by Robert Coles
But the father had no desire to sit down and talk at any length with his daughter about money. She remembers a somewhat awkward, even tense time of it: “Daddy said I shouldn’t be thinking about money, because there are more important things in the world. He said the teacher was just pulling my leg. If she wasn’t, he’d get her fired. He asked me about the horse riding, and I told him I was doing real good; the jumping was getting better and better. Then he asked me if I wanted more allowance. I said no, a dollar and a half a week was still enough. I don’t even spend that, a lot of weeks. He told me it’s a good idea to learn how to save, and if I wanted, he’d open up an account for me in the bank and I could put away some of my allowance. He said if I put a lot of the allowance away, he might add some of his own money to my account, ‘a matching amount.’ Then we started talking about my room, and how it should be neater, and it wasn’t fair to expect the maid to clean up after us all the time. I told him that when I grow up and I have my own house, I would like to have a maid, but it was ‘good discipline’ for us girls to know how to clean our own rooms. I asked him if I’d be able to afford a maid. That’s when he got annoyed with me. He slapped his knee and said it was getting time for me to go up to bed, because I had school the next day and a ballet lesson afterwards. I told him I was just trying to ask a question, but he wouldn’t answer. He said he didn’t like all this talk of money, and I should keep my room neat — and he might go talk with my teacher so she wouldn’t make another comment like the one she did about money on the composition I wrote. Then I said good-night.”
Marjorie didn’t let the matter drop, though. She tried to have a talk with her mother. She told her mother that she thought that Daddy had been upset by the questions she put to him. The mother said yes, that was true. Her father had said later that night (to his wife) that he hoped none of his daughters became “money conscious,” because it’s “not at all nice for a girl to be like that.” When the mother had finished telling her daughter what the father had said, the girl immediately asked this: “If I was a boy, then would Daddy want me not to be asking him a lot of questions about money?” The mother didn’t answer right off, but she did say, finally, that “it makes no difference, boy or girl; it’s wrong to have your mind dwelling on money.” Marjorie gave in, said she didn’t really care about money; she had just become curious as a result of her teacher’s remark.
But the girl was not convinced by her own words; she had, anyway, asked her mother several times how much money her father made each year. The mother had said she didn’t know, and the girl was persuaded that was so: “My mother told me that if our lives depended on it, she couldn’t tell someone how much money Daddy makes, because she doesn’t know — and she doesn’t really want to know. I told her I didn’t want to know; it’s just that you hear kids talking, and they’ll say my father owns this, and my father makes that, and then you begin wondering — what does my father do? My father is a lawyer, I know. In our social studies class the teacher asked us to put down in the papers we wrote what our fathers did and what we would like to do when we grow up. We were writing about the state of West Virginia, and the teacher told us a lot about the state, and she told us that it was coal that is our biggest asset. She said that if any of us come from families that make money from coal, we should write that down too. I didn’t think I should write down that we made money from coal, because Daddy is a lawyer. I started worrying later, though — because my grandfather owns some mines. But that’s his money, and not Daddy’s, I think. Anyway, I said Daddy is a lawyer, and I’d like to be part of a ballet company.
“I don’t think I could be a leading ballerina, like I once wanted to be. The ballet teacher says I don’t concentrate enough and work hard enough. She said you have to be possessed. I asked her what she meant, and she laughed and said if I knew then I’d be a future ballerina! I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she explained to me that there are very few good ballerinas in the whole world, and to be one you have to give your whole life to dancing, and that’s too much for most people to give — even for her, and she’s a good ballet dancer. That’s right; I’d like to do other things as well. But I would like to dance in a ballet company, for a year or two, maybe. My mother says I might change my mind later, but if I didn’t, she’d back me up. She says my father might not like the idea of ballet as an occupation — that he’d rather I take ballet lessons, but do something else: go to college, I guess. Maybe that’s what I’ll do, go to college. But the ballet teacher says that you can’t work part-time for a ballet company. So, if I want to be part of a company, I’ll have to postpone college.”
Marjorie does rather well at ballet; she is the most committed of her friends. Her mother has taken her to New York City three times to attend the ballet there and also go shopping. They stay at the Plaza, dine at various French restaurants, go shopping in Bergdorf Goodman’s and Saks Fifth Avenue. Marjorie was ten when she first went; at eleven she went twice; and she has her mother’s promise of an annual visit. The mother went to Vassar and knows New York City well. She also believes in taking each child off alone, as the particular girl gets old enough, and since Marjorie loves ballet and New York City is where ballet is most commonly available, it is there her mother takes her.
Marjorie is quick to point out how flexible and versatile her mother is. For example, Susan, the daughter a year younger than Marjorie, loves the outdoors, is an excellent horse rider, has already won several prizes in shows, and loves as well to go on long hikes with a friend or two, even camp out. The girls take a bare minimum of food, have learned to cook outdoors, make do without matches, find safe and relatively comfortable places to sleep. Susan and her mother go on “overnights” alone, setting out from a “camp” the family has about an hour out of Charleston and wandering through paths, up hills, along a stream or two, and then back. Marjorie has no such interests or inclinations; she likes to ride, but “for pleasure,” not “to compete”; and she prefers the city to the country. The family lives outside Charleston, actually; the girls don’t get into the city all that much. Even their mother stays away except for certain evenings — a play, a concert. When Marjorie talks of the city, she has in mind not Charleston, West Virginia, but New York City, or Pittsburgh, or Washington, D.C. Her father has taken the family repeatedly to the last two cities; he has board meetings, and while he attends them, his wife and daughters (and a maid, who comes along to help out) “have a good time,” as Marjorie sees it. They go shopping. They go to the movies. They visit museums. They eat in elegant restaurants. They romp through fine hotels, and especially enjoy room service.
How can Susan have any doubt that such a life is the very best one imaginable? Marjorie asks that question often — but answers, she knows, only for herself. She and Susan have always disagreed, have fought constantly, have entirely different hopes and plans, or so one tells the other on many occasions. When Marjorie was nine she drew a picture of herself, another of her sister. Marjorie’s self-portrait shows a limber-legged ballerina in a conventional pose — one leg up, the other only barely touching the floor. She is smiling, has light blue eyes that are open, stretches her arms upward to the ceiling of what turns out to be a stage when the drawing is done (Figure 57). As for Susan, she is shown under a cluster of trees, and near some bushes, holding a horse by the reins. She is looking down at the ground, and the viewer doesn’t actually get a direct look at the girl’s face. Rain is falling, the rider and her horse have stopped for a moment to take cover (Figure 58).
Marjorie was willing to make more distinctions than those she acknowledged and portrayed in her drawings: “My sister says she hates fancy clothes, and she doesn’t like to get dressed up at all, even for church. My mother has to insist. Sometimes she talks back to Mom, and then Daddy steps in. I like to get new dresses. I like my ballet clothes, and I go with Mom when she buys her clothes, and she buys some for me. Susie won’t go. Mother has to order clothes for Susie, and get our sewing lady to fix them up. The
lady comes once a week. She does the laundry, and she sews. My mother was taught to sew, but she doesn’t like to do it. She says she won’t even teach me, because she can tell that I’m going to be like her; but Susie is a great friend of the sewing lady, and Susie says she wouldn’t mind being a sewing lady herself! She would work one day a week, then ride her horse or go camping on the other days! We had a talk at the supper table once. Susie told Daddy of her plan, and he laughed and said she’d change her mind when she got older — because she’d never make enough, with one day of sewing, to live the rest of the week and be able to pay her bills. She told Daddy that she wouldn’t be spending much, just enough for snacks, and she’d camp out a lot. Daddy asked her where she’d live, and she said here at home, of course. Then he laughed again and told her that he hoped she did, because if she didn’t, she’d be in real trouble, trying to get by.
“Susie didn’t like what Daddy said. She told him she could camp out all week, even in the winter. Then Daddy started listing all the expenses she’d run up, and he asked her about the worst winter days, or the summer days, with the mosquitoes. She didn’t give in. She argued with Daddy until he got angry, and he told her to stop talking because she didn’t know what she was talking about. That’s when Susie had her temper; she told Daddy she didn’t want to live the way we do. He asked her what she meant, and she said ‘like rich people.’ He turned to Mother and asked her where Susie got the idea we’re rich. Mother said she never talks with us about money. I spoke up: I told Daddy that Mom was telling the truth. Susie said we were all playing pretend, the way she would when she was five or six. She turned to me and told me I was rich, and she said she was, and she said everyone in the family was. My father said he was glad our younger sisters had eaten and were being put in bed. He told Mother that Susie and I should eat with them for a while, until we knew what to say at the table and what not to say.
“I started to cry. I hadn’t said anything, really. Mother defended me. She told Dad that it wasn’t fair to blame both Susie and me, when it was Susie who was doing the talking. Then Susie said she couldn’t see what she’d done that was so wrong. Daddy decided to give us a lecture. He said we might as well understand who we are and why we live the way we do. He told us about his grandfather and his father, and how they worked hard, and how they didn’t work so we would just sit around and do nothing. He said he sets his alarm for six in the morning and he likes to read over his work for a half an hour before he comes down for breakfast. He eats little in the morning, just fruit, toast, and coffee — because he wants to be in ‘top shape’ for the office. He said he didn’t have to work. He said he could just sit at home and watch television and read the newspaper. Then he wouldn’t be doing anything for anyone else, only living like a lazy person does. He said he could play golf all day. But if he did, it wouldn’t be any better than watching the television set. He said we had to learn the difference between a hobby and work. It’s a hobby to go for a walk, or ride on one of our horses, but it’s work when you have a job, and you go every day to the office.”
There was much more to the lecture, but the girl didn’t hear any more; she complained of a headache, a stomachache, a sore throat — all three! — and left, followed by her mother. Her father stayed with her sister, and they apparently kept on talking for a half hour or so, Marjorie learned the next morning. Not that she had any clearer idea, then, what her father meant when he talked about their collective “responsibility” as a family to provide “leadership.” She knew when she was in the first grade that her father was an important person in Charleston, West Virginia. He was on the school’s board of trustees, and her teachers obviously deferred to him when he came to visit the classroom. During one recess period she was overheard by the teacher telling another child that her Daddy was a lawyer; the teacher added, “a prominent lawyer.” Marjorie didn’t know exactly what “prominent” meant; at the supper table that evening she asked — and heard about the “responsibilities” that go with prominence.
When she was seven she drew prominence, so to speak; she made a painting of an office building, made it quite tall, and placed her father on top of the building. He was almost as tall as the building, and his head quite literally touched the sky. The sun seemed like a neighbor of his. The earth appeared as a distant object, perhaps of little concern, because the father’s head was turned upward (Figure 59). The girl’s explanation for that posture was quite direct: “Daddy likes to listen to the wind. There’s a lot of wind on top of tall buildings. He’s probably thinking while the wind blows. Daddy likes to climb up hills and mountains. He says he thinks better, when he’s climbed to the top of a hill, and he can see for miles, and the wind is strong, and he’s away from all the things he has to do down below.”
Five years later, at twelve, she still had only a vague sense of what those “things” were; but she could take comfort in the fact that her mother was not all that sure, either, of the man’s various obligations: “My mother tells me that a woman shouldn’t be poking into a man’s business, and the same goes vice versa. She said that when they got married, she and Daddy made a pact, and she recommends that I make one, too, with my husband, when I get married: stay out of each other’s hair, but try to be of help, when there’s need for help.”
But Marjorie knows that her father belongs to various committees, is a trustee of various institutions. She has heard him talking on the phone, recognizes the influence he wields, the authority in his voice. She has heard him talking to her mother, heard the latter express her unqualified confidence in his ability to “get things done.” She has seen his picture in the newspaper repeatedly, and watched her mother clip the articles, paste them in a scrapbook, which the family upon occasion looks at together. And she has thought of her own future: what kind of man will she marry?
She said at nine that she couldn’t possibly imagine the man. She said at eleven that she couldn’t be “too exact,” but she did have some ideas. She is partial to blond men, for instance; and would like to marry a tall man. Unashamedly she indicates the connection between her father’s appearance (tall, sandy hair) and her own preferences. But she has some reservations, too; she doesn’t want her future husband to be as “busy” as her father is. He has too many duties — burdens, really. He gets too many requests, has to take far too many phone calls, must deal with a heavy correspondence. He himself has sometimes wondered out loud how he manages to do all he does. His oldest daughter wonders whether she might one day meet a “farmer,” fall in love with him, whatever her prejudices in favor of the city. At least, if that should happen, she would know what her mother refers to, wistfully, as “peace and quiet.” But she doubts such an outcome is in store for her. She will “probably” marry a lawyer, she suspects, or “maybe” a businessman. Her best friend is the daughter of a surgeon, and he is also an enormously overworked man. Marjorie has emphatically crossed surgeons off her list of prospective successful suitors. She would be “too lonely,” like her friend’s mother.
Since she was in the third grade Marjorie has been described as an imaginative and expressive child, who has a knack of describing what she thinks and feels in vivid and strong language. When some forty miners were killed in a serious disaster north of Charleston, the girl was saddened and prompted to become reflective in her sixth-grade English composition class. The title of her brief essay was “Dying Underground,” and it went as follows: “I read in the paper that forty miners died the other day. They were digging coal, and suddenly there was an explosion. On television the man said the miners must have been killed right away. I wondered what the men thought when they heard the explosion, and they knew they were going to die. They must have thought of their wives and their children. They must have prayed to God. They must have said good-bye to each other. They must have thought that it’s not fair, for people to die like that. I hope the coal company gives the families of the men a lot of money. They deserve it. I hope we don’t have more explosions like that one. We should
have more mine safety, like the newspaper said. A lot of people are poor. They have hard jobs. They suffer. Sometimes they even die. Then the rest of us feel sorry for them. We should worry about them when they’re alive.”
For that effort she got an “excellent,” though her teacher wrote this comment on the paper: “You must understand, Marjorie, that explosions are accidents, and sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do to prevent an accident.” The girl brought the composition home, and of course, her mother and father read her words, and her teacher’s words, with great interest. The mother hugged her daughter, told her she was a “good Christian,” and said she hoped the compassion expressed so eloquently would last the child’s lifetime. The father said he loved his daughter’s “sincerity,” and agreed with her about the miners — the sadness of their death; but he also agreed with the teacher. “The fact is,” the father reminded his daughter, “miners often cause a mine disaster, because they are careless; they don’t pay attention to the safety rules.”