Second Generation (41 page)

"How much would I have to be involved?"

"As a minimum, at least three or four meetings a year. As a maximum, it could involve you completely. You place your own function where you see fit."

She nodded. "You see this as the best way, Sam?"

"Unless you change your mind?"

"No. We'll set up the foundation."

"All right. That's the first problem. Now, I had a talk with your mother. Understand me, Barbara, Danny is like a son to me, but what goes on between a man and his wife is not for anyone else to understand. Your mother is quite a woman, and I don't think she'll give you any grief about what you want to do. But during the twelve years that she has been trustee for yours and Tom's stock, there has been very considerable income. Some of it you used, most of it is untouched, and there's a trustee account in your name at the Seldon Bank that amounts to some-think over a quarter of a million dollars."

Barbara began to laugh. She became half-hysterical, almost unable to stop.

"Are you all right?" Goldberg asked anxiously.

"Yes, Sam, yes." She tried desperately to control her laughter. "It's just a joke. It doesn't stop. I live here in these United States, with millions of unemployed"—her laughter stopped now—"with shanty towns, Bonus Marchers, hunger and misery everywhere, and I get richer and richer and there's no way to stop it, and it's just crazy. It's the craziest thing I ever heard of. I have eight hundred dollars left out of my own savings, and I plan and plot to stretch it out until I finish my book, and living with daddy rent-free and eating his and May Ling's food, and I don't dare buy a new dress, and now you tell me that after all this talk and decision, I still have a quarter of a million dollars that I never knew I had. Well, I don't know whether to laugh or weep."

"Neither. Just face it, and Barbara, don't give that money away. Please. This is a wise old Jew who has seen a great deal of what can happen. Don't give it away. Leave it alone, if you wish. The Seldon Bank is very solid. Just pretend it isn't there. You've just divested yourself of fourteen million dollars. That's enough!"

"Sam, you're upset," she said in amazement.

"Is it any wonder? Now, will you leave that money alone?"

"You'll be terribly disturbed if I don't."

"To put it mildly."

"All right then. For the time being. It's after two," Barbara said. "Is there anything else?"

"One more decision, my dear. It concerns your brother. As I understand it, you have not seen him since you returned from Europe?"

"No, and I feel terrible about that."

"Do you dislike him?"

"No. No, not at all. It's just that, well, we're so different. We went our different ways. Not that we ever had a fight or a falling-out, except the kind of fights that kids have. I guess every brother and sister have that kind of thing. No, I like Tom. I don't know whether I love him. It's been so very long. Five years. That's a long time."

"So much for that. Now, I've had some discussions with John Whittier, whom I gather you don't like."

"It doesn't matter, now that mother has divorced him."

"Well, from what I surmise—and it's no more than a surmise—he and Tom are going to enter into some kind of combination, the Seldon Bank and California Shipping. For a bank to enter into such an arrangement is still not legal in California, but there are ways to get around that, and may I say that such a financial combination will be of enormous strength and importance. The point is that, to control the bank, Tom needs the voting power of your stock—or the foundation's stock, since we'll think of it that way. Both Whittier and Tom have addressed me on

this point."

"But when we establish the foundation, could Tom vote the stock?"

"If we write it into the charter, he can indeed. But what I think is more likely is that Whittier will offer to buy enough of your stock to give him and Tom fifty-one percent, which will mean control of the bank. How do you feel about that?"

"I don't care. Should I, Sam? Should I care?"

"That's up to you."

Barbara thought about it for a while and then shook her head. The truth was that she did not care. The load was off her mind and soul. Who controlled the Seldon Bank or any other bank was a matter of indifference to her.

"If we sell them the stock, what then?"

"The foundation will put the money into very solid securities—American Telephone, government bonds, that sort of thing. From the point of view of the foundation, it might be an advantage to have a diversified portfolio of securities rather than all the eggs in one basket, and if I were to advise on that score, I would suggest selling a substantia] part of the Seldon stock. And since Whittier will be the buyer, and since he wants it so desperately, we should get a good deal more than the book value, perhaps a million dollars more."

"Is that fair?' Barbara asked.

"Quite fair. We won't go into any details this afternoon. The only question is whether you're willing to sell to Whittier. If you are, I'll tell them that and make the arrangements. There's no need to raise the question of the foundation at this meeting. It would be better, I think, if you yourself told your mother what you plan to do."

Barbara agreed. As they left the restaurant, she said to the old man, "Sam, I'm so very grateful. You've been kind and understanding. You're dear, and I love you very much."

The day before, Jean had dropped into Halleck's on Sansome Street, the small but very expensive couturier where she had been buying things lately. Halleck himself informed her that while war had broken out in Europe, fashion would not bow its head to such mundane forces. The great Paris houses of Worth, Molyneux, and Paquin had ahead pulled up stakes and moved to London. And Digby Morton, a step ahead of them, had taken his collection to the States. It might be some months before the Paquin designs arrived, but the Morton clothes were expected momentarily. "Ah, dear Mrs. Whittier," Halleck said—he was a Viennese who carefully cultivated a French accent—"what a pity that in this superb city of ours, which is so much the queen of the world, we have not yet developed a couturier worthy of the name. Ah, that will come." Or, as he said it, "Zat vill come." "But I have information," he added, as if he were imparting state secrets. "The skirts will be straight, always straight. Very high buttons on the jackets. I have some designs; already we are working on them. A pouched and one-sided peplum for day wear. Revolutionary. You are bringing your daughter here, as you said, tomorrow, perhaps?"

"I think not," Jean said slowly. She walked out of the store, indifferent to whether or not she had offended Halleck. She took a cab up the hill to the Fairmont, went into the bar, ordered a Scotch and soda, and then sat at the little table without tasting or touching her drink. Why had she ordered it? She disliked liquor, barely tolerated wine, and the sight of both provoked her. So many things provoked her these days. Her conversation—or rather, Halleck's conversation with her—disgusted her, and for the life of her she could not understand why. Halleck disgusted her. Why had she gone in there at all? But she knew why. She was desperate in her desire to please Barbara, to think of some wonderful thing she could do for her. Then why sit here and perform a charade of drinking? She tasted the drink and made a face.

And then a voice said, "Why, Jean! How delightful! How absolutely delightful!" She looked up, and there was the past, a man called Alan Brocker, fifty-five years old, with the strange, old-man-little-boy face of the very wealthy, workless, pointless Anglo-Saxon. Of all the people in the world, Brocker was the last she desired to meet at that moment, the man whom she had selected—or had he selected her?—for her first extramarital affair. Silly, senseless, mindless Alan Brocker, who had married Manya Vladavich, the model of a third-rate painter called Calvin Braderman; Alan Brocker, who had, as Dan put it, pissed away his life without ever doing a decent day's work or an unselfish act in his life, who had once hired a Pinkerton detective, at Jean's request, to spy and report on Dan's liaison with May Ling. "My dear Jean," he said. "Drinking alone. No woman should be reduced to that, not even after a second divorce, which these days is absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, I salute you. Manya is in Reno, getting a divorce, so we can drown our sorrows or joys together. Will you ask me to sit down?"

"I suppose I have no choice," Jean said. "Where have you been? I've enjoyed not seeing you for years—how long is it?"

"Ah, Jean, dear Jean. How witty you've become. France, until this stupid war started. What are you drinking?"

"It's sufficient. Whatever it is."

He motioned to the waiter and ordered a drink. "And you, Jean, where has life led you?"

"Would you pay for my drink, Alan?" Jean asked casually.

"Of course."

"I'm grateful. It facilitates things. I've spent the afternoon being disgusted, and I think I've had my fill of it." And with that, she rose and walked out, not looking back, not giving a damn what Brocker felt or thought, only saying to herself later, "You're making quite a habit of burning bridges, my dear Jean. Be careful. You've lived half a century, and there's still a long, tired road ahead."

The next day, Jean went to Sam Goldberg's office at two-thirty, aware that she was half an hour early, but hoping that Barbara would be there already. She had been waiting ten minutes when Barbara and Goldberg returned from their luncheon date. In every meeting with Barbara, Jean anticipated a rebuff that never actually took place, and even now, wanting so desperately to see her, Jean stiffened and held back. But Barbara came to her and embraced her, and Jean held her tightly, thinking, This is all I have left, and the rest is gone, washed out, destroyed.

"Tom will be here any moment now," Jean said. "Did Sam tell you what he wants?"

Barbara nodded.

"Do you care? He has John Whittier's money behind him, and they'll want to buy a controlling interest in the bank."

"Sam and I talked about it," Barbara said.

"It's the way he is," Jean told her. "He has a desperate need for power and money, the way some people have a need for—well, I don't know, perhaps to be loved. Maybe it's his path to love or hope or just living. Please don't hate him, baby."

"Hate him? Why?"

"I don't know. He's so different."

"Mother," Barbara said, "he can have whatever he wants. I don't care, believe me."

And Jean thought, You really don't, and that's the pity of it.

Tom arrived with Clark Seever, who was the senior member of Seever, Lang and Murphy, John Whittier's attorneys. Seever was a tall, well-groomed, handsome, carefully spoken man in his mid-fifties. He knew Sam Goldberg, as indeed everyone did who was in any way connected with the legal or political functioning of San Francisco, and they shook hands while Tom and Barbara embraced. Five and a half years had gone by since they had last seen each other, and Jean found it strange, almost bizarre, that these, two, brother and sister, were so loosely united, so content to spend a portion of a lifetime away from each other. Jean had been an only child, and like so many only children, she romanticized brother-sister relationships. Yet Tom was not cold or aloof. Too much at stake, and he had obviously structured the warmth and delight with which he greeted his sister.

Barbara, on the other hand, had been anticipating the self-conscious boy she had last seen so long ago. The fact of Tom Lavette was something else entirely, a stranger whom she had difficulty fitting into place and position. At twenty-seven, he was entirely self-possessed, immaculately groomed, his sandy hair parted on one side and swept loosely across his brow; tall, wide-shouldered, his father's height grafted onto the spare frame of the Seldons, he was graceful and meticulous in the niceties of meetings and introduction.

"This is my beautiful sister, Barbara," he said to Seever, "who garnered most of the brains and all of the talent in the family." And then he added to her, "Dear Bobby, it's been too. long. Much too long. Well, we'll change that."

The meeting was amiable. Seever brought up the question of control, but almost indifferently. He wondered just how active Miss Lavette desired to be, recalling the role

her mother had once played in the affairs of the Seldon

Bank.

"I have no interest at all in banking," Barbara said.

"Then you would not be averse to a transfer of sufficient stock to give Thomas the control that the family should necessarily have. Not that I imagine for a moment that you would contest your brother's voting, but then I understand you're not living in San Francisco at the present. Of course, a sale of stock is not the only method, although Thomas has ample capital available for that. There could be an assignment of voting rights if you preferred that method."

"Miss Lavette has no objection," Goldberg interposed, "to a sale of sufficient stock to give Thomas the control he desires, and I think those are details you and I can work out at another time—"

Barbara glanced at her mother. Jean was studying Tom, and then she turned and met Barbara's gaze and smiled slightly. There was a kind of woeful pathos in the smile that cut to Barbara's heart. She had never truly thought of her mother as one who wept, bled, suffered. Even now, at fifty, Jean was an incredibly beautiful woman, and through all the years of Barbara's life, her mother had been the untitled queen of San Francisco society, a sort of magnificent medallion worn by that tight, small circle of wealth and power who regarded themselves as the equal of if not superior to Boston or New York society. She remembered how, in her childhood, she had only to look at the society column in the
Chronicle
or the
Examiner
to find that this or that party or ball or dinner was "graced by the presence of the beautiful Jean Lavette." She had never learned to feel sorry for her, or even to feel for her.