The Chameleon

by Sugar Rautbord

  Ophelia cackled out loud when she heard Claire announce at a Sunday supper that she was bringing over two four-year-old orphans from Seoul. “I thought slavery went out with Lincoln. Pass the cream.”

  “No, Grand-mère.” Six's smile was so disarming that Ophelia missed the flash of temper that had momentarily widened his pupils. He flew his mother's flag. “If bad soldiers took their parents away, I don't mind sharing my toys with them.”

  “Ophelia, you misunderstand my intentions. I'm not planning to adopt these children. I'm just placing them in nice homes,” Claire said, wondering how the wicked witch of Charlotte Hall could possibly imagine that her house was a more suitable atmosphere for two frightened children than a mortgaged Cape Cod decorated with love in a suburb of Long Island. She thought back to her own first meeting and inquisition by Ophelia and shuddered. You didn't save a child from North Korean bombings only to throw him into the society wars of the North Shore.

  Sara spoke up, sensing that Six had said the right thing. “I'd love to have a Korean of my own.” The Aunties had sent her a Korean doll couple from Marshall Field's fifth-floor Toys, and she kept the pair, with their green silk pajamas and black stovepipe hats, on her Most Favorite Ten Things shelf.

  “Well, as long as they're out of here by Christmas.” Ophelia swallowed her coffee.

  “That's the spirit.” Mrs. Mortimer looked around the table pleasantly.

  And so with the arrival of the little refugees, the “apocalypse in a thimble,” as Slim later referred to it, began.

  “Who's been peeing in my Pillsbury?” Cook, flour coating her thick arms, was in a tizzy. She stormed into Ophelia's study to complain about the “slant-eyed savages invading my house.” With her aluminum bowl filled with a discolored recipe as evidence, not only the tiny Koreans but also Claire were put on trial. It was the final instance of breaking the rules Ophelia had been waiting for to bring her case to court. In her relentless campaign to purge this misfit from her otherwise perfect universe, the attack on the dinner rolls by Claire's non-toilet-trained orphans was tangible evidence for the prosecution.

  “Heaven knows what else they've contaminated. We could be catching Korean cholera just by eating muffins at our own table for all we know. I insist you put a stop to this, Harry, and I hope it opens your eyes to the fact that this woman who doesn't love you is only using us. Divorce her.”

  And if Harry had any misgivings about his mission, the lieutenant commander was constantly flanked by his mother and Minnie to be sure he stuck to his guns.

  “Son, if this intruder loved you she wouldn't need to find time away from you with these little yellow creatures,” Ophelia preached to him at breakfast.

  And during their secret suppers in New York, it was Minnie who manned the guns. “Darling, you needn't uncork your thrills.” Minnie shook her finger and pulled the after-dinner bottle of Tanqueray away from Harry. She twisted around, exposing her boyish breasts as she placed the bottle on the bedside table. And there, beneath the Union Club's wainscoted ceiling, in a room reserved for its top-drawer members to freshen up before the theater or unexpectedly stay the night, she wet her finger and used it to satisfy Harry in the way he preferred.

  Afterwards, as Harry rested back against the headboard with his jug ears pushed forward, Minnie propped herself up with a bony elbow and massaged his temples.

  “Claire's been a fine brood mare and given you two wonderful children. We should be grateful to her for that.” Minnie didn't bother telling Harry that all the best doctors in New York and Boston had pronounced her infertile. “Let's just give her a big thank-you, a nice send-off, and the freedom she needs to save her lower classes. I have no qualms about doing it our way and writing a great big check to CARE and the Red Cross at Christmas.”

  “Oh, Minnie, my little pudding. What would I do without you?” Truth be known, Harry had felt more in the shadow of his father than ever, and Minnie was the perfect wall sconce to shine a little light on his secondhand quarter of the universe.

  Tom Brewster, whom Harry had sent as his messenger boy, came to Claire with the divorce papers. The two old friends met for lunch at “21,” and over corned-beef hash and with miniature Texaco trucks, oil derricks, and New York Yankee pennants hanging over their heads, he outlined to a surprised Claire which assets would be available to her. She had known their marriage was a sham, but she had assumed that to the Harrisons’ appearances were too important for something as seedy as a divorce. Tom's papers probably laid out a civilized arrangement, Claire thought, with her and the children ensconced in one of the guest cottages, still under Ophelia's watchful authority.

  Her eyes scanned the masculine, childish decor—big boys’ trophy toys representing the businesses owned by the tycoons who ate there—and desperately searched for something familiar, like a Marshall Field's truck or an ice-skating Sonja Henie. She leaned the sleeves of her Lord & Taylor suit on the red-and-white-checked tablecloth and pushed the creamed spinach around on her plate.

  Her reaction was less emotional than she might have thought. She had been leeched by Ophelia so many times she was almost too anemic to respond to this publicly delivered cut. Tom rattled on in dull lawyerly tones, and Claire noticed a blue-haired friend of Ophelia's whispering into Walter Winchell's ear, both of them trying too hard not to look in her direction but obviously there for the show. She was determined not to give them one.

  “Take your time here, Claire, and by all means get your own counsel if it'll make you comfortable. But the Harrisons feel, since it's a friendly divorce, I can represent both parties.”

  “It's not a party, Tom.” A good buddy to her during the war years, when life returned to normal and he'd become the Harrison firm's in-house legal counsel, he'd put some distance between them. Claire was disappointed but understood. After all, what was six years of friendship compared to a six-figure income and a powerful position? “I see no reason to drag this out. The Harrisons are nothing if not honorable. I'm sure they'll be fair.” She thought she caught a glimpse of a silly-hatted Minnie giggling in the corner with another girl. The hat, pulled down low, could disguise her horsey face but not that whinnying laugh. Finally Minnie lifted the brim and openly smirked at Claire, as if challenging her to a contest.

  Claire restrained herself. She didn't want to behave like the ill-bred shop girl they wanted her to be. “Why don't you have the papers drawn up and send them to me in Chicago? I think I'll take the children to see the Aunties for a few days.”

  “We can do it now or wait till you come back. That'll be about a week, right? Nobody's forcing you to sign.” There was a twitching in his hand as he held his butter knife. She sensed there was another piece of news he was almost sorry he had to be part of. “But it would be the Harrison preference to sign off on this unpleasantness here and now. I'm sure you wouldn't want to a create a drama.”

  “Has Harrison approved this … document?”

  “They've been drawn up to protect all the Harrisons. Of which you are one.” Tom's tone was that of both a friend and a lawyer.

  “Oh, why delay the inevitable?” And she signed in triplicate the places he had marked.

  “Claire.” Tom started to lay his hand over hers as he took back the document. “If there's anything I can ever—”

  She pulled her hand away as if he had touched a raw nerve and, clutching at her gray gloves, felt a hint of color returning to her cheeks. She was sure she had handled herself like a lady, and she was glad she had given Minnie and Winchell nothing in her behavior to crow about. Hadn't there been enough domestic damage already?

  Auntie Wren's hand-painted banner and colorful welcome-home balloons festooned the arch between the dining room and double living room of their Windermere apartment. The longtime friends had purchased a two-bedroom suite on the top floor of the residential hotel that provided them a peachy view of a tree-filled Jackson Park and four whole windows overlooking Lake Michigan. Violet's financial wizardry and plain old-fashioned thri
ft had finally made her a woman of property. It wasn't a palace—it wasn't even a house—and while it wasn't in Slim's swanky neighborhood, it was paid for, pleasantly furnished, and home. Violet and Wren had happily gone to the extra effort to greet the tired travelers with the fresh smells of just-baked chocolate chip cookies. The minute Claire and the children entered the sun-filled apartment, decorated with framed finger-painted originals by Sara and Six, the tension of the last few days flew away like the pigeons that took their breakfast on the Aunties’ windowsill.

  Claire had tried to protect her children from the angry words and accusations hurled at their departure from Charlotte Hall. As usual, the Aunties had the old-fashioned remedy: busy days and lots of laughter. Six preferred the Museum of Science and Industry half a block away, with its giant beating heart you could walk through, and Sara liked the sailboat pond off the drive at Fifty-seventh Street almost as much as she enjoyed doing something she had never done before: grocery shop. She insisted on wearing her best Florence Eisman to tap the grocer's melons, pinch the grapes, and instruct the butcher exactly what size and shape to cut their lamb chops before he wrapped them in the shiny white paper. The butcher always called her “young lady” and gave her a sample of something she had never tasted before, like salami or tongue. In the restful evenings—the Aunties took their dinner promptly at seven—me tuckered-out children were content to listen to the Aunties’ store stories, the radio playing in the background, and pore over their mother's pretty stamps.

  Wren wrung her hands and cried.

  “It's the one thing we didn't teach you. What to—you know—how to keep them—that hormonal part of a man happy.”

  “Wren, please! Stop this!” Slim choreographed her entrance like Ruby Keeler.

  “It's not the most terrible thing in the world. The duchess of Windsor was divorced twice before she married her king, and so was Rita Hayworth. As the French say, sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get your prince.”

  “Well, if that's the game plan, you should be an empress by now,” Violet observed sharply.

  Ignoring her, Slim continued. “We've always been a special pride of lions, an all-female family.” She sighed. “And now God has blessed us with two beautiful grandchildren to cherish, and even”—she hid her deep emotion—”the most special little boy on the planet.”

  William Henry Harrison VI, “Six” to his East Coast family but called “Sweet William” by the Aunties or just plain William by Grandlady Violet, was a head turner. No matter where he went in Marshall Field's, somebody stopped shopping just to stare at this beautiful child who moved in a part-the-seas way.

  Wren was aghast at how anyone could name this angel dropped to earth after a number. “How could they? Like Sweet William was something you could buy at the pastry shop after you've waited your turn.”

  “No imagination, that's how.” Slim explained it away. “Sure, I'm named after an adjective, but at least it's descriptive.” She ran her hands down her sleek hips. “Six is just something that comes after five and before seven. Isn't it, darling?” She pinched his cheeks with hands circled with clanging charm bracelets, smothering him in a mist of Chanel No. 5 and My Sin.

  “I love the way you smell, Auntie Slim.” He adored her. For all the special attention lavished upon Six, no one could say he was spoiled. The cherished child, who received so much love, only had more love to give back.

  At his request, Six celebrated his sixth birthday in the store's Walnut Room, the same room, they all remembered, where Ophelia Harrison's purchase had bought Christmas in the depth of the Depression and a ticket out of debt when Claire had been just about the same age. While his sister wasn't looking, Six rolled up his sleeve and grabbed a slippery orange goldfish out of the fountain and mischievously dropped it down the back of her party dress. After a few seconds of hysterics, all was forgiven. Nobody, especially Sara, could stay angry at Sweet William.

  I've never felt so relaxed, Claire thought as she tucked her nose into the crook of her elbow and swung easily on the fringed silk hammock hanging across Slim's salon. God knows what her aunt and Cyrus Pettibone had done in this contraption, but who was she to judge? No matter where, it felt good to be alone for a lazy half hour. Mother was at the store, Wren was with the children at the zoo, and she was waiting in no particular hurry for Slim to return from “lunch” with Uncle Cyrus. She laughed to herself. Sometimes out of great complications came serenity. At this moment she was seriously considering writing a social studies chapter on how women could come together and raise very fine children.

  “You shouldn't have signed the papers.” The serious expression on Slim's face as she entered the room was as set as a dead-bolt lock.

  “We've been over this before.” Claire was still in the lull of the swaying hammock. “It's done.”

  “Undone, according to Cyrus. Ophelia's filing a custody suit. She's determined to steal both of your children away. Full custody. Evidently those divorce papers you so graciously signed didn't give you as much as you thought.

  Harder to do battle with the Harrisons without their kind of bucks.”

  Claire sat upright and brought her feet down to the floor. “But they don't take children away just because one parent's richer.”

  “No, dear. But they do if the rich parent's family dines with judges and”—the unblushable Slim was embarrassed—“accuse the mother of anti-American acts.”

  “What on earth can you be talking about?” Claire stood and tried to steady herself, letting the silly hammock swing away. “I've been playing Betty Crocker for five years!”

  “Evidently there was a fly in the batter. My dear Claire, I'll testify for you in court. We all will.”

  Suddenly Claire was truly terrified. A vision of the colorfully hatted Aunties, single ladies all, taking the stand across the room from the gray-garbed Harrisons, long-married pillars of the world's best communities, rattled her so that she fell backwards into the silk swing and hung there dumbfounded.

  It was several hours before Claire could fully mobilize herself into reaction. After she and Slim taxied to Hyde Park and the children were given a quick supper and tucked into bed, the four ladies assessed the situation. Slim outlined the story for them all as Claire nervously paced the floor. Evidently private detectives had been following her for months, and since no lover could be found or phantom invented, they had to search deeper. Claire had been a true incarnation of the good mother. She didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't swear, and never missed so much as a bubble bath she had promised her children. So the only thing left to assassinate was her political character. With Senator Joseph McCarthy finding Reds under every rock, it was becoming fashionable to be frightened by Communists. What with the Soviet Union expanding its party lines left and left, if a very good lawyer could connect the dots between Claire harboring deserted Czechoslovakian children and Korean orphans, importing them into America—literally taking in the teeming masses struggling to be free—and some “all are equal” Communist manifesto she might be in for a very ugly trial.

  “We've always taught you to help everyone in need, but it's not like you're Emma Goldman.” Secretly Wren was an admirer of the socialist firebrand.

  “Nor are we your average family.” Slim was the reality check.

  “Exactly what do you know, Slim? The facts will do.” Violet was the calm in the hurricane.

  “Well, ever since Cyrus's prostate trouble we do more pillow talk than anything else in the—”

  “The fact, not the finding, will do nicely.” Violet arched a feathery eyebrow. In the afternoon light off the lake there suddenly appeared a fresh touch of gray at her temples.

  “Cyrus says…” Slim had spoken those words so many hundreds of times over the years that the others had invented their own eponymous secret parlor game. Violet had always vowed that she was going to turn “Cyrus says” into a board game one day, sell it at Field's, and make her fortune.

  “Cyrus says there's caus
e for concern.”

  Wren envisioned the yellow game pieces moving two squares back on the board.

  “Concern?”

  “Yes, Ophelia's confided in Millicent Pettibone, who's confided in Cyrus.” Slim rolled one fingernail over the other as if to explain.

  “Thank goodness for pillow talk.” Wren put her palms together.

  “Quiet. Go on, Slim.”

  “Tom What's-his-name, the Harrisons’ private hatchet man, has already filed in court in Ramapo County, where all their poor cousins are judges, to bring the children—let me get this right—home. Yes, ‘home to the only place they've ever lived in.’ They have money, connections, and evidently Ophelia is breathing fire over this. Cyrus says”—she took a breath—“Claire doesn't have a mouse's chance in a cat house.”

  “What am I going to do? How can I save my children?” Claire almost screamed. “They're so much happier here with all of you. Away from them.” Her voice was a lament.

  The phone rang half a dozen times before any of them had the composure to allow an invisible stranger into their crisis. Slim listened for a moment or two and then put down the receiver. She turned to Claire.