The Chameleon (35 page)

“Oh, why delay the inevitable?” And she signed in triplicate the places he had marked.

“Claire.” Tom started to lay his hand over hers as he took back the document. “If there's anything I can ever—”

She pulled her hand away as if he had touched a raw nerve and, clutching at her gray gloves, felt a hint of color returning to her cheeks. She was sure she had handled herself like a lady, and she was glad she had given Minnie and Winchell nothing in her behavior to crow about. Hadn't there been enough domestic damage already?

Auntie Wren's hand-painted banner and colorful welcome-home balloons festooned the arch between the dining room and double living room of their Windermere apartment. The longtime friends had purchased a two-bedroom suite on the top floor of the residential hotel that provided them a peachy view of a tree-filled Jackson Park and four whole windows overlooking Lake Michigan. Violet's financial wizardry and plain old-fashioned thrift had finally made her a woman of property. It wasn't a palace—it wasn't even a house—and while it wasn't in Slim's swanky neighborhood, it was paid for, pleasantly furnished, and home. Violet and Wren had happily gone to the extra effort to greet the tired travelers with the fresh smells of just-baked chocolate chip cookies. The minute Claire and the children entered the sun-filled apartment, decorated with framed finger-painted originals by Sara and Six, the tension of the last few days flew away like the pigeons that took their breakfast on the Aunties’ windowsill.

Claire had tried to protect her children from the angry words and accusations hurled at their departure from Charlotte Hall. As usual, the Aunties had the old-fashioned remedy: busy days and lots of laughter. Six preferred the Museum of Science and Industry half a block away, with its giant beating heart you could walk through, and Sara liked the sailboat pond off the drive at Fifty-seventh Street almost as much as she enjoyed doing something she had never done before: grocery shop. She insisted on wearing her best Florence Eisman to tap the grocer's melons, pinch the grapes, and instruct the butcher
exactly
what size and shape to cut their lamb chops before he wrapped them in the shiny white paper. The butcher always called her “young lady” and gave her a sample of something she had never tasted before, like salami or tongue. In the restful evenings—the Aunties took their dinner promptly at seven—me tuckered-out children were content to listen to the Aunties’ store stories, the radio playing in the background, and pore over their mother's pretty stamps.

Wren wrung her hands and cried.

“It's the one thing we didn't teach you. What to—you know—how to keep them—that
hormonal
part of a man happy.”

“Wren, please! Stop this!” Slim choreographed her entrance like Ruby Keeler.

“It's not the most terrible thing in the world. The duchess of Windsor was divorced
twice
before she married her king, and so was Rita Hayworth. As the French say, sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get your prince.”

“Well, if that's the game plan, you should be an empress by now,” Violet observed sharply.

Ignoring her, Slim continued. “We've always been a special pride of lions, an all-female family.” She sighed. “And now God has blessed us with two beautiful grandchildren to cherish, and even”—she hid her deep emotion—”the most special little boy on the planet.”

William Henry Harrison VI, “Six” to his East Coast family but called “Sweet William” by the Aunties or just plain William by Grandlady Violet, was a head turner. No matter where he went in Marshall Field's, somebody stopped shopping just to stare at this beautiful child who moved in a part-the-seas way.

Wren was aghast at how anyone could name this angel dropped to earth after a number. “How could they? Like Sweet William was something you could buy at the pastry shop after you've waited your turn.”

“No imagination, that's how.” Slim explained it away. “Sure,
I'm
named after an adjective, but at least it's descriptive.” She ran her hands down her sleek hips. “Six is just something that comes after five and before seven. Isn't it, darling?” She pinched his cheeks with hands circled with clanging charm bracelets, smothering him in a mist of Chanel No. 5 and My Sin.

“I love the way you smell, Auntie Slim.” He adored her. For all the special attention lavished upon Six, no one could say he was spoiled. The cherished child, who received
so
much love, only had more love to give back.

At his request, Six celebrated his sixth birthday in the store's Walnut Room, the same room, they all remembered, where Ophelia Harrison's purchase had bought Christmas in the depth of the Depression and a ticket out of debt when Claire had been just about the same age. While his sister wasn't looking, Six rolled up his sleeve and grabbed a slippery orange goldfish out of the fountain and mischievously dropped it down the back of her party dress. After a few seconds of hysterics, all was forgiven. Nobody, especially Sara, could stay angry at Sweet William.

I've never felt so relaxed, Claire thought as she tucked her nose into the crook of her elbow and swung easily on the fringed silk hammock hanging across Slim's salon. God knows what her aunt and Cyrus Pettibone had done in this contraption, but who was she to judge? No matter where, it felt good to be alone for a lazy half hour. Mother was at the store, Wren was with the children at the zoo, and she was waiting in no particular hurry for Slim to return from “lunch” with Uncle Cyrus. She laughed to herself. Sometimes out of great complications came serenity. At this moment she was seriously considering writing a social studies chapter on how women could come together and raise very fine children.

“You shouldn't have signed the papers.” The serious expression on Slim's face as she entered the room was as set as a dead-bolt lock.

“We've been over this before.” Claire was still in the lull of the swaying hammock. “It's done.”

“Undone, according to Cyrus. Ophelia's filing a custody suit. She's determined to steal both of your children away. Full custody. Evidently those divorce papers you so graciously signed didn't give you as much as you thought.

Harder to do battle with the Harrisons without their kind of bucks.”

Claire sat upright and brought her feet down to the floor. “But they don't take children away just because one parent's richer.”

“No, dear. But they do if the rich parent's family dines with judges and”—the unblushable Slim was embarrassed—“accuse the mother of anti-American acts.”

“What on earth can you be talking about?” Claire stood and tried to steady herself, letting the silly hammock swing away. “I've been playing Betty Crocker for five years!”

“Evidently there was a fly in the batter. My dear Claire, I'll testify for you in court. We all will.”

Suddenly Claire was truly terrified. A vision of the colorfully hatted Aunties, single ladies all, taking the stand across the room from the gray-garbed Harrisons, long-married pillars of the world's best communities, rattled her so that she fell backwards into the silk swing and hung there dumbfounded.

It was several hours before Claire could fully mobilize herself into reaction. After she and Slim taxied to Hyde Park and the children were given a quick supper and tucked into bed, the four ladies assessed the situation. Slim outlined the story for them all as Claire nervously paced the floor. Evidently private detectives had been following her for months, and since no lover could be found or phantom invented, they had to search deeper. Claire had been a true incarnation of the good mother. She didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't swear, and never missed so much as a bubble bath she had promised her children. So the only thing left to assassinate was her political character. With Senator Joseph McCarthy finding Reds under every rock, it was becoming fashionable to be frightened by Communists. What with the Soviet Union expanding its party lines left and left, if a very good lawyer could connect the dots between Claire harboring deserted Czechoslovakian children and Korean orphans, importing them into America—literally taking in the teeming masses struggling to be free—and some “all are equal” Communist manifesto she might be in for a very ugly trial.

“We've always taught you to help everyone in need, but it's not like you're Emma Goldman.” Secretly Wren was an admirer of the socialist firebrand.

“Nor are we your average family.” Slim was the reality check.

“Exactly what
do
you know, Slim? The facts will do.” Violet was the calm in the hurricane.

“Well, ever since Cyrus's prostate trouble we do more pillow talk than anything else in the—”

“The fact, not the finding, will do nicely.” Violet arched a feathery eyebrow. In the afternoon light off the lake there suddenly appeared a fresh touch of gray at her temples.

“Cyrus says…” Slim had spoken those words so many hundreds of times over the years that the others had invented their own eponymous secret parlor game. Violet had always vowed that she was going to turn “Cyrus says” into a board game one day, sell it at Field's, and make her fortune.

“Cyrus says there's cause for concern.”

Wren envisioned the yellow game pieces moving two squares back on the board.

“Concern?”

“Yes, Ophelia's confided in Millicent Pettibone, who's confided in Cyrus.” Slim rolled one fingernail over the other as if to explain.

“Thank goodness for pillow talk.” Wren put her palms together.

“Quiet. Go on, Slim.”

“Tom What's-his-name, the Harrisons’ private hatchet man, has already filed in court in Ramapo County, where all their poor cousins are judges, to bring the children—let me get this right—home. Yes, ‘home to the only place they've ever lived in.’ They have money, connections, and evidently Ophelia is breathing fire over this. Cyrus says”—she took a breath—“Claire doesn't have a mouse's chance in a cat house.”

“What am I going to do? How can I save my children?” Claire almost screamed. “They're so much happier here with all of you. Away from
them.
” Her voice was a lament.

The phone rang half a dozen times before any of them had the composure to allow an invisible stranger into their crisis. Slim listened for a moment or two and then put down the receiver. She turned to Claire.

“Cyrus says you're to call Mr. Harrison at this number right away.”

“Harry?” parroted Wren. “Is there a chance you two children might patch things up?”

“Merde!”
Slim was furious. “Not Harry—Cyrus says he's going to marry Minnie Mortimer and Ophelia's going to give them Claire's children as a wedding present.”

Claire started to swoon.

“Steady, now. Here's the number you're supposed to call for the elder Mr. Harrison.”

The concerned ladies moved into the kitchen but not completely out of earshot. They strained to pick up bits and pieces of Claire's conversation with her father-in-law.

Claire, shaking with rage, nonetheless spoke into the phone with the voice of a gentle sparrow.

“How could you? Why would you? Why not just take a knife and cut out my heart?”

And then there was a very long silence. Auntie Wren peeked through the crack of the swinging doors, hushing the others behind her. Claire's mouth was a perfectly straight line—not a natural shape for a mouth.

“I don't understand…

“It sounds cold-hearted.

“Arrangements like that can't be ordered. Isn't something like that an affair of the heart?

“Why would he possibly want to help? What's in it for him?”

Everyone in the kitchen held her breath as the next minutes passed without Claire uttering a single word.

“Oh, I see.

“Yes, of course. It would put an ocean between us. And the lawyers couldn't touch us there?

“I see. Of course. Speed. I understand.”

And then the Aunties heard a quivering contralto in Claire's voice they had never heard before.

“And will you make it over?”

And then an icy response. “Of course. I'll be sufficiently grateful. I won't give him cause to be sorry.

“I've never quite understood your negotiating skills before. You really are the master. Don't worry.” Her voice dropped away like fallen rose petals. “I'm in. The deal is sealed in rubber and cement.”

She stood there, cradling the phone in her hands, listening to the dead signal. Finally she put the receiver to rest and turned stony-faced to the expectant Aunties.

“I need to get passports for the children. I'm taking them on holiday to Italy.”

Never had there been so much hysteria over scrambled eggs and bacon at staid Charlotte Hall. The family that handled every crisis with icy calm was now wiping spilled milk and orange juice off the morning pages of the
New York Herald
and the
Times.
There, not on the society pages but in the international news section of both papers, was the announcement, accompanied by separate pictures of the principals, of the surprise nuptials of society matron Mrs. William Henry Harrison V to Fulco Duccio, Italy's playboy businessman whose fortune was estimated in the hundreds of millions.

Both Cholly Knickerbocker and Walter Winchell reminded their readers that the dashing Duccio was a regular figure in Europe's fast night life. The
Post
reported that he had recently caused a ruckus at Maxim's in Paris, breaking glasses and chairs when the French ballerina he was dating danced with another man. Mr. Duccio had reimbursed the French restaurant for its expenses and was still a regular at its best table. Mrs. Harrison, attended only by Anna Roosevelt and the bride's children from her first marriage, wore a blue Balenciaga and carried violets. She is best known here for her generous charity work and in particular for founding Eleanor House, a children's refugee center.

Harry read aloud to the rest of the family, a long-faced Minnie at his elbow, while Ophelia noisily rearranged her Lowestoft china with the back of her hand, and Harrison reached into his pocket to light an early morning cigar.

Across the sea, Claire Harrison Duccio was learning Italian and busily reinventing herself.

Chapter Twelve

Social Climbing