“She’s not even twenty-two, Bert, she’s young, and we’re all foolish at her age,” Blake said gently.
“Her foolishness has produced a child,” Bert said soberly, “a responsibility and a burden she will have to shoulder forever, for the rest of that child’s life, and hopefully hers.” Having lost two children himself, he did not wish that on her, no matter who the child’s father was, or how unsuitable. “I suppose we’ll have to invent some respectable story about who Lili’s father was. It’s easier to do after a war. A lot of girls married too quickly, and proper young men too. At least Lili wasn’t born out of wedlock.” That would have been an unpardonable stigma the child and Bettina would have carried forever. He was grateful they didn’t have that to contend with, and could put it behind them now. Lili was a Butterfield, and that was that.
“How is she?” Blake asked about Bettina. He hadn’t seen her at dinner yet, since the birth, and it had been a week.
“She seems fine. She’ll rest for the next month, and then she’ll be back among us,” her father said.
Blake was sure that lower-class working women got back on their feet more quickly. But not women in their world.
Augusta was pleased with her first great-grandchild. Bettina had chosen “Augusta” as Lili’s middle name to pay homage to her, and her grandmother was flattered.
“Shame it wasn’t a boy,” Angus had said regretfully, when told of the baby’s arrival, but on the whole it was a happy time, and Gwyneth was enjoying her grandchild. She had stopped her computer sessions when the baby was born, so she could help Bettina adjust to motherhood, which didn’t seem to come naturally to her, and she was outspoken about not wanting more children. Gwyneth told Sybil she’d be back on the computer soon, once Bettina was up again in about a month.
It seemed like forever to Bettina before she was allowed to come downstairs for dinner. She had been permitted to walk around the garden with the nurse a few days before, and she had admitted to Sybil with a grin that she wanted to leap over the wall and run away. She felt like she was in jail in her room with the baby. Lili was four weeks old by then, and Bettina was finally released. It had been a long convalescence for a healthy young girl her age, after a natural event. She had almost regained her figure by then, and wasn’t nursing. They had hired a wet nurse a few days after the baby was born, and Lili was fat and healthy, and had just produced her first real smile. And so did her mother as soon as the doctor pronounced her free and she was allowed to leave her room.
She still had trouble feeling close to the baby, and Sybil wondered if it would have been different if she had nursed, but she had been adamant about not wanting to. She wanted her body back now, and her life. She and Lili would be linked forever, but she showed no signs of being maternal and was perfectly content to let the nurse and wet nurse tend to all of Lili’s needs. The last ten months had been too traumatic, and she wanted to get back on her feet.
The first time Bettina rejoined the family for dinner, Caroline announced that she had been accepted at UCLA and would be going to college there in the fall. She had been wait-listed at Stanford, but was satisfied with her second choice. Andy was already back in Edinburgh after the Christmas break. He was dating a girl there, and Sybil had the feeling it was serious, or could be. Caroline was still seeing the same boy at school, but he had been accepted at Princeton and was going east, so they had agreed to break up in June.
Blake was looking strained. They had some financial issues at the start-up, with the founders losing a great deal of money with some high-risk decisions that had gone badly. He was discussing them intently with Bert, who always gave him good advice. And he had made Sybil aware of it too.
And for the Butterfields, there was still a war on. They no longer had a son in it, but the news from the front was devastating, and the boys were dying like flies in the trenches. Things were going better for the Germans than the Allies. There were gold star banners in the windows of homes all around the city, and across the country, indicating sons who had died. America had been in the war for only nine months, but the death toll was alarmingly high, and it showed no sign of being over yet. And stories of the revolution in Russia were depressing too.
But the mood at the Butterfield Mansion was lighter with Bettina back in their midst, the baby to admire, and Josiah home. Sybil was working on her book again, and hoping to finish it by the end of the year. She kept adding more material to it, and Blake called it the never-ending book. Gwyneth returned to Sybil’s office to create art on the computer. The two women worked side by side for many hours in companionable silence, with an occasional smile or comment.
Sybil was sorry Gwyneth couldn’t show anyone her art, Gwyneth was still keeping it a secret from Bert and didn’t think he’d approve. And Sybil didn’t disagree with her. She was not only challenging the time barrier, but defying the social rules of her world and class, by trying to be a modern woman, which was forbidden to her. Sybil often chafed for her more than Gwyneth did, but it bothered Gwyneth too, to be so restricted from the natural order of things, in a world run entirely by men.
—
That summer the Gregorys rented a house in Santa Barbara for a month, instead of the one they used to rent in the Hamptons when they lived in New York. It was fun to do something different, and have a change of scene. The summer before, their first in San Francisco, Josiah had been killed and they hadn’t wanted to abandon the Butterfields, and canceled their vacation, but this year things were peaceful. The Butterfields were going to Woodside, and Bettina was taking the baby and the nurse with them. Lili was six months old in July, and a happy, easy baby.
Caroline had broken up with her boyfriend in June as they had agreed to do. She had been ready to let him go by then anyway. She met someone new while they were in Santa Barbara, he was going to UCLA in the fall too. He came to dinner at the rented house in Santa Barbara several times, and he took her out for dinners and movies, and he got along well with her brothers. They went out on his parents’ sailboat a few times, and Sybil and Blake liked him. His name was Max Walker, and he wanted to major in film, which he already seemed very knowledgeable about.
While they were in Santa Barbara, Andy texted a dozen times a day with the girl he liked in Edinburgh, Quinne MacDonald. He asked his parents if she could visit in San Francisco over Christmas, which was an interesting dilemma, since they spent their holidays with the Butterfields, and they weren’t easy to explain. Sybil and Blake had no idea how they would deal with a stranger or if the Butterfields would even appear if someone else was there. And they didn’t want to spoil things.