In all his imaginings of what his father might say, this intense, prompt, conclusive statement had not been conceived. It quite marvelously startled him, and he was just at the point of remarking on it when he saw on his father’s face the look he knew as a presager of something further to be said. He waited—
Not for long: “If it hadn’t been for my orchards, Morgan—my apple trees—I’d have sold my house after your mother died. But you lack such a binding reason for keeping yours. Sell it, son, and God-speed.”
It was a full blessing, one beyond words welcome, but again, Morgan had no chance to speak, his father rushed on so: “As regards the practical side of your move, I’d be glad to put you in touch with old Ambrose Hawes. Do you remember him? He’s still in the antique-auction business, and his eye for the rare is as keen as ever. He’d be able to advise you about how best to dispose of some of your larger possessions—that fifteen-foot-long dining table, for instance, and that front-hall, baronial bench—things like that, all worthy of regard, ultimate nuisances though that they are…. But there’ll be plenty of time to think about all such matters. Now let’s have our drinks and dinner…. Bring me up to date on your New York doings.”
For Morgan, these words were a perfect release.
Later, in the grip of his father’s good-night embrace, Morgan said: “Thank you as always, Pa. You’re as good as a week’s vacation.”
Ansel Shurtliff laughed. “Keep your eyes on the long view, Morgan. Perspective! The long view…And one final admonition: don’t drive too fast.”
…Forty minutes later, on a clear stretch of road, still a few miles from Hatherton—the night air cool, the stars above the open field so bright they seemed to be dancing, he heard himself singing—caught himself doing it—driving along, not too fast, singing!
On Wednesday, mid-afternoon, he met with Lillie Ruth and Tessa and Dennis. He gave each of them a formal document that explained how, in their retirement, they would be separately provided for. He named mid-June as the time the house would “officially” be put on the market, and the end of August as the deadline time for it to be emptied of all its contents. “Come September,” he said, “we’ll leave it.”
They were in the library, seated closely together, four motley humans: Lillie Ruth, light-skinned (she had once told him she was “born of a blood mix”); himself, white; Dennis, black as wet tar; Tessa—her brown complexion spotted by a few berry-sized, milky “blotches” (Lillie Ruth’s word): Lillie Ruth, eighty-two; Dennis, seventy-three; Tessa, fifty-five; himself, soon to be forty-eight. Collectively, they were two-hundred-fifty-eight years old: four distinct minds and souls speaking in one language about the fortunate chance that had brought them in the first instance together; talking, interchangeably, about what had been and what was and what would be: still together.
(A parenthetical epilogue to that afternoon: distant years later, in the 1990s [when he was as old as Lillie Ruth was now], someone, not herein to be named, accused him of “idealizing” this foursome relationship and he told that person: “Discover for yourself who your friends are.”)
On that same Wednesday, after dinner, he sought out Wills in Wills’s quarters over the garage. Wills would stay on as caretaker of the house until it was sold. He told Wills the amount of money—“a bonus”—Wills in due course would receive. Wills had huge hands. He took Morgan’s right hand and clamped it between his two huge ones and pumped Morgan’s whole arm up and down, up and down. “Wills!” Morgan laughed, nearly yelling. Wills said: “It’ll be money for me when my rocking-chair days come on me. Hear me, Mr. Shurtliff? Money for my rocking-chair days!”
After he left Wills, he telephoned Ann Montgomery. “Yes,” she said: “Yes, Morgan Shurtliff, I’m expecting you tomorrow night at seven.” (She often, undressed, addressed him by his full name, sort of purring it. Then she would laugh, as she did now: that soft, shivering, physical laugh.)
The next day, at noon, he boarded the plane for the flight to New York. Up there in the sky, he took out of his briefcase a leather-bound calendar-notebook and a red pencil. He opened the notebook to today’s page and drew a circle around the date—Thursday, May 28, 1959—by which self-coded means, as much on the notebook’s page as in his celebratory sense of it, he decorated the date.
2 That Singular Summer, into Autumn
All noise and radiance, on the first Thursday in June, Caroline and Julia arrived from college. Trailing them through the apartment’s front door, pushing a baggage trolley, was Lester, one of the building’s elevator operators. Caroline watched as Lester removed from the trolley a mound of various-sized suitcases and a rope-tied box of books and two canvas bags exploding at the seams with what Julia called “vital stuff.” After the trolley was emptied and Lester departed, Morgan stood—a kissed, embraced father—looking at his daughters’ brilliant faces, feeling their summer excitement, seeing them happy—previous to what he must soon tell them: that they were to be parted from their Hatherton home.
Of course he didn’t tell them on the day of their arrival. He put it off until the next day’s late afternoon. “There is something we must talk over. I’ll be in the living room.” Those were the words by which, brief moments ago, he had separately summoned them. So it was in the living room he awaited them. It was a fine, well-proportioned room with four wide, tall windows giving on to a high view of Central Park. A room (he thought) of great potential. In time it would contain the large dark-red-and-deep-blue Herati-patterned Bidjar carpet and some of the paintings and furniture now in the living room of the Hatherton house. In time too, the oak-carved ivy-and-floral Leigh mantel would replace the severe black marble chimney-piece—
“Here we are, Morgan,” Julia said.
He had been so engrossed in imagining how the room would be changed, he had not heard their quiet approach down the hall.
Julia joined him on the couch; Caroline sat cross-legged on the floor, facing them.
Nothing for him then but to proceed. “I’m going to sell the Hatherton house,” he bluntly stated. “I must, because—”
Julia interrupted. “Mother’s death,” she murmured.
Caroline nodded. “I love the house,” she said. “I’ll always love it, but without Mother, I don’t like being in it.”
They had stated the case for relinquishment so fleetly, with such adult directness, that it left him with nothing to say. And he had been for so long prepared to say so much! Or, more accurately, he had expected to have to say so much that now, with his words all taken from him, he sat mute, almost dumb, staring off, until, after a moment, they stirred, as if prodding him, so that he did then look at them, and, looking, saw how they were looking at him—keenly: expectantly. Lead us, their eyes said. Let the relinquishment begin.
“I have a plan,” he said.
He named August 15 as the date they would leave New York and go to Hatherton and clear out from the house all of their possessions—
—(leaving the house empty of all but their memories of it)—
—which unspoken thought simultaneously, palpably seized them, placing them in each other’s sight suddenly on the extreme edge of emotional breakdown—
He would not allow it. “We mustn’t,” he said. “We’ll say no more about the move this evening. Now, now let’s talk about the rest of the summer.”
Enthusiastically, they took hold of the subject, and so well, so earnestly that it engaged them for a considerable length of time—for so long in fact that when it did occur to him to consult his watch, he let out a whistle of surprise and exclaimed: “It’s almost seven! We’re to meet Geoff and Alan and Lucy for dinner at quarter to eight.”
“Oh! You should have told us sooner!” Caroline said. “I must change my dress. Are we going to a restaurant?”
“Yes. Giovanni’s—”
“Bliss!” she yipped, and ran out of the room.
Julia remained with him. Just for a bit longer. “I must change too, Morgan.”
“So must
I…. Thank you, Julia.”
Still, after she left him, he stayed on the couch, resting, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out, like a long-distance runner who’s just crossed, just now, the finish line.
Together (ah, Miss Sly) they interviewed a small parade of prospective cook-housekeepers. They chose Elsa Althaus. She was Austrian (from a village near Vienna); a Roman Catholic. She had come to America after the war, in 1948. She was in her mid-fifties. Her hair was gray and straight and cut short. She was quite tall, on the plump side of bony, and plainly countenanced. Her eyes, large and blue-gray and heavily lashed, were her best physical feature. She had a clear, dulcet voice and a generous smile. She brought to her interview one letter of reference from her former employer of ten years (Mrs. D. S. Bouvier, languishing now in an Upper East Side nursing home—“Dying from old-age ills,” Elsa told them, crossing herself). In the letter, Mrs. Bouvier lauded Elsa’s character and her organizational and culinary skills. All of which praises, within a couple of weeks after she moved in, Elsa proved true. “Miss Car-oline.” “Miss Chew-lia.” “Mister Shurtliff.” (She intoned the Mister in a royal way.) When she cooked, she kept the kitchen radio tuned to one station: WQXR. “To the great music. At WQXR, they know the great composers,” she said. “Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven und so weiter.” (For her cooking and taste in music, Alan Litt thought her “divine.”)
Julia declared herself “thrilled” by her course of study at Columbia…. Remember her Hatherton friend Bruce Wilson, owner of the springer spaniel named Pansy? Bruce was a senior now at Columbia, majoring in philosophy. His interest in Julia was as great as ever. There was another young man in thrall to Julia: Alex Winston. Alex was also a senior at Columbia (“pre-med”). Morgan knew Alex’s father, a banker.
Alex vied with Bruce for Julia’s free time. Both of them came often (separately) to dinner. Alex took Julia to movies, sometimes to a “nightspot”—the Blue Angel or the Rainbow Room, or to a currently “in” downtown “jazz-joint.” Bruce didn’t have that kind of money to spend. He and Julia went to museums and took long walks in Central Park and sat of an evening in the living room, talking, talking, talking, sometimes reading aloud to each other. When it got late, time for Bruce to go, he and Julia would embrace and kiss each other lightly, unurgently on the lips.
Under Geoff’s aegis, Caroline went to work at the Balfour Foundation, researching and writing reports about proposals submitted to the foundation by organizations seeking funds for various environmental projects. She was one of four summer “apprentices.” At Balfour’s offices on West Fifty-fifth Street just off Fifth Avenue, she occupied “a dinky cell, just big enough to hold a desk, a waste-paper basket, and me.” Geoff was a tough taskmaster. He rejected her first report. It lacked clarity and focus, he told her: “Re-think it and rewrite it.” She got huffy. She went so far as to accuse Geoff of being harder on her than on the other apprentices. Geoff’s retort: “I adore you, Callie, but not in the office.” (It was from Geoff, not from Caroline, that Morgan heard about this confrontation.) Caroline submitted a second report. Geoff thought it an improvement over the first report, though still “too sprawled,” then went over it with her idea by idea, paragraph by paragraph, showing her how to cause her conclusions to cohere. Her third try—“Hit the mark”—and Geoff (good godfather that he was), in celebration of her achievement, took her to lunch at “21.” After that, there was no stopping her. By the time July rolled around, Geoff told Morgan: “She’s settled in. She’s terrific…. A word of warning, though, about a guy named Seth Ferrison. He’s my summer mistake. And he’s got the hots for Callie. Don’t let him in your door, Morgie.”
“He’s already entered. I’ve met him. He came home with Callie day before yesterday. He likes bourbon—”
“He’s a white-shoe smoothie. Don’t give him an inch.”
“I won’t, but Callie might…. Maybe not. We’ll hope not. Anyhow, he’s got plenty of competition. I like to think there’s safety in numbers.”
“She’s such a beauty.”
“‘Beauty is as beauty does.’ Sex is the demon.”
Geoff laughed. “So what’s new?”
Sex. The demon Sex…Sometime in late June, Ann Montgomery told him she feared she was becoming too fond of him. “I haven’t any sense that you’re similarly affected, Morgan.” It would have been easier for him if she hadn’t sounded so wistful. She pronounced sentence on them: “We shouldn’t see each other so often. Maybe once in a while.” He liked her enough not to see her again…. He had, that summer, four other single-purposed lays, all four instigated by the women. That was what most surprised him: their instincts, at the instant they met him, of his readiness. That, and the number of women who would have had him, and the number he would not consider having (young, conspicuously excitable women, or disillusioned wives out to revenge a lapsed husband). But of older, fully fledged divorced or otherwise unattached women, there were plenty who kept offering themselves. He met them at “drop-in” cocktail parties given by the spouses of lawyers he knew, and at other large social affairs he felt obliged from time to time to attend. One of the four lays he met at a noisy gathering sponsored by the United States Trust Company; or had it been the Fiduciary Trust Company? (He couldn’t, by summer’s end, remember which.) Beyond a reciprocally sought satiation, the four women meant nothing to him, nor, he was sure, did he mean anything to them. They merged in his mind, forgettable in their transiency. He didn’t go so far as to label these flings sins, but neither did he like himself the better for them. He realized then, about himself, that only in the exchanges made in a sworn conjugal bed would he ever again achieve anything resembling the finer shades of sexual joy. A chilling realization: he doubted that such chance would ever, again, come his way.
Work became the intimate that most sustained him. His high-stakes gamble on his ability to successfully expand the New York Kissel, Chandler office had begun to pay off. He had sought and attracted new clients, three of whom were Croesus-rich and bore, therefore, the usual familial and psychological and legal problems great wealth imposes on its possessors. Such clients are the mainstay of a trust-and-estates practice. Establishing a corporate department was the next challenge incumbent upon him to accomplish, toward which end (back in April) he had let it be known to his New York colleagues that he was on the look-out for someone to head such a department. A friend at Davis Polk Wardwell Sunderland & Kiendl told him about a man named William Hallet. “He’s a very talented corporate lawyer, Morgan, and a very persuasive business getter.” So why had Hallet not ascended to a partnership? “Well, he’s a bit of a maverick. A bit hard to control.” “Is he tamable?” “I think yes—by the right person. You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But if you think you can tame him, you should fix your terms and go for him. I happen to know there are other firms interested in him.” Morgan got hold of Hallet’s credentials: Exeter; University of Chicago; Columbia LL.B., Law Review, Kent Scholar; served as a Marine in World War II (Pacific arena), decorated for valor; forty-four years old; married; two children. He met with Hallet, two long sessions: “If you think that, under my supervision, you can conduct your enthusiasms in a way that matches in delicacy your legal talents, I’ll take you on as an associate. And if you measure up, I can promise you a partnership sooner than later. Believe me, with the other firms you’re considering, it’ll be later.” (Maybe) it was the “sooner” inducement that swung Hallet to accept his offer…. In the Cleveland office, his choice of Hallet raised some eyebrows. So George Colt came to New York and met Hallet and sided with Morgan in Hallet’s favor: “Let’s do it, Morgan. Let’s bet on him.” Tamed, Hallet was fine. In fact, excellent. In further fact, superb. Morgan, in a continuance of gratitude that upon the venture of the New York office the sun kept shining, the sky not falling, worked harder; harder.
On a hot Saturday afternoon he was standing on the Tiffany corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, waiting for the light to change.
; “Mr. Shurtliff. Sir.”
That voice! An unbelievable, indescribable instant. As if sixteen years hadn’t gone by. Before he turned, he said, “Sutter,” then, face-to, repeated: “Sutter—”
—displaced: both of them displaced, staring incredulously at each other, not there on the corner of Fifth and Fifty-seventh, but on the Stubbins, checking the guns…in the lifeboat after the torpedoing…being rescued…saved…near-gone survivors set ashore in alien Durban, South Africa, yet there they were in the racket of New York traffic, being jostled by passers-by: the light had twice changed.
“Let’s have a drink.”
“Where?” Sutter asked, as if there could be no refuge for their kind.
“I know a place on Fifty-eighth. It’s quiet. We can talk.”
They fell into step, elbow-to-elbow; walked, not speaking; walked the short distance to Fifty-eighth Street: a small restaurant there, with a dark little bar attached to it. From out of the bright sunlight, they entered the dark bar; sat down in a booth—
“What’ll you have?”
“A double Scotch. No ice.”
“Two,” Morgan told the waiter.
Some awkwardness then—rank, after all this time, still strangely in effect, and their clothes a chasm between them of prosperity and lucklessness, Sutter eyeing the pristine coolness of Morgan’s seersucker suit, himself perspiring in soiled, dun-colored gabardine, yet the tremendous emotionality of connection—
The waiter returned with their drinks. They touched glasses and began to talk.
Sutter wanted to know: “After we all split up, did you stay in touch with the captain?”
Enough, (Morgan said) to find out that the captain had died in the Pacific, off Formosa; another torpedoing: all hands lost.
“Shit,” Sutter oathed. He wanted to know: “What about the others of our crew? Have you ever heard from any of them? Ever run into any of them?”
Matters of Chance Page 42