Worthy Opponents(2)

Their son, Tucker, was born on their first anniversary. There had been complications during the birth, and the doctors told them afterwards that Hannabel wouldn’t be able to have other children, but she and Thornton were happy with their only son. Tucker was a strapping baby boy.

He didn’t have his parents’ fiery, outgoing nature, but he had an aptitude for math even as a child, and a passion for finance. He talked about being a banker or an accountant when he grew up. He learned to add and subtract before he learned to read. He had his ancestors’ bankers’ blood in his veins and none of the entrepreneurial “retail blood” of his grandfather Jeremiah or his father.

Tucker was a quiet child. He and his father had little in common, and Tucker barely saw him. Thorny was working two jobs during the week, and a third on the weekends. Hannabel stayed home to take care of their son, and she was clever at helping Thorny save his money. She made their clothes, upholstered their furniture, and made their curtains. Four years after Thorny had come home from the war, he had enough money to go to a bank, looking respectable and sufficiently financially sound to borrow the rest of what he needed to open a store. Twenty-one years after his father had had to close the most exclusive department store in the city, Thorny opened his own small, very elegant shop, far downtown from where his father’s much larger store had been. He was thirty years old and full of great ideas. He had an instinct for men’s clothing and Hannabel taught him what he needed to know about women’s apparel.

The store was an instant success and turned into a goldmine. Ten years later, in 1960, he bought a large old building near his small exclusive shop in the same poor neighborhood and turned the inside into a thing of beauty. It was like a secret treasure in a place where you’d least expect it. Brooke’s was an institution by then, famous for its luxurious, elegant clothes for men and women. The staff brought over the latest fashions from Europe and worked closely with high-end American designers, often influencing what they produced. Brooke’s had one-of-a-kind pieces. The store was a gem, although the outside of the building itself was ugly. It was on the fringes of a marginal neighborhood, so Thorny had bought the building cheap, but no one seemed to care about the location, as he had guessed they wouldn’t. Inside, the store was elegant and luxurious, and smelled of fine leather and expensive perfume. The décor was avant-garde and up-to-date. The most elegant society women in New York came from uptown to shop at Brooke’s. They knew they would always find something special there, something that no one else would be wearing, handmade knits from Italy, and evening gowns from Paris. They special-ordered dresses from Brooke’s own designers and bought alligator handbags in every color.

Thornton reveled in the sheer pleasure of what he did and what he sold. The merchandise in the store was known for its high quality and stylishness. He brought samples home to Hannabel sometimes to ask her advice, and she came into the store to give him her opinion on displays and merchandise. They were a team, in the most modern way, although Hannabel didn’t work at the store. She didn’t need to. She had an unfailing eye where fashion was concerned. Like Thornton, she knew their merchandise by heart, and she knew even better what women would want to wear next season or next year. With Hannabel’s instincts and his own, Thornton built Brooke and Son into a booming business. He fully expected his son, Tucker, to come into the business with him when he graduated from Princeton. Thorny had taken Tucker with him to Princeton as a child when he went to annual reunions. He had no trouble convincing Tucker to attend Princeton, but it was nearly impossible to get him interested in the store. Another offshoot of their gene pool ran through his veins. As he got older, the only thing that held Tucker’s attention was finance. He had no choice but to comply with his father’s demands. Thornton made it clear to his son at an early age that he expected him to work at the store. Tucker felt as though a life sentence in prison awaited him when he graduated. He begged to go to business school, just to postpone going to work at the store. Thornton granted him that wish, deciding that having a master’s degree in business might be useful for them.

Tucker married Eileen, a girl from an extremely restrained, conservative family in Boston, who had as little interest in commerce as Tucker did himself. Her family, with old money and old-fashioned ideas, frankly disapproved of Tucker’s family’s involvement in a store. Tucker was working at Brooke’s by then, and was embarrassed by it, and so was his wife. Tucker worked in the finance office, and Thornton could easily see him becoming CFO one day, but not CEO. Thornton jokingly said to Hannabel that he would just have to run the store himself until a grandson arrived who could run it with him. Tucker was never going to be that person. Eileen had no interest in fashion and wore dreary, conservative clothes like her mother. Everything she wore looked dowdy and shapeless. She wasn’t an unattractive woman, but the style in which she dressed made her seem that way, and Tucker preferred it. They were cautious about everything, not risk-takers, and they waited until Eileen was nearly thirty-nine, and Tucker nearly forty, after twelve years of marriage, to conceive their first child. They had been in no hurry to have children, often thought of and would have preferred not having any, but finally gave in to social and familial pressure. They felt that a baby would be an intrusion on their marriage.

There was no doubt in their minds that the baby would be a son, once Eileen was pregnant. Thornton was thrilled at the prospect. They didn’t even bother to consider girls’ names. They were that sure that it was going to be a baby boy. Tucker hoped he’d be a banker one day, and so did Eileen, not a “shopkeeper,” as she referred to her father-in-law with disdain. They decided to call him Spencer, a family name on Eileen’s side. Thornton had been afraid they wouldn’t have children at all and was greatly relieved at the idea of a grandson. He wanted a grandson to continue the tradition of Brooke’s. Both Tucker and Eileen were shocked when told their baby was a girl. The possibility had never occurred to them, and they named her Spencer anyway, and were sorely disappointed.