Almost Paradise

by Susan Isaacs

  It was as if God said, Do it over and this time get it right. James seemed destined to follow in Henry’s footsteps, but his path to the summit was cleaner and surer and straighter. As soon as the boy could walk, he toddled down the rotted front porch steps and into the kitchens of his neighbors, looking for attention. Dazzled by his blond light and filled with pity—the Cobleighs’ neglect of their child was a Cranston scandal—the mothers pulled him up into their laps and insinuated bits of meat and pasta between his lips. The fathers tousled his silky curls. As he grew, the boys taught him how to hold a bat and how to roast a potato over a trash fire in a vacant lot. Although he lacked the coordination to be a good athlete, his cheerful willingness to play any position and risk his limbs to win assured his being sought by team captains. When he turned twelve, the boys taught him how to look a girl up and down without ever lifting his eyelids. The girls took care of the rest.

  Like his father, James lost his virginity at fourteen. But his partner was not a deranged middle-aged laundress; she was an eighteen-year-old Venus named Laura DiMarcantonio who followed him home from school and showed him what was what in the back of Mr. Paglia’s milk wagon. “You know something, Jimmy honey? You look an awful lot like Conrad Nagel. I mean it. That’s how handsome you are. And—ooh, you want to do it again so soon?” James met Laura every day after school for three months until the afternoon when Mrs. Delvecchia waylaid him and asked if he would mind helping her carry her rugs out to the back yard. Although not as beautiful as Laura, Mrs. Delvecchia was pretty enough, and she gave him wine and played her Caruso records for him after they made love. When James told Laura he couldn’t meet her any more, she sobbed and grabbed his shirt and pleaded with him. “Please, Jimmy. I need you. Listen, I don’t have to see you every day. Just once in a while. Please. You’re my sweetie, Jimmy.”

  “Laura,” he said, smoothing back his pale hair which Mrs. Delvecchia had mussed, “you can’t get blood from a stone.” A month later, Laura married a cousin newly arrived from Calabria. Seven months later, she gave birth to a baby girl.

  And about that time, he uttered those same words to a weeping Mrs. Delvecchia. Her role had been filled by his French teacher and, after her, by a succession of sweet, ripe neighborhood women and girls eager to succor the aloof but charming and beautiful son of the crazy Cobleighs.

  But James was no run-of-the-mill Cranston Lothario. Even at fourteen, he never doubted that he could always get a girl. But he wanted more than sex and, unlike most high school students, he loved to work and he worked to his capacity—which was extraordinary.

  When James was seventeen, Henry pointed to a chair opposite his in the living room, the stuffing peeking out through a hole worn in the seat. “Sit. Listen to me. I hear you’re a smart kid.”

  “I’m doing fairly well.”

  “Don’t use that phony crap talk with me. Now listen. You want to do something with your life? Get the hell out of stinkpot Cranston? Then you have to go to college. Don’t look at me like that; I don’t have any money. You speak to your grandfather. Don’t wait till Christmas, because your mother will be there then and probably be falling face down into the cranberry sauce and he’ll be upset. And have your hair cut before you see him.”

  James was accepted at Brown University after his grandmother, Mary Kendall, pleaded with three of her five illustrious sons-in-law to write letters of recommendation for him. His grandfather interceded on his behalf and arranged for a scholarship, one given to the families of Baptist clergymen. Perhaps the Kendalls felt they owed their daughter something. The Christmas before, she had lurched to the table, drunk, knocking a platter of sweet potato balls onto her sister Violet’s lap. She looked shriveled and yellow and weak, and her family’s disgust at her degradation was mingled with fear for her health. They were perceptive. Although she would not die for quite a time, her insides had gone bad; she would never be right again.

  Although a member of the Ivy League, Brown, in the late twenties, was not known for its intellectual ferment. It had a reputation as a playboy school, and a good many of its students were the sons of movers and shakers who were not up to Harvard and Yale’s standards—where students felt obliged to attend classes prepared and sober. Brown, even more than Princeton, was the fun school. But while his classmates were roaring “Here’s to good old Brown, drink ’er down!,” hanging out dormitory windows and vomiting the hooch they’d been drinking, or engaging in tapioca pudding fights in the dining halls, James was studying.

  His professors, impressed with his intellect and engaged by his manner, welcomed James into their offices and homes. He learned to sip sherry and be seduced by faculty wives. He was gifted enough to receive straight A’s in his field, American history; indeed, his perfect transcript was marred only with one B minus, which he received in English composition, where his instructor noted, Writing graceless/content gd.

  Of course his education continued after class. From the moment he stepped into Hegeman Hall, James watched the well-born eating breakfast, mailing letters, showering, and shaving. He added these observations to those he had picked up at the occasional Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner at the Kendalls’—the use of fingerbowls, the correct method of buttering a roll—and before long seemed just another well-brought-up son of the upper class. Despite his lack of even an extra quarter to buy an ice-cream soda, his smooth ways, keen mind, and exceptional looks made him one of the most sought-after men on campus. In 1931, any Pembroke girl who could say “I’ve got a study date with Jimmy Cobleigh” was the envy of her dormitory. “Jimmy” generally got what he wanted, and, unlike Henry, he never had to hand out a single trinket. Most of the girls he dated were keen to get married, and many of them had wealthy fathers who would have been pleased to have a smart, handsome son-in-law join the family business. But James was not ready to marry and, with all his considerable courtesy, told Nan and Missy and April and Gwendolyn that the time wasn’t quite right. Perhaps James sensed he could do better if he waited. Possibly he was waiting to fall in love.

  Meanwhile, he followed in his father’s path. He would be a lawyer. In September 1932, in his first year of Harvard Law School (where, unlike Henry’s, his grades would be high enough to make Law Review), he sat on the yellow, sun-scorched grass on the banks of the Charles River, gazed into the water, and sighed.

  “What is it, Jim?” his cousin asked. Three days before, on his first day at Harvard, James Kendall Cobleigh had met Bryan Kendall Devereaux, the son of his Aunt Catherine, when Bryan slipped on a pencil and fell in the aisle of the Constitutional Law lecture hall. James had helped him up and, after a courteous thank-you and a polite you’re-welcome, the two young men had suddenly gaped with recognition. “Out with it, Cousin Jim. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing much, Bryan.”

  “You can’t be worried about your scholarship, can you?”

  “No. I think I’ll manage.”

  “Probably get a ninety-nine. I’ll flunk, naturally. Don’t know why I couldn’t inherit the brains you have.”

  “Don’t know why I couldn’t inherit the money you have.”

  “Oh Jim, not broke, are you?”

  “Flat out.”

  “Can’t I lend you—”

  “Thanks, Bryan, no. I have a job this weekend. Tending bar at Wally’s after the Princeton game.”

  “You need some fun in your life, Jim. All work and no play and all that rot.”

  “I play a little.”

  “Damned little. And it’s not play, hitting the sheets with that cross-eyed Cliffie math major. It’s work. You need some excitement, some glamour. Don’t worry. Cousin Bryan will come up with something.”

  And that’s how James met Winifred Tuttle, who would be his wife.

  6

  …Murray King, Nicholas Cobleigh’s agent, said the actor did not wish to speak with the journalists who have gathered at the hospital, as he considers his wife’s medical condition “a private matter.” However, Mr. King did acknowl
edge that Mr. Cobleigh had consulted with Sir Anthony Bradley, the British neurosurgeon who…

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  The Tuttles were not as rich as the Rockefellers or the Mellons, but they were rich enough. The first American Tuttle, Josiah, landed in Manhattan in 1701. He was a warm-hearted seventeen-year-old illiterate who bore features that would recur in generations of Tuttles: a bush of carrot hair and a broad nose so coated with freckles it looked brown. Unlike so many young immigrants, Josiah was neither an indentured servant nor a ne’er-do-well. He had a job. He was a bootblack, a member of the household of Lord Cornbury, the British governor of New York.

  However, the governor did not like boots. Like so many New Yorkers after him, the governor loved to dress up. He was particularly fond of low-cut gowns, so Josiah soon learned to be an expert corset-lacer and wig-dresser.

  “Think I’m odd, Jo, fancying petticoats?”

  “No, m’lord.”

  “Rot! I don’t like liars, Jo. I am odd. Damned odd. But pretty too.”

  “Lovely, m’lord. Especially in blue.”

  When his lordship was kicked out of New York several years later, he did not forget his bootblack, the only member of his entourage who had seemed sincere in his compliments; before his ship sailed, he gave Josiah a single ruby earring.

  Josiah, whose taste ran toward basic linsey-woolsey, sold the earring and with the proceeds bought five acres in what is now Greenwich Village. A year later he sold off two acres and with his profit purchased ten acres farther uptown. He continued in this fashion and, by 1740, owned a sizable chunk of Manhattan, dined with the Jays and the Van Cort-landts and the Livingstons, and had his own bootblack. When he succumbed to influenza in 1764, Josiah Tuttle was patriarch of one of New York’s first families.

  In 1792, Hosea Tuttle, Josiah’s pale, frail, orange-haired great-grandson, liquidated about a fiftieth of the family’s real estate holdings and founded the American Bank, thereby reinforcing the Tuttles’ grip on the city and the nation’s economic life for generations to come. He also made one other wise move: he married beneath him.

  Hester Smithers was the daughter of the Tuttles’ carriage driver and the family was aghast at Hosea’s choice, but he would have none of the female Stuyvesants or Philipses or Marstons they paraded before him. Big, earthy Hester, who could take a full-grown financier, throw him to the floor of the carriage house, and ravish him, was the only woman Hosea Tuttle wanted.

  So while other founding families intermarried into idiocy or lost fortunes through the machinations of incompetent heirs, the Tuttle line was invigorated by the three dynamic sons and four daughters Hester bore Hosea.

  Like financial genius, exogamy became a recurring family trait. Every two or three generations, the eldest male Tuttle would discover the daughter of a stevedore or a blacksmith, drop to his knee, and propose. The family, whose memory of its plebeian heritage was faulty, would clutch its chest in horror or weep into its collective handkerchief each time a scion rejected the hands of eligible aristocratic ladies. But the process worked well and the family thrived. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were Tuttles not only in the marketplace but in universities and on pulpits. They wrote poetry and fought slavery. They were lawyers, surgeons, horse-breeders, suffragists. And while there was a compulsive gambler or two, an opium addict, and a pederast, by and large the Tuttles entered the twentieth century with a distinction nearly equal to their great wealth.

  On March 24, 1900, thirty-year-old Samuel Tuttle, rushing home late for tea, knocked a young woman into the gutter right outside his parents’ house on Washington Square. “Oh, my,” he said. “I’m sorry. Terribly sorry. Really, you have no idea. Here, let me help you.”

  “Fine gentleman you are!” She sniffed, eyeing his well-cut Chesterfield, and struggled to rise, but her long skirts, logged with the filthy water from the gutter, held her down.

  “Please, allow me.” Samuel offered his hand, but she reached for it as though he were presenting her with a rotting fish. Because he was a homely, awkward man, he read her vexation as disgust. “Sorry,” he murmured, letting his long, thin arm drop to his side.

  “You’re going to have me sit here in this puddle and catch my death of cold, mister? Fine fellow indeed. Don’t just stand there turning red, help me up. It’s not hand-holding I want from your sort anyway, you skinny boiled-out carrot.” Samuel’s skin flushed, clashing with the orange of his hair, but he offered his hand again and pulled her up. “Sorry,” she said. “I mean, about going on. My father calls me Flap-jaw. Mister, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, really I—Oh, my, look at my dress!”

  She was tall, nearly as tall as he. Samuel bent over to inspect the side of the thin wool skirt. “Oh, dear,” he murmured. Besides the fetid water in the gutter, there had obviously been a mound of horse manure, for there was an unpleasant blotch of dark brown on the pale gray fabric. When he found his voice, Samuel said, “You must let me buy you a new dress.” He delved into his trouser pocket and came up with a handful of coins. Like many rich men, he did not find it necessary to handle cash. “Really, I have money in my house. I would like to make amends.”

  “You couldn’t make a cow moo, you big faker. Buy me a new dress, my Aunt Tilly.” Collecting her sodden, stinking skirt, she took a step away, but only a step. The hem of her petticoat had drooped onto the ground, and she caught her foot in it and would have fallen if Samuel had not caught her around the waist. “All right, you can let me go now.”

  He was blushing so hard the tip of his nose and his ears tingled. The irises of her eyes were as black as her pupils and her hair was a color Samuel had never seen before, an auburn tinged with bronze. Her skin was soft ivory except for a spot of pink on each cheek. Until he felt her hands against his chest, pushing him away, he didn’t realize he was still holding her. “Sorry.” Then he noticed tears in her eyes. “I’m so terribly sorry. It was a good dress, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, leave me alone.” This time she managed to walk and he followed her across the street, into Washington Square Park. It was nearly sunset and the great stone arch glowed yellow. The grass was a green so dark it seemed blue and the air above it was gray mist, enveloping the park in a magic cloud that made the city beyond its borders seem sketchy and lifeless. Her skin was flawless in the enchanted light. “Stop looking at me like that! Go away. Away! What are you, a masher too? I’ll call a policeman.”

  “If you’ll just come back across the street with me. I live in that house over there. I could get money for a new dress and one of the maids could help you—um, brush yourself off.”

  “One of the maids!”

  “But—” Samuel could not stop gaping at her. More beautiful women had been thrust into his arms once he came of age, the most delectable, dazzling temptations American society could offer its Crown Prince Tuttle. But, as all the smitten swear, this one was different. Her face was riveting; her bronze-brushed dark red hair demanded emerald eyes, yet her black eyes were right for her, as if she had insisted on them just to be contrary—or because she was too strong to assent to others’ ideas of beauty. And she was strong. Samuel was not a particularly sexual man, but—behind his proper facade—he was an emotional one, and his soul swelled at her vigor. Unlike the pretties, whose voices were wispy because their corsets prevented their inhaling properly, whose personalities fell into two categories, languid or giggly, she was forthright and vital. Vital enough to break through his upbringing and his inhibitions and, for the first time in his life, to turn Samuel Warren Van Dusen Tuttle into a passionate man.

  “Do you think I’m batty enough to go with a stranger into a strange house?” But her tone was more gentle, as if she finally recognized he was not deranged.

  “I have an idea!” Samuel found his voice shaking, and this shocked him. He was always in control. But now his palms were moist, and when he rubbed his hands together he realized they were as shaky as his voice. He swallowed and felt his large
Adam’s apple throb in his throat. “Just wait here one moment. I’ll dash across the street and bring back my mother or one of my sisters. They’ll vouch for me. And a maid. With a damp cloth. Or—” He charged across Washington Square North and barely missed being trampled to death by an onrushing carriage horse. But Samuel didn’t notice because he had fallen in love.

  It was not until a half hour later, as he sat across from the young woman in the front parlor of his parents’ townhouse, gazing at her, at her gorgeous hair, at her flowerlike complexion blooming in the mauve dress borrowed from his sister Dora, that he learned, in answer to his mother’s polite interrogation, that her father worked in a grocery store on Sixth Avenue and her mother was dead and she had an older brother who was a fireman and a younger brother in the merchant marine and no sisters and she was twenty-one years old and her name was Mary Sue Stanley and all her friends called her Maisie.

  During the third week of their honeymoon, Samuel reached across the tiny table of a Parisian café and stroked Maisie’s hand. “Do you still think I look like a carrot?” he asked.

  “Yes. But a splendid carrot, Samuel.” Already she was gleaning adjectives from his vocabulary and planting them in hers: “splendid” and “solid” and “nice.” Sacre Coeur was “a splendid church, really splendid, don’t you think, Maisie?” and she had replied, “Quite splendid, Samuel dear.”

  Maisie was not merely mimicking her husband’s upper-class vocabulary; she was absorbing it, becoming an aristocrat herself, and very quickly. Maisie Stanley Tuttle had class. She was perceptive, assertive, humorous, and kind, and although she had been born in a railroad flat in lower Manhattan, her beauty and high spirits were patrician. Had she not been knocked into a pile of manure by Samuel Tuttle and raised up, she would have made her own way in the world.