Midge Gette: The more the sexier

"Did you read about the people down in Dade County, Mother?" Sharon asked.

"No, dear," said the beautiful little woman, "what about them?"

"They're rioting and some of them are dead. No money, no jobs, no food. And just look at us. We have all this, and for what?" Sharon looked down from atop the massive staircase. "I've heard of people showing off-five-hundred-dollar millionaires, they call them-but this is insane! If the Washington economists are searching for where all the money in the country has suddenly disappeared to, they ought to look right here! It's disgusting and ridiculous."

"Everything to you lately is ridiculous, Sharon. Isn't it beautiful, though?"

It was beautiful. Gorgeous, in fact, Sharon had to admit. Gorgeous and gaudy. The huge reception hall of their house, spreading out below them, was like something out of The Student Prince. All it needed was the opera star, Pavarotti, standing in its center, wearing knee-length britches and singing his heart out. Sharon's own life had become something like a fairytale opera since Uncle Nate had moved them all into this beautiful monster of a house.

Uncle Nate. Sharon rolled her eyes in helpless disgust. She could not bear to look at the little man who, after many years of wandering the face of the earth, his existence all but forgotten, had returned to the bosom of his family with more money than sense, in Sharon's considered opinion; and the dimensions of his family having with the passing years been reduced to one member, her mother, he had proceeded to turn that little woman into a complete idiot with his seemingly inexhaustible largesse.

Sharon's wide mouth settled into the sardonic lines that were becoming a habit of late. Below her the great hall was empty and not a sound of life could be detected anywhere. Behind and around her, all the doors to bedrooms and sitting rooms were discreetly closed, except her own. The wide stairway looked cold and endless and the front door a mile away. She was tempted to give a shout and stir up echoes from the great domed ceiling, but resisted. She had tried it before and almost created bedlam among her mother and sister and the entire staff of servants. She had enjoyed it, but at the moment was not in the mood for such childish pranks. After two months' residence in this mausoleum of a house, her sense of humor failed her at times.

"Ridiculous," she repeated aloud, and suiting protest to action, she ran down the long stairway, skidded across the gleaming rotunda floor and escaped through the front door.

Manicured lawns with decorous shrubbery and precisely spaced trees did nothing to ease her restless mood. Disgruntled, she wished herself back where so short a time ago they had lived in more or less contented sanity, instead of making great fools of

themselves up here on Skyline Drive, where only the very best people of the town dared to breathe.

Ungrateful. It was her mother's most persistent definition of Sharon now, and the girl did not refute it, but no amount of argument could change her attitude toward the whole thing. It was ridiculous. The Parkers did not belong on Skyline Drive. High above the town, it lay against gentle hills in a quarter-moon curve that accommodated less than a dozen beautiful mansions in immaculate quiet. It was the quiet, more than anything, that made Sharon feel frantic. It was almost impossible to believe that behind the blank facade of these fine houses any life-breathing, thinking, moving life-existed at all. Even the Talmadge mansion at the north end of the curve, where her brother and sister-in-law lived, bore no evidence of youth within its stately walls.

Sharon scuffed her feet to destroy for a moment the perfection of grass too green and too preciously untrodden, and thought about her sister-in-law Lorraine, who was the real reason why she was here, and not happy as a lark on old Tiger Tail Road. Ever since her brother Dwayne had married Lorraine and moved into the Talmadge mansion, her mother had died a thousand deaths of frustration and jealousy, until Uncle Nate had appeared on the scene and with a wave of his magic wand transported the rest of the Parkers to the hill.

Uncle Nate. Again the thought of him made her roll her eyes helplessly. She had as little to do with him as possible, but he did rather haunt her mind. In some ways he seemed as much a victim of all this as she was herself, but that did not change the fact that, along with Lorraine, he had ruined her life.

"Sharon, for heaven's sake!" Behind her, the front door opened a few inches and her sister's voice hissed out at her. "Sharon, get in here-this minute!"

Sharon did not bother to turn. "What's up?" she shouted.

"Sh-" The door closed sharply.

Sharon's laughter echoed down the quiet drive. She just had to say it again, loud and clear. "Ridiculous!" And in her mind she could see her sister Debbie scuttling away from the front door, terrified that the butler would appear out of nowhere and catch her opening her own front door.

If only, Sharon thought, her mother and Debbie could see how ridiculous it was. There was always something both pitiful and contemptible about social climbing. If one were not a Lorraine Talmadge Parker, born to Skyline Drive and all it typified, there surely could be little happiness in coveting a like position. While it was true that Skyline Drive in recent years had seen a small influx of families not born to the cloth, as it were, it had to be obvious to all such intruders that they never quite made it. The Talmadges, Roths, Huntleys, and Kingsleys-the four first families -remained aloof, and all that was left to the intruders was to band together in false pretense that no line separated the two factions.

A rueful little smile touched Sharon's lips. Her brother's marriage to a Talmadge had started the whole thing, and yet it was not fair to blame Lorraine, vho was, in Sharon's opinion, not a bad sort. Sharon liked her, but with certain reservations. Anyone who could have so blindly married Dwayne Parker just had to be suspect in the brain department. Sharon had no illusions about her brother. Shallow, vain, and circumventive, Dwayne had married Lorraine because he was tainted by social ambitions and the Talmadges were the first family of Brookings.

Lorraine loved Dwayne. To Sharon, this was the mystery of the century, and had quite convinced her that love was wholly blind and for herself a thing to be carefully avoided. Not that she had much to worry about on that score. At nineteen, Sharon was not besieged by suitors and had, in fact, never had any boy or man interested in her past a first or second date. She scared them off, her mother said. She just did not have what it took, her always popular and now married sister declared.

Sharon shrugged. Nothing about marriages of either her sister or brother was particularly conducive to envy on her part. She liked her brother-in-law Hermie, but considered him a weak character to have let Debbie talk him into moving into the Skyline mansion. Sharon did, on the whole, find her in-laws much more likable than any member of her own family. Lorraine was rather fond of her, she believed, and Hermie, at least, had no foolish social ambitions.

Bored by the monotony of her thoughts and surroundings, Sharon listlessly returned to the house, climbed the great stairway and sought her own suite of rooms. Once there, she stood looking about her with a sadness of appreciation.

The very best decorators available had wrought their skill upon every inch of the house and there was no denying the flawless results. It was perhaps the very flawless aspect of it all that moved Sharon to protest. From time to time, she tried to bring life into her own quarters by scattering her belongings, knocking cushions to the floor, moving a chair or kicking a rug, but the moment her back was turned one of the innumerable servants restored order, and had done so now in her brief absence.