Kitchen Privileges

by Mary Higgins Clark

  She had been widowed two years before our marriage, and her sons were the center of her existence. Ken and his wife, Irene, had moved to Washington Township as well, and we lived within walking distance of each other. The fact that her twelve grandchildren were more like brothers and sisters than cousins delighted her.

  She did not deceive herself about Warren’s condition. Several times during that week in September after he came home, she told a friend that she would not want to outlive one of her sons. She was visiting the night he suffered the fatal attack; she collapsed at his bedside. When the doctor arrived, they were both gone.

  For the children, it was a crushing double blow. In the same moment they had lost the father they adored and Mimi, as they called their beloved grandmother. At only ages five, eight, ten, twelve, and thirteen, they had been introduced to profound grief.

  I took all of them, even Patty and Carol, to the funeral parlor. The older ones understood death, but I was afraid that the little ones might not. When Warren was in the hospital, Patty would stand at the window waiting for him to come home. I felt she needed the finality of knowing that he wasn’t coming home anymore.

  The wake was enormously sad, but even in such dire circumstances, there can be a moment of levity.

  Warren hated the expression, “I’m sorry for your trouble,” a condolence frequently offered at Irish family wakes.

  “You’re sorry someone is experiencing trouble,” he would point out.

  A visitor came into the funeral parlor, looked at the two caskets, pressed my hand, and said, “I’m sorry for your double trouble.”

  I was afraid to turn around. I was sure Warren would have a pained expression on his face.

  The evening of the funeral, I knew I needed to be by myself. My mother was exhausted and went home to rest. People had surrounded us for the last three days, but they understood my need for quiet time now. When the children went to bed, I sat in the tall fireside chair that had at one time graced the parlor in my mother’s childhood home. I was beyond tears. For the moment, they had all been shed.

  This is the rest of my life, I thought. I knew how much the children would miss Warr. My heart ached for them. I knew about all the birthdays and holidays and graduations when they would see other kids with their fathers. I knew because I’d been there.

  Warren had been so proud of them. They’d all done some professional acting and modeling. That had started when we lived in Stuyvesant Town and the first two were little. Someone I knew casually told me that her toddler was paid ten dollars an hour to model for the Sears Roebuck catalog. Ten dollars an hour! I couldn’t believe it. She suggested that my offspring were just the type the Conover Agency wanted.

  I phoned the agency, was invited in for an interview with the kids, and a week later one of them was booked for a job. The modeling calls came off and on for years. Warrie was the baby in monthly ads for the Bayer Aspirin series; Patty was a Gerber baby; Carol did a commercial for Quaker Oats; Marilyn for Ideal Toys; Dave had been the voice of Linus on the Ford Falcon radio commercials from the time he was four years old until he was seven, and Warren got such a kick out of seeing them on television. I’d been glad to have a little extra money to squirrel away against the day it might be needed. There were expenses, of course: clothing; trips to New York for “go-sees” that might or might not end up in a booking; composite pictures for the agency to disperse. Everything added up, but I’d still managed to save some money.

  Warrie had just started the first grade when he became in demand for television commercials. By then we were living in New Jersey, and I’d explained to the principal at St. Andrew’s that I’d appreciate it if sometimes he could be excused from class early for a “go-see” and occasionally be absent for a day or two to act in a commercial. She agreed, with the proviso that it was not too frequent and that he keep his marks up.

  A new parish was created in Washington Township with the result that the younger children, beginning with David, went to a different school, Our Lady of Good Counsel. When I timidly told the principal that I’d like to be able occasionally to have him excused either early or for a whole day, she looked at me severely. “Does he get paid for this activity?”

  “Yes, he gets paid quite well,” I replied.

  “Can they use a nun?” she asked.

  I’d always sworn that there would be no fudging of the truth. I’d never call in sick for them when they were working, and I never did. But one day when I was racing eight-year-old Warren in for a “go-see,” as we exited the George Washington Bridge, he turned to me and asked, “What am I today, Mom, a big six or a small ten?”

  Dave, an easygoing, happy-go-lucky child, had a plaintive quality about him. As skinny as one side of eleven when he was little, he always managed to look forlorn. His blond hair fell over his forehead, he wore a look of perpetual worry, and there was a beseeching note in his voice. You always felt you wanted to help him, although in no defined way.

  One day when he was four, I had a “go-see” with him for what I was told would be a public service ad. I was asked to bring in a selection of worn and shabby clothes. I scouted around and arrived with two suitcases laden with castoffs, which I offered to show the photographer.

  He looked at Dave. The hair I had carefully combed was falling over Dave’s eyes. He was wearing a new shirt and shorts. The shirt drooped over his shoulders, the waistband of the shorts was anchored on his skinny hips. One sock had somehow managed to get sucked under the heel of his shoe.

  The photographer nodded approvingly. “He’s perfect the way he is,” he told me. He got Dave in position next to a little girl about his age and directed him to put his arm around her shoulder and to try to look sad. Dave let his mouth droop forlornly, but the photographer wasn’t getting what he wanted. Then he had an inspiration: “Dave, will you please stretch out your hand and show me your happiest smile?”

  David willingly agreed. The shoot was for United Way, and Dave’s picture, wistful and pleading, appeared in ads all over the country. The caption under his image was “Give until it hurts.”

  I smiled, thinking of Warren’s reaction to driving over the George Washington Bridge every evening for weeks and seeing that image of his son on a big billboard.

  I thought of the fun we had had over my Fab commercial. The Ted Bates Advertising Agency had a new campaign for the soap powder Fab and wanted to use real mothers rather than models in the commercials. I got to their offices and was given a form to fill out. It said something to the effect that I was to give my reasons why I used only Fab, never anything but Fab, in my washing machine.

  Oh, please, I thought, but decided to go along. Tongue in cheek, I wrote that Fab made my clothes whitey-white and cleany-clean. Since there were a dozen other potential real life models there, I was sure I was wasting my time.

  Finally it was my turn for the audition. It was already late, and I knew I’d be caught in five o’clock traffic. The interviewer asked if it was all right if he recorded me and assured me that I was being paid ten dollars whether or not I was chosen.

  On tape I earnestly repeated what I had written. That wasn’t quite enough. “Maybe there’s one special reason why you use Fab?” he suggested.

  I came up with one. “My son is a little league pitcher, and when he comes home after a game, his uniform is ever so dirty. Oh my goodness. I don’t know how I’d get it clean without good old Fab.”

  “A little league pitcher,” the interviewer said thoughtfully. “Fab and the little league pitcher. I like that.” He smiled. “Then, Mrs. Clark, you are saying that you are happiest when you use Fab in your washing machine.”

  “I never want to see anything in my washing machine except All,” I said emphatically, then immediately realized my mistake. All soap powder was the big competition! “FAB!” I screamed.

  For the next week I had fun telling everyone how I had blown my big chance to be a television star. Then I got a call from the modeling agency, instructing me to
go to the Paramus, New Jersey, shopping mall on the following Friday for a test commercial. I would be paid the princely sum of twenty-five dollars for the day’s work.

  I got to the mall at eight in the morning. And I waited. And waited. And waited. At four o’clock, it was finally my turn. By then I was coffee-logged, bored, and disgusted. They gave me a shopping cart loaded down with boxes of Fab and told me to push it past the cameras. Then their spokesperson, the TV announcer Jack Lescoulie, came onto the scene. He admired the Fab hanging out of the basket and asked me why I had purchased it.

  With exaggerated emphasis, I did my little league uniform story. The director ordered me to do it again, curtly telling me that I neither sounded nor looked spontaneous. During the day the weather had changed dramatically. By then it was windy and cold. The director was wearing earmuffs, heavy leather gloves, and a fur-lined jacket. I had on a spring coat, and my teeth were chattering. “Loosen up, Mrs. Clark,” he snapped. “Do something natural. For example, if you want to scratch your nose, go right ahead.”

  “Have you given any consideration to my picking it?” I snapped back. We did one more take, and he abruptly dismissed me. I was sure the film of my audition would end up in the nearest trash can.

  A few weeks later, a friend called. She’d just seen me in a commercial on the I Love Lucy show! That commercial also ran on the top daytime soap operas for weeks. Warren and I went to Hawaii on the loot I made, and we had a marvelous time.

  So many marvelous times…

  As I sat there, I realized how important it was that I do a good job on the script writing. Because of Warren’s heart condition, we had been able to get very little insurance. I knew that I certainly wasn’t going to be able to support five children on short-story writing.

  For a couple of years, I’d had significant success selling my short stories. The Saturday Evening Post was the pinnacle for mainstream writers in those days, and I not only had sold a short story there, but it had been included in their list of “Best Post Stories of the Year.” Called “Beauty Contest at Buckingham Palace,” it depicted a fictitious beauty contest among the very attractive young women who in 1961 were either a first lady, a reigning monarch, or the wife of a reigning monarch. They included Jackie Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Sirikit of Thailand, Queen Fabiola of Belgium, Queen Farah of Iran, and Princess Grace of Monaco. Not only to sell to the Post, but to be included as the author of one of its ten best stories of the year was a breathtaking achievement for me.

  On the other hand, my first attempt at longer fiction had become a private joke. I’d aimed it at Redbook, which each month paid a princely sum of seven thousand dollars for a novella. Katie Miles, the stewardess who was the reason Joan Murchison and I applied for jobs in Pan Am, had at that point gone through five husbands. The third was a Pan Am captain whom she thoughtfully removed from his wife when they were stationed in London.

  I wrote that story from the wife’s viewpoint—“the patient Griselda,” as Professor Mowery referred to that kind of heroine, the long-suffering wife. In the story I wrote, she willingly gives the cheating husband a divorce; she loves him too much to stand in his way, and she won’t take any alimony. I called that story “Journey Back to Love.” The response from Redbook’s editors was, “We found the heroine as boring as her husband had.”

  The story did sell eventually to an English magazine and was published as a two-part serial, for which I was paid four hundred and fifty dollars, not seven thousand. But when the first installment came, I was thrilled to see I had the magazine’s center spread, which is top-drawer positioning for a writer.

  “Journey Back to Love” was blazoned across the double-spread. My name had never been larger in print. The illustration was of a sweet, sad creature weeping as she gazes out a rain-drenched window. The caption read, “Can a woman lose her husband’s love when she offers him tenderness and obedience?” When Warren saw that, his comment to me was, “I certainly wish you’d try.”

  The memory made me laugh. True, I hadn’t offered him obedience, but I certainly had given tenderness.

  But the practical problems that were looming for me and my family inevitably came to mind. The fiction market had dried up, simply vanished. Collier’s was out of business. The Saturday Evening Post now published only nonfiction. The women’s magazines had dropped fiction and began printing nothing but self-help articles. “How to be your own best friend”…“How to grow a better lawn”…“How to be a helpful neighbor.” How to do anything except sell fiction.

  In the first nine months of 1964, I’d made a total of fifty dollars, the amount paid for the reprint of a short story. Warr had been joking that he’d been supporting an indigent writer. I knew that Liz was writing three radio series. That meant she was earning three hundred dollars a week. I resolved to get to that point, too.

  At home, I was going to have to assume the role of both parents. And as my mother hadn’t taken my father’s death out on us, I resolved I wouldn’t take my grief out on my children. As best I could, I would try to give them a happy home.

  Finally, exhausted, I got out of the tall chair and went upstairs to bed. The room that was now only mine felt empty and quiet. I lay there for a long time, then finally dozed off. Around one in the morning, my bedroom door opened. Five-year-old Patty came in, dragging her security blanket. “Can I sleep with you?” she asked.

  I scooped her up. “It’s the best offer I’ve had all night,” I told her. And we fell asleep together.

  Eleven

  Following Warren’s instructions to look gaunt after his death, I elected to wear black, at least until spring. It was not that I was locked into the old custom of wearing mourning attire, but he absolutely hated to see me dressed in black. By wearing it now, I felt I was fulfilling his admonition not to be a “blooming widow.”

  And so it was that five days after the funeral, clad in a black suit, I went into what I will now refer to as the Gordon R. Tavistock office on East Fifty-fifth Street to sign an agreement to write sixty-five four-minute programs for the Portrait of a Patriot series to be aired in thirteen-week cycles.

  The office occupied the back half of the third floor of a brownstone located midway between Madison and Park Avenues. My friend Liz worked there, and she filled me in on the fact that the front half of the floor was a residential apartment occupied by another lady of easy virtue who each day walked her toy poodle on Park Avenue and returned with a number of appointments from gentlemen who had stopped to chat with her.

  There were only about seven people who actually worked in the brownstone office, including Liz, who was the head writer; Frank, head of sales; Barry, producer/director of the programs; Laurence, the office manager; an accountant whose name I forget; and a couple of typists. The other writers, freelance like me, were hired by the series and worked at home.

  Liz had explained that Gordon R. Tavistock—“G.R.” as she called him—had made a bundle of money on a very popular television talent show and had conceived the idea of creating free-of-charge radio programming that would be distributed to radio stations but would have an essential difference from other so-called “filler” material. The stations would agree to schedule the Tavistock series at a specific time each day, and because the programs were hosted by a wellknown personality, the publicity messages built into the announcements were deemed acceptable.

  I was told I would meet Bud Collier, the host of my series, at the first recording session. Liz assured me that I shouldn’t be nervous—Bud was a gem.

  It was a while before I got to meet G.R. He hated living in New York, which he had decided was full of hippies. He was traveling around the country, looking for a suitable place to live. I immediately got the impression that G.R. was not as easygoing, as unflappable a boss as Sterling Hiles had been.

  Laurence, the office manager, a thin, tall, pale, solemn man, who looked twenty years older than his actual age of forty-seven or eight, gave me sample scripts the former writer had done and
asked me to submit a list of ten potential patriots for approval by the Grolier Company, the sponsor of the series. He said that I would be expected to be in the studio when the programs were recorded, in case alterations to the script were necessary. Finally, in a dirgelike voice, he welcomed me to the G. R. Tavistock family.

  On the way out, I heard the lady of easy virtue in the front apartment arguing with the laundry delivery service. “I gave you sixteen sheets last week,” she was shrieking, “and you only brought back fifteen.”

  I could tell I would now be traveling in a very sophisticated world.

  It is not always how we act, but how we react that tells the story of our lives.…Laugh and the world laughs with you…God is in His Heaven, and if sometimes he seems not to be listening, it’s only because He’s saving something special for us….

  No matter how you slice it, the first year after losing your husband can only be compared to walking barefoot through hell. And it’s just as bad for the children. The loss they have experienced is visible in their eyes.

  Daily Mass helped get me through it. “I will go unto the altar of God, the God who gave joy to my youth.” Family and friends did their best to help. My brother-in-law Allan stopped in every evening on the way home from work. He was a rock for all of us. Mother was there 90 percent of the time, and while she was an enormous help, her presence also created an exasperating, but funny, problem.

  Now that I was widowed, in her mind she wasn’t only minding my five children. She immediately resumed her role as guardian of another young girl—me.

  A week after Warren’s death, Paul Becker, the funeral director, came in to drop off some Social Security application forms for me to fill out. When he arrived, Mother herded the boys upstairs. Patty and Carol were already in bed. In five minutes my visitor was gone, and Marilyn, who had just started her freshman year in high school, turned on her French-language records. For the next thirty minutes, a suave masculine voice asked such questions as “Voulez vous aller à la bibliothèque avec moi?”