Too Much Too Soon (39 page)

Having ferretted out secrets that the Bears had managed to keep hidden from Gideon had restored Crystal’s confidence. Her hopes for the coming meeting might not be utterly sanguine, but neither were they any longer totally despairing. She sat on the claw-footed black horsehair sofa, her hands folded, her
face thoughtful.

When the tiny, faraway sound of the electric bell announced that the front door had been opened, she got to her feet. There was the remote rumble of the elevator then a discreet rap.

“It’s me, Padraic.”

As she opened the door, the grandfather clock began chiming.

“On the dot,” she said.

“I meant to be here first, but then I decided to park a couple of blocks away, where nobody’ll see my car.”

“Very James Bond,” Crystal said with a smile. “I only got here a couple of minutes ago myself.”

She trusted Mitchell implicitly, she knew he was with her to the hilt no matter what her methods, but she was not about to let him see her from any unfavorable angle.

When the first car pulled up, they fell silent, glancing at one another. She moved to sit tensely at Gideon’s desk.

This office opened directly on the boardroom. By ten thirty the booming of masculine voices and the odor of expensively smuggled Havana cigars seeped around the locked door.

At the smart rapping of a gavel, Crystal’s stomach twitched violently. What insanity was this? She, a ninety-three pound woman who had never worked a day in her life, was about to face down a combined ton of masculinity with well over two centuries of experience in heavy building?
Sell out
, her common sense
told her.
Take the money and run.
Then she glanced at the silver double frame on the desk. Gid on the right, Alexander on the left. Her younger son’s handsome, self-contained face looked out at her. She could hear his voice on the humming, long distance line:
I want Talbott’s.

Clasping the eighteen-carat gold chain of her black alligator purse, she got to her feet, crossing the old-fashioned red Turkey carpet. Mitchell pressed the lock, easing the door open.

She stood in the jamb, lighting up the boardroom like a blazing firecracker—gold hair, flawless English white and rose complexion, small yet exquisite body.

It was like a farcical pantomime the way the men at the long, oval table turned, peering at her through the drifts of cigar smoke, eyes bulging and jaws sagging.

Redelings, with invalid slowness, pushed to his feet. The others followed his example.

Crystal had never before seen any one of the Bears out of his uniform, the anonymous dark suit, fresh white shirt, unpatterned dark tie—the dress code that Gideon had followed and enforced. They might have been in fancy-dress costumes with their sports clothes. A jauntily crushed yachting cap hid Cline’s flat, bald pate; LeBaron’s short-sleeved knit shirt showed off the meaty biceps produced by those barbells.

Masters, in a beige leisure suit that strained across his ample belly, held the gavel at the head of the long table. After a pause, she moved to him. “Mr. Masters,” she said sweetly, “you
have my place.”

His large, fleshy, windburned face settled into its jovial lines. “Why, Mrs. Talbott,” he said. “What a pleasure to welcome you. We know you’ve been going through a difficult time and—”

“This is where my husband sat,” she said resolutely. She knew because she had taken this chair at the January meeting.

Masters weighted the gavel against his palm, continuing to smile at her as if placating a small child. “We’re only going over some technical matters today.”

“Yes,” somebody put in. “It’s just dull engineering talk.”

“This is my place from now on,” she said.

“Mrs. Talbott,” Masters said, “there’s nothing to interest a lady as lovely as you on our agenda today.”

Though she was gazing politely up at Masters’ ruddy, genial face, she could sense the others at the table were smirking at his refusal to shift from the presiding officer’s chair. “I prefer to be at all the board meetings, as Mr. Talbott was—” She paused several seconds before adding, “. . . Andy.”

At the nickname, Masters’ heavy flesh sagged and his cheeks puffed in and out as if he were having extreme difficulty breathing.

“Isn’t that your place, next to Mr. Roliu?” she asked with one more “Andy?”

“Yes, Mrs. Talbott,” he said thickly. “I don’t know what got into me. Of course Mr. Talbott’s chair is yours, of course you should
be at the meeting.” He shambled backward unsteadily.

O’Shea spoke up. “Mrs. Talbott, we would have notified you, but there’s really no point to your being bored by engineering talk. We’ve given up our sunny Sunday, but you don’t have to.”

“It
is
a surprise that you’re here, Mr. O’Shea,” she said. “I’d heard you’d be in Reno.”

O’Shea’s small, neat features convulsed. His color drained and he stubbed out his cigar with a trembling hand.

Masters pulled back the head chair for her.

Sitting, she glanced at the small heap of rumpled notes.
Agenda for today: the Woodham proposal.

“Here, Mr. Masters,” she said. “These are yours.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Talbott, thank you very much.” He grabbed for the papers, crushing them in his big, veined hand. She glanced around the table. She wasn’t positive if the other Bears were in on their two colleagues’ womanizing and gambling, but from the tense, watchful expressions she could tell that they knew lethal hot buttons had been pressed. Ritter—the consumer of bourbon—had gone white and his left index finger jumped nervously as if he were unwittingly tapping out a Morse code message. Only LeBaron was leaning back in his chair, smiling cockily. The idiot, he really must believe she had a yen for his thick, dumbbell-produced muscles.

“Before we come to order,” she said. “I have a few remarks that are off the record. First, I’d like to give you my heartfelt thanks. From the reports that Mr. Mitchell has brought me I know that you’ve handled Talbott’s affairs with efficiency. For this I am extremely grateful. Without your efforts we never would be sailing smoothly through this difficult period of adjustment.”

“That’s what we’re paid for,” said LeBaron. The left eyelid came down, a hint of a wink.

She looked steadily down the table at him.

“I mean, we always do our best, Mrs. Talbott,” LeBaron said uncertainly.

“Yes,” she said. “But, Mr. LeBaron, does that mean I can’t tell these other gentlemen that I’m grateful for a short grace period while I adjusted to my deep personal loss?”

Murmurs of sympathy rippled around the table. A cigarette and three cigars were stubbed out.

She kept staring at LeBaron until he mumbled, “No, Mrs. Talbott, of course not.”

“Some of you may not know how deep my interest has always been in Talbott’s, so maybe you are unaware of the extent that Mr. Talbott relied on my judgment.”

They nodded gravely. No more superior smirks.

It was going better than Crystal had anticipated. She had been far more nervous at two thirty this morning as she practiced this speech in front of her bathroom mirror. “I earnestly hope,” she went on, “that you will continue to
work for me with the same steadfast loyalty that you gave him.”

“You bet we will, Mrs. Talbott,” Masters said with loud vigor.

A chorus of agreement rang. The four grizzled over-sixty crew spoke most ardently.

“It has come to my attention that certain unscrupulous competitors have decided to prey on Talbott’s in what they consider a time of weakness.” She allowed her honest bitterness to seep into her tone. “As you must be well aware, Talbott’s was started by my late father-in-law over eighty years ago. When my husband inherited the business he expanded our scope beyond the state of California, and today Talbott’s is respected worldwide. His sons will carry the same spirit of engineering service and enterprise into the space age.” The men gazing at her nodded vigorously. “Until the new generation comes to the helm, however, it is up to me to carry on. I realize that others might hold my sex against me, but I am positive that you on the Talbott’s Board of Directors will continue to work with me in the same spirit of generous cooperation that so richly earned my late husband’s trust.”

“Hear hear!” Masters burst out.

Applause filled the boardroom.

Crystal smiled brightly. “Thank you, gentlemen, for that informal but heartfelt vote of confidence.” She picked up the silver-handled gavel. For the first time since she had entered the boardroom she glanced at Mitchell. His gaze of awed admiration told her how well she
had succeeded. She nodded, and he moved to his chair, opening the large black Minutes book.

She rapped the gavel twice. “The meeting will come to order,” she said.

“Here is Lissie’s place mat,” Joscelyn said, her expression animated. Sitting at the breakfast table at Lissie’s level, she was holding up plastic imprinted with a red train. “Oh, today Lissie has the place mat with the train. What a nice place mat.”

The child, who had been watching her mother’s mouth with an expression of grave importance, took the shiny oblong, putting it in front of herself, then looked back at Joscelyn. Lissie wore a hearing aid but—in the audiologist’s terms—it was to give her sound awareness, for she had little access to the speech spectrum.

“And here is Daddy’s place mat,” Joscelyn said. “See? Daddy’s place mat isn’t like Lissie’s. Daddy’s place mat is blue.”

Lissie reached for the woven mat, moving around the table to set it down with a corner turned.

“And here is Mommy’s place mat, it is blue, just like Daddy’s place mat.”

The child placed the second cloth askew opposite the first.

“And here’s Lissie’s fork. It is a little
silver fork.”

“Ork,” Lissie said in a high, flat inflectionless little squeak.

Joscelyn clapped her hands, beaming. “That’s very good speech, Lissie. Fork.”

She went through the procedure with the other forks, then the spoons. Almost every child learns to speak easily, by mimicking sound, not by watching incomprehensible facial contortions. Patience was hardly Joscelyn’s virtue, yet she discovered a vast, hitherto untapped tolerance when it came to teaching her daughter the means of communication.

When she and Lissie had first come home, while Malcolm was still in Lalarhein, they had stayed with the Ivorys. Joscelyn and Honora, in order to let Lissie see their faces as they talked, had crawled around yattering to the active baby—both women had constant scabs on their knees. Now, when Joscelyn had Lissie’s attention, she talked to the child or let her “help,” performing her household tasks at a tortoise pace. She sledgehammered the key words thousands upon thousands of times. The rare times in her earlier life that she had ever thought about deafness, she had assumed that with a deaf child one lived in perpetual silence. Instead, she had turned into a nonstop gabber. The habit of talking constantly did not come easily to her: she kept a box of Sucrets for the inevitable sore throat.

“This is Lissie’s knife.”

She held out the knife. Lissie didn’t take it. Instead she ran to the window with a scowl
that for some reason Joscelyn found enchanting. The child had an amazing attention span, but she
was
only three and a half, and enough is enough.

Joscelyn swiftly finished setting the table.

“Bu,” Lissie said in that odd pitch.

Joscelyn looked out the window at the small back garden. A blue jay was stalking across the patch of recently mowed grass.

“Bu,” Lissie repeated, turning to her mother for approval.

Joscelyn clapped. Lissie had learned to understand the concept “bird.” “That’s very good speech, Lissie, very good. It is a bird, a big bird.” She knelt, stroking Lissie’s soft black hair. “See his pretty blue feathers, the same color blue as Daddy and Mommy’s place mats.”

“Mah-mah.”

Joscelyn hugged her daughter. What a morning!
Ork
and
bu
and
Mah-mah.
Oh joy! Oh triumph! Yet her natural skepticism never would back down entirely, and that inner voice, her cruelest censor, said:
Three pitifully spoken words that probably only I can recognize.

Even at her happiest, Joscelyn could never entirely banish that excruciating burden of failure. Didn’t it figure? Joscelyn Sylvander Peck couldn’t produce a normal kid, one who would learn to communicate without this agony. Lissie was gazing at her with those huge, alert, ultrablue eyes. Joscelyn wouldn’t change a silky black hair on the exquisite, clever little head.

Lissie pulled away, rushing into the hall. She
had felt the vibrations of Malcolm’s footsteps.

Dressed in his charcoal gray suit for work, hair in place from recent water combing, he squatted in front of his daughter—
If you don’t get down to her level, all she’s going to see is a waggling chin
, Joscelyn kept reminding him. Most of the time he ignored Joscelyn’s strictures, treating his daughter as though she were a hearing child. “Hi, Lissie,” he enunciated carefully before he hugged her, pulling away so she could see him as he said, “What pretty pink overalls.”

Joscelyn smiled down at them.
It’s a good day
, she thought.

Lissie knelt on her chair, her small hand hovering near her juice glass until after her father picked up his—Malcolm had a rule that nobody began a meal until they were all seated. She squirmed, vocalizing with inflectionless little cries, tapping with her fingers to attract his attention, but he was absorbed in the sport section.

Malcolm’s emotions toward his daughter fluctuated from that early totalitarian devotion to a surliness when, Joscelyn was positive, he did not see Lissie at all, but only three-year-old defective ears. On his very worst days he seemed ashamed of her, and resentful that she occupied such an extensive area of Joscelyn’s attention.

Joscelyn swiftly scrambled his eggs and served the bacon from the Roaster-Toaster, handing Lissie two pieces. The child had already taken Cheerios and was picking up the milk pitcher
carefully with both hands.