Baby of the Family

by Maura Roosevelt

  One marine yelled: Heeeeeh-up! The three in the line twirled their rifles into position, expressionless. Bang, bang, bang: three shots rang out in succession. A three-volley salute for Grandfather Whitby. The other two marines held the open American flag at chest level, as the bugler began the first bars of taps. Nick’s mother found his hand, and he let her take it. The bugle hadn’t made it past “gone the sun” when the girl began her howls again. How many people were there? Hundreds? Many dabbed their eyes with tissues, but this girl was the only one making a scene of it. Nick looked again. She was older than him—fourteen?—wearing black corduroy pants and a blue paisley tunic. Hardly funeral wear. Then it came to him: he knew her. It was just before his mother had married Roger and they’d moved to California, when he had been sent unaccompanied on an Amtrak train from New York to Boston to go to swim camp. He had been sitting across the aisle from this exact girl, who had been reading a book. On the train she began to laugh loudly at her book every few pages—a squawk, to be honest—which forced everyone in the car to direct their attention to her.

  Something about her face on the train had made Nick’s eyes linger; he wanted to stare at it for hours, to figure out how it worked. The eyes, the lips, the nose, the mouth: all slight, unobtrusive oval shapes. Pale but not too pale. Freckled just barely. It was a perfectly plain face, but it tempted him. He had tried to turn away, to watch the View-Master scenes of New England click by the train window. The sun was setting into stripes of orange and purple, and the flat blue shoreline of Connecticut spread itself out. Boats filed perfectly into slips; sailboats, motorboats, wooden cigarette boats; one after another, row upon row. Nick turned back to the girl. Her lank brown hair hung over one cheek. His gut compelled him to go over and yank that hair, hard. He wanted to see what she’d do. He swiveled to the window: burnt bristle tree stumps stuck out of the water, a dam’s stillness reflected back. Not an animal in sight. Bombed-out and boarded-up brick warehouses echoed the roar of the zooming train. No one in the car said a word. The girl squawked; Nick examined the curve of her waist, the plump funnel of her upper arm. To the window—the sky azure-ice blue, then water again: silver. Soon came the bridges of Rhode Island in the nighttime. Metal turning to stone; the hum of permanence. Her laugh.

  In California the end of the burial procession had begun. It was time to throw handfuls of dirt over the coffin and set the old man to rest. The minister, in his white Episcopal robe, spoke in a monotone: “Ashes to ashes . . .” Multigenerational ex-wives, dressed head to toe in black, traded glances and raised eyebrows. They would settle a plan for who would throw in the first handful. Was it possible that Nick and his mother were the only people who didn’t know everyone else there? The wives were mid-head-tilt-conversation, when the girl from the train marched ahead and picked up a fist full of dirt. She threw it into the hole recklessly. “Love you, Grandfather,” she announced in a clear, strong voice. She shrugged and began her way back to the crowd when Roger seemed to snap into it.

  His deep croak: “Thank you, Shelley.”

  Then the girl did an about-face. She put two hands on Roger’s shoulders and bent to kiss the man on the cheek. “Love you too, Daddy,” she announced, her face turned expectantly to the crowd.

  Daddy. That’s what she had called him. Nick had met the people who were now his other half siblings—the older ones, Andrew and Kiki, and Kiki’s sister and brother. Many of them lived in New York with their multitudes of children. But this girl was younger than the rest, closer to his age. And no one had ever said a thing about her. Could it be true? Anger for his own mother boiled inside of Nick, and he dropped her hand. The word resounded within him. Daddy.

  6

  | 2003 |

  “Well then, dear. All is not lost. Not yet.” Armond nodded as he retied his maroon scarf. Brooke, standing on the banks of the rapidly thawing Charles River next to the aged but very upright man, tugged on Phoebe’s leash to keep the dog away from a wandering duck. They were in front of the orange Arthur Fiedler footbridge, which would soon carry Armond over Storrow Drive and return him to his decorous home office on Commonwealth Avenue. It was before eight in the morning, and Brooke and Armond had just completed one of the early walks that they’d been going on a few times a year for the majority of Brooke’s life. They’d been going on these walks together since Brooke’s father left, right before she started high school. Perhaps Armond did this because she was the youngest of the brood then, and the most in need of a father figure. Or maybe it was because he saw himself in her measured, sincere ways. Both of them were early risers and serious walkers.

  He tucked his hands up near his armpits as he often did when departing: a clear sign that he was not planning to shake her hand, and certainly not offer an embrace. His consistency was a comfort.

  “Thank you, as always,” she said. He nodded again and turned. She watched his charcoal-wool-covered back stride up and away on the orange ramp. How much she owed this now old man for walking with her over the years, for listening to her troubles and triumphs and offering small snippets of guidance. She occasionally wondered if Armond regretted never having children of his own. He had not married and had always lived alone in the big Back Bay town house that had once belonged to his parents. He never acknowledged his personal life at all. Instead, Armond was a listener, and a good one. The frustration at her recently deceased father that had been churning inside of Brooke for the past week had just funneled out of her mouth and into Armond’s quiet, receptive ears. She was furious at her father for disinheriting her and plagued by the questions of why, but her upset had also stirred her anger at him for leaving her family so many years ago. And now she was even mad at him for dying.

  For nearly eight days Brooke had been legitimately fatherless. But of course, her father had been absent for so much longer than that. As she stomped again along the cracked river path in her L.L.Bean boots, she muttered to herself, “All is not lost,” mimicking Armond’s antiquated accent. But she felt the laces that held her together loosening at her center. She was terrified that everything was, once again, coming undone.

  At least the dog was happy, panting and trotting along in the frigid morning as they walked toward the CVS by Charles Circle. Brooke wouldn’t allow Saul’s son, the pharmacist at the local pharmacy, Gary Drug, to ask her questions about the thing she needed to buy there. Her dizziness had dissipated, so she wasn’t very worried anymore, but she would still buy the test as a precaution. By the river, a handful of poplar trees carried white buds on the ends of their knurled branches, and two runners sprang around her on the path—a couple wearing knit gloves and beanie hats. The air emitted the chlorinated smell of melting ice, but winter’s knuckles were still grasping for a few more weeks of life. In Boston, not-yet-May was often still winter.

  Armond had given her sound advice about the house problem: lay out the disparate possibilities of what could happen with the property, calculate the financial outcomes of each, and write down a plan for dealing with each potential outcome. It was a logical task, and she could complete it that morning. In a dream world she and her half sister Shelley would work together to pin down this Nick child. She knew Shelley better than any of her other half siblings, due to the summers they were both on the Vineyard. Perhaps they could convince Nick to simply gift Shelley’s New York house and Brooke’s Boston house to them, respectively. Maybe, if Nick was given all the rest of the money without a fight, he wouldn’t mind?

  A ridiculous thought. This child owed her nothing. He had no ties to her at all; why on earth would he just give her a property that was effectively worth millions of dollars? What was more likely was that Nick would take ownership of the house on Joy Street, the only place Brooke had ever been stable and happy, and live into his old age on all the remaining Whitby money he’d come into by the odd collision of coincidences. But still: What if? What if she went to New York the next day and she and Shelley worked together to find him and ta
lk to him at least?

  Perhaps that’s what she needed, anyway, a New York trip to lift her spirits. In Boston, Brooke had always felt like a regular, if unlucky, person. But in New York she felt like a Whitby. It wasn’t just the roads and the buildings bearing her family name that gave her that impression. It was the energy of the city that allowed her to step up into the role of heir, a role that no one really gave a damn about in Boston. But in New York, people noticed her. She was acknowledged.

  When she was a child, her family would go to the city a handful of weekends every year, one of which was always the first weekend in December, for the annual Whitby Christmas party. They’d catch the early train and arrive in Midtown at the family hotel, the Whitby-Grand, just after noon. The hotel had begun as two separate hotels built next to each other, the Whitby and the Grand, helmed by warring cousins at the end of the nineteenth century. It was Ethan Whitby who had later joined them together, convincing the two sides of the family that if they kept the infighting within private residences and out of business deals, it would benefit all involved. And Ethan proved to be correct, even after his death: in the years following the merger, the hotel was known as one of the most luxurious and prominent in the nation, raising millions of dollars from events hosted in ballrooms—from benefits supporting victims of the Titanic to Cold War–era peace conferences, where the president himself laid out plans to eliminate the counterinsurgents and communists who plagued the nation. But in the seventies, after their international hotel chain endeavor failed sorely, the Whitby success began to plummet and they sold off pieces of the New York hotel.

  Now it was just another Davidson property, owned by modern-day wealthy people who still worked. But when Brooke was little, when it was still theirs, she felt that as soon as she entered the hotel, she was a Whitby princess. The grown-up guests smiled down at her, and the navy-suited staff asked her if she needed anything. The expansive main lobby varied its holiday decorations every year: one year giant red and gold bows dangled from the archways and staircases; another year, dozens of elf-sized Christmas trees adorned the balcony level, each overdecorated, creating a maze worthy of Charlie and his chocolate factory. The decorations changed, but every year, without fail, there were the great silver branches held in oversize urns set up in the entryway. Pinprick lights gilded the branches as they arched up and over Brooke’s head, forming a shining dome. When she walked through that glowing Christmas arch, that was when the transformation happened. It was her favorite moment of every year.

  The last year of the Christmas party, 1977, was also, possibly, the best one: it was when her parents decided to put on a show, for the rest of the family and whatever longtime friends and business associates who received their annual invitations. The party was in the ballroom as it always was, but that year it seemed there were more people in attendance than usual; faces peeked down from the stacked balconies, as if they were at the opera. Brooke’s mother strutted up to the microphone in a strapless gold lamé gown, with a peplum jutting straight out from her narrow waist, while her father took a seat at the piano.

  Later, Kiki and LJ would say they were mortified by the prospect of their father playing the piano and both parents crooning away, but Brooke, young and naive, had been thrilled by it. They looked perfect up there: her father leaning back at the baby grand Steinway in his red bow tie, wearing a Santa hat at an angle. Her dark-haired, mysterious mother beaming. The couple launched right into the beginning of “White Christmas,” and as soon as they began, all of the partygoers fell into thunderous applause. It was a few hours into the event, but the older kids had yet to pull their inevitable prank. Brooke’s older siblings and cousins had a tradition of completing a small prank every year, although their schemes had been growing over the years. It was more than exciting when all the cousins from the shipping side (the Rogers) and the railroad side (the Ethans) got together. It was joyous. During their daily lives at school and at summer camp, they were always set apart. They were looked at by other kids and parents and teachers with an edge of suspicion and an arm’s-length curiosity; each child was an awkwardly plain yet semifamous specimen. So when they were in the same place it was a relief. They all felt giddy to be part of the norm, just one of the gang. And they channeled this giddiness into their pranks. But perhaps the tradition would be snuffed due to her cousin Theo Jr.’s pyrotechnics last winter: he’d set the Christmas cake on fire, causing the kitchen staff to revolt and threaten to not make anything for the coming year’s party. It really had been ablaze, four tiers with flames shooting up from it. The adults who were not enraged seemed actually rather tickled. Was it kerosene? Olive oil? How had he managed to do that?

  At the close of her parents’ first song, Roger and Corney kissed each other. Screams of approval and whistles of pleasure resounded from the floor and all tiers of the balconies. Corney looked coyly around the room and said into the microphone in a husky, dampened voice, “Oh, who’s coming to town? Who is on his way?” She put a hand over her eyes, as if to search the horizon, while behind her Brooke’s father began singing, “You better watch out, you better not cry . . .” The crowd cheered and began to clap along to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

  Little Brooke, at the edge of the dance floor in her velvet-topped red plaid dress, found herself swaying along, grinning while holding her Shirley Temple. Where were Kiki and LJ? Where had all her cousins gone? It was the first Christmas party that her younger brother, Peter, hadn’t come to. He was already very sick, although no one in the family ever verbalized the word cancer. But everyone was positive about his treatment then, and one of the nannies, Carla, was probably sitting beside him in his bed at Children’s Hospital in Boston at that very moment. Brooke always had an empty feeling without her little brother, her constant playmate, around, like she’d forgotten to pack something important but couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

  It was after the second number that Brooke’s mother stopped and announced to the crowd: “We have a very special song right now, for a girl who recently turned twelve, and has spent the past year being the best daughter and big sister a mother could ever dream of.”

  It took Brooke a moment to realize her mother was talking about her. All the faces in the ballroom turned, and her father got up from the piano and leaned into the microphone. “Birdie, where are you? Would you come up here and dance with your dear old dad?”

  Everyone clapped as Brooke made her way toward her father, at the front of the crowd. He grabbed her hands and spun her around, before taking her fully into his ballroom-dancing-trained arms. Her mother began an a cappella version of “The First Noel,” and her father swayed and twirled a giggling, blushing Brooke.

  In retrospect, Brooke understood that her parents had enacted this charade because they knew how hard she was taking Peter’s sickness. His death, which would occur a year later, would tear her family apart and forever change the course of Brooke’s life. Her father would never totally recover from it. But at the time, Brooke had not envisioned that possibility. And it didn’t occur to her to analyze her parents’ motivation for the singing-and-dancing show. She was simply happy. Upstairs in the ballroom’s balconies, her older brother, LJ, was in the midst of leading a band of Whitby cousins in what he considered the greatest prank they’d yet to pull. He and Theo Jr. had cooked up this plan over the phone, and two days earlier LJ had gone to Gary Drug on Charles Street. He’d told Saul, without blinking an eye, that what he needed was three cartons of condoms.

  “Cartons?” Saul had leaned over the counter with eyebrows raised. “What do you need one carton for, LJ?”

  “I just need them!”

  Saul rolled his eyes. “And I don’t suppose a quick call to your father would change this order?”

  LJ’s jaw set, and he stamped one foot. “This is illegal, Saul. I need three cartons of condoms, and I’m paying you for them. So just give them to me before I call the police!” He was a skinny
and childlike sixteen—not someone who should, or by the look of it could, be using the condoms for their intended purpose. LJ continued, “And, if you really must know, these prophylactics are for a sexual-health class at the St. Paul’s School, where I am an exemplary member of the student body. Ever heard of it, St. Paul’s?”

  Saul rolled his eyes so far back he looked possessed. “You are not paying for any of this, kid,” he grumbled as he walked into the back room to get the products. He muttered jackass under his breath, but quiet enough that there was no way LJ could hear. The Whitby family account was the highest-grossing one every year.

  Now, up in the balconies, four Whitby teenagers (Kiki had deemed herself too old) stood with plastic bags filled with wrapped-up condoms at their feet. The cousins didn’t live in the same town or go to school together—they had very little shared experiences—and therefore these little stunts became a bonding mechanism. A joint life event; something to remember one another by. Theo Jr. and LJ were across the room from each other, motioning with their arms that the time was not quite right yet. In the balcony box beside Theo Jr. was Eliot (the fourth) and directly across from him, in her own box, was Anna, thrilled to be included.