Too Much Too Soon (24 page)

“I’m hardly the one to bring up a huge amount of work,” he said quietly. “Not to mention expense.”

“Malcolm, quit being an ass,” Curt said. “We offered, we meant it.”

“We’d really love to.” Honora leaned forward. “Our own wedding was small.”

“So small,” Curt said brusquely, “that it wasn’t even recorded. We had to do it over.”

Honora consulted her calendar again. “May fifteenth’s a Saturday. How does that sound?”

“Great,” Malcolm said, looking at Joscelyn. “Okay, hon?”

She touched her diamond. After a long silence she said in a flat tone, “May fifteenth it is, then.”

“That’s my lady,” he said, reaching for her hand, holding it on the chintz as the four of them planned the wedding.

“I guess it’s true, what they say about men being more sentimental,” Joscelyn said, her breath pluming in the chill night air.

Malcolm thrust his hands into his pockets, striding more swiftly uphill.

It was an hour or so later, and at her suggestion they were heading for Honora’s new belvedere, which overlooked the city, following the path that zigzagged up the steep slope through the masses of imported bulbs. A hidden spot turned a cluster of tulips, daffodil, iris, into a phosphorescent, voluptuous spring display.

She was matching his strides. “Why didn’t you speak up before? Why all the talk about small and quick?”

“I already spelled it out,” he said, his voice level. “It’s not up to me to toss around other people’s money. Besides, anyone could see Honora was dying to do it.”

Malcolm was forever ingratiating himself. His hunger for approving affection extended far beyond the Big Boss and the Big Boss’s wife. He set out to win every stranger he came in contact with—the supermarket checker, the ticket taker at the movies—and was crushed when he couldn’t elicit a heartfelt smile. He put himself out, he flattered, he fitted in. Joscelyn, woefully inadequate when it came to social relationships, adoring him, did not see how inexhaustibly he worked at being liked, only that he
was
liked.

“And what about me? I’m only the bride.”

“I guess you feel we shouldn’t enjoy any of this.” The gigantic shadow of his encircling gesture swept across the trunk of a magnificently pruned sycamore. “Isn’t that how your mind
works? Forget everything pleasurable and grab for economy?”

Beginning engineers weren’t exactly rolling in money, so she would suggest eating either here or at a Mexican dive before taking in a second-run movie. Joscelyn’s hurt was strangling her, and she spoke more acidly than she intended. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The reason you’re marrying me is to have a really big show”—she mimicked Ed Sullivan—“in the gardens of the house of Ivory.”

“If I were you, Joscelyn, I’d shut up,” he snapped. “You’ve never seen me lose my temper.”

“I’m petrified,” she said. She was. And fear sharpened her tongue yet more. “Let me tell you, it was really cute down there, you blithering on about what a big deal it is for you to have a real brother and a real sister, how grateful you are to be part of a family. Sure. A real family that happens to be headed by the sole owner of a multinational corporation. You don’t honestly believe they were taken in, do you? They’re not morons.”

“What a cunt you are!”

“If I’m so miserable, why’re we engaged, huhh?” Her heart was pounding with terror, but she could not keep quiet. “Fess up. You’re marrying this house, these gardens, the boss’s sister-in-law.”

A gust of cold wind shifted the black shadow that hid his face: for an instant she saw the sudden gleam of sweat on his forehead, the deep-set rage in his eyes.

Both his hands clenched into fists.

Then his right arm shot out.

His blow sank into her stomach. Exhaling in a breathy gasp, she staggered backward from the path into the clumps of iris in a recently cultivated bed. Arms flailing, she somehow managed to stay on her feet.

Then the full force of her pain struck her. Bending almost double, she clutched protectively at the heavy, shooting agony below her midriff. Spontaneous tears welled, scalding hot in the night chill.

In movies—Joscelyn had not voluntarily read a novel since she was ten—when a man, even the blackest-hearted of heavies, hit a woman he slapped her with the flat of his palm. Malcolm’s blow had been delivered as if she were a mortal, masculine enemy.
Why didn’t I shut up? I should’ve accepted that Joscelyn Sylvander gets the crumbs. Now he hates me. He’s so much younger. It’s over.

Still hunched, she tottered back onto the path in the direction of the house, a wounded animal lurching toward the safety of its den.

“Oh, Jesus, hon, Jesus God.” Malcolm was in front of her, squatting to peer up into her face, in an attitude of supplication.

Snuffling back her tears, she muttered, “Why didn’t you warn me you were a Golden Gloves champ?”

“Did I hurt you bad, hon?” Love and terror shook his voice.

With a repressed grunt she stood erect. “I’ll live. But you’re the winner by unanimous
decision.”

He put his arms around her and she leaned into the warmth of his body, rubbing her tears dry on the shoulder of the navy cashmere pullover she’d given him for Christmas.

“Christ, I could kill myself,” he said.

“It takes two to tango.”

“We’re still on then?” he said against her ear.

“Need you ask? I was being a total bitch.”

They clung together for a minute, his body heat soothing her raw, aching viscera.

“Better get you back to civilization,” he said.

Her first tentative step tore at stomach and pelvic muscles she hadn’t known existed. From this point the house was nearly a quarter of a mile down the zigzag path.

“Give me a couple of minutes,” she said.

Wincing, she sank on the nearby sequoia log that had been carved to form a bench. The smooth dampness of the wood chilled her through her sheer pantyhose. No lights were placed nearby and the slight, silver trunks of birches showed dimly.

Malcolm’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “The thing is,” he said in a low voice, “Dad sometimes batted me and Mother around.”

Surprised, she turned to him. In this darkness it was impossible to see more than his posture of dejection.

Malcolm always spoke with fond regret of his late mother, but he clearly had idolized his father—and still did. Mr. Peck had taught him to play golf, to sail, to skim on one water
ski after a gunning Chris-Craft, to open car doors for frail females. Mr. Peck’s record of three homers at the Cub Scouts’ father-son picnic had never been broken, a statistic that Malcolm repeated with relish. As a lieutenant JG, Mr. Peck had been commended for outstanding heroism at the Battle of Midway, and above Malcolm’s daybed hung a shadow box of his father’s medals centered by the Navy Cross dangling from its blue and white ribbon.

“I can understand swatting a kid, but he hit your
mother?
”

“Not often. Hon, it wasn’t his fault.”

“Whose was it, then?”

“He had it rough at work. Thatcherson, his superior, was a prissy asshole clerk who’d taken advantage of the war to get a vice presidency. Dad was everything he wasn’t, and it goes without saying he kept him down because he was terrified Dad would get
his
job.”

Joscelyn managed to keep a look of dopey understanding on her face, but a sinking logic told her that among Mr. Peck’s gifts had been a fertile inventiveness when it came to excuses.

“You’re saying that when things went sour at the office, your father kicked ass at home?”

“That makes it sound rotten, and it wasn’t.”

“I didn’t mean to knock him, just put it in perspective.” She touched the scar at his lip. “Did he do this?”

Malcolm shrugged.

She kissed the tiny ridge. “How?”

“I can’t remember,” he said. “Not eating my eggs. Dad was all shook because his
department was being cut in half.”

“Were there stitches?”

“Eight.”

Oh, God.
“Malcolm, you went to a doctor—”

“The Georgia Street Receiving Hospital.”

“Didn’t anyone ask how it happened?”

“I said I fell over a sprinkler.”

“And this?” Her finger traced the bump on his nose.

“Another guy got Dad’s promotion—he’d really worked his tail off, and Thatcherson passed him over. I’d left my two-wheeler in the driveway—it was new, I’d just gotten it for my sixth birthday. When the bandages were off, he took me on my first camping weekend. It was the best time of my life.”

“Did he drink?” If Langley had ever laid a finger on her and her sisters, she couldn’t remember it, but hectoring and tirades had flown when he was heavily under the influence.

“You’ve got Dad all wrong, hon. He was a great guy with a short fuse, that’s all. Mother and I knew when things were rough at the office we shouldn’t give him any reason to get steamed up.”

“But you were only six.”

“I don’t have to defend him.” Malcolm’s voice became hard. “He was a fabulous man. Brave, compassionate, with a terrific sense of humor. Mother worshiped him, his friends would do anything for him. I’m sorry I mentioned that crap. Now you’ve got a distorted picture. Ninety-nine percent of the time Dad
was the best there is.”

A wonderful father who breaks his six-year-old’s nose for not putting away his bicycle
, she thought, shivering. The pain in her abdomen had dulled, becoming like a bad, first-day menstrual cramp. “Let’s go back,” she said.

“You’re okay?”

“Good as new,” she said, hiding her wince as she stood.

Arms around each other’s waists, they walked slowly down toward the lights of the house. Malcolm’s mumbled confession had exacerbated Joscelyn’s love for him, and she refused to hurt him with further questions, yet she couldn’t entirely banish her curiosity about Mrs. Peck—what punishments had been inflicted on her and how had she maintained her adoration during her husband’s lapses into despairing rage?

“Joscelyn, look, hitting you like that—”

“It’s forgotten,” she said firmly.

“You’re the one clean, perfect thing in my life. And I want to keep us perfect.”

“We
are
perfect,” she said, hugging his narrow waist tighter.

*   *   *

Curt and Honora were in the family room, he at the desk going over some preliminary freeway plans, she stretched on the couch with
Herzog
open on her chest.

“Joss didn’t want a wedding, did she?” she said.

Curt looked up. “You know our Joscelyn. Above the mundane feminine pleasures.”

“I didn’t mean to push her into anything.”

“She’ll get into the swing, if only to please Malcolm.”

“It was dear of him, wasn’t it, wanting to see her in a white dress?”

“He’s really gone on her.”

“And she’s crazy for him. Curt, does this sound awful? At first I was a bit put off by his good looks.”

“As soon as he’s in the family, I’ll arrange for Quasimodo lessons,” Curt said, screwing the top on his pen.

“Did you feel that way?”

“Yeah, a bit. But I figured that was the attraction for Joss. As a kid, she wouldn’t have won any prizes.”

Honora stared into the fire, her fingers curling upward as if to catch an idea. “The thing is,” she said slowly, “she’s always been her own person.”

“To say the least,” Curt chuckled. “And why not? She’s got one of the few topflight minds around.”

“Do you think Malcolm can handle that?”

“He seems to.”

“But what about when they’re married, and she keeps being promoted? You’ve always said she has a big career ahead of her.”

“They’ll sort it out.” Curt was folding his papers into his scuffed maroon Cartier briefcase with the solid gold corners. “Marriage is a gamble.”

She smiled. “You sound like you’re sorry.”

“I’m in despair,” he said, pulling her to her
feet. His thumb caressed the blue pulse at her narrow wrist.

Distracted from her reservations whether Malcolm, likable and gorgeous but definitely not a first-rate mind, could take Joscelyn’s inevitable success, she leaned closer to her husband.

Theirs was the only bedroom in the main part of the house and they were both smiling as they crossed the hall to the big room with the fireplace and beams.

Joscelyn and Malcolm were married in St. Alban’s, the rustic, stone church opposite UCLA. The bride came down the aisle on her father’s arm, looking summery and unusually feminine in a short-sleeved white organza gown.

Most of the dearly beloved gathered here were tied, however tenuously, to Ivory—clients, prospective clients, politicos, board members of the companies with whom Ivory formed consortiums, important men wearing dark, single-breasted suits and expressions of dignified bonhomie. And of the ornamental sprinkle of younger couples, many of the masculine side worked for Ivory, co-workers and comrades of Malcolm and Joscelyn. There were, of course, some old friends. Fuad had flown in from Lalarhein, Vi was there with her new husband, a San Diego building contractor,
her red bouffant hairdo rising proudly above her mink stole, the only fur in the church.

Honora, standing in the front pew and holding Curt’s hand, thought it should be her husband rather than Langley giving the bride away. After all, who had calmed Joss’s juvenile fears and soothed her adolescent crises; vetted her first pimply boyfriends and jokingly steered her away from the rotten eggs? Who had paid her bills and signed the checks for her college expenses; who had been on hand to hug her at her triumphs?

As the bride passed, she gave them a mistily grateful, very un-Joscelyn smile, and all at once Honora thought:
If only Crystal were here.
At not one of the Sylvander girls’ weddings had both other sisters been there to embrace and attend the bride.

*   *   *

The long line of cars wound the three miles to the house, where guests were served champagne in the gardens. Great pots of Honora’s white cymbidium were everywhere, a luncheon buffet of silver chafing dishes and salads was set under the pergola, and the round tables on the grass were shaded by fringed yellow and white umbrellas. Manny Harmon’s band played on the terrace.