After dinner, Charles invited Peter to indulge in a snifter of Armagnac on the open-air porch—a 1923 Laberdolive from Gascony, which he and Anne had discovered while celebrating their twentieth anniversary in France, and so reserved for the most special occasions. Snifters in hand, he found Whitney gazing out the window of the dining room, and paused. “I don’t want to stifle you,” he said apologetically. “But the comfort we enjoy at our dinner table will not always be available in the social world of Peter’s business. Like it or not, he won’t be making his career among avatars of Bobby Kennedy.”
Despite his gentle delivery, Whitney felt patronized. “I know that,” she said stiffly.
“I’m sure you do,” her father responded with the same paternal calm. “Nonetheless it’s awkward to disagree with your husband in front of others, especially when it’s a matter of first impressions. Most often you’ll be the youngest woman at the table. As you and Clarice were tonight.”
Still touchy, Whitney heard—or imagined—a tacit comparison. “Clarice barely said a word.”
Charles smiled faintly. “A sign of her social intelligence. Including, I thought, one helpful intervention. She didn’t want to attenuate any discord . . .”
“Especially when she has no opinion.”
The remark was sharper than Whitney had intended. Charles regarded her closely. “As Clarice remarked to your sister, Whitney, jealousy is unbecoming—especially of your closest friend. It shouldn’t threaten you to acknowledge that Clarice has considerable tact and acuity, and deserves an enviable place in the world. Even at the price of elevating some benighted male.” He signed with resignation. “A somewhat thankless job, many say these days. But helping a husband’s career is no small thing. I’ve seen unhappy women—alcoholic, neurotic, or just plain shrill—derail a spouse at crucial moments. And others whose touch with people eases the way with such grace and subtlety that no one discerns the art in it.”
Suddenly, Whitney imagined herself in finishing school, learning to ease the way of men. “Like Mom.”
Charles gave a slight but emphatic nod. “As I made clear, I never forget what I owe her. Nor will Peter.”
Unsure of what to say, Whitney lowered her eyes. Gently, Charles kissed her forehead. “I’m very happy for you, and sorry if I upset you.” He paused again, perhaps waiting for her to speak, then went off to join Peter.
Whitney faced the living room. Clarice and Janine were there, her sister sipping port and conducting what appeared to be a somewhat one-sided conversation. Feeling Anne at her side, Whitney sensed that she was the object of a parental pas de deux. Preempting this, she inquired softly, “Have you ever felt stifled, Mom?”
Anne’s puzzled look contained a hint of asperity. “‘Stifled’?” she repeated. “Lord no. Your father has given me a wonderful life—love, children, and more privilege than even I could imagine. Never once have we disagreed about anything fundamental. Instead I was free to fill the role most natural to women.” Her voice eased. “To these so-called feminists, I know, that sounds like a gilded cage. But I’ve had a life any generation of women in the history of the world would have envied—freedom from drudgery and enslavement, the dangers of childbirth, or the ravages of disease. Within my area of responsibility, I was autonomous, a full and equal partner. You and Janine, I devoutly hope, got the best of us both.”
Beneath this statement, Whitney sensed, lay an inquiry she was not inclined to acknowledge. Instead, she asked, “But when you were supervising Billie, or seeing to our activities, didn’t you ever want to be doing something else?”
“No,” Anne replied firmly. “I was doing what I wished my own mother had been able to do for me. Watching over you was all I wanted, and more than I’d had.”
Though Anne seldom spoke of it, Whitney understood that Elaine Padgett’s death from the ravages of cancer, as the fourteen-year-old girl watched with helpless dread, was central to forming the mother she knew. Curious, Whitney asked, “Was that why you and Dad had Janine so soon?”
Perhaps because of Whitney’s quiet tone, or the privacy created by candlelight and shadow, Anne seemed to relax. “This may sound odd to you, but I’d wanted children for as long as I can remember. For a woman not to, I think, betrays a terrible selfishness. And once you girls were born, I had the luxury of caring more about you and your father than myself. It felt quite liberating, really.”
The remark surfaced a memory that Whitney had not parsed for years. Well short of adolescence, Janine was pushing a toy baby carriage and baby down the driveway. Watching through the kitchen window, Anne had mused to her husband, “The maternal instinct comes early, doesn’t it?” Hearing this, the child Whitney had wondered when those feelings would bloom inside her, and then wondered at Janine’s. Given that Janine often ridiculed or picked on her, Whitney hoped that she would be nicer to her kids.
“I had a professor,” Whitney told Anne, “who questioned all that. She argued that women aren’t discontent because of some personal or psychological problem, but because of societal assumptions that put them in a straightjacket.”
Her mother turned to her with eyebrows arched. “I don’t know your professor, Whitney. But I once saw Betty Friedan on television. A hideous-looking woman, obviously compensating for her unhappiness through a sharp and aggressive manner. I would have felt sad for her but for all the women she’d confused in order to justify herself. I wonder if she likes men at all.”
Though Anne was trying to be good-humored, Whitney heard an undercurrent of anger. “Professor Claymore wasn’t like that, Mom. She has a husband, but she also has a career.”
“And so do I, Whitney. But mine acknowledges that men and women are different.” She paused, her manner becoming patient and tutorial. “Early on, I set out to establish my own relationship with your father’s business associates. One way was to ferret out their interests, then ask questions that allowed them to reveal themselves.
“The men were often quite different, and sometimes difficult, which required me to be a bit of a chameleon. So it was better if whoever the man was never asked a single question about me, but left knowing that he’d had a fascinating conversation with an intelligent and sympathetic woman.” Anne smiled reflectively. “If you know men at all, you’ll be wholly unsurprised by how well that works.”
“But didn’t you ever want to tell them what you thought?”
“Why would I?” Anne’s voice softened. “However I appear, I’m a very private person. I never really wanted people to know that much about me. If you’re a woman that’s easier to get by with.”
“And men are different.”
“Oh, yes. Your dad needed to be known, and to make a name in business. Not just because he wanted to build the firm, but because that was his essential nature. He arranges his surroundings as he wants them to be.” Anne’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “In his benign way, my father said that Charles was heaven-sent to keep our family’s blood from thinning out. Looking at our family tonight, he’s certainly done that. You girls were all the credentials I ever needed.”
For an instant, Whitney chafed at the word “credentials.” But what followed was an intuitive sense of her mother’s loneliness, even her need for Janine as a surrogate. Without quite knowing why, she drew Anne to her, feeling her mother’s instinctive resistance to closeness, perhaps fear of vulnerability, before she yielded to her daughter’s embrace.
“I love you, Mom,” Whitney told her.