The Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page B

year of his life — he had a rewarding surrogate in his grandfather, Dan Lavette, whom he adored, and in turn Dan Lavette had taken the child to his heart. Almost as soon as Sam could walk, Dan introduced him to the art of small-boat sailing, and by the time he was eleven, Sam’s happiest memories were of the hours he had spent on the San Francisco Bay with his grandfather. Dan at long last had found an apt student for all his lifelong knowledge of fishing and crabbing. It was a mutual joy. Dan had asked no more of life than to be out on the bay with his wife and his grandson, and for Sam it was his own form of earthly paradise.
    It was this passion for sailing that had proven the deciding factor in the choice of a school for Sam. When Barbara signed the contracts to turn her first book into a film and realized that she would be spending as long as four or even six months in Los Angeles, she decided that at least a year in an Eastern school might be a rewarding experience for Sam and that there might be some important benefits in removing him for a while from the uncritical affection of his mother and his grandparents. Barbara’s grandfather and her brother Tom had both gone to Groton, but she had developed an antipathy toward the place, in part because of a prejudice toward the Eastern establishment, and in part because of the coldness between herself and her brother. It was her lawyer, Harvey Baxter, who had recommended Roxten Academy — having been there as a boy — and the final persuasion was in the brochure, which showed the old ivy-covered buildings fronting on Long Island Sound, as well as a small marina which belonged to the school. It was only after Sam arrived there that he discovered that the marina was reserved for the upperclassmen and that he would have no chance to set foot on a boat or explore the sound.
    He made other discoveries. Roxten was an Episcopalian school and advertised itself as a Christian Preparatory School. In his first interview with the headmaster, Dr. Clement, a rotund, pink-cheeked man with pale hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, Sam was informed that he was more or less an Episcopalian. “Your mother writes,” Dr. Clement said, “that you have had no formal religious training. This is not uncommon with the children of mixed marriages, but since your mother was raised as an Episcopalian and is widowed, as I am given to understand, this should present no difficulties in Bible studies and in chapel. I must tell you, Samuel, that your application was given very grave consideration. A child should not be made to suffer for his parent’s action; nevertheless, a degree of felicitous behavior will be expected. As you sow, so shall you reap.”
    He had endured three months of reaping between the time he had arrived at Roxten and this day in mid-December of 1958, when he had been awakened by his uncle Joseph Lavette, calling from San Francisco to tell him that his grandfather was dead. A few hours later, dressed, shivering with an unfamiliar chill called death, he had spoken to his mother, who had asked him to leave that same day for San Francisco instead of waiting a week until the beginning of the Christmas holidays. Now, at eleven o’clock in the morning, he sat on his suitcase in front of one of the ivy-covered red brick buildings, staring dry-eyed and bleakly at glimpses of the sound through the naked branches of oaks and maples, waiting for a cab to pick him up and carry him to the railroad station.
    His grief was laced with guilt and tempered with relief, which only served to sharpen the guilt, for with the death of his grandfather, he was released from purgatory, from a place he hated and from people he feared and despised. Trying to remember his grandfather, trying to make pictures of the golden days they had spent together, trying to cope with the mysterious finality of death, trying to evoke some memory of his father, whom he did not remember at all,