Treasures (3 page)

Once, before Lara was born, so Peg had told them, she had glanced at one of Pop’s library books and seen the name Lara. “It was a Russian story he was reading,
Doctor Zhivago
, I think he said. Anyway, the name looked pretty, and so when you came along, I gave it to you.”

And Connie? Well, Connie was Consuelo after the
Vanderbilt heiress who married the Duke of Marlborough.

“She was forced to marry him. Isn’t that awful?” Peg had been horrified. “I read it in a magazine. Went to her wedding with eyes red from crying. Isn’t that awful?”

Those, then, were the parents, Vernon and Peg, a pair of tangled lives, knotted and twisted like a length of twine rolled carelessly.

Connie had begun to strip off her clothes. In bra and panty hose she stood before the mirror and stretched.

“I’m so tired, I hardly have enough strength to take a shower.”

“Wait till the morning, then. You’re clean enough and you need your rest.”

Connie smiled. “You always used to say that. Oh, Lara darling, don’t look so miserable! Don’t worry about me. I’ll do fine, I promise.”

“I can’t help worrying, can I? Besides, I’ll miss you. I’ve never been without you.”

“Don’t you think I’ll miss you too?”

“Are you really sure you’re doing the right thing? It seems so drastic, so unnecessary.”

“Lara, I need a chance to meet people.” Connie spoke with unusual gravity. “In this town—you know what’s here, Lara. I don’t want a life like—”

Like mine, Lara said to herself. I know that. Walking home beneath the trees on a summer night, Davey asked me, “Are you willing to share almost nothing with me? I’ll do my best for you, Lara. Only, my best isn’t all that good.” Was I willing? To go to the ends of the earth
with you, Davey, to live in a tent or under the open sky. It was true then, and it is true still.

“You have such a lovely expression right now,” Connie said. “What are you thinking?”

Lara shook her head. “I don’t know. Just—everything.”

“I love you, Lara.”

“Of course you do. We all love each other. Go to sleep, dear. I’ll go out and say good-night to Eddy.”

He was already in his overcoat. “I waited to see whether you were feeling any better. Davey’s gone down to his workbench.”

“I feel all right. I guess I have to. But why, tell me why you had to encourage her?”

“She has a right to live her own life, Lara. Besides, she’ll do what she wants with or without encouragement.”

“She’s rebellious. Yes, she’s strong and clever, but she thinks she can make anything turn out exactly as she wants it to. She hasn’t yet learned that that’s not possible.”

“Lara, you’re a rock. Do you think we—Connie and I both—don’t remember how you watched over us? I can still see you walking Connie to school and calling for her, I remember how you used to drive me to the barbershop and the dentist’s. But, honey, a time comes when one can’t cling to the rock anymore, and Connie’s time has come.”

“Whom have we got?” Lara blurted. “Two second cousins too old and poor even to make the trip for the
funeral, and that’s all. We have no roots and I’m trying to establish some, that’s all.”

“Money will help,” Eddy said darkly. “And I’m trying to make some.”

“We’re not speaking the same language tonight, Eddy.”

“Maybe not. We’re both too tired to think.” He kissed her. “I’ll be going. Get some rest.”

Through the window that overlooked the yard, she saw a light burning in Davey’s shed behind the garage. The rain had slackened to a drizzle, and throwing an old coat over her shoulders, she ran out back.

Davey’s workroom was a cramped jumble of shelves before which stood a battered table covered with a variety of implements, both delicate and solid, that had no meaning at all for Lara: tubes, filaments, calipers, chisels, fuses, and rolled copper wire, along with notebooks, pencil stubs, and oil-stained rags. Bent over all these now was Davey’s dark, round head; he was apparently intent on writing in a notebook. At some time or other, when his current idea clarified itself, he would tell her what it was.

She was so proud of him! Even if nothing were ever to come of any of his inventions, she would always be proud of him. He was the first friend she had made on her first day in a strange high school in a new town. Walking home after school, she had been followed by a group of frightening toughs, but when Davey had appeared and walked next to her, they had dispersed. Later she found out why. The tall boy with the odd name,
Davey Davis—Davey was his mother’s maiden name—just happened to be the basketball star of the school.

She went inside and put her arms around him. He stroked her hair.

“I know. It’s been a cruel day. Cruel months,” he murmured.

“I’ve been thinking over and over how true it is that as soon as the mother’s gone, the family scatters.”

“No, no. We’re too close for that. Anyway, plans change all the time. Nothing’s written in stone.”

“They’ll never come back again.”

“Lara! This doesn’t sound like you. You’re always the family optimist.”

“I know. But sometimes I get to thinking that one can be a fool of an optimist too.” She sighed. “You know what I mean, Davey. You know.”

“The baby,” he said gently.

“The baby we wait for every month and who never comes.” Her voice broke. “And never will.”

“Never is a long time, darling.”

“Words, Davey. Just words.”

He put his cheek on hers, holding her close. After a moment he said, “We could adopt.”

“So you’ve stopped hoping too?”

“I didn’t mean— Oh, Lara, it’s so hard to know what to say to you. How to cope with these monthly disappointments, the doctors, the tests? I just don’t know anymore. But we could adopt,” he repeated.

“That’s not easy either. One doesn’t just walk in and select a baby. One waits for years, and even then—”

“Perhaps not a baby, but an older child who needs a home? Sad to say, there are plenty of those.”

“I want a
baby
! I want to be the mother from the very start.”

“Darling,” Davey said, holding her tighter. “Then we should wait a little more. Won’t you try some of your optimism again?”

She felt that she was weighing him down with her obsession while he was striving to lift her up. It wasn’t fair of her.

“Okay, okay, no more. Let’s go upstairs,” she said.

In the familiar bed, under the quilts, they lay warmly and quietly.

“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Davey murmured. “In a gingham apron or, better, in nothing at all.”

And so, after a little time desire moved them. It fled across Lara’s mind as they turned into each other’s arms that this was the deepest joy and comfort of all, this total, trustful merging. This was the reality of life. All else faded away.

In the aftermath Davey fell immediately into sweet sleep. But for a long while she could only drowse, to dream and to be startled awake. In the confusion of one dream she had been sitting at the table that she always liked to picture in her head. It was a lavish table set with flowers, candles, and pink linen. Peg was well, with all her lovely hair. Pop in his best mood was reading aloud; she herself was a child, the privileged eldest, with the little brother and the baby sister next to her. But at the same time she was a young mother in a long rose skirt,
sitting there with Davey and their children between them. “We couldn’t have any, so we adopted them,” Davey was explaining, when she opened her eyes.

But Davey hadn’t stirred. She curved herself now into his back, feeling unity, feeling the safety of his presence in the silent room. A piece of sky, visible over the bulk of his shoulder, covered half the window. It seemed to be in motion, racing like the ocean she had never seen, a dark green ocean shot through with gleams of light.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

H
ouston was
hot.
Like a metal dome the bronze sky burned above the city. Dusty leaves hung through the long afternoon. Coming into the hotel from the street was like walking into a freezer room; the sweating body received a shuddering shock.

Connie’s hotel was a huge commercial establishment in the downtown business district, neither expensive nor cheap, but suited to the funds that Eddy had advanced, adequate for a month or considerably longer if she were careful.

She had moved a chair over to the window. The outlook here, some fifty feet to a bank of similar windows on the opposite side of the meager courtyard, was depressing, but even such dim daylight was less depressing than was the sullen yellow lamplight next to the dingy brown bed. On the floor at her feet a pile of newspapers lay open at the want-ad section.

Column after column of Help Wanted confirmed her judgment: Texas was truly booming. With a feeling of challenge and elation she ran her eyes to the top of a
page and down, when suddenly they paused, and she read,

Young vendeuse for exclusive shop, experienced European fashions for demanding clientele, well spoken, attractive appearance. Salary and commissions.

Vendeuse.
From her slight experience with high-school French, Connie summoned up a verb:
vendre
, to sell. So what this verbiage boiled down to was being a saleswoman in a fancy dress shop.
Experienced.
Three years’ worth, although not doing exactly what they were looking for.
Young. Well spoken. Attractive.
She stood up and went to the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.

The mirror showed her nothing that was not entirely familiar. Nevertheless, the sight was reassuring. Her heavy hair hung at a becoming length almost to her shoulders. The beige linen suit with coral shirt, Lara’s going-away gift, was smartly slender; the gold earrings, Eddy’s extravagant birthday present, were eighteen karat; her long, slender feet were shod in Italian shoes, which were her own extravagance, for she was vain about her feet and her long, slender hands. One by one, for perhaps the thousandth time since she had reached adulthood, Connie examined each feature of her face: lips just a trifle too thin, nose a trifle too short, cheekbones a trifle too wide; the whole no match for Lara’s classic near-perfection. She knew that well and was not at all bothered by it, for she had the greater power to attract, and knew that well too.

The important thing was to know how to use this power to a practical end. So, before going to be interviewed, Miss Osborne, go buy a stack of magazines and make yourself familiar with European fashion. Then do your hair tomorrow morning, hail an air-conditioned taxi, and arrive coolly unruffled and speak up. There can’t be much difference between selling polyester pant-suits and Chanel, can there? Selling is selling, and people are people, after all.

The shop, situated in a grand mall, was spacious and serene, carpeted in silver-gray and ornamented with sprays of gladioli. Here and there a circular rack held a dozen garments on display, but obviously, most of the stock was out of sight behind a mirrored wall.

Slowly and keenly, for half an hour, Connie was examined.

“You say you’ve had experience with merchandise like this?”

“Yes. In Cleveland.”

“Have you a recommendation from them?”

“Unfortunately, no. The owner died of a heart attack, and everything fell apart the next day. As you can imagine,” Connie added with a small sigh. She touched a lavender suit that hung where she was standing. “What they’ve been doing with Chanel is delightful, isn’t it? Adding new touches without changing the traditional charm one bit.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, of course.…” And finally, “Well, I suppose you’re available to start soon?”

“That would be wonderful.”

“Then we can go over the formalities in the office. Social Security and the rest.”

So it was settled, an auspicious start on the third day in this vast, energetic city. It would be pleasant to work surrounded by beautiful, rich things. Granted, it would be still more pleasant to have the beautiful, rich things for oneself, Connie reflected, to own these silks and velvets before the wrinkles appeared on one’s neck and the flab on one’s upper arms. But one day at a time.

Next she must find a place to live.

Studio apartment, walking distance downtown.

Downtown meant very likely a dreary view like the one in this hotel, and streets abandoned after five o’clock.

Two young women will share apartment with third, share all expenses.

That meant, most probably, a sofa bed in the front hall and a parade of arriving or departing boyfriends all through the night.

Retired business couple have large room with kitchen privileges in suburban condominium for respectable single woman. Garden view.

That, now, sounded more like it, especially the “garden view.” To live in the suburbs, however, she would need a car. But then, she would need one no matter where she lived in Houston unless she were to camp out
in the mall. You have to spend money to make money, Eddy said. And Connie’s mind began rapidly to click like an efficient small machine: Take some of Eddy’s money for a down payment on a used car; then put aside a fixed sum out of her weekly salary to pay off the balance. Like Lara, but unlike Eddy, Connie feared debt. So, back to the newspaper for the used-car advertisements and then to see the room with the garden view.