4
The Wyatts
“You are different, Althea, and I’ll tell you how,” Sam Wyatt said to his daughter, voice rising. “You’ve got a nice home, a family that loves you and the best damn education money can buy. The question is, are you going to do anything with it?”
“Mom,” Althea said, looking to her mother.
Sam slammed the Times down on the breakfast table.
“Don’t,” his wife said softly, placing a hand on his arm.
“You talk to her,” Sam said, jerking the paper back up.
Harriet lowered her head slightly, took a long breath, and then looked at her daughter. Althea was standing there, arms rigid with anger. “Honey,” she said, “if you had the money to go on your own, it would be a different matter. But you don’t, and since your father doesn’t agree with you that it’s a good trip to make, you can hardly be furious with him for not giving you the money.”
“I’m eighteen,” Althea began.
The Times came crashing down. “Yeah,” her father said, “so maybe if you’re old enough to want to go palling around with Muffy, Scruffy and Whupsie—the Honky Sisters—you’re old enough to support yourself.”
“Oh, Dad,” Althea said, storming into the kitchen.
The Times was thrown to the floor. “What is it with that girl?” he said, yanking first one shirt cuff down over his wrist and then the other.
Harriet was eating her scrambled eggs.
“If I had the advantages she has—”
“You didn’t,” Harriet said.
“You better believe it.”
“I know, Sam.”
It was even odds whether the man named Sam Wyatt would explode or deflate at this point. His wife, sitting next to him, chewing, watched to see which it would be. When he fell back into his chair with a sigh, a faint smile passed over her lips and she moved on to her English muffin.
Sam took a deep breath, straightened his tie and then paid serious attention to his tie clip. “I don’t want her to get hurt,” he said quietly.
“I know, honey,” his wife said.
He let go of his tie clip, plunked his arms down on the arms of the chair, and looked at himself in the dining-room mirror. He straightened his tie again.
At fifty, Sam Wyatt possessed a handsomeness that was not easily defined. He was one of those men whose looks came alive with expression, animation, and since he was forever—as his eldest daughter would say—”intense,” he was most often rather striking. He was tall, nearly six foot one, and squarely made across the shoulders. His skin was a deep, ebony black, and his closely cut hair had gray coming in fast at the sides. His mouth—perfectly fine when still—had a curious habit of lifting to the right side when in use. (Four years ago, when Sam brought home a publicity photograph of himself from the office, three year-old Samantha had burst into tears. “That’s not Daddy!” The Wyatts had finally pieced together that what was scaring Samantha was the absence of “Daddy’s cook-ked smile.”) Sam’s nose was long and a tad sharp (“Where do you suppose that came from?” Althea would ask, pulling on it). And his eyes were large and bright, veiled by long lashes.
“Sam,” his wife said, lowering her English muffin, “is there something else? Something other than Althea, I mean.”
Sam thought for a moment and then sat back up to the table. “Would you want to go to Southampton with a bunch of white girls?”
“Not particularly,” Harriet said, pulling the bit of muffin into small pieces on her plate, “but then, I’m not Althea. And they’re nice girls, Sam, and I know she wouldn’t have been invited unless they really wanted her to go. And it’s preseason—” She frowned as Sam started humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; she picked up a piece of the muffin and bounced it off his nose. “You’re worse than a weather vane,” she said. “Make up your mind, are you in a good mood or a bad mood?”
“Yeah, I’d like that—weather reports,” Rosanne said, swinging in from the kitchen with a coffeepot. “Nobody told me hurricane Althea was gonna tear up the kitchen this mornin’.”
“What is she doing?” Harriet asked.
“Aw, nothin’,” Rosanne said, putting the coffee down on the table, “she’s okay. Killed the last muffin, though. I think it’s behind the refrigerator.”
Harriet giggled and the sound of it made both Sam and Rosanne smile. Harriet Wyatt was one of those lucky women who in her forties had gained ten pounds and a rather astonishing new voluptuousness. But her black hair—straightened and coiffed in a stunning sleek cut around her neck—her spring suit and silk blouse and her gold hoop earrings and bracelets did nothing by way of indicating that she could be a woman who giggled. But that was Harriet, forever coming forth with warm and happy surprises. That is, unless she thought one was wrong, and then she would grow ten feet tall (it would seem to Sam) and everything about Harriet would turn hard with the warning, “Just try and mess with me.”
“Can’t imagine where she gets her temper from,” Harriet said.
“Yeah,” Rosanne said, going around Sam’s chair to pick up the newspaper from the floor. “Here, Mr. W, let’s set an example,” she said, refolding it and placing it at his side.
Sam gave her a look out of the corner of his eye (with the side of his mouth rising accordingly) and then reached for the coffee.
“I wanted to ask ya somethin’, Mrs. W,” Rosanne said, moving back around the table.
“Coffee, Harriet?” Sam asked.
She nodded and turned to Rosanne. “Shoot.”
“Like, well,” Rosanne said, rolling up her sleeves, “Howie’s a good editor, isn’t he?”
Both Harriet and Sam burst out laughing.
“What? What?” Rosanne wanted to know, looking at one and then the other.
“I knew it!” Sam cried. “Harriet, I told you she’s going to write a book about us. Remember?”
“I’m not writin’ a book,” Rosanne declared, stamping her foot. “But let me tell ya, if I was”—she poked Sam in the shoulder— “I wouldn’t waste it on the likes of you. I got a lot more interestin’ things to write about than you two spoonies.”
“Hear that, Harriet?” Sam said. “She says we’re too boring.”
“Then thank God for boring,” Harriet said to the skies above. She looked back at Rosanne, smiling. “Howard is a very good editor.”
“I thought so,” Rosanne said, starting to clear the dishes. “He’s gonna read a friend of mine’s book.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“Sam,” Harriet said, sipping her coffee, “I’m supposed to have a meeting this morning with Harrison.”
He nodded, but then, after hesitating a moment, said, “I wanted to talk some more about that job offer.”
“Aw, no,” Rosanne said, balancing the pile of dirty dishes, “you’re not gonna leave, are ya?”
Harriet reached out to touch Rosanne’s arm. “I’m only thinking about it, Rosanne, so please don’t mention it to Howard.”
“Naw, I won’t,” Rosanne promised, going out to the kitchen. “He’s down in the dumps enough as it