“Tell me,” she would say: “Tell me”—pinning him in her gaze, her head cocked to one side, the massive bun of her hair, at its pitched angle, threatening to come undone and drop into her soup or onto her salad plate…. God knows that in 1957 there was plenty to tell about Caroline and Julia, so much was happening in their lives and in such rapid sequence…. This was their senior year at Hollis Academy: the consuming topic of the first four months of 1957 had been college. Which one would they enter in the fall? Early on, they had let it be known that they wanted to attend the same college, but wanted to live in separate dormitories. They had applied for admission to three institutions: Radcliffe, Smith (Maud’s alma mater) and Bryn Mawr—(and had had the thrill of being accepted by each). During the break of the Hollis spring vacation, he and Maud had taken them to visit the three campuses, after which trip there followed an agonizing week of what Julia and Caroline called—“terminal decision.”
“Tell me,” Miss Sly appealed, leaning toward him across the luncheon table—a picture of suspense. “Bryn Mawr,” he said: “They’ve opted for Bryn Mawr.”
“Tell me,” she said again in late April, this time in appeal for an account of the dinner party organized by Maud (at the twins’ behest) in celebration of their seventeenth birthday, all their Hollis classmates in attendance. “Twenty young women,” he reported, “all in various stages of bloom!” He’d gone on, narrating how, as one by one the feminine horde had arrived for the party, he had stood with Maud and Julia and Caroline at the foot of the staircase in the festooned hall of their house and greeted each girl and—“as a mere male and father”—been, by each girl, for a moment, “beautifully tolerated,” and then, how, with the arrival of the twentieth girl, Caroline had cast upon him a prompter’s glance: his cue to disappear. And he had. And gladly: “Because,” he laughed, “if I hadn’t, I’d have been made deaf for life! What I learned is that when a bunch of seventeen- and eighteen-year-old girls come together as social creatures, they squeal, unmercifully, and about everything.” “Their dresses,” Miss Sly took over, “and the entire way they’ve gotten themselves up for the party, hair and all!” “Exactly.” (He didn’t, with Miss Sly, say anything about how some of the girls had been shod—in narrow, slick, high-heeled pumps of the sort Sutter had always used to refer to as “Joan Crawford fuck-me shoes.” He had been more than a little surprised at how sexually advanced [at least in appearance] some of the girls had seemed to him to be.)
“Tell me”—three weeks after the occasion of the birthday dinner—about the greater event of the twins’ graduation from Hollis Academy—the June evening of the commencement exercises warm enough to warrant keeping the tall windows of the school auditorium open, letting in the fragrance of flowering lilacs. Julia “walked off” with the English Literature Prize; Caroline “capped” an Honorable Mention in Mathematics. From the terribly erect way his father sat throughout the proceedings, Morgan knew what a struggle he was having to control his emotions. Not Maud, though. Her tears had flowed: “Like the Nile.” “And you, Mr. Shurtliff?” Ah… Her question made him laugh; his laughter was her answer. Impossible to translate his feelings into words. But he did tell her that when Julia was called forward to receive the English Literature Prize (a handsomely bound collection of Henry James’s short stories), her young, solemn dignity as she’d walked across the stage had very nearly undone him.
(Sometimes when they lunched together and had the rare luck of having a few extra minutes to spare, they would linger over their coffee and ruminate outside of Time about nothing much at all, like two very old people about to pass away—a communion of souls. Their friendship had become an entity that capable.)
Money and Morgan.
By the sweat of his lawyer’s brow, he earned the money to maintain his family and home to his own standards of accountableness and, by personal inclination, of beauty.
That is an objective statement that could be made about him. It is not a statement he would have made about himself—which isn’t to say he was above pride of ability, or was lacking in satisfaction of accomplishment—only that he had been schooled to believe that work is a moral part of what Life is: one of its expectations. The maxim had been drilled into him: “Unless one is incapable of doing so, one earns one’s way in life.”
Having by chance been born into a circumstance of bed-rock wealth, money was a subject his father, in ethical terms, had obliged him from an early age to think about. He could never forget the day Ansel Shurtliff had sat him down and quoted to him Lord Byron’s remark: “Ready money is Aladdin’s lamp,” then juxtaposed that happy quote with Epicurus’ words to the effect that riches don’t lessen, only alter, one’s troubles. And then how his father had gone on to say that the privilege of having Money carried with it many duties, many societal obligations, after which admonition he had delivered his fierce, valedictory message: that anyone who possesses Money and uses his possession of it as a weapon, or allows his possession of it to bloat his ego into a kingliness out of all proportion to the rest of mankind, “is—to put it in the politest possible terms—an ass.” To Morgan’s young ears, the way his father intoned the word “ass” came out sounding cold and scornful, beyond redemption, vile.
Given that background conditioning, it was at times almost an embarrassment the way Money kept pursuing him, singling him out, haunting him, hovering near him, over him, depositing willy-nilly into his lap more and more of the cushy green stuff that was the signifier of its omnipresence in his life. Three times during that 1948–1957 decade, Frederick Selby (the Shurtliff family lawyer) summoned him to his office for the purpose of informing him that Money, yet again, had tracked him down and deposited upon him, yet again, more money. The third summoning came in mid-June of 1957. A relative, unknown to Morgan, never met, had died and left him (and three others of his generation) the bulk of a sizable fortune.
“Pa,” Morgan telephoned his father: “Who the hell is—was—Thurlow Shurtliff?”
Ansel Shurtliff laughed. Then: “I’ve been expecting this call from you! Fred Selby telephoned me last week to tell me old Thurlow had died. I understand you take very handsomely under the terms of his will.”
“Yes. But Pa, I’ve never heard mention of him! How am I related to him?”
“Well”—his father’s laughter came fresh—“he was my second cousin, which I guess makes you his second cousin once removed. And by a very considerable gap in age. Are you sitting down?”
“I am now,” Morgan said.
“Because the story of Thurlow’s life may surprise you. In our branch of the family, Thurlow’s always been more of a legend than a presence, always spoken of as ‘a fearless eccentric.’ He gained his first fame as a First World War hero, then as a mountain climber. He climbed mountains all over the world—the Matterhorn, Kilimanjaro, peaks in South America. After he satisfied his craze for climbing mountains, he took up ballooning—went every year to France, somewhere near Chartres, to take part in an annual balloon-do that’s held there. I have an old, very endearing photograph of him standing in the cab of his balloon, waving to a group of people gawking up at him from the ground. It was taken just as he was commencing one of his aerial ascents. I’ll search out the picture and send it to you. You’ll be amused by what you can see of the clothes he’s wearing. He liked to go about en travestie. The one and only time I ever met him, years ago at your cousin Richard Shurtliff’s house in Cincinnati, he arrived driving a top-down Pierce-Arrow phaeton. He was gotten up in a mauve-colored hat and a mauve silk scarf and mauve gloves that matched the mauve pleated skirt he was wearing over his pants. I was young enough to be tremendously impressed…. Have I rendered you speechless?”
“Not quite.” Morgan laughed.
“He was married, by the way, and by all accounts very happily. His wife—they had no children—died about ten years ago. Georgia was her name. I never met her. But Richard Shurtliff once described her to me as looking like a tall, very imposing, ivory-faced Victori
an clock of the type you’re likely to see in the Great Hall of an English country house—one that chimes on the hour. He also said she had a wonderful sense of humor and a really rare talent for making friends. The next time I see Richard I’ll ask him if he has a spare picture of her he might be willing to let you have.”
“That would be nice. And I’d much appreciate a look at that picture of Thurlow you mentioned—”
“In the cab of his rising balloon.” Ansel Shurtliff laughed again. “I’ll hunt it out for you the minute I hang up.”
About his unexpected monetary windfall, Morgan next asked: “Why me?”
“Oh, in the end, lacking any children of his own, I think old Thurlow felt the pull of the family name; wanted his means to remain in the family. From what Fred Selby told me, the three other beneficiaries are all in the same cousinly line as yourself, all males and all roughly your age. And Thurlow surely knew that the text of his will would cause a lot of family talk—as it has—and he undoubtedly relished that prospect…. You would have liked him, Morgan.”
It was in June too that Lillie Ruth stunned Maud by telling her that on this very Friday, the fourteenth day of the sixth month of 1957, she had “turned” seventy-nine years old; that this time next year, if God wanted her to, she would “become” eighty. She had for so long pretended to youngerness and in appearance and spryness and eagerness worn her pretense so well that no one for a long time had thought to count, to add up the truth, starting with what they all knew: that way back in 1918 when she’d come to work for the Leighs, she had admitted (then) to being in age “about forty years old.”
“That was thirty-nine years ago,” Maud mused aloud to Morgan that evening, equating the date in terms of her own age: she had been a four-year-old child when Lillie Ruth entered her life. “I feel foolish, guilty, not to have put it all together,” she said, then had gone on to tell him what Lillie Ruth had talked about after confessing her real age: how, seated together on the couch in Maud’s sitting room, holding each other’s hands, they had exchanged memories of Maud’s mother, and then how Lillie Ruth (“looking suddenly tired”) had revealed to Maud what she called “her greatest want,” which was to live out her last years “under the same roof” with Maud (so too of course with him)—not just be driven out by Dennis of a morning to the house, then driven back in the afternoon to her own place (a square-fronted, three-room abode set down on an area of land referred to by older Hathertonians as “the Negro district.”) “I’ve grown timid to be alone at night, Maudie,” were Lillie Ruth’s final words; her ultimate confession.
It was plain to them what to do: all that extra unused space adjacent to and level with Tessa’s rooms (no stairs involved) must be renovated and made fine for Lillie Ruth (“Lovely and appropriate,” Maud projected), toward which end Morgan telephoned his architect the next morning and told him to look at the space and submit, as soon as possible, a sitting room, bedroom, and bath design of what would be Lillie Ruth’s future home.
“Ready money is Aladdin’s lamp”: the sentence came back to him a couple of weeks later when he and Maud showed Lillie Ruth the architect’s drawings. Unforgettable, the way she clapped her hands together and praised Jesus and flung herself into Maud’s arms. Ah: sheer magic, being able to honor her by providing her her “greatest want.”
The architect found a builder. The renovation would begin in a month’s time. “We’ll have you moved in by October,” Morgan told her. In the quiet, June-sunlit library, Lillie Ruth again struck her hands together. A second thunder-clap of joy.
…By July, what he sorely needed was a vacation. “The case,” alas, precluded the possibility. “But just you wait,” he kept telling Maud: “The instant the case is settled, we’ll be off, my love, to distant lands”—waxing poetic with her about their plan-in-the-make to board an ocean liner and sail away to Europe: “The instant the case is settled.” The phrase became a prayer of anticipation they chanted to each other all that summer.
All that summer of the discovery, by young men, of Caroline and Julia.
Beginning in about the third week in June (just as Lillie Ruth had long ago predicted they would) boys began to turn up and buzz around the twins in numbers like flies. They drove between the griffin gate-posts and came down the lane in all makes and types of cars, remnant jalopies, station wagons, convertibles, chamois-shined sedans; one stripling piloted a sassy new jeep. Some of the youths were the privileged sons of family friends and acquaintances, which nicety of social connection did not necessarily mean that such known young men posed any less a threat (in Morgan’s and Maud’s eyes) than did the young men whose faces and names were new to them—youths whom the twins had met at dances, or beside the country club swimming pool, or at sailboat races at the Eagle Lake Club, or wherever else on a sunny afternoon the young crowd found itself, here and there, to be. Most of the youths were the twins’ age, newly graduated from private day schools or eastern prep schools, due to start college in the fall. And as opposite as north is to south, as down is to up, cold to hot, black to white, they behaved one way with Caroline, the other way with Julia. It was fascinating to see. Around Caroline, they postured and made themselves vivid—showing off their speed and stamina on the tennis court, making tricky dives into swimming pools—competing hard for Caroline’s attention. Around Julia, they behaved more like friends than rivals. (Early on in the summer Lillie Ruth said: “It’s Julia’s unity that gentles them.” Ansel Shurtliff said: “Julia’s an aesthetic creature. If I were a lad, I’d be awed by her.” Maud said: “Boys mirror her shyness.”)
There was one youth who was older than all the others—Mitchell Talmadge, called “Mitch.” He had already completed his freshman year at Princeton. He was dark eyed and dark haired and slim hipped. Developed. Morgan titled him—“The Sophisticate”—and by the time July rolled around, he and Maud knew that Mitch had gained a special hold on Caroline’s imagination. They knew he had from the way Caroline acted whenever Mitch was due to play tennis with her or to take her sailing or to carry her off to a movie or an evening party. A few minutes before Mitch was expected, Caroline would become either abnormally animated or abnormally placid. (“Wired, or in a trance,” was the way Maud put it). One Sunday afternoon she positioned herself at the top of the long curved staircase and stayed there until Mitch had been admitted through the front door into the hall. Then, from above, over the stair-railing, she called down to him—“Mitch.” And then, slowly, she began to descend the stairs. She was wearing a short-skirted tennis dress. At the bottom of the staircase Mitch stood, his face raised to her, the fingers of his right hand wrapped around a newel post, gripping it. His eyes never left her. Morgan, from his paternal stand in the library doorway, watched Mitch watch her, and for a moment—remembering what it was like to be a sexually revved-up young man of nineteen years—he almost felt sorry for Mitch. Almost.
He and Maud were in complete agreement that, as to boys, Caroline was the twin to worry about. In June, Maud had vouched: “She has it in her to be led.” In July, after witnessing that staircase scene, Morgan vouched: “She has it in her to lead.” Maud said: “I know. I’m going to speak to her about that…. No, Morgan, you shouldn’t be there when I do. It’s too female a topic…. Leave it to me…. I’ll instruct; you be the guard-dog.” They both laughed then, looking and looking at each other: balanced.
That summer, with Morgan away so much of the time in New York, Ansel Shurtliff spent many days with Maud. She would telephone him (he always waited to be asked) and he would leave his home, leave the burgeoning acres of his beloved orchards to go to her. (Toward the end of June, he wrote her a note: “How tremendous it is, my dear Maud, at my age, to be made to feel both wanted and useful. I am a fortunate man! Pip.”) He told Morgan that the summer had for him “a throwback feel” to the war years when he and Maud had stood sentry-duty together. “But that was then,” he had mused on, “and this is now, and where, oh where has the time gone?…Caroline and Julia, grown up!
All of a sudden!” And then he smiled: “It amuses me, the grand paternal effect I have on the young crowd—particularly on the lads—when you’re not here. How they kowtow to me: Shurtliff the Elder authorized by Shurtliff the Younger to occupy the Imperial Throne of Espial while Shurtliff the Younger is absent. I love the power!” He grinned: “But what I love even more is the look of amazement on the lads’ faces when they see me getting in or out of my new Jaguar” (which second such car, dark red, he had recently purchased). “How they do stare! I tell you, Morgan: when your time rolls around as the grand-father of grown-up grand-children, if you can, be in possession of a ‘Jag,’ because, in the eyes of a bunch of lads, it’s the equivalent—for clout—of Merlin’s wand.” He said it gaily, the sun on his white hair as he strolled with Morgan over the lawn. “But now,” he said, “you talk, son. I want to hear the latest news of your case. And did you see Geoff and Alan on your last trip to New York? Maud told me they’re coming for a visit in August. I’d like to see them when they’re here. And what’s Sidney up to these days?”
Morgan never got the chance to answer.
“Morgan! Pip!” Julia’s voice.
Morgan and his father stopped walking; turned around. The call had come from way over there, across the broad sweep of lawn, from the direction of the pond.
“Morgan…Pip…Wait.”
And then Julia came running toward them; waving, smiling. As she came on, Morgan—the years tumbling backwards—saw her for a flash as a child again whom he would catch in his arms and swing up over his head. But running forward, getting closer, she regained in his eyes the actuality of what she was now—“Grown up, all of a sudden”—just as his father had said.
Matters of Chance Page 31
