Manhattan Monologues (8 page)

Grinnell Scott, my lord but no longer my master (I have had to take up the reins of management), may still be one of the most beloved and popular sportsmen on the Northeastern Seaboard, a long-term president of the New York Golf and Tennis Club and a squash racquets champion at age fifty-five. But with a genial smile and shrug of his shoulders he leaves all business matters to me, droning, in his pleasant whine, "But, Katie, sweet, you always got high school marks, and you know I could never add two and two." Well, I've done my best, but I can't perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and I've had to rent our house in Manhattan and park my little family the year round in our shingle villa in Bar Harbor, inadequately heated for a Maine winter, where we can gaze out the windows at the cold gray Atlantic and envy our departed summer neighbors, tucked away cozily in their southern homes.

But I must say about Grinnell and the children that although they left the decisions to me, they never complained. Grinnell insisted that cross-country skiing, which he can do in Maine, was the sport in which he had always wished to indulge, and the twins, Elfrida and Damon, now thirty and cheerfully unemployed, were equally content, Elfrida with her watercolors and Damon with the opportunity to get on with that novel he was always going to write.

My mother-in-law, typically, managed to keep her New York apartment open so that she was spared the rigor of Maine winters. Much later, on her demise, we learned that she had done it by spending all the capital that might have come to my children. Really, she and Grinnell's maiden sisters were incomparable. Serene in their smugness and fatuity, confident that their Colonial blood was envied by all (actually, my family was much better) and proud of what they called the Scott "pluck" (they would pale at the sight of a cockroach), they counted on me to ingratiate myself with the new rich of Bar Harbor, when summer came, and marry off Elfrida and Damon to advantage. But would they help? Heavens, no! They would not lower themselves to meet the newcomers and did not hesitate to look down on me for being able to do the job on which they counted but the mechanics of which they despised—and congratulated themselves for despising! For would a lady, a real lady, care as I had to care about clothes and looks and ingratiating manners? Of course not!

And I must admit that they are not wholly incorrect in their judgment of me. I
do
use people. My only real resentment of my in-laws is that they expect to profit from the dirty water into which they decline to stick a finger. It is I who must handle the new rich with whom they don't care to associate. And, of course, I have learned how to do that. I am well aware of how social climbers make use of summer resorts, which represent the soft underbelly of the old guard. In their hometowns—Boston, New York, Philadelphia—the established families are more or less secure in their guarded citadels: the clubs, the private schools, the subscription dances, even some of the major charities. But at a watering place like Newport, Bar Harbor or Southampton the new tycoon (provided he is not too repellently vulgar, as a surprising number are) can attract the children of the old guard to play with his children by offering them the use of yachts, fast foreign cars, well-kept tennis courts and other luxuries, and once the younger generation has been lured in, the parents are almost bound to call, and the fortifications are breached. Marriages between the old and new soon guarantee total acceptance, and the battle is won.

But there are pitfalls for those who, like myself, are bent on hastening the process. A member of the old guard must not surrender too quickly; it will be assumed that he or she is a phoney, not the real thing. And, secondly, the friendship "that you finally offer a newcomer must be sincere. After all, these people, even if they need polish, are not stupid. They wouldn't have made their millions if they were. And, like other people, they want to be loved. And this is not always impossible. Take Mrs. Oscar Gleason, my prize capture, widow of the rubber tycoon whose mammoth fortune was rumored to be derived in good part from contraceptives. I admired and respected this grave and regal dowager from the beginning and was genuinely amused, as were so many others, by her six handsome if rather madcap children. Indeed, I think I can say truly that I came to love that family.

My own family (as opposed to my in-laws) proved useful allies. Good-natured and essentially democratic, my husband and son and daughter made friends easily with everyone on the island. In fact, I doubt that Grinnell made any distinction in his mind between the old stock and the new. His athletic prowess and easygoing manner shed a beam of light about him, and the business moguls could admire his muscle and enjoy his sometimes naive amiability without envying his brain. It rather fascinated them that he had never worked, and his explanation of this was much repeated at the swimming club. He had worked, he told them, for a year after his graduation from Harvard, as a customers' man in a Wall Street brokerage house, but when he discovered that he and his chauffeur had the same salary, he decided to drive himself and be free of toil. This, I may say, was typical of Grinnell. He never read a book, but he wrote one, a short collection of fishing stories, and had it privately and too expensively published, with the placating dedication "to Kate, my companion in the adventure of life." One could forgive him anything, even a bromide. And one always did.

Elfrida was a lovely but passive young woman, perfectly content to be idle, except when painting her mild little pictures, and oddly indifferent to masculine attention. There was not much chance of lassoing a young heir for her, but I knew that if I got an heiress for Damon, he would always look after his twin. Damon was my ace of trumps. Everyone loved him. He was slight but beautifully built, with dark eyes and hair, romantically good-looking and a fine athlete, though nothing like his father. The few things that he consented to do he did well—tennis, golf and bridge—but he was regrettably lazy and spent hours in the summer stretched out on the porch, acquiring a perfect tan. He appeared to have no ambition and seemed perfectly happy to depend on the small trust fund he had inherited from his grandfather to guard him from industry. Although he lived with me, he did not live on me, insisting that I take a good half of his small income for his maintenance. That was like him.

The great thing about Damon was his character. He was the essence of amiability and kindness to everyone, and especially to me. He and I discussed everything that I could not discuss with his dear but easily distracted father; we thought alike and felt alike and laughed alike. I guess it's sufficiently obvious that Damon was the love of my life.

There had been times, of course, when I tried to persuade him to work, but there was a stubbornness in his quiet insistence on a life of temperate hedonism that I at last came to realize I was not going to overcome. It was I who would have to arrange for his future; nobody else would do it, least of all himself. He had, as I say, his own small means, but if I should die, and my heart is not strong, he would give it to his father and sister whenever they needed it, which would be often. And even if they didn't, it was not enough for him to marry on, and I couldn't bear the idea of his never having a family of his own. Needless to say there were plenty of girls in Bar Harbor who had fallen in love with him, but so far he seemed to have avoided any serious entanglement. There was one woman with whom he enjoyed a deep and lasting friendship, but she was his slightly older first cousin, my niece Leila Bryce, a bright and attractive woman, a Catholic convert who had found herself locked into a miserable marriage with a dissolute and faithless husband from whom she was now separated. I am sure that there were people who raised their eyebrows at Damon and Leila's long intimacy, but he always implied that she was simply another sister to him.

No, if Damon was to marry, it would have to be to an heiress, and as there was not a mercenary bone in his body, it would be up to me to find one for him. Marjorie Gleason was an almost too obvious choice; she was the oldest, prettiest and most lively of my friend Florence's brood and a devoted friend of Damon's. They had even won the swimming club's bridge tournament as partners.

As I have said, I did not consider Damon's friendship with my niece Leila an impediment to my project, but to be sure there were no ambushes lurking in those woods, I put it before her one morning at the swimming club. Leila had come out of the pool and joined me on a stone bench by the water, pulling off her rubber cap and shaking her head to fluff out her lovely blond hair. I admired her glistening wet body, her handsome tanned features and her sympathetic brown eyes, regretting as always that this fine woman, so svelte and youthful-looking at thirty-five, should have tied herself up to the wrong man.

"You know, Aunt Kate, I've had the same idea!" she responded with what certainly sounded like sincerity. "It's high time that Damon got married, and Marjorie Gleason is just the girl he needs. And I've a hunch it won't be too hard to pull off. I'm pretty sure she has a crush on him. But remember, Auntie, don't push too hard! We all have a tendency to shy away from any match Mama favors. Maybe a few nice remarks about Marjorie, well placed, will be enough."

"Oh, I think Damon's natural inertia will need more than that. But don't worry; I'll be tactful."

Leila looked not so sure of this, but she turned to another aspect of the match. "If it should really happen, it might be the making of him. For to be known as the idle mate of an heiress, who has contributed only his good looks and charm to the union, will be galling to Damon. It may convince him to get off his ass and make something of himself!"

Leila had always been a frank talker, but I now thought that she was too frank. "I agree that it may give him a new sense of direction," I retorted, somewhat dryly.

"At any rate, there's nothing to lose, for he couldn't do less than he's doing now."

"You're hard on him, Leila."

"Because I love him, Aunt Kate!"

This reassured me. Would she have used the word if she loved him in a romantic way?

But there was still a hitch. The remarkable thing about the Gleason children was that they all drank. Oh, they were handsome and healthy and happy and fun-loving and rich, but they still drank. Why? Was it just high spirits? And would it pass away when they married and settled down?

It so happened that this very question was put to me by their mother, Florence Gleason herself, in the first conversation I had with her after my resolution to open a campaign in favor of a Damon-Marjorie marriage. Needless to say, it was not I who introduced the subject. I was not so unsubtle. My plan was first of all to clear my son of any suspicion of mercenary motives—the perennial bugbear of both old and new rich—and to do so before mention was made of his marriage to anyone. But Florence forced me to alter my plan of attack. Fortunately, I am quick-witted.

We met that day in the center of Bar Harbor's social life: the umbrella tables on the lawn of the swimming club, looking down on the long blue pool filled with brown youthful bodies. But these did not belong to the rulers of the scene. The rulers were their mothers and grandmothers, much less brown and certainly not youthful but splendidly and colorfully attired, who gathered at noon at the umbrella tables to signal to the red-coated waiters to bring them the first cocktail of the day. A brilliant sky, a sparkling sea, dotted with white sails, and a range beyond the encompassing village of great green hills aspiring to be mountains formed the backdrop to these ladies' spirited analyses of the doings and undoings of yesterday. I used to claim that it was impossible to read the newspaper in Bar Harbor. The big cities, with their angry headlines and toiling husbands, were out of sight and out of mind; we lived in a Utopia of smiles and thoughtlessness.

Coming down the steps of the clubhouse that morning to the lawn, I spied Florence Gleason not at her usual table but sitting alone at a corner one, as ladies did when expecting a guest who was not of their regular circle. She beckoned to me, however, and I crossed the lawn to join her.

Florence was tall and gaunt, with great sad eyes and a lined, melancholy countenance. She was dressed in perpetual mourning for a long-dead husband—a spotless white dress with a few black trimmings. She always gave me the curious impression of one who constituted a kind of detached audience to the drama of her life and that of her different and rambunctious offspring. It was not that she wasn't interested in such dramas; she was touched, even moved, but you felt that she had seen the play before and had no control over its outcome. She took her perquisites for granted—the huge stone villa, the yacht and all the shining cars—seeming mildly to protest that she had never sought them.

"I have something to ask you, Kate," she began. "But first let me order you a drink." She beckoned to a waiter.

"Is the sun over the yardarm? Not yet, I see. It must be a serious question."

"Well, as it's about drinking, a drink may be in order. As you are doubtless aware, my children all imbibe. And rather too freely, I fear."

"Oh well, they're young and full of spirits."

"That is indeed what they're full of."

"I didn't mean a pun, Florence."

"And if you did, there's no harm in it. But here's the point. Marjorie, who's the oldest and should set an example to the others, is the worst of all. And I'm afraid she's getting worse. She has a very hard head and carries it well, but think what it must be doing to her liver! I was wondering if your Damon could help her."

This certainly startled me. I had to play for time. "How do you mean?"

"All my children love Damon. He has a wonderful gift with people. And he strikes me as that rare sort of man who is capable of real friendship with a woman."

"A platonic one? That's not always considered a compliment, you know. To the man or the woman."

"Oh, Kate, you know I mean nothing like that. Your Damon is as manly as anyone. And for that matter, isn't he taken up with that lovely niece of yours? Forgive me, dear, but one can't help hearing what people say."