Sitting down at the dressing table, she slipped on a pair of pink silk moire heels she'd bought to wear with the dress. When she straightened, her gaze fell on the framed copy of an old issue of Business Week that was hanging on the wall. On the cover of the magazine was a picture of Bancroft's stately downtown store, with its uniformed doormen standing at the main entrance. The fourteen-story building was a Chicago landmark, the doormen a historic symbol of Bancroft's continuing insistence on excellence and service to its customers. Inside the magazine was a long, glowing article about the store, which said that a Bancroft label on an item was a status symbol; the ornate B on its shopping bags the emblem of a discriminating shopper. The article also commented about the remarkable competence of Bancroft heirs when it came to running their business. It said that a talent for—and love of—retailing seemed to have been passed along in Bancroft genes from its founder, James D. Bancroft.
When the writer had interviewed Meredith's grandfather and asked him about that, Cyril had reportedly laughed and said it was possible. He'd added, however, that James Bancroft had begun a tradition that had been handed down from father to son—a tradition of grooming and training the heir from the time he was old enough to leave the nursery and dine with his parents. There, at the dining table, each father began to speak to their sons about whatever was happening at the store. For the child, these daily vignettes about the store's operation constituted the equivalent of ongoing bedtime stories. Excitement and suspense were generated; knowledge was subtly imparted. And absorbed. Later, simplified problems were casually brought up and discussed with the teenager. Solutions were asked for—and listened to, though rarely found. But then, finding solutions wasn't the real goal anyway; the goal was to teach and stimulate and encourage.
At the end of the article, the writer had asked Cyril about his successors and, as Meredith thought about her grandfather's reply, she felt a lump in her throat: "My son has already succeeded me to the presidency," Cyril had said. "He has one child, and when the time comes for her to take over the presidency of Bancroft & Company, I have every faith Meredith will carry on admirably. I only wish I could be alive to see it." Meredith knew that if her father had his way, she would never assume the presidency of Bancroft's. Although he'd always discussed the operation of the store with her, just as his father had done with him, he was adamantly opposed to her ever working there. She made that discovery while they were having dinner soon after her grandfather's funeral. In the past, she'd repeatedly mentioned her intention of following tradition and taking her place at Bancroft's, but either he hadn't listened or he hadn't believed her. That night he did take her seriously, and he informed her with brutal frankness that he did not expect her to succeed him, nor did he want her to. That was a privilege he planned to reserve for a future grandson. Then he coldly acquainted Meredith with an entirely different tradition and one he intended she follow: Bancroft women did not work at the store, or anywhere else, for that matter. Their duty was to be exemplary wives and mothers, and to donate whatever additional talents and time they had to charitable and civic endeavors.
Meredith wasn't willing to accept that; she couldn't, not now. It was too late. Long before she'd fallen in love with Parker—or thought she had—she had fallen in love with "her" store. By the time she was six, she was already on a first-name basis with all of the doormen and security clerks. At twelve she knew the names of every vice president and what his responsibilities were. At thirteen she'd asked to accompany her father to New York, where she'd spent an afternoon at Bloomingdale's, being shown around the store, while her father attended a meeting in the auditorium. When they left New York, she'd already formed her own opinions—not all of them correct— about why Bancroft's was superior to "Bloomie's."
Now, at eighteen, she already had a general knowledge of things like workers compensation problems, profit margins, merchandising techniques, and product liability problems. Those were the things that fascinated her, the things she wanted to study, and she was not going to spend the next four years of her life taking classes in romance languages and Renaissance art!
When she told him that, he had slammed his hand down on the table with a crash that made the dishes jump. "You are going to Maryville, where both your grandmothers have gone, and you will continue to live at home! At home!" he reiterated. "Is that clear? The subject is closed!" Then he'd shoved his chair back and left.
As a child, Meredith had done everything to please him, and please him she had—with her grades, her manners, and her deportment. In fact, she'd been a model daughter. Now, however, she was finally realizing that the price of pleasing her father and maintaining the peace was becoming much higher: It required subjugating her individuality and surrendering all her dreams for her own future, not to mention sacrificing a social life!
His absurd attitude toward her dating or going to parties wasn't her main problem right now, but it had become a sharp point of contention and embarrassment for her this summer. Now that she was eighteen, he appeared to be tightening restrictions instead of loosening them. If Meredith had a date, he personally met the young man at the door and subjected him to a lengthy cross-examination while treating him with an insulting contempt that was intended to intimidate him into never asking her out again. Then he set a ridiculously early curfew of midnight. If she spent the night at Lisa's, he invented a reason to call her and make certain she was there. If she went out for a drive in the evening, he wanted an itinerary of where she was going; when she came back home he wanted an accounting of every minute she'd been gone. After all those years in private schools with the strictest possible rules, she wanted a taste of complete freedom. She'd earned it. She deserved it. The idea of living at home for the next four years, under her father's increasingly watchful eye, was unbearable and unnecessary.
Until now she'd never openly rebelled, for rebellion only ignited his temper. He hated being opposed by anyone and, once riled, he could remain frigidly angry for weeks. But it wasn't only fear of his anger that had made her acquiesce to him in the past. In the first place, part of her longed for his approval. In the second place, she could understand how humiliated he must have been by her mother's behavior and the scandal that had followed. When Parker had told her about all that, he'd said her father's overprotective attitude toward Meredith was probably due to the fear of losing her—for she was all he had—and partly to the fear that she might inadvertently do something to reawaken the talk about the scandal her mother had created. Meredith didn't particularly like that last idea, but she'd accepted it, and so she'd spent five weeks of the summer trying to reason with him; when that failed, she'd resorted to arguing. Yesterday, however, the hostilities between them had erupted into their first raging battle. The bill for her tuition deposit had come from NorthwesternUniversity, and Meredith had taken it to him in his study. Calmly and quietly, she had said, "I am not going to go to Maryville. I'm going to Northwestern and getting a degree that's worth something."