It took only a second for his father to read the words, first to himself, next in a struck voice aloud to the others, then to exclaim: “I had no idea! None whatsoever”—and, turning to Alan, addressing him: “It was my wife’s father’s first name. That’s how we came to pass it on to”—he turned back to Morgan—“to you. I’m certain that neither your mother nor her father had any inkling of the name’s being Welsh, or of its meaning in that language. They’d have told me if they’d known. They both reveled in all such out-of-the way lore…. Why Alan, how you have enlightened us!”
Everybody was active now, talking, passing the book around, hand-to-hand. Morgan, though, was in a world of thoughts completely his own. Morgan: a dweller on the sea. The words suggested perpetual brine, perpetual drift: a loner’s existence devoid of witnesses. It surprised him how much within himself he denied that definition of his name. A dweller on the sea? Ah, no! Not this Morgan. Define this Morgan as a dweller on the land, in his way a deeply-rooted tree: proof (it comforted him to think) that in one’s given name there is no destiny.
…On New Year’s Eve, they all went into Cleveland for Lewis and Letitia Grant’s annual party, Maud, Julia, and Alan in Morgan’s car; Caroline and Geoff with Ansel Shurtliff in his “Jag.” All their lives, Caroline and Julia had heard about this party; this was the first time they were going to it, Letitia Grant having pronounced them old enough now to attend. “Why are you so excited about this particular party?” Maud asked. “Because,” Julia explained, “because, finally, Callie and I’ll see what it’s really like. We’ve imagined it for so long, since we were little. We used to spend hours talking about it and pretending we were at it, dressed up like princesses, surrounded by princes—everything gorgeous—fabulous clusters of flowers hanging by pure gold ropes from the ceiling and chiffon-veiled pink lights—that was Callie’s idea—and the air scented with a foreign, awfully exotic perfume, Arabian, we thought!” Caroline, in on these nursery remembrances, said: “We’re prepared, on those terms, to be disappointed.” Maud laughed: “On those terms, you’re bound to be.”
Still, it was a grand party; on its own terms, memorable. At midnight, as he always did, Lewis Grant led the company in a first toast to the New Year: “To 1958.” (When he did that, Morgan looked at Maud. She understood that his gaze went far beyond 1958, that it kept faith with what, earlier in the evening, they had told each about the last ten years—the decade just ended: that it had been the best, the happiest of their lives: “So look at me at midnight, won’t you. Look at me, so we can toast together the next ten years.”)
They got home around two-thirty. As they were getting out of their coats, Maud announced: “Breakfast at noon.”
Ansel Shurtliff said: “I promise you won’t see me one minute before.”
Morgan turned to Geoff and Alan: “Let’s have a brandy.”
“Let’s do that.”
“Are ladies not welcome?” Caroline asked.
“Certainly not,” Maud told her.
“Come on, Callie,” Julia said.
(Good night, loves. Good night. Sleep well. Bless all. Good night.)
What did they talk about over their brandies? Nothing monumental. They were too pleasantly spent, too relaxed for such exertions. Oh, inevitably, the New Year’s mythic power drew from them some out-loud personal concerns: Morgan’s, about his case (the New York State Court of Appeals ruling expected in January); Geoff’s “hope” that the position he’d put in for as president of the Balfour Foundation would come through; Alan’s simply spoken wish “for a quiet year, good for work.” And they touched on the matter of their ages: in 1958, each of them would “chalk up” forty-seven years. “God, we’re pushing fifty,” Geoff said. Alan checked him: “Don’t complain. Think of the times during the war when you doubted you’d live through the next day. We’re damn lucky to be pushing fifty.”
“I’m going to fall asleep right here in this chair.”
“Don’t.”
They stood up. Turned out the lights. Went into the front hall and side-by-side, mock soldierly, mounted the stairs.
“Sweet dreams.”
They laughed.
“Shh…”
9 Soaring
Monday, January 13, 1958
In Cleveland, the morning sky was gray. Lake Erie was gray. A cold, misty rain enshrouded the city. “Gloomy,” Morgan’s secretary said of the day, sighing as she entered his office. He was sitting at his desk. Miss Corey took her usual chair opposite him. After checking, as she always did, that her knees were covered by her skirt, she uncapped her pen and opened her shorthand pad. The phone on his desk rang. Miss Corey reached out and picked it up. “It’s Mr. Buchanan calling from the New York office,” she reported. (Ah, John Buchanan.) Miss Corey handed him the phone.
“John. How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. I have splendid news for you, Morgan. It came through a few minutes ago.”
“Dare I guess?”
“Dare indeed.” Quickly then, John Buchanan told him that in the matter of his long, hard-fought case, the New York State Court of Appeals had at last rendered its decision. “It’s your win, Morgan. Yours all the way. Your crown to wear.”
“John!”—Morgan all but yelled.
“Before you start to explode in earnest, let me say I’ve already airmailed a copy of the court’s order to you. You should have it by Wednesday. Thursday for sure. You’re due to be here next week, right? So I’ll save my congratulations until I see you…. Do I have your permission, as of now, to spread the good news among our colleagues?”
“Please do. And thanks, John. Many thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
He hung up the phone. Miss Corey again took up her pen and shorthand pad. “Not now, Miss Corey.” He told her to go down the hall, please, to George Colt’s office: “Find out if he’s free, and if he is, tell him I’d like to see him as soon as possible.” All in a usual voice. It wasn’t until she was out of the room, until he was alone, that belief overwhelmed him. Belief, as in the fact of a mountain risen to view. The actuality of its existence. That it was, in truth, there. There, as in conclusion: that the conflict was over; ended. Ended by the court’s decision, which decision concretely favored his two clients: made of them victors: sealed, forever, their victory. Abruptly, and completely, he began to shake. From sheer relief, sheer elation, to shake. Walk, he told himself. Stand up and walk around the room—
“What’s up, Morgan?”
George Colt was standing in the doorway. George Colt, as in Kissel, Chandler, Shurtliff & Colt.
“George! You startled me.”
“You look slammed.”
“I am. There’s terrific news.”
“Is it what I think it is?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Stop talking like Molly Bloom. Spell it out for me.”
The spelling out didn’t take long. And the minute George Colt left him, creaming off almost at a run “to tell the others,” Morgan did the next vital thing: telephoned his clients. Two separate, exultant long-distance calls.
That done, then, his Cleveland colleagues, led by George Colt, converged upon him. Lawyers’ glee. Nothing quite like it! By mid-afternoon, armed with the court’s by now publicly released ruling, newspaper and magazine reporters began to surface (at which moment the clock began ticking off the seconds of what, years later, reminiscing about his first “glory” case, Morgan would dub “my fifteen minutes of fame”).
For the next few days—without apology—he heaped the full magnitude of his winner’s euphoria on his family and his closest friends. With Maud, for a couple of nights, all he was good for was fucking. That, and in the dark, afterwards, not quite completely exhausted, talking with her about their long-promised, long anticipated trip to Europe, soon to be embarked on! For he had, had, in the wild midst of his euphoria, called the New York office of the Cunard Line and secured their passage. On Tuesday, February 25, they would sail from New York; have the fine ple
asures of the Atlantic crossing (“God, the freedom!”); have four days in London, then on to Paris; from Paris to Avallon and Vézelay (Vézelay, vividly remembered as the favorite place of his fifteenth summer when his father had taken him to Europe on what, back then, was called “The Grand Tour”); then back to England, to Southampton, there to reboard ship for the return voyage, docking in New York on Wednesday, March 26; then the train trip to Cleveland: home—in time to receive Julia and Caroline, whose spring vacation from college would commence on Saturday, March 29. All the dates in place. Fixed. (“O, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, wonderful! and yet again wonderful! and after that out of all whooping.” To Maud he quoted his favorite Shakespeare line.) They lay in the dark, talking in each other’s arms: This is what we’ll do. This is the way it will be.
(Before they had gone to bed, it had begun to snow. They had stood at a window and watched the huge flakes fall. It was one of those rare, windless January blizzards, the snowflakes softly dropping, the lawn, as far as they could see, all white. “A bride’s new sheet,” Maud said, leaning against him. “Listen. Listen to the silence.”)
10 Suddenly
These things never happened, but are always.
—SALLUST (CAIUS SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS,
86 B.C.-C. 34 B.C.), OF GODS AND OF THE WORLD
Their plan was to leave Cleveland (by train) for New York on Friday evening. In New York, over the week-end and on Monday, they would have the fun of seeing Geoff and Alan, Lucy Blackett, Sidney and Linda, Lawrence and Pamela. On Tuesday, they would board ship and sail away.
Yesterday, he had had a farewell lunch with Miss Sly. When they parted, Miss Sly had said: “I know you’ll have a glorious time, Mr. Shurtliff. I’ll be thinking of you and Mrs. Shurtliff in all those wonderful places. Call me the minute you get back.” In their warm, ceremonial way, they embraced. “Good-bye.” “Good-bye.” After he left her, he’d gone back to his office, said a final round of good-byes there, sat for a moment at his desk for what would be the last time in a long time—the surface of his desk clean, no papers on it; nothing left to be attended to. This is what it’s like to be care-free, he had thought. Then he had picked up his briefcase and swung off, out of his office, down the corridor, passing other open office doors, waving as he was waved to all the way to the elevator. Out of sight. DOWN, thanks to Mr. Otis, to the building’s ground floor.
Driving home, he turned on the car radio. Frank Sinatra: “So while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance / Let’s face the music and dance.” Ta ta-tatata-ta ta. Then some swing: Big Band versions of “Tuxedo Junction” and “Celery Stalks at Midnight.” Old war-time stuff. Boogie: “Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar.” He turned off the radio. He didn’t need it. He had, after all, his own repertoire to sing to himself. He drove fast, eager to be home, eager to be with Maud, eager to see his father, who was coming to spend the night. (“I want a last evening with you and Maud before you leave,” Ansel Shurtliff had said.) He arrived home, incredibly happy; announced his arrival with a ballpark yell when he entered the house. Maud and his father were already ensconced in the library. Ah, the warmth of a blazing hearth fire. Maud’s kiss. His father’s bear-hug. Drinks. “I’ve just told Pip that I’m virtually packed,” Maud said. Morgan said: “By this time tomorrow night I’ll be packed, too. God, I’m excited. Exorbitantly excited.”
She died alone. The next morning. In their bedroom. Dropped onto the floor close to their bed.
Morgan had gotten up at seven-thirty. Maud had opened her eyes just long enough to say she wanted to sleep a while more. She was tired, she said. She’d been racing about so much, she said: “Getting ready.” For their trip…“Wake me if I’m not downstairs by nine,” she said. She’d smiled and turned in the bed onto her side. Closed her eyes. He had showered, shaved, dressed. She was asleep when he left their room. His father was already at the table in the dining room. “Nothing like one of Tessa’s breakfasts,” Ansel Shurtliff greeted him. They read the papers, talked. The February morning had just begun to come on bright. Morgan looked at his watch: “It’s almost nine-thirty! I told Maud I’d wake her at nine.”
When he found her—close on to nine-thirty, dropped like that onto the floor close to their bed—by Dr. Forbes’s calculation, she’d been dead about an hour. From down the private hallway that led to their bedroom, and with the door of their room closed, and the house so large, if she had cried out, she wouldn’t have been heard. “But if you had been with her, there wouldn’t have been anything you could have done for her,” Dr. Forbes said. “It was a massive hemorrhage, a massive black-out, Morgan. In such cases, death occurs in seconds. A moment or two and it’s all over. She would hardly have had time to know what was happening to her.” (Yet, had she said his name? Breathed it at the last, hoping?)
One draws on memory’s examples to make it through such a time. Morgan thought of the captain: of how he had behaved in the first hours after the Stubbins was torpedoed: of his iron will, his insistence on surviving—on surviving survival, that is: how he had conducted himself in a way that had obliged those of the crew left living to care that they were alive. Strange, that he thought of the captain before he thought of his father: his father, sitting right there beside him. His father, who had sustained the death of his wife—the words on her tombstone now remembered: Caroline Cunningham Shurtliff / Born—28 March 1887 / Died Age 36–3 April 1923 / Beloved Wife of Ansel Osborne Shurtliff / Mother of Morgan Cunningham Shurtliff.
“You must think about Julia and Caroline,” his father said.
He must telephone Bryn Mawr’s dean. No. First—Lucy Blackett. Lucy would go from New York to Philadelphia to be with Julia and Caroline; she would accompany them on the plane trip to Cleveland: they shouldn’t be alone on the flight home. Call Lucy. No. First call the airline: get the plane schedule, secure the tickets, then call Lucy; then the dean—the unmet dean, experienced in such matters as this. When Morgan spoke with her, he heard experience in her voice. She would go herself, she told him, and get Julia and Caroline from their classes and break the news to them (she would have to tell them what had happened, she said); then she would bring them back to her office and then she would call Morgan, and then it would be his turn to speak with them. His turn: not long in coming. Beyond confirming the terrible truth, he told them that Lucy was on her way to them, that she would come home with them on the plane—everything was arranged; Pip and Dennis would meet them at the airport; he wished he could meet them himself, but he couldn’t: there was too much that had to be seen to here at home. “By nightfall, though, we’ll be together,” he told them.
Next, with his father, he drew up a list of people who must be told as soon as possible. Doctor Leigh’s name headed Morgan’s list. Doctor Leigh would be asked to notify other Leigh relations—excepting Peter Leigh (Maud’s favorite cousin; Julia’s godfather). Morgan to call Peter; then the minister; then George Colt, who would tell the firm’s partners; then Mary Berridge (ask Mary to tell Ann Goodyear and Jane Garth and Sally Myers (Maud’s “tennis pals”). Ansel Shurtliff would call Letitia and Lewis Grant and Shurtliff cousins in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and New York…. A secondary list was begun and set aside. Mustn’t put the cart before the horse: a death notice should be written out next, and was: Morgan dictated it over the phone to Miss Corey (who, in turn, dictated it to the proper editors of the designated newspapers). Then back to the secondary list.
Those few names that didn’t require being written down kept springing to mind: Geoff, Alan, Sidney, Lawrence, Miss Sly.
In the kitchen, Lillie Ruth and Tessa were grieving. Not that you could hear them weeping: only that you knew they were. They had begun to prepare lunch, to plan dinner. To stay strong (Lillie Ruth had earlier said), folks would have to eat.
The day went on without cadence. At two-thirty, the minister arrived. The Reverend Mr. Daniels. A thin, dark-haired man with deep-set eyes and large, expressive hands. He limped into the library.
One of his legs was shorter than the other. A terrible limp: a war injury. He was still spoken of as the “new” Presbyterian minister (the Reverend Mr. Halliday having retired three years ago: gone to live with his unmarried sister in Bangor, Maine). Maud had grown fond of Mr. Daniels…. When Morgan had spoken with Mr. Daniels in the morning, they had fixed Monday as the day when the funeral would be. No, Morgan said now, she was not going to be cremated. In body whole, in a coffin, she would be buried in the Leigh family plot. Near her mother. Soon after her mother died, Maud had said that that was what she would someday want. Someday. Some distant day, transiently (when she’d said it), imagined. That was all Morgan had to go on. But she had said it. So that was how it would be. Which psalms to be spoken? Which hymns sung? To those questions, Morgan replied that he must await Julia’s and Caroline’s coming: that they would want to help choose which psalms, which hymns. A eulogy? No. Only the simple service; the simple ritual words Maud had known by heart.
Later in the afternoon, after his father and Dennis had left for the airport, Morgan telephoned Miss Sly at her Tilden-Herne office. Her secretary asked: “Who’s calling, please?” He gave his name. He was all right until he heard Miss Sly’s voice: “Mr. Shurtliff! What a pleasing dividend to yesterday’s lunch.” “Miss Sly—” he said, then stopped. Something (his tone? his immediate silence?) warned her: “Something’s happened,” she said: “Take your time, Mr. Shurtliff.” He managed finally to tell her. “Oh,” she gasped: “Oh.” And in a moment: “Don’t try to talk…. I’d go to you this minute, but that wouldn’t be appropriate, would it? We’ll have to wait a few days to see each other—as soon as you can, whenever you can, for as long as you can…. Don’t try to talk…. We’ll talk next week when we’re together. I’ll hang up now. My dearest love to you, Mr. Shurtliff.” Then the click of disconnection, merciful.
Matters of Chance Page 34
