The Chameleon

by Sugar Rautbord

  Grant moved proudly to Claire's side to validate his gift of a home to her. After everything she had done for him tonight, he felt proud and manly being able to add something as simple as a house to her gift list. He stood there handsome in his custom-cut tuxedo, his windburned face in masculine contrast to Claire's pale beauty. Even he noticed how her differences complemented him. He effused to the hushed crowd, “I can only regret that journalist's ethics keep me from putting my talented wife on the cover of all my periodicals. As you know, a good-looking woman on the cover always sells.

  “I give you, esteemed ladies and gentlemen”—Grant lifted his glass, prodding Anita to shrug—it was okay for a newspaperman to be photographed with a drink in his hand; they were supposed to be boozy anyhow—“the next senator from California, Claire Harrison, my wife.”

  “And a woman of property at last,” Pam whispered loudly into her Governor's ear.

  The Senate race was a shoo-in. California loved Claire for her high-level Washington access and voted her in by a wide majority. She could pass job bills and highway budgets and build new schools and raise teacher salaries—and did. Since the working girl in her never forgot about weekly wages, she rewarded California coastal cities with naval bases and landlocked towns with air force sites.

  As a representative, she had stood at Coretta King's shoulder as she muscled in segregation reforms. Now, as a senator in the Ford administration, Claire increased her zeal. She followed Coretta's lead in ensuring that Dr. King's initiatives be continued through equalizing education and creating job opportunities rather than merely erecting statues and issuing plaques. As Claire played the Washington game by following the rules and adding a little finesse, her influence became increasingly powerful.

  And, while never a love match, her relationship with Grant gradually developed into one of mutual respect, one based on domestic courtesy and civilized consideration. He highlighted passages in his papers for her in yellow marker that he knew she would find interesting, and with her knack for mimicry, she repeated for him the floor speeches of his least favorite senators with all the humor and drama of Lucy and Lana. After some minor household reforms, Fenwick Grant became the ideal husband for Claire, the politician. This marriage made her feel grounded and attached to something solid; if passion wasn't part of the equation, still it all added up to a mature complement of progress and power. After all, Grant loved the scent of power. And Claire now wore it behind her ears, on her wrists, and at her pulse points.

  When spring returned to HurryUp after the long winter of 1975, with its jonquils, dogwood, and forsythia and Easter egg-colored blooms limning the newly landscaped Pie, Claire pushed her other business to one side and recommitted herself to bringing her son home finally, now that she had a place of her own to gather all her loved ones in. It had been over a year and a half since she'd won her Senate seat, and it gnawed at her like an old wound in her heart that Six lay in a long, anonymous row with Ophelia's ancestors, whom he had never known, in a rectangular plot behind a house in which only Ophelia lived and which she had reliably heard was never visited by Harry, not even to lay flowers across his grave. She was denied visitation under the legal document she had been forced to sign in Italy, and Ophelia held her to every word of its terms. After all, Six's grave was on her property, and Ophelia had threatened to shoot if the “murderess” stepped a foot onto her soil.

  Whether it was the passage of time or the fact that she was now a U.S. Senator who was married to a media mogul able to protect her from the kind of damage Ophelia had heaped upon her before, or whether it was because she had proselytized Ophelia's henchman into her loyal press secretary, or merely the fact that she was over half a century old, Claire felt she was of a mind and age to confront Ophelia.

  Claire commissioned a sculptor who worked in marble, whose chiseled work encircled the rotunda of the Senate Building, his latest piece a marble bust of Robert Kennedy, which he had sculpted from photographs and memories. She put Sara in charge of the likeness, and her daughter thanked her for her confidence.

  Then she attempted Six's exhumation. There was no dealing with Ophelia. She wouldn't keep her lawyers’ appointments or come to the phone, and she lied to her fellow members at the Tuxedo Club that grave robbers had tried to desecrate her family's remains. She even hired private security police for her ancestors’ bones. Claire finally realized that the only way to kill an old witch was to drop a house on her. And in her case, probably the House and the Senate.

  Age hadn't softened Ophelia's hardness. Her nasty disposition and prejudices only magnified with the accumulation of years. Sara still dutifully visited her grand-mere with her children, but they always cried before the visits and complained to Claire about stomachaches before and nightmares later. Fit as a fiddle, Ophelia still enjoyed a strict daily regimen of diet and exercise, walking briskly around the grounds of Charlotte Hall and nourishing herself with its home-grown vegetables and their supernatural vitamins. She had taken to keeping bees on the grounds to harvest her own honey and in the winter months retired to her “cottage” in Hobe Sound, adding grapefruits from her grove to her menu.

  She still kept her sharp wits about her, and her mean streak focused principally on “Senator Strumpet,” as she referred to Claire. Even the formidable Edward Bennett Williams, who had advised feisty presidents and defended mobsters, found Ophelia “terrorizing.”

  “My God, Claire. I think I've met the devil and she's your former mother-in-law. I swear she was going to spit up green bile while we were having tea. I went to mass as soon as I got outta there.”

  “Well, what's your best legal advice on this?” Senator Harrison asked.

  “Hire a hit man and I'll defend you.” He was joking, of course, but he also was telling her that legally pursuing this thing was out of the question. Clout was what was required.

  “What's the most important thing to her? Cut her off from it and she'll come around.”

  What was important enough for Ophelia to fear losing? What was worth a trade of buried bones to her, bones that were like the Holy Grail to Claire?

  Ophelia had stocks and bonds and houses and Harry and Minnie and their adopted child, William Henry Harrison the Sixth. Number Six. Again. Claire had heard from Williams what he had unearthed through the legal grapevine: Ophelia Harrison had purchased this child just to hurt Claire. But Claire suspected it was really a clinical effort to give the Harrisons a direct male heir, a hysterical attempt to entice Harrison back. Claire despised her for using her son's name in an unconscionable game of one-upmanship.

  When Ophelia had learned from Tom that Six was really the child of Harrison and Claire, she had become demonic, allowing her darker side to rule both her left and right hands.

  Tom was CEO of Harrison, Harrison and Pettibone, the commodities exchange that Harrison had relinquished per his divorce agreement The youthful CEO wanted stock and voting control as a reward for the long hours he put in; although Harry was the firm's chairman and president, he held these titles in name only, spending more time on the links than in the office. Yet it was not Tom's work ethic that allowed him to prevail in his fight for control. Instead, he won through social blackmail, threatening to go public to the papers with the ugly facts of Ophelia's former husband's and former daughter-in-law's affair. It was a sordid enough scandal to excise Ophelia from her social circles in Tuxedo Park, New York, Hobe Sound, and Newport. And to remove her from the best chair in all her clubs where she sat on the membership committees, Brahmin-style, deciding who was good enough to join and who wasn't. But Ophelia couldn't stand to have any mud smeared on her own hem. She'd lose her finger-pointing status. According to Williams, Tom had emerged with basically sixty percent of the company, all to preserve Ophelia's pristine reputation.

  Surely Claire could get the silly woman, who had swapped a company for her unsullied name, to return her child's remains under the same conditions. And so the deal had been worked out. She left only the final details to her
lawyers.

  Claire had thought about the war of the two Mrs. Harrisons for some time before she had acted on it. She would use her connections and even the foot trail of Tom to trade Six for Ophelia's social standing. At first, she hated the thought of undermining an old lady. But then she reasoned that age was relative, and, besides, Ophelia was no lady.

  Claire herself flew up to New York to retrieve Six. She borrowed the Harrimans’ plane so she could ride back with the coffin. Her heart was weighted in anticipation of the sad journey she was finally taking and at the same time exhilarated that she would finally be bringing him home. Forever.

  If heavenly spirits and souls could be comforted by down-to-earth displays of loving remembrance, Claire would tend to it. In her own mind's eye, Six was the beautiful seraphim, eternally an adolescent angel dwelling in the room in the clouds she and Lorenza had long ago decorated for him with all his favorite things. But somehow she needed to have his earthly remains at rest in the garden of tranquillity she had created for him in the Pie. Where she could tend to the flowers on his grave of velvety green grass and have a place to pray, keeping him remembered by his family.

  It stung her to the core that she had never seen him again or been allowed to say words over his little body since that day of Duccio's memorial-service circus. Now he would be buried in the Pie in which Auntie Wren already lay and where places were reserved for Slim, Violet, and even Claire herself. Death was part of the circle of life as much as birth and should be planned for, she had reasoned in her increasingly pragmatic way.

  She had tried to stifle any desire to confront Ophelia on her own turf. The prearranged plan was for Claire to collect her son's remains from Charlotte Hall's private burial plot and leave. Ophelia had promised to absent herself from the property or, if indisposed, to stay inside the house. What was the point of meeting again?

  “This has been the oddest custody case I've ever been involved with, Senator.” Sam, the young attorney who was already considered a preeminent Supreme Court advocate, had smacked his lips over his Perrier and shaken his head on the flight over. Odd indeed.

  Ophelia had finally been defeated, but only by the clout of the mighty, one of whom Claire had now undeniably become. This time Claire had the press on her side and the strength that came from “under the table” influence. But still she felt uneasy.

  The ride from the airfield was interminable. Claire could hear her heart thumping in her ears, feeling as nervous as the first time Harry had brought her here as his young bride, three weddings ago. She felt beads of perspiration forming at the wings of her brown-and-silver chignon, the widely imitated Claire Harrison coiffure. She took a deep breath and asked one of the attorneys to turn up the air conditioning in the sedan. As her face returned to its usual look of composed serenity, she glanced down at her dark Chanel suit and peeled off one of her trademark white gloves, laying it over the handle of the cognac crocodile handbag that rested perfectly centered in her lap. Only a simple gold wedding band adorned her hand. She had dressed carefully for this occasion. Ophelia was so devious. She might make a last-ditch effort to stand in her way. She wanted to be impeccably groomed so as not to arch even an undertaker's eyebrow. Suddenly she felt as ill prepared as the schoolgirl she had been on that first visit to Charlotte Hall. As they turned down the long driveway, she imagined a pair of eyes behind every tree.

  When they pulled into the courtyard, Claire was sure she saw one of the stone lions move. It was Ophelia, standing on the threshold of her house as if to turn them away.

  “Jesus, Senator Harrison,” one of the young lawyers piped up. “You didn't tell us we were serving papers on Medusa.”

  A decade of ferocity was etched on Ophelia's face. Her creased chins jutted out like a ski jump from the glum valley of her downturned mouth. The meanness and hatred that had been part of her features for so long had been petrified on her face. The narrowing, rheumy eyes and protruding lower lip dropped to reveal a line of brownish bottom teeth.

  “God, Senator. Does she wear a muzzle?”

  Claire steeled herself and stepped out of the car. What was the old Medusa myth? If she looked you in the eye you turned to stone. Claire wondered if she should push on her sunglasses. One granite monument to the past was enough.

  She shook off the chill that even on this summer day shivered down her spine and willed herself to picture something pleasant. Ah, the Aunties. She saw them young, as they used to be. Their goodness and love were the perfect antidote to Ophelia.

  She wanted to get this business over with as quickly as possible. She mounted the flagstone steps with determination, marching up the stair entry, chin thrust up, white gloves concealing her clenched fists. Ophelia's walking stick, a heavy black pole topped with a silver dog's head, missed her foot by less than an inch.

  “Don't come any farther. You're a trespasser here, Senator Strumpet. And your bastard isn't ready.” She moved her eyes up and down Claire's clothing until Claire felt naked and exposed. She sneered at Claire, her eyes flashing with yellow specks. “His grave is the one with the shallow stone. Food for worms. Dig him up yourself, if you will.” Ophelia showed the rest of her teeth as she tilted her hand back toward a servant wearing a carnation and holding a shovel.

  Claire looked momentarily frightened as she turned to her legal team for answers. It wasn't supposed to have been like this. Six was supposed to be ready.

  Young turk number one was already on the car phone, yelling about the whereabouts of the exhumation crew. He turned to Claire, relieved.

  “She kept them out all morning but they're at the grave site now, with some guys from the sheriff's office. She's just bluffing.”

  There was an instant look of dislike on his young face for the bad witch guarding her Tudor dungeon. Both men moved in as if to protect Claire from some dark force of evil.

  “You can't take him. He's mine. He belongs with the ancestors.” Ophelia raised her stick.

  “He was never yours,” Claire said quietly. “He was only Harrison's.” She watched as the look of understanding spread over Ophelia's twisted features. She backed off and Claire moved in.

  “Ophelia, you're an ugly fool. Once you had everything. Now you are like a foul-smelling puddle. Just something we have to step over on our way home.” The word “home” gave her courage. “You're just a living illustration of a snaggletoothed witch from one of Harry's old nursery books. You haven't changed at all. Go back to hell.”

  Both the chauffeur and lawyers were startled to hear the ladylike senator with the aristocratic bearing haul off at the mouth. The tips of Ophelia's ears brightened to an unhealthy pink. The younger attorney glanced at his Perrier bottle in the car and vaguely wondered whether it was true that if you poured water on a witch she would melt.

  Her venom exhausted, Claire turned on her low heel, giving Ophelia nothing but her back as she eased her way into the car, the doors still expectantly open. Her shoulders trembled with rage. Under her shaky directions, the limousine pulled into the plotted ground that housed Charlotte Hall's mausoleum and the few mathematically arranged lesser stones planted around the outside perimeter marked by two massive granite urns. The site was cold and impersonal, closer in proximity to Harry's house than Ophelia's. Six's undistinguished flat stone was off to one side, its grave open as two men in overalls and a hydraulic iron lift pulled the child-sized casket into the air.

  Claire's breath momentarily left her body, and her knees weakened at the sudden lightness. Still she managed to hang on. She would not crumble in front of Ophelia, who stood rooted to her spot watching. As the bronze casket was removed and pushed into the Cadillac hearse, Claire caught a glimpse of two petty, living ghosts. Harry and Minnie were peering from behind a curtain at her bold action of taking home her own. Claire turned to confront them full face. But then she softened. How pathetic these pale remnants from her past appeared now. Harry's fly-boy handsome features had been ravaged by quarts of Boodles gin and decades of self-loathing. Mi
nnie's face, pinched next to his, wore the expression of a cranky governess. And to think she had even lived in that poor excuse for a home, decorated with silk snobbery and sterling-silver prejudice. How little had changed here. Claire noticed that even the crewelworked curtains were the same pattern Ophelia had ordered for her and Harry thirty-five years ago. How far away and long ago it all seemed. What if she had stayed? In Washington she lived in a world of power and action, where everyone was in perpetual motion. But here everyone was like figures painted on an expensive antique vase, forever frozen, doomed to go on repeating the same useless activity.

  She didn't breathe normally or even sigh until Six's casket was loaded onto the plane and she and her admiring attorneys, their faces bursting with adulation, were onboard. By now they would have fought battalions for Claire.

  “Senator Harrison, I would have gladly bopped that old witch in her crooked nose. It would have been worth sixty days in jail!” Sam slapped a cocky backhand on his gray flannel thigh.

  “I could get you a reduced sentence. Thirty days,” Robb boasted.

  “Yeah, Claire. Excuse me, Senator. I just feel like we're pals now that we've been in the trenches together. You know.”

  “I know.”

  “Why didn't you just haul off and hit the dragon lady? I wouldn't have told. I would have perjured myself for you.” There was a look of fealty on the earnest face of Williams's brightest protégé.

  How like youth, even my own, she thought. To want to feed evil with anger.

  “Because, son, it wasn't necessary. I'm leaving with what we came for. We've won. Now we can go home.”

  Claire leaned her head back on the gray leather seat. The Gulfstream jet taxied down the runway and pulled into its takeoff slot. Soon they would be away from here. She closed her eyes. Six was safe and she was protected by her two by-now doggedly faithful guardians.

  “Senator. Senator Harrison!” The Harrimans’ pilot was standing over her. “Excuse me, Senator.” He cleared his throat and Claire could smell the coffee on his breath. In her anxiety, her adrenaline level had jumped, making all her senses more vivid.