My goodness, thought Ophelia. The girl must be a sexual sorceress.
“Really, Harry. Your father and I have never shared a bedroom.”
Claire stifled a gasp and didn't have to wonder why Ophelia Harrison and Millicent Pettibone were such good friends. She wondered if Mr. Harrison had an Auntie Slim too.
Freshly bathed and rested, Claire slipped down the stairs early. Her new dinner pumps were soundless on the deep pile carpet running down the mahogany stairs, garnished at each riser by a brass rail. The house was strangely silent. She had met six of Charlotte Hall's staff: the butler, the chauffeur who had picked them up at Penn Station that morning, the two upstairs maids who had unpacked Claire's new wardrobe, and the gardener and the groomsman who lived in the gatehouse at the entrance to the estate. She wondered where any of them might be. Perhaps she should find scissors or a letter opener to scratch up the soles of her new shoes so she wouldn't slide across the high-buffed floors. Where was everyone?
Did the Tuxedo people all take a siesta before their evening highballs? Or perhaps she had flunked the entrance exam into the Harrison clan and they had left her alone in this gray stone Tudor house to wander around like a character in a Charlotte Brontë novel.
Struggling to get her bearings, she looked back over her shoulder up to the top of the stairs and had to laugh. Harry was still asleep, exhausted from his Olympic lovemaking. She had suspected that he was athletic, but his attentiveness was going to leave her with little time out of bed. Claire wondered how her mother, having tasted love, could have lived without a man all these years.
She carefully turned a gold door latch almost as high as her shoulder and walked into what appeared to be a gentleman's study. The entire west wall of the room consisted of six French doors looking over a flagstone terrace, the doors each containing a dozen panes of beveled glass. She spied a letter opener on the desk and walked over to it.
Suddenly, something pulled Claire to the windows. She was startled to see Harry. He was coming up the snowy hill, two dogs jumping and running around him, obviously their master. How had he managed to be in two places at once? Did the man need no sleep? She instinctively opened a door, allowing an icy blast to enter the room, and called out a warm hello. The dogs lifted their heads. She held her arm in the air and stopped, frozen, when she realized she had the wrong man.
He came up the path with purpose, his tweed jacket softly nipped in at his waist. Authority was in his stride like a man who moved comfortably through the corridors of power, each step taking him someplace. The hounds bounded in a second before him, his vanguard.
“The bride, I presume.” His brown eyes were flecked with hazel, his thick hair groomed back like his son's, although prematurely gray and raked with silver.
“Yes.” She extended her hand, her mouth widening. “I'm the new Mrs. Harrison.”
“And I am the other Mr. Harrison.”
They shook hands and studied one another.
His handshake was firm and his physique as trim as his son's, but self-confidence granted him the bearing of the dignified statesman he was. She was visibly stunned. If this was how Harry was going to age, Claire thought, she had everything to look forward to. Her father-in-law was the flesh-and-blood image of the Marshall Field's man.
“Have you been introduced to Tippecanoe and Tyler?” His voice was surprisingly friendly.
“May I pet them?” She knelt down, her open expression eager for an answer.
“They seem to have taken to you.”
Claire rubbed their necks and they nuzzled their wet noses on her velvet dinner dress. She didn't seem to mind. She kept her eyes averted on the dogs.
“Hello, boys. I bet your pedigrees are better than mine. I'm glad you like me.” She laughed, and Harry's father liked her instantly.
“And so with eighty-three poor Jewish refugees aboard and the Quanza about to sail back to Europe, E.R. and I simply had to intervene.” Ophelia rang the silent dinner buzzer under her foot, signaling for the fish course to be removed and the meat course served.
“We had enlisted Negroes in the navy the week before, so we were chock full of missionary fervor. Thank you, Charles,” she mumbled discreetly.
“Go on, Mother.”
“Yes, do,” Mrs. Mortimer chimed in. “It's riveting.” Ophelia had assured her that Harry's marriage wouldn't last. She and her daughter watched squinty-eyed as Claire correctly placed her fish fork on the right side of her plate.
“Well, as Harrison knows, Franklin wasn't lifting a finger.” Ophelia tilted her bushy eyebrows first in Mr. Mortimer's direction and then at her husband. “It falls to us women to bring compassion into the world. Remember that, girls. Men may be the brains of this nation, but we are its heart and helping hands.”
She helped herself to a heaping platter of cauliflower, carrots, russet potatoes, and well-done roast.
“There are some people in the War Department who would consider it meddling.” Harrison speared a potato.
“Rest assured that Eleanor Roosevelt doesn't meddle. She deserves a medal of honor for her work. And if we hadn't ‘meddled,’ if you insist, my dear, those Jewish refugees would be in one of the German camps we keep hearing about but that the State Department refuses to believe exist.”
“Please tell us what happened, Mrs. Harrison.” Claire leaned in closer. Mr. Korach in Better Shoes had a brother still in Germany and worried about these rumored camps.
“Eleanor and I were at Hyde Park when she received word. You and Franklin were out sailing the Augusta with Churchill, as I recall.”
Harrison nodded, unable to hold back a smile. That was more or less accurate, he thought, secretly glad that Ophelia would never be his biographer.
“So here comes the Quanza, steaming into New York Harbor, with its passengers packed in like sardines. No Queen Mary, this ship, children.” Ophelia loved holding the room's attention. “Everyone with an American visa disembarked except the Jews from occupied France, who were pleading to come ashore, but no. Our ridiculous bald-headed bureaucrats said, ‘Not without your papers.’ I ask you, where is the compassion in our government?” She examined the red wine in her glass as if it held the answer.
Claire looked startled. Harry's mother was evidently capable of great social good as well as drawing room mischief.
“Well, these people should have had their passports with them. I mean I always have mine, even at the horse shows.” Minnie felt she should participate in the conversation since Harry loved politics.
“So the boat sailed off to Mexico just like one of those Caribbean holiday cruises”—Ophelia's knife sailed through an imaginary sea—”except that those poor souls weren't allowed ashore there, either. Lickety split, they were turned around to return to Europe and an almost certain death. Whole families, can you imagine? Luckily, the boat had to load up with coal in Virginia and that's when the Eleanor forces quickly sprang into action. We had everyone onboard certified a political prisoner so the entire ship could disembark. So clever. Those tedious immigration people at State said we were in violation of the law and tried to stop us. But it was too late: Our Jews had landed! Like Pilgrims!” Shoulders lifted in her moment of triumph, she swung her arm out over the tablecloth, accidentally pinging the china with the large sapphire on her finger, like a clash of cymbals ending a symphony.
“But that's wonderful, Mrs. Harrison! You are a saint.” Minnie applauded.
“Yes, we're thinking of having Mother canonized. Aren't we, Father?”
“If that would make her happy, I am sure it can be arranged.” Harrison raised his crystal goblet to his wife. He had the look of a man who had long ago drummed out his wife's speeches.
“Nonsense,” shot back Ophelia, looking pleased.
“We took hell in the White House over that one.” Harrison waved his white napkin like a flag of truce. He was proud of his wife, but his first duty was to protect his president. “Franklin had been trying to keep us out of the war and now th
at we're in it, we can't handle every European political situation that arises.”
“And what's more, if we take all these refugees in, where are we going to put them?” Mr. Mortimer pounded a weak fist on the table. He shared the prominent Mortimer chin and nose with his daughter.
“Oh, can't we talk about something more fun,” Minnie whined. “Claire, do you ride?”
“No, I'm afraid not.”
“That's too bad,” Minnie's mother said tragically, as though Claire were a social quadriplegic. “Almost everyone rides in Tuxedo. How about tennis?”
“No, I never learned.” She pushed her peas into her potatoes. A big silence dropped over the table. Claire could see that Harrison dinners were a constant game of “keep up.”
“Could it be golf?” Minnie asked like it was a game of charades.
Harry gave Claire an eager look of “Come on and join in.”
But she couldn't.
“Mummy and I went to the Winter Antique Show and, Mrs. Harrison, you won't believe it, there was a dining room set just like yours.” Minnie indicated the grand piece of furniture they were dining at, the seven chairs on which they were seated and the seventeen more spaciously parked around the magnificent Chinese-wallpapered room. “Good thing you inherited yours, because Hepplewhite costs a fortune.”
Claire, having added nothing to the conversation, was now relegated to being a piece of furniture herself. She looked over her shoulder and studied the row of mahogany chairs.
“Chippendale.”
All the eyes in the room turned toward her. The ball was in her court.
“Hepplewhite,” Minnie thundered.
“Chippendale, decidedly. It's a fine example of Philadelphia Chippendale,” she said to no one in particular, like she was back in Field's antique section. “Mid-eighteenth-century, pre-Revolutionary. A fine example, too.” She smiled.
“And just how would you know that?” Minnie was losing her home-court advantage.
“By the cabriole legs. See? The overall air of delicacy. And the clawed feet on the pedestal balls. Eagles’ claws.” She imitated a clutched claw with her hand and arched it in Minnie's direction.
“Claire, how clever. Is antique collecting a hobby?” Harrison asked.
“Oh, no sir. The only thing I collect is stamps.”
“I'd suspect you'd collect something small.” Minnie glanced over at Harry.
“Probably an authority on Chippendale beds, too.” Minnie's mother whispered into Ophelia's ear.
“What a wonderful coincidence, Claire. I'll have to show you my stamps.” Harrison was truly delighted that his new daughter-in-law shared his solitary hobby.
“Isn't she wonderful, Father?” Harry beamed.
“Tell us, what are all the young people doing for New Year's Eve?” Ophelia interrupted, changing the course of the conversation.
“Well, everyone's going to the club, just like every other year. Except now most of the boys are in uniform or”—Minnie looked at the man who had been her New Year's date up until a few days ago—“married.”
“We were thinking about taking Minnie away to Palm Beach for the holidays,” Mrs. Mortimer added quickly. She knew it was time to surrender. “It's sure to be very gay and far removed from the war.”
“Hardly. The Breakers Hotel is probably going to be turned into a military hospital.”
“Heavens, Ophelia.” Minnie's mother's wheels began to turn. “The Japanese wouldn't invade Palm Beach, would they?” She struggled for breath. “Think of the Everglades Club. Men with sabers and women in kimonos on the croquet court! What is the world coming to?”
“Don't worry.” Harrison laughed at her silliness. “The membership committee would never let them in.”
“Cigars and brandy for the gentlemen.” Ophelia stood. “Enough of this nonsense.” Claire had earned her seat at the table—for now. “We ladies shall adjourn to the drawing room—but only for fifteen minutes while the men have their smoke. Perhaps I can interest you in some of the war relief work E.R. and I are cooking up.”
“Yes, Yes!” Minnie was up like one of her jumpers, swiftly taking Ophelia's arm. “Did you hear about Marjorie Merriweather Post Davies? She's giving her yacht the Sea Cloud to the navy. She's such a trooper!”
When Harry joined Claire some minutes later, his too-big Havana still smoking in his mouth, Claire didn't respond the first time he called her Mrs. Harrison. Nor did she respond when it was echoed in an even lower, more resonate timbre. It was only when he tapped her on the shoulder and Claire spun around, her velvet skirt following her by seconds, that she realized that both father and son were addressing her by her new name.
“Mrs. Harrison.”
“Mrs. Harrison. Mrs. Harrison, would it interest you to see some of my stamps now?”
Claire lifted her head, nodding happily while Ophelia lowered her gaze.
Now there were two Mrs. Harrisons in the house.
“She has her charms. And she's got spunk. I'll give her that. But she has absolutely no pedigree! Perhaps if her great-grandfather had invented the organ. Why, we checked on Tippecanoe and Tyler's bloodlines for the preceding five generations before we brought them into our home!” Ophelia was helping pack her husband's Vuitton hardcase. He was returning to Washington early the next morning, at the president's urgent request. “And if we hadn't spent Christmas at the White House with Churchill, Harry wouldn't have gone to the Pettibones’ alone and unprotected, and none of this would have happened.”
“The dogs seemed to like her well enough.”
“Pleasing an Airedale is one thing. Placating our neighbors is quite another.” Ophelia snap-latched the double locks on his well-worn crocodile travel case with the gold-plated grooming implements.
“I find her unspoiled and refreshing. She'll be good for Harry.”
“Harrison, what exactly do you suggest I give to the society pages in the way of an announcement? Ordinarily, the New York Times wants to print the relevant details about the bride's family as well. You know, their professions, clubs, summer houses, in addition to the bride's finishing school, what season she debuted in, all the milestones. Frankly, I'm at my wits’ end about something Harry picked out at Marshall Field's.”
Ophelia needn't have worried about embellishing Claire's abysmal social history. Walter Winchell did the honors. From his regular Table 50, Winchell spied the newlyweds dancing at the Stork Club on New Year's Eve. They had decided to escape the Tuxedo Club's certain stares for New York and an overnight getaway before Harry reported to officers’ training school and an assignment overseas.
The wide-eyed Claire, in cream satin and a pair of sapphire clips borrowed from Ophelia, was caught in a newspaper photo seated in a booth between two men in uniform, her husband and Elliott Roosevelt, the president's handsome son who was on his way back to England as an army air corpsman. The black-and-white picture showed her shaking hands with Brenda Frazier and her new husband, Shipwreck Kelly. This popular photograph ran in Life magazine, all the New York dailies, and the Chicago Tribune, establishing Claire on her very first visit to a nightclub as a former deb from the Midwest, a well-married young woman, and a society party girl. Claire's makeup-free face, highlighted only by a dash of Maybelline, stood out in fresh contrast to Brenda Frazier's sickly pale powdered skin and liver-red lips. And while the photo was crunched up and discarded in certain Lake Forest living rooms, in the Aunties’ modest apartment it was prominently displayed in a silver Field's frame.
An investigation of the fine print revealed that Claire was no longer the other Mrs. Harrison, but in Winchell's freshly minted phrase, “Claire Harrison of the Harrisons.”
Chapter Eight
The Second Front
Dearest Leona,
The knowledge that your letters are flowing to me in a never-ending stream is enough to tide me over as manyCENSOREDas the APO cares to inflict on me. Have I ever told you what a comforting feeling that is, honey? We are at the point now when some
of the flimsy alliances contracted in the States are starting to crack under the strain of separation, and I thank God a million times a day for blessing me with such a true and devoted wife. We have enough jilted boys on this island to open a branch of the Brush Off Club. The only consolation I can offer those boys is that it is just as well to have the truth show up now as later.
—Sgt. Robert Barry
14th Bomb Squadron
12 November, 1943
Their young, feverish love never had a chance to dwindle from the honeymoon stage, since by March Harry was gone to fight and fly. Indeed, Claire's pregnancy had been the ink on the deal.
“Couldn't you stay a week or two more? You could learn one more safety parachute maneuver,” she pleaded.
“I can open a parachute now in my sleep. It's sleeping alone I'm worried about.” Harry ran his fingers down her cheek, memorizing it.
Claire buried her head in his uniform and inhaled the smells of him. It might have to last her weeks or months or, heaven forbid, longer. He wasn't just leaving her, he was leaving her behind.
“Take me in your pocket. I'll fly with you. Like before,” she whispered.
Ophelia and Harrison stood back at a discreet distance near the canteen where hot coffee was being served to the hundreds of soldiers boarding their trains who were still bidding farewell to their loved ones.
“I'm afraid you wouldn't fit in my pocket for long. Not with that small bundle coming alive down there.” Harry pulled his officer's coat around them, hiding his hands as he touched Claire tenderly, his palms gliding over her hips and across her belly. She fervently pressed her lips to his and the familiar tastes of their mouths mingled, tainted by her light, salty tears.
“Harry, I'll write to you every …”
Claire's soft voice was drowned out as the conductor called out the last “All aboard” and Ophelia stepped between them.
The Chameleon Page 15
