Legacy of Secrets (68 page)

Shannon had bought herself a silky hand-knit sweater the color of the fuschia hedgerows and she wore it with a flowing black silk skirt. “I thought if you could get away with red hair and pink frocks, so could I,” she said, teasing.

“And very nice it looks, too, dear girl,” I said approvingly, though I did look askance at Eddie, still in blue jeans. I’m beginning to worry the lad has nothing else. Perhaps I should offer him something from Pa’s wardrobe. I bet he would look wonderful in plus-fours with one of those checked jackets with the pleats in the back. Pa used to look superb in it, a bit like the young Duke of Windsor, only with a mustache and a stronger chin.

I myself was in soft panne silk velvet, one of Mammie’s own dresses from Vionnet, in a subtle grayish-green that looked silvery under the lamplight, with long sleeves and a pair of leaf-shaped diamond clips pinned at the corners of the low, square neckline. It had a tasseled sash and I had wound a gauzy silver scarf around my neck to disguise its scrawniness, and I had placed a frivolous little green velvet bow atop my curls. My long fake emerald-and-ruby earrings were St. Laurent from his gypsy period, about 1968 I think, and they clanked and rattled with every movement of my head. Why is it that earrings like that make a woman feel so feminine and flirtatious? I bet Lily knew the secret.

A
T THE TIME WE PICK UP THE STORY,
Liam was seventeen years old. He was built like his father, tall and slender with a wiry body, but in temperament he was more like Lily’s brother, a dreamer who preferred music and painting to sports. He had the sculptured refinement of Lily’s features, but he had his father’s clear gray eyes and black hair. If you knew Finn was his father you would have said, of course, he looks exactly like him. But if you did not, then you would have said, well of course, he looks like Lily. Liam had the best of both their looks, and the best of both their temperaments. He was calm and easygoing, he was clever enough in school, but to Lily’s chagrin he was not academic
like John Porter Adams, the man he thought was his father.

“I
F ONLY YOU WOULD TRY A LITTLE HARDER,
you could become as renowned a scholar as your father,” she would say, irritated by his dreaminess, and ignoring the fact that he was not the slightest bit academic.

Liam didn’t want to go to Harvard. He wanted to go to Florence and study art, and after that he wanted to wander through southern Europe with an easel and paints and a single bag with his few belongings, just painting anything that inspired him; the red earth hills in Provence, the horizon blending into the sea in Venice, the ochre and umber and terra-cotta villages of Tuscany, and the silver-green Mediterranean olive groves. But he was wise enough not to divulge these plans to his mother just yet.

He was a loner at school, not because he was unpopular with the other boys but because he preferred it that way, and since he was good at all the usual subjects, he was well thought of by his teachers. It was generally expected that he would follow in his father’s footsteps, and in any case Lily planned to endow a John Porter Adams library at Harvard and to donate a great many of her husband’s rare volumes, along with a vast amount of money.

Liam knew there would be trouble when he told his mother he had no intention of going to college, but he put the problem out of his mind to be faced later, exactly the way Lily always did, and he lived each day as it came.

The years were passing and Finn was a very rich man, much richer than he had been when Cornelius James left him his inheritance, and probably even richer than his brother Dan, whose stores now stretched from coast to coast and who was reaching new markets in the remote farming settlements on the wheat plains of the midwest and the isolated forests and lakes of the north, through his
innovative mail-order catalogues. The brothers had never spoken since the night of the fight, but Finn had followed Dan’s progress in the financial pages as well as the political pages of the newspapers.

Dan was a senator now. He lived alone but for the servants in his fine white-pillared mansion in Maryland, and except when a grand occasion or an important speech made it necessary and a large dose of painkiller made it possible for him to get to his feet, he was confined to a wheelchair. From the news photos Finn saw that his brother had gained a little weight, but he was still the same handsome Senator Dan, with his derby and his red suspenders, his tousled curls and his cheery grin. “Honest Dan” the media had dubbed him, and the name had stuck because, as Dan often said himself, it was true.

Finn, too, lived alone, but in a vast fourteen-room apartment on Fifth Avenue. He rarely went out, always worked late, and was at the office early again the next morning before the world markets opened. Any spare time was filled reading his way through all the books Cornelius had left him in his library, as well as the ones John Porter Adams had recommended. He had also sought out a professor of literature at Columbia University and got him to draw up a reading list, and he conscientiously read one a week from his list.

Finn kept track of Lily; he knew where she lived, who she saw, and what she was up to. He had bided his time and now he wanted his son.

Liam was seventeen when Finn O’Keeffe paid a visit to his prep school, ostensibly looking it over for a future son.

After he had been shown around, he mentioned casually that John Adams had been a neighbor of his in Boston, and that he had heard his son attended the school. “I thought I might say hello to him,” he said, nonchalantly waving away their suggestions that they ask Liam to join them for tea in the headmaster’s study. “No, no. Just tell me where I might find him, and I’ll stroll by,” he said easily.

Liam was sitting on the riverbank sketching. Finn watched him silently for a few moments, choking back the tears as he gazed at his son, a boy he barely knew. The raw emotion of paternal love struck him for the first time, and he wondered why he had wasted all these years.

“That’s a very clever sketch,” he said admiringly, when he could manage to speak.

Liam scrambled respectfully to his feet. “Thank you, sir,” he said, embarrassed at being observed.

Finn held out his hand. He said, “I’m Finn O’Keeffe James. I knew your father. He was a neighbor of mine, and he was kind enough to help me with my library.”

Liam was surprised, he rarely met anyone who had known his father, and he shook Finn’s hand eagerly. “Good to meet you, sir. And you are luckier than I am because I never knew my father.”

“He was a good man. And a great scholar.”

Finn was surprised when Liam said, “Yes, I know. And it’s hard to live up to such standards.”

“Why don’t we walk along the riverbank and you can tell me what you mean,” he suggested.

It was odd, but Liam felt he could unburden himself to this stranger in a way he never could to his mother, and he told Finn his dilemma. He said that what he wanted most in the world was to be an artist. He added guiltily, “My mother would be angry if she knew what I just told you, even though you were my father’s friend. You see, I haven’t told her. Not yet.”

“I understand,” Finn said quietly.

“My mother is devoted to me,” Liam said suddenly. “She’s had my life planned out since the day I was born. Maybe it’s because my father died so soon afterward and she just transferred all that extra love and caring to me.” He glanced hopefully at Finn. “I’m sorry, Mr. James, if I’m out of line, talking like this. Only sometimes it gets on top of me. She just smothers me with so much caring. Since I was a kid every meal was planned for its nutrition, I even had to come away to school to taste my first candy bar.
Every class I took: riding, dancing, fencing, swimming, ice-skating, was not just for pleasure but to fulfill some function, social or physical, I don’t know. And I’ve been stuffed with books and learning like a force-fed goose since I was old enough to read.”

“And how old was that?”

Liam grinned. “Four years old, sir.”

Finn laughed. “I was fourteen before I could read properly, and now I’m the one who’s like a force-fed goose, stuffing myself with books and knowledge in an attempt to catch up on all I missed.” He looked thoughtfully at his son. “Let me ask you something, Liam. Have you ever questioned your artistic talent? Have you asked yourself how good you are? Or is painting just a pleasant pastime that you are clever at and that you enjoy?”

Liam said eagerly, “I don’t know how to explain it, sir, but it’s as though I’m thinking with my fingertips. The idea is there in my mind, the shapes, the colors, the light, and it just somehow translates itself through my brush onto the canvas. I don’t know how good I am, and I’m certain I have a lot to learn. All I know is that I’m willing to give up everything to do it.”

Finn raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Everything? Your home? Your position in life? Money?” He paused and then added cleverly, “Your mother?”

“Everything, sir, except the last one.”

“Think about it, Liam,” Finn said as they strolled back to the school. “Because it seems to me that if you did, your mother would be the first thing you would lose. Ask yourself if your art means that much to you.”

“Will you be visiting the school again, Mr. James?” Liam asked eagerly as they shook hands and said good-bye. “I’ve enjoyed talking to you.”

Finn smiled and slapped his shoulder genially. “Then we must talk again. And next time we shall have lunch. How about Saturday? Only let’s not tell your mother. From what you’ve told me, she probably wouldn’t approve.”

Liam sighed as he watched him walk away. He knew he
was right and of course he wouldn’t tell his mother, but for the first time in his life he had met a man to whom he could talk about matters close to his heart. Almost like a father, he thought wistfully.

F
INN WENT TO SEE
L
IAM
the following Saturday and over lunch they got to know each other better. He told Liam that he had come to America from Ireland when he was Liam’s age, just seventeen, and how he had worked for Cornelius, and the events that had made him a rich man.

And after that, whenever Liam was free, Finn was there. They discussed his talent and his future endlessly and Finn saw an easy way to get back at Lily and take her son from her. If Liam went to Italy to become an artist, she would cut off his money, leaving him with no choice but to do as she said. But if he offered to finance him, Liam would be free to do whatever he wanted, and he would also be alienated from his mother.

Finn was tempted, but for the first time there was another emotion besides his desire for revenge. He loved his son and, like a true father, he wanted the best for him. He wanted Liam to go to college.

“You are young,” he said. “There is time for everything you want to do. Study the history of art and architecture. You can travel abroad in the summer vacations, maybe you can take courses in drawing in Florence or Sienna. I’ll find the best tutors for you. And if there’s any financial ‘difficulty’”—he grinned at Liam, who knew he meant “trouble with his mother”—“then I shall be delighted to underwrite your expenses.”

He held up his hand to stop his protests. “I wouldn’t
have gotten where I am today without help,” he said firmly. “And I consider it my duty to help you now. Besides, I rather fancy being a patron of the arts. When you’re famous I can tell everyone I was the first to recognize your talent.”

And so, to Lily’s relief, Liam went to Harvard without protest the following year, and though the subjects Liam chose to study were not the ones she would have preferred, at least he was dutifully following in his “father’s” footsteps.

M
EANWHILE,
L
ILY’S OTHER SON,
John Wesley “Boy” Sheridan, was a grown man of twenty-eight. Since he had run away from Nantucket he had crisscrossed the country a dozen times, traveling in railroad boxcars and sleeping rough with other vagrants, huddled around bonfires to keep out the cold in derelict city yards, or hiding in country haystacks and barns, stealing food and money wherever he could, and spending most of that on cheap booze. His face was lined and battle-scarred from too many barroom fights, and he looked older than his years. He was a bitter, angry young man, easily pushed to violence, and there were at least two hobos who had not survived his brutal beatings or his quickness with a knife.

Every now and again he would find himself a temporary job. Sometimes it was rough work tidying up yards in pleasant suburban neighborhoods, where the ladies of the house were sympathetic to his story of how he had fallen on hard times, and so fed him and paid him a little more than they had meant to. For some reason Boy had an allure for women; there was a boldness in his eyes when he looked at them that made them blush and fuss with the necklines of their blouses.

More often he worked on farms, reaping the corn and picking apples and peaches. He found that in the country
areas the women were lonelier and the comforts they offered along with the job were easier to come by than with suspicious city women. And often, when he left them, he managed to take a trophy or two with him: a ring or a bracelet, or a stash of money from under the mattress, to ease the next phase of his endless journey.