Teddy nudged up next to her, not quite ready to join in such extravagant emotion. Holly Grace slipped her arm around his shoulders, and they both watched as Dallie lifted Francesca high off the ground, hoisting her by the waist so that her head was higher than his. For a fraction of a moment, she hung there, tilting her face into the sun and laughing at the sky. And then she kissed him, brushing his face with her hair, battering his cheeks with the joyous swaying of her silly silver earrings. Her little red sandals slid from her toes, one of them balancing itself on top of his golf shoe.
Francesca turned away first, searching for Holly Grace in the crowd, holding out her arm. Dallie set Francesca down without letting go of her and held out his arm, too, so that Holly Grace could join them. He hugged them both—these two women who meant everything to him—one the love of his boyhood, the other the love of his manhood; one tall and strong, the other tiny and frivolous, with a marshmallow heart and a spine of tempered steel. Dallie's eyes sought out Teddy, but even in his moment of victory, he saw the boy wasn't ready and he didn't press him. For now it was enough that they could exchange smiles.
A UPI photographer caught the picture that was to grace the front pages of the nation's sports sections the next day—a jubilant Dallie Beaudine lifting Francesca Day up off the ground while Holly Grace Beaudine stood to one side.
Francesca had to be back in New York the next morning, and Dallie needed to perform all the duties that fell to the winner immediately following a major championship. As a result, their time together after the tournament was much too short and all too public. “I'll call you,” he mouthed as he was swept away.
She smiled in answer, and then the press engulfed him.
Francesca and Holly Grace traveled back to New York together, but their flight was delayed and they didn't reach the city until late. It was past midnight by the time Francesca had tucked Teddy into bed, too late to expect a call from Dallie. The following day, she attended a briefing on the upcoming Statue of Liberty citizenship ceremony, a luncheon for women in broadcasting, and two meetings. She left a series of phone numbers with her secretary, making certain that she wasn't out of contact anywhere she went, but Dallie didn't call.
By the time she left the studio, she had worked herself into a froth of righteous indignation. She knew he was busy, but he certainly could have spared a few minutes to call her. Unless he'd changed his mind, a little voice whispered. Unless he'd had second thoughts. Unless she'd misread his feelings.
Consuelo and Teddy were gone when she got home. She set down her purse and briefcase, then slipped wearily out of her jacket and headed down the hallway to her bedroom, only to come to a halt in the doorway. A crystal and silver trophy nearly three feet long lay in the exact center of her bed.
“Dallie!” she screeched.
He came out of her bathroom, hair still wet from the shower, one of her fluffy pink towels wrapped around his hips. Grinning at her, he hoisted the trophy off the bed, walked over to her, and deposited it at her feet. “Was this pretty much what you had in mind?” he asked.
“You wretch!” She threw herself into his arms, almost knocking over both him and the trophy in the process. “You darling, impossible, wonderful wretch!”
And then he was kissing her, and she was kissing him, and they were holding each other so tightly it seemed as if the life force from one body had poured into the other. “Damn, I love you,” Dallie murmured. “My sweet little Fancy Pants, driving me half crazy, nagging me to death.” He kissed her again, long and slow. “You're almost the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Almost?” she murmured against his lips. “What's the best?”
“Being born good-looking.” And then he kissed her again.
Their lovemaking was full of laughter and tenderness, with nothing forbidden, nothing withheld. Afterward, they lay face to face, their naked bodies pressed together so they could whisper secrets to each other.
“I thought I was going to die,” he told her, “when you said you wouldn't marry me.”
“I thought I was going to die,” she told him, “when you didn't say you loved me.”
“I've been afraid so much. You sure were right about that.”
“I had to have the best from you. I'm a miserable, selfish person.”
“You're the best woman in the world.”
He began telling her about Danny and Jaycee Beaudine and the feeling he'd gotten early in life that he wasn't going to amount to much. It was easier not to try too hard, he had discovered, than to have all his shortcomings proven to him.
Francesca said that Jaycee Beaudine sounded like a perfectly odious person and Dallie should have had enough sense early on to realize that the opinions of unsavory people like that were completely unreliable.
Dallie laughed and then kissed her again before he asked when they were getting married. “I won you fair and square,” he said. “Now it's time for you to pay up.”
They were dressed and sitting in the living room when Consuelo and Teddy returned several hours later. The two of them had spent a wonderful evening at Madison Square Garden, where Dallie had sent them earlier with a pair of ringside tickets to see the Greatest Show on Earth. Consuelo took in Francesca's and Dallie's flushed faces and wasn't fooled for a minute about what had been going on while she and Teddy were watching Gunther Gebel-Williams tame tigers. Teddy and Dallie eyed each other politely but warily. Teddy was still pretty sure Dallie was only pretending to like him because of his mom, while Dallie was trying to figure out how to undo all the damage he'd inflicted.
“Teddy, how about taking me to the top of the Empire State Building tomorrow after school?” he said. “I'd sure like to see it.”
For a moment Dallie thought Teddy was going to refuse. Teddy picked up his circus program, rolled it into a tube, and blew through it with elaborate casualness. “I guess it'd be okay.” He turned the tube into a telescope and looked through it. “As long as I get back in time to watch The Goonies on cable TV.”
The next day the two of them went up to the observation platform. Teddy stopped well back from the protective metal grating at the edge because heights made him dizzy. Dallie stopped right at his side because he wasn't all that crazy about heights himself. “It's not clear enough today to see the Statue of Liberty,” Teddy said, pointing toward the harbor. “Sometimes you can see it over there.”
“Did you want me to get you one of those rubber King Kongs they're selling at the concession stand?” Dallie asked.
Teddy liked King Kong a lot, but he shook his head. A guy wearing an Iowa State windbreaker recognized Dallie and asked for his autograph. Teddy was an old hand at waiting patiently while grown-ups gave autographs, but the interruption irritated Dallie. When the fan finally walked away, Teddy looked at Dallie and said wisely, “It goes with the territory.”
“How's that again?”
“When you're a famous person, people feel like they know you, even though they don't. You have a certain obligation.”
“That sounds like your mama talking.”
“We get interrupted a lot.”
Dallie looked at him for a moment. “You know these interruptions are only going to get worse, don't you, Teddy? Your mama'll be upset if I don't win a few more golf tournaments for her, and whenever the three of us go out, there'll be that many more people looking at us.”
“Are you and my mom getting married?”
Dallie nodded his head. “I love your mama a lot. She's about the best lady in the world.” He took a deep breath, charging in just as Francesca would have. “I love you, too, Teddy. I know that might be hard for you to believe after the way I've been acting, but it's true.”
Teddy pulled off his glasses and submitted the lenses to an elaborate cleaning on the hem of his T-shirt. “What about Holly Grace?” he said, holding the lenses up to the light. “Does this mean we won't see Holly Grace anymore, because of how you and her used to be married?”
Dallie smiled. Teddy m
ight not want to acknowledge what he'd just heard, but at least he hadn't walked away. “We couldn't get rid of Holly Grace even if we tried to. Your mama and I both love her; she'll always be part of our family. Skeet, too, and Miss Sybil. Along with whatever runaways your mom manages to pick up.”
“Gerry, too?” Teddy asked.
Dallie hesitated. “I guess that's up to Gerry.”
Teddy wasn't feeling so dizzy now, and he took a few steps closer to the protective grating at the edge. Dallie wasn't quite as eager to move forward, but he did, too. “You and I still have some things to talk about, you know,” Dallie said.
“I want one of those King Kongs,” Teddy declared abruptly.
Dallie saw that Teddy still wasn't ready for any father-son revelations, and he swallowed his disappointment. “I have something to ask you.”
“I don't want to talk about it.” Teddy mutinously laced his fingers through the metal grating.
Dallie laced his fingers through, too, hoping he could get this next part right. “Did you ever go to play with a friend, and when you got there you found out that he had built something special when you weren't around? A fort, maybe, or a castle?”
Teddy nodded warily.
“Maybe he made a swing when you weren't around, or built a racetrack for his cars?”
“Or maybe he built this neat planetarium out of garbage bags and a flashlight,” Teddy interjected.
“Or a planetarium out of garbage bags,” Dallie quickly amended. “Anyway, maybe you looked at this planetarium, and you thought it was so terrific that you felt a little jealous you hadn't made it yourself.” Dallie let go of the fence, keeping his eyes on Teddy to make sure the boy was following him. “So, because you were jealous, instead of telling your friend what a great planetarium he'd made, you sort of stuck your nose up in the air and told him you didn't think what he'd made was all that terrific, even though it was about the best planetarium you'd ever seen.”
Teddy nodded slowly, interested that a grown-up would know about something like that. Dallie rested his arm on top of a telescope that was pointing toward New Jersey. “That's pretty much what happened when I saw you.”
“It is?” Teddy declared in astonishment.
“Here's this kid, and he's a real great kid—smart and brave—but I didn't have anything to do with making him that way, and I was jealous. So instead of saying to his mom, 'Hey, you raised yourself a pretty neat kid,' I acted like I didn't think the kid was all that great, and that he would have been a lot better if I'd been around to help raise him.” He searched Teddy's face, trying to read by his expression whether he was following, but the boy wasn't giving anything away. “Could you understand something like that?” he asked finally.
Another child might have nodded, but a child with an I.Q. of one hundred sixty-eight needed some time to sort things out. “Could we go look at those rubber King Kongs now?” he asked politely.
The Statue of Liberty ceremony took place on a poet's day in May, complete with a soft, balmy breeze, a cornflower blue sky, and the lazy swoop of sea gulls. Three launches decorated with red, white, and blue bunting had crossed New York Harbor toward Liberty Island that morning and had landed at the dock where the Circle Line ferry normally disgorged tourists. But for the next few hours, there would be no tourists, and only a few hundred people populated the island.
Lady Liberty towered over a platform that had been specially built on the lawn at the south side of the island next to the statue's base. Normally, public ceremonies were held in a fenced-in area behind the statue, but the White House advance team thought this location, beneath the face of the statue and with an unblocked view of the harbor, was more photogenic for the press. Francesca, in a pale pistachio dress with an ivory silk-shantung jacket, sat in a row with the other honorees, various government dignitaries, and a Supreme Court Justice. At the lectern, the President of the United States talked about the promise of America, his words echoing from the loudspeakers set up in the trees.
“We celebrate here today—old and young, black and white, some from humble roots, others born into prosperity. We have different religions and different political beliefs. But as we rest in the shadow of the great Lady Liberty, we are all equals, all inheritors of the flame....”
Francesca's heart was so full of joy she thought she would burst. Each participant had been permitted to invite twenty guests, and as she gazed out over her diverse group, she realized that these people she had come to love represented a microcosm of the country itself.
Dallie, wearing an American flag pin on the lapel of his navy suit coat, sat with Miss Sybil on one side of him, Teddy and Holly Grace on the other. Behind them, Naomi leaned to one side to whisper something in her husband's ear. She looked healthy after having given birth, but she seemed nervous, undoubtedly worried about leaving her four-week-old baby girl even for half a day. Both Naomi and her husband wore black armbands to protest apartheid. Nathan Hurd sat with Skeet Cooper, an interesting combination of personalities in Francesca's opinion. From Skeet to the end of the row stretched a group of young female faces—black and white, some with too much makeup, but all of them possessing a spark of hope in their own futures. They were Francesca's runaways, and she had been touched when so many of them wanted to be with her today. Even Stefan had called her from Europe this morning to congratulate her, and she had pried out the welcome news that he was currently enjoying the affection of the beautiful young widow of an Italian industrialist. Only Gerry hadn't acknowledged her invitation, and Francesca missed him. She wondered if he was still angry with her because she had turned down his latest demand to appear on her program.
Dallie caught her looking at him and gave her a private smile that told her as clearly as if he'd spoken the words how much he loved her. Despite their superficial differences, they had discovered that their souls were a matched set.
Teddy had snuggled over close to Holly Grace instead of to his father, but Francesca thought that situation would soon resolve itself and she didn't permit it to disturb her pleasure in the day. In a week she and Dallie would be married, and she was happier than she had ever been in her life.
The President was revving up for a big finish. “And so America is still the land of opportunity, still the home of individual initiative, as witnessed by the success of those we honor this day. We are the greatest country in the world....”
Francesca had done programs on the homeless in America, on poverty and injustice, racism and sexism. She knew all the country's flaws, but for now she could only agree with the President. America wasn't a perfect country; it was too often self-serving, violent, and greedy. But it was a country that frequently had its heart in the right place, even if it couldn't always get all the details worked out correctly.
The President finished to a rousing ovation, captured by the network cameras for airing on the news that night. Then the Supreme Court Justice stepped forward. Although she couldn't see Ellis Island behind her, Francesca felt its presence like a blessing, and she thought of all those throngs of immigrants who had come to this land with only the clothes on their backs and the determination to make a new life for themselves. Of all the millions who had passed through these golden gates, surely she had been the most worthless.
Francesca stood along with the others, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she remembered a twenty-one-year-old girl in a pink antebellum gown trudging down a Louisiana road carrying a Louis Vuitton suitcase. She lifted her hand and began to repeat the words being spoken by the Supreme Court Justice.
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty....”
Good-bye, England, she thought. It wasn't your fault that I made such a muddle of things. You're a good old country, but I needed a rough, young scrapper of a place to teach me how to stand on my own.
“... that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of th
e United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic...”
She would try her best, even though the responsibilities of citizenship awed her. If a society was to remain free, how could it take those duties lightly?
“... that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States...”
Gracious, she certainly hoped not!
“... that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by law...”
Next month, she was to testify before a congressional committee on the problem of runaways, and she had already started forming an organization to raise funds to build shelters. With “Francesca Today” broadcasting only once a month, she would finally have a chance to give something back to the country that had already given her so much.
“... that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”
As the ceremony ended, a series of Texas cheers went up from the audience. With tears in her eyes, Francesca watched her guests making spectacles of themselves. Then the President greeted the new citizens, followed by the Supreme Court Justice and the other government dignitaries. A band struck up the first bars of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the White House staff member who was in charge of the ceremony began moving the participants toward bunting-draped tables set up under the trees and laden with punch and tea sandwiches, just like a Fourth of July picnic.
Dallie got through the crowd to her first, a Texas-size grin spread all over his face. “The last thing this country needs is another voting liberal, but I'm real proud of you anyway, honey.”
Francesca laughed and hugged him. On the east side of the island there was a noisy roar from the lawn as the presidential helicopter took off, bearing away the Chief Executive and some of the ceremony's other dignitaries. With the President gone, the mood of the occasion relaxed. As the helicopter disappeared, an announcement was made that the statue had been opened for private viewing by those who wished to enter.