The Chameleon (21 page)

Yours,
Harry

“Why aren't your lips moving? Are you all right, dear?”

“Of course, Mother.” Claire had her face twisted up like her mother-in-law's in a poor rendition of an Eastern Shore aristocratic accent.

“What, dear? I can barely understand you. Whose mother is queer?”

Claire relaxed her lips and spoke in her regular clear mid-western voice. She had been practicing her diction as part of her campaign to conquer Locust Valley.

“No, no, Mother. I'm so glad you're
here.
” Obviously Claire's newly affected diction needed work.

“Come and hug me then. We're all just a bunch of sad sacks without you.”

“Me too.”

“Claire, you're as thin as a sparrow. Are you eating enough for the baby?”

Violet was spending a rare but much anticipated weekend with her daughter. Civilian travel was expensive and discouraged, not to mention that Violet's impeccable good manners wouldn't allow her to stay longer than was proper in a house in which she didn't feel entirely welcome. She hadn't seen the Harrisons since that disastrous January weekend when she and the Aunties had been invited to Charlotte Hall for what they assumed would be a round of black-tie postnuptial parties. Instead, the visit had gone like a Noel Coward comedy that they could laugh about only now.

Upon arrival, they were ushered into the lead-paned solarium for tea sandwiches with Harry and Claire, their bags whisked upstairs. Instructed to dress for dinner, Wren caused a small commotion before she realized the upstairs maids had only unpacked for her and were steaming, not stealing, her two outfits. By the time Slim descended the spiraling oak staircase holding her long enamel cigarette holder aloft while blowing smoke rings directly into the faces of the ancestors lining the wall, a slack-jawed Ophelia had made up her mind to cancel Saturday night's dinner at the club and Sunday's brunch with her Tuxedo neighbors. She told Harrison she simply wouldn't mix fruitcakes with caviar. Even Claire was aghast. She wondered what had happened to her proper aunties. Since they had arrived in Tuxedo they were behaving like the Marx Brothers.

So the lady houseguests were secluded like social lepers in the great house, a band hastily hired to provide dinner music Saturday night so that Claire and Harry could dance while the “mothers-in-law” tapped their toes like out-of-luck wallflowers.

Throughout it all, in contrast, Violet had behaved so properly that by the time the ladies departed for the Sunday night train back to the Midwest, she had probably intimidated her hosts as much as she had impressed the servants. She had left the help exactly the right amount of tip money for their weekend stay and discreetly left a dozen silk hangers and scented drawer liners for Ophelia to open after their departure as well as a beautiful fountain pen in a stand for their host.

Still, for all the pleasantries and promises exchanged, Violet felt like she was meant to be just an occasional house-guest and resolved not to intrude on the Harrisons’ hospitality any more often than was necessary. Besides, she was needed at the store. So it was just a quick visit and a little maternal aid—both emotional and financial. Just because her daughter was well married didn't mean the largesse spilled over into Claire's pocketbook. Like most of the very rich who budget for the cook's groceries and the chauffeur's car polish and the gardener's manure, Violet observed, no one had thought to give the new Mrs. Harrison a dime. So Violet slipped a twenty-dollar bill into Claire's palm as her daughter hugged and waved her off in the Harrisons’ chauffeur-driven town car.

After Violet's departure, the silences in the house became overbearing. Claire sometimes thought that unless she could find something useful to keep her occupied she'd go crazy herself. She'd read every baby book printed in English. But there was a war on and she had to find a way to participate.

It came together in the oddest way. Minnie Mortimer telephoned to invite Claire to a horse show at which they would be selling war bonds. Would Claire be interested in manning one of the tables? No one would need to see Claire from the waist down; some of the Old Guard of Tuxedo didn't fancy seeing a pregnant woman out and about, especially at a blue ribbon event. Minnie's offer was a prickly olive branch. Claire didn't bother to tell her that she still wasn't showing yet, just that she'd be there.

Sitting at her makeshift desk a good nervous hour before the bond drive began, Claire conscientiously pored over the literature neatly arranged on the table.

“A woman is a substitute,” one War Department brochure began, “like plastic instead of metal. Women are needed to do the work of men now that they are away.” “An idle typewriter,” a pamphlet from the Office of War Information trumpeted in bold type, “is just another weapon for Hitler.” Fascinated, Claire read on, pulling her cashmere cardigan closer. All of the literature was designed to encourage women to take secretarial jobs in Washington, where the mountain of paperwork necessary to move a nation through war was triple anything the capital had ever seen before. She itched to get close to the action. Later that afternoon, when the bond drive was over, Claire, an event calendar in her hand, motioned Minnie into the corner with an excited “Eleanor Roosevelt's coming!”

“Whose house?” Minnie yawned as though she couldn't have been more unimpressed.

“How far are we from Poughkeepsie?”

“Thinking of entering Vassar?” Minnie looked at Claire sideways.

“No, Eleanor Roosevelt is going to be speaking at a plant near there. I think we should go.”

Minnie pursed her lips and wondered if her old fiancé’s new bride had been kicked in the head by a horse. “If you want to go that's fine, but why me?”

“Because I haven't learned to drive yet.” Then Claire flashed her a smile every bit as charming as the diplomatic Harrison Senior's. She was learning.

The dogwood and forsythia along the roadway to upstate New York were in robust bloom, as were bright-hued tulips prying their way up from the moist earth, but all of them paled in comparison with the yellow silk daisies bunched on the first lady's hat. The two well-dressed girls arrived at the factory just as Mrs. Roosevelt was mounting a platform to speak with several women welders by literally walking the plank, the only means of ascending the makeshift platform erected four feet above the ground so that everyone in the crowd would be able to see her.

Mrs. Roosevelt's voice was mellifluous and pleasant, lifting up to the rafters of the former Waring factory, which now made small airplane parts instead of eggbeaters and blenders.

“If you've sewn on buttons, or made buttonholes on the machine, you can learn to do spot welding on airplane parts.” E.R.’s voice sang out like a high-pitched contralto. “If you've done fine embroidery, or made jewelry, you can learn to do assembly on time fuses and radio tubes. And if you've ever poured batter for a bundt cake, you can pour the lead for our bullets. Are you ready?”

A cheer went up and Claire's heart leaped.

“I am here today to commend you, and you are here to tell me what needs to be done. Once in a while down in Washington they listen to me when I have something to say.” She smiled. “I say, if our country needs its married women to work so that we can win this war, then the government needs to step in with day nurseries and play schools adjacent to our plants!”

Clapping, Claire turned to Minnie and said, “Isn't she wonderful?”

Minnie looked back at Claire and shrugged. “She sounds like a socialist to me. Besides, that's what we have nannies for.”

Claire turned away from her and inched closer to the applauding factory worker on her right.

“As I have traveled the country I am invigorated to see college girls and career women, shop girls and stenographers, housewives and widows, girls whose fathers are army men or girls whose husbands are flying planes and driving tanks, picking up the slack to do the work the men have left behind.” Claire applauded vigorously and thought of Harry. Surely she could think of some way to help her own flyboy.

Back at Charlotte Hall after the speech, Claire's step was lighter and her mind on her immediate goals as she raced up the elaborate floral carved staircase two steps at a time and whizzed past her father-in-law's bedroom. Something caught her eye. She backtracked and poked her head into the normally unoccupied suite. She was surprised to see Alice and Katy, the upstairs maids, involved in an elaborate bed-making ritual. As they shook the thousand-thread-count second sheet, one girl on either side of the four-poster bed, the Egyptian cotton and silk blend fabric was billowing up into a huge balloon over the bed like a perfectly shaped cloud. As the luxurious square of custom cotton fell flat, each of the gray-uniformed girls with a starched pinafore hurried to pull the top sheet taut and tuck it into hospital corners before any wrinkles could form in the fabric.

“Could you do that again?” Claire spoke with all the authority of Mrs. Roosevelt, whose no-nonsense voice still rang in her ears. “Please.”

“What, ma'am?”

“Have we left any wrinkles, Miss Organ?”

Claire cringed at the sound of her maiden name, but to the maids in this house, there would always be only one Mrs. Harrison.

“Um, yes. And you know how Mrs. Harrison dislikes sloppy work.” There was such an unexpected authority in her voice that the startled maids undid their handiwork and began again.

“Oh, and billow it out, yes, high now … and hold it, just like that … to shake the wrinkles out.” Claire directed. Charmed at the lovely sight, she leaned against the door well and watched as the sheet floated so softly to touch the mattress below it could have landed an angel. And then it came to her. Like quicksilver Claire was out of the room, bounding down the stairs again and into Harrison's office. She closed the door and began to type, her fingers flying over the lettered keys, leaving Alice and Katy, who overheard everything at Charlotte Hall, to wonder whether Miss Claire wasn't as batty as those Aunties.

The small private elevator, paneled in wood, was crammed full of crocodile suitcases forming a pyramid up to its vaulted cathedral ceiling. The Harrisons were returning to Charlotte Hall, though one of them—no one bothered to tell Claire which—was a day ahead of the other.

But Claire was busy concentrating in Harry's old nursery. She stood atop a step ladder, her pastel smocked shirt puckered at what used to be her waist, painting cumulus clouds on the walls and ceiling. The puffy clouds were bright white, their linings tinged with pinks, and they sailed through a clear bright sky dotted with shiny silver airplanes wearing big smiles on their fuselages. And in the recessed space where the crib would stand was her masterpiece, a striped hot-air balloon flanked by two creamy white parachutes gently sailing a pair of happy clowns to earth. No soldiers or guns in her child's nursery. No horses either.

“Claire. Come down off that ladder!” She was so startled to hear his voice that she tumbled off faster than her feet. Harrison caught her before she crashed to the floor.

“Safe. No harm done.” She stood up, recovering quickly. She was seized with a momentary panic as she remembered Ophelia's admonition to stay off ladders. Claire hoped Harrison wouldn't tell his wife. Who knew what punishment Ophelia might try to impose?

“How goes the work of the ambassador of war?”

“Better, thanks to the busy work you've been up to.”

So he knew. Claire could tell by his smile.

“I have to admit that when they first told me that Mrs. William Henry Harrison had secured an enormous contract for manufacturing war matériel, turning the leading producer of bed linens and hosiery into our biggest supplier of parachutes, I was astonished that Ophelia could carry off such a coup. But when I congratulated her over dinner, she didn't know what I was talking about. The following day when I looked into the matter and learned that the supplier was Marshall Field and Company, I knew that our Mrs. Harrison was you.” Harrison was wearing his genuine grin now, not his diplomatic one.

Indeed, Claire had written a series of impassioned letters lobbying her old acquaintances in the executive office to give up manufacturing Field's primary products, Fieldcrest sheets and pillowcases, and to sacrifice Zionets lace curtains and Fieldbilt lingerie for the war's duration to serve a bigger need. She suggested that by turning over their North Carolina mills and Indiana plants to the production of war goods—silk bags for gunpowder, and parachute cloth, camouflage, and mosquito netting—Field's could make good on the store's motto to “give the lady what she wants,” namely a speedy end to the war and her husband's and son's safe return. Little did Claire realize at the time that out of her instinct to help her Harry, she had helped a thousand Harrys.

“I think the war effort could use your persuasive skills more than your paintbrushes,” Harrison continued. “Come down from your ladder, Claire, and come to Washington with me.”

July 9, 1942

USS
Hornet

Clairest,

Fancy that! Father tells me if I have to bail out of my bomber I probably have you to thank for the smooth ride down. Aren ‘t you the resourceful one, turning sheets into parachutes, but then I did get the prettiest girl at the party and shouldn't be too surprised at any of your accomplishments.

Darling, I can't tell you what comfort it gives me to know that you will be safe now with my parents at the Willard where Mother can look after you properly. I am truly delighted she was able to track down and persuade old Bridget to come out of retirement and be our baby's nurse. She was my nurse until I was nine and I seem to have turned out none the worse for it.

Forgive me, Claire, for not wanting to share my war news but rather to hear all about your domestic adventures, whether or not the baby has kicked you in the side yet or if you like the plans for our house to be built on the north parcel of C.H. We will be just a stone's throw from the big house. Do you like Mother's plan for a connecting underground passageway?

I have had my first brushes with the darker side of the war and my greatest salvation is to envision the three, no three and three-quarters, of you, minding the hearth and giving so generously with your own volunteer efforts. But do remember to rest and listen to Mother—at least until our little one is born.