Deepening anger turned Bayard’s blue eyes black. “All that damned talk. We’d had a big house party-the fortieth anniversary of Calvin taking over Bayard Publishing, his pals from the left’s glory days came, even old Armand Pelletier-he stayed with us for three days, until he got into a huge shouting match with Calvin and stormed out. There was one of those daylong parties-people came to ride and have breakfast and stayed on all day until we had dinner for eighty-Renee loved showing off, not her possessions, her genius for organizing.
“All the neighbors from Coverdale Lane showed up, except Olin, of course. Old Mrs. Drummond creaked over in her diamonds. She was ninety-eight and forced everybody to drop anything they were doing if she had any kind of whim. Even Renee danced when Mrs. Drummond banged her drum. Geraldine Graham came, too, although she and Renee didn’t get along. And she didn’t get along that great with Mrs. Drummond, with her mother, come to think of it. And I heard some of the women talking in those delicious breathless voices, `Does he even suspect, do you think? After all, he looks just like his mother, so why would he?”’
His chin jutted out as if he dared me to mock him. “I do look like Renee, so if Calvin isn’t my father, I can’t tell by looking in the mirror. When I was little, I kept believing I’d grow up as tall as he was, and then I was sixteen and stuck at five foot eight. I look like Renee’s father, like his younger twin, there’s not a trace of Bayard in me!
“So while they were having the time of their lives at that party, I went through Calvin’s desk-I knew his study was the one room that people didn’t go to fuck in. Sacred ground, not like even my own bedroom where I found Armand with Peter Felitti’s wife! I was hoping there’d be one word in Calvin’s old diaries about me, one thought that he’d paid attention to my conception or my birth!”
Bayard was panting as though he’d been running hard. “When Trina was born, I made a conscious effort to write it up. It was a big moment in my life, I should think in any father’s life, his first child’s birth, seeing that perfect little creature you made happen. But not Calvin. And I never knew whether it was because he wasn’t my father, or because he was so damned wound up in his own importance that I didn’t count for crap. Everyone worshiped him-you yourself do. Well, I wanted a father, not a god who expected to be on that pedestal.”
My stomach tightened at the accusation, but I kept my voice steady. “Did your mother have affairs? It doesn’t seem in character, although I didn’t know her when she was twenty.”
“That’s what I would have thought, too,” he said savagely. “And of course it’s what she said when I put it to her.”
“So what did you tell Taverner when you met? Did you ask him who your father really was, or just about the letter from Ms. Drummond?”
He began picking at the rubber edge to one of my legal pads. “It-I decided to explore other viewpoints than Calvin and Renee’s and served as an intern in Senator Tower’s office. That was when I really met Olin, got to know him. He was astonished, of course, to see a Bayard in that office, but he and Tower were good friends. Olin was a different kind of person than Calvin, not as easygoing, not expecting people to fall down and worship him. I liked him, and we got to be friends.”
“And there was the added benefit that knowing him made your parents see red-so to speak.”
“As if that isn’t what they always saw.” He ripped a length of rubber from the pad. Now the pages would all fall off, but that was a small price for the information I was getting.
“So you came to tell him about the letter from Ms. Drummond. Did he know about it?”
“He said he was surprised old Mrs. Drummond cared, that her views on Negroes were as antiquated as she was-she hung on until 1984, you know, running Larchmont like it had been when she moved into it, except she installed electricity, talking about the coloreds knowing their place and hiring four Japanese gardeners to keep the pond and gardens in order. Mrs. Drummond was Olin’s aunt, but even though he made fun of her she intimidated him, too.”
“What did her views on blacks have to do with your father?” I tried staying on the main point, but I had trouble figuring out what it was. “Calvin had been stealing from Augustus Llewellyn, apparently. Olin never spelled it out, he said he wasn’t there to stir up old wounds, but as I’d seen his aunt’s letter, I should know that Calvin had been-“
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I interjected. “Your father lent Llewellyn the money to start T-Square.”
He stared at me. “Did Renee tell you that?”
“Yes. And they confirmed it over at Llewellyn enterprises.”
“Calvin did something with Llewellyn’s finances,” Bayard insisted. “Olin told me, and he wasn’t a liar.”
“So what else did he tell you?” I demanded. “Why did he hint around about your father’s financial deals but never spell them out?”
“Because he’d made a promise, and he kept his word.”
“Be your age, Bayard. Have you ever even read any of the transcripts of the hearings Taverner masterminded? He reveled in unveiling people’s secrets. He kept quiet because-“