"I'm sorry, Miss Olivia. Your mother was the heart and soul of this house. With her gone . ."
"Thank you, Carmelita," I said sternly. She had made her point. I didn't have to hear it continually. She pressed her lips shut and left the room.
I knocked on the bathroom door.
"Are you all right, Daddy?"
"Yes," he said. "I'm fine. I'll just shower and take a rest and then you and Samuel can tell me all about your honeymoon."
"Are you sure, Daddy?"
"Yes," he said.
I thought I would go to the office and see how bad things were, especially what was left undone. Just as I started down the stairs, the front door opened. First her laughter entered and then Belinda followed, accompanied by some strange young man. He had his hand around her waist. She turned and they kissed in the entryway, the man's hands sliding down Belinda's back until he cupped her rear end and practically lifted her off the floor. She squealed with delight.
"Belinda!"
She broke away from him and gazed up at me, her hand going immediately to her lips, but her smile holding.
"Oops," she said and hiccupped.
The young man stepped back. He wore a yellow and white striped shirt and had long greasy hair. He wore a faded pair of dungarees and I was amazed to see that he was barefoot, too.
Belinda's light green blouse was open enough to reveal most of her braless bosom.
"Hello, Olivia. This is my sister Olivia," she declared. "Olivia, I want you to meet Bryan."
"Ryan," the young man corrected.
"Oh, right. Ryan. Ryan, this is my older sister, Olivia. She was just-married. How was your honeymoon, Olivia? Was it bumpy out at sea?" she asked with a light, thin laugh.
I glared down at her. She wobbled, tried to hold her smile and then reached for the side of the doorjamb to steady herself. I turned to the young man.
"I think you had better be going," I said. He appeared to sober up instantly.
"Oh. Sure. I was just . . . I can't stay anyway," he explained. "I have to . . ."
"I'm not interested in why you think you can't stay. Please leave," I ordered.
He nodded.
"Now just a minute," Belinda began. "I invited Bryan to dinner tonight."
"It's Ryan," he corrected again and backed away.
"That's all right. I'm not hungry. Nice meeting you," he added glancing at me and quickly left.
"Hey?" Belinda called after him. She turned back to me, her eyes furious. "That's not very nice, Olivia. He gave me a lift home all the way from . . ." She hesitated. "From someplace far away and the least we could do . . ."
"You're drunk, Belinda, and you haven't been home since I left. Where have you been?"
"With friends," she declared, her hands on her hips. "You're married and living in your own house now, so don't come here bossing me around. And I'm not drunk." She hiccupped and stumbled toward the stairway.
"I have to get to the office," I said. "I'm not going to waste my time sobering you up and looking after you when you should have been here looking after Daddy. You're a selfish, inconsiderate person, Belinda, and one day you'll wake up and find yourself stranded on an island of insanity. I won't come to rescue you. I promise," I said and walked past her.
She tried to say something, but I slammed the door behind me before she could utter a word. My conscience told me she might fall down the stairs attempting to get to her room, but I didn't care. If she did, it would serve her right. As I got into my car and drove to our offices, my anger was so hot I was sure smoke came out of my ears.
What I found at the office confirmed my worse suspicions. Not only hadn't Daddy been there looking after our affairs, he hadn't returned phone calls made to the house and he had let some accounts drop us.
I went right to work, restoring as much semblance of order as I could manage in the few hours I was there. Samuel called looking for me.
"I had a feeling I would find you there when Carmelita told me you had left the house hours ago. I thought we weren't going back to work until tomorrow, Olivia," he complained when he heard what I was doing.
"I don't have that luxury. My father let too many things go, Samuel. I won't be home until much later."
"But . . . what about our dinner? I made reservations at the club. We have people to meet."
"I'm not very hungry. Go without me if you want," I said.
"This is ridiculous. Surely, it can all wait another day," he moaned.
"You might as well know right now that I don't procrastinate, Samuel. If something needs to be done, I do it," I told him in a tone of voice that would engrave the words in his brain.
"Of course," he muttered. "Maybe I should come there and help you," he added but without any enthusiasm.
"There's nothing you can do here. It would take longer to explain it to you first, Samuel. I'm very upset," I said and told him a little about Belinda's behavior while we were away.
"I see," he said.
"It's better I get to work and keep my mind off my anger."
"All right. go to the club then and I'll wait for you there. Maybe you'll finish in time and . ."
"Don't wait supper for me. If I can come, I will," I promised, but I knew it was an empty promise. Samuel accepted that offer quickly. He wasn't unlike so many other people I knew: satisfied as long as there was pretense, as long as they could fool themselves into believing something they knew wouldn't happen or wasn't true.
There was so much to do, I got lost in the work and didn't pay attention to time at all. When Samuel called again, he was already home from the club.
"I expected I would find you there," he said. "I can't believe you're still at it, Olivia."
Even I was surprised at the hour.
"I'll be home directly, Samuel," I said.
"Everyone at the club wanted to know where you were. When I told them you had gone right to the office, they were all impressed," Samuel said. I heard the way his voice dipped and I understood that "impressed" was not quite the way they really reacted.
"I'd better call and see about my father," I said realizing I had never even called him. "I'll see you soon."
When I called Daddy, the phone rang and rang until Carmelita finally picked up.
"Oh, Miss Olivia. Your father? I haven't seen him since we helped him upstairs. He fell asleep and didn't come down for any supper."
"What about Belinda?" I asked.
"I heard her in the kitchen a little while after you left. I came out to help her find something to eat and then she went upstairs, too. I thought she fell asleep as well, but an hour ago, I heard someone come to the door and she left."
"Okay, Carmelita. Call me if you need me for anything," I said and left her my home number.
Samuel was watching television in our den when I returned to our new home. He wanted to know all about the work I had done, but I told him I was too tired to repeat or describe it.
"Suffice it to say, it was considerable, Samuel, but there's a great deal left to do."
"Well," he said slapping his hands together and rubbing the palms, "starting tomorrow, I'll be there to help, Olivia. I'll take up the slack. That's a promise. We're going to build something here."
"We already have built something here, Samuel. We've got to hold onto it," I said dryly.
"Sure. Absolutely," he agreed.
I had some tea and toast and then decided to go right to bed. Samuel remained downstairs watching television. In the days to come, I had to interview and appoint our servants, as well as see if I could get Daddy back to work. I needed all my strength. I remember I was so exhausted, it didn't occur to me until I had my head on the pillow and the lights were out that tonight was the first night I was sleeping in my new home.
In the days and then weeks that followed, I became more and more concerned about Daddy. He returned to work, but I could see he was still drinking too much. Consequently, he wasn't taking good care of himself and occasionally looked as if he had slep
t in the clothes he wore to the office. I noticed that he often had problems with his concentration. It took him an hour to read and review something that would ordinarily take him minutes. He started to look so much older to me, too. His hair was grayer; the lines in his face grew deeper and his once powerful, straight posture degenerated until he walked with a slight bend in his torso as if his sadness had turned into lead weight on his shoulders.
It was pointless to ask him about Belinda. Now that I was gone from the house and Daddy was distracted, she was like a balloon someone had released in the wind. There was no way to get control over her. Her whims blew her randomly from one place to another. She avoided me as much as possible, was rarely home when I visited, and if she was, she was always getting ready to meet someone. Daddy was simply overwhelmed. I tried to get him to see what was happening.
"She was never very stable as it was, Daddy, and that was with my and your supervision. Now that I'm out of the house, you've got to take more interest in what she does, whom she sees and where she goes. Don't give her so much money. Get her to think about her future."
"I know," he would say. "I will," he would promise, but it was as if his mind was a magnet that had lost its powers. Everything that had stuck to it before, floated off, drifted away, fell out of his memory and his thoughts.
Samuel saw what was happening to him and to Samuel's credit, he did try to help. He visited Daddy almost as much as I did whenever Daddy didn't show up at the office or when I was too busy to get away myself. If he saw Belinda out at a bar or restaurant, he would try to take her home or get her to stop drinking so much. He knew how much it bothered me to hear about her exploits from other people, so he tried to soften the blow by telling me first.
Samuel was happy getting away from the office, despite his great oaths and proclamations to be at my side building our business. He quickly came to consider himself our public relations expert.
"We need to socialize with other business people, Olivia, and you're not fond of all this, what you call, fluff, take care of it," he assured me and then proceeded to work up an expense account that quadrupled any we previously had, justifying it always by claiming it was a tax deduction or it brought in new business. It rarely did. In fact, some of the people he entertained had little or nothing to do with what we did and when I pointed that out, he would say, yes, but they are connected to people who are important to our business.
Daddy didn't disapprove of what Samuel did and at times, he even accompanied Samuel and seemed to enjoy himself. There weren't many occasions when he did these days, so I held back on my criticism. Samuel, on the other hand, seemed to realize and accept the limits of his own abilities, interests and concentration, and did not try to take on any of the responsibilities I had assumed.
"That's more Olivia's area of expertise," he would say. As it turned out, practically everything that involved real work was "Olivia's area of expertise."
However, in the beginning at least, I thought some of what Samuel was doing had value. We quickly became the darlings of the charity and social circuit, included on everyone's A-list for invitations to just about any and every high social affair. Samuel insisted I improve my wardrobe and buy some more expensive jewelry, much of which he chose for me and charged to our account. He never stinted on his own wardrobe either.
We began to host our own elegant dinner parties, and through Samuel's socializing, met more influential people such as politicians and government officials, many of whom did have some authority over our enterprises.
The social affair I looked forward to the most, of course, was Nelson Childs' wedding. It had been months since I had last seen him. He had finished his legal education, passed the bar, and joined his father's firm. His name had already been engraved on the sign outside his father's law offices, and every time I rode past and saw it, my heart would skip a beat. There were times I deliberately took a longer route just to ride past that sign. Later, I would chastise myself for it, telling myself I was behaving like a lovesick schoolgirl. He wasn't my beau; he was marrying someone else and I was married to someone else. What did I think I was doing?
Everyone who had been invited to Nelson's wedding knew how much preparation and thought had gone into designing the affair and reception. There was great expectation. Daddy and Belinda were invited of course, but Belinda told me she would not be going. I wasn't unhappy to hear that. It was one of the few times I had been able to find her at home recently. She was in her room packing a bag for a trip she was taking with some new friends.
"Who are these people?" I demanded.
"Just some people I met. You wouldn't like them," she added quickly.
"Why, because they drink and don't hold down jobs?" I fired back at her. She paused and put her hands on her hips.
"No, because they like to have fun more than they like to work."
"They don't have to work? What are they, spoiled rich kids like you or thieves?"
"I don't want to talk about them with you, Olivia," she said, tears in her eyes.
"So you won't be going to the wedding then?" I asked. She paused and smiled at me.
"No, Olivia. You can have him all to yourself." I felt the heat rise up my neck and into my face. "That's not funny anymore, Belinda. I wasn't the one in the boathouse. You were."
"Yes, but you wished you were," she countered.
I felt as if the air around us had grown too hot to breathe.
"Your husband knows how you feel about Nelson," she continued.
"Did you say something stupid to Samuel?"
"No, but he knows. I can tell." She started to pack again. "You and he aren't exactly sweethearts, sleeping in separate rooms in separate beds."
"That's none of your affair."
"No," she said laughing. "It's not and I'm glad, but maybe you're not giving Samuel enough of a chance to prove himself," she went on, defying my fury. "Maybe if you did, you wouldn't dream so much about Nelson Childs."
"Stop it!"
"All I'm saying is I think Samuel is . . . could be a good lover. Isn't he?"
"I won't continue this stupid conversation any longer, but I warn you, if you should say any of this rubbish to anyone and I hear about it . . ."
"You'll throw me out of the family. I know," she said. "Don't worry. I don't care enough to say anything. I'm too busy having fun."
"At our expense. Don't you ever want to make anything of your life?" I asked her.
"I think I am," she said. "I'm making a good time of it."
I left her and went to complain to Daddy who simply shook his head.
"She'll settle down soon, Olivia," he muttered. "You'll see."
"You're lying to yourself, Daddy. That's worse than lying to other people."
He just stared blankly at me. He had lost so much weight and was so pale and tired these days. I didn't have the heart to badger him about Belinda anymore. Let her destroy herself, I thought and put it out of mind.
Instead, I wanted to think of what I would wear and how I would look at Nelson Childs' wedding. Nothing I had in my closet looked good enough to me. I had to have something special. In the back of my mind, I hoped Nelson would glance at me and think that maybe he did miss his chance. He could have had someone attractive and intelligent. He could have had a perfect partner, someone who would have helped him become all that he was capable of becoming instead of just marrying some socialite.
I recalled the dressmaker Mother had gone to when she wanted something special for Belinda's graduation. She showed me some of the latest fashions and designed a gown for me. When I saw what she intended, I couldn't help thinking Belinda would cry green tears when she saw it. It was an emerald green chiffon with sequins down both sides of the V-neck that plunged into the valley of my bosom and sequins on the cuffs of my sleeves. I had a teardrop diamond necklace with matching earrings to complement it and I went shopping to find the perfect pair of matching shoes. Then, I had my hair styled and my nails done, something I had never befor
e had done by a professional beautician.
"You're doing more preparation as a guest of a wedding than you did for your own," Samuel quipped. He smiled, but I wondered what was behind those laughing eyes. Many a truth was said in jest and who knew what Belinda had really said to him?
"You think you would be proud of me," I replied, looking away.
"Oh I am. Once again, we'll steal the limelight from Nelson and Louise. Why, that woman's going to come to hate you, Olivia."
"I hardly think so," I said, but in my secret place deep in my own heart, I hoped he was right, but not because I stole the limelight at her wedding, but because I stole the light in Nelson Childs' heart.
12
The Wedding
She Wanted
.
Nelson's wedding ceremony seemed far more
elegant than mine had, perhaps because there wasn't the same expression of amazement and even disdain on the faces of many of the guests. There was a very different atmosphere, erne that suited an affair in church. What's more, everyone treated this wedding as if it were the marriage of royalty, everyone except me that is. There were oohs and ahs over every aspect, from the red velvet carpet to the arrangement of multicolored roses in the form of an arch at the altar. When Nelson took his place with Samuel alongside him as his best man, all the women, young and old alike, gazed at him with such adulation, even a casual observer would think some Hollywood celebrity had stepped up to pronounce his wedding vows. There was a deep hush and then a nearly simultaneous sigh from the lips of his young, female admirers as he gazed out at the guests and beamed that handsome smile.
An electric shudder passed through the audience after the music began and Louise Branagan, on her father's arm, started her march down the aisle. It was impossible not to admit she looked beautiful. Not a strand of hair was out of place and her wedding dress with its long train looked as if it truly had been designed for a princess. The train was held up by her older sister's twin seven-year-old girls who resembled cherubs with their round, smiling faces and peach complexions. Louise moved with grace and poise, a small, but beatific smile on her lips, her eyes fixed on Nelson, whose eyes were locked on hers. I could almost feel the excitement they had for each other. Even the small children in the audience looked like they were in awe. There was a deep hush with just one muffled cough from the audience when Louise reached the altar and her father stepped to the side.