Timeless

by Lucinda Franks

  “Your father and I understand each other,” Bob would say later, after we were married, rather understating the fact. The six years that separated them belied their uncanny similarities; it was as if they had been born at the same minute. Both were lieutenants in the navy, heroes who cared too little about their own safety. With their deadpan demeanors, they were both taciturn, unflappable, touched by the unfortunate, and often tongue-tied with those they loved. They were not only noble characters; they shared a myriad of other trivial oddities: conducting activities in slow motion; taking an interminable time to finish a meal; pausing to think before answering a question; and donning weekend clothes whose conditions they seemed to ignore.

  * * *

  One Saturday, not long after I had left MacDowell with typewriter and blank paper in hand, the doorbell rang. I was reveling in the quiet of the snug nest I had created for myself, but then who would just come over uninvited except Bob? So with a little frisson of pleasure, I got up to answer it. There he was, grinning. As soon as we sat down, he put his hand in his jacket pocket, took out a little blue Tiffany box, and thrust it at me.

  Inside, on a puff of ebony velvet, was a ring with a sapphire flanked by two smaller diamonds. “Oh,” I said, my breath catching. I touched the glistening stones. “Oh!”

  I held it up to the light. “Oh, sweetheart. Oh. It’s exquisite.” It was delicate, lovely … and the band was the size of a dime. He must see me as some petite Bo Peep, I thought, and was so touched by this that instead of shattering his illusions and trying to force it over my bony knuckle, I put it back in the box.

  “Try it on.”

  “I will. I believe in delayed gratification.” I went over to my record player and dropped “Hey Jude” on the spindle.

  I sat beside him and folded my fingers into his. “I didn’t expect this.”

  “I didn’t mean for you to expect it.”

  He looked so pleased with himself. A sunset somewhere beyond the skyscrapers turned his skin rosy, and he smiled the smile I love, the curve of a half-moon.

  “I love you,” I said and nestled into him. The last light drifted in and flickered over his finely furrowed hands. They were the most beautiful hands I had ever known.

  He lay back, and we were still except for the rhythmic circling of my fingers on his wrist. Soon, his arms began to slip from around me. They fell to his lap. I tried to relax, to doze with him, but I felt the pressure building in me. The old pictures. The old beliefs. When the good comes, the bad will come quicker. I tried to head it off. Head your mother off before she shows her other face.

  But I couldn’t. “What will all the kids think?” I asked softly. “What will they think when I wear this ring?”

  Silence.

  “I want to know,” I said. “You must have talked to all of them by now. Tell me, please.”

  I felt the heave of his chest. “Can’t we just enjoy the moment for once?”

  But the moment was gone.

  “They don’t want me to marry you,” he said.

  “What?” I sat up. “I thought they liked me!”

  “They don’t want the marriage.”

  “You mean they don’t want it right now.”

  “They don’t want it, period.”

  “That can’t be right. We all get along! We share a lot,” I argued, though I knew the only thing we shared was their father.

  “Can’t you speak to them, convince them this could be a good thing?”

  “I’ve been speaking with them. For a considerable length of time.”

  “What have you been saying?”

  He fixed his gaze on a corner of the rug. He looked worn down. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t just keep paddling around in some gray marshy water. I couldn’t keep not knowing what was going to happen. “Talk!” I said.

  He turned his deaf ear to me. I heard my voice rising and was ashamed. Over and over, I was asking the same question, hoping to get the answer I wanted.

  “Maybe you haven’t been definite enough,” I said. “You can be evasive, you know.”

  “They want you to sign a prenup.”

  “A prenup? What’s a prenup?” It sounded like a diaper for old people.

  “Doesn’t matter, you’re not signing it.”

  “Like, what is it?”

  “It’s about my assets. They don’t want you to get anything. We’re not signing it anyway.”

  “I don’t believe it! They think this is all about money?” The room tilted. I felt dizzy.

  “Forget about it, the issue is over. Your voice is like a razor.”

  “Well, damn it, Bob, this is gross. I know you love me, but why do you let them manipulate you? Why not just shout, ‘Quiet! I’m not taking any more polls. I’m marrying her. Period.’”

  “I have to let things take their course, do this in an orderly fashion.”

  “This is not an indictment, for Christ’s sake. We’re not in the grand jury.”

  Suddenly his chin began trembling. He put his head in his hand. Then I saw a long tear roll down his nose.

  “Sweetheart, what’s the matter?”

  “I can’t have all of you yelling at me at the same time.” His voice broke.

  I sat frozen. I had never seen him cry like this. I had never seen him cry at all. I stood up and held his head in my arms. I had been a bitch. “I’m sorry,” I said, crying too. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were hurting so much.” I stroked his hair. “My beloved, I’m so sorry.”

  7

  Over the next few days, I meditated on Bob’s paradoxical personality. By day, he was nonchalant about criminals who threatened to kill him, and by night he became paralyzed by his children. The man who was brought to a pitch of agony by a personal crisis was the same one who regarded shady corporate giants with hard, unmerciful eyes, recommended the maximum sentences for rapists, and was immune to city power brokers petitioning him to go easy on corrupt politicians—the man who’d taken me to Rao’s restaurant in East Harlem and introduced me to a rough fellow who gave him a big smile and a vigorous handshake. “That was Matty the Horse,” he’d told me. “I put him away for ten years.”

  How could his family turn him into such a different person altogether? I mused. But then I thought about their own feelings, the desperation they must have been experiencing. Although it had been five years since their mother died, it must have seemed like five months. They had all lost her at young ages. It was easy to see how powerful an instrument Bob was in their lives, how much they must have felt they had to lose. He had been a beacon in their lives, and here I was sucking up all the light.

  Now it seemed he was about to leave them for another woman. Bob advised me against it, but I decided to talk to the kids, one by one, to let them vent, to tell me how I could help. I put on a dusty-rose wraparound dress and conservative block heels and tied my hair back, hoping to look older than I was.

  I started with Bobby. We went into the old playroom in Riverdale, sat down, and stared at the bookcase in front of us. It was full of Modern Library classics that his mother had subscribed to. There were pictures of her everywhere: she and Barbara in Fair Isle sweaters, the family on the deck of Bob’s boat, Martha laughing in a bathing suit, she and Bobby as a toddler.

  “So what are you doing marrying a fifty-seven-year-old man?” he asked, his fingers holding up his chin.

  “Uh, well. I love him.”

  “Are you, like, going to have children?”

  Was he worried that a whole other family of five would sprout up while he wasn’t looking? “Oh, well, not a lot,” I said. I held up one finger. “Maybe just one.” I held up a second finger. “Or two at the most.”

  He was quiet.

  “I’ll be here for you, Bobby. I’ll be as good a stepmother as I can be.”

  “Well, that we don’t want,” he replied.

  “Well, then I won’t interfere,” I said, my hands slightly shaking. “Is there anything else I can tell you, anything else you we
re wondering?”

  “No,” he said and got up to go, not looking very reassured.

  I was told that it would not be helpful for me to talk to Jenny. But she was known to feel that the only way I could help would be to leave the premises in a hurry. She feared I might be a fortune hunter, out for the Morgenthau money, such as it was. Since Bob’s grandfather made a fortune in real estate and other investments, the original funds had dwindled. She was intent on protecting what was left, however, and on convincing her father of who she thought I was before he married me.

  I called Annie’s husband, Paul, a tall, handsome lawyer who met his wife while they were both working for Bob. Paul, an honest and witty individual who had been particularly friendly to me, looked and acted more like a Morgenthau than a Morgenthau did. “Yes, of course they’re concerned about a second family,” he said. “They feel like their father thinks they’re not good enough. Otherwise, why would he want more children. And who can blame them?”

  I was more hopeful as I walked over to Annie’s large turn-of-the-century house, a few doors up from Bob’s Riverdale home. Annie and I had always had something nice to say to each other. And I admired her because she had been a lifesaver for Barbara, particularly with her two young children. Barbara loved sprinting over to Annie’s house; her older sister was her adviser and comforter, and she loved playing with the kids and being part of their family.

  I sat at Annie’s kitchen table as she leaned over the sink, washing dishes—making it clear she didn’t want to look at me. I could hear the clock ticking, moving toward the time she must leave to pick up Hilary from school. I finally found the courage to ask her if my marriage to her dad would be problematic for her.

  “I wouldn’t want to be in your position,” she said, turning around. “Not for one minute. People are very emotional about this.”

  “Please tell me what I can do,” I said. “I want to help everyone adjust.”

  “Jenny broke up with her boyfriend a little while ago,” she said pointedly, “because he had two children and she felt she couldn’t do anything for them.”

  “I feel I can do things, especially for Barbara,” I said.

  “It’s really Barbara that we’re all concerned about,” she replied.

  “I understand and I will do the best I can by her.”

  She looked at me hard. “It’s her father she needs. She doesn’t need anyone else. Just her father.” The rims of her eyes were red.

  “I will give them plenty of time alone,” I protested.

  “Frankly, whatever you’re prepared to give them I don’t think will be enough.”

  I sighed, exasperated. What did she expect me to do, obliterate myself? Well, of course she did. “I would think his children would want their father to be happy,” I said.

  “I think they are more concerned about themselves right now,” she replied.

  I was startled. My head began to pound. Bob had devoted his life to his kids, nurturing Barbara in spite of his own grief.

  I was about to walk out the door when, surprisingly, Annie asked if I would like to come with her and get Hilary from school. Hilary, now five, was perhaps my best friend in the family, probably because she had no idea what was going on. When the Grands came up to the farm, we would put blankets and cups under the big oak tree so I could invent little tea parties for her where we pretended to be proper “Cambridge” ladies. Now, when I saw her bounding out of Fieldston and into the car, I gave her a big hug.

  Annie dropped me off at the bus stop. I looked around, saw no one, and hid behind a tree to have a full-blown cry.

  I went to our apartment on the West Side, which Renia happened to be helping me clean out. I must have looked hangdog. She shook her head. “Don’t you trouble now, Mrs. Morgenthau, I mean, Miss Franks.

  “You’re to take care of Mr. Morgenthau and don’t bother with anybody else … Listen now, you make him happy. I never thought anyone would again.

  “You should see what my own son Bill’s gone and done to his family. Children, they only think about themselves. But what can you do? That’s the way it is.

  “I think,” she said, lowering her voice, “they hope if they’re rude enough to you, you will walk out that door and never come back.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, I sat on my bed, so dazed that I jumped at the trill of my phone. It was an unexpected call from an old radically active friend, inviting me to a mass antinuclear protest in New Hampshire. Things always happen for a reason. I thanked her profusely for remembering me, even though I had renounced protest politics. Just for a day, I needed to get far away from those who thought me unworthy; just for a day, I needed to feel the warmth of people who forgave me for leaving them and remained loyal and kind.

  The next morning, I was lying down in the muddy marshland of Seabrook, New Hampshire, blocking workers from entering a nuclear energy facility under construction. An accidental nuclear explosion was, by the law of averages, certain to happen. It was a cause I believed in. So I found myself once again linked arm in arm, part of a large but tight community, waving placards, handing out leaflets to the workers trying to climb over us.

  I joined in shouting insolently at the police who were dragging people by their legs into buses they’d made into holding cells. Suddenly a big beefy cop hauled me up, and into the arrest line I went. Word traveled fast; the demonstrators who got caught would be held in a national armory for days and days. Now I was scared down to the soles of my Doc Martens. I had always welcomed being arrested, but that was before Bob. I could see the headlines across the front page of every tabloid: “DA’s Fiancée Arrested and Incarcerated!” I might lose my first true love forever.

  As the police were writing down names, I saw my chance. Along with a man from New York, I broke away and sprinted as fast as I could before we were noticed. Thankfully, we ran to a road, put out our thumbs, and were immediately picked up by a trucker. As we bounced along, I could hear the sound of sirens right until we crossed state lines. In a few hours, I was home.

  * * *

  Two days later, on Monday night, I was both relieved and not relieved to be sitting with Bob in the cozy comfort of my apartment. I hadn’t told him a thing about Seabrook. It would be my secret, my exhilarating assertion of independence, the comforting knowledge that I had somewhere to escape to if the complications of this relationship got too much for me.

  “So where did you disappear to this weekend?” he asked.

  “You know, I never did read you that Frost poem that I love.” I jumped up and took my Frost omnibus out of the bookcase. “Let me do it before I forget.” I read him the all too relevant “The Road Not Taken,” then I launched into the provenance of the framed knights on my wall, carrying on about how I spent many happy hours in Westminster Abbey on my knees rubbing the brass with black or gold wax, then I popped into the kitchen to make him a treat I had ordered from England. I knew he’d never refuse food. “Your Majesty, your crumpet,” I said in Windsor English, flashing my engagement ring. By now, I had surely diverted his attention.

  “Was it my children? Did you go away because of them?” he asked, sinking his teeth into the buttery snack. “You didn’t tell me how your talks with the kids went.”

  I picked a thread from the hem of my pink sweater. I knew how exquisitely vulnerable he was to reminders of the children and me, and I vowed not to add to his pressure. “Oh, fine. It was no big thing,” I said cheerfully.

  “It wasn’t very nice of you to abandon me like that,” he said plaintively.

  “I didn’t go far. Just visiting some friends in New Hampshire.”

  “You could have told me.” He was studying me with those blue eyes, sharp as surveillance cameras. I knew he was taking my measure. Then he raised his eyebrows and reached out and touched my cheek, and I burst out crying.

  He put his arm around me, and I got the English lavender shirt I’d ordered from Turnbull & Asser all wet. He pushed back my hair, and when I ha
d wiped my eyes on his shirt, he tickled the sensitive inside of my hand, causing me to smile.

  “How’s November?” he asked.

  “For what?”

  “For the wedding. And before that we can go to Greece, like we’d planned.”

  “Our wedding? But, Bob, what about…”

  “We are going to be married,” he said firmly. “You’re not leaving me again.”

  “Sure?” I nuzzled his prickly cheek, taking in the fresh smell of his collar.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said, feeling my engagement ring. “I love you so much.” Over his shoulder, my brick walls were brilliant red, the dull brown stripes of the couch had gone deep chestnut, my humble apartment was a riot of color. Had I never noticed this before?

  “I’m not concerned about what anyone says. I’m marrying you.”

  * * *

  We were in JFK airport, waiting for our plane to Greece. It was August. I held Bob’s damp hand. We had sat here for an hour, and by then he knew the men’s room nearest Gate B28 intimately. He hated to fly, hated to be on planes whose mechanisms he didn’t understand, especially for eight hours. He was doing this for me.

  As we boarded the plane for Athens, I uttered soothing words: “Planes are just like birds; planes want to fly.”

  Myself, I loved the experience; I grew up on a wing, a leaf batted about in a capricious home, and then a frequent flier to investigate UPI and Times stories. Bob, on the other hand, had such deep roots that were seldom disturbed; he must have felt as if I had unceremoniously yanked him out of the earth. As we took off, he gripped the armrests as if to hold the plane steady; once in the air, he immediately fell asleep. I watched him, the shine on his forehead, the crown of hair that had been a mass of curls in his boyhood, his strong mouth with its upper lip, feminine, vulnerable. I loved him. He was mine. I could not run away now or switch or disengage. The cogs were locked.

  I sipped a second glass of wine and watched the dimpled skin of the Atlantic Ocean below, the clouds wafting like bits of dreams.