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“Donald had it designed just for the guests. He doesn’t mind our having guests,” she continued explaining, “but he likes us to have our private areas. Do you know who Citizen Kane was?”
“No,” I said.
“It’s a movie, actually, but in it, this man Kane builds an enormous mansion, which is actually modeled on the Hearst Castle. Have you ever seen that?”
“No.”
“I keep forgetting how limited your life was,” she muttered, more like someone chastising herself or someone else living inside her. “Well, anyway, Donald always got a kick out of a line in the movie suggesting that there were guests still there, guests Kane and his wife had forgotten. Can you imagine a house so big that you’d forget your own guests were still there? It could almost happen here, I suppose. At least, some of Donald’s friends tease him about it.”
I could see myself very easily being forgotten here.
She turned us through the smaller living room, which was surely bigger than the living rooms in almost all of the other houses in America, and then to the French doors that opened onto the other patio. She was right about the lighting. The grounds were illuminated like some major league ball field. There were more beautiful gardens, pruned bushes, and an area that seemed to be under construction. I asked about it.
“Donald’s building a hedge maze,” she said. “Like the one in Hampton Court in England.” When I didn’t say anything, she added, “Oh, but you probably don’t know anything about that yet. You’ll learn about such things in history when you return to school. There,” she said, pushing me to the far left corner. “See downtown Los Angeles? Isn’t it beautiful to be able to see it from here?”
“Were you always rich?” I asked.
“Rich?” She laughed. “Oh, well, yes, I suppose I was—or my family was, I should say. My father always says Donald interrupted my education. I was just graduating from Marlborough and on my way to attend Smith when I met Donald at a charity gala in Los Angeles. I had never met anyone like him. He was basically just starting out, but he was so sure of himself. You know how people often say there are no guarantees in life? Well, Donald behaved as if he had been given a guarantee of major success.
“But it wasn’t only that. He was and is a very attractive man who believes your presentation is of paramount importance. My father believes the same thing. People usually, whether rightly or wrongly, judge you on first impressions, so it’s essential to make the best first impression always. You’ll never notice Donald looking sloppy or unkempt. He’s never off duty, so to speak, whereas I’ll let my hair down occasionally. Needless to say, my father loves Donald. In fact, he fell in love with him before I did.”
She gave a trickle of a laugh. “I don’t mean anything like gay love. He loved who Donald was and wanted to be. Can you imagine a father telling a girl just out of high school that this was the man for her? Oh, I know some people thought that was because my father believed I could never succeed at anything but being a wealthy man’s wife.” She laughed again. “Maybe that’s true. So what?”
I don’t know if she realized how much she had said so quickly or not, but she stopped talking and just stood there beside me looking out at the lights in the distance.
“What about your mother?” I asked, since she never had mentioned her.
“My mother was a rich man’s wife,” she replied, as though that answered everything. “Whatever my father said was gospel. She doted on my younger brother far more than me, anyway. He’s a lawyer working for the Justice Department in Washington, a great success. They think he might become attorney general someday. I think every other sentence out of her mouth begins with his name, Gerald. Gerald Savoir Faire, his friends call him. You know what that means in French?”
“No.”
“To know how to do … everything. Sophisticated,” she said, but she didn’t say it with pleasure and pride. “I’m just kidding,” she quickly added. “He’s terrific. His real name is Gerald Wilson. We’re supposedly descendants of President Woodrow Wilson, you know. That’s almost royalty in America.”
“What about Mr. March’s parents?”
“That’s a different story. Donald’s father was married to someone before he married Donald’s mother, and he has children with his first wife. He and Donald’s mother had only Donald, and his mother died two years ago while on holiday with Donald’s father and two of his three other children and their families.”
She sighed deeply. “Aren’t families complicated sometimes?” she asked, but she didn’t look at me. She looked out, as if she were asking someone else.
We were both quiet, and then, after a few moments, she turned sharply and said, “Don’t let Kiera’s behavior at dinner and Donald’s tolerance of her discourage you. You belong here now. I’m determined about that. Give it time. Everything takes time. Otherwise,” she continued with a smile, “babies wouldn’t need nine months.”
What was she thinking and saying? That I was going to be reborn in nine months?
“I’m so happy we had this little chat. We have to do it more and more so we get to know each other better. Soon Donald will open up more, as well, and before you know it, we’ll be like a family, a family for you. Okay? Don’t be discouraged, okay?”
I saw that she wasn’t going to stop until she got me to agree. I nodded, and she smiled.
“Good. What was it Scarlett O’Hara said? ‘Tomorrow is another day’? Well, tomorrow is another day, and every tomorrow thereafter. Would you like to watch television in the entertainment center? We have a screen as big as some small movie-theater screens. When was the last time you went to a movie?”
I thought about it and realized that it had been soon after Daddy had left us. Mama had taken me to a movie to cheer up both of us. That was years ago, because we never spent money on a movie after that, and my school friends had stopped asking me to go to movies with them.
“Years ago,” I replied.
“Years?” She got behind my wheelchair. “Years, and you live in the movie capital of the world? We’ll do something about that, although once you see a movie here, you might not care about going to a theater.”
As she wheeled me along, she described some of their theater parties. She said that her husband knew an important movie executive at one of the studios, and he brought them first-run films to watch. The elaborate parties she described and the things they had done were as foreign to me as rituals in Africa or the Far East.
When we turned into the entertainment center, she stopped my wheelchair abruptly. Kiera was there with one of the girls I had seen at the pool, but what they were watching on the screen was more surprising. A naked man and woman were embracing as they lay on a beach. Mrs. March adjusted the lights so the room was blazing.
