The Chameleon

by Sugar Rautbord

  “Oh, no.” Harrison chuckled as he raised both hands defensively and shook his head. “The last thing I want is to be involved in the selection of your wife.”

  “I see, sir. It's one tiling for you to help decide whether a nation goes to war but when it comes to family duty, looks like Mother's commander in chief and I've just been drafted.”

  “Oooh buck up, dear, she's a sporting girl. The kind we like.” Ophelia stooped down to pick a late-summer garden mum from a stone urn. She pushed it into her son's tweed riding jacket as a boutonniere. Ophelia's outdoorsy life had left her face as weatherbeaten as her husband's, but whereas time and nature had made Harrison's sculpted features even more distinguished looking, the ravages of the elements had left her face as lined as a Chinese shar-pei.

  “Well then, I'd be delighted to see Minnie, Mother. Lead the way.” He sighed in surrender. He fleetingly wondered why women were not considered tough enough for war.

  The three of them walked around the main house to the side terrace facing the pool pavilion where a round luncheon table beneath an enormous ancient elm had been set with colorful summer china and picnic crystal. Minnie was already standing at the table, waiting as eagerly as a filly at the starting gate raring to go.

  “I had forgotten how you can see our house from this exact spot if you stand on your toes. Well, at least the chimney. Come look, everyone.” Minnie spoke out of one side of her mouth as if she had had a partial stroke. She was pointing a toned, bare arm off into the distance.

  “Oh yes, dear, you're absolutely right. Come look, Harry.” Ophelia didn't move her lips at all. The Tuxedo Park ladies communicated with one another like snooty ventriloquists.

  “I haven't seen you anywhere for the longest time, Harry. Not at the club or at any of the dinner dances. What have you been doing with yourself all summer for fun?” She dug at a loose brick with the toe of her shoe and lowered her head.

  “Flying. Would you like to go up with me?” he asked politely.

  “Heavens no. It's too high-danger for me. If I can't get there on Thunder or by the New York Central, I don't want to go at all! Umm, unless maybe it's in the adorable red roadster Daddy just gave me for winning Best in Show. Did you see it in the driveway?” she blurted out excitedly. “Why don't you come for a ride with me?” Her voice boomed out into the fresh air as if she had spent a lifetime entertaining hard-of-hearing relatives. Her hair was pulled back in the equine style she wore when she rode, a thick chestnut-colored French braid to match the mare's. At least she'd had the good sense not to wear her ribbons. The Harrisons and Minnie all took their appointed places at the table, Minnie next to Harry.

  Harry closed his eyes for a moment and was caught off balance by the high whinny of Minnie's laughter at one of Ophelia's jokes. He bolted from the table, dropping his napkin to the terrace.

  “Mail's just arrived and I'm expecting a letter. ‘Scuse me.” The reluctant recruit in Ophelia's army wondered if he'd be shot at dawn on the terrace, or just be sent to his room without dessert for going AWOL.

  “Well, what do you think, Harry? She's something special, isn't she?” Ophelia and her son were waving Minnie down the quarter-mile-long driveway at dusk as she sped away in her red roadster through the scrolled Tudor archway into the sunset. His rude manners at luncheon had been forgiven.

  “Really, dear, I wish you would be serious about your future. All this”—Ophelia indicated the house, horses, acreage, and the four million dollars she held in her own trust fund aside from what her husband was worth—“must have its proper guardian. With inherited wealth, dear, comes inherited responsibility. Best shared by two individuals from the same world.”

  Harry jammed his hands into his pockets. Ophelia noticed the line of freckles running across the bridge of his nose. He looked so young.

  “Aren't you rushing me, Mother? I have all the time in the world.”

  “Not if you're thinking of becoming a fighter pilot, you don't,” she snapped in a way that reminded him of a crocodile clamping its jaws down hard on its unsuspecting prey. Seeing his reaction, she changed her tactics and softened.

  “You know, dear, your father and I were ‘fixed up’ as you call it, and nudged into a marriage when I was only seventeen and he was just out of Princeton, and it's worked out very well indeed. Very well.” She nodded grandly.

  Harry envisioned his own arranged marriage, in which Minnie would win horse ribbons and he, flying ace and war hero, would eventually settle into the family banking firm and father dozens of grandchildren for his mother. He could imagine Ophelia marching her heirs around and dictating the hour-by-hour structure of their little Harrison lives, just as his had always been planned out on his mother's Adams writing desk in the sun parlor each morning. He thought he had been free at college. Now he realized he had only been following the plan. His mother was leading him to a proper Tuxedo life with Minnie Mortimer or someone just like her. But duty and conscience were what propelled the Harrisons. Who was he to meddle in the unknown fires of passion?

  “Of course, dear”—Ophelia was gleeful—“you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.”

  “Don't you mean make her drink?” He hoped she would smile, but she prattled on about duty and family, inheritances and familial responsibility. Even the leonine stone statuary on the grounds seemed to be staring him down.

  “Okay, Mother. I'll see her again if it will make you happy. But no promises.” He made an intense effort to look intractable, like one of the Harrison portraits in the Great Hall.

  “Your father would like you to go to Cyrus Pettibone's daughter's debut in Chicago over the holidays. He's hoping to pull Pettibone into one of his hush-hush transactions in this European war business. But he's got to be with FDR on government affairs that weekend. Take a look around if you like. There'll be plenty of nice girls from good families, but trust me, they won't be like Minnie. I've been your mother for a long time. She'll bring out the best in you.” Ophelia's eyes twinkled. “Take your plane,” she advised, “and,” she said, conjuring up one of their presidential forebears for good measure, “don't forget to take an overcoat and keep your speech short.” They both laughed. “And Harry”—she patted him on the back—“lots of grandchildren.”

  “Father, I'm sorry that I put you to the loyalty test this morning—me against the president. I know he's walking a fine line.” Harry entered the library. His still boyish voice held an edge in it. In the soft light cast by the antique American wall sconces and his father's hooded brass reading lamp, the heavily waxed dark wood floors gleamed like embers in the fireplace. As was his custom, Harrison had retired to his favorite room in the house following a quiet family dinner in the smaller of the two dining rooms.

  Harrison looked up from his official documents, and, indicating the crystal decanter of brandy beside him on the desk, asked, “Won't you join me?” He seemed less intimidating to his son beneath the vastness of the two-story wood-beamed vaulted ceiling.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  There was a long silence.

  Warmth was not Harrison's strong point, but he did put before all else his devotion to duty and God and loyalty to his friends and family. He struggled here to find the right thing to say, and to appease his son in the process.

  “You'll get your chance to fly, Harry.” He stood up and poured them each a short glass of sherry. “We're moving cautiously into this dung. It's very mature of you to grasp the gravity of the situation. When you're older, you'll understand it's the big picture that needs concern us. I appreciate you trying to see the overview with me. Sit down, son. I think you'll be interested in what FDR and I were up to this August.”

  “I heard you sailed up to Nantucket on the Potomac.”

  “It wasn't aimless holiday sailing.” Harrison's thick brows knitted together into a bushy gray hedge. “We did take the presidential yacht but we made a top-secret rendezvous with some of our American warships. Harry, you've heard about this. The Jo
int Declaration.”

  “Churchill?” Harry folded his arms and leaned on the short-lived ninth president's desk, his eyes aglow. “You were there?”

  Harrison nodded, a slight smile curling his lip. “The president and I secretly transferred over to the heavy cruiser, the U.S.S. Augusta. Fine ship.” Harrison sipped at his sherry. “Even Eleanor and your mother weren't told where we were going.”

  “Father, I had no idea. Tell me what it was like.” Harry's awe of his father was real.

  “It reminded me of kindred spirits coming together. One of the most emotional moments I've ever witnessed. The world's two great leaders were as nervous to meet each other as a couple of young people on a first date.” Harrison's usually cool delivery was awash in warmth. “FDR stood straighter than he's stood in years. He wouldn't use the wheelchair or the crutches. The only assist he'd use was the support of his son Elliott, and as the navy band struck up ‘God Save the King,’ Churchill boarded. I've never seen such a look of elation cross FDR's face. He was determined to greet the legend and be standing on his own to do it. I wish you could have been there to see it.”

  “And Churchill?”

  “When he moved toward Roosevelt, I could swear the tough old fellow had tears in his eyes. Many of us did.”

  Harry couldn't tell whether it was from the light reflecting off the glass decanter or the smoke wafting up from the lit pipe or the emotion ignited from the story that caused his father's eyes to glisten.

  “Mark my words, Harry, together they will annihilate this darkness stalking the world. Mark my words.” For a moment, Harrison's voice resonated exactly like President Roosevelt's.

  “Mr. Harrison, sir,” the butler interrupted them.

  Both father and son spun around.

  “Excuse me, sir, but there's a call for you from Hyde Park.”

  Harry watched as his father crossed the room and picked up the telephone. He thought to himself what a distinguished-looking gentleman his father was. With his thick, sleek gray hair, aloof air, and trim, athletic body, Harrison looked as alert for action as a man of half his years. But his demeanor exuded concern, self-discipline, and a sense of the serious matters crowding his briefcase. Harry almost felt apologetic for bothering him with his modest problems.

  Harrison put the receiver to his ear as he purposefully picked up the fountain pen from its inkwell, a plethora of Harrison presidential memorabilia and photographs crowding the desk. A nerve in his left jowl twitched.

  “She was a remarkable woman. We will all feel her loss.”

  Harry stood at attention.

  “How is the president taking it? … I see. Yes, Mrs. Harrison and I will leave first thing in the morning. Of course. Yes. Thank you for calling.” He gently lowered the receiver back into its cradle.

  “The president's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, has passed away and Franklin's very undone,” Harrison announced. In the darkening room, dimly lit, Harrison, deep in thought, cast an unusually large shadow.

  Watching his father, Harry reflected how difficult it must have been for him to succeed in the shadow of two presidential forebears and such high expectations. But he had, first on Wall Street and now as senior adviser and intimate confidant to the president of the United States.

  Harry wondered if he could ever follow in those exalted footsteps. As a breeze blew in from the terrace, rustling the important papers on his father's desk, Harry suddenly felt he cast no shadow at all.

  A wintry blast lifted the heavy hem of Claire's coat, blowing her snow-matted hair across her face as she sidestepped over an icy patch and into the Marshall Field's employees’ entrance. She ran up the silent and still escalator two steps at a time. It was shut off for Sunday, the store's day off but not hers—she was late. Mother and the Aunties were probably already there laying out handbags and gloves to go with evening dresses and cocktail suits. The Aunties were dying to get their busy hands on the reluctant party-goer, fix her mouth into a smile, puff up her hair, and deck her out in an evening dress required to be at once “elegant” (Mother), “sweet” (Auntie Wren), and “a head-turner” (Slim). Claire would just as soon be facing the German measles.

  Just a few employees were taking inventory today to prepare for the Christmas rush, the burst of year-end revelry that would fill the dressing rooms of the new but already touted “28 Shop” for weeks to come. Field's expensive and deluxe “Store within the Store” was her mother's kingdom, and Violet had poured herself into it just as her clientele poured themselves into the newest pencil-slim fashions from Mainbocher and Claire McCardell. The September opening had been covered by every important magazine and paper in the country and hardworking Violet, finally rewarded for her years of service, had been appointed the new salon director.

  The newest jewel in Field's crown was breathtaking. Joseph Platt, who had created the Hollywood sets for Gone With the Wind, had been dispatched to design the shop with the single instruction to “outmatch anything in the world—even the most fashionable establishments of Paris.” And so he did.

  The twenty-eight dressing rooms were sinfully spacious and each decorated in uncompromised luxury. The “salonettes” were arranged in fourteen opulently designed pairs, with each room facing its twin in a circle around a grand oval foyer. The spacious, regal main salon, with its customer-flattering recessed lighting and hand-rubbed pink oak walls, was furnished with Louis XV gilt tables and Regency chairs covered with gold-studded turquoise velvet and silks. And if gossip ever had a home before, now there were twenty-eight private parlors for high society's greatest pastime, dishing the social dirt. Since each dressing room was decorated in duplicate, any customer could have her favorite room even if it was already in use by a rival, a friend, or the subject of another woman's unflattering remarks. One pair of dressing rooms was a dazzle of cut-glass sconces, beveled mirrors, and tufted rose-satin banquettes; another pair was done up in black marble trim and peach silk; while a third set of private salons, reserved for the viewing of casual hacking-around clothes, was covered with café-au-lait pigskin. English tea was served to the clients from elaborate silver services, and while the salesgirls walked softly and spoke in whispers, the noisy customers had a whale of a good time in the party atmosphere, trying on clothes and trading juicy tidbits.

  And there was no tidbit juicier or more vigorously dissected than the long-running affair between Slim and Cyrus Pettibone. It had been six years since the day young Claire had brought the unsuspecting Mr. Pettibone home to tea. For four of them, knowledge of the quiet little romance had stayed within the protective quilted cocoon of Marshall Field's fitting rooms and immediate environs, whispered about and speculated upon by shop girls, society matrons, caterers, hairdressers, hem fitters, and down the fashion food chain. The latest news often circulated with malicious speed, moving along the telephone wires and onto the pastel carpet of the 28 Shop's fancy fitting rooms.

  “Slim is taking elocution lessons so she can talk like his hoity-toity socialite wife,” a fitter confided to a customer.

  “I don't think it's her elocution he's interested in.”

  “Slim's got a body most models would kill for.”

  “She could be killed for her body now, by Mrs. P.”

  “Pettibone won't walk out on a wife and four daughters.”

  “Not if he wants to continue to be on the board of the Art Institute.” Mrs. Armstrong poked her aquiline nose out of her fitting room.

  “Not to mention the Chicago Stock Exchange.” Mrs. Dunworth inhaled.

  “Slim won't be able to close this sale. Even if she bathes in Paris Nights all day long,” the Jean Harlow blonde modeling a satin figure-fitting evening gown drawled.

  “I hear he's taking her to Paris.”

  Every saleslady in the custom salon was struck dumb.

  Mrs. Winterbotham's jaw dropped to her girdle. Too bad she couldn't run with it, but gossip wasn't “hard news.”

  Every woman within earshot poked her head out of the dress
ing room, no matter what stage of undress she was in.

  “But nobody's actually seen them together, have they?” she queried.

  Miss Violet waltzed in with a gown draped over her arms. “Ladies, ladies, we can't wear rumors. Facts and fabric, that's what we deal with on Six.” Violet's singsong denials were Slim's best defense.

  “Poor old Cyrus must have been seduced in his sleep,” Cora Woodnorth told two friends next door in the beveled-mirrored dressing room. Like a slinky incubus armed with a nightie from Lingerie on Field's fifth floor, they whispered to each other, Slim had aroused his desire, driving him insane for six years.

  “And to think”—Hanna Rusk stamped her foot, splitting a stitched seam and sending an arsenal of straight pins flying all around the ultraplush fitting room—”I purchased that silver dinner suit from her only last week.” She shook off Slim's taste. She'd never wear that outfit again, out of deference to Millicent.

  So the women customers closed ranks in the pinky beige foyer of the 28 Shop with the kind of unity only seen when one of their own was facing childbirth, breast cancer, or divorce, while the salesladies secretly rooted for Slim's success. And amidst the din, Cyrus was forgotten and forgiven, as if he had innocently fallen out of a tree, pants off and ready to go, and landed right in Slim's conniving lap.

  Each time Cyrus had to cancel a romantic rendezvous, Slim fell onto the steady shoulder of her loyal friend Violet, who led her to their usual table at Trader Vic's for a good long cry. Slim, her mascara streaking down her cheeks, would ruin martini after mai tai as the colorful paper umbrellas stuck into the exotic drinks couldn't keep her tears from falling into her frosted glass. Gloomily, Slim would return to her apartment alone, slip into a black peignoir, smoke two packs of Gauloises, and retire to her bed, where she reread Fannie Hurst's Back Street, the popular tearjerker about a woman in retail who was also in love with a married man. And then Slim would be ready to face the world again.

  Yet despite appearances, the years as a married man's mistress had been kind to Slim. He had, in fact, provided for her. Not only was the State Parkway apartment, where she lived with her Persian cat Chat and a canary for company, put into her name, but he also built a small stock portfolio for Slim that included five hundred shares in the Ice Capades. It made Slim feel very proud indeed to take Claire to an evening performance seated in the best box seats on the ice, her full-length mink coat, a Cyrus present, thrown around her shoulders to keep off the stadium chill, knowing she owned a little piece of the show. And Claire took it all in as just another dimension of her after-school education.