The LeBaron Secret Read online

  Since Julius LeBaron’s day, only one decorative detail of the office has been changed: the removal of the two brass cuspidors that used to flank the desk. Sari saw to that.

  Now, in Papa’s big swivel chair, she sits behind the walnut partners’ desk. Her wheelchair has been put away in a closet, since none of the Madison Avenue boys is supposed to be reminded of her handicap. Mike Geraghty lays out the proposed ads, one by one, for her to consider, contemplate, study. He places each new glossy page on top of the last in the order in which—if Sari approves—they are to make their appearance to the wine-drinking public. The backs of his well-manicured fingers are downed with a light peach-fuzz of pink hairs.

  “Now, let’s go through the whole lot again, Mike,” Sari says at last.

  “Certainly, Mrs. LeBaron.”

  The other two young men say nothing, merely sit stiffly in their chairs in attitudes of attention and profound respect. Months of work are at stake here, and everything hangs on Sari’s approval or disapproval. Thus far, she has registered neither emotion, and the brow of Howard Friedman, the copywriter, has begun to glisten slightly. The proposed new slogan is his.

  “Well, I see what you’re trying to say here,” she says at last. “‘Baronet—The Wine You Can Trust.’ You can trust the Leaning Tower of Pisa not to fall down. You can trust the Statue of Liberty not to drop her torch. But—”.

  Anxiously: “Yes, Mrs. LeBaron?”

  “But what are we doing with all these pictures of banks? What does a bank have to do with wine?”

  “You see, Mrs. LeBaron,” Howard Friedman interjects quickly, “the idea is that you can trust Baronet wines just the way you can trust your bank to take care of your money. You notice, in the copy, we’ve used the phrase ‘The wine you can bank on.’”

  “I see that. But what I can’t see is why anyone would want to bank on a wine. Am I missing some subtle point?”

  “Banks,” says Mike Geraghty, “are trusted American financial institutions. The very bedrock, you might say, of our American capitalist system.”

  “Don’t forget—I’m pro-Communist!” She says it with a wink.

  “Ha-ha, yes. Well, Americans feel very strongly about their banks. The dream of every young American man or woman is to be able to walk into a bank and cash a check, his or her own check. That couldn’t happen in Russia or your other Iron Curtain countries. We’ve done some very deep-level psychological research stuff on this, Mrs. LeBaron, on Americans’ deep-seated feelings about their banks, and—”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Mike,” Sari says, waving her hand impatiently, “but I still don’t see the connection between people’s feelings about their banks and the wine they drink. That’s what I don’t get about all of this.”

  “Banks,” says Mike Geraghty, “are solid. They can be trusted. They’re like an old friend. Who is more trusted in any town or city in this country than the local banker?”

  “The local doctor, perhaps?” Sari suggests.

  “But that raises health issues, doctors,” says Mike Geraghty, “and of course we don’t want to go into anything like that, we really can’t get into an area like that, Mrs. LeBaron, saying that wine is good for you, good for your health, nine out often doctors, that sort of thing. Why, the government would—”

  “I’m not suggesting that,” Sari says. “All I’m saying, Mike, is—why banks?”

  “We’re trying to give Baronet a more upscale image, Mrs. LeBaron,” Howard Friedman says. “The bank, the banker—conservative, trustworthy, the person in town everyone loves—”

  “Well, I certainly don’t love my banker,” Sari says. “He happens to be a horse’s ass. But what do you mean by this upscale business?”

  “The banker. The town’s most upright citizen, the pillar of the community.”

  “Are you trying to say that bankers drink Baronet wines?”

  “That’s implicit, yes, in the copy. A subliminal message. Upscale.”

  “But that’s bull-do, Mike. Bankers don’t drink Baronet wines—not in this town or any other. They drink a Beefeater martini with a twist, or Johnnie Walker Scotch. Or something equally respectable.”

  “Of course, that’s only a very minor copy point, Mrs. LeBaron. That’s the subliminal, the upscale part. The main point is—”

  “Yes, let’s get back to the main point,” Sari says. “The main point of all this is ‘Baronet—The Wine You Can Trust,’ as I see it. So let me ask you this: Is there any reason why anyone should not trust Baronet wines? Is there any reason why anyone should trust Baronet more than any other wine? Trust Baronet to do what? Not get you tipsy? Not make you upchuck, or give you cirrhosis of the liver if you drink too much? Not give you a hangover? Face it, Mike, our wine is cheap jug wine, always has been. It’s not champagne, and it’s not Scotch or bonded bourbon. Baronet is blue-collar stuff. Kids drink it in fern bars that can’t afford a liquor license. They drink it at fraternity-house parties. They buy it by the gallon to spike the punch. We’re not trying to be Beaulieu or Paul Masson or even Almaden. We’re just a plain old honest wine with a low sticker, and people drink it because they get a pleasant buzz. We’re the house wine, seventy-five cents a glass in some of your not-so-better restaurants. That’s what we are, and always have been.”

  “But with the taste emphasis changing these days, Mrs. LeBaron, and the—”

  “Bull-do! If the public were turning away from our wine, we’d see it in the bottom line, wouldn’t we? If we’re doing something wrong, we’d see it in the sales figures, wouldn’t we? But we don’t. So why are we changing our ad approach, with this upscale business? Next thing you know, you’ll be suggesting I buy ad space in Town & Country, or Architectural Digest, or la-di-da books like that! If you want to give me something new, give me something lighthearted—something that’s about good, inexpensive fun. Are banks lighthearted? Banks are about interest rates.” She spreads the palms of her hands flat on the desktop and looks at each of the three young men in turn. “If you ask me, gentlemen, if there’s one thing Baronet wines are not about, it’s banks.”

  There is silence now, and all around the room the Madison Avenue boys’ faces are crestfallen and disconsolate, and all at once Sari feels almost sorry for them. They are so very young, and their young hopes look so very dashed. “Tell me,” she says in a gentler tone, “has my sister-in-law approved any of this stuff?”

  Their expressions grow even more morose. It is difficult for them, after all, to hear all their hard work dismissed as “this stuff.”

  “Miss LeBaron reviews every agency presentation very carefully before it is presented to the client,” Mike Geraghty says rather stiffly.

  “Well, Joanna must be losing her marbles,” Sari says.

  With that, Eric LeBaron clears his throat softly, leans forward on the sofa, and makes a steeple of his fingers. “Excuse me, Mother,” he says. It is the first time he has spoken.

  Sari throws him a quick look. “Yes, Eric?”

  “Excuse me, Mother, but I think I see what these fellows are trying to do.”

  Now there is a collective, if inaudible, sigh of relief in the room. All is not yet utterly lost for the boys. Another opinion is at least being offered, and there is a fleeting chance—a fleeting one—that the day may be saved, even though the boys know from long experience that it is Sari who tells her son what to do, and not the other way around.

  “I’m not saying I’m one hundred percent in favor of this particular campaign,” he says carefully, and the briefly hopeful looks on the other men’s faces fade quickly. “But I see what they’re trying to say, and I think I should tell you that what they are showing us today is based on a suggestion of my own a while back.”

  “Of yours?”

  “Yes,” he says. “You see—the idea of an upscale campaign for Baronet is based on a very definite national trend that has been going on for the last ten, twenty years.”

  “What trend is that?”

  “Wine has b
ecome a fashionable drink. It has become the drink of choice for upwardly mobile people, particularly young people—young urban professionals, the people who—”

  Sari waves her hand impatiently. “I know all that,” she says. “Are you trying to tell me something I don’t already know? That trend started in the late nineteen sixties. Are you trying to tell me I’m behind the times?”

  “Of course not, but the point is—”

  “The point is that those people, those yuppies you’re talking about, don’t drink our wine. Why, they wouldn’t touch a bottle of Baronet with a ten-foot pole! You won’t see our wine being served at any Park Avenue parties, Eric. On the Bowery, sure. Why, every wino they pick up on skid row is lugging a pint of Baronet Thunder Mountain Red in a paper bag!”

  “But what I am trying to say,” he begins slowly, and Sari can see the small forceps scar on his left temple beginning to redden, as it often does when he is angry or upset. No one else notices this, but she does. Good, she thinks, let him squirm a bit. “What I am trying to say,” he continues, “is that we don’t have to direct our entire marketing effort toward skid-row winos and Bowery bums.”

  “You want to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse—is that it?”

  “There is another market, Mrs. LeBaron,” Mike Geraghty interjects.

  “I know there is! But it’s not our market.”

  “But is there any reason, Mother, why we shouldn’t also try to tap this other market, with an advertising campaign designed to make the Baronet name just a little bit respectable?”

  “And turn our backs on the market we’ve got already? Kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? I tell you, our market doesn’t read Town & Country. It reads the National Enquirer and the girlie magazines. It doesn’t watch the ‘MacNeil-Lehrer Report,’ it watches ball games and prizefights. Our research shows us that. We’re sold in supermarkets, Eric, to men and women who drive home in pickup trucks.”

  “But do we have to concentrate on that market exclusively? While this other market is—”

  “Don’t change horses in midstream—did you ever hear that piece of advice? Don’t take your money off a winning horse—that’s another.”

  “And, while we’re exchanging clichés,” Eric says, “there’s another about putting all your eggs in one basket.”

  “Bull-do!”

  The three other men in the room are now all extremely uneasy. It is painful for them to have to witness a member of their own sex being taken to task by a member of the opposite one, particularly when that member of the opposite sex happens to be the man’s own mother. Eric, they know, is talking marketing. That is supposed to be his bailiwick, and to talk marketing is supposed to be his right. A marketing vice-president is supposed, at least from time to time, to offer marketing suggestions and advice, and that is all he is doing.

  There is a silence, and then Mike Geraghty says, “You see, Mrs. LeBaron, what we have been proposing is some sort of advertising campaign that would begin to add some respectability, some dignity, to the popular image that the Baronet label now has, in preparation—”

  “In preparation for what?”

  “In preparation for the possibility of introducing a new line of higher-priced wines. Of château quality. With new packaging, with a new label—retaining the Baronet signature, of course. ‘Château Baronet,’ in fact, is one of the labels we’ve been tossing about.”

  “Who’s ‘we’? Is this some new idea of Joanna’s?”

  “No, actually it was mine,” Eric says.

  “Only a suggestion, of course,” Mike Geraghty says, “in an effort to capture a share, at least, of this upscale market.”

  “Belatedly,” Eric adds.

  “What do you think of the name Château Baronet, Mrs. LeBaron?” Mike Geraghty says. “We rather like it.”

  Sari makes a face. “Château Baronet,” she says. “Sounds kind of pansy to me. Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think this is all a terrible idea. I think it’s worse than terrible. I think it’s a lousy idea, I think it stinks.”

  Now the sighs are audible.

  “Let me tell you something about wine,” she continues, folding her hands across her desk and adopting the attitude of an all-wise mother superior in a convent addressing a group of unschooled novices. “Wine is crushed from grapes, and grapes grow on vines, and vines grow in soil, in earth. In the earth, they depend on rain and on sun—on nature—on sunny days and cool, dry nights. In some of our northern vineyards, like Napa, we let wild mustard grow between the vines in spring. Why wild mustard? No one knows exactly, but wild mustard seems to nourish grapevines in certain areas. Up in the foothills, weeds like clover and vetch seem to work better—no one knows why, but they do. Nature again. Later, closer to harvest time, these weeds are all plowed under, and this also seems to help the vines. Provides soil texture. You see, that’s what I think all you boys sometimes seem to forget—you, in your Madison Avenue offices, Joanna in her duplex on Fifth Avenue, even Eric here in his office in the city. You’ve forgotten the wild mustard, and the clover, and the purple vetch. How many of you have ever watched the bees, the way a hive of bees will attack a vineyard? A single bee can suck a grape until it’s as dry and empty and wrinkled as a dead balloon. I’ve watched this, watched with tears in my eyes, and watched as those bees fell, one by one to the ground, drunk from their drinking on our vines.

  “And the larks! ‘Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,’ you think, but larks can be some of our worst predators. Those pretty songbirds can be some of our most voracious scavengers—insatiable!—and a summer of larks for us is a summer of disaster. As a girl, I used to watch the Chinese field hands chanting, shouting, flapping their arms, beating gongs, trying to frighten off a flock of larks from the vines. Did no good at all! Forces of nature, you see.” She pauses for effect. “That’s what I think you’ve all forgotten, sitting there in your ivory towers. We’re not Park Avenue aristocrats. Hell, we’re farmers. We work the land. We study the sky and sniff the air for signs of rain. We battle nature every day. We’re real people, and we’re ordinary people, and those are the people who drink our wine, and that’s how we’ve made our reputation.” And she brings down her fist, hard, on the top of the walnut partners’ desk. “And that’s how we got rich.”

  After a moment, Eric says dryly, “Well, thanks for the lecture, Mother.”

  “That wasn’t a lecture,” Sari says. “That was a sermon!” She pauses, and then smiles. “Well,” she says, “how about some lunch? I don’t know about any of you, but I’m starving.” She presses the button on her desktop and rings for her secretary, Miss Martino.

  Eric rises. “Sorry,” he says, “but I can’t join you. I have an engagement.”

  He can do this. He can escape, with an excuse, but the others cannot. As long as the Madison Avenue boys remain in San Francisco, they belong to Assaria LeBaron. Sari nods a curt farewell to Eric, and Gloria Martino appears at the doorway, notepad and pencil in hand.

  “Something to drink before lunch, boys?” Sari asks.

  Mike Geraghty speaks first. “I’ll have a nice chilled glass of Baronet Chablis,” he says.

  “Good!” says Sari. “I’ll have a touch of Baronet vermouth”—she winks at them—“mixed with a couple of jiggers of Beefeater gin.”

  Eric LeBaron strides into his office on the other side of the building and flings himself into the chair behind his desk. Marylou Chin, his willowy Eurasian secretary, has followed him into the room. “Well,” he says, “she did it again. Let me have it, in front of the whole Madison Avenue gang. Shit!”

  Ordinarily, Marylou would have simply made clucking noises with her tongue, murmured something noncommittally sympathetic, and then asked him if it was all right if she took her lunch hour. But just in the last few weeks the nature of their relationship has changed, and so, instead, she closes the office door behind them, takes a seat in the small chair opposite him, crosses her legs, and carefully lights a long filte
red cigarette, studying his face. “How much longer are you going to let her treat you like this, Eric?” she asks at last.

  “Shit, I don’t know,” he says. “Until they carry me out of here with a ruptured, bleeding ulcer, I suppose.”

  “It’s—it’s intolerable, is what it is.”

  “I know.”

  “You work so hard, you give her so much, and she rewards you by treating you like some sort of galley slave. Like shit, as you say.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re the one who should be running this company. Not her.”

  “I know I could run it a damn sight better,” he says.

  “Of course you could.” She shapes the ash on her cigarette against the rim of his ashtray. “Was it—was it the same sort of thing today?”

  “Of course. She simply refuses—refuses to consider anything that even remotely smacks of a new idea. Refuses.”

  “You’ve offered her so many good ideas.”

  “The Madison Avenue guys had come up with a new campaign that was, frankly, shit. But they were on the right track. But she, of course, derailed them before they could even get the train out of the station. Refused to listen to anything anybody else had to say.”