The LeBaron Secret Page 2
If these walls could talk, Gabe thinks, what secrets they could tell. “Is love important?” she had asked him here. “I mean, is it important to be in love?” And, “I want to go to China. I want to see the Orient. I want to walk the Great Wall, visit the Forbidden City, see the palace of the Great Mogul. Peter loved San Francisco so, he never wanted to go abroad. At best it was New York … or Bitterroot. Do you know I’ve never been to Los Angeles? ‘There’s nothing to California south of Tehachapi,’ Peter used to say. But now I want to go to China. Take me to China, Gabe.”
But today the talk would not be of love, or of distant Far Eastern voyages. Today would be all business in this room, and there would be no coffee, and none of Cookie’s famous sweet rolls—coffee served with chunky crystals of brown Demerara sugar, sweet rolls filled with apple, cherry, blueberry, and peach preserves, and dusted with cinnamon. Gabe has not yet had breakfast, and his stomach is grumbling. There have been a series of Cookies, all with their own names, of course, but all called Cookie, since Sari LeBaron sees no reason to learn the names of employees with whom she has no direct contact. She and Thomas plan the menus, and these in turn are presented to whichever Cookie happens to be in the kitchen that year. If a woman can cook, and doesn’t mind being known as Cookie, she can work for Sari LeBaron. There is only one qualification demanded of a Cookie. “Can she do a galantine?” Sari will ask. If the answer is yes, she will get the job, though in Gabe Pollack’s memory not one of Sari’s Cookies has ever been asked to prepare anything remotely resembling a galantine.
The clock ticks away, and still Gabe Pollack waits. Having been asked to come at once, he has jumped in his car and driven to the city, breaking the speed limit on the freeway, and now he has managed to arrive a little early. It is often this way, when she feels she must give him a dressing-down. She makes him wait. It is as though she is gathering her strength for the dressing-down, and there is no doubt in Gabe’s mind but that today she is going to give him the sharp side of her tongue. Don’t forget, he could tell her, that I can remember when you weren’t so effing rich and powerful, when in fact it was I who told you what to do. Well? she would say to him. What good does remembering that do you? Looking straight at him with those extraordinary black eyes, she would say to him: Does your ability to remember when I was not so effing rich and powerful provide you with any special weaponry? If so, I’d like to have you effing demonstrate that now. Show me, Gabe, what all your effing memories will do. Make memories turn back that clock. Make memories remove the Bay Bridge and bring the ferries back. Make memories blow out a single candle on your eighty-first birthday cake.
Do you know, he replies, getting nastier, that some of the things that are said about this house are not all that pleasant? Have you heard it referred to as the Doge’s Palace? Worse yet, have you heard it called the Dago’s Palace? I have. Do you know that you—and your husband—are not universally loved in this city?
I am beloved, she answers him, because I am rich.
Gabe shifts in the Belter chair, crosses his legs, and with one hand reaches around and rubs at the achy spot in his back. And now there is a new sound. It is the whirring sound of Assaria LeBaron’s motorized wheelchair as it makes its way down the long gallery, across the carpet, toward the south sitting room.
“Is that you, Gabriel?” he hears her call. And that is another ominous sign, when she calls him by his full name. Batten down the hatches, he thinks. All the storm warnings are up from Point Reyes Station to Point Lobos.
“I’m here.”
And she swings herself through the door and into the room. “You were talking to yourself!” she says.
Rising, he says, “I wasn’t.”
“Of course you were. I heard you. But don’t worry, we all do it. Sit down, Gabe,” and she extends her hand to him, to be kissed.
Taking the hand, he thinks: I will now kiss the Pope’s ring. “How are you, Sari?” he says, and kisses Her Holiness’s hand.
“Very well,” she says brightly. “And you? I was so pleased when Thomas told me you were here. Now tell me, Gabe. What can I do for you?”
He hesitates. She may, or she may not, be playing games with him. One can never be entirely sure with Sari. Studying her, looking for a clear clue, he is struck, as always, with her smallness, her daintiness. It is hard to believe that so much strength and energy can have been encapsulated in such a single, small woman. The hands are tiny and delicate. The figure—and the wheelchair emphasizes this, of course—seems so fragile as to be almost frail. It has been said that, as we get older, we acquire the looks we deserve, and if that is the case, Assaria LeBaron must be among the most deserving of women. Though her hair is white now, and though her former Titian-haired beauty is apparent more as a shadow seen through layers of gauze, there is still that smooth, almost olive-colored skin, and those extraordinary dark eyes that can either be fierce or playful, depending on her mood, and that look quite merry now. “What can I do for you?” she repeats.
“I had a message waiting on my desk this morning that you wanted to see me.”
“Oh,” she says. “Well, I guess I did suggest that it would be nice if you stopped by.”
“There was nothing—important—on your mind?”
“Oh, I guess it seemed important at the time. It doesn’t seem all that important now. What it was is all water over the dam.”
“Was it that story—about the snake?”
“Well, yes, actually. I was a little upset by that. But then I realized, after all, you run a newspaper, and your job is to print the news.”
“Yes!” He tries not to say it too defensively.
“And I sometimes tend to forget that, don’t I?”
“Yes.” It is all an echo, of course, of his conversation with Thomas in the elevator. What Gabe Pollack himself sometimes tends to forget is how close in collusion Sari LeBaron and her manservant are. He is more than her legs and an extra pair of hands. Thomas is by now, after all these years, an adjunct to her personality, answering for any shortcomings that may have developed in any of her senses—an extra pair of eyes, of ears, even an extra nose and set of taste buds. “I’m afraid Cookie has over-sweetened your sorbet, Madam. Shall I speak to her about it?” “Yes, do.” Together, these two comprise a kind of fully functioning super-being, an unbeatable combination.
Sari pushes the button that activates her motorized chair, and wheels herself deftly behind the long library table that serves as her desk—moving herself with the same ease with which she famously navigates the crowded aisles of Saks and Magnin’s. She fixes her eyes on him, and there is a bit of a crackle in them. “You look tired, Gabe,” she says. “You work so hard. You must be looking forward to retiring.”
Here it comes, he thinks, and says carefully, “No, as a matter of fact, I’m not.”
“You must be. And I’m sure you have your successor all picked out.”
“No, I don’t have that done, either.” And then, “Sari, I wonder if Josie could bring us some coffee?”
She waves her hand impatiently. “Josie’s busy. I’ve had my breakfast, and I’d rather talk. I suppose it is to be that young one with the shoes.”
“Who?”
“Your successor.”
Shoes, he thinks. He knows the man she is talking about, and tries to think if there is anything remarkable, unusual, about Archie McPherson’s shoes. “You mean Archie?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Well, I suppose he’s a possibility, but I really haven’t given that much thought to it.”
“I’m wondering. Will I have any say in the matter?”
“What matter?”
“The matter of who succeeds you at the newspaper. Well, I suppose that doesn’t matter. You don’t tell me how to run my business, and I don’t tell you how to run yours.”
Oh, no, he thinks. Hardly at all.
“It’s just that I very much hope that you don’t choose him. He seems to me to be quite unworthy of you, Gabe
. He’s the one who wrote that story about me flying my plane. The Chronicle and the Examiner were tasteful enough to bury that as a small item in the back pages. In your paper, he made it front-page news. And he’s the one who wrote this snake story—am I correct? Also on the front page.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
She sighs. “I was sure of it. I’ve learned to recognize his—style, if one can call it that. The kind of yellow journalism—sensationalism—that our late friend Mr. Hearst was so fond of. It seems—beneath you, Gabe.”
“As you said, my job is—”
Her expression is sad, now, pained and weary. “It’s just that I’ve tried,” she says in a faraway voice, “I’ve tried so hard—Lord knows I’ve tried—to make my Odeon Theatre a place this city could be proud of, a proud showcase for the performing arts on the highest level. My dream, my little dream—my Odeon—was to make it one of the city’s shining crown jewels. Three million dollars—oh, it isn’t the money, Gabe. The money meant nothing to me, as I’m sure you know. But I can’t help thinking—three million dollars later, and what do we have? A snake act. What will it be next, I wonder. A dog-and-pony act? How about midgets? My beautiful dream. Everyone in San Francisco must be laughing at me this morning! Do you know that the head of the California SPCA was on the phone to me this morning at eight—accusing me of killing innocent animals? Me! ‘Don’t you have any say about what goes on in your theatre?’ he asked me. I said—”
“Now, wait just a—”
“And all because of your reporter’s story! Don’t you have any say about what goes into your paper, Gabe?”
“Now just let me—”
She waves her hand. “The Dildos!” she says. “Do you know what a dildo is? I do, because I looked it up!”
“It can also mean a refrain syllable in music,” he says. “Or a West Indian cactus plant.” Thank goodness he had looked up the word this morning, too.
“Nonsense! Don’t give me that. It’s an artificial pee-pee, and you know it!”
“Now, Sari. Just simmer down for a minute, and—”
“What I want to know is who chooses these acts at the Odeon. I don’t—though the SPCA man seems to think I do. As you very well know, Gabe, I deliberately—deliberately—declined a position on the Odeon’s board of directors, because I felt I’d done enough already, and I didn’t want to have any sort of veto power. But you—you, Gabriel J. Pollack, you are on that board! You must have some sort of say about the caliber of acts that get booked in there! That’s what I’d like to hear from you. How did this whole thing come about in the first place? And then, on top of that, how did you let that nasty little reporter put that story on the front page of your very own paper? Just to make me look ridiculous? Was that it?”
“Of course not, Sari. Frankly, it was to sell newspapers. Our early edition sold out at the stands in half an hour.”
“Is that all you care about—money? What’s happened to your standards, Gabe? You used to have them!”
“I run a business, a business with stockholders, just the way you do, Sari.”
“And what about that last line?” she demands, her voice rising. “‘Other cultural events are scheduled throughout the coming year.’ Cultural events. If that wasn’t snide—if that wasn’t sarcastic—if that wasn’t someone trying to take a sly poke at me—then I—then I don’t know my ass from a hole in the wall, if you’ll pardon my French!”
He is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I believe the correct French is ‘not knowing your ass from a hole in the ground.’ You never were attractive when you were angry, Sari.”
“Oh, dear.” She closes her eyes now, makes two tiny balls of her fists, and bows her head in an attitude of sudden contrition. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry. It’s just that I try—I try so hard. I know I make mistakes, but I try not to. It was that SPCA man calling, out of the blue, reading me the story—I hadn’t even seen the paper—that did it. Don’t forget I’m on their board, Gabe. And my first thought was, how will this look? And I thought—sometimes I think here am I, an old woman alone—handicapped—trying to run a business in a man’s world, all alone. So many responsibilities. So many demands. Trying to do—too much. Sometimes it all just seems—too much for one—one lonely old woman.” Gabe watches as, incredibly, two identical tears squeeze out from her closed eyelids and course down her cheeks. It is a performance worthy of a Bernhardt, and he almost laughs, but to do that would be unwise. “All, all alone,” she repeats, and he watches as she extracts the lacy white handkerchief she keeps tucked in the wristband of her dress, places it against her face, and blows her nose noisily. “Forgive me, Gabe. I didn’t mean to quarrel with you.”
“Now, now,” he says. “We’re not going to start feeling sorry for ourself, are we?”
“Dear Gabe.” She opens her tear-filled eyes and looks at him. “How long have you and I known each other? Fifty years?”
“Longer,” he says. “Longer than that.”
“Sometimes I think—sometimes I think you’re my only friend. Sometimes I think you’re the only person I can trust. Not my family, not even my children. At the office it’s—Eric. I can feel Eric trying to usurp me. But you—you I’ve always felt I could trust. And that’s why, when I feel that trust betrayed—it hurts me so.” She wrings the handkerchief between her clenched fists.
He covers both her hands with one of his. “You can trust me, Sari,” he says.
“We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?” she says. “It hasn’t all been a bed of roses. But—we’re still here.”
“Still here.”
“Do you still love me a little bit? Are you still my Polly? Are you still my darling little Pollywog?”
He chuckles. “Still your darling, aging little Pollywog.”
“Good.” She sniffles some more and dabs at her cheeks and nose again. The worst of the storm, it seems, is over. But there may be more to come. She has tried invective, then tears, but there is still no indication that their session is over. Ah, Sari LeBaron, Gabe Pollack thinks, your aging Pollywog knows you much too well. This moment may just be the calm eye in the center of the hurricane. “Now,” she says, seeming to regain her composure, “just tell me how this—snake act—got booked into my beautiful new Odeon.”
“The answer isn’t going to make you happy, Sari.”
“How can I be any more upset than I am already?”
“It was your daughter’s idea.”
“Melissa’s? You’re not serious!”
“I’m afraid I am. She made a very convincing presentation to the board. She felt that the Odeon should, from time to time, offer something for young people. That it shouldn’t all be symphony or opera or ballet, or Shakespeare. She felt that an occasional concert should be scheduled that would draw young people to the theatre. Last night’s group was her choice.”
“Melissa!”
“And, as it turned out, she was quite right. Last night was a sellout.”
“And a bloody scandal!”
“It wasn’t Melissa’s fault that the snake decided to—misbehave. The act went very well—without any incidents—in, I think, Omaha.”
“Omaha. This is supposed to be sophisticated San Francisco. Not some prairie cowpatch. Melissa! I might have known Melissa was to blame. Sometimes I think that wretched child is to blame for everything.”
Gabe Pollack refrains from pointing out that the wretched child is now—what?—fifty-seven years old. Instead, he says, “In terms of box office, it was a very shrewd suggestion.”
“You see what I mean about not even being able to trust my own children? Of course, she said nothing to me about it!”
“Should she have, Sari? As you point out, you’ve deliberately distanced yourself from the theatre’s board.”
“Did it to spite me, probably—the way everybody does. To embarrass me. Typical. Well, I’ll deal with her.”
He spreads his hands. “She’s your daughter, not mine,” he says.
“I admit that last sentence was—unfortunate. I should have caught that when the copy came across my desk.”
“You can say that again!”
“Tell you what I’ll do for you,” he says, leaning forward. “I’ll run a nice follow-up story on the Odeon. Listing all the really cultural events coming up on this year’s calendar. The Baltimore Symphony, the San Diego Ballet, the Houston Orchestra, Pavarotti. Today’s story didn’t mention you by name. But I’ll see that the follow-up does—gives you full credit for what you’ve done with the Odeon, and what you’re still doing in the south-of-Market area. Would that make you happier?”
She considers this. “Well, perhaps,” she says at last, a little sulkily. “Perhaps. A little.”
“Making it quite clear that last night’s program was hardly typical.”
“A freak occurrence. Conceived by a freak.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”
They sit in silence now, but Gabe Pollack knows that their meeting is not over. He knows it, and she knows it. When it is over, she will give the signal. It is always that way, and Gabe knows her so well, has known her for so long that he knows the almost Byzantine way her mind works, the little games she plays with people, pitting one set of circumstances against another to get, in the end, the result she wants. However oblique and illogical her approach may seem, there is always method in her madness, which is why, in her business dealings, she is considered such a difficult woman to bargain with. It has been said that Assaria LeBaron thinks like a man, but Gabe Pollack disagrees. Men approach problems, for the most part, directly, through the front door. But Assaria LeBaron creeps up on them stealthily, through a back entrance, and then through a maze of alleys and secret passageways. This has been the secret of her extraordinary success in, as she puts it, a man’s world—that, and her quite theatrical sense of timing. The American stage, Gabe sometimes thinks, lost a great actress when Sari LeBaron became a businesswoman. Men think in terms of objects, things. Sari LeBaron, like women since the beginning of time, thinks in terms of techniques.