The Legacy by Howard Fast Page B

less than twenty-four hours since her father’s death. She was numbed and confused and nervous about being away from her mother. She had left Los Angeles suddenly, violently; and just as suddenly she had parted with the film industry. The palm trees on the streets of Beverly Hills, the beach at Santa Monica, and Carson Devron with his old Buick convertible were all like a dream. Once or twice during this day, she had thought about her brother Tom, but with no clear notion of whether to approach him or how to approach him. She had never been able to hate, to carry a grudge as some precious inner treasure, and now, confronted suddenly, she let go of all the bitter memories and embraced Tom. For him, her reaction was unexpected. He felt limp, and when she stepped back away from him, he nodded, the funereal expression on his face adequately defining his state of mind.
    â€œIs mother all right?” he asked her.
    Lucy simply stood next to him, silent, composing in her mind her condolences.
    â€œAs all right as she could be under these circumstances,” Barbara replied.
    It Was time for Lucy to express her condolences. Listening to the empty words; Barbara wondered what on earth she could do now. Introduce Joe? “Tom, this is your brother, Joe, whom you have never spoken to before.” How does one say that?
    Tom solved the problem. “Is mother here now?”
    â€œShe’s at the chapel.”
    â€œI see. Should I go there?”
    â€œThat’s up to you.”
    He and Lucy exchanged glances. “It would be better, I think, if we simply came to the funeral. You’ll tell mother we were here?”
    â€œI’ll tell her,” Barbara whispered.
    Then they left. There were no introductions to the other people in the room.
    At the chapel, Stephan Cassala and Jean Lavette sat in attendance to the coffin and Dan Lavette’s body. They made an odd combination. Cassala was sixty-three years old, a tall, thin, gaunt man. A bad stomach wound, a memento of World War One, had given him a lasting jaundice. His tightly drawn skin, parchment-like, was the color of yellowed ivory, and the discoloration also tinged his eyeballs. He was possessed of an old-world, courtly elegance, and his manner was gentle, almost womanly. Never too close to him, Jean had always trusted him. She was of a time when manners had meaning, and Stephan Cassala’s manners were impeccable. He and Dan had been children together, the families close, Stephan the son of a Neapolitan bricklayer who was to become the first important Italian banker in San Francisco, Dan the son of a fisherman. After the death of Mark Levy, Dan’s first partner, Dan and Stephan had become business associates, but it was always Dan the mover, Stephan the worshipful follower. This Jean understood, and she was comfortable with him sitting beside her.
    Like Dr. Kellman, Cassala was amazed at Jean’s apparent lack of emotion. Of course, he told himself, he was Italian; Jean was the other kind; yet he knew better than most the amazing closeness of Dan and Jean Lavette. The white Protestant was not anything he had ever hoped to understand. The meaningful thing was Jean’s presence. She had told her son Joe, “I don’t want anyone else here. Not tonight. Stephan will stay with me. He wants to, and I have to respect that. But no one else, please.”
    They sat in silence for the most part. At one point, Cassala recalled the day after the great earthquake. Young Dan, numb with the death of his father and mother, had spent the day ferrying panic-stricken people from San Francisco across the bay to Oakland. They thrust money at him, a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars — anything to get out of the burning city. The following day, he turned up at the Cassalas’, his pockets stuffed with over four thousand dollars.
    â€œThat money,” Stephan mused, “was the beginning of everything, our bank, Dan’s fortune