The Astor Orphan (23 page)

A daddy longlegs moved slowly, barely perceptibly, in the corner.

I could eat supper here, but Grandma hadn't prepared for a guest. I could set up an organized spot, an island in the sea of papers on the dining table, with a place mat, plate, and silverware. But, feeling guilt and sadness about abandoning Grandma, I had no appetite. I looked at one of her photo place mats that held pictures of relatives both close and distant, made meaningless to me by excessive familiarity. Aunt Janet in her wedding dress, Uncle Steve waving from behind a ship's helm, Grandma Claire as a wildly curly-haired infant on her father's lap, all her granddaughters in our square-dancing dresses under the maple on the western lawn, and so many more that had been ingrained in my memory from long study during dull dinner table conversation.

“Now, don't forget that it is thanks to your aunt Liz that you are going to this school. She contributed a substantial sum toward your tuition. I want you to remember that the next time you feel the urge to complain about her taking things from you.”

Why hadn't anyone told me that Aunt Liz was involved? This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Going away to boarding school was supposed to be a liberation from my family. It was supposed to be Grandma Claire who would rescue me. Now I would have an unpayable debt—like the one Dad owed to Uncle Harry.

As Grandma Claire walked me out after my visit, the late-afternoon sun elongated her shadow on the front stoop. She stood in the doorway, hunched over, her spindly fingers pushing against the screen door's Plexiglas.

“Well . . . Bye, dear. Write often. You'll be home before you know it. Thanksgiving is just around the corner.” Grandma was already an expert at sending children off to boarding school.

When I tried to hug her—which I didn't think I'd ever done before—her shriveled body recoiled from the physical contact. She patted my shoulder with her gnarled hand instead. “I'll come visit you soon.” Her kiss barely touched my cheek. She waved as I walked away, then called Bianca in off the stoop and let the door slam shut.

Other than Grandma Claire, there seemed to be no one around to send me off—no friends, relatives, balloons, cakes. The inanimate objects in the big house had always been more present for me than the human beings.

I decided to climb the big house's tower and bid good-bye to Rokeby from a great height.

To reach the fifth floor, I walked through the library and along the creaky back staircase with its collapsing plaster walls and dangerously low banister. The room just beneath the tower was the old schoolroom, where the Astor orphans used to have their lessons with a hired tutor—until they were old enough to be sent away to boarding schools. In the middle of this old schoolroom was a metal spiral staircase with wide wooden steps. I ascended, crunching dead wasps underfoot.

Rokeby stretched all the way to the Hudson River and beyond—we even owned some of the land under the river. To the north was Cousin Chanler's estate, and to the south, the estate that had once belonged to the Delanos.

Around the tower, some crows were now coasting on the wind like kites, flipping sideways, then flapping to straighten themselves again, seeking their balance. I felt the warm wind hitting my face, blowing through me and softening me momentarily. It was like swimming underwater. I wished it could blow through the house as well and gently undo the loneliness that ruled there.

From here, I could see the parts of Rokeby I loved and knew so well—the forest paths and streams; the niches in the brush where I used to hide and chase wild rabbits; the giant, craterlike puddle in the barnyard in whose oozing mud my cousins and I used to bathe after rainstorms. I loved those days—before I'd grown stern and angry, before I'd turned my back on the squalor at Rokeby as an enemy against which I felt compelled to build a fortress of order, hygiene, and self-discipline. I loved those days when my cousins and I used to run around the property all summer long, unsupervised, shirtless, barefoot, wild—little orphans all.

The Rokeby trees, favorites of generations, were dancing in the wind. The languorous, sprawling ginkgo, with its many tiers in which we kids would lounge and read for hours, waved its long branches. The giant white pine, which had provided shade for countless picnics and croquet matches, tried to bend its trunk slightly in a courtly bow. The double white cedar, all alone in the field between the house and the river, swayed in sad good-bye.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, grasshoppers were buzzing in the surrounding fields. The cool Catskills were silent as I struggled to stuff my bulky trunk through the back door of Grandma's Plymouth.

By eleven, we were ready to depart. I was dressed conservatively, in a kilt and blazer.

I'd tried desperately to make Mom and Dad look fashionable. Dad was wearing a suit, which I'd insisted on preapproving. I'd had to work hard to cover up his dirty white shirt collar with his jacket collar. Mom had recently cut her hair short. Today, she was sporting punky sunglasses.

Initially, Mom hadn't wanted to come along, but she agreed after Grandma Claire had explained to her that the presence of two parents would make a better impression. And Grandma wanted me to start off on the right foot.

Giselle and the baby hadn't affected our ability to act like a unified family when circumstances required it.

As we rolled along the carriage drive, I was reminded of a recurring dream that featured this driveway.

In this dream, I would walk toward the front gate. My right leg was shorter than my left, so every time I'd step on it, I'd dip low. Then I had to drag my longer leg along the ground, position it, and heave my body up again.
High, low. High, low
. I was privileged yet impoverished, cultured yet squalid, past yet present. My family was united by a common heritage and property, yet torn apart by alcoholism, competition, and infidelity. I had so many caregivers yet so much neglect. I strove to find the edges that defined me, but the lines remained blurry.

And in the dream, the driveway had changed. Instead of the winding gravel road with mild inclines, it was a series of endless, rolling hills. Each time I'd climb another hill in my crippled state, a new one would rise up before me like a wave. In this way, the edge of Rokeby kept eluding me, and I never did reach the public road.

Dad was exuberant about revisiting the institution he considered to be a great “molder of men.” Mom, on the other hand, was in her usual foul mood and kept interrupting Dad as he tried to recall his own boarding school experience.

“When my mother decided to send me off to my first boarding school, I was ten. I was simply informed one day that I would be going, and was dropped off the next.”

“You couldn't have taken a bath before going on this trip?” Mom complained as she rolled down her window.

“So sorry, dear . . . ,” Dad said in his appeasing voice. “I thought I had taken a bath this morning.”

“A bath without soap doesn't count.”

“Of course, dear. I hadn't realized. . . . Speaking of bathing, at this same boarding school—where things were rather bleak and didn't really get better with time—the students had obligatory showers and haircuts. When one master complained that my hair was unclean, I got even with him by rubbing waste oil into my hair so as to make it waterproof. It was black and smelled terrible, and wouldn't wash out!”

“Ugh!” Mom moaned. “Why
ever
did I agree to come along? I think this whole business is disgusting. Someone could come up with twelve thousand dollars for boarding school tuition, while all these years we've gone hungry! And why? Why, I ask you? Because boarding school is more necessary than food in this family?”

Dad continued, unfazed. “There was one master, Mr. Jones. . . . He was particularly cruel to the boys he found pathetic or unattractive. He'd hit them with books. There was one boy named Gooding whom this master didn't like, so he used to say, ‘Gooding, you're nothing more than a great suet pudding!'”

“Suet pudding?” Mom made a contemptuous grimace. “Was that something your ancestors used to eat? Ridiculous!”

“Mr. Jones would insult the boys until they cried. If they complained, he'd write out demerits for insolence or insubordination. One time, I decided to read Lord Charnwood's biography of Lincoln and write a report on it, because my pop had been reading it. When Pop complained to Mr. Jones that he thought he'd given me too high a grade on the report, Mr. Jones replied, ‘I wasn't giving
him
the grade. I was giving
Lord Charnwood
the grade!'”

Mom addressed me. “And you think
we're
bad parents? You'll appreciate us after spending some time in a school where the teachers will hit you and call you all sorts of names!”

“They're not allowed to hit kids anymore, Mom,” I said with a sigh.

“Oh yeah? You'll see.”

It was clear to me that Mom didn't want me to go away and she thought she could scare me out of it. I couldn't understand why she cared, as she spent so much of her time alone and so little of it with me.

To alleviate my own guilt about abandoning Mom to the devastating loneliness of Rokeby, I rationalized that I needed a fine education in order to make the fortune necessary to rescue her one day.

“The school nurse was also cruel, and a drinker,” Dad continued. “She was a large, imposing, mean woman, who gave injections and enemas with relish. She and her husband both drank, and after eight
P.M
., they wouldn't come out of their apartment, where they lived as the dorm parents of a certain dorm. They would also lock the bathroom at night, so it was necessary to pee out the window, or into a boot to be taken out in the morning. In the winter it was a problem because the dining room was right under this dorm and the pee would run down the windows and freeze yellow.”

“So that's where you learned your nasty habit of peeing out your window onto the gutter!”

M
OM WAS AWED
into sedation by the abundance of limousines that were delivering students' trunks. “The rich kids fly up, mostly from Manhattan, and arrive separately from their luggage,” Dad explained.

“Why can't I be rich like that?” Mom asked.

Not wishing to keep Mom and Dad here a moment longer, I remained distant as they got back into Grandma Claire's car. It was essential not to display to the other students anything from our life together. Any incriminating language or behavior would taint this clean slate I'd been given.

“Not everyone is so lucky, I guess,” Dad—ever viewing himself as the luckiest man alive—said sarcastically.

I felt very lucky that day.

The Brooks School looked like a country club. Its sprawling lawns, its air of affluence and privilege, filled me with a sense of unlimited possibilities. Here, I would be free from the shame and chaos of Rokeby, while I could use the more glorious aspects of my heritage to my advantage. After all, as an Aldrich, I belonged here, among other students with famous names, most of whom hailed from Manhattan's Upper East Side, where they had attended day schools like Chapin and Buckley.

As my parents pulled away, I envisioned the self-assured and intellectual person I would become here. I would spend every spare minute of my day studying, writing in my journals, and practicing my violin.

Although Rokeby, like a lonely orphan, would inevitably call me back, for the moment, I was free.