And Gene stood for Calvin, the Boy Wonder. And Rhona … and Ken. MacKenzie Graham. He’d been impotent, so Geraldine turned elsewhere for love? Was that what she meant, when she said she and MacKenzie had so little in common?
I drew circles on my notepaper. Edwards Bayard had overheard talk as an adolescent about someone who looked just like his mother, and so didn’t seem to realize who his father was. Adolescent self-absorption, a fantasy yearning for the perfect father, made Edwards assume the neighbors were gossiping about him. And then his hurt and bitterness with Calvin kept him clinging to this adolescent version of events. Funny to see someone with so much education, and with the power of his personal wealth and his position in the Spadona Foundation, unable to let go of his adolescent view of the world.
I listed all the Bayards in one of the circles I’d drawn. In another, I put Darraugh’s family, starting with Laura Taverner Drummond, then Geraldine and MacKenzie, whose father connived with Laura to marry the two wild children. Their daughter Laura, named after the formidable grandmother. Darraugh, born in 1943. Darraugh’s son, young MacKenzie.
I slowly added a line joining the Grahams to the Bayards. Darraugh looked exactly like his mother. Everyone said Geraldine Graham had been a wild young woman. In his current illness, Calvin Bayard wandered to Larchmont in the dark. He had kept a key to the house. He had clutched me, crying, “Deenie.” Geral-deeme. She had spilled coffee all over herself when I reported it. Whatever Pelletier had thought about Calvin, the Boy Wonder, Calvin had loved Geraldine Graham.
I again imagined Darraugh as a boy-not galloping around the fields on his horse, but kneeling in bed in the middle of the night, head cupped in his hands, watching Calvin Bayard appear through the woods and let himself into Larchmont after the servants had locked the place up. He had stood up fiercely for MacKenzie Graham; he had weathered his grandmother’s fury by naming his son MacKenzie. Whether Calvin Bayard, MacKenzie Graham, or, for that matter, Armand Pelletier had been his birth father, MacKenzie was the man Darraugh loved. No wonder he hated Larchmont Hall.
CHAPTER 45
The Ice Cube Man Cometh
I skimmed the rest of the manuscript. Armand’s sense of personal grievance ran too deep for him to record a little thing like “Rhona’s” pregnancy, so he didn’t leave any hint about whether he or Calvin might have been Darraugh’s father. On the other hand, he heaped a lot of scorn on Toffee Noble-an offensive name for anyone, even someone totally imaginary. If Noble was supposed to be Augustus Llewellyn-and it sounded like him, with his basement printing press-Pelletier must have really hated him.
Llewellyn was a prominent Republican donor these days, but in the forties he’d hung out with Calvin and Pelletier and Kylie Ballantine at the bar where lodal leftists and labor organizers congregated.
Marc had read this manuscript. What if he’d gone to see Llewellyn after all: “I’m troubled, sir, by a manuscript Armand Pelletier wrote. It suggests you were some kind of fellow traveler in the forties.” Maybe Llewellyn wouldn’t want his-Republican pals, or his sailing friends, to know this. If he’d asked Marc to meet him after hours-“Come with me to New Solway, I’ll show. you what that setup, what those people were really like”Marc would have gone with him readily. Llewellyn did know all those New Solway people, after all. He was the one black member of the Anodyne Park Golf Course. Julius Arnoff was his registered agent as well as Geraldine Graham’s and Calvin Bayard’s-in his casual gossip with his clients, Arnoff had probably told Llewellyn about the nounous abandoning Larchmont Hall; what a shame it’s standing empty-the ornamental pool is filling up with dead carp …
“VI.! Wake up-you’ve gone catatonic on me.” Amy was shaking my arm. “Didn’t you say you had an appointment at four? It’s three-forty, and you’ve been blanked out for the last ten minutes.”
I blinked at her, trying to feel some urgency about my appointment. “Twenty to four? Yes, I guess I need to get going.”
I started to put the manuscript into my briefcase, but remembered it was the library’s a second before Amy squawked at me. “Sorry. Look, they’ll be closing the reading room in an hour. Do you think you could read this by then? Or get a copy made? If it’s a thingamajig, a clay something-“
“Roman a clef,” Amy interrupted, spelling it for me. “A novel with a key. I can read it and tell you what I think, and get a copy made, but it’s still a novel, even if it’s a novel with a key, and I don’t think you can rely on it for evidence.”