Jackie and Me(42)

something more suitable, but the sight of Jackie’s Mercury

convertible idling outside Union Station—the sight of Jackie herself in the passenger seat—closed off that avenue. It was Merrywood or bust.



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My second trip there, in contrast to the first, was conducted in the light of day, a gunmetal-blue sky with fat

freighters of cloud. This time I could appreciate the way the oaks and maples towered over us, the quiet belligerence of the magnolias and weeping cherries. Even the rhododen—

drons were flexing their shoulders.

“Look here,” I said. “Your mother knows, doesn’t she?”

“Knows what?”

“We’re just friends.”

“I don’t know what she knows.”

“Does she know about Jack?”

There was a pause. “I don’t think she’s impressed by

him.”

“But she’s never met him, has she?”

“Mummy can be quite abstract about her loathing.”

The sun fell back behind groves of first-growth beech,

chestnut, oak. We passed a red-clay tennis court, a green—

house, a horse paddock, a pool, a Cape Codder dog kennel.

At last, the driveway, with a soft exhalation, curled to a stop before a mock-Georgian edifice. Only a few decades old by that point, but the ivy had long since run wild, and the red brick was turning to chalk, and the palisade of boxwood looked as though it had been standing for centuries. So, too, did the butler, who opened the door and passed my hat to the housekeeper and asked if I wanted refreshment.

In those days, Merrywood was as populous as it was

vast. Nine bedrooms, eleven full baths, a staff of easily two dozen, a quarter of them groundskeepers. It would have been natural to cower before such scale—surely that was

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the founding intention—but for someone like me, there was

something nearly atavistic about the broad staircases, the

plaster moldings, the outsized oil portraits, even the pink soap balls in the powder rooms. I could almost believe, stepping into that foyer, that I’d been granted an alternative destiny in which good Dr. Billings lived and the Depression never was. As if to affirm the illusion, came Jackie’s stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, bearish and amiable, pumping my hand as though I had a county seat of my own. Next came

Janet Auchincloss, slight and tawny and ductile, with a single strand of pearls and a palette of flaming red nails, giving me a tolerably firm handshake of her own and telling me I had time for a quick dip in the pool if I wanted to cool off before lunch.

“But I didn’t bring any trunks,” I said.

“Oh, we can certainly lay hands on a pair of Hughdie’s,

he never wears them. No? Are you sure? Well, next time.”

Yes, it was a bit like being the prodigal Wasp, but even

as I was letting down my guard, Jackie was dragging it back up. Eye rolls. Squeezes on the wrist. In retrospect, I wonder if she wasn’t simply testing me, waiting for me to bolt.

(Where?) Seconds before we traveled into the dining room,

she whispered: “The stepmonsters and half-monsters are

joining us, too. So sorry.”

Nothing about the meal that ensued, though, was different in form or spirit from the Sunday lunches of my youth.

The flocked silence, broken by crystal clinking against china.

The atrial ticking of the grandfather clock. The beef bour—

guignon (gout special, Jackie called it), prepared in direct



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defiance of the warm weather. As for the stepmonsters and

half-monsters, they seemed not terrified but bored. If they’d been encouraged to think of me as Jackie’s suitor, the prospect had failed to rouse them, and the whole meal would have passed without incident if five-year-old Jamie hadn’t

announced between courses that he’d eaten a frog and let

loose with a belch of such force that every fork stopped in reply.

“You may leave the table,” said his mother.

He tossed his napkin onto his chair and made for freedom. No one was more envious than Janie, aged seven. “I

told him he shouldn’t,” she said.

“Boys aren’t always educable. And what about you,

Nini?” said Janet, wheeling on her stepdaughter, seventeen.

“Have you any reptiles you’d like to introduce?”

“Frogs are amphibians.”

“Your expensive education is such a comfort. Tommy?”

She turned to her stepson, fifteen. “Perhaps you have something to impart besides baseball cards.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Nothing for the good of the cause?”

“Nope.”

She gazed at him fondly. “This must have been how

Madame de Sévigné felt, presiding over the great salons of

the Place des Vosges. Mr. Billings, I don’t know if you’ve

noticed anything in particular about our staff.”

“I can’t say I’ve—”

“Unlike our Southern compères, we don’t believe in colored servants.”