Rich Friends (11 page)

4

The following Tuesday Caroline got a phone call from her grandmother. The right birthday gift for Em, Mrs. Van Vliet admitted, had her bewildered. Could Caroline help? And lunch with her?

“Saturday,” Caroline agreed.

Saturday, promptly at half-past eleven, the Daimler drove up Cordell Road. Caroline, feeling blissfully elegant (her pleasure enhanced by a gaping neighbor), stepped into the car as she would a perfumed bath. Joseph, tipping his cap, closed the door after her. “How was Arrowhead?” Mrs. Van Vliet inquired.

“On the way up, the motor boiled over—twice. It snowed the entire time. And Mrs. Duquesne insisted on serving her curried lamb—twice.”

“Delightful,” said Mrs. Van Vliet dryly.

“Grandmama, remember I told you Gene's been writing about the Army? Short stories? Old luv, you wouldn't believe how good they are. Sensitive. Fine. I cry each time I read them. Well, LeRoy Duquesne spent the weekend criticizing them.”

“Criticize? That has an ominous ring.”

“LeRoy Duquesne's meant to be a
renowned
critic.” Caroline made a face. “Gene's working like a dog, revising.”

“Does this mean he's given up on the Holy Cause?”

“We're still slaving on the petition, if that's your innuendo, Grandmama.” Very French.

“Will Gene sign?”

“Of course not!”

“Then he'll be dismissed.”

“Faculty firing—there's one little threat I do not believe they'll carry out.”

A hand gloved in French kid brushed light as a butterfly wing on Caroline's knee. “Caroline, remember those movie writers, the ones who refused to answer the House Un-American Activities Committee? Some went to jail. None'll work again. Ever. The same goes for recalcitrant professors.”

A remark as infuriating as unarguable: Mrs. Van Vliet numbered among her friends, Caroline was aware, three regents of the University of California.

They had turned into the heavy traffic on Colorado Boulevard before either spoke.

“Methinks we can work this out,” Mrs. Van Vliet said.

“His signing? Gene never will.”

“You two getting married,” Mrs. Van Vliet said without lowering her voice. She and Joseph would have considered it a breach of etiquette to hint that his protruding black ears might eavesdrop. “You've been sleeping together for almost a year.”

Caroline's cheeks burned brighter. Close as she was to her grandmother, she was also a daughter of her time. What girl in 1950 could admit sexual activity? And to another generation?

“God knows I'm no Puritan,” said Mrs. Van Vliet. “But let these long-term romances continue past a certain point and they fade. The girls drift from one affair to the next. Some never marry, some make a bad marriage.”

“Alas and alack for me.”

“Why?”

“You just said he's about to get the ax. How can we afford to get married?” And as she spoke, into Caroline's normally self-assured mind flashed oddly deflating facts: Most of my Omega Delta pledge group are married. Beverly's married and pregnant.

Mrs. Van Vliet said, “We'll find something for him in Van Vliet's.”

Caroline's breath sucked in.

“Why the surprise? Gene has vision, he'll make a good merchandiser, and that's what a market chain needs most.” She gave a chuckle. “It wouldn't surprise me if he does well. Very well indeed.”

“Why should it? You own half the stock.” Caroline, recovering, bent one leg to the seat, turning to her grandmother. “He's a sensitive, wonderful writer. A born teacher.”

“We've eliminated teaching. And writing?” Mrs. Van Vliet's tone was guilty of malice aforethought. “What luck your tastes run to expensive red frocks. Apprentice writers are notoriously overpaid.”

“I don't believe Gene could be good in the business.” Caroline's tone echoed her grandmother's. “He's smart, progressive, creative, the exact opposite of Uncle Richard and Uncle Hend.” Mrs. Van Vliet's sons, who alternated presidency of the chain. “
They're
good at it.”

Mrs. Van Vliet chuckled. Caroline's assessment of her two sons coincided with her own. “Now. Be serious. You can convince Gene.”

“To each his own disaster area.” Caroline shrugged. “Sure I can. Bossy from the word go, that's me. But I won't.”

“The idea doesn't appeal to you?”

“It does. Very much.”

“Then?”

“Not for Gene.”

“Let's see if I understand. You want Gene in Van Vliet's, but there you won't respect him?”

“That's about it.”

“Normally, Caroline, you're more straightforward.”

“Van Vliet's just isn't Gene, Grandmama, don't you see that? On campus he can write, do crazy, wonderful things like the petition. He can admire and trust people.”

“Even if he doesn't admire the family, he can trust us,” said Mrs. Van Vliet wryly. “Caroline, listen to me. You're not the little hausfrau sweeping up cookie crumbs like Em. You have style, spirit. You're expensive.”

“Grandmama, why're you playing Mephistopheles?”

“Your happiness is important, very, to me.”

“Then let me be happy.”

“Without the accoutrements, you won't be.”

“With Gene grubbing, I won't be.”

“You don't understand how important money is to women like us,” Mrs. Van Vliet sighed. “I'll have to manage this.”

They rode the rest of the way to the new Bullock's in silence.

While Caroline and Mrs. Van Vliet deliberated over Em's birthday gift, Gene was at his desk in the English Department office, surrounded by empty desks of other TAs and the stale memory of their (possibly) stale bologna sandwiches. He was typing the final draft of “Troopship” carefully, lovingly, erasing his infrequent typos, blowing away curly dust. He read the story aloud, pausing three times, thoughtfully inking over three sentences. He retyped these pages. He moved to the pigeonholes, folding crisp paper lengthwise into the empty crypt labeled
DR
.
LEROY F
.
DUQUESNE
. Pages rustled into a fan. Gnawing a thumbnail, Gene stared for approximately five minutes. He pulled his story halfway out, then hastily pushed it back.

5

“Can't you tell me what this is all about?” Gene asked when he picked up Caroline on Monday night.

“
La grande dame
's invited us to dine, that's all,” said Caroline, grabbing his earlobes. “Kiss me, you fool.”

He kissed her forehead. He knew better than to smear the crimson lipstick brushed an immaculate millimeter inside the ripe mouth, a mouth that hinted of the gratification of various healthy appetites. She hugged his rib cage, hard, admitting that although she normally found him most unsexy, tonight there was a full moon, and the full moon invariably brought out the Countess Dracula in her, causing her to yearn after passionate scenes of vampirean lust, floggings, degradation, and your routine bloodletting. All the way to her grandmother's, she babbled.

Parking, Gene asked, “Caroline, what is it?”

“What's what?”

“The fluster.”

“Can't you tell
per
version when you see it?”

It was rare for Caroline to be nervous. She infected him. Joseph, huge, jug-eared, opened the door. Gene began to sweat. He knew Joseph. Besides, his parents kept an elderly live-in maid. Tonight, though, he realized a butler is a butler is a butler. Mrs. Van Vliet took his hands in hers. He felt the outsize gems. Her perfume, he decided extravagantly, was distilled from lilacs grown under rock-crystal panes of a Côte d'Azur hothouse. Normally he enjoyed being with Caroline's grandmother. Tonight she was queen dowager. Joseph passed a salver with three glasses of tawny wine. Gene downed his. And for some reason thought of “Troopship,” now in the agonizingly silent custody of LeRoy Duquesne. He was served avocado salad, a slab of perfect pink beef flanked by tasty roast potatoes and hollandaise-girdled asparagus. An excellent meal that Gene could not taste. He was worrying alternately about “Troopship” and the vastness of the dining room. Why was Caroline so nervous? Why was he?

Imari dessert plates were set in front of them.

Mrs. Van Vliet glanced at Caroline. Caroline pleated her damask napkin. Mrs. Van Vliet looked down the length of table at Gene. “You're active against the loyalty oath, aren't you, Gene?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “Yes.”

“Then you won't sign?”

His twitchy stomach knotted. The sixty-four-dollar question.

In theory, of course, he'd told himself he would burn first. Gene, however, was totally self-honest. The implications of not signing, like the
Titanic
going down, had created a disastrous suction, threatening to pull him under. Who would he be if not Professor Matheny, author of critically well-received, nonprofitable novels?

Therefore his firmness of tone surprised him as he answered, “It wouldn't be possible to, no.”

“I see,” Mrs. Van Vliet said.

“Not that I'd be perjuring—”

Fragile laughter shattered his reply. “Gene, Gene. I never believed you were slipping the
Communist Manifesto
to your freshmen along with their Sandburg. Why won't you?”

“The State Constitution says no oath, declaration, or test shall be required of us, so it's illegal. And the end of academic freedom—hiring and firing of faculty after this will be at the whim of the regents.” Abruptly he stopped.

“Go on,” Mrs. Van Vliet encouraged.

Gene's long, pleasant face bore more than its customary resemblance to a hound dog. He chewed his thumbnail.

“It's not that logical. I think the Oath is unjust to people who may have done something in the past, when it was legal and feasible. This is ex post facto.” He raised his heavy goblet, taking a sip of water. “It's even more. The whole thing was started by a bunch of bigots in Sacramento and Washington—Tenney, J. Parnell Thomas, our honorable congressman, Richard Nixon. I'll be damned if I'll sign any paper that sets apart any group of people—whether I agree with their ideology or not—to bolster those hacks.”

Mrs. Van Vliet's smile glowed with warmth. “Gene, I do like you.”

“I'll be fired.”

She agreed.

“I'll have to try my luck at some other campus,” he said with deep uncertainty.

Joseph bore in a magnificent crown of charlotte russe. Mrs. Van Vliet shook her head. Caroline, darting a defiant smile at Gene, carved herself a double portion. She was on a diet, she was always on a diet and telling Gene not to let her eat. He took a sliver.

“Teaching,” said Mrs. Van Vliet, “is not the only career.”

“It's the only one I'm trained for, Mrs. Van Vliet.” His fork probed whipped cream.

Mrs. Van Vliet gazed at him.

And Gene understood the conversation was up to him. “I don't know what I'm meant to say.”

“Try.”

“By other careers, you mean Van Vliet's?”

His hostess nodded assent.

“I've had no business training. None.”

“Gene, to my knowledge there is not a single graduate of the Harvard School of Business running a supermarket in this area.” She paused. “The average Californian consumes fifteen hundred pounds of food a year. Van Vliet's job is simply seeing he buys it at the lowest possible price.”

Caroline was watching intently.

Mrs. Van Vliet said, “It's not a pretentious business, ours. The profits are in mills, not pennies. Once I remember my husband debating over some new office furniture. Finally he said, ‘We'll have to move a million dollars worth of goods to pay for this.' And he didn't buy it. Food is the most basic human need.”

Mrs. Van Vliet's faintly mocking tone angered Gene. She knew, and was using, his weaknesses. (Or his strengths.)

“You're ringing Pavlov's bell, Mrs. Van Vliet.”

Smiling, she bent her head. Through exquisite white hair the skull showed pink. And this was what calmed Gene. For all the imperiousness, wit, wealth, her pink skull proved her mortal.

They returned to the tapestry-hung living room for coffee.

“Well?” asked Mrs. Van Vliet.

Gene realized she'd been staring at him.

“You have no idea what an expressive face it is, Gene.” She paused delicately. “I take it you intend to make an honest woman out of my grandchild?”

Caroline turned crimson.

Gene, too, felt the blood rising. In those days such a remark, however lightly spoken, wasn't for laughs: it was cause for a man to pick his ushers and buy the ring. From one fading tapestry a haloed angel beckoned.

“You'll need a job to support her.”

Gene nodded.

“And selling food,” she said, “can never bring equal fulfillment with untangling allegory from the Great White Whale?”

Gene yearned to follow the beckoning angel into ancient threads. “I wasn't thinking that.”

“Something very close, then,” said Mrs. Van Vliet. She set her demitasse on a bowlegged table. “Los Angeles is growing. We recently opened two markets in Watts.” A colored area, and perhaps the most telling argument with Gene.

His gray eyes looked into space. This, too, he thought, is coercion. Caroline, who for once had remained totally silent, moved to the couch where he was sitting.

“No wonder you were nervous,” he said. “You'd like me to, wouldn't you?”

“Luv, she wanted
me
to put it to you. I said absolutely no.”

They were parked on Cordell Road, in front of her house. On the radio, Frankie Laine wished to go where the wild goose went.

“I'd be good at it,” he said thoughtfully.

“Don't be ridic!”

“I would.” He reached an arm around the lightly padded shoulders of her red Ann Fogarty suit. “Caroline, can you understand this? I want writing—and teaching—too much. When you want something too much, you're a little terrified of it. In business I'd have the necessary contempt. I'd do well, but I'd feel wasted.”