waiter put a plate of grapes and pears before them, and poured fresh tea. “You are wondering how I remember the date. I remember because on that morning Hugh woke up, dressed himself, and went to work, as if on a normal day. Four years had passed and he knew it, but his depression was gone, so he went to his office and sat down in his chair and began running his company.”

Katherine studied Victoria's expressionless face. “But it wasn't his company. You'd made it yours.”

“It was Hugh's company. There was only one office and it was his, one desk and it was his. He thanked me for what I had done and sent me home to take care of our sons.”

“But they weren't—how old were they?”

“Curt was twenty and Jason nineteen.”

Their eyes met and they began to laugh. “But it isn't funny,” Katherine said. “It's sad.”

“Certainly. But you see, Hugh was a genius and I knew it. I had kept the company alive, but he made it one of the largest and most influential in the state. And besides the monstrous projects that multiplied after the war—roads, bridges, dams, shopping centers—he carried the idea of restoration much farther than I ever dreamed. And if he took credit for thinking of it in the first place, what difference did it make, since he did it so brilliantly? You see, Katherine, all Hugh took from me was a small company. I never would have succeeded as he did.”

They were silent. Around them, conversations rose and fell, cultivated murmurs and the clink of silver spoons. “He took more than a company,” Katherine protested. “He took your place. It was important to you.”

“True.”

“And you missed it when it was gone.”

“Oh, my, yes.”

Katherine was thinking. “Would you tell me,” she said hesitantly, “what Jennifer was going to study in college?”

“Ah.” Victoria's eyes were bright. “I knew you would understand. Didn't I say I was always right about women? And men, of course. Jennifer wanted to be an engineer.”

“And work in the Hayward Corporation?”

“In fact, we often talked about my financing her own company.”

To finish what you began. You wanted Jennifer to live the life Hugh took away from you. So you could live it through her.

Victoria sighed. “It's late, and we haven't talked about you. We must make definite plans for you, now that you have an order from Mettler. You'll come to tea so we can talk quietly.” She signed the check, slipped her arms into her fur jacket, and kissed Katherine on both cheeks. And they walked down the carpeted stairs and through the lobby as clusters of people made way for Victoria's imperious figure and determined stride.

*  *  *

Late that night, Derek called. Katherine had not seen or heard from him in the two weeks since he told her the story of the sailing accident. “I understand you and my grandmother bought out Gump's this afternoon.”

She smiled to herself. “Aren't you the one who made a comment about the joys of a large family?”

“I am. But a grapevine is often valuable. Did I wake you?”

“No, why?”

“You sound subdued and it's after midnight.”

“I'm working on a new design.”

“And?”

“I shouldn't be so glad to hear from you.”

“Victoria told me you'd been transformed,” he said. “But evidently you still say what you think.”