presidents. She kept track of his social schedule, dealt with his servants, and was the perfect hostess-never making her mother's mistake of greeting someone with the wrong name. With Susannah sitting capably at the helm of his household, Joel was spared the more disastrous effects of Kay's incompetence.
As Joel's kingdom grew, so did his arrogance. Not even Susannah escaped the chill of his displeasure when something wasn't arranged to his satisfaction, but this only made her try harder. She pleased him by becoming the most successful debutante San Francisco had seen in years-at least in the eyes of the social matrons who arranged the events. They were enraptured by her reserve and graciousness. The old ways weren't dying, they agreed-not with a young woman like Susannah Faulconer to carry forth the torch.
Susannah loved mathematics, and her excellent academic record would have guaranteed her admittance to any university in the country, but she enrolled in a local college so she could continue to manage the household at Falcon Hill. From the beginning her grades suffered because she missed so many classes while taking business trips with her father and tending to her ever-increasing responsibilities at home. But she owed Joel Faulconer everything, and the glow of living in the warmth of his approval more than compensated for setting aside her own vague dreams of independence.
When she was twenty, she fell in love with a thirty-year-old investment analyst and they began to discuss marriage. Free love floated in the air of the early seventies like oxygen molecules, but the man was so intimidated by her father that he attempted no more than chaste kisses. When she finally gathered enough courage to tell him that she wasn't averse to deepening their relationship, he said he had too much respect for her to sleep with her and she would only hate herself afterward. Several months later she discovered that he was sleeping with one of Paige's friends, and she ended their relationship.
She tried to accept the fact that she was the sort of woman to inspire respect rather than passion, but as she lay in bed at night, she lost herself in sexual fantasies. Not proper fantasies with soft music and romantic candlelight, but raunchy scenarios involving swarthy desert sheiks and brutally handsome white slavers.
And then Kay developed lung cancer, and nothing else mattered. Susannah dropped out of college to care for her mother and tend to her father's increasing demands. Kay died in 1972, when Susannah was twenty-one. As she watched her mother's coffin being lowered into the ground, she experienced both grief and the terrible foreboding that her own young life had just ended with as much finality as Kay's.
On a sunny April day in 1976, two months before her wedding to Calvin Theroux, Susannah met her sister Paige at a small, weathered restaurant tucked away from the city's tourists on one of San Francisco's commercial fishing piers. It was an unusually busy day for her, but she didn't appear either rushed or flustered. Her sage-green suit looked as fresh as if she had just put it on minutes before, instead of at seven that morning. She wore simple gold clips at her ears, and her auburn hair was pulled back into a soft French twist that was a bit severe for a woman who had only the month before turned twenty-five.
Although Paige was already ten minutes late, Susannah didn't fidget as she waited. She gazed at Russian Hill in the distance and mentally rearranged her schedule.
Paige's voice interrupted her reverie. 'I've got a million things to do, so this had better not take long.'
As she looked up at her sister, Susannah firmly repressed her irritation. Paige was prickly at best, and it would do no good to antagonize her before they'd even had a chance to talk. Her mind flashed back to the time when they were young children, and she had smuggled Paige small toys and chocolate-covered cherries after Joel had punished her. But then one day Paige had told him what Susannah was doing, and Joel had put a stop to any more errands of mercy. Susannah still didn't understand why her sister had tattled.
Paige tossed her knapsack on the floor and took the opposite chair. While she was getting settled, Susannah studied her sister's appearance. Even in worn blue jeans and a faded Mexican cotton top, Paige was extraordinarily beautiful. Her nose was petite, her lips as pouty as Kay's had been. She had Joel's blue eyes, and lush blond hair that fell halfway down her back and always managed to look as if some lusty young man had just rumpled it with vigorous lovemaking.
At the age of twenty-two, Paige was as modern as Susannah was old-fashioned. She was tough and cocky, with a longshoreman's mouth and apparently unlimited self-confidence. Susannah ignored the familiar stab of envy that always passed through her when she was with her sister. She gestured toward the menu. 'The abalone is really wonderful here. Or you might enjoy the avocado stuffed with crab.'
'I'll have a hamburger,' Paige replied indifferently.
Susannah placed her own order for mahi mahi, a fish she'd grown fond of during her frequent trips with Joel to Hawaii. As the waiter moved away, she broached the subject of their meeting.
'Did you think about what I said on the phone? Tonight is Father's fifty-eighth birthday party. I know it would please him if you were there.'
'Did King Joel tell you that?'
'He didn't have to. I'm certain of it.' Susannah was certain of no such thing, but she had to end this estrangement between them. Right now her sister was living in a shabby one-bedroom apartment with a would-be rock singer named Conti Dove.
Paige impatiently pushed her hair away from her face. 'Don't you ever get tired of running around playing Miss Goody-Two-Shoes? Fuck off, will you?'
Susannah's impassive expression gave no hint of how much she disliked hearing those tough, ugly words coming from her sister's lovely mouth. At the same time, she thought how exciting it would be if, just once in her life, she could toss those rude words at somebody. What would it be like to be so free? What would it be like to have life stretching ahead like a blank canvas-unplanned and waiting to be filled with bold, exciting strokes from one's very own brush.
'He's your father,' Susannah said reasonably, 'and this estrangement has gone on long enough.'
'Exactly twenty-two years.'
'That's not what I mean. I'm talking about your leaving home.'
'I didn't leave, Susannah. His Highness kicked me out. Not that I wasn't getting ready to split anyway, so you can wipe that pitying look off your face. The best thing that ever happened to me was getting out of that mausoleum.' Paige pulled a cigarette from a pack she had tossed on the table and lit it with a cheap plastic lighter. Susannah looked away. Cigarettes had killed their mother, and she hated seeing Paige smoke.
'Look, you can stay around and play Queen of the Castle to Daddy's King if you want-waiting on him hand and foot, giving him birthday parties, taking all the shit he hands out-but that's not my scene.'
Definitely not, Susannah thought. Within the space of eighteen months, Paige had flunked out of college and had an abortion. Joel had finally lost patience and told her she wasn't welcome in the house until she was ready to start acting like a responsible adult.
The waiter arrived with their food-broiled mahi mahi for Susannah, a burger and fries for Paige. Paige sank her teeth into her hamburger. As she chewed, she refused to look at the creamy amandine sauce that covered Susannah's fish, refused to think about how wonderful the mahi mahi must taste. Since her father had ordered her out of Falcon Hill, Paige couldn't remember having eaten anything more exotic than an anchovy pizza. The bite of hamburger she had just swallowed settled heavily in a stomach already churning with years of resentment from growing up in the shadow of an older sister who was perfect-an outsider who had taken her place in her own father's heart when she had been too young to defend herself.
Paige watched as Susannah delicately set her fork on her plate. Susannah had begun to remind her of those nineteenth century portraits she had studied in her art history class before she'd flunked out of college-portraits of thin, juiceless women who spent their lives languishing on chaise longues after giving birth to small blue-lipped infants. A deceptive image, Paige admitted to herself, since Susannah seemed to have an endless supply of energy, especially for good works such as saving her younger sister from a life of rock 'n' roll and sexual debauchery.
Paige could barely resist the urge to reach across the table and rumple that always-tidy auburn hair, rip away that carefully tailored suit. If only Susannah would scream or yell once in a while, Paige might have been able to get along with her better. But Susannah never lost control. She was always calm and cool, Daddy's paragon of a daughter. Susannah always said the right thing, did the right thing, and now she was capping her accomplishments by marrying exactly the right man-Mr. Calvin Stick-Up-His-Ass Theroux.
Paige was absolutely certain that Susannah was still a virgin. A virgin at twenty-five! What a joke. An image flashed through her mind of the bride and groom climbing into bed the night of their wedding. She saw Cal Theroux flashing that spectacular smile of his and easing up Susannah's nightgown just to the top of her thighs.
'Pardon me, darling, but this won't take a second.'
