The Chameleon

by Sugar Rautbord

  “You mustn't be late, dear.” Ophelia bussed Harry on the cheek and chided him as if he were just going off to Miss Chase's Dance School with the other privileged youngsters. “Try and get an upper berth,” she trilled, always aware of their lofty social position.

  “Be brave, my boy.” Harrison firmly shook his only son's hand and clasped him on the shoulder with his gray leather glove.

  “Be safe.” Claire mouthed, pushed aside in the same moment her young husband leaped aboard the train, already pulling out of Grand Central Station. The combined steam from a half-dozen locomotives sent up a fog so thick that even people wrapped up in their final good-byes lost sight of each other.

  So Claire waved to a dozen lieutenants, any one of whom could have been Harry leaning out of the Pullman's open windows, all the boys waving back, whether or not they even had someone seeing them off in this human sea of worrying wool coats, raised trilbys, and waving white handkerchiefs. In this world turned upside down, the image of a pretty All-American girl with a look of I'll-wait-for-you-until-you-get-back was a picture they all needed to carry overseas as much as they needed their dog tags. And so they waved to the tall, shiny-haired girl standing on tiptoe on round-toed high heels, the indigo blue of her coat skimming her slim ankles.

  Harry watched Claire for as long as he could, her small waist cinched by the coat belt, her nose tucked into the fur of her beaver collar until the smoke erased her. He waved happily even if she couldn't see him anymore. Thanks to her, he was free. Free to fly and soar.

  “Don't forget to wear an overcoat, Harry,” Ophelia called out last as if wrapping him up in the family motto was as good as a hug and a kiss.

  “Well, I'm off. To the war effort, you know.” Ophelia turned abruptly on her sensibly low heels to board her own train, which was leaving momentarily for Washington, as if the real work at hand was going to be done by her at DuPont Circle from her volunteer's desk at the Office of Civil Defense. She brushed her cheek quickly against her husband's and nodded to Claire's belly.

  “Take care,” she said crisply, more to the growing embryo who most emphatically would not be born in a department store than to her daughter-in-law of twelve weeks. In Ophelia's mind, Claire's baby was a gift that would belong to her, never mind the unsuitability of the maternal packaging it arrived in. Claire was just the delivery girl.

  “Remember, stay off step ladders and drink your milk,” she barked.

  “Yes.” Claire was too stunned to assemble any more words. The steam, the noise, the heat, and the Harrison inside her all conspired to make her swoon. She'd had morning sickness all day.

  A steadying arm caught her elbow and turned her away from the tracks and back into the crisp air away from the station. Harrison strolled with her down Forty-fourth Street, allowing her fawn deerskin-covered hand to rest on his coat sleeve, generously adjusting to her shaky rhythm when he would have characteristically led the way. They paused at the curb in front of the Commodore, Claire's head falling against his square shoulder, the hem of her coat hitting his houndstooth trousers. She bobbed in and out of reality, and drew in deep breaths of air in a brave effort to compose herself.

  His voice was as elegantly smoky as rich rolled tobacco.

  “Would you like a cup of tea? We're not far from my club, if you're feeling well enough.” He checked the mono-grammed pocket watch he kept tucked in his vest. “I've time before I'm due at La Guardia.”

  La Guardia? Was the whole family shipping out tonight? she wondered. Perhaps they had booked her on the Titanic II sailing at midnight.

  “I'd like to drive you back to Tuxedo, but I have yet to pick up my diplomatic pouch. Averell Harriman and I are flying the Pan Am Clipper to London, in just a few hours.”

  The cold air and all the Harrisons’ traveling plans were quickly clearing her mind. There were nightly bombing raids in London and death among the rubble. No wonder the family had all been so blasé about Harry's departure. They were all going to the “front” in some way or another.

  “So you'll be going to war as well.” She brushed her hair from her forehead, tidying up, and looked into her father-in-law's distinguished face.

  “Just as a citizen soldier. Armed with pouches of paper ready for negotiations.” His eyes twinkled as the corners of his mouth, Harry's mouth, lifted in a wide, disarming grin. No wonder Harrison was so good at diplomacy. That ingrained response of modesty had left permanent creases around his eyes and jaw, adding character to his handsomeness.

  “I feel so useless.”

  “Nonsense, Claire. You have the most important job of all of us. You're carrying the next Harrison. My grandson … we hope.” He stopped smiling. It was suddenly apparent that he wasn't offering idle words of comfort.

  There was so much more to this send-off than was outwardly acknowledged, she could see that now. If the Harrisons’ only son were killed without a male heir, the illustrious family line would end right here. To Harrison and Ophelia, having this child was much more compelling than whether Claire or Harry was in love, or if she was a good wife, or if indeed his parents even liked her. A surge of elation invigorated her with the realization that they were all counting on her, depending on Claire to do the one thing this proud family could not do for themselves.

  When Harrison took her hand it was to shake it formally as if they had just reached an understanding. They were allies now, each off to perform their separate but equal duties. He to deal with Churchill and Roosevelt, and she to bear a son. No one had to tell her that her future rested on her ability to deliver.

  So Claire returned to Tuxedo with her one assignment. Like a good soldier she would fly their flag and hold the fort. But with her husband in the South Pacific, Harrison shuttling between Washington and London, and Ophelia at Eleanor's elbow, Charlotte Hall seemed more of a musty museum than ever, especially to a young girl aglow with new life inside her. She rattled around the enormous house, wondering if she would go the whole nine yards without ever seeing another soul. Her loneliness was all the more acute when she considered that Harry might still be gone when their child was born. A sudden chilling thought snaked its way into her mind. Just like her own birth. Her father had been thousands of miles away and was never heard from again. Claire shuddered and shook off the comparison. Harry would be back.

  In the meantime, she tried to enliven the long, empty days before her. Up early, breakfasting by herself in the sun parlor, poring over the New York Times, Claire listened intently to the Philco radio for news of her husband's carrier group or her in-laws’ whereabouts between commercials for Carter's Little Liver Pills and Old Gold cigarettes.

  Claire hungered to have a real conversation, even if it was only to sell someone a pair of knitting needles or a Chippendale chair. Trying to engage the stiff household staff in friendly chitchat was out of the question. They were like Field's nose-in-the-air floorwalkers, only making themselves visible to tell her what not to touch or to scold her with an icy “Mrs. Harrison wouldn't like that.” So among the sixty-odd rooms at Charlotte Hall the only ones she stuck to were the bedroom she had shared with Harry and her father-in-law's book-lined study. He had even earmarked some books on foreign policy for her and she devoured them, committing whole passages to memory.

  It irked her that the regiment of servants who ignored her took hours tending to chores she and her aunties could have whizzed through; and it worried her that as soon as her child was born, a delegation of nurses and nannies reporting to Ophelia would take charge. She had overheard as much.

  As the afternoon light lengthened and the dogs napped in the still house, she indulged herself in one of the few activities that truly gave her pleasure. She explored Charlotte Hall like a social archaeologist for clues to Harry's childhood. A porcelain music box painted with his initials yielded a lock of his baby blond hair, along with a picture of Ophelia holding her small son. A double passport issued to him and Ophelia when he was six showed that they had visited Venice and Paris many times
and Claire concluded that mother and son had rarely been separated. By taking his silver trophies off recessed shelves, tracing her fingertip along the inscriptions and touching his blue ribbons, she learned that he'd jumped horses until he was twelve and shot skeet at the Greenbriar on holidays, winning prizes for his marksmanship with clay pigeons. She particularly liked the photo of an eighteen-year-old Harry with his fly club, their matching emblem Ps worn as jauntily on the sleeves of their leather jackets as their cocky grins.

  She couldn't quite decipher, though, which fellow the college-age Harry was in the picture of the Princeton water polo team hanging on the wall in his closet. All the boys were tall, thin, and wiry, and with their wet hair flattened on top of their identical WASP features any one of the eight could have been her husband. After some time with a magnifying lens she thought she found him in the middle row, third from the left.

  After several weeks of these “excavations,” Claire uncovered the single most interesting fact. She realized that she didn't know her Harry very well at all. By carefully going through the albums and seeing him grow over the years with the same circle of relatives and friends, and by reading the Rudyard Kipling stories he kept by his bed, she was beginning to get a picture of someone she hadn't met yet.

  She had known only the passionate young flier in a uniform and in a hurry. She'd fallen in love to the strains of Benny Goodman, her dashing young lieutenant's hands holding her tightly. She'd dined with the polite heir who told her he didn't care about her ancestors, but whose own house proudly displayed crowds of them on all four floors, each in carefully tended-to frames.

  Their time together so far had been recklessly romantic, full of sweet tenderness and forever promises, their excitement enhanced by the drama of separations and anticipated returns. Their wedded life had been a patchwork of hurried golden moments on sporadic evenings, where touching took the place of words, and of intense weekends sandwiched between flight school and family, until, too soon for her, Harry's final orders came through. And then he was gone.

  Her isolation and Tuxedo's frosty treatment of her, the discoveries of her daily “excavations,” the hormonal changes—all of it caused her to question whether the peacetime Claire would be up to Harry's Hudson Valley standards. Her instincts told her she would have to find a way to blend in, to learn whatever she would need to know to make him happy.

  In the meantime, the long letters she and Harry wrote back and forth filled her evenings and sustained her. Nestled in Harrison's study, a cherry plaid blanket thrown over her elevated legs, the dogs snoozing on either side of the buttery leather lounge and ottoman, she read:

  April 24, 1942

  USS Hornet

  My darling,

  I am wistful tonight, my dear, and a picture I crave is of you and me sitting on a soft couch somewhere in the complete quiet, where we might watch a smoldering fire and just be together. Or perhaps out in the pine woods somewhere beyond C.H., lit by the stars and moon, stretched out on a blanket of needles, just feeling the touch of you and staring up at the limitless sweep above, where no one cares where you come from, just that you are the sweetest girl in the world and you are mine. I know we Harrisons do not show emotion easily or express our feelings well, but I can only tell you, my dearest, I am yours alone.

  I have put the picture of you and me and old Elliott at the Stork Club over my bunk onboard and even though there's not a single fellow here I prepped with or who attended Princeton or Yale Law, I have bonded more closely with this squadron than any group of fellows I have known before. They are all quite smitten with you and your beautiful face, although one of the guys, a good pilot and a grocer's son, might have been just a smidge more impressed that old FDR's son was squeezed in next to you. Well, at least they can see this is a Democratic war. No favoritism in this man's army. What with the commander in chief's boys in the thick of things. Elliott is already flying overCENSOREDreconnaissance missions in unarmed photographic planes.

  Yours truly will be flying to an island off the Philippine mainland calledCENSORED. Sounds like one of those Trader Vic drinks we indulged in, doesn't it? I wish I had you in my arms now, my dearest, and the wonderful fresh vanilla smell of you in my nostrils, and your silky hair lying across my chest. I cherish you and our little bundle that you are carrying within you. I wish I could be there, too. Write to me, Clairest. I long for your voice.

  Yours,

  Harry

  “Why aren't your lips moving? Are you all right, dear?”

  “Of course, Mother.” Claire had her face twisted up like her mother-in-law's in a poor rendition of an Eastern Shore aristocratic accent.

  “What, dear? I can barely understand you. Whose mother is queer?”

  Claire relaxed her lips and spoke in her regular clear mid-western voice. She had been practicing her diction as part of her campaign to conquer Locust Valley.

  “No, no, Mother. I'm so glad you're here.” Obviously Claire's newly affected diction needed work.

  “Come and hug me then. We're all just a bunch of sad sacks without you.”

  “Me too.”

  “Claire, you're as thin as a sparrow. Are you eating enough for the baby?”

  Violet was spending a rare but much anticipated weekend with her daughter. Civilian travel was expensive and discouraged, not to mention that Violet's impeccable good manners wouldn't allow her to stay longer than was proper in a house in which she didn't feel entirely welcome. She hadn't seen the Harrisons since that disastrous January weekend when she and the Aunties had been invited to Charlotte Hall for what they assumed would be a round of black-tie postnuptial parties. Instead, the visit had gone like a Noel Coward comedy that they could laugh about only now.

  Upon arrival, they were ushered into the lead-paned solarium for tea sandwiches with Harry and Claire, their bags whisked upstairs. Instructed to dress for dinner, Wren caused a small commotion before she realized the upstairs maids had only unpacked for her and were steaming, not stealing, her two outfits. By the time Slim descended the spiraling oak staircase holding her long enamel cigarette holder aloft while blowing smoke rings directly into the faces of the ancestors lining the wall, a slack-jawed Ophelia had made up her mind to cancel Saturday night's dinner at the club and Sunday's brunch with her Tuxedo neighbors. She told Harrison she simply wouldn't mix fruitcakes with caviar. Even Claire was aghast. She wondered what had happened to her proper aunties. Since they had arrived in Tuxedo they were behaving like the Marx Brothers.

  So the lady houseguests were secluded like social lepers in the great house, a band hastily hired to provide dinner music Saturday night so that Claire and Harry could dance while the “mothers-in-law” tapped their toes like out-of-luck wallflowers.

  Throughout it all, in contrast, Violet had behaved so properly that by the time the ladies departed for the Sunday night train back to the Midwest, she had probably intimidated her hosts as much as she had impressed the servants. She had left the help exactly the right amount of tip money for their weekend stay and discreetly left a dozen silk hangers and scented drawer liners for Ophelia to open after their departure as well as a beautiful fountain pen in a stand for their host.

  Still, for all the pleasantries and promises exchanged, Violet felt like she was meant to be just an occasional house-guest and resolved not to intrude on the Harrisons’ hospitality any more often than was necessary. Besides, she was needed at the store. So it was just a quick visit and a little maternal aid—both emotional and financial. Just because her daughter was well married didn't mean the largesse spilled over into Claire's pocketbook. Like most of the very rich who budget for the cook's groceries and the chauffeur's car polish and the gardener's manure, Violet observed, no one had thought to give the new Mrs. Harrison a dime. So Violet slipped a twenty-dollar bill into Claire's palm as her daughter hugged and waved her off in the Harrisons’ chauffeur-driven town car.

  After Violet's departure, the silences in the house became overbearing. Claire sometimes
thought that unless she could find something useful to keep her occupied she'd go crazy herself. She'd read every baby book printed in English. But there was a war on and she had to find a way to participate.

  It came together in the oddest way. Minnie Mortimer telephoned to invite Claire to a horse show at which they would be selling war bonds. Would Claire be interested in manning one of the tables? No one would need to see Claire from the waist down; some of the Old Guard of Tuxedo didn't fancy seeing a pregnant woman out and about, especially at a blue ribbon event. Minnie's offer was a prickly olive branch. Claire didn't bother to tell her that she still wasn't showing yet, just that she'd be there.

  Sitting at her makeshift desk a good nervous hour before the bond drive began, Claire conscientiously pored over the literature neatly arranged on the table.

  “A woman is a substitute,” one War Department brochure began, “like plastic instead of metal. Women are needed to do the work of men now that they are away.” “An idle typewriter,” a pamphlet from the Office of War Information trumpeted in bold type, “is just another weapon for Hitler.” Fascinated, Claire read on, pulling her cashmere cardigan closer. All of the literature was designed to encourage women to take secretarial jobs in Washington, where the mountain of paperwork necessary to move a nation through war was triple anything the capital had ever seen before. She itched to get close to the action. Later that afternoon, when the bond drive was over, Claire, an event calendar in her hand, motioned Minnie into the corner with an excited “Eleanor Roosevelt's coming!”

  “Whose house?” Minnie yawned as though she couldn't have been more unimpressed.

  “How far are we from Poughkeepsie?”

  “Thinking of entering Vassar?” Minnie looked at Claire sideways.

  “No, Eleanor Roosevelt is going to be speaking at a plant near there. I think we should go.”

  Minnie pursed her lips and wondered if her old fiancé’s new bride had been kicked in the head by a horse. “If you want to go that's fine, but why me?”