by Susan Isaacs
“Winifred, you are a married woman with two children, and you have obligations. If you choose, you can feel as ill at ease and as doltish as you like. No one can stop you. But it still doesn’t take away your obligations. Period. You are an adult, Winifred.”
“But, Mama, don’t you understand? I don’t feel like one.”
“Then you must pretend, mustn’t you?”
“‘Yippee ti yo / I’m a lone cowpoke / Ridin’ the range / On m’ pal’ mino.’” Five-year-old Nicholas sang the theme song of his favorite radio program, the Texas Pete Show. His voice was deep for a child’s, and husky. “‘Yippee ti yay /Yippee ti yee.’” He squashed a clod of wet black Connecticut earth with the toe of his boot. The air was rich with Yankee smells, manure and mown grass and spruce, but he was able to imagine his grandparents’ farm a Panhandle ranch. He hooked his thumbs over the waistband of his hated jodhpurs, transmogrifying them into leather chaps. “‘I’m the loneliest cowpoke / You ever did see.’” The collie, barking at the station wagon making a delivery from the local liquor store, became one of the beasts of the west—a coyote or a buffalo. “‘Where the land is gold / And the sky’s so bluuuue / I’m Texas Pete / Big and brave and truuuue.’”
“What’d you say, kid?” Mr. Sullivan, his grandfather’s groom, came around the side of the stable leading the only horse Nicholas was allowed to ride, a small rheumy filly named Lady Red.
“Nothing, Mr. Sullivan.”
“Ready to take on Lady Red?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Come on over. I’ll give you a boost up.”
“Is Lady Red a wild stallion?”
“Well, not exactly. But close, kid. You gotta control her. Know what I mean? Stay with her every minute. Don’t let her get away with nothing. Can you manage?”
“I think so.”
Nicholas was happiest at the farm. Despite his rarefied Manhattan-Tuttle lineage and his respectable Providence-Kendall blood, he was—ultimately—a descendant of English peasants. The country air stirred something primeval in Nicholas, and when out of doors often he wore the same goofy smile of contentment a Saxon sheepherder might have on a fine May morning.
He had to keep moving. Like his mother, Nicholas was a natural athlete, and he was incomparably more content racing the dogs down to the orchard than sitting imprisoned in a velvet suit watching The Nutcracker. His energy needed a place to go.
He was born in Manhattan but he really wasn’t of it. On the days he couldn’t chase his ball down the path to the playground in Central Park or hang by his legs from a jungle gym, he would often be sent to his room for some misdemeanor: crunching one of Thomas’s toy tanks under his shoe or tracing the outline of his hand in aquamarine crayon on the hand-painted silk wall coverings in the dining room.
He was not a natural urban child. Instead of lugging a well-groomed teddy bear about as Thomas did, snuggling with it in an overstuffed chair, or begging for one more elevator ride, Nicholas hopped and jumped and bopped on the balls of his feet. He was rarely without a ball appropriate for the season and would toss it, rhythmically and mindlessly, toward the ceiling or from hand to hand.
On the farm he was free from the endless parade of ladies in hats who squeaked and tried to pinch some part of him. Nicholas was warmhearted, but, unlike Thomas, he did not curl into a ball of anticipatory pleasure whenever he was hauled onto a lap. Thomas behaved as if the adult world were created to delight in him. Nicholas was too careful an observer; he recognized that the matters which really intrigued his mother and her lady friends and his grandparents had nothing to do with children. Their world of soft voices and abrupt laughter, cocktail shakers and newspapers, was different from his and exceedingly complicated. Weekends at the farm he could keep his distance.
“Hey, kid,” called the stableman, “you’re doing good. You’re doing some good posting there.” Nicholas smiled and blushed and then peered at the horizon with Texas Pete eyes, a gaze of confidence and dignity. “You’re doing real good.”
However, as much as the women of his childhood, women of the 1940s, may have admired strong, silent men, they preferred the perky politeness of a Thomas. Nicholas was by far the more handsome of the brothers, but in his early years he put people off with his vague hellos and dreamy expression. Five-year-old Nicholas’s temperament was not the sort New York society matrons and proper English nannies found engaging. They quickly turned to Thomas, with his broad smile and crinkly freckled nose, for amusement. Nicholas exhaled relief when they moved away from him and on to chuck Thomas under his chubby chin. Left alone, Nicholas could relax. He could stick his thumb into his mouth, hook his index finger over his nose for maximum comfort, turn his ear to the undemanding universe of Texas Pete and Ned Wickham, Private Eye, and stay out of the proper English nannies’ world as best he could.
Not that there were many proper English nannies in Nicholas’s earliest years. Nanny Budd was dismissed for swilling Jamaican rum, Nanny Williams for locking Nicholas in the bathroom for an entire morning—supposedly to encourage his toilet training—Nanny Benson for stealing half of Thomas’s layette to send to a pregnant niece in Dorset. Nanny Keyes left in a huff because Win persisted in making disruptive visits to the nursery, and Nanny Coe, sloe-eyed and pigeon-toed, aborted herself on her day off and was found, by Nicholas, lying in the linen closet barely conscious in a puddle of blood. “Get Mummy” were the last words she uttered in the Cobleigh household.
From 1940 to 1945, the sea lanes between Southampton and New York were not swelling with waves of nannies seeking employment. Many upper-class American women looked at the help that was available, sighed, and raised their children themselves. Win could not do this. She felt no more competent to change a diaper or nurse a croupy child than she could tap-dance.
Also, she was beset by obligations. Because of her social position, she was on the boards of three charities. Because of her altruistic nature, she served on committees for another four. She planned house tours for the Manhattan Chorale, dinners for the Interfaith Council of Greater New York, dansants for the Soldiers and Sailors League, and raffles for the Iron Lung Association. She rolled bandages, knitted hats, packed medicines, and presided over teas. She had about two hours a day to spend with her children, and while the hours were happy, it never occurred to Win to seek more.
She was too tired. The rest of her schedule was so wearying. Unlike the friends with whom she’d grown up, she found that the social side of the numerous good works she performed gave her no joy. It was an onerous burden. She was not naturally sedentary, and the long luncheons and longer teas where she sat, stock still, straight-backed with crossed ankles, drained her. Gossip and ridicule, as much a staple on these occasions as watercress sandwiches, unsettled her because she sensed she was a perfect target. But Winifred could not break out of this world because it was the only one offered her. She lacked not only the initiative to create another life for herself but also the imagination. She accepted the package that had been handed to her and tried to behave the way a woman of her station was expected to behave: appreciative and gracious.
“There aren’t enough hours in a day,” she complained along with her friends as they sipped Manhattans and drew up guest lists for the next theater benefit or rode each morning in Central Park. “If only I were a twin,” they’d murmur to each other as they left the hospital where they’d spent the early afternoon reading to young soldiers who had been blinded in battle. “I need an extra set of hands desperately,” they’d moan as they led their children and nannies and maids to Grand Central Terminal for the weekend trek to their parents’ country estates or their own more modest cottages.
Win rubbed her throbbing shoulder. Weary from her week in the city, she had still felt obliged to spend an hour leading Nicholas’s horse through the woods that edged her parents’ property. The hour before that she’d picked six baskets of blueberries and, before that, had planted sunflower seeds with Thomas. Her neck felt as if there were a clenc
hed fist inside it. Her hair was a million dry wires. “Hurry, now,” Maisie said to her. “You have exactly ten minutes to get ready.” Some neighbors were coming to the house for drinks. “And make sure you pay attention to Nora Vickers. The one whose front teeth make an X. She lost her son on Iwo Jima. Winifred, perk up. Only eight more hours in the day.”
“I’m nearly done in.”
“Who isn’t? Come, Winifred. I wouldn’t want to think you’re feeling sorry for yourself. You’re only going at half speed now. What will you do when James comes home, hm? You’ll have a whole new set of wifely obligations. Now get into the shower and don’t forget poor Mrs. Vickers.”
Pallid, freckled, seventy-six-year-old Samuel Tuttle sat before an electric heater in his study, frail after a nasty cold that had worked its way up to bronchitis and finally to a month-long siege of pneumonia. His doctor (who held one of the four professorships at Columbia University’s medical school that Samuel had endowed) had forbidden him to work. Maisie had confiscated all his cigars, and none of the servants would accept his five-dollar bribe to sneak out and buy more. He had reread his Whartons and Jameses and Conan Doyles. Although cranky after weeks and weeks of coddled eggs and poached chicken, he could imagine no morsel that would tempt him. “Well, Nicholas,” he said to his grandson, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
“Nothing, Grandpa.”
“I see. Did your mother send you in to cheer me?”
“No. Grandma did.”
“Oh. What did she say? It’s all right. You can tell me.”
“She said ‘Grandpa Samuel is in a blue funk’ and I should come in and you would give me paper and pencils and I should draw pictures to make you happy.”
“Well, if I had a blue pencil you might draw my blue funk and show it to your grandmother, but I have only a black pencil. Here. And paper is in that cabinet there. Open the little doors. Now, what are you going to draw for me?”
“My daddy?”
“Oh. That would be very nice, Nicholas.”
“He’s in Europe in the war.”
“I know.”
“Do you know him?”
“Of course I know him. He married my daughter. Your mummy is my daughter.”
“I know that. And Uncle Jesse and Uncle Caleb are your boys, but now they’re grown-ups.”
“Yes. And Uncle Jeremiah in Rhode Island.”
“Grandpa, can I ask you something?” Samuel nodded. “You aren’t my daddy’s daddy?”
“No.”
“Does my daddy have a daddy?”
“Yes. He has a mother and father. And do you want to know something? They live in Rhode Island too, just like Uncle Jeremiah and Aunt Polly.”
“Do they know each other in Rhode Island? I mean—”
“I don’t believe so, Nicholas. Your grandparents live in another city, and your grandmother is very sick.”
“They’re my grandma and grandpa too?”
“Yes.”
“My daddy’s mummy and daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t they want to see me and give me Christmas presents?”
“I’m quite sure they do, Nicholas. But they are very old and sick, and they can’t make the trip to New York.”
“Can I go see them in Rhode Island?”
“Well, perhaps one day you will. Perhaps when your father comes home from Europe.”
“Could they send me a birthday card?”
“Maybe they’re too sick to go to the store.”
“Couldn’t they send the maid?”
“Nicholas, many people—most people—don’t have maids. Shall I tell you why? You have to pay maids to work, and most people don’t have extra money to do that. So they do all the work themselves.”
“Texas Pete grooms his own horse. Bravo. That’s the horse’s name.”
“That’s right. And there they are in Rhode Island, old and sick, and they have to do many, many things for themselves.”
“And that makes them tireder and sicker.”
“That’s right.”
“Why don’t we give them some money for a maid?”
“Well. That’s a difficult question. People have to do things for themselves, even though it’s hard. It’s the way of the world. But your grandparents must think about you and Thomas often, though they may not have the strength to do all the things they’d like to do, like buying Christmas presents and traveling. Do you understand?”
“I think so. Does my daddy know his mummy and daddy are old and tired and sick and poor in Rhode Island?”
“I would think not.”
“Should Mummy write to Daddy and tell him, and he could come home from the war right away and—”
“No more questions, Nicholas. I am waiting for one of your fine pictures, something to cheer me.”
“I’ll be four weeks at the most,” James said.
“Four weeks?” Denise asked.
“Well, maybe five or six. If I get stuck in London for a few days—meetings and so forth—and if I miss the New Orleans I’ll have to wait for the next troopship and that may take—”
“I am not planning a Mediterranean cruise. If you return, you will find me here.”
“Stop it, Denise! Just stop it! I said I’ll be back. I just need time to explain to Winifred and sign a few papers, and I’ll be on the next ship back to France. You know that. You have my word.”
9
And to fill us in on some of the technical details, we have Dr. Andrew Herbert, Chief of Emergency Medicine at Bellevue Hospital and author of…
—The MacNeil-Lehrer Report, PBS
Five-year-old Nicholas sat beside three-year-old Thomas in a wing chair so big it nearly hid them in its brown shadows. He pulled his brother’s knee socks straight. “Just sit still,” he whispered. “If you keep moving, your socks will fall down again and your shirt will get mussed.”
“Do I say ‘How do you do, sir. I’m Thomas Josiah Cobleigh’?”
“No. He knows who you are. He’s your daddy.”
“And your daddy?”
“Yes. I told you that a million times, Tommy. Just like Mummy is both our mummies. You just go up to him and kiss him.”
“Are you going to kiss him too?”
“Of course. First Mummy kisses him at the door. That’s why she’s waiting there now, because she saw him get out of the taxi. And we sit here and don’t do a thing until she brings him into the room, and then we get up and say ‘Hello, Daddy’ and kiss him.”
“Who goes first?”
“Me. I’m bigger.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It is too. You never even met him yet.”
“It is not fair, Nicky.”
“I said it is and I’m boss.”
“You aren’t either. You’re a dummy stupid-head.”
“You shut up or I’ll punch your fat nose, you baby.”
“You shut up, Icky.”
“Shhh.”
“You poopy poopface. You—”
“Shhh. He’s here.” Nicholas took his brother’s hand and held it between his. “Don’t worry, Tommy. It’ll be okay.”
He knew he would have to kiss her, but then, at the earliest moment, he would pull back and say, “Winifred, we have to talk.” But James had not anticipated what a shock his own apartment could give him, how after more than three years of mildewed cellars and outdoor privies he would be stunned by a richness he’d forgotten was his. Just in the foyer, the red glint of the dark wood floors, the perfume of the dried petals of potpourri in a celadon bowl seemed almost too pleasurable; it made him want to cry.
Neither had he anticipated that the woman in his arms, his lanky, electric-haired wife, would feel so warm and smell so clean and look so inviting, her freckled arms reaching out from the neat cap sleeves of her crisp blue linen dress, her tears staining her pale lashes dark. He closed his eyes, held her close, and rubbed the soft skin and vertebral bump on the back of her neck.
; And while all along he knew he would see his sons, he had certainly not anticipated how shattered he would feel when his shy older boy finally lifted his head to say hello and he saw his father’s face on his five-year-old son; Nicholas was a miniature Henry Cobleigh, but with Winifred’s sweet seriousness shining from behind the wide turquoise eyes. And he could not have planned on Thomas—all fat-faced, freckled Tuttle—screeching “Daddy” and flinging his pudgy arms around James’s leg. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
Nor had he considered roast beef and champagne by candlelight, served by a maid in a black uniform and white apron, nor the brief visit paid by the Tuttles where Samuel actually grasped his shoulder and said, “Glad you’re home, James,” nor, finally, the silky economy of Winifred’s lean body.
By the end of his first week home, he realized that, after all, Denise Levesque had been right. Theirs had been a wartime romance, intense, unreal. He belonged in New York. Several times in the weeks that followed he tried to write Denise, admitting that she had been the more perceptive; he could not return to France. But all his letters sounded clipped and analytical. Denise would mock them: lawyer’s letters. So finally he did not write at all, knowing that Denise, who had so wisely predicted what would happen, would understand.
Everything at the Broad Street Club in downtown Manhattan was larger than necessary. Easy chairs could accommodate gorillas. Chowder bowls might double as foot baths, and a swordfish steak would supply the average American family of four with its requisite protein for three and a half days. It was as though the Club’s fourteen-foot-high ceilings and mahogany-paneled walls afforded enough protection for the upper-class white Protestant male to feel secure enough to abandon his habitual understated tastes and self-control and to shriek—silently, of course—Gimme! Gimme!
Samuel Tuttle lifted a giant shrimp from its bed of crushed ice. “I think I do understand,” he commented, and ripped off a third of it between his teeth. “You want to leave Ivers and Hood, abandon the practice of law, drag Winifred and the children to Washington, and work for an intelligence agency that has not yet been formed.”