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. Anenormous 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.
CHAPTER 8