Surviving High Society
Prologue
Life always has two sides: comedy and tragedy. Take my life, for example. It has been filled with such outrageous tragedy that the overall story has turned the corner to become comedy. And it has been such bad comedy that it is pure soap opera, worthy of waterfalls of tears or laughter, depending on your mood.
My basic philosophy mirrors that of Josh, one of my stepson’s best friends. With my stepson as a passenger, Josh totally destroyed his car on a country road in 1995, but both seventeen-year-old boys emerged unscathed. Josh, who suddenly owned a twisted pile of metal, clapped his hands and immediately declared with a big grin, “Well, I guess that’s the end of that one! Damn, but we’re going to have to walk home!” Admit defeat, declare victory that you’re alive, laugh, and keep on trucking!
It turned out that being born illegitimately was the least of my problems. There is little question that my natural mother, Maxie, used her pregnancy with me to try to pressure my very married father, Charles, to divorce his wife and marry her. The plan didn’t work. Although Maxie eventually got what she wanted (marriage to Charles), she discovered it was not forever, as Charles had gone on to another affair and. I had been a wasted effort; Maxie’s anger at the man to whom she had given her heart and soul never subsided, and she never was able to move beyond Charles’s betrayal and live a truly full life. To add insult to injury, she was now responsible for her second child by Charles: Jonathan, a handsome boy who was an everyday reminder of the man who had done Maxie so wrong. Unfortunately for Jonathan, his mother often vented her rage toward him with physical attacks aided and abetted by her second husband. But Jonathan, had inherited his father’s logical mind, which he used to step around Maxie’s emotional problems and build a satisfying life for himself. The bottom line was that both of Maxie’s children, Jonathan and I, concluded that making lemonade out of lemons allowed us to disregard the history of our beginnings, and we became productive, happy adults.
I was adopted into a wacky, moneyed, blue-blooded family in Connecticut. My brother, another adopted youngster who came from the same agency I did, arrived a year later. My world contained many rich people, some of them famous: Katharine Hepburn, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lord Louis Mountbatten. I came to learn that many of these people wore public faces—even in their private lives—that hid their true personas. Quite a few sought emotional security by amassing fortunes, in the belief that their money would be an unassailable moat that would shield them from the unwashed and unknown.
The biggest lesson I learned in my younger years concerned the power of money. Lots of money could buy diamonds and wonderful trips abroad, but in my case it also bought plans for the premature deaths of both my adoptive brother and me. Although our adoptive mother’s convoluted and vicious plans for our futures did not work out precisely as she planned, those plans made life much more difficult for both of us.
However, my spirit survived, buoyed by the unconditional love and wry humor of my adoptive father, who died when I was twenty-two. After a long and painful life, my brother died in 2007. I ran from supposed insanity for twenty-three years, had a doomed relationship with a cousin of Ernest Hemingway, and then fell in love with a blue-eyed Irishman, originally from Chicago, whose hand was holding the hand of his red-haired ten-year-old son. The two of us nearly went bankrupt, frazzled banks and probate courts, and legally sold estate Tiffany diamond jewelry we did not own. By 2002, we had found my natural family and discovered the final details of a medical scam that lasted for thirty-eight years and could have killed me.
The luxury of realizing that I’ve done well is now mine. I have a loving family, a paid-up house, and good health. I also get to play bridge and golf with nice people at a country club. It seems the cat likes me, too.
I can’t ask for anything more.