Pictures of the Past

by Deby Eisenberg

  And she especially wanted to give the gift of a child, one with his own impressive genetic makeup, to Richard, her Prince Charming, sans horse. But no such pressure was ever imposed by Richard himself. If there was not to be another baby, then he accepted the hand they were dealt, although he ached for both of them, but mainly for Rachel, when twice early pregnancies were diagnosed, but did not last a trimester.

  It was one of the few challenges in Rachel’s life that she could not surmount. Often Richard would reassure her with words—"we’re lucky—we do have a family—we do have a child.” And eventually, it was the emergence of Jason’s personality that would help ease her out of even her brief periods of depression. As it turned out, his auburn hair aside, he was a little Richard. And it was a testimony to Richard’s immersion in his fatherly role that Jason was channeling his impressive talent for numbers, and emulating the identifiable lift in his gait, and his mischievous smile.

  So with no babies at home and Jason in school most of the day, her professional dream had time to develop into a successful reality. Rachel was now filming the third installment of eight in a series of television specials, which would actually be a forerunner to Robin Leach’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. It was called Living the Good Life, and featured estate homes and hotels, always including not just the properties, but a glimpse of the life and the people.

  She knew immediately how she would introduce her piece. She was prompting the cameraman—dozing in the rear of the van—to begin his filming. “Shep, are you up? Are you on this?” When she saw that he was ignoring her, she became more forceful. “No, really, take out the camera—quickly—don’t miss this. This is going to be extraordinary.”

  He eased himself forward with his elbows and opened his eyes briefly. From the backseat, he squinted through the front windshield and thought he was still dreaming. The fog was so thick that he had to remember for a moment that he was not on an airplane in the clouds. He shut his eyes again. “OK, Rachel,” he said through closed lids, as he returned immediately to his reclining position.

  “No. You don’t understand,” she persisted, turning from her place in the front, slapping the backpack on his lap and pressing it against the protrusion of his middle-aged paunch.

  “Hey, stop it,” he mumbled, still half asleep. “Is this a joke or what? There’s nothing out there—are we even nearby?”

  “Now—take out the camera now—you’ll see…” And then she turned to the driver. “Dave, stop for a second by the side of the road; let Shep get everything ready.”

  “Jeez, Rachel,” he moaned. “I hate to stop in this fog—if I stop on the street someone could rear-end us,” he returned initially, and then added, “OK, maybe now, there’s a real shoulder I can make out.” Perhaps because of his lower position on the studio hierarchy, perhaps because he would do anything to please the beautiful Rachel Gold—to keep her lilting voice from reaching its manic phase—Dave did as directed. And finally, Sheppard Watts grabbed his handheld equipment, removed the protective cap, and focused in the precise direction she was pointing.

  The fog was still dense enough that the driver, proceeding at no more than ten miles per hour, could barely see one hundred feet ahead. And so the slowly paced motion required for the shot was easily engineered, without Rachel having to say more.

  Shep remained obstinate. “I’m wasting a good five more minutes of nap time here. I love you, Rach—but I am wasting good film here, too—fog is fog—plenty of stock footage for that.”

  “Just wait—be patient—it’s rising—the sun is breaking through above—and I want you to capture the scene in real time. You’ll hate yourself for missing it— think cinematography Emmy.” There was silence for almost a full minute while they continued the approach to the mansion. “It’s edging up. See, the fog is lifting. You can see almost to the end of the road now. Keep shooting—this slight wind—it’s all working together. I’ve staked this place out and you are going to be more than surprised. We’re already on the street so it will be right ahead of us where the road will take a sharp right curve at the junction of the estate gates.”

  Shep leaned out of the car now on the left side behind the driver, so as to be more aligned with the center of the street. If the image she painted was true, and Rachel was always on target with every detail, he would be even with the entry. And—as if on cue—as they were approximately one hundred yards away, the length of a football field, as Rachel continuously wiped the inside of the windshield where the humidity was further limiting the driver’s vision, the fog began lifting. A victim of the softly swirling wind patterns, the dense fog was disappearing, unveiling the magnificence of the property.

  “No way,” Dave bellowed un-self-consciously, as he blinked at a home that would rival any museum in New York. As a studio driver and the product of a lower-middle-class upbringing, Dave was newer to work in the entertainment field and Rachel loved the freshness and naïveté with which he greeted each location. Of course Shep, who had photographed royalty around the world, was less overtly awed, but he was gracious enough to acknowledge with a slight nod that, once again, she was on top of her game.

  At this more than impressive Newport, Rhode Island, venue, Rachel knew she should be concentrating on the marvelous colorful array of fabrics being displayed before her as puddling draperies in the parlor. But she couldn’t help focusing on the antics of a seven-year-old ballerina prancing in front of a mirrored wall nearby, with a possibly twin brother imitating her moves in a most obnoxious manner. They were playing for the cameras, although the cameras were focused on Rachel interviewing their grandmother in this renovated, turn-of-the-century mansion, where one would expect F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character of Jay Gatsby to come up from the sea entrance in his perfect white suit.

  The girl, not to be upstaged, grabbed her brother’s hands, at first seeming to curtail his movements, but then she maneuvered him to be her ballet dance partner, to hold her waist while she did a lengthy pirouette and then a leap. Together, as if on cue, they ended in a bow.

  “Nana, Nana,” they called in unison, “Look at me; look at me; look at us now.”

  The stuffy and irritated grandame turned to Rachel.

  “My Lord—do you understand now why I have each line on my face? First their mother, my daughter, graces me with an adolescence from hell, and then she marries some sort of pitiful tattooed movie star and leaves on my doorstep for half of the year these two totally undisciplined charges. Why call me Nana—why not just call me Nanny—that is what they think I am.

  “And the beautiful art treasures you see here,” she continued, “my china, my crystal—Faberge eggs—twice as much I have moved to closed storage rooms after their fifth crashing episode. I apologize to you a million times over. If you wish to reschedule or even cancel, I will explain it to my husband. Lord knows I only hope the tyrants don’t short out your plugs with their shenanigans,” she said, referring to the imposing network of wires and cables that snaked within each room where they were filming.

  “On the contrary,” said Rachel, “I’d love to use the energy of these children to really highlight the property. Remember today’s audience is extremely family oriented,” she explained to the owner. “They value that casual lifestyle.”

  Rachel was actually surprised that her staff doing the front work on this assignment at the estate of Judge and Mrs. Simon Barrett had failed to mention these young residents. But perhaps it was a period when they were with their own parents, as certainly Mrs. Barrett would not have been forthcoming about them.

  “I can envision the promo right now.” Rachel was thinking aloud. “Imagine playing hide-and-seek in a thirty-five-room estate.”

  During a break for lunch, the formal and sophisticated hostess seemed much more relaxed and approachable and actually interacted with the young children as the most endearing grandmother. Rachel was invited to tour the mansion at her leisure and to identify any other rooms that might have been overlooked on th
e initial scouting visit and where she would now feel that she might want to continue filming. Claiming that the humidity of the foggy morning was weighing heavily on her joints, Mrs. Barrett urged Rachel to explore the upstairs on her own. “Oh, I am really so happy that those vast rooms are used again by my grandchildren. These are the rooms of my childhood—I grew up in this very house, and then my husband and I moved in as a young married couple when my parents passed. And so my children were raised here, as well. And before I knew it, my daughter was sitting at the little vanity table in what was my bedroom. Don’t miss it—the pink room, of course, third or fourth door down on the right. And now my little grandchildren are jumping on those same beds—playing with the same train set that my own father assembled. One day my daughter and son will inherit the house, but I don’t see them fighting over it. They and their spouses are ‘citizens of the world.’ This is not their idea of modern. They will sell it, believe me, before they will settle here.”

  “Oh, but this is such a beautiful home—mansion really, or should I say castle?” Rachel finally was able to add.

  “Oh, home. Yes, that is the highest compliment. My parents were ‘old world money’ and so they did not raise us to chase or covet materialistic things. But nothing is enough for my children—especially my Hollywood son-in-law. All of the history, the memories, the fact that senators and presidential candidates began their campaigns here, they roll their eyes at that.” She stopped herself suddenly, as if afraid that her personal digression had seemed immodest to her audience, and so she went back to the specifics of the architecture.

  “I knew that you would love the light and openness that the parlor would offer, especially the pillared loggia view to the backyard. But go on up the stairs, and excuse me that I will not accompany you. Anyway, I should be helping the real nanny to corral the little ones and get them appropriately dressed for a birthday party they will be attending.”

  Rachel recognized that the owner’s exasperation had turned to tenderness. She could sense that Mrs. Barrett actually felt a responsibility and a love toward those rambunctious twins that overshadowed her pride in any of her material possessions.

  And so Rachel accepted the invitation to proceed through the home. But when she climbed the beautifully curving central staircase and looked down at the patterned foyer floor, she had a déjà vu moment. Suddenly, she was back in time to her visit to the Woodmere residence in Kenilworth, Illinois. There were similarities certainly in the size and the layout of the mansion, the view out the rear, the grand entrance and multilayered chandelier; it was as if she had a second chance to survey that home that had so impacted the direction of her life, both personally and professionally. But for the first time ever, she had a pang of guilt. Before this, she had never looked back on her decision to keep Jason’s real father a secret; certainly, that was not a choice that she had ever questioned. But for some reason today she tried to recall the image of another person she had noticed at the visit. While in Kenilworth, she had spoken only to Court and briefly to the butler, but she had seen this other man out of the corner of her eye, an extremely distinguished-looking, middle-aged gentleman. He seemed to have been shadowing them from a distance down the long hallway. Although she had dismissed him at the time, she knew that she must have understood that he was Court’s father. And only now she allowed herself to wonder if perhaps the son was not a reflection of the father. Perhaps there was a grandfather who would have embraced Jason. Perhaps she had denied Jason a solid and impressive legacy. She was not thinking in monetary terms. No, it was the solid character of this grandmother that had impressed her and set her thoughts in this new direction. She would not go back on her decision, of course, and Jason had the benefit already of two sets of devoted grandparents, but all of a sudden she felt for this one man. Maybe he too was disappointed in his own son. Suddenly, Rachel was almost dizzy from looking over the banister, concentrating on the complicated pattern of the stone floor and her own complicated reflections, and so she literally shook her head and continued on her tour. As she peered into the playroom of this house in Newport, however, one more memory could not escape her. There was a little girl that Jason had insisted he had been playing with that day in Kenilworth. He spoke about her incessantly for a week after that visit, until, serendipitously, a new little boy about Jason’s age moved into their New York apartment building and Jason became distracted enough to abandon all talk of the girl. And so Rachel could finally dismiss the incident as an overactive imagination at work.

  Jason

  New York, 1979

  Jason Stone had always exhibited a maturity and strength of character beyond his years, and that is what his parents, Rachel and Richard, were hoping would surface when they presented him with the news that they were relocating to Chicago. The year was 1979 and Jason was ten years old.

  “We’re what?” was his initial response. “I can’t leave my friends. What are you thinking? What is this really about?” Instinctively, tears were welling up in his eyes. “You’re not hiding something, are you? You’re not getting divorced, are you?” he ambushed them accusingly. Richard and Rachel looked at each other more than lovingly and couldn’t hold back little laughs. “No, darling,” his mother had said quickly. “You know that is not true.”

  “I’m not sure I know anything anymore,” he returned. “It’s just that every day it seems like the parents of someone at school are getting divorced. And half the time at games the kids have one mom dropping them off, a stepdad picking up, a stepmom cheering— another having a tantrum with a dad and then the next thing you know my friend has left school and moved farther uptown or to Long Island.”

  Rachel and Richard again were sharing knowing looks and shrugs. Their young son had so graphically articulated the scenarios at many of the pricey Manhattan prep schools, where parents had too much money and too little time for anything but themselves—where children were often one more commodity for display. Husbands were leaving families for colleagues, secretaries, and nannies, and wives were multitasking with jobs, workouts, lovers, or any list of priorities that did not include raising kids. Their son needed the strongest reassurance at this point that they were an extremely intact family.

  “Jason. We are moving—all three of us—together— and happily—back to my hometown of Chicago. All the reasons are good. Your New York grandparents, Dad’s parents, have relocated to Florida, and since Aunt Ida and Uncle Chal married, they are away for half of the year themselves. If we move to Chicago, my parents can enjoy watching you grow up and we can be there for them as they have needs. It all began because Dad’s firm presented him with a wonderful opportunity to be a managing partner in their Chicago office. Architecture Today is anxious for me to work out of that area and has given me the title of Midwest editor.”

  Rachel knew she was speaking quickly and in an almost artificially upbeat manner, as if her tone and cadence could obscure the reality of what enrolling in a new school and separating from old friends might entail.

  “I don’t suppose it’s like I have any choice in this decision, anyway; at least you can be honest with me in that,” Jason said.

  At this point, Richard took over. “Jason, one thing you can be assured of—to us you are number one—we would never do something that would in any way hurt you. We know that Chicago is going to be a wonderful hometown for Mom again and now for all of us. Our job opportunities will mean security for us and for our futures, including your education. And we like the pace of Chicago. It is a big city, but maybe a little less intense than New York.

  “You asked if you have a choice and you do. If you truly feel that you cannot cope with the news, then Mom and I will reevaluate our decision. But we hope you will choose to be happy and excited and to welcome this adventure.”

  “By the way,” Rachel added, not above sweetening the pot with a small bribe, “your grandpa is waiting for the word that we’re really going to live by him so he can pick out a new racing bike for you. He’s so
happy that you will live where there are safe streets and bicycle paths.”

  Suddenly Jason’s sullen look was lifted—he was still, after all, a ten-year-old boy confined to walking and taxi riding in his Manhattan environment. “Well, that would be nice,” he said softly, trying to maintain his pitiable attitude for he was enjoying the sympathy it was evoking. But he couldn’t restrain himself. “No,” he finally interjected to his parents’ initial dismay. And then he quickly added, “No, he can’t pick it out himself. I’ll go with Grandpa to Spinner’s Cyclery—I remember I saw that they have one in Chicago too. I want to pick out the bike.”

  And three months later, as the school term ended, Jason and his grandfather left the bicycle shop rolling the sleekest royal blue and steel gray bike, the newest model—The Courtland.

  Taylor

  Kenilworth, 1987

  While his wife, Emily, constantly protested his traveling for business, in reality, when Taylor was home, he was inattentive and distant, even dismissive of her. Earlier in the evening, she had approached him while modeling a new formal gown and reminding him to begin preparations for that evening’s charity event. Once again, however, he accused her of caring more about her looks than about any cause and challenging her to choose an existing dress from her wardrobe and to donate the difference. Naturally, she stormed off in tears. But Taylor made no move to placate her or to apologize. He was content to spend time alone in his study, simply using the remote to scroll through the channels on the television set, when suddenly something caught his attention. It was some sort of special presentation featuring a hotel dining room, with the cameras scanning everything from the rich, textured wood furniture to the antique dishes. He was attempting to raise the volume when the venue changed to highlight the veneer of a massive and lengthy maple wood bar. He knew he had been to this location, but he could not immediately place it. He had a familiarity with the spot to the point where he could say to himself, “I sat on that chair,” or he could picture the bartender drying a wine goblet and then holding it up to the light to check for water spots.