“It is not supposed to mean anything,” Maggie said, won-
dering whether she could have kept her son if her mother had
not pushed them out into a world that was so different from
everything they knew.
“Margaret, we are better off than we’ve ever been.”
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“Are we?”
“How can you ask that? We thrived during one of the worst
times in history. You have everything a woman could ask for.
Why don’t you see that? It has been more than seven years
and you are still mourning that pathetic excuse for a husband.”
“Don’t say that,” Maggie shot back. “If you had ever loved
anyone other than yourself you’d understand why…” She didn’t
finish the sentence, trying to explain her love for Hank to her
mother was a waste of time and energy.
“Are you finished?” Charlotte asked. “I will ignore your
ungrateful, disrespectful outburst because you are upset
about Lance.”
“Yes, that’s it. I’m upset about Lance.” Charlotte returned
to her reading and after a few minutes of silence Maggie rose
from the sofa and headed to her stateroom. “I won’t be joining
you for dinner, I don’t have much of an appetite,” she said.
“Suit yourself,” Charlotte said. “Evelyn Cumberbatch is
also aboard and she has asked us to dine with her. I will convey
your regrets. Rest, you’ll feel better in the morning.” When
Maggie reached the door to her stateroom, she turned back
to her mother.
“This did not work out the way I wanted it to. I thought
there would be more time with them,” she said.
Charlotte looked up from her magazine, “I think things
worked out just fine, Margaret.”
“Momma,” Maggie asked, “have you ever needed anyone?”
“What a question,” Charlotte said. “Get some rest, you’ll
feel better in the morning.”
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“Did you love my father?”
“As much as I could,” Charlotte said, without looking up.
“I love you, Momma,” Maggie said. Charlotte looked up
just in time to see her close the door. She didn’t bother to tell
her daughter that she loved her too.
(IV)
Maggie went to the desk in her stateroom and wrote a
long letter to her son, then sat on the side of the bed until she
heard her mother leave for dinner. She rang the steward and
asked him to post the letter on the first mail back to France.
“Will you do me a favor? My mother is in the dining room.
Please ask her not to wake me when she returns from dinner.
Let her know I’ve already gone to bed.”
After the steward left, Maggie rummaged through her
toiletries until she found the bottle of medicine for her migraine
headaches and a vial full of sleeping pills. She poured all of
the pills into a glass and added the entire bottle of the potent
migraine medicine. While she swirled the glass to dissolve the
pills, she thought how wonderful it would be when she was
final y with Hank again. Lance will take care of Momma, was her last thought before she drank the entire contents of the glass.
(V)
When Lance returned to his apartment in Paris after seeing
his mother and Charlotte off, there was a package there from
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Belle in New York. Inside was a Monopoly board game. The
accompanying letter read:
Dearest,
I received your letter letting me know that Charlotte
and your mother are on their way to New York. As
you well know, your grandmother scares me to death!
However, as a favor to my favorite protégé (I’m blush-
ing) I will have a small reception for them so they
can meet a few people here in the City. I will contact
them with the information you sent me to set a date
once they arrive.
No doubt you’ve noticed the present accompanying this
letter. The Monopoly Game is all the rage here in the
US. I thought it fitting for you, in real estate and art,
as you are quite the tycoon these days, gobbling up all
of the great modern art and undervalued real estate on
the market. I don’t dare let on that I know you as wel
as I do (again, I’m blushing) for that knowledge leads
directly to questions about how you know what artist to
buy before the rest of us have an inkling. I am lost when
they start talking real estate – but just in case you want to
share I’ve been asked to inquire about the location of New
York’s next upcoming neighborhood for savvy investors.
My Love, you are now quite the col ector – and to think
I knew you when you were just the art!
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I do want you to think seriously and soon about fol-
lowing your family back to the States. You and Peggy
Guggenheim are the last of my original group there
I believe. Peggy wil not leave, she is furious because
the Louvre won’t hide her art in their secret refuge –
too contemporary they say. You, dear, may have the
same problem – remember, the Germans have already
burned the work of two of your favorite artists, Klee
and Kandinsky! If you won’t think of yourself, think of
your col ection, please! I know when we were in Italy
I was wrong about Mussolini, but I am right about
Hitler – Germany and now Austria will not satisfy him.
Send word and I will be happy to help you look for
suitable housing for you and your col ection – not that
you need real estate advice from me!
In the meantime I beg you to remain safe and vigilant.
Affectionately,
Belle
Lance smiled thinking back on who he was when he met
Bel e da Costa Greene—a lost and traumatized eighteen-year-
old who fled Richmond clinging to Charlotte’s coattails. Today,
he felt older than twenty-five. He’d worked hard to be the man
Belle wrote about in her letter.
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His acquaintances were educated men and women; he gleaned
everything he could from them and then learned more. He would
never be a university club man like his Ivy degreed friends—he
never felt the need to be. He didn’t require that kind of group
acceptance and social confirmation. He liked being independent,
it was safer. He was comfortable with the quiet reputation he’d
built among high-end investors as a result of his financial success.
His col ection provided entrée into the most élite group of serious art col ectors. The exclusivity of these worlds offered him the
protection of limited scrutiny, especial y in Europe. New York
was too close to whom he used to be, one glimmer of recognition
from someone in his past life—an old acquaintance of his father’s
or one of his mother’s League ladies shopping New York—could
bring the world of Lance Henry Withers crashing down around
him. The word ‘whom’ made him laugh as he remembered
how
Charlotte corrected his grammar at their departure lunch at the
Waldorf in 1931. Just seven years but a lifetime ago, he thought. Now he could give Charlotte lessons in manners and decorum.
“I am my own man,” he said aloud. Everyone else believes
it, he thought, even if I don’t.
(VI)
Arrived. Settling in. Please come soon.
Love, Maman
Lance received his mother’s cable the day after she and
Charlotte were scheduled to arrive in New York. Two days
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later a long rambling letter from his mother arrived. As he read
it he realized how distraught she was about their separation.
Why was she surprised that he was ready to strike out on his own, that’s what men did.
Maggie’s letter repeated several times how much she loved
him, how much she loved his father and how she missed the
life they had in Richmond. That was almost a decade ago, Lance thought. I don’t know why she can’t let go of the pain and move on.
In her letter, Maggie asked Lance to promise her one thing,
No matter what happens in your life, mine or hers, I’m begging
you to take care of my mother. Please keep her with you always, she is your only connection to your true past. Please do not tell Momma that I asked you to do this for me. She pretends that she needs no one but she loves both of us and wants the best for us, even though she has difficulty showing it. She will not be able to live without you in her life.
Why would she ask him this? Of course he would take care
of them, why would she ever question this? He would talk to
her about it when he went to visit them in New York.
(VII)
In August of 1939, Lance received a letter from Charlotte
notifying him that she had booked a trip to New York for
him in early September. Initially he considered ignoring her
demands and staying in Europe but all the expatriates he knew
seemed to be making plans to return to the United States and
they encouraged him to do the same. A friend in the U.S.
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Embassy warned him that the government was planning to
order all Americans to leave France. Passage to the States
was becoming impossible to get so Lance relented, packed his
art collection and the contents of his apartment and shipped
everything to New York.
On September 1, 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland. The morn-
ing of September 3, 1939, Lance Henry Withers boarded the
SS Île de‘France on route to New York with 1,776 other passengers, 400 more than the ship usually carried. Ironically, the
same ship that brought him to France would return him to
the United States.
Just a few hours into the voyage, the captain announced
to the passengers that Great Britain and France, in response
to Hitler’s aggression, had declared war on Germany. The Il
de France was the last ship to leave France before the outbreak of the war.
(VIII)
Charlotte was there to meet Lance when the ship docked.
“Where’s Maman?” he asked looking around for his mother.
Charlotte put her hand on his arm, her eyes welled with
tears. “My dear Lance, I have something terrible to tell you.”
In the back of his mind he knew something was awry
when Belle wrote to tell him that only Charlotte came to the
reception she planned for his family. He assumed that Maman
was once again feigning il ness to avoid social events. The letters he received from her throughout the year he remained in Paris,
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dictated to her secretary, assured him that she was on the mend
and seeing him would put her back in great form.
Now Charlotte was telling him that his mother had been
gone for more than a year.
“She took ill on the voyage to New York…the ship’s doctor
did everything he could but she could not be saved,” Charlotte
told him through what seemed like a fog.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” was all he could manage with
the shock of the news.
“She made me promise not to tell you anything until you
were safely home. She did not want you to carry any guilt for
what happened to her. The letters I wrote in Margaret’s name
were to bring you home. I was desperate and alone,” Charlotte
began to sob.
“What about the letter she wrote during the voyage, did
you write that one too?”
Charlotte looked up, dabbing her eyes with her handker-
chief. “Letter during the voyage? I didn’t write you during
the voyage, only when we arrived in New York, as your dear
mother asked me to.”
His mother’s request in the letter he received a few days
after she left France now made sense. She killed herself, Lance thought. She had been wanting to since his father died.
“Where is she buried?” Lance asked as they rode to
Charlotte’s apartment.
Charlotte hesitated for a few seconds. “We had to cremate
the body…the condition it was in when we docked…” she didn’t
finish the sentence.
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They were silent until they arrived at his mother’s apartment.
“I’m going to a hotel. I need to be alone,” he said. What
he really needed was to be away from Charlotte until he could
purchase a home for himself. He would honor his mother’s
request and keep Charlotte with him as his permanent guest. He
would make sure she was cared for, but he would do everything
he could to keep their lives separate, for as long as she lived.
(IX)
In April of 1940, German forces invaded Norway and
Denmark and in May, Germany began its assault on Western
Europe. On June 14, less than nine months after Lance left
Paris, the German Sixth Army marched down the Champs
Elysees after the French government evacuated Paris and
declared it an open city. The French surrendered to the
Germans on June 22.
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Part Two
Abstract Expressionism
Movement in painting originating in New York City in the
1940s. It emphasized spontaneous personal expression, freedom
from accepted artistic values, surface qualities of painting and
the act of painting itself.
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• 16 •
New York—Winter 1948
“I don’t think we have anything for you,” the
kind-faced young girl said from inside the warmth of
the service entrance. “I think the kitchen is all staffed
up,” she added, looking at the pale teenager dressed in a heavy
sweater and a shawl on a twenty-degree New York winter day.
“You eaten today? You look pale as a communion wafer.
Wait here a second. Let me get you a little something from the
kitchen. Don’t move now, I’ll be right back,” she said, leaving
the door open enough for Emma George to see down the long
hall and feel the warmth inside. Inside, if I could just get inside for a few moments. She took a small step across the threshold to get closer to the warmth of heat and people. She had been
out in the cold and by herself since she le
ft Ellis Island over
a month ago.
Emma heard a commotion and a woman’s scream. She
saw the girl who had asked her to wait at the door run past the
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hall and then she heard another woman shout, “Don’t touch
me. Don’t you ever touch me!” Emma took another step into
the hallway, curious but mostly cold, just as the kindly young
woman came around the corner and back into the hall.
“Can you help me? Help me get the wench up and back to
her room,” she said without charity. Emma came inside and
closed the door behind her. She dropped her satchel on the
floor and followed the girl.
“She doesn’t like me to touch her. I’m not white; maybe
she’ll let you because you are.”
“Let me help you up, ma’am,” Emma said, reaching for
the elegantly dressed older woman sprawled on the floor. She
allowed Emma to help her up while the girl brought over a
wheelchair.
“If you’d just use the chair, Miss Charlotte, you won’t fal .”
“Mind your mouth, you gal,” the old woman said to her.
“My nurse is here now and she’ll tell Lance what you did to
me, won’t you, dear?” Emma had never heard venom and honey
flow from the same mouth in one sentence. “Take me to my
room, dear. This has been all too much for Miss Charlotte. I
need to rest.” Emma looked at both women, not sure what to do.
“Do not look to her for direction,” Charlotte said. “She
takes her orders from me and from you, that’s the natural order of things. I told Lance bringing them into the house was a bad
idea. I would never allow that in my house. Out in the garden,
the garage, the shop—but never in the house,” Charlotte said,
staring directly at the girl who, though young, looked strong
enough to snap the old woman in two without breaking a
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sweat. “I told Lance,” Charlotte continued, “they will steal
you blind. They’ll tell your secrets.” The girl’s facial expression never acknowledged Charlotte’s insults, she simply turned and
started down the hall, indicating Emma should follow with
Charlotte in the wheelchair. The three of them entered a small
elevator, the girl pressed the button and impatiently waited for
the elevator to rise to the next floor. When the door opened, she
exited first and Emma followed as the old woman continued
to heap insults on the poor young woman. When they arrived
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