at the door to an opulent suite of rooms, Charlotte addressed
the young woman as if she were a wayward animal.
“Shoo now! What you hanging around here for? You’ve
done enough damage,” she said to the girl who couldn’t have
been much older than Emma, but showed a maturity that
Emma wasn’t sure she could have managed. “Now, help me
onto the bed, dear,” she said sweetly to Emma, “and sit with
me while I nap.”
There was a flickering fire in the room’s fireplace, lace
curtains on the windows and rugs layered upon the carpet
that covered the floor. The upholstered chairs had embroidered
doilies on the arms and the backs. The old woman’s bed was
covered with a silk comforter. Emma was overwhelmed by the
warmth and beauty of the room. Was she was dreaming? A hard
bench at the ferry station could not inspire a dream like this.
“Stay here. I’ll look in on you in a few minutes,” the girl
whispered to Emma as she left the room, leaving the door ajar.
“Tell me your name again, dear. I’m forgetful these days,”
Charlotte said, her watery eyes on Emma.
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“I’m Emma, ma’am. From London, Richmond-upon-
Thames. I came to the U.S., well here to New York because,
because—well I had . . .”
“We’re from Richmond,” Charlotte said, then clapped
her hand to her mouth. “Lance has forbidden me from telling
anyone that, so it must be our secret. We’re just two girls from
Richmond,” she whispered, then laughed. Charlotte handed
Emma a book from her bedside table, “Read to me, from this.”
“East Side, West Side by Marcia Davenport,” Emma
read aloud.
“I know it’s not Shakespeare, but sometimes I just love a
really good story and this one is about our people, New York
Society. I know its fiction, but I’ve been told I’ll recognize some people I know,” Charlotte said.
“I don’t read all that well, ma’am,” Emma said
self-consciously.
“Don’t be silly, the British are all very well read. I’ve been
across the pond too, dear. Actual y, I’ve made several crossings,
and for a time, I even lived abroad. That was before the war
of course . . .” the old woman said, trailing off. After a few
minutes of silence, Emma started reading as she had been told.
Before she reached the second page, she could hear Charlotte
snoring softly. Not sure what to do, she sat in the chair looking
around the room. If she could just sit here for a while, rest and
finally get warm.
From the time she left England to today, she had been cold,
hungry and alone. There was nothing left for her in London,
or what was left of the London she used to know. The blitz
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had taken everything: her mother, her father, her dear brother
Philmore, her home and her job. The house and garden in
Richmond-upon-Thames where her family had been in ser-
vice for generations was destroyed. The Master and his family
retreated to their estate in the country, leaving the servants in
London to fend for themselves. Displaced person. That’s what they called her when she applied to come to the United States.
There were rich people in America, they still had their houses,
and they would need staff she reasoned. Emma knew how to
cook, clean and care for those who don’t do those kinds of
things for themselves. She would make a new life for herself
in America.
A soft knock on the door brought Emma back. The girl
motioned for her to quietly come with her. Once outside the
door she said, “I’m glad you were here. I’m the only one down-
stairs right now. My mama’s the cook here and today’s her
market afternoon. The old woman gets like that sometimes,
we don’t pay her no mind. My mama says you’d think she was
a southerner or something. She says that’s the way they are
back where we’re from in North Carolina which is why she
moved us to New York.”
“Who does she think I am?” Emma asked, wishing she
could be that person.
“Her personal maid up and quit earlier this week and she’s
been even more addled than usual ever since. As long as she
doesn’t have to deal with my mama or me, she’s happy—only
wants to deal with white folks. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’
so, I’m just speakin’ the truth.”
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“Does she need another maid? I can do that too. I do more
than kitchen work.”
“Well, I’m not the one hiring, but wouldn’t hurt to ask.
What’s your name?”
“I’m Emma George. From London, England. My family’s
been in service . . .”
“Slow down, Emma George, this ain’t no interview. I’m
just Mina, I help my mama out in the kitchen when I’m not
in school. I go to the culinary arts school, but I’m gonna be
the chef here one day. You’ll have to see Mr. Lance, Miss
Charlotte’s grandson. This here is his house. But first let’s get
some food into you. You’re wasting away before my very eyes.”
•
Emma George arrived at 580 Park Avenue in February,
1948, and never really left. Lance Withers hired her on the
spot. All civility in his relationship with Charlotte ended the
day he returned to the United States from France. He could
not forgive Charlotte for hiding his mother’s death from him,
but did as his mother asked him to—he kept his grandmother
with him. He’d purchased a city estate in Manhattan, a home
and grounds large enough to keep Charlotte under the same
roof but out of his sight. As long as he could pay someone to
fulfill his mother’s last request, he was happy. At seventeen
years of age, Emma had the youth and patience to deal with
Charlotte Bennett’s demands. Eventually she became the only
one who could.
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Emma thrived at 580 Park Avenue. In her mind, taking
care of Charlotte Bennett was a small price to pay for a clean,
warm place to sleep, food, a fair salary and a family in the other
members of the staff. A life of security at 580 Park Avenue was
more than she had dared hoped for when she sailed for America.
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• 17 •
New York 1950
The elevator opened to a face Lance Withers had
seen before. Startled, he hesitated for a few moments,
as the other New Yorkers also waiting for the elevator
streamed around him filling the car.
“There’s still room, sir,” the operator said. “You going up?”
“Yes. Yes,” Lance said. “Sorry.”
“Not a problem, I’m here every day, eight until six, travelin’
the same route—you can catch me goin’ up or comin’ down,”
the man said. Some of the passengers tittered at the operator’s
joke. Lance stepped into the elevator and tucked in behind the
man. He was as close to him as he ha
d been several times at
the clubs in Montmartre. He was older now, they both were.
Lance was thirty-seven so this man had to be in his mid-fifties
if Lance remembered correctly. His hair was grey now but he
stood tall and straight in his Rockefeller Center uniform. No
medals for valor or gold braid decorated his uniform, but he
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wore it with the same élan as when he was the celebrated black fighter pilot for the French Military’s Escadrille Flying Corps.
“Which floor, sir?” the operator asked, turning to face
Lance as the first group of passengers left the elevator.
“The sixty-fifth. Not afraid of heights are you?”
“Me? Not at al , sir,” the operator said. “I’ve done some of my
best work at six thousand feet. Eight fifty ain’t nothin’ to me.”
Now Lance was sure. It was him—Eugene Bullard—the
celebrated “Black Swallow of Death,” the World War I fighter
pilot and recipient of France’s highest military honor, the Croix de Guerre. When the elevator arrived at the 65th floor, Lance was the last passenger.
“Here you are, sir,” Bullard said as he opened the ele-
vator door.
“Thank you,” Lance said. Before stepping out of the ele-
vator, he extended his hand to shake Eugene Bullard’s hand,
something he never had the opportunity to do in Paris. Lance
gripped Bul ard’s hand; he looked down at their clasped hands—
Bul ard’s dark, fleshy and strong—the hands of the boxer he had
once been. Lance’s white and manicured—the hands of a man
who had and never would work with anything but his mind.
“Well, you’re quite welcome, sir,” Bullard said, surprised
by Lance’s gesture. When Lance stepped off the elevator, he
started to walk away, but turned abruptly to face Eugene Bul ard
as he was closing the door to elevator.
“I remember you, from Paris, I remember you,” Lance said
in French. The elevator door was halfway closed but Bullard
opened it again.
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“Do I know you?” he asked in French.
“No,” Lance said, returning to English. “We never
really met. But I was in Paris, before World War II, and I
remember you.”
“That was more than a lifetime ago. No one knows that man
anymore,” Bullard said like a man who had long ago accepted
how life worked out, then he closed the elevator door.
But for the color of his skin he might have been a celebrated
hero in the country of his birth. Lance knew that the color of his skin had protected him, giving him the opportunity to fulfill
his potential despite the fact that he shared Eugene Bullard’s
heritage . I’m not the man I was in Paris either, Lance thought.
He watched the floors light up in the elevator’s overhead panel
as the car descended with a glimmer of his glorious past inside.
The promise of Paris seemed longer ago than a lifetime to him
too. With Belle’s death a month earlier and Paris now overrun
with GIs and a younger generation of expats, there was virtu-
ally no one from his time still there. Everyone had returned
home to do other things and now Lance Henry Withers was
a reluctant New Yorker.
He had turned his real estate investments from the time
of the Depression into the more formal Withers & Associates,
an exclusive private investment limited partnership with Lance
as the controlling partner. Throughout the last two decades
he had made himself—and the few investors he had allowed
to buy into the fund—very, very wealthy men. He was at the
RCA building to meet with his old friend Nelson Rockefeller
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and his banker brother, David, to talk investment strategies
and look at Nelson’s recent art acquisitions.
Lance, still the collector, was the founding chair of the
City’s newest museum, The Manhattan Museum of Modern
Art. He achieved the distinction the way most wealthy people
do, with money and the loan of several of the jewels from his
collection to open the Museum.
Nelson was still a trustee of the Museum of Modern
Art—the museum his mother, Abby Aldridge Rockefeller,
had founded. Walter Chrysler, as he said he would, opened his
own museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Lance, Nelson
and, on occasion, Walter sometimes competed for the same
art for their respective museums. Their rivalry was friendly
but serious, often driving up the price of art when it became
known that the three were interested buyers.
Lance’s business and social life were insular and inter-
changeable. In his world, money bought everything—his
mansion on Park Avenue, art, access and anonymity. While he
maintained friendships with the sons of titans and a few of their
friends, they were not close relationships. Nelson Rockefeller
was serving on presidential commissions and planning to run
for governor of New York State. Walter continued his habit of
making substantial purchases in art as well as glass, books and
stamps. Unlike these men who enjoyed being in the public eye,
Lance tightly controlled his world and remained outside the
limelight his friends cast. By many standards he should have
enjoyed his life, but Lance Henry Withers still feared that
someone, somehow would uncover the secrets and lies that
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were the bedrock upon which he had built his success. Though
race relations were not what they were in the thirties, in 1950,
racial discrimination was still rampant in business, housing,
jobs, education and the art world. It wasn’t until he returned to
the United States that Lance realized how deeply his father’s
revelation had scarred him—and still had the potential to take
everything from him, again. The only way he could ensure that
would never happen was to tightly control every aspect of his
life, ensuring that no one would ever know that he had a life
before the one he had now.
Lance had not taken Belle’s advice to find someone who
knew his secret, so he carried that burden alone after she died
in May. She had been ill for a while and they had seen each
other infrequently. Now that she was gone he felt the loss
deeply. Charlotte was the only person who truly knew who he
was. She was not his confidant, but he knew his secret was as
safe with her as it had been with Belle. Charlotte was the only
person who wanted to keep his race a secret more than he did.
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• 18 •
New York 1960 - 1965
(I)
“Richmond-upon-Thames, is that correct? I
once knew people in Richmond, the one here in
the United States,” Lance Withers said, without
looking up. Emma perched on her chair across from his desk,
eyes riveted on him.
“I don’t know London that well, but Paris, have you ever
been to Paris, Miss George?”
“Once, sir. Before I came to America, I accompani
ed my
former missus. We were there just before the war.” Lance was
half listening to Emma as he leafed through her personnel file.
“So you think you’re ready to be assistant House Manager?
How long have you been with us, Miss George?”
“Twelve years in February, sir. I started as Miss
Charlotte’s aide.”
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“Twelve years,” he said, still distracted by the paperwork,
as if Emma only existed in the documents in front of him.
“Mr. Withers,” Emma said, tired of talking to the top of
Lance’s head. “Mr. Withers, I’m right here. You can ask me
anything that’s in those papers.”
Lance finally looked up. “Of course, I’m sorry. Yes, I
remember when you came. You’ve changed.” In twelve years,
this was the first time he really took the time to notice her.
“I’ve grown up some,” Emma said, but it was evident to
Lance that she had not just grown, she had blossomed. “And
I’m a citizen now,” she added, proudly.
“Wel , congratulations. That’s an achievement,” Lance said.
“Thank you, sir. Now, about the position?” Emma launched
into a rambling pitch for the job as the house-manager-in-training.
“I manage the first floor housekeeping staff now, coordinating
with the kitchen, engineering, and any event staff. I know
the scope of the work, having worked closely with your house
manager, Daniel. He has given me his recommendation. I
believe you have a copy there. If not, I have a carbon copy here
that he gave me and I can assure you that I am ready to take
on additional responsibilities, and I will in no way neglect my
responsibilities with Miss Charlotte . . . ”
At that point, Lance raised both hands, palms up, in
surrender.
“May I get a few words in here?” Lance asked the now
red-faced Emma. “Daniel told me he wants to retire in a couple
of years. He is extremely impressed with you. He tells me if he
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can work with you, you are the best person to succeed him. He
says your best qualification is that you get along with Charlotte.”
Emma tried, but could not suppress her grin.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. We all know she’s more than a handful,”
Lance said, laughing.
“She and I understand each other,” Emma said. “She’s just
afraid, that’s all.”
“We’re talking about Charlotte Bennett here. I’ve known
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