The Chameleon (55 page)

When Claire finished reading the letter, she hugged Lefty and threw herself into her film at an even more fevered pitch. The project snowballed, and as the documentary grew, more and more people were attracted to it. Marian Anderson agreed to sing in the film and relive the historic event when Mrs. Roosevelt, who had resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution in protest at their refusal to let the Negro American contralto sing at Constitution Hall, arranged for her to perform at a massive outdoor concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The rushes of Ms. Anderson's memories and voice on the screen were emotional and stirring.

When Eleanor and Anna decided they would attend the Washington opening of Claire's documentary, Claire anguished over whether she could turn the opening into a gala benefit for Eleanor House.

“Go for it, Toots. Shine the floodlight on the old lady. She deserves the applause. But so do you.”

After the scandal, she had taken her name off the organization's letterhead and kept her participation secret, so as not to damage further the organization's chances of surviving, even after she had endowed it anonymously with the sizable sum from the sale of the de’ Medici cross. Eventually, though, she had resumed her rightful place as founder and now was its most vocal spokesperson. She had even added Princess Grace to her board. In a bold move engineered by herself and carefully controlled by Lefty, she allowed a women's page feature on herself, the making of
The Eleanor Years,
and the twelve thriving Eleanor Houses to run in the
Los Angeles Times.
Claire was careful to protect Sara from the reporter working on the piece. Evidently Sara was surviving, if not exactly thriving, at the Eleanor House in New York. Teaching poetry, of all things, and helping place the older, less wanted orphans in homes. Although it disturbed Claire that she hadn't heard a word from Sara herself—it was the home's director who kept her informed—she busied herself in her film in order to do what she had promised her daughter. Leave her alone.

After the
Times
article appeared, Claire started to receive weekly mea culpa letters from Fenwick Grant himself, whose company owned the rival
LA. Spectator
and four other California newspapers, calling for a truce. She paid no heed to his condescending requests for her to be generous and leave the past behind them, even going so far as to offer to run an apology on his editorial pages.

“What is he, fucking nuts?” asked Lefty. “You can only call a truce when one guy recognizes the other as an equal.”

In his next letter Grant offered her the cover of
Sunday News Magazine,
which was inserted into all twenty-five of his newspapers. Along with “her version” of the Duccio murder. Was this abominable man never going to get the point?

“The nerve of him!” Claire tossed Grant's latest letter onto her husband's desk. “His papers branded me a murderess. I was never officially charged.”

“Yeah, you could
show
him how you did it, using him as the next victim.” Even though Lefty knew the truth, and even through they shared everything, including his socks when her feet got cold and the scrambled eggs she whipped up for Sunday supper, Claire would never betray Sara's actions that day to another living soul. And so Sara's role in the murder was never again discussed. Not even with dear old Lefty, who had a heart as big as all Bel-Air.

There was only one other part of her life she didn't share with him—Harrison's poignant letters, the ones she read privately and then refolded, placing them in her only locked drawer.

The Washington premiere of
The Eleanor Years
on September 25, 1962, was a heady assemblage of reigning politicians, Hollywood royalty, a real Kennedy roundup, and a gathering of the Roosevelt clan. Every living member of the Roosevelt family and all surviving members of Franklin's White House still standing showed up at the black-tie salute to “Our Lady of the New Deal.” Claire was particularly excited because Harrison was supposed to be coming as part of Eleanor's party. Anna had told her. So she paid extra attention to her appearance, trying on outfit after outfit until Lefty assured her she looked like an entirely different Claire: Claire Lefkowitz, Producer. Her shiny hair was swept off her face in a bouffant. On her white satin dinner suit, the short skirt emphasizing her long-stemmed legs, she had pinned an
Eleanor for President
button.

Pam Churchill arrived arm-in-arm with Broadway producer Leland Hayward, her new husband and her former friend Slim Hayward's old one. When Harrison showed up, proud as punch, with his old friends Archibald and Starling Fillmore, Claire felt his eyes on her and blushed the shade of the theater curtain. She stole a few glances at him. She wondered how much she had changed in the five years since she had seen him—would he still find her desirable?—but when their eyes locked, her question was answered. The Aunties sat in a balcony box next to the one reserved for President and Mrs. Kennedy, his red plush seat replaced by a waiting rocking chair.

As much as Auntie Slim loved Claire, she forgot all about the film once the first lady and the president arrived. Kennedy had forgone the closed-circuit television heavyweight boxing match between Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston to attend.

“You see, Jack,” Slim overheard Jackie gaily whisper into the president's ear, “all the heavyweights are
here.
”

But Sara wasn't, although her seat remained empty, just in case she changed her mind and came after all. There was no telling with Sara. There were signs, though, and Claire cherished every one of them, that her daughter was making a tentative place for herself in the world, one set apart from both Hollywood and Tuxedo Park. When Sara adamantly refused to join the other debutantes in what would have been her own coming-out season, Ophelia had come to the realization that maybe Sara really was crazy. She agreed to let Sara leave her first semester at Vassar and move into the New York City branch of Eleanor House, where she was now a resident teacher to the younger children. To the ladies of her clubs, Ophelia passed off her granddaughter's decision to choose social work over high society as proof of the Harrisons’ outstanding philanthropic spirit.

Claire anxiously watched the back of E.R.’s head for her response, and was conscious of exhaling for the first time since the lights had dimmed when the former first lady patted her eyes with Anna's handkerchief. She pointed and laughed at the earnest young girl she was on the screen, clutching her diary as her voice-over said, “I wasn't really sure that I would have anything interesting to record.” The audience loved being in on the joke and laughed with her. There had been enough interesting times to fill volumes.

“Did you notice the Kennedys and the Roosevelts have the same kind of teeth?” Lefty elbowed Claire like it was some sort of astute political observation as the audience applauded and rose to its feet.
The Eleanor Years
was a hit, a critical success among the people whose approval mattered to Claire.

Claire was able by now to do several things at once, so she smiled head-on for the cameras, accepted her kudos with grace, kept an eye out for Sara and another out for Harrison as she double-checked out the place cards at her table. The incorrigible Fenwick Grant had somehow connived his way into the seat next to hers. By now, her actions were rote. She simply took his place card and moved it down to the far end of the long table.

Too exhilarated to eat, she just watched the others. She was enchanted by the way Jackie held the rapt attention of both her dinner partners with her little-girl voice and grownup wit. She admired how Eleanor held up her end of the table with anecdotes about Franklin, often making herself the butt of her own jokes. She observed with some interest when Starling Fillmore dropped three lumps of sugar into her husband's coffee and then two into Harrison's without bothering to ask. How very cozy, Claire thought, and wondered why the little scene rattled her. She shifted her gaze to Mrs. Archibald Vanderbilt Fillmore, analyzing her like an actress the Lefkowitz Talent Agency might sign up. If Claire had included the Lucy Mercer chapter in her documentary, Starling Fillmore could have played the part on a moment's notice. Well into her fifties, she still possessed the unruffled calm of a woman who had never had a truly troubling thought startle the neurons of her brain.

Long-lashed, longer-necked, she prettily wore a slightly puzzled look on her delicate features as if she were constantly wondering. Two lumps or three? There was something even more familiar about Harrison's friend's wife, but Claire couldn't quite put her finger on it.

It wasn't until the after-dinner brandy and bonbons were served that Claire caught Harrison's eye. He rose to move to her side of the table, wearing the expectant look of a man with a promise to deliver. But as President and Mrs. Kennedy decided to leave at the same time that Mrs. Roosevelt stood, the whole table was suddenly hindered by a phalanx of burly Secret Service men. So Harrison and Claire's words together went unspoken and the moment vanished. Later at the curb as the limousines and taxi cabs queued up, Claire caught a closer glimpse of Mrs. Fillmore and her two escorts. The slight woman daintily sidestepped a puddle even as she pointed it out for both of them to avoid. She spoke quietly, first into one's ear and then the other's, informing the men who the approaching senator from Virginia was with or what Ethel Kennedy right behind them had named her last child.

It suddenly dawned on Claire who Mrs. Fillmore reminded her of. Herself. The young, adoring Claire who had worked as Harrison's assistant, anticipating all his needs, smoothing out the wrinkles. She wondered if the soft-spoken Mrs. Fillmore lit Harrison's cigar before or after she lit her husband's. As one more photograph of Claire was snapped with Eleanor and the political editor of the
Washington Post
blocked her path to the departing Harrison and promised her she'd love tomorrow's coverage for a change, she felt an onrush of sadness. How many Claires ago was that unquestioning girl whom Harrison had fallen in love with? How many reinventions was she removed from that Claire, protected by the strong shoulders of her mentor and all-consumed with pleasing him? She wondered if that trusting innocent to whom no harm had yet been done was still visible beneath the dazzling disguise of the fiercely independent working wife with a smash movie up her sleeve. She hoped so, but she knew it was out of necessity that she had changed her outside colors. In order to survive.

With the success of
The Eleanor Years
came invitations to speak at Democratic lunches, teas, and women's groups of every size. Often she tossed aside her notes on Eleanor, using them only as a jumping-off point, and addressed the very modern issues that were close to her heart: children's education and mental health, and women's rights. Claire brightened when the question-and-answer period after her speeches began to focus on requests for her to talk about Eleanor House or even enter politics herself rather than the infamous de’ Medici cross and her days as a “party girl.” But when, after a few years of hard work on state party commissions and children's welfare reforms, that phrase appeared in a piece in the
Los Angeles Times,
it was referring not to her hostessing skills, but to her effectiveness in the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy.

It was curious how, in the age of jet planes and telephones, Claire's contact with the two people she loved most was through the mail. Harrison's letters from his new home on Lake Como were a precise recounting of his progress on a three-volume memoir of the war years that he had finally begun. But between the lines she could read his unwritten message: Italy wasn't the same without her. He complained that he couldn't find a satisfactory researcher, firing one after another. He listed the things they couldn't do: organize his notes, relive the historical past with him, plan his day, inspire him. “Indeed, all the things you, my dear Claire, do so well.” He described the lake, its sunsets and scents, but it was all unnecessary. Claire had already etched every detail of their lake idyll in her mind. She stared out in her Bel Air garden at the silk floss tree with its pink blossoms and dreamed of Italian olive trees. She wondered how much more damage would be done if she followed her girlish heart instead of her grown woman's obligations.

She answered his letters on her Claire Harrison Lefkowitz stationery, the blue sheets from I. Magnin. Although she kept her news breezy and her sentiments to herself, she'd usually mail them with rare stamps from her collection, knowing they would speak volumes to Harrison, who understood their priceless value.

When Sara made contact it was with terse messages scribbled on file cards and stuffed into Eleanor House envelopes. Sometimes she forgot to stamp them, and when they arrived it was with postage due. They were like telegrams, just enough words to express Sara's outrage when an adopting couple wanted to exchange their orphan for one who was younger or whose eyes were a brighter color, or her quiet pride in one of her young pupils. Claire was glad her daughter shared her social conscience, gladder still that she shared anything at all with her. Occasionally her brief notes would mention a young poetry professor “with the kindest voice” who volunteered with her on weekends, and Claire thought she was finally starting to detect the normal stirrings of a young woman in Sara. Claire had to read between the lines wherever she could before Sara's communication cut off sharply with a quick “Gotta go.”

Over the following years, she made arrangements twice to meet Harrison. But once Sara surprised her with a weekend visit, and the next time, she tried to steal a quick moment to meet him for lunch when she and Lefty were in New York for the opening of his new production of the play
A Hole in the Heart,
but had been literally turned around in the lobby. Lefty whirled her full circle in the hotel's revolving door as he was arriving with Wildenstein the art dealer and an enormous Chagall between them. He'd bought the painting with his anticipated proceeds from the play.