by Duke, Renee
Actually, my sister and I absorbed Nanny’s socialistic views and became quite radical, ready to save the world. Nothing like seeing your Mother shop and party from Nanny’s point of view!
Well, that was then. I suppose the girls who are ten years younger than us will do it another way. I’m glad I’ve known successful women who work, who look wonderfully glamorous, love their children and are alive!
Now, back to the car.
“Mummies, take the next right, I can see the ferry!” Sean has stirred himself and we all feel we are coming home at last. The Germans at Customs are methodical as they check our papers. They’re pinched with cold and willing to ignore Cleo. For safety, Sean has her under some coats in the back seat, but I don’t think anyone notices anything today.
We drive the car into the waiting ferry. There are very few cars around us. The snow melts as it hits the iron deck. With one mind we all run to the rear of the ship to watch the sailors cast off. The small town of Lübeck, with its steeples, slips away into the mist. The Baltic, steel grey and very cold, roils and rolls underneath us.
“I think I’ll stay here, mummies,” says Sean, “I’m feeling a bit green.” He looks it too. He’s always been sick when we’ve crossed by ferry to England and back to France.
“Good idea. I don’t want you taking Dramamine. It’s too strong a drug. No need to have drugs.” He looks at me oddly and I wonder about his silences, locking himself in his room, his dreaminess. Has he been taking drugs? I know so little about them but I hear they’re popular in America and he has been at an American School in Paris.
America’s not alone, Denmark is experimenting with easy access to pot and Amsterdam is famous for teenage druggies–and England. God, how sad.
How can you assume that your opinions on drugs get picked up by your children? Just because I don’t take or give any kind of drugs doesn’t mean a thing. Come to think of it, Eric and Sean have not talked to me honestly in several years.
I think I’d better get to know them fast! Jock and I were very close but that was ended by his enforced trip to boarding school in the United States. I haven’t seen him enough to fully communicate. It’s so easy to bring up cute babies! Boys turning into men is another thing.
Cold water thoughts!
Up on the next deck my future men have taken an easy stance next to the chocolate candy. It all smells of cold water and disinfectant, fuel and coffee and ferry, European ferry. The boys argue in French about which cardboard-tasting sandwich they want while the bundled up fraulein waits stoically behind the counter. The sea splashes against the foggy windows and the tables anchored next to them shine with yellow gold varnish.
“Randall, get three sandwiches and three hot chocolates and a Toblerone between you. I want to see Denmark from the front deck.”
What a diet for my children! But Denmark is there and life will settle down to normal soon.
The door pushes against me in the gale and I stand behind the roped off area, trying to see the shore through life boats and tackle and whirling snow. It’s there, I know it, the familiar shore of sand and low houses. Each time I see it, I feel like I’m coming home, although I’ve never known why. How exciting to be living in a Viking land! All the old Eric the Red stories rush through my mind.
The boys come to get me. Do they feel the same way? Every new place we live is an adventure when we’re together.
As we drive off the ferry at Rødbyhavn, the snow is still driving through the night in long slashes.
“Randall, do you remember how to get to the hotel?”
“Left at that building may get us over there by the lights.” We are all craning to see, Cleo majestically draped in the coats. I hope the hamster is still alive. He doesn’t seem to be in the cage.
***
There is a Danish smell to the hotel, wool, new wood and candles, bright homespun curtains hiding the night.
“But, mummy, what about the hamster? “Matthew is in tears as we go up to our rooms, Cleo walking close to us.
“I think he escaped. Let’s hope it’s to some warm place. Sweetheart, if he got in the back with all our things, he might live.”
“Oh, mummy, he has to eat. I got all my hamster food in Paris. They don’t live long without food.” The tears begin to roll down his face Poor Matthew, poor little hamster. It was his friend. We never thought we’d be driving up through Europe in weather like this.
But we drove up through weather like this and we are all safe and here. I feel suffused with pride.
“Matthew, honey, come to bed. Sean will go and look with Randall. You need sleep ...” I’m the one who needs sleep. What a drive!
I can hear Sean and Randall through the thin wall, they’ve found no hamster. They talk in French for a few minutes. Matthew has dropped off instantly. Once again, I’m in a small hotel room with street lights glowing through the orange curtains. A darkened room with a child breathing close by. There are no voices anymore to give me guarded counsel. There’s only my decision to guide my family, whatever ethical sense I’ve been able to bash out over the years and my ability to get them to do what I think best. Fragile future, exciting and unknown!
Chapter 13: The Morning After
Comes the dawn, here I am with the only other girl in the family, walking Cleo. Nothing like a dog to anchor me to reality. Walking through the still quiet, intensely linoleum lobby, Cleo clicks quietly along, not too eager to feel the cold snow on her delicate feet.
It is an adventure. It really is an adventure. I suddenly feel irresponsible. Evans would uproot us from country to country and I would be the one to find the house and manage the move. I should be able to do this easily. I miss someone to share this responsibility with me.
What if there are no good schools? I think of my exhaustive phone calls to England, arranging a school and a house and bank statements and guarantees and mother saying “what will you do if he doesn’t pay the alimony?” and I gave up.
What about that wonderful house in New York that I was going to wangle in exchange for the one I was renting in Paris? I even had the boys entered at Buckley and Evans said he wouldn’t let me move back to America, he wouldn’t pay the alimony.
I am tied on a strange string for these days of feminine equality. We used to be so big on being independent at Radcliffe. “You need a marketable skill to bring up children and live on your own.” That has got to be the most boring thought!
I push the inner door and heavy storm door with my shoulder, and pull Cleo to the cement which is only dusted with snow. The salt air drifts over the fields of snow and the gulls scream high overhead in the still dark sky. The Nordic night is wonderful, I wonder how long it lasts. Denmark, the Danes mark, “beware of the Danes and their beautiful fierce dogs” ... the long ships sweeping into harbor, signal fires burning on the hills, brave men, brave women, witches and modern Danish furniture, furs, glowing fabrics; past and present fuse in my mind.
Coming here was a strange move for me to make, still right if I can be like Scarlett O’Hara and think about it tomorrow.
I’d better check the car, it has stood up well. Wherever the hamster is, he must be dead by now. At least I can get rid of the crumbs inside … As I open the door I see a hole eaten through my old Morgan’s convertible hood carrier, which has served so well to carry all my paints and crayons and paper. The poor little hamster obviously gnawed his way into the bag. Great. I’ll run into a small frozen hamster. Poor Matthew, his only reminder of his cozy life in Paris. Bathos sweeps over me, the terrible mother.
As I stand glumly by the open car door, the ceiling light casting a ghastly yellow glow, I hear scrunching in the snow. Matthew! His shoes are untied as usual, his dark brown hair is standing straight up as usual and his beautiful face is rosy from the cold.
“Mummy, I want to feed the hamster, he’ll die if I don’t. I got all his food in Paris with my allowance, he must have it.”
“Sweetheart, we have to look for him. I’m afraid he
’s frozen in this cold.”
“Oh, mummy, if he’s dead, then Paris is all gone.”
“I know.” By now, I just stand there, helpless.
“It’s a good thing, mummy. I hate thinking about Paris. Daddy said I looked bad in my blue corduroy suit and none of the French kids were nice to me at school and I hate thinking about it. I’m sorry for the hamster but I’m excited about Copenhagen. No school anywhere in the world could be so horrible as a French school.”
Well, my God. So he felt it too. Daddy, who made fun of the clothes he loved and made me feel pretty lousy too and the teachers at the school, where my enormous, healthy American child towered over his classmates and the teachers treated me as a recalcitrant child. My God. Of course. I tell the boys we’re having an adventure and then I lose my courage! We’re leaving because I was made into a nothing of fear and obsessive agreement and here is my little guy, taking life as it comes.
“I know what you mean, Matthew. Let’s find the hamster and do what we have to do and then go in and have some hot chocolate, okay?” My theory of food as the calmer of all woes is an automatic reaction.
“Here he is, mummy. We mustn’t let Cleo get him.”
There he is, quite frozen. “Let’s put him over in that field, buried under the grass by the post. He was a good little hamster.”
Matthew and I part the frozen grass and make a little nest, then cover it with snow and dirt. As we stand up the sun is coming up and the snow is lit gold and deep violet shadows. The distant houses are block-like and sensible. Actually, so what if I can’t see into the future with the boys. I just have to keep moving along with good intentions and never let them down. I’ve spent so many years being dishonest with myself but I’ve never lied to them. It’s a pity mothers have to grow up with their children. Being mature has nothing to do with age.
Could I support the children as a painter? Could I just dash back to America and find some little apartment in New York and work in that downtown loft with the other painters that I met last year? Public school in New York? Or I’d take a job– back to the garment industry. Would the sacrifice hurt them more than me? It seems grubby and wrong in this clear light. I think I just have to accept alimony as my ex–husband’s contribution to his sons’ future and have my high minded principles when I can take care of the boys with less pain– or fewer boys. They will be growing up.
Here in Denmark, I can work on archeology at the University, paint, study philosophy. My time is for them now. The great shark of sacrifice could graze close to me and I could go off in a delirium of going down and down. Now I have the freedom to know about many people, real people as they are, not just bodies walking around in clothes. I must not lose my humanity because others lose theirs. Courage is living and growing as a spirit. It doesn’t require money, just carrying on.
I won’t go off chasing rainbows until the boys can take care of themselves. As soon as the time lapses in my divorce agreement to return to the United States, I will go back. In the meantime this safe small country will refuge us as it has so many others.
Chapter 14: Hollywood
1977
And here we are, back at the beginning. I’ve made it through long Danish winter nights, watching Matthew speaking Danish, learning to sail and playing ice hockey. I’ve seen Sean waver back and forth between his father and his mother and drugs and finally pick sanity and a wonderful wife. Randall, bicycling endless miles to school, has studied and developed his brilliance. Duncan still looks like a blond Danish visitor in the schoolyard but we have all stayed together and we’ve done a good job and we know it.
Coming back to America has been strange and nothing is stranger than this moment with my ex–husband.
“You understand, Andrée, I don’t feel like lunch now.”
Anne bows and bobs like a Japanese housewife, curtseying in his wake, trying to keep peace all around. The wind is whipping my hair across my eyes and I turn away. My body walks in a lopsided way to the car. Old dreams and old chains are breaking. Perhaps I will fly. Oh, space!
I breathe to say what I feel or not to say what I feel! I laugh and my smile reaches my toes. Matthew and Duncan run out and wave goodbye, thinking that we are alright, nothing is really wrong.
Gina and Sean laugh and I can laugh at last. He’s gone. We laugh and laugh.
“So that’s what he’s like.” Gina’s body seems to vibrate with laughter. “It’s medieval. It’s ridiculous! What shall we do now?”
Sean giggles hysterically, brushing his Sassoon haircut with the palm of his hand. “Well, we don’t get a free lunch. Let’s go back and cook a gourmet lunch at home. I’ll make you the most wonderful omelets you’ve ever tasted.” He uses my pet name. We three look at each other affectionately. The air is clean and cool.
Off we go in my beat-up old Volvo with two broken windows, a smashed front fender.
And sweet freedom laughing on the hood.
Epilogue: After the visit
The day after we finally break free, morning comes into my yellow bedroom, with purple bougainvillea nodding on gentle green stems, tapping the window screening.
Miles of Los Angeles stretch to the distant ocean, blue-hazed; the Valley of the Smoke, as the local Indians used to call it. Indian thoughts guard the Hollywood Hills and there is victory reflected in our landlord’s mirrors and chandeliers.
I throw the heavy grey and white striped cover awkwardly on the huge bed, angry that my children should have had to risk hurt from a bigoted father. Now I am determined to write our life, for them and me to see the truth.
There are no windows in the rear of the Volvo but I’d better get a typewriter, so I’ll sell two of the mountain prints–the Ektachrome will give me more profit than the Cibachrome–and there’s a down-payment on an electric typewriter.
How to do it? How do you write such a thing without sounding like a shrill victim? I’ll do it in the present tense. One decides each moment in the present–even if stuck in past thoughts and ways to handle life. In the present, each one of us constructs a world or takes a turning without knowing it, slight turns that push us in another direction. Only later can we look back and see the path, although straight, ended up in another direction. A ballet is in the present and this has been like a ballet, a dance with discover and emotions, a life. No accusations, a life record.
I want to be in that time and part of it as I write. Returning to the day, I will see with the limitations and virtues of the moment. I will see my self-imposed pattern, my interaction with others and the boys will read my book and share my thoughts.
My sons will discover me as they read. I won’t say “This is why I did it.” They can see for themselves and decide if I was right. I’ll be there and they can be me, and give their own answers as well as mine. Those who read it will know me as I was and as I became and know I survived very well–so there’s hope too.
How can I give both sides? Not at all. The readers will have to see what the others were like by my conversations with them. This is my side of the story. Theirs may come later.
I’ll follow no more rainbows, looking for a pot of gold or whatever I felt I needed. I know that I’ve got the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I know myself, my children and I have grown up together as friends and I am here, really, to help others. I am the rainbow and the gold is myself.
As I am sure of this, my anger fades. What happened yesterday was actually very funny, so the first chapter will be “The Visit”.
The kitchen, tiny as it is, has one corner not dominated by the view, just glimpses of thick pine trees against a blue sky found only at the top of the Hills. I’ll make strong coffee, hot milk and buttery English muffins for breakfast and play LA freeway music; disco, loud and strong.
It’s time to make new images.
First, I’ll see who I was.
- The End -
About the Author
Renée Duke (1927-2010) was born in New York City to attorney T.W.D. Duke and
socialite Dolores Carrillo de Albornoz, She attended The Brearley School and spent summers with her sister Diane at the Cedarhurst Yacht Club in Lawrence, Long Island. She graduated from Harvard’s Radcliffe College, and subsequently enrolled in the R.H. Macy’s Executive Training Program under Bernard Baruch.
In 1951, her husband began a series of overseas postings that took them to Toronto, Puerto Rico, Caracas, Paris, Brussels and later back to Paris. Throughout these travels, Renée raised six boys. Beginning in 1954, she was a reporter for Women’s Wear Daily and other Fairchild publications, eventually covering the 1960 wedding of Fabiola de Mora y Aragón of Spain, a relation, to King Baudouin of Belgium. In the early sixties, she wrote the “Around Paris Art Galleries” column for the International Herald Tribune.
