Second Generation Read Free Page A

lectured me about the strike. You can't do anything with ice cream once it melts. You throw it away, and it didn't mean a thing to any of us. It just doesn't. We can't think that way—I mean, we don't even understand what food is in a country where thousands of people are starving."
"But you do understand this," Jean said.
"Now you are angry with me."
"Barbara," Jean said calmly, "I am not angry. Not really. You're a very romantic child, you always have been. I'm well aware of the inequities of society, but we did not create them."
"I'm not a child, mother."
"I think you are. In many ways. You dislike John, and you compare him to your father. I don't -think seeing your father has helped, and the romantic image of him that you have is far from the reality."
"Then I dislike John Whittier," Barbara said flatly. "I can't control who I like and who I dislike. Do you think it's pleasant for me to live under his roof?"
"It's my roof too. I happen to be married to John Whittier, and you are a part of a very wealthy family, like it or not. I have no intention of shedding crocodile tears or wallowing in guilt over what my father and his father created by their own sweat and wit. As for the apartment —well, we'll talk about that another time."
It had not been the best of days for Jean Whittier, and now, looking at her daughter, the strong, lovely face, the pale gray eyes, the honey-colored hair, so like her own— and thinking that this was probably the only person in the world she truly loved—it promised to end even more wretchedly than it had begun.
It had been Jean's last day as president of the Seldon Bank, a great, unshakable financial institution, which her grandfather had founded in a wagon at the placer mines just eighty-two years before, and which her father had continued and cherished and nourished. At his death, six years ago, Jean—then Jean Lavette and not yet divorced —had become trustee for three hundred and eighty-two thousand shares of stock in the Seldon Bank, to be divided equally between her two children, Thomas and Barbara, twelve years later. With over seventy percent of the voting stock of the Seldon Bank in her trust, with the right to vote it, Jean had taken over the presidency of the bank, becoming the first woman in California, if not in the entire country, to sit as president of a major bank.
Now she was surrendering. No, as she saw it, not a surrender but an abdication. Willing or unwilling? She could not be certain. Until today, she had felt that she was certain, that she was taking a step out of her own free will, doing what was best for her and for the bank. Walking into the bank that morning, passing through the great marble-clad street section that fronted on Montgomery Street, she had been shaken by a sudden and desperate sense of loss. Which, she told herself immediately, was an understandable and emotional reaction. Essentially, nothing had changed. She still, as trustee for her children, voted the controlling interest in the stock; she would still sit on the board of directors; and at long last she would be able to return to the central interest of her life, her collection of paintings and sculptures, which she had so long neglected. It would be said, as it was perhaps already being said, that her husband, John Whittier, had persuaded her to take this step; and she admitted to herself that it was true in part—but only in part. It was her own decision.
Alvin Sommers, vice president of the Seldon Bank, had been waiting and watching for her that morning, and as he saw her enter, he hurried to meet her. He noticed that she was wearing what to his way of thinking was civilian dress, a bright flowered taffeta with pink velvet trimming, both cheerful and youthful, he assured himself. Even at the age of forty-four, Jean Lavette—he still thought of her as Jean Lavette—was, as the news stories so often observed, perhaps the most fashionable and attractive woman in San Francisco social circles. He