Hers the Kingdom (87 page)

     "But I like writing long letters," I rejoined, weakly.

     "Well I don't," she answered, "so if you don't feel like talking, just listen. It will save me a good deal of time."

     She did as she said, and telephoned me the very day Sally returned to Washington.

     "We have had the most sparkling good time," she bubbled over the long-distance wires. "I do believe Sally is good for Porter right now. She draws him out, though she is a good deal better informed on most issues. And Porter—Praise the Lord!—Porter understands. I believe he is finally past that phase when he felt he was expert on all subjects. Sally has been able to help him sort out what he wants for the future."

     "And what is that?" I asked, standing on a wooden box so that I could speak into the transmitter.

     "Well, yesterday the three of us were pedaling bicycles around Golden Gate Park. Sally is a physical culture devotee, and she will not hear of sitting and talking for more than half an hour at a stretch. You simply must be up and about with her . . ."

     "You were telling me about Porter and the future," I reminded her.

     "I'm getting to it," she said testily. "Anyway, we sat down to rest at the lake and before she got Porter out on the paddle boats where they scooted around like great water spiders, they continued a conversation about the labor situation on the docks in San Francisco. I think they've been talking about it between them . . ."

     "I know, Porter's written me," I managed to say before Sara plunged on.

     "Porter's plan is to go to work as a stevedore after graduation. That will give him the income he needs—and insists on providing for himself—at the same time it will allow him to study the problems of unionism firsthand, from the working man's point of view.

     "He and Sally got to talking about how often it is necessary to sacrifice the work a person wants to do just to make a living wage, and how many people take menial jobs to support their private passions, be it writing or labor organizing or struggling to help women get legal rights.

     "Sally said to me, 'It helps to have a benefactor,' I imagine to recognize the financial help I've given her. I decided right then that it was time I talked to Porter about my plan to make him and Kit
my heirs, and maybe suggest that I set up a trust fund for him now, so that he would have a regular income."

     "And did you?" I asked.

     "I did," she answered, "and I can tell you I had no idea he would be so adamant. He jammed his hands in his pockets and began to pace. I told him he was driving me mad and to please sit down. Then he began to laugh. 'It's pretty damned funny, isn't it?' he said, 'I sit around complaining about having to earn a living and you offer me a way out. Just like that. I'm not even twenty-one yet, and twice in my life I've been offered a small fortune. Here's the money, sonny . . . now let's see what you do.'

     "That's what he said, Lena," she told me, her voice rising.

     "What did you say to him then?" I countered.

     "I said, 'I'm not trying to call your bluff, Porter—nothing like that.' I told him I have been planning to make him my heir for a very long time—before he was born, if he only knew. I said that I thought he should look at it from my point of view. That is my way of taking part in something I believe in—what he wants to do. I explained how, by helping Sally, I felt that I had a hand in the reforms she was bringing about."

     I knew what Porter would have said to that, but I asked anyway.

     "He said that in one sense I was perfectly correct, that I handle my fortune more responsibly than most rich people, that it is a good thing for me to help Sally. But as for him—he said that it was an advantage he could not allow himself. He said it was better if he didn't have an inheritance, that if he planned to work on the docks and the men were to accept him, he should be as broke as they were. Otherwise, he said, he would be playing a part."

     "He's right, Sara," I told her, raising my voice over some noises on the line.

     "I know he's right," she called back. "It's just that I want him to be secure. I want to know that he is secure. I, I, I. Listen to me! But I couldn't budge him."

     "I guess," I said haltingly, not certain she could hear me now, "I guess this is when we let go."

     There was a long pause, and for a moment I thought she had not heard, that my words had not carried the long distance. But then she said, "I'm terribly proud of him, Lena."

     And I called back, as loud as I could over the crackling noises, trying to keep the tears from welling into my voice: "So am I, Sara. So am I."

The years that followed Kit's marriage to Connor took on routine. I divided my time between San Francisco and the Malibu. When I was north, I was happy. When I was on the Malibu, I was not. My life was divided, but I had lived long enough to know to take satisfaction from the San Francisco days and to endure life on the ranch.

     In San Francisco, I watched Kit and Porter move steadily, gaining power along the way, into maturity. On the ranch, Soong's letters helped sustain me, along with the gardening I had discovered could be a source of both comfort and joy. My flower gardens blazed with pansies and cyclamen, with Asian poppies and birds of paradise. Everything seemed to grow on the ranch, and my passion for gardening grew with it.

     The one point of dread in my days at the ranch was the dinners we shared—Willa, Thad, and I—in the small dining room. Thad was silent, his eyes lowered to his plate, while Willa and I attempted a conversation that did not exclude him. I would have preferred to take my evening meal alone, but I could not bring myself to suggest it. Willa was clinging to the hope that something would happen. She was as tenacious about Thad as she had been about everything else in her life; she could not let go.

A few months after Porter had graduated and was working on the docks as a "casual"—a stevedore not among the selected few who consistently were chosen to work—I went north for a visit. Porter was chosen to work only two or three days of each week, so he had time enough to visit with me.

     Kit was working at the Mission House. She was also taking a class in accounting, and the remainder of the time she was looking over Connor's shoulder, learning all she could learn about his business.

     "How do you put up with it," Philip teased Connor one night when we were all having dinner together, "having your wife know your business, I mean?"

     Connor understood it was a joke, but he chose to answer as if it were not.

     "She's quick, I have to give her that," he said, grinning at his wife. "I have to say, it seems to me that women are well suited to business," he went on in a serious tone, "Katharine grasps the central issue faster than most of the men I've worked with." Then, grinning again, "She's tough and she's hard. She drives a hell of a bargain." At that, Kit made as if to hit him, doubling her fist in mock battle, when he said, serious again, "The best thing is having someone you trust completely to talk over a question. But I suppose everybody needs that." Kit's fist opened, and she touched Connor lightly on the face.

     "Hear! Hear!" Philip said, raising his glass, and we all echoed him.

     Connor, grinning, raised his glass in answer and said, "I remember—it was the first thing you told me about her."

     "What, Philip?" Kit asked. "What did you tell him?"

     "That you were a slow sort of a girl, but pretty," Philip quipped.

Sara was experiencing one of her most productive periods, often enough both Porter and I joined her in the studio as she worked and fussed at her to tell us exactly what she was trying to achieve.

     I watched the portrait of Kit take shape; watched, entranced, as Sara captured Kit on canvas with much the same success as she had had with Rose. The wit was there, the intelligence, as well as the fragility. Sara painted the woman Kit was becoming, and it took our breath away.

     Connor had been excluded from the sittings on Kit's orders. The portrait was to be a surprise. We were, each of us, exhilarated by the portrait and it was all we could do not to hurry Sara.

     "It's hard work, posing," Kit said to us during one pause. She padded around the studio in the Fortuny gown, her feet bare, fixing tea and biscuits.

     "Don't say that to Lena or she'll never agree to sit for me," Sara told her.

     It was a sore point. I did not want Sara to paint my portrait, I'm not sure why. Perhaps I worried that she would reveal too much. Perhaps I feared I would not like the truth.

     "I'm not vain," I said involuntarily. Both of them looked at me in surprise.

     "Are you arguing with yourself again?" Sara chided.

     I was embarrassed and made matters worse by snapping at her.

     Silence.

     "Why don't you move north?" Sara finally said. "You know you would rather live here just now." Her tone was worried.

     "There's too much to do on the ranch," I said, annoyed. "We've talked about all this before."

     Kit walked to the window and pretended to look down on the street. She would not encourage me to move, and I knew why. She was worried about her mother, alone now with Thad. Kit could do little about it, except for an occasional brief visit. It had been taken for granted that Connor would not go to the ranch—and Kit was loath to leave him for more than a few days at a time.

     Defeated, Sara said, "Willa could at least pay us a visit now and then."

     "She won't leave Thad."

     "She won't leave the ranch," Sara corrected me.

     "It's the same, isn't it?" Kit said, ending the argument.

     I decided to stay until the portrait was finished, since I could not resist seeing Connor's face when he looked at it—Kit, standing, a hand reaching to touch a chair; the figure of Rose in the background as a portrait on the wall.

     It was finished on a Wednesday. Sara agreed that we could hang it on Friday if we took great care, as the oil was still quite wet. It took us the better part of a sultry day to get it to Wildwood and find the proper place—over the marble fireplace in the green drawing room—and then to hang it.

     Kit had stayed behind to bring Connor out. We were waiting for them, our task complete, under the Camperdown elm in the garden.

     We heard the sound of the car on the gravel lane.

     "They're early," Porter remarked as we hurried toward the house. We stepped through the french doors at the very moment that Connor and Kit walked into the green room.

     He stood, staring at the portrait. For a moment, he seemed stunned. Then he turned to Kit and took her face in his hands.

     We turned away, embarrassed at witnessing something so intimate. But then Connor's arms were about us all. He did not appear to be weeping, yet his face was wet.

     "If I had known you would go to pieces, I wouldn't have done it," Sara grumped.

     "Yes you would have," Connor told her, "you have powers that do not belong to this world, Sara Hunt . . . and I'm blessed to have you touch my life."

     "It's paint on canvas, that's all," she answered, but she held Connor's hand tightly for a moment before she said, "I hope you plan to feed us well after this."