Second Generation (39 page)

She was also, as Clair realized, extraordinarily bright, certainly the brightest of the three children. She was an omnivorous reader and read everything, almost without discrimination. Poetry, novels, technical books, the encyclopedia, comic books, magazines—everything was grist for her mill; and again and again Clair would go into her room at midnight to turn off the lights and lecture her on the evils of living without sleep and wasting eyesight that has to last a lifetime. But Sally's store of nervous energy was apparently inexhaustible. She would be up at dawn, racing across the fields, assuring herself that nothing had changed during the night, and feeding her pets, which included a caged racoon, a turtle, her own special dog that she had found and adopted, a yellowish indeterminate breed, and two cats. She lived a full day's life before breakfast, at which she consumed more food than anyone else in the family. But regardless of how much she ate, she could not flesh out or fulfill her promise to Joe to become fat and sexy.

When, at age twelve, she first informed Clair that she was in love with Joe Lavette and that she intended to marry him, Clair received the news without concern. Nothing that Sally did or said was entirely unexpected. But, watching the progress of this curious infatuation over the next two years, Clair became somewhat perturbed. Her attempts to discuss the matter with Jake gave her little satisfaction. "Leave her alone," Jake said. "Anything you try to do with that crazy kid will only make matters worse. She'll grow out of it, and Joe is a good, solid boy who knows which side is up."

But when Sally—after Joe had left for Los Angeles and medical school—asked Clair how she would feel if she, Sally, had an affair with Joe, Clair determined to take matters in hand.

"Exactly what do you mean by an affair?" Clair asked her.

"I mean if we began to sleep together. You know, mom. If we had sexual intercourse."

Clair swallowed, breathed deeply, took a firm hold on herself, and said, "That's hardly likely with Joe four hundred miles away."

"I could go to Los Angeles. I mean weekends."

"Could yOu? And how does Joe feel about all this?"

"I haven't discussed it with him."

"Thank heavens!" Clair renewed her hold on herself. There were at least a dozen things she thought of saying, but she restricted herself to observing that Sally was still very young.

"Not really."

"What do you mean, not really?"

"I'm not really very young."

"Sally, you're thirteen years old."

"Well, not really. I've been reading this book on reincarnation, and I've decided that I lived a lot of lives in places like Egypt and China and maybe Norway, because of the way my hair is—"

"Your grandmother had the same hair and she was never near Norway," Clair cried in utter exasperation.

"And maybe Tahiti," Sally went on, carried away by the notion, "because otherwise why would I feel this way about Joe, who's kind of dumb, and anyway, he's a Chink—"

"Sally!"

"Well, I didn't mean it that way."

"I don't care how you meant it. I won't have that word spoken, and to say you care for someone and. then call them a Chink is just wretched."

"I didn't mean it that way, mom, please."

"And Joe is not dumb. He's brilliant. He's half Chinese, and a fine boy, and I think," she finished lamely, "I think you ought to forget about all this until you grow up."

"You can't stop being in love just like that! You can't. And all I meant about Joe was that we must have been in love in some previous existence, maybe in China, and I don't mean to cast any impersion—"

"You mean aspersion."

"I know that, and I didn't mean dumb the way you mean dumb. He's dumb about things, and that doesn't mean he's not brilliant. It just means he's dumb. Can I

go to Los Angeles for a weekend?"

"No," Clair said flatly.

"Boy, that's great. That's wonderful. That's some way to treat me, like I'm some kind of stupid kid."

"You're not a stupid kid. You're a very intelligent kid, and I do wish you'd use that intelligence at times. Joe will be back here next summer, if he wishes to come, and if you really love him, a year will make very little difference."

"And suppose he stops loving me?"

Suddenly serious, worried, Clair said, "I know Joe likes you. What makes you think he's in love with you?"

"He told me so. Well, don't look at me like that, mom, he never even touched me. You know what I mean. He never touched my breasts or anything like that. He kissed me, that's all. What's so terrible about that?"

When she told Jake that evening about her conversation with Sally, Jake doubled up with laughter.

"I don't think it's quite that funny."

"What breasts?"

"You might take a good look at your daughter," Clair said. "You might even spend some time with her. She is a very unusual child."

"You can say that again. You know, I'd let her go to Los Angeles for a weekend. Joe can handle it."

Clair looked at him and shook her head. "I do wonder about you sometimes, Jake."

Sam Goldberg telephoned Barbara in Los Angeles to tell her about the meeting at his office that would end the trusteeship. She received the news with a sense of shock and bewilderment.

"I had totally forgotten," she said.

"But you will be there?"

"Must I?"

"I think it's best, Barbara. Of course, you can give me power of attorney in this case, but I feel we should discuss the matter beforehand. The meeting's at three o'clock. Suppose you come to my office at noon and I'll take you to lunch, and that will give us plenty of time for a good talk."

"Sam?"

"Yes, Barbara?"

"Sam," she said uncertainly, "how much money is actually involved in this?"

"Don't you know?"

"No. I haven't the faintest idea. I know you spoke to me about it, but that was years ago, and I've just forgotten completely."

"All right," Goldberg said. "Now you listen to me, Barbara. In the two weeks between now and the time you come here to San Francisco, I want you to think about what I'm going to tell you. It's not a question of what you like or what you want, Barbara. That we can discuss at lunch. This is a question of fact, and these are facts I want you to think about very carefully."

"I understand."

"Good. Now the Seldon Bank has a present book value of some forty million dollars. That is a very conservative estimate because the stock is not publicly held. In other words, it is not listed on any market. If it were, the value might be much greater, not less but much greater. Now, your grandfather owned three hundred and eighty-two thousand shares, which represented seventy percent of the stock. Do you fol'ow me?"

"I think so," Barbara said.

"He left this stock in trust for you and your brother, with your mother as the trustee. It was to be held by her for twelve years and then turned over to you and Tom. The income from the stock was hers to use or dispose of as she saw fit. That is another matter, and we'll talk about it when I see you. The main thing with which I want to impress you at this moment is that you will come into the free ownership of one hundred and ninety-one thousand shares of Seldon Bank stock, with a book value of fourteen million dollars. That's a round figure. If you should decide to dispose of it, well, it might be worth a great deal more." He waited. "Barbara, are you there?"

"I'm here. I just can't deal with it, Sam."

"Think about it. Get used to it. You have to deal with it, Barbara."

"I'll try, Sam."

She put down the telephone and tried to deal with the facts that had just been presented to her. The more she thought about it, the more she became prey to gloom and uncertainty, and when at last May Ling came home from

the library and poked her head into the tiny room that was

Barbara's, she saw a woman close to tears.

"Barbara, what happened?"

"Nothing."

"You look absolutely miserable."

"I am miserable."

May Ling pulled a chair over to the desk. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Barbara repeated the gist of Sam Goldberg's conversation.

"Fourteen million dollars."

"Well, that much money doesn't really have any meaning, Bobby. In any case, it was always yours. You did know about it?"

"I did and I didn't. I always thought of it as belonging to mother."

"Your mother is quite wealthy. She doesn't need that money."

"No. But I don't either, and I don't want it."

"But, my dear, you have it. It's yours."

"I don't want to be anything else but what I am. Do you understand me? All my life I've been trying to find out who and what I am. Now I think I'm beginning to know. It wasn't easy. Do you know that I earned my own living in Paris. I got along on what the magazine paid me. The bank sent me a hundred dollars a week, but I hardly used it. I just deposited it in an account I had there, and I still have six thousand dollars in my account. I don't need any more than that. If I can't prove to myself that I'm a writer, then my life has no meaning at all. I'm twenty-five years old, and the only lasting satisfaction in my life has been the realization that I'm not worthless, and the only proof of it is that I taught myself a craft. Now I'm trying to write a novel that will reflect some of the things I've lived through and seen, and it's the hardest thing I ever tried to do. But if I can do it, and if people will pay money to buy it and read it, then I can have some sense of myself, some justification of myself. I don't want that rotten money!" she cried, almost violently. "I don't need it and I don't want it! How could I live here with you if I were a millionaire? How can I watch daddy break his back in that wretched shipyard? How can I make any sense of my existence? Do you know what was the best thing between Marcel and me? We spoke the same language. I don't mean French or English. I mean that things meant the same for both of us. He understood that I had to live on what the magazine paid me. Once we decided to eat at Maxim's. We pooled all our money and decided on poverty for the rest of the week. Oh, it was a wonderful evening. Not that the food was so great, but the fact that we blew our whole fortune on one posh meal. Do you see what I mean, May Ling?"

"I see exactly what you mean. But you must also understand that nothing has truly changed. My dear Bobby, I don't want to hurt you, but you do see that you were living with a pretense, with the illusion that the money did not exist?"

"But it didn't. Not for me, anyway."

"Bobby, do you remember, during the strike on the Embarcadero, the difference between you and the others down there. Not in terms of love or compassion or strength—but you could leave. They could not."

Barbara stared at her.

"Do you see what I mean? Let me tell you a story, darling. Thirty years ago, I was thirteen years old. I remember it very well indeed. We were poor. I don't say this as a virtue, it was simply a fact. We were the kind of poor where one comes to the end of the rope, and then there's a bottomless pit. We had no money and no hope. There was my father, my mother, and myself. They had not eaten for three days. I had not eaten for a day and a half —nothing, not even a crust of bread. My father was born in this country. He was an educated man, a sort of genius with figures, and once or twice he had worked as a bookkeeper. He had also dug holes for outhouses, cleaned toilets, washed dishes in saloons in the Tenderloin—anything that would bring in a dollar or two. That was when he went to Dan Lavette, who had advertised for a bookkeeper. No one would hire a Chinese. Chinese literally starved to death there in San Francisco. There was no help for them and no hope for them. Well, Dan gave pop a job, and you know the rest, but that's not the point. The point is that being poor is a fact of life in this strange and demented world we live in. You cannot pretend to be poor any more than you can pretend to die. You either are poor or you are not poor, and one of the tragedies of the rich is that they mostly cannot comprehend what it is to be poor. You're very fortunate, my dear, because you have some understanding of what poverty means and of the toll it takes. You are also a talented and healthy and lovely woman. But don't play any games. You're talented enough to make your own way in the world, and you're mature enough to face the fact of the money. I can't tell you what to do with it. That's a decision you must make for yourself."

They sat in silence for a little while, then Barbara nodded. "I'll work it out."

"I'm sure you will."

"Can I give any of it to you and daddy?"

"I'm afraid not," May Ling replied, laughing. "He had his day with Seldon money. No, don't even mention it. Anyway, he has the Maritime Commission behind him now and he doesn't need money. No, dear, this you must work out yourself."