by John Darnton
CHAPTER 20
I decided to track down Hub Cobb, the man who had lived with us when I was young and who suddenly, and inexplicably, dropped out of our lives. I wanted to learn more about my parents. Hub had come from their world and had been romantically involved with my mother. I figured he had to know a lot. I traced him to a small Connecticut town called Deep River. I wrote him, then called. A stepson who was visiting at the moment said Hub, now eighty-eight, was frail and in a nursing home but would be happy to see me.
During the two-hour drive from New York three days later, I pulled off the road twice to jot down questions. I listed them on the last page of my notebook, where it’d be easy to scan them, an old reporting habit, and the list grew to cover two pages. I took along a small tape recorder, which I had tested twice. As I pulled into the parking lot of the Saybrook Convalescent Hospital precisely at noon—the agreed-upon time—I felt unaccountably nervous.
The lobby had a stomach-wrenching odor, a mix of disinfectant and bedpans. I gave the receptionist my name and said I had come to see Mr. Cobb. A flickering of shadow crossed her brow. There seemed to be a problem. She disappeared into a back office, and I began to worry. Maybe I needed an appointment. Maybe Hub had changed his mind about seeing me. When she returned, her expression suggested the problem was indeed serious. Mr. Cobb, she said, had collapsed a little over an hour ago and been rushed away in an ambulance. I must have turned ashen, because she seemed to transfer her concern to me. She quickly provided the name of the hospital. In the car, I berated myself. More than half a century had passed since I had last seen Cobb. At any time over the last five, ten, or twenty years I could have called him up, but now it turned out I had missed out by only one hour!
I sped to the Middlesex Hospital in Essex and rushed into the emergency room. I asked a nurse if Mr. Cobb had been admitted. She checked a short list and nodded. “You let family members in, don’t you?” I inquired. (I was not, technically, claiming to be one.) She said the patient was waiting admission to a room and then led the way through two doors to a small, crowded corridor. There, strapped to a gurney, was Hub. He had an oxygen tube under his nose and electrodes pasted to his forehead. He appeared shrunken. I found it hard to believe that this could be the man from my childhood—Van Johnson in a leather jacket—but the more I scrutinized him, the more his features seemed to merge into an almost-forgotten face.
He looked at me, bewildered. I explained who I was. He stared, perhaps a little less confused. “Hub,” I said, “you remember we were supposed to meet. I know this probably isn’t a good time … but I wonder if I might ask you a couple of questions.” He nodded weakly. I said that I remembered him fondly, as did my brother, and that we had talked of him over the years. A doctor began hovering nearby. I thought I had time for only a single question. It popped into my brain. I looked down at him. “Do you happen to know … did my mother ever tell you … why she and my father never married?”
His face twitched a bit. He seemed to be summoning up energy. His voice came out slowly, in a croak. “No,” he said. He paused, then seemed to feel it necessary to elaborate. “She never told me that. Or if she did, I didn’t pay it any attention.” An aide came and pushed his gurney away.
On the way home, I mused over the fact that of all the questions scribbled in my notebook, that was the one I had most wanted to ask. It was, I realized, a question that had rankled more as time went on. (I did manage to interview Hub two weeks later, when he returned to the nursing home, but his memory was so impaired, he could provide no information.)
The thought of my parents living “in sin” wasn’t upsetting as a moral issue. But insofar as it raised questions about their commitment to each other, it tore at the foundation of the myth that my mother had cultivated throughout our childhood. If their love had been as unbounded and eternal as she’d made out, why not consecrate it in the eyes of society? My mother, a romantic, would surely have wanted a wedding. She would have loved everything about it: the ceremony, the bridal dress, the prospect of friends making witty toasts, a theatrical moment in the public gaze. And she had not been one to flout social convention lightly. Why else would they have pretended to be married and gone through the charade of picking an anniversary date?
One possible answer, of course, was that one or the other had been unable to secure a divorce. But that seemed unlikely. I remembered how vividly my mother had described winning her freedom from her first husband on the grounds of adultery, how she’d had to pretend to catch him in flagrante with another woman, a prostitute, and her contempt for him when he’d insisted on actually having sexual intercourse to get his money’s worth. And as for my father—his second wife, Pollie, had insisted to my brother that she had rushed through her divorce so he could remarry. I reread Bob’s notes from his interview with her. She had provided various details, including the fact that she had hired a cousin to represent her, a young lawyer who served up mountains of legal background to the irritation of the judge, who kept saying, “I know, I know.”
I was skeptical about some of Pollie’s information because she was bitter—she was, after all, the woman Barney had spurned. Still, she didn’t seem to be the type to lie outright and say something had happened if it hadn’t. She was convinced that our parents had gotten married, and had even suggested that Mom had been lying when she said they hadn’t. In the interview Bob had pressed the point. Maybe, he ventured, having undergone two divorces, Barney rejected marriage as a “bourgeois” institution. She fixed him with a hard stare. “But Barney was bourgeois,” she insisted. “He was very conventional.” What he wanted was an old-fashioned kind of wife who would stay home and cook and raise kids. “And when he got Tootie, he got what he wanted.”
I suddenly remembered something Pollie had said. At one point, an FBI agent had called on her, posing questions about Mom, who had, apparently, been applying for a government job. After beating around the bush, the agent asked what he wanted to know: Why had Tootie left her first husband, Clarkson Hill? Pollie answered the question with a question: “Have you ever met Clarkson Hill?” Her implication was clear: The man was a twerp. The agent couldn’t help but laugh.
Invoking the Freedom of Information Act, I wrote the FBI, requesting any information on file about my mother. I didn’t hear back for months, and then to my surprise, in November 2006, a thick envelope arrived. It was part of a dossier covering some sixty-seven pages, initiated in April 1951, in connection with her application to work for the State Department’s Voice of America. Since the position dealt with news and propaganda, it was clearly a sensitive one. The investigation into her background, a cover form stated, was “to be assigned immediately” and completed within two weeks. FBI offices in New York, Washington, and New Haven were mobilized for the task. The first reports from agents interviewing neighbors and colleagues were entirely positive: “… all advised that they consider her to be an individual of high moral character, excellent reputation, and loyal American citizen.” She had no police record and her credit rating—other than late payment of a bill amounting to $30.05 to a department store—was unblemished.
Then, one day before the deadline, a snag arose. “Unfavorable information requires additional investigation,” a handwritten note said. Apparently the Bureau had stumbled onto the fact that my mother had been previously married. An internal Teletype message referred to her as “Eleanor Darnton, née Choate, aka Mrs. Clarkson Hill,” and suggested checking divorce records in Trenton, New Jersey (where she had lived with her first husband), adding, BUREAU ADVISED MATURE EXPERIENCED AGENTS TO BE UTILIZED THIS INVESTIGATION. The Newark FBI office compiled comprehensive records on both Mr. and Mrs. Hill during their three years in New Jersey but could find no record of divorce proceedings. Obviously, the State Department was not eager to hire a bigamist. In Philadelphia agents fanned out to conduct more interviews in Philadelphia, Jenkintown, Moylan, Media, Chester, Washington, and New York. They didn’t turn up any dirt. On the contrary, their r
eports extolled her qualities in a litany that sounded like the Boy Scout oath: She was capable, efficient, intelligent, loyal, morally upright, and altogether worthy of hire. “She associates with reputable citizens whose loyalty is unquestioned,” concluded a nine-page report in mid-May.
But then came a report from the New York office that sent the Bureau into high alert. It was based on an interview with the publisher of YOU magazine, already defunct, where my mother had worked as the editor from 1937 until April 1939. The publisher said she was very capable, but he questioned her “moral character.” He noted that when she was hired, she was Mrs. Clarkson Hill, and then she became acquainted with Byron Darnton, also married. The report went on:
He said that the HILL family and the DARNTONS were very close friends and apparently had known each other socially for several years. However, he stated that toward the latter part of Mrs. Hill’s employment with “YOU” magazine, Mrs. HILL left her husband and Mr. Darnton left his wife and the two established a residence in Connecticut without benefit of divorce from their respective spouses. [Name redacted] advised that this created quite a scandal and caused considerable gossip among persons who were acquainted with the two families. He said that as he recalled the incident, when Mrs. HILL advised her husband that she was leaving him, her husband refused to give her a divorce in spite of which she left to live with Mr. DARNTON. He further stated that shortly before her termination with “YOU” magazine, Mrs. HILL became pregnant by Mr. DARNTON, which forced her to resign her position.
For good measure, the publisher asserted that the immoral Mrs. Hill hung out with a group of people who were, in his opinion, “somewhat sympathetic to the Communist cause,” though he did not go so far as to say that anyone in the group joined un-American organizations or took antigovernment stands on any ideological issues. He declined to furnish a signed statement or appear before a government hearing board. No one else, among dozens questioned, cast any aspersions on her loyalty or politics.
The FBI investigation flew into top gear. Internal messages were sent off to various bureaus, signed with a single name: Hoover. (Maybe all messages were sent out in his name. I can’t believe that the director would have interested himself in my mother’s background check—but who knows?) The case—number 123–6451—had become urgent. One such Teletype notice commanded:
VERIFY MARRIAGE OF APPLICANT AND BYRON DARNTON BY PUBLIC RECORDS. ASCERTAIN BIRTH DATA RE APPLICANTS CHILDREN BY RECORDS. BVS. SUBMIT ON AMENDED PAGES TO REPORT OF JUNE TWENTY. EXPEDITE.
HOOVER
Special agents in Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, and New York swung into action, looking for a certificate to prove my parents had gotten married. They couldn’t find it. One of the agents noticed that Who’s Who listed their marriage date as April 23, 1938. Another noted that their address at the time was in Westport and suggested looking there. A special agent interviewed a source in the Westport town clerk’s office and came away empty-handed. In Hartford, the agents poured through all the marriage records between 1937 and 1939. Nothing turned up.
My mother’s divorce decree from Clarkson Hill was finally located in New York County Supreme Court. But where was my father’s divorce decree? Hoover—either the individual or the generic—must have been apoplectic. Then came information that Byron Darnton had been divorced in Philadelphia. Hoover fired off another Teletype message:
INFO RECEIVED … BYRON DARNTON DIVORCED PHILADELPHIA, APRIL THIRTYNINE. DARNTON THEREAFTER MARRIED APPLICANT. REVIEW COURT RECORDS PERTAINING TO ABOVE DIVORCE FOR DATE THEREOF, DATE OF MARRIAGE SAID DIVORCE DISSOLVED, FULL NAMES OF LITIGANTS, GROUNDS, ETC. BEAR IN MIND FOR PURPOSES OF CLARITY IN YOUR REPORT THAT APPLICANT AND POLLACK BOTH HAVE GIVEN NAMES ELEANOR. EXPEDITE.
HOOVER
But the Philadelphia office came up empty-handed. To be certain, the agent culled through the files for an eight-year period and found no record of Barney’s divorce, no record of his marriage to my mother. Then an agent in Washington turned up a possibly significant discrepancy in my mother’s passport applications. In one she said she had been married on April 29; in another she gave the date as April 28.
At this point, the written record petered out. Needless to say, my mother didn’t get the job. The reason was provided in a box that was checked, indicating that the applicant had been turned down “as a result of suitability determination.” When I saw this, I cast my mind back to that period. I remembered that Mom had been hopeful of landing a government job. A neighbor in Washington told her that the FBI had been asking questions, which made her very anxious. I suspect that she was fearful that word would get out that she had a drinking problem and that this would be made part of some permanent record. I recall her saying that it was horrible that the government could pry into a citizen’s private life. I held her FBI file in my hand, assessing its weight. She had little idea, I thought, of just how much prying the government had done and just how thick her dossier had become.
I succeeded where the FBI had failed—that is, I was able to dig up my father’s divorce decree, as well as my mother’s. Equipped with the index numbers from the Department of Records, I went to the County Clerk’s office in the Surrogate’s Court in lower Manhattan. It was just north of City Hall, where I used to work. The building, a seven-story Beaux-Arts masterpiece with an ornate granite façade of thirty-six-foot-high Corinthian columns, had been built one hundred years ago to impress. As I entered the cavernous lobby under skylights several floors up, facing a grand staircase inspired by the Paris opera house, I was impressed—though I had no idea why divorce records would be kept there. I was directed to the seventh floor, where I followed a corridor lined with shelves stacked to the thirty-foot ceiling, packed with yellowing folders. Inside the cluttered gloom of a vast chamber, a man was asleep in a chair near a desk fan that, rotating slowly, mussed his hair. A young clerk fielded my inquiry. I explained what I wanted. There was a problem, he indicated.
“What year did you say?” he asked.
“Nineteen thirty-eight.”
“Divorce records are sealed for one hundred years.”
“One hundred years—you must be joking.”
“Nope. You need a court order to unlock them.”
As we talked, a grizzled old man shuffled by, carrying an armful of folders. He was about seventy, dressed in a blue smock and wearing glasses with thick lenses. He put the folders on a dolly and disappeared behind a stack of shelves. I paid him little mind. I assumed he was probably a filing clerk placed in a dead-end job by some Democratic party boss.
“Isn’t there anything I can do?” I asked the young man.
He shook his head, doubtful. “Not much. Talk to Bruce.”
“Who’s Bruce?”
“He’ll be back.”
I chatted with the young man some more and then with another clerk who wandered over. We talked about the magnificence of the building, which was, the clerk said, built in 1907. Together with the Municipal Building across the street, it was the centerpiece of the City Beautiful Movement, which emphasized grandeur in civic architecture. It was certainly grand, I agreed, and as we talked, I felt the gaze of a pair of eyes upon me from the other side of the stacks. After some minutes, the old man in the smock returned.
“That’s Bruce,” said the clerk.
Bruce, it turned out, had been eavesdropping, so it wasn’t necessary to repeat my request. He took down the index number to run a check on whether the divorce decrees had “been weeded out,” and he disappeared again. Most decrees between 1910 and 1958, explained the clerk, had been tossed out. Bruce returned. I was warming to him and I was in luck. The records were intact. He directed me to go to the basement of the state supreme court building at 60 Centre Street. I was to ask for Mickey Ruiz. “Don’t ask for anyone else,” he cautioned, “except maybe for Erlon or Kevin. And whatever you do, don’t tell them it’s about a divorce.”
A few blocks away I mounted the steps of the state supreme court building, familiar to millions o
f fans of Law and Order. I went through a metal detector, crossed a marble lobby, and descended to room 103 in the basement. It was crowded with doughty-looking people, whom I took to be gofers and researchers for divorce lawyers. They seemed familiar with the setup. I filled out two requisition slips and went to the counter. Mickey wasn’t there—maybe out to lunch, I was informed. I handed in the slips anyway and a clerk told me to return in two or three days. There was no mention of a hundred-year exclusion rule. I had no idea if that requirement was a fiction or if I had luckily slipped through a crack in the bureaucracy.
When I did return, the records were waiting for me, two thick stacks in closed envelopes. I carried them to a long table and sat down. I decided to look at my mother’s file first. Among the papers was a soft-focus photo of Clarkson Hill. I stared at it, this relic from my mother’s prior life—he looked like a dandy with a pencil-thin mustache, swept-back hair, and a weak chin. He had the louche air of someone who belonged on the wrong end of a divorce action. There were affidavits and legal summonses and transcripts, all signed and stamped and properly recorded. In the legalistic folderol of the era, in which men of honor were supposed to sacrifice themselves before the altar of the court, my mother was the plaintiff and Hill was the defendant. So the very first words of the case were a lie. An affidavit from a certain Helen Rafshoon established that she had served “a man known to her to be Mr. Hill” with the summons on June 9, 1938, at the Hotel Astor. He didn’t turn up in court—“the Defendant has not answered,” the record stated ominously—but my mother did. She provided basic information: names, addresses, length of marriage. Then an architect named Charles Du Bose took the stand. He swore that he was with his wife and Mrs. Hill at the Hotel President on May 4 at seven o’clock in the evening.
QUESTION: What did you do?
ANSWER: I went to the desk clerk and asked if Mr. Hill was registered and I found out that he was. I was told he was in room 1423 and I rejoined Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Du Bose.