The opening of a new mill was usually a celebratory occasion, during which Cal and his father would stroll through and meet the hired foremen, watch the machinery being tested and then retire together to toast the expansion of business.
This one, though, Cal couldn't wait to be done with.
He hadn't spoken to his father since their argument and hadn't particularly wanted to. Construction of the mill had been underway all summer long, and Cal had known when it was scheduled to open, in October. They coordinated a time to meet at the mill for its inspection. And that was all.
Rose asked if she could come along and watch the inspection.
"What are you talking about?" asked Cal, completely at a loss for how she could suddenly find interest in such a thing. In the time they'd known each other, Hockley Steel had opened several other mills and any time Cal spoke at length about business Rose had shown nothing but extreme indifference.
"I want to see where you go every day," she replied. "Can't I do that? Aren't I entitled?"
Her sudden interest seemed flippant.
At least she had stopped hiding away in her bedroom.
Nathan greeted them at the mill and embraced Cal as though they had never exchanged a harsh word. While they walked through and oversaw the inspection, Nathan chattered on mindlessly, updating Cal on the latest activities of everyone they knew.
"Louisa and I had dinner with the Hendersons last week," he said. Louisa was Nathan's second wife, and the two of them entertained many more guests than Cal had remembered having around when his mother was alive. "Certainly you remember the Hendersons—it had been ages since I'd seen them. They've been living abroad in Europe for the last ten months. Their daughter Alice was married just a few weeks ago. Rose, aren't you acquainted with Alice?"
"We were aware of each other at one point," Rose replied, unsuccessfully hiding her distaste. Alice Henderson was several years older than Rose; Cal knew that they'd gone to finishing school together and that Ruth believed Alice would be a good influence on her daughter and so had tried to bring them together. The friendship never seemed to stick.
"She's an exceptional young woman. So very charming and pure. The respect and devotion she seems to have for her husband is astounding."
Cal didn't miss the way his gaze lingered on Rose as he spoke.
Rose didn't either, and the moment Nathan turned his back, she glared not at him, but at Cal.
Why? she seemed to question, angry but resigned.
Cal ignored her attempt to guilt him.
"The two of you ought to rekindle your friendship," said Nathan breezily, his attention on the machinery now rather than on Rose. "It might prove beneficial…"
Rose looked at Nathan with glazed eyes. "To whom would it prove beneficial?" she asked.
Cal knew that she was on the verge of making a scene and it was something he wanted to avoid at all costs. "Give me that," he said to the inspector, reaching for his clipboard of notes. In an attempt to distract himself and interrupt the flow of conversation, he looked around critically and began complaining to the inspector that the millworkers seemed inefficient and ignorant of the proper safety precautions. The inspector seemed annoyed, as though he suspected that Cal had cast around deliberately for something to criticize.
"With all due respect, sir, every worker here has been required to undergo the appropriate training."
Being spoken back to put Cal in an even worse mood than he already was. At times, taking a stroll through one of the mills had given him a sense of inner peace; he was mighty and untouchable, a king observing his kingdom, and his subjects dare not slip up in his presence for even a moment. He'd taken comfort in watching the order and progress as it unfolded in front of him and had enjoyed catching mistakes so that he could exercise his authority.
But now it struck him as suddenly senseless, irrelevant—even inane. What was power, anyway? Business was nothing but a convoluted hierarchy, a web cleverly woven of fear and pressure and partisanship. And there was no solace to be taken from prestige, because no matter how insured you thought you were, you could never rise above the influence of the masses. Sometimes it seemed to Cal that the payoff wasn't worth even a fraction of the time and money and effort he had put into safeguarding himself.
But that was an idea that he refused to follow to its logical conclusion.
He had always understood clearly that he couldn't influence the direction of society; he could only work with it and around it, using conceit and impunity to pervert everything to his own advantage. In a world that was both savage and bureaucratic, manipulation was the only card he had to play.
*****
Toward the end of the tour, Cal suggested to Rose that she run along outside to the car.
"I'll only be a minute," he said. "We just have some paperwork to fill out."
She left, and Cal and Nathan stood waiting for the inspector to bring the papers.
"Can't resist, can you?" Cal asked in a conversational tone, watching ore shoot into a nearby furnace.
Nathan smiled. "I'm sorry?"
"Rose. Stop provoking her."
"Now, now, certainly you don't think I meant any disparagement to dear Rose when I mentioned the Hendersons. I was simply making conversation."
"Spare me, Nathan."
Nathan flinched slightly at Cal's use of his first name. Cal hadn't called his father 'Father' since he was a young teenager, but Nathan still seemed startled any time Cal addressed him as an equal.
"We've already had it out. There's no point in continuing."
Nathan's smile came unhinged. "You take for granted that you're the only one in a spot," he said, scowling. "You may be keeping all of this together for the time being, but as proprietor of our company, all eyes are on you, and that's something which makes me increasingly ill at ease."
"That doesn't mean anything. I'm taking all the damage. All you have to do is sit back and watch me self-destruct."
"Wherever did you come across a notion as ignorant as that?" Nathan demanded, discomposure creeping into his voice. "You've put the good name and financial security of this family at risk."
"I couldn't be less concerned about money right now," said Cal, although it wasn't entirely true. "I consider myself insured."
"How so?"
"Walter Sullivan. He'll pull strings on Wall Street for me if I tell him to."
Nathan blinked. "How can you be certain that he's an ally?" he asked. Cal knew that his father and Sullivan went back together some years as business associates, although he'd never sensed much about the nature of their partnership—whether it was hostile or amicable or competitive. Now, Nathan's comment—which indicated obvious mistrust—made Cal's resolve flicker in a moment of doubt, but he shoved it aside.
"I won't expound, but I've taken precautions that should allow you to sleep peacefully at night," he said, still intentionally vague.
"I can't sleep peacefully when I'm left in the dark," said Nathan.
"Ignorance," replied Cal, "is bliss."
"I beg to differ."
"In either case, it hardly concerns you."
"Oh-ho, I'll say it doesn't!" Nathan said with a sudden burst of anger. "Your virgin wife is going to birth me an illegitimate first grandchild, but certainly that's no business of mine. How meddlesome of me. My deepest apologies."
Your first and only, thought Cal caustically.
"Pardon me, gentlemen. The paperwork."
Disturbed, Cal glanced at the inspector. How long had he been there? Had he heard Nathan's last comment?
If he had, he gave no indication. He just thrust the paperwork at them and stood there whistling while Cal looked it over and signed the mill officially into business.
*****
Nathan and his wife, Louisa, stayed for dinner that night. As they all settled in the dining room, Cal felt the beginning of what he knew would evolve into a gut-churning headache, but he forced himself to stay focused—to keep the conversation diverted away from sensitive subject matter. Rose seemed to have nothing to contribute and her silence kept earning her glances from both Nathan and Louisa.
"Nathan tells me business has picked up a bit," said Louisa as she spread her napkin over her skirt.
Shards of angry red sunlight slanted through a crack in the drapery. Cal looked at Louisa and felt completely detached, as though he were at the door of someone else's dining room watching the people inside interact from a distance.
"It has," he answered in a dull voice, uninterested in providing any further comment that would draw out the discussion.
"It's been difficult, lately," she persisted gently, "hasn't it?"
"I can't predict every downtrend," Cal replied. "These things run in cycles."
"Some damage is too heavy to recover from," said Nathan.
"Defeatist mentality," Rose interjected, her first comment in some time. The words sounded hollow.
Nathan aimed an off-kilter smile in her general direction. "Defeat is quite a selfish feeling, dear Rose," he said. "To allow oneself to fall into the depths of despair over circumstances which may not perfectly mirror one's ignorant fantasies. Such a mindset can be dangerous. It can lead to lapses in judgment...to impulse." He sipped his chardonnay. "Every successful businessman understands how perilous it is to act on impulse."
"Thank you, Mr. Hockley, for the insightful lesson," said Rose. "Cal, did you get all that? Should you be taking notes?"
"Rose," Cal said, knowing that she would take it for the warning it was meant to be.
"What's that, Cal?" Rose asked, almost daring him to try to rein her in. Nathan and Louisa both looked slightly appalled by Rose's outburst, and Cal wished that they hadn't stayed for dinner.
But he smiled and raised his glass. "Let's move along, shall we?"
"Let's," Nathan agreed, also raising his glass. "To recovery."
"To recovery," Louisa repeated.
Rather than join in the toast, Rose stood up. "If you'll excuse me," she said. "I'm not feeling well."
She vanished.
A maid appeared in the doorway. "Dinner will be in shortly," she said. She took in the room, probably noticing Rose's absence. "Where is—"
"Thank you, Margaret," said Cal, pinching the bridge of his nose. The maid accepted that as her dismissal and left; Cal got up to go after Rose. "Go ahead," he told Nathan and Louisa. "I'll join you in a moment."
"Perhaps we should—" Nathan began, also rising. Cal neither cared nor wanted to know what Nathan had to say. He gestured for Nathan and Louisa to stay put as he retreated up the grand staircase.
Rose sat on the edge of her canopy bed, scribbling furiously on a sheet of watermarked stationery. She turned the page over so that Cal couldn't see whatever she had written.
"What are you doing, Rose?" Cal asked, trying to hide his exasperation.
"I'm writing a letter," she replied.
"To whom?"
"Does it make any difference?"
Cal knew what was supposed to happen next. He would reprove her immaturity, she would retaliate in anger over his attempts to control her, he would try to force her to come back down to dinner, she would refuse. He would fight the urge to strike her and her resentment of him would cause him to become almost physically ill.
He stared at her, at her empty face, her defeated posture, and in an instant he could see that she was wearing thin.
The thing he felt then was transient and foreign, a strange flutter of empathy that began to subside almost as soon as it appeared.
But he did understand what she was feeling.
"Is there anything I can say that will make you come back downstairs and pretend?" he asked, uncharacteristically blunt.
"I'm tired, Cal!" Rose snapped. Her hand smacked against the stationery pad and closed into a fist, crumpling her letter. "I'm half dead from exhaustion."
Cal knew that she wanted him to leave her to her meditations.
Instead, he flipped the chair at her desk and sat down to face her. "What's going through your mind right this moment?" he asked.
She gave him an odd look. "Pardon me?"
"Don't think about it. Just seize onto the first thing you feel."
"Cal—"
"I'm trying to understand."
He saw surprise and a hint of doubt in her eyes, as though she wasn't quite sure about his motives.
"I wish that I could be anywhere," she said. "Except here."
"Where would you like to be?"
"California," she said in an instant. "Santa Monica."
Cal forced himself to swallow the lump in his throat. "And what would you do there?" he asked.
Rose shut her eyes. "I would stand on a pier," she said, "and lean out a bit over the water, and I'd breathe in the clean air and gaze up at an endless blue sky and sigh in contentment because I'm alive, I'm free—"
Cal studied her face, waiting for her to finish.
"—and then I would snort back a mouthful of spit and aim for the coast of Asia."
If he'd been drinking something just then, Cal was certain he would have choked on it.
Rose's eyes opened. "To put it delicately," she said, "I would live." In response to the awkward silence that followed, she added, "You wanted to know." Her tone was almost apologetic.
"Fair enough," said Cal.
Rose gazed down at the paper in her hand. "I just want an escape," she said. "I want to fall asleep forever and dream."
"I understand that," said Cal.
She looked at him. "Do you?"
"Yes," he replied, entirely honest.
She seemed unsure then, like she couldn't draw conclusions about anything, even though she might have wanted to. Cal decided to leave the conversation there, and he stood.
"Is there anything you'd like me to have sent up?" he asked.
She shook her head.
He left her alone and returned to the dining room, where Nathan and Louisa sat waiting. He heard their voices from outside and they both fell silent as soon as he appeared at the doorway.
"I suppose you'll have to entertain us by yourself tonight then, Caledon," said Nathan, clearing his throat.
"Nathan," said Cal flatly, "shut up."
Nathan looked taken aback.
"I have nothing to say to either of you. I recommend that you see yourselves out now before the evening can deteriorate any further."
Nathan pushed back his chair, his hands gripping the edge of the table, but he didn't stand. The expression of disappointment—of disgust—on his face made Cal feel vaguely nauseated.
"If you insist on making every bad decision in the book and putting my good name at risk for the sake of your own perplexing whims," said Nathan, "then I suppose there's nothing I can do to stop you."
"I suppose there isn't," Cal deadpanned.
Nathan and Louisa called to one of the maids to bring their coats. Louisa hesitated, nervous over all the negative tension.
"Come along, Louisa," said Nathan loudly, not looking at Cal as he swept out of the dining room.
"I'm coming, dear," she called over her shoulder, then turned her attention to Cal. "You have to understand," she whispered, wringing her hands. "We all just hope for the best. We're concerned for you and for Rose."
"I appreciate the sentiment," said Cal, and he sounded dead to himself.
"You can't hide this sort of discontent from the world, no matter how hard you may try. I don't claim to know everything, but I know what Nathan has told me and I've heard all the same rumors you have...please, Caledon, just be careful. For your father's sake. Promise me you will."
"Louisa!" Nathan shouted from the front foyer.
"Will you promise?" she asked as she moved toward the door.
"I'll manage," said Cal.
Alone in the dining room, Cal poured himself more chardonnay. The pain in his head had swelled to an almost blinding level. He knew with complete certainty that the remaining threads of his sanity had snapped and that his mind was lost now, beyond reach within some vacuous purgatory that existed in him.
Margaret entered the room. "Mr. Hockley, do you still want dinner sent in?"
"To hell with dinner," said Cal. "Sit down and join me for a drink."
"Sir—?"
"Do what you're told."
Margaret sat. Cal noticed her hand tremble slightly as she reached for her glass. She was afraid of him, of course. All the servants were. He had made sure of that.
Cal ignored her discomfort. The rims of their classes clinked together, unnaturally loud in the empty room.
"I always win," he said, more to himself than to the maid. "One way or another."
You're a good liar.