Julia Read online

  *

  Carolyn pulled into Bancroft Parking, took her portfolio out of the back seat, then saw Andrea Frohman getting out of her car.

  “Andrea, hi.”

  Andrea, dressed in her signature bib overalls to hide her weight, with her scraggly long black hair half-hiding her eyes, pulled her portfolio out of her car and turned to Carolyn with a smile. She held the portfolio high. “All ready to go. It’s an exciting day, isn’t it? I can’t believe we’re here today. You’re seeing Marc Silver, right? Today?”

  Carolyn looked at Andrea with a dismissive frown. “You’re not going like that, are you?”

  Andrea looked down at herself, at her grandma shoes, but kept on smiling anyway. “Hey, it’s not a cheerleader audition. It’s what’s in the portfolio that counts.”

  Carolyn smiled back at her. “Well, every man for himself.”

  Andrea rolled her eyes. “I guess. But I feel lucky. Why don’t we splurge and have lunch at Chez Panisse afterwards?”

  “Okay, how about an hour?”

  “You got it.”

  They walked together in the bright morning sun to the Art-Deco building of the Art Institute. Andrea waved goodbye and disappeared inside as the campanile chimed three-quarters of an hour.

  The lobby of the Art Institute had been remodeled into sparse, cold, and modern. A large vertical abstract bas-relief combining rays of black, white and grays dominated the wall facing the chrome and black visitor chair. The outside of the building had a very old feel to it, but the entrance door with “Marc Silver” in bold lettering beckoned with new mahogany and brass. Carolyn sat in the chair and put her portfolio beside her. She checked her watch, reassured that she arrived with time to spare.

  The office door opened and a tall, thin blond man with angular features appeared. He smiled, showing perfect white teeth. He held out his hand and said in a formal, crisp voice, “How do you do. I’m Marc Silver. Please come in.” He held the door open for Carolyn.

  His office functioned as an art gallery. Modern, renaissance, Greek. Eclectic, she noted.

  He held out his hand as he said, “May I look at your portfolio?”

  Carolyn handed it to him.

  He put it on a large black table, and opened it up. “Let’s look at it together, shall we?”

  Carolyn nodded.

  Marc spread the work out on the table. He picked up each one, moving it to observe the effects of lighting, now oblivious of Carolyn’s presence. He put the final piece of art back on the table and closed the portfolio. Then he turned and handed it to her, and looked her in the eyes. “You have four very different paintings. Some are chromatically intense, others look washed out. You are experimenting with your style. That is very clear. I’m afraid it won’t work for us.”

  Carolyn’s heart sank and her head spun. “I’m sorry?”

  “We don’t teach technique here. We guide artists who are self-aware. You are not. You wouldn’t fit.” He nudged her toward the door.

  She stopped. “I have a letter from Robert Henry. He recommended me.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know Robert. I read his letter. In my view, it wasn’t strong enough.”

  Carolyn couldn’t accept what he said. She had to say something in her defense. “I won awards at Mills.”

  Marc raised his voice. “This is not Mills, Miss Stuart. You should consider art history perhaps, or commercial art. Now if you will excuse me, I have other appointments.” He opened the door wide for her and stood in rigid sentinel for her exit. Somehow, Carolyn moved through the door and heard it shut behind her. And the world shut with it.

  She sat on the steps in front of the building, her portfolio falling down to the cobblestones below, lying there for anyone to walk on. She shivered in the cold shadow, and the shivering was just punishment. She looked left and right for a pay phone to call Andrea and cancel lunch and commiserate with her, but saw nothing. Instead, she picked up the portfolio and drove down Shattuck to the restaurant. She found Andrea in the upstairs café nearly hidden by a giant dark green fern.

  Andrea smiled broadly when Carolyn arrived at the table, already set with water and a half-bottle of white wine. “Carolyn, can you believe it? Kroeber Hall! The Art Institute! We’ve got it made in the shade.” She stood and opened her arms.

  Carolyn pushed her back. “What? You got in? And I didn’t? Shit. I don’t believe this. Dressed like that?” She folded her arms across her chest.

  Andrea appeared very close to tears. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it.”

  “Yeah, well neither can I.” Carolyn swept her hand across the table and sent water and wine flying, glass breaking on the tile. “I wonder what you had to do. You can go to hell!”

  She turned and went out and back to Bancroft parking. Sitting in the car, she banged hard on the steering wheel. Andrea, she thought, goddamn Andrea? And not me? She hit the sides of her head with her fists and grunted all the air out of her lungs.

  Carolyn headed back to the apartment. Right now, she needed Damian’s arms.

  Carolyn opened the door to the apartment and looked for Damian’s sympathetic eyes on the sofa or the kitchen table. Not there. Damn him!

  A strong musky odor permeated the air. He still slept, the bastard, and hadn’t opened any windows. She bit her lip as she shook her head.

  She walked down the hallway to the bedroom. The door was closed, but Damian was making a muffled noise inside.

  She pushed the door open and looked over to the bed. A pain spiked down her chest. A naked red-haired woman moved up and down on Damian. They did not notice Carolyn, but went on grunting and thrashing. Carolyn tensed her whole body and screamed. The woman fell off and Damian grabbed a sheet to cover himself. His dark eyes glared angry and defiant as he came up on one elbow, breathing hard.

  Carolyn backed out of the room, slammed the door shut and kicked it. As she turned to leave, the portrait of her mother looked down on her from the wall. Before, it was the radiant red dress, the glamorous pearls. Now it was the stern, analytical eyes accusing her.

  She went to her car sat in the driver’s seat, turned sideways, her feet on the ground. Her head was light, her stomach ready to vomit. She waited. The feeling passed and she moved inside the car. She looked out the car at the San Francisco skyline in the distance.

  Her mother. Despite all the tension-filled history between them, Carolyn had a mother. Elizabeth.

  Carolyn stood inside the elevator on the 47th floor of the Bank of America building in San Francisco. The tears she had been holding back welled up in the warm air, but she brushed them away. She entered the hushed offices of Elizabeth Stuart Financial, LLP. On the right, glass windows looking in on rows of young men and women in professional business suits, typing away before banks of computer screens, with older men prowling among them. On the left, a giant door, made from a single board of European walnut, as she knew, with a gleaming brass handle. Only the best for her mother. Except not today, Carolyn realized.

  A handsome young man with curly blond hair appeared in front of her. “May I help you?”

  Carolyn smiled, in an attempt to be polite and keep her emotions to herself. “No thank you. Actually, I’m here to see my mother.” Without waiting for the man, she turned left and headed for the door. She opened, and then closed it without looking behind her.

  In front of her, Marian Brooks, at her gilt-edged Louis XIV desk, smiled at her, leaned forward, and held out her hand. “Carolyn, how nice to see you. It’s been a while since you’ve been here.” Still smiling.

  Carolyn nodded. “Yes, that’s true. But I’m here to see my mother.”

  Marian frowned and spoke in a warm voice. “Oh, I’m sorry. Your timing isn’t good. She’s in a meeting. Does she know you’re here?”

  Carolyn responded with her best imitation of a warm voice. “She’s always in a meeting, isn’t she? That’s all right. I’ll just go see her.” She walked to the end of Marian’s desk and turned toward the doo
r.

  Marian stood and blocked her way, her lips a thin line. “I beg your pardon, Miss, but she is in a very important meeting.”

  Carolyn’s eyes widened and her voice rose, just enough. “She is going to be in a meeting with me. Please get out of my way.”

  Marian sighed and returned to her desk.

  Carolyn opened the door. Elizabeth Stuart sat at the end of a long green marble conference table, Alcatraz shone white in the distance behind her, her auburn hair tied back severely, accentuating her strong jaw line, large brown eyes, red lips, and the diamond pendant earrings. Everyone in the room stopped talking and looked at Carolyn. She looked at her mother.

  Elizabeth stood up. “Excuse me, please.” She smiled as she looked at the four gentlemen at the table. She was wearing a Valentino black stretch wool dress. She moved forward to Carolyn, taking her by the arm and leading her out of the room. Before closing the door, she turned back in and said “Gentlemen, she’s my daughter. This won’t take very long.” The men all nodded and smiled politely, then turned to each other in conversation.

  Elizabeth led Carolyn two doors to the right and pushed her into a plush office with a view of the Bay Bridge. Two steps in she stopped and turned to face her daughter, arms folded across her chest. “What is this all about, Carolyn? This is a very important meeting with Goldman Sachs.”

  Carolyn hesitated, confused about where to begin. “Mother, I-”

  “Yes? Tell me. I don’t have time for a chat.”

  Carolyn looked at her mother’s eyes, the same as her own, hoping for recognition. “I wasn’t accepted at the Art Institute.” She desperately wanted Elizabeth to hold her so that she could let the tears flow.

  Elizabeth threw her arms up in the air. “You came here to tell me this?” She walked to the window, and then turned around. “I don’t have time for a career discussion, Carolyn. You should have come to work here. You could be talking to Goldman Sachs.”

  “I need a key to the house, Mother.”

  “Where is your key? Oh-” Elizabeth looked at her diamond Rolex. “This won’t do.” She picked up her purse off a chair and took out a keychain, taking a key off it. “Here.” Then she put it back, shaking her head. “I don’t need a distraction right now. And you don’t need a key. Alice will still be there. Just go.”

  “Mother, please, I-”

  Elizabeth opened the door. “Carolyn!” Her eyes blazed with frustration. She went out and shut the door.

  Carolyn stood, silent, stiff, cold, her head down, shoulders stooped, heart empty, amid the splendor of crystal chandelier, designer carpet, burled French wood, Renoir, and leather chair. “Goldman Sachs. God, Mother!”

  Carolyn parked her car half an hour later on Camino del Mar, walked to the side gate of her home and followed the brick path to the back yard. In the distance, through the span of the Golden Gate Bridge, were the dark Berkeley hills, far away. Distant from this morning. The memory of her morning when he awoke took hold of her, when she looked out the window, wishing she could see the lights of this house.

  The low brick wall at the end of the yard overlooked the restless sea below, waves incessantly crashing against the rocks. Carolyn leaned over, looked down and became dizzy, mesmerized by the whitecaps moving in and out. The swaying water pulled her down. Holding her stomach, she turned away from the view, closed her eyes for several seconds, and looked at the home she grew up in. On the third story on the right was the window of her room.

  She had been so anxious to leave that room, the departure that symbolized her adulthood. Now she needed to be in it, to feel a child again, to know she could start all over. Without rejection, without betrayal. She could leave behind the rejection by Marc, and the betrayal by Damian.

  But not her mother’s stinging criticism, which had come just when she needed understanding. She didn’t know if she could leave that behind. Goldman Sachs. As if that were the be-all and end-all of life.

  Carolyn walked the 20 yards of grass back to the house. The door stood open to the rec room. She went in and climbed the stairs to the first floor. From the kitchen came the sound of pots and pans. Alice. Carolyn went into the kitchen, and when she saw Alice, the perfect grandmother substitute, who had practically raised her, standing there, a chocolate cake on the counter ready for frosting, she burst into tears. Alice had always been there for Carolyn. She took the place of both grandmothers and grandfathers. And Carolyn's father as well.

  “What's the matter?” Alice, in a staid blue dress, with an apron her sympathetic eyes widening, opened her arms and pulled Carolyn in and held her for a long time, patting her on the back.

  Carolyn pulled back from Alice, held her hands for a moment, and then sat down at the kitchen table. She ran her hands through her hair. She pointed at the chocolate cake and said, “Can I have a piece?”

  Alice smiled and her eyes lit up, just from being asked for a piece of cake. It meant she was appreciated. “Of course you can, Darling. Just let me cut a piece and put some frosting on it for you.”

  Carolyn slouched down in the chair and watched Alice moved deftly around the kitchen, getting a plate, cutting the cake, putting frosting on the piece. She felt at home. She had not realized until now that she had missed home, missed being home. Missed the comfort of Alice.

  She put a bite of the cake in her mouth, and held it there, savoring the creamy chocolate density of the cake and frosting. She sighed and relaxed, and quietly ate the rest of the piece of cake, looking down, following every bite on the fork from the plates to her mouth.

  Alice stood with her hand on Carolyn’s shoulder. “There, now. Why don’t you go up and take a nice long bath. That’s what you need. You need to relax.” Alice was like a talisman to Carolyn, irresistible.

  Carolyn looked up at Alice, licked her lips and smiled. Then she stood and gave Alice a hug, and went upstairs to her room.

  Carolyn was stunned by the art on the walls of her bedroom. Exactly what Marc Silver had pointed out. Something of everything. Every style, every hue, every nuance of brush stroke, medium, line and atmosphere. Nothing that told you who Carolyn Stuart wanted to be. An excess of eclectic, whether of her own or of great painters. She had plastered every inch of space on the white walls with art. It wasn't inspiration, it was dizzying distraction.

  She got to work and took it all down. She lifted the framed paintings off first, and yanked the nails out of the wall. Then she took the taped pieces of art paper, pulled them off, and threw them on the floor. Finally, she gathered them all up and hid them behind the sofa. As a final act she went down to the garage, found the Spackle and a spatula, and went back to her room and cleaned up every hole in the wall. She stood back and looked at it and realized this was the state of her life. She saw more than a empty single canvas a whole empty wall. She had nothing before her. Nothing to look forward to.

  She took her clothes off, deliberately letting them fall to the floor in a heap. Then she turned the water on in the bathtub, sat down in the middle, her legs outstretched, and waited for the warm water to come up to her neck. She rested there, surrounded by silence, covered by oblivion. By the nothingness of her existence. And she fell into a dreamless sleep.

  When she woke up, the water had cooled, and the orange glow of sunset filtered in through the window. Carolyn got out of the tub, dried herself, and went out into her bedroom. She picked up the clothes and put them into the hamper. On the table she noticed a sandwich and diet soda. She smiled to herself. What a wonderful thing for Alice to do.

  Carolyn put on Ralph Lauren: dark blue wool pants and multicolored wool knit cardigan. To show her mother she was not going to give in. She splashed water on her face, straightened her hair out, put on light lipstick, and then went downstairs. She had no idea what to say to her mother. But one thing for sure, it didn’t involve going to work anywhere near Goldman Sachs. And absolutely not for Elizabeth Stuart Financial, sitting in front of a screen while millions of meaningless numbers marched by.
r />   Carolyn stepped into the living room. She expected to see her mother there, but she obviously had not come home yet. Logs burned in the fireplace. She stood before the fireplace and felt the warmth. She went into the kitchen, where Alice looked up from the vegetable-strewn counter, smiled, and insisted on another long hug.

  “Are you feeling better now, dear?”

  Carolyn nodded. “Rested, and clean, Alice.” She looked out the kitchen window to the long lawn. “Do you know where Mother is?”

  “Your mother, she just came in. I’m sure she’s in her room, changing. She knows you’re here. Why don’t you just go wait in the living room?”

  Carolyn took a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator, went to the living room and sat down on the sofa, then picked up the Cartier coffee-table book and flipped through it. She looked up to see Elizabeth standing in the hallway at the entrance to the room.

  Elizabeth was dressed in her white terry cloth bathrobe, her hair dry but messy hanging down. No makeup, no jewelry, and bare feet. She smiled at her daughter. She was holding two short Waterford cocktail glasses with amber liquid in them. “Carolyn, will you have a cocktail with me? It’s dry Oloroso and a drip of Johnny Walker Blue. Not very strong, really. We could have a drink together, you and me. I would really like that.” She saw the can of pop on the coffee table and smiled again. “Something more grown-up, maybe?”

  Maybe Elizabeth thought that was clever, but Carolyn did not take it that way. It was not the way to start a grown-up kind of conversation, if that’s what her mother really wanted. Not today. She had enough happen to her today. Her voice became hard. “Mother, if you don’t think I’m grown up, you shouldn’t be offering me liquor.”

  Elizabeth looked disappointed, hurt even. “No, Carolyn, I didn't-” She sat down next to Carolyn on the sofa. “I'm sorry, maybe I did talk that way, but I didn't mean to. I just wanted us to have the same drink, and it came out the wrong way.” She leaned back and rested her head and let the drinks rest on her thighs. “I wanted you and I to be two women having a cocktail before dinner.” She held a glass out to Carolyn. “I know you had a very bad day. Please share it with me.”

  Carolyn took the glass without looking at her mother. Elizabeth held her glass out toward Carolyn and waited.

  Carolyn looked down at the floor, and then raised the glass to her lips and let the liquid just barely touch them. Then she looked over at her mother, who was taking a drink from the glass, but looking over the top at Carolyn. “I appreciate that you're making an effort, Mother. It would have been helpful to me if you would have made an effort this morning.”

  Elizabeth stood up and looked down at Carolyn. “You can't get it through your head, can you, that the world does not revolve around you.”

  Carolyn put her drink down on the coffee table. She pulled her legs back underneath her and folded her arms across her chest. She looked down at the floor as she spoke. “No, Mother, I don't think the world revolves around me.” She reached out and took her drink, raised it to her lips and quickly emptied the glass. “Sorry, I think one of your two women needs another drink.” She went to the bar cart and filled the glass half-full with the sherry and then poured another inch of scotch into it. Sitting down, she held the glass in her hand and looked into her mother's eyes, waiting.

  Elizabeth sat down and shook her head before answering her daughter, her eyes trying to penetrate Carolyn's mind. “Getting drunk will not solve any of your problems. And this stuff will just make you sick at the rate you're pouring it down. Suppose we slow down on the drinking and then talk.”

  Carolyn tried to determine the attitude in her mother's voice. Criticize her behavior and at the same time try to sound empathetic. But Carolyn could not bring the two into agreement. She heard only criticism. Feelings had never been important for her mother. For Elizabeth only success mattered. As Carolyn witnessed this morning. So now, it was obvious, that her mother tried a pop psychology trick to get her to calm down. Carolyn drank the whole glass of liquor in response. But then her stomach became queasy and the room started to spin around her. She rolled off the sofa on to the floor, got up and walked to the bathroom, holding on to the sofa, the table, the chair, the wall, and finally the bathroom door. Then she threw up in the toilet.

  Carolyn sat down on the bathroom floor, hoping to hear her mother’s voice above her, comforting, worried. She heard nothing. She pushed herself up and washed her face and cleaned her mouth, then went back to the living room. Elizabeth was sitting on the sofa, drink in hand, looking at the floor. Her mouth was a straight line. One leg was over another, the foot moving slowly up and down.

  Carolyn stood in front of her mother, exhausted and beaten down. Sick to her stomach and sick of heart. Her mother could not accept her unless she changed. Elizabeth needed to make something different out of her daughter. And Carolyn could not be controlled like that.

  A small black-and-white photograph in a silver frame stood on the mantelpiece. A picture of Elizabeth as a very young child in Central Park holding the hands of her mother and father. She took the picture down from the mantelpiece and held it in front of her mother. Elizabeth looked at the picture, then looked up at Carolyn, with eyes that showed how much the picture meant to her. For just one second she looked helpless as if Carolyn controlled in her hand everything that was dear and precious to her.

  “You know, Mother, this is your whole problem isn't it?” Carolyn took a step back as if she were making sure that Elizabeth could not reach out and take the photograph back from her. “There is no picture of my dad in this house, is there?” She held the picture out in front of her so that Elizabeth could see it. “You have no mother, your father disowned you, and my father ran away from you. So you take it all out on me. You want me to be rigid, and controlling, and hateful, just like you!” Carolyn threw the picture at the fireplace. It hit the brick and fell to the floor, the glass broken in jagged triangles.

  Elizabeth stood, her eyes blazing, her lips quavering, her hands shaking as she pointed at Carolyn. “You-you-you are the reason I have no husband!”

  Carolyn stood in disbelief, staring at her mother. She turned and saw the long lawn, the brick wall, and the sea beyond that. She ran to the hallway and out the back, slamming the door against the wall. When she reached the wall, she climbed and stood in the wet breeze. The wind whipping her hair in her face, she put both arms out and looked down to the waves crashing into the rocks. And waited, confident that her mother would see her and come.

  Strong arms circled her leg. “Carolyn! Please, I beg you.”

  Carolyn opened her eyes and looked down. Elizabeth held her tight, then lifted her hand up, her eyes full of tears. Carolyn took her mother’s hand and stepped down from the wall. They walked close together back to the house. Inside, Elizabeth led Carolyn back to the sofa in front of the fireplace. They sat, quiet, in each other’s arms. Then Elizabeth, shaking, held Carolyn and looked at her.

  “Carolyn, I love you. Do you understand me? I want to help you, not work against you. I have an idea. Will you listen to me?”

  Carolyn nodded, watching her mother's eyes, moving from one to the other to try and perceive her mother's feelings. Listen to her mother, that's what she is supposed to do, when the real problem is that her mother doesn't listen. Her mother held her tight against the pull that Carolyn still felt from beyond the walls, from the brick wall and the sea, the rocks below it. She sighed, slumped down in the sofa, and said, “Yes, I will.”

  Elizabeth tightened her grip on Carolyn's hands, then put her hand on her daughter's shoulder and shook it with a gentle movement. She waited, and Carolyn opened her eyes.

  “What I want-”

  Carolyn sat up. “I will listen to you, Mother.” Her voice was begging. “If you will listen to me.”

  Elizabeth let Carolyn's hands go. “I just want you to listen to my idea. I have no control over you. I don't think I ever had. At least, not for a very long time. I paid for you to study art at Mills Colleg
e. I paid for you to go to Paris in the summer to study Picasso, Florence in the summer to study Michelangelo, and then Louvain in the summer for medieval jewelry. Don't say I have failed to listen to you.” Carolyn started to speak, but Elizabeth held up her hand. “Hear me out, will you?”

  Carolyn fell back into the sofa again, nodding to herself. “Tell me what your idea is.”

  Elizabeth came close to smiling, but she knew it wasn't appropriate under the circumstances. “What if you went to New York?”

  Carolyn sat up, her eyes widened. “What exactly do you mean?” She wanted to be interested, but she wanted the conditions to be right. She hadn't yet learned to trust her mother. “You're going to put conditions on it.”

  “Let me finish. We can worry about conditions later on. But let me tell you upfront I am worried about one thing. It's Damian.”

  Carolyn rolled her eyes.

  Elizabeth threw her hands up. “There you go.”

  “Mother, you don't have to worry about Damian. I'm through with him.”

  Elizabeth looked long and hard at her daughter, testing what she saw in the eyes, and sighed. “Well thank God for that.”

  There was a moment of silence and Carolyn knew that her mother expected her to explain why she didn't have to worry about him, but she couldn’t tell her about another failure.

  “All right, here's what I propose. You know your aunt Beatrice lives in New York.”

  “Aunt Beatrice? I have never even met her.”

  “I know that, Carolyn. But she is my father's sister, and she lives in my father's house on the Upper East Side.”

  Carolyn suddenly found herself very interested in New York. She didn't let herself believe that her mother's interest coincided with her own. That would be too much to expect. Her memories of her mother’s support for her interest in art weren't very positive. “You have a house in New York?”

  “No, I don’t. Beatrice does. My father left it to her.”

  “Why did he leave it to her?”

  “I don’t know, Carolyn. When he cut me off, he cut me off. His sister was married and living in Canada at the time.”

  “Maybe you were in his will. Well, of course-” Carolyn knew the answer before she finished the sentence. She had known it for a long time.

  “No. My lawyer saw his will, and there was nothing in it for me.”

  “You didn’t see the will yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you contest it?”

  “My father already told me personally, to my face, a long time ago, that he was only leaving me the trust fund. Fortunately, he left me something more valuable.”

  “What was that?”

  “His list of friends and contacts. That’s what I used to start my own business.”

  “Mother?”

  “Yes?”

  “How well do you know Aunt Beatrice?”

  “Not very well, I admit.”

  “Don’t you see her when you go to New York?”

  “Carolyn, I tell you, outside of business the only place I go to in New York is the New York City Marble Cemetery where my mother is buried. I leave flowers there every time I’m in the city. And that brings up my idea.”

  Carolyn waited without moving.

  “I propose that you go to New York and stay with Aunt Beatrice.”

  Carolyn’s eyes lit up. “And-?”

  “You stay there while you-now please don’t get upset with me. Hear me out. I think you should explore the schools there.”

  “School. What kind of school?”

  “Okay, I want you to consider business school. Columbia, or NYU, or even Wharton.”

  Carolyn’s eyes widened. She felt trapped. New York. But not my New York. My mother’s New York.

  “I can see your reaction,” Elizabeth said. “But please hear me out-”

  But Carolyn did not wait. “Mother, I’m not prepared for business school. They won’t even let me in.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, my Dear, I’ll make sure they let you in if I have to buy the whole damn campus.”

  Carolyn resisted. Her mother always bought what she wanted. “I’m not going to do it, Mother. You can’t force me. I’ll just go live with Andrea until I get a job.” But she didn’t tell her mother that she had burned her bridges with Andrea. She’d figure that out later.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Carolyn, don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re going to get a job. Doing what? For how much money?”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Mother? I’m not going to business school. I’m not you. I’m not a math person like you.”

  “Look, things will work out. They have an international program. You go to London, to Paris, not just New York. You concentrate in art philanthropy, or in art collection finance. Whatever you want.”

  “Oh, great, just like Marc said. Work for a museum.”

  “Good god, Carolyn. You do the collecting. You make your home a museum. You work with the New York art galleries. That’s what I’m offering you. And nothing’s stopping you from taking art courses on the side. I’m offering you the world. Don’t you see that?”

  Carolyn was confused. She didn’t want to do what her mother proposed. A flurry of ideas flew around her head. She did want to go to New York. But she knew in her heart she wasn’t an MBA student. It would be marvelous to work with art galleries in SOHO and Chelsea. And London and Paris. The real question was whether she could accept her mother’s help and not go to business school. “So I would have to stay with Aunt Beatrice, is that it? So she could watch over me?”

  Elizabeth put her lips together and thought for a moment, then said, “Beatrice has no children. She would very much enjoy having you stay there. She’s not going to control you, Carolyn. You will be too busy.”

  “How do you know all this? Have you already talked to her about it?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  Carolyn’s voice rose. “When? This afternoon?” She couldn’t believe she was hearing this.

  “No. Not at all. Earlier in the summer.”

  “Mother, you mean to tell me you worked this whole scenario out with your sister-in-law and you didn’t say a word to me?”

  “I think you should calm down. I didn’t work out anything. We talked, and she mentioned that she lived in a very large house on the Upper East Side, and she would like for me to stay there when I go to New York, and she mentioned you as well. It was her initiative, not mine.”

  “Are you going to stay there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have any plans to go to New York at the moment, so I haven’t given it any thought.”

  It’s true, Carolyn thought, this Aunt Beatrice can’t really control me. I can do as I want. “All right, Mother. I agree. I will go to New York. But I can’t promise you that I’m going to become a banker.”

  Elizabeth smiled for the first time. “All I ask, Carolyn, is that you try.”

  Carolyn fastened her seat belt and watched out the window as the American Airlines DC-10 accelerated on the SFO runway and lifted into the air and banked over Golden Gate Bridge on its way to Idyllwild Airport. She looked down on the bridge she might never have to cross again. As the plane climbed into the sky, she felt free. The whole Berkeley episode disappeared. New York lay ahead of her beyond the clouds.