Full Cry

CHAPTER 7

Clay and Isabelle Berry loved to entertain. Their modern house, built on a ridge, enjoyed sweeping views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Because each of their rooms opened into other rooms or onto a patio, people rarely became bottled up in narrow door openings at their parties.

The floors, polished and gleaming, were hard walnut, stained black. Izzy, as Isabelle preferred to be called since she was named after her mother, Big Isabelle, fell under the spell of minimalism. Every piece of furniture in the house had been built to fit that house. Each piece, a warm beige, complemented the lighter beige walls.

The occasion for this party, January 2, Friday, was Izzy’s thirty-eighth birthday. A few guests, possessed of remarkable stamina, hadn’t stopped drinking since New Year’s Eve.

Tedi, scotch and water in hand, whispered to Sister that these were blonde colors. As Izzy was a determined blonde, she shone to great effect.

The kitchen, stainless steel, gleamed. Overhead pin-pricks of high-intensity light shone down on guests.

The downstairs boasted a regulation-size pool table, itself starkly modern.

Donnie Sweigert, along with three other men, manned the two bars, one in the living room, one downstairs.

A flat-screen TV, built into the wall of the library, glowed. The one in the poolroom did likewise. Both TVs had men and women watching snatches of football reportage. They’d get a pigskin fix, then quickly rejoin the party, only to return periodically or ask another sports fan what he or she thought about the countdown to the Super Bowl.

Sister and Tedi both stared as a commentator narrated clips from the most recent pro football games. The playoffs kept excitement mounting across America.

“Do you think these men are mutants?” Tedi asked.

“How?”

“Look at their necks.” Tedi clinked the cubes in her glass as a close-up of a well-paid fullback beamed from the wall.

Wearing a fabulous electric blue dress, Sister stared. “And that’s just someone for the backfield. Imagine what the defensive guard looks like.”

Clay, who was moving by, a drink held over his head thanks to the press of people, overheard.

“Better nutrition, better dentistry. Remember, a lot of bacteria come in through the mouth. Better workouts, better methods for reducing injuries or healing them when they occur. Better drugs.”

Tedi smiled at her attractive host. “When you played football in high school, you made All State, Clay, and you never looked like that. You had a good college career, too.”

Clay, middle linebacker for the local high school, had been outstanding at the position. He’d won a scholarship to Wake Forest and been a star.

He laughed. “Tedi, you’re very kind. Think how long ago that was. I’ll be forty-four this year. I don’t think I would do half so well at Wake now as I did then. It’s a different game. The training alone is so different.”

“But you never looked like a bull on two legs.”

“Steroids.” He shrugged genially. “Just wasn’t much of an option then. Even if I had taken them, I was too small to make it to the pros. I don’t mind. I came home, built a business, and discovered golf.”

Sister touched his arm. “What is it they say about golf: a good walk ruined?”

He laughed. “The devil plays golf. He’ll give you just enough great drives, good putts, to keep you coming back.”

“So pretty out there, a verdant paradise.” Tedi adored golf, carried a respectable twelve handicap.

“Clay!” Izzy called from the living room.

“The birthday girl.” Clay smiled. “Good hunt yesterday, Sister. Despite the weather, we’re having a terrific season.”

“Thank you, Clay.” She was glad to hear the praise as he left to join Izzy, who was surrounded by women from her college sorority.

Kappa Kappa Gamma songs filled the house.

“Janie, were you in a sorority?” Tedi asked. “I don’t remember. They didn’t have them at Sweet Briar, did they? Didn’t have them at Holyoke.” Tedi didn’t wait for her question to be answered since they both realized Tedi figured out the answer for herself. “Loved Holyoke. Loved it. But you know, I missed you so much. Think of the fun we would have had if we’d gone to the same school.”

“We’d have gotten ourselves thrown out.” Sister grinned.

“Well—true.” Tedi tipped back her head and laughed. “And I never would have met Edward. Imagine going all the way to Massachusetts to meet your future husband, himself a Virginian, who had gone all the way to Amherst. Course I was wretched when neither Nola nor Sybil elected to go to Holyoke. Still can’t believe they did that.”

“That’s the thing about children. Damn if they don’t turn out to have minds of their own.”

The corners of Tedi’s mouth curled up for an instant. “Shocking. But really, Janie, University of Colorado for Nola, and then Sybil, well, she did go to Radcliffe. She applied herself, probably to make up for Nola. God, how many schools did that kid roar through? I miss her. Even now.” Tedi stopped for a moment. “Stop me. Really, what is it about a new year? One casts one’s mind over the years, but the past is the past. You can’t change a thing about it.”

“Historical revisionists certainly are trying.”

“Yes, well, that’s not exactly about the past. That’s about a bid for political power now. Rubbish. Every single bit of it.” Tedi knocked back her scotch. “Sometimes I think I’ve lived too long. I’ve seen it all, done it all, and now am colossally bored by the ignorance and pretensions of the generations behind us. If anything, Nola and Sybil’s generation is tedious, hypocritical, and lacking in fire.”

“Tedi, they’ve only known peace and plenty. That’s like a hound who has only slept on the porch. If they have to run, they’ll be slow at first, but I promise you, they’ll run.”

“You’re always hopeful.”

“I’m an American. They’re Americans. When the you-know-what hits the fan, we do what has to be done, and it doesn’t matter when or where we were born. Doesn’t matter what color we are, what religion or none, what sex or how about having sex. Anyway, you get my drift.”

“I do. I’m still cynical.” She turned her head. “And speaking of that generation, here comes an extremely handsome member of it.” She smiled, holding out her hand as Walter took it, pressing it to his lips, then leaned over to kiss Sister’s cheek.

“You two look radiant.” Walter knew how to talk to women; beautiful would have been very nice but radiant showed imagination. “Sister, that color brings out your eyes.” He stopped, then lowered his voice. “Can’t get out of this.” He smiled big as a dark, intense, attractive man, early forties at most, pushed over to him. “Mrs. Bancroft, Mrs. Arnold, allow me to introduce Dr. Dalton Hill from Toronto. He’s come up from Williamsburg, where he gave a lecture this morning.”

Tedi, who’d looked him over, inquired, “How good of you to make the trip. What is your specialty, Dr. Hill?”

“Endocrinology.” He exuded a self-important air but had good manners, nonetheless. “However, my lecture was on the development of ornamentation in furniture during the eighteenth century.”

“A passion?” Tedi’s eyebrows lifted.

“Indeed.” He inclined his head.

“English and French furniture from the eighteenth century is beautiful,” Sister joined in. “Is there anyone who can make such pieces today?”

“Yes.” His voice was measured. “A few, precious few. It’s not talent, you see, it’s temperament.”

Both women smiled.

Walter said, “I never thought of that, Dr. Hill.”

“Call me Dalton, please.”

“Dalton, you hunt in Canada, don’t you?” asked Walter.

“If you’re going to be here for any time at all, please hunt with us.” Sister extended an invitation.

“You are the master, I believe?” Dalton had been informed of Sister’s status when he asked Bobby Franklin who the tall, striking-looking gray-haired woman was.

“I am, and I’m a lucky woman.”

Ronnie Haslip came by, Xavier and Dee behind him. They swept Walter and Dalton along with them after a few more comments.

“Has an air about him.” Tedi sniffed.

“Winding, are you, Tedi?”

They laughed and headed back to the bar. Tedi ordered another scotch on the rocks, and Sister asked for a tonic water on the rocks with a twist of lime.

Donnie, who had been nipping a little here and there behind the bar, quickly made the drinks. “Ladies.”

“I couldn’t help but notice your rifle and the scope the other day. What a beautiful piece of equipment.” Sister took her drink from him, fished a dollar bill out of the unobtrusive slit in her dress, dropped it in the tip glass.

“Thank you.” He nodded, then said, “I saved and saved. Cost me over two thousand five hundred dollars.” He paused for effect. “I’ll go without food to get the best. Makes a huge difference.”

“Yes, it does,” Sister replied.

“Clay Berry is tight as a tick with his employees.”

Tedi piped up. “I know you went without food.”

They moved back into the crowd, after a few more words with Donnie.

“I suppose I ought to find my husband. It’s ten, and the roads will be dreadful.”

“I ought to move on, too. Thought maybe Gray Lorillard would be here.”

“Do you know he’s rented the dependency over at Chapel Cross, the Vajay’s place? Haven’t they just brought that farm back to life?” Tedi paused. “Alex is here,” she mentioned the husband. “Solange should be here, too. Well, there’re so many people packed in here, I think I’ve missed half of them.”

Tedi put her drink down on a silver tray, half-finished. She’d had enough. “I study how different civilizations deal with wealth. How different people deal with it.” She could say anything to Sister. “The truth is, few people can handle it, whether it was China in the seventeenth century, a great industrial fortune in Germany in the nineteenth, or today, dotcom, that sort of thing.”

“You’ve managed.”

“I was trained since birth, Janie. When you make it in your lifetime, it’s quite savage really. You’re a stranger from your own children who never had to fight for it. I was fortunate in that our money was made with Fulton, with the steamboat fortune. It has been prudently invested and managed ever since. I grew up in a milieu that understood resources and understood restraint. Edward, of course, has more recent wealth. His grandfather developed refrigeration for food processing, transporting foods. But the Bancrofts were and are people of common sense. They kept working, kept producing. But we were all born and raised before the Second World War. Times have changed.”

“Yes, but they always have.”

“Then let’s hope there’s a pendulum. I was flipping through the channels last night before falling asleep, and I caught, for the barest second, a show where people had eaten a lot of food, consumed different colors of food dyes, then threw it all up to see who vomited the best color. That’s just unimaginable to me.”

“Me, too.” Sister leaned on Tedi, so petite. “If you’ve been watching the gross shows, then what do you think of the sex channels? Not that they’re gross, just hard-core.”

“Oh,” Tedi brightened, “I like them.”

They both laughed uproariously as the Kappas sang more lustily.

As Sister, Tedi, and a captured Edward stood outside the house, its windows ablaze, and casting a golden glow over the snow, sounds of merriment seeped from inside.

“Well, dear, win anything?” Tedi figured Edward had played pool.

“Forty dollars. Five bucks a game. Took five dollars from Ronnie. We needed smelling salts to revive him. I swear Ronnie has the first dollar he ever made, probably sewn over his heart.”

“Maybe that’s why he doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Tedi said forthrightly as they walked to their vehicles.

“Now why do you say that?” Sister listened to the crunch of packed snow under her heels.

She hated heels, but she looked so good in them, and they could jack up her six feet to six three if she wanted. She liked that.

“Too damn cheap. If a man dates another man, doesn’t he pay for dinner just as one would with a woman? And then if Ronnie found a partner, I bet he’d watch every penny and drive the other man insane.”

“Well, I think many men keep their finances separate,” Edward remarked. “Not quite like marriage or our version, I should say, because now even middle-class people sign prenuptials.”

“I think of the money at stake when we married, it’s a wonder we didn’t spend a year on prenuptials.”

“I know it’s wise, but it seems so calculating. Doesn’t seem like a good way to start a marriage,” Sister said.

Edward thought a moment. “You and Ray had no agreement concerning finances?”

As she opened the truck door, she answered, “No prenuptial. I didn’t have much. I mean, we were comfortable, but nothing extravagant. Ray was about the same. Everything we had, we made together, and we didn’t think divorce was an option. Look at our generation. How many divorced people do you know?”

“That’s true.” Edward waited as Sister, door open, changed into a pair of L.L.Bean boots.

“I can’t drive in these damned things.” She tossed her heels onto the seat. “Oh, who else did you clean out down there at the pool table?”

Edward puffed out his chest. “That Toronto doctor. Bragged about what a good pool player he was, so I let him have the first one, then I cleaned his clock. A bit of a pill, that one.”

“We thought so, too.” Tedi giggled.

“You drive safely now.” Edward pecked Sister on the cheek.

Tedi playfully kissed Sister, too, then said in her beguiling voice, “Minimalism is for the young.”

Cruising out the driveway, thinking of Tedi’s comment and all the money Izzy had spent to achieve the pared-down look, Sister laughed. She also noted a brilliant silver Mercedes 500SL, which passed her at the entrance gate. Bill Little, one of the men at Brown Mercedes on the Richmond road, carefully navigated the treacherous road. An enormous yellow ribbon and bow rested on the driver’s seat next to him.

She waved to Bill. He waved back.

On the way home she wondered just what Izzy did to get such a fabulous birthday gift. Then she laughed out loud, imagining she had a pretty good idea. Even as an adolescent, Clay exhibited an intense interest in sex.

Come to think of it, Sister thought to herself, Izzy earned that Mercedes.