The Astor Orphan (8 page)

I walked along the tracks behind Dad as he scanned the ground with a flashlight. “Looks like the place has been picked clean. . . .” Dad had already been down here several times, and taken loads of plywood and cases of Schaefer beer that had been spewed from the derailed freight train.

“Warren Delano was killed in a train accident on these tracks,” Dad mused. Warren Delano—FDR's uncle and president of the Delano Coal Company—had lived on the estate that bordered Rokeby to the south. “It was 1920. Warren Delano was on his way down to the post office to pick up the mail with a four-in-hand, and the horses bolted, as a ‘twentieth century'—a crack, express passenger train—was coming through at about ninety miles an hour, with no stop in Barrytown. It would go from New York to Chicago in seventeen hours. . . . It didn't help that Delano was a famous driver successful in racing competitions. He couldn't control those horses once they'd panicked and bolted. When they ran right into that train, all four horses, together with Warren, were caught in the wheels and dragged along. . . . The irony was that Warren Delano was on the board of directors of the Atlantic Coast Line consolidated railroad that ran from north Virginia to Florida.”

“Dad?” I asked anxiously. “Can you get arrested for taking stuff off the tracks?”

“Me, arrested? Ha!”

Courtesy of The City College of New York, CUNY

O
h good evening, dear . . .
hiccup . . 
. You're jus' in time to help with the dinner party. . . .” Grandma Claire welcomed me as I rushed in through her kitchen door, after having unpacked our groceries up at the big house. “Whaaaa . . . ?” she asked guiltily, in reaction to my scowl.

She was oscillating from side to side by the stove, as if unable to choose which way to fall. As she turned unsteadily to face me, I saw that her eyes had that milky, sleepy look, with her lids half closed. She seemed to grin through me. Her nose was red and swollen, in contrast to the deathly whiteness of her complexion. Because her posture had been permanently lost to a hunched back, her rocking gave her the aspect of a wrestler preparing to take me down.

On her mother's side, Grandma Claire was descended from the Fishes, a very old New York family founded by an Englishman named Preserved Fish. Born in the 1760s, he'd been thus named because as a boy he'd survived a shipwreck and been plucked from the sea while crossing the Atlantic from England. Grandma Claire's great-great-grandfather Nicholas Fish had been Alexander Hamilton's fellow student at King's College—what is now Columbia University—and had served as an executor of Hamilton's estate. As a result, Nicholas named his son, who was born shortly afterward, Hamilton. He was the first of many generations of Fishes who were politicians named Hamilton. Hamilton Fish I served as secretary of state under Ulysses S. Grant. His grandson was Grandma Claire's uncle Hamilton Fish III—known to us as “Uncle Ham”—who served in the U.S. Congress as a Republican from 1920 until 1945, and was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and one of America's leading isolationists throughout the 1930s.

But despite her distinguished—if in the latter case morally dubious—lineage, and the fact that she still had enough money to live comfortably and help with her grandchildren, Grandma Claire's life at Rokeby was difficult. The setting, with its long, dusty driveways riddled with potholes, was rustic. And Dad, whom she wanted so desperately to control, broke every rule of propriety that she held sacred.

So to help ease the stress, Grandma Claire drank. Though the drinking made her prone to sudden rages, I would most often find her asleep in her bed when I stopped by after school, her face pale and drained of life, her nose red as if she'd been crying. She'd open her filmy eyes and hiccup constantly in alarmed little gasps.

Grandma Claire had moved permanently to Rokeby—more affordable than renting an apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side—once Aunt Liz had finished Chapin and gone off to college. With Great-Grandma Margaret and Grandpa Dickie dead, Grandma Claire had become one of Rokeby's owners. As such, she was drawn to the property, like a concerned parent.

Grandma Claire now pointed to boxes of Triscuits and Wheat Thins and a chunk of cheddar cheese. “Uhhh . . .” She moaned in confusion as she took an unsteady step. “Oh dear!” Her movements were slow, her nasal breathing loud. “Could you take these out? . . . I'll give you twenty dollars later.” She frequently slipped us kids payment for helping out at her dinner parties. We would set and clear the table, pass the hors d'oeuvres, and wash the dishes. It was tacitly understood that the money would also ensure our good manners.
Be sure to curtsy and smile
.

I was too angry at her for “getting bombed” before a dinner party to give my usual modest refusal:
You don't have to
. I always ended up accepting the money anyway.

The first thing you saw as you entered Grandma's main room was the bar. Set up on a narrow table against the back of the orange “dog sofa,” it was well stocked with Ocean Spray cranberry juice, Clamato, spicy V8, gin, bourbon, and pink sherry in a glass decanter.

Maggie and Diana played jacks on the floor in the recreation area—complete with a black-and-white TV—behind the sofas where sat Mom, Aunt Olivia, Uncle Harry, and an older couple who'd been family friends for decades.

Dad hadn't yet appeared, but I knew he would because he never turned down a free meal.

With Grandma in such a state, I hurried back into the kitchen, now steamed up by the boiling pots.

Grandma Claire was wearing a white canvas apron that said
COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF
and sported black burn marks along some of its edges.

I grabbed her oven mitts and removed the leg of lamb from the oven, placing it on the stovetop next to a pot of boiling artichokes, a dish of baked scallops, and a pan of sautéed asparagus. The scent of rosemary rose from its sizzling juices. Grandma could prepare these dishes in her sleep, or in any other condition.

The table was set with custom-made place mats, which bore photos from Grandma's youth and childhood—now distorted by years of spills. Some photos were of the grandchildren, and others were of Dad, Uncle Harry, and their sister, Aunt Liz, as kids. There were still others, black-and-white photos, of a young Grandma Claire, her four siblings, and their parents. The blank spots in the mats were like the ghosts of banished relatives.

G
RANDMA WAS AN
expert at seating arrangements. “Now, Ala”—her voice sounded hollow and slightly breathless—“you're there—
hiccup
—next to me.” Grandma was very protective of Mom. She would refer to her as “poor Ala” and keep her close by, under her wing. “And Olivia—
hiccup
—I hope you can—
hiccup
—forgive me. I've squeezed you in between your husband and your brother-in-law.”

“Oh, that's just
fab
ulous, Claire! We can talk about the Porcellian Club and Haybines!” she muttered through a crooked smirk, but her sarcasm was lost on Grandma.

“And Teddy is at the head of the table. But oh, now, where
is
Teddy, damn it all?” Grandma always sat at one end of the table, while Dad, being the oldest, got the honor of sitting at the other.

Just then, Dad rushed in with bits of hay still in his hair. He apologized for his appearance. “. . . Just didn't get a chance to change.”

“Oh, no need to explain yourself. It's not as if anyone here doesn't
know
you,” Aunt Olivia said, rolling her eyes.

Amid the general clatter of knives and forks against china, the conversation revolved around the least controversial subject—the past. Dad took the lead with stories of his outrageously naughty childhood.

Dad hardly ever asserted his opinions in front of his siblings or his mother. If he did, or if he received any positive attention from other people for his wit and charm, his immediate family would mock or contradict him. It was easier to avoid humiliation by keeping quiet or talking about noncontroversial matters, and on the subject of his childhood hijinks, everyone could agree.

Once, at the age of four, during a lunch party at his great-aunt's, Dad had locked himself in the bathroom and flushed the key down the toilet.

“I was trying to figure out a way to climb out the window—which had no ledge—and get back in through another window. I was going to try to grab the next window and swing over. There were hasty consultations audible from behind the door as to what could possibly be done. It was a really solid door, about two inches thick, and there was no easy way to get through it. Finally the superintendent was called. It was a Sunday afternoon, so he came with ill grace to take the door down. He pulled the pins, and pried the door off the hinge side, and got it out.”

Aunt Olivia erupted into histrionic, though not unfriendly, laughter. “Oh
hon
estly! I don't believe you were
that
awful!”

“Oh, he was. . . .” Grandma sighed, her cloudy eyes still distant. Her body was curled up in her seat, her shoulders stooped, her abdomen caved in. Every part of her was gnarled.

“Oh
do
tell us another,” Aunt Olivia teased.

Dad told about the time when, at the age of four or five, he had been dragged along to his uncle's wedding reception at an incredibly narrow Manhattan brownstone. He had grabbed handfuls of brightly colored canapés that he'd assumed were pastries, and was disappointed to discover that they were actually salt fish.

“There was nowhere to put said canapés, so I just jammed them into my pants and jacket pockets. There were quite a lot of them, and with the pressure of people pushing up against me, this stuff started to ooze out, and naturally got onto other people's clothes, which they began to notice. People were starting to get mad at me, and chase after me, at which point I had to escape. So I snuck upstairs. But since the place was so full of people—even upstairs—the only way I could go was out. So I climbed out onto a cornice. At some point, somebody noticed me up there, and a commotion erupted on the street, while from inside there was this consternation among the guests, who were trying to get me back inside. But since nobody wanted to climb out onto that gutter to get me, I sat pretty up there until eventually I had to come in because I wanted something to eat. At that point, I got into serious trouble and was taken home. And that was the end of the party!”

“Speaking of delinquency,” Uncle Harry interrupted. “When do you plan on replacing the roof on the pump house?”

Grandma Claire bared her large teeth, ready to join in the attack on Dad.
You, Teddy, are a disappointment, a miserable excuse for a human being!
But, like a faithful guard dog trying to prove its worth, Mom jumped in first.

“Yes,” she barked, “the pump will break and we'll be left with no water. But of course Teddy isn't concerned about that! What does
he
ever use water for?” Mom tended to have a very poor grasp of mechanical details but was preternaturally provoked by Dad's imperfections.

“Gee, I mean, that piston pump's been there since the thirties,” Dad now answered as meekly as he could to avert a quarrel. As much as Dad loved to stir the pot, he avoided direct confrontation at all costs. “I'd like to install a submersible. And to do that, I have to pull out over two hundred feet of steel pipe, which requires that the roof be removed. . . .”

Just as I planned one day to rescue Mom from Rokeby, I felt guilty that I didn't stand up to the family when they ganged up on Dad. When I was alone, I would practice what I would say to them if I had the courage.
I don't see any of you fixing anything. If you don't like his work, why don't you pay professionals to do it? If you don't like his friends, you don't have to speak to them
. But I said nothing. I continually failed as his one and only protector.

A
FTER I'D CLEARED
the plates and piled them into the warm, soapy water in one side of Grandma's great cast-iron sink, everyone retired to the sofas for more conversation and coffee. Grandma Claire made her usual request of me. “Oh, Alexandra, do play us a little something! I'd love to hear my favorite, ‘Long, Long Ago'!”

Reluctantly, I took out my violin. I usually brought it down with me for parties, knowing I'd be asked to play. The folk melody “Long, Long Ago” was from the beginning of volume one of the Suzuki method books, one of the first songs I'd ever learned to play—after “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Lightly Row.”

A general hush had already filled the room when Aunt Olivia leaned over to Grandma Claire and whispered loudly enough for all to hear, “Will Alexandra be playing us a little ‘Twinkle'?” She giggled shrilly, then put her finger to her lips. “Shhh . . . ,” she said to herself, and pretended to suppress more giggles.