Perhaps I should not have been stubborn about it but I do not see that I owed it to either of them to go through the fiddle-faddle—the trauma—of finding a lawyer and digging up witnesses and appearing in court. I would cooperate…but let them do the work.
Brian gave in once he saw that I meant it. Marian was vexed with me, stopped smiling, and avoided talking with me. Finally I stopped her when she was about to leave the living room when I came in. “Marian!”
She stopped. “Yes, Mother?”
“I want you to stop pretending to be aggrieved. I want to see you smile and hear you laugh, the way you used to. You have asked me to turn my husband over to you and I have agreed to cooperate. But you must cooperate, too. You are acting like a spoiled child. In fact, you are a spoiled child.”
“Why, how utterly unfair!”
“Girls, girls!”
I turned and looked at Brian. “I am not a girl. I am your wife of forty-seven years. While I am here, I will be treated with respect and with warmth. I don’t expect gratitude from Marian; my father taught me years ago never to expect gratitude because there is no such thing. But Marian can simulate gratitude out of politeness. Or she can move out. At once. Right this minute. If you two expect me not to fight this divorce, you can both show me some appreciation.”
I went to my room, got into bed, cried a little, then fell into a troubled sleep.
A half hour later, or an hour, or longer, I was awakened by a tap on my door. “Yes?”
“It’s Marian, Mama. May I come in?”
“Certainly, darling!”
She came in, closed the door behind her, looked at me, her chin quivering and tears starting. I sat up, put out my arms. “Come to me, dear.”
That ended any trouble with Marian. But not quite with Brian. The following weekend he pointed out that the sine qua non of an uncontested divorce was a property settlement agreed to by both parties. He had fetched home a fat briefcase. “I have the essential papers here. Shall we look them over?”
“All right.” (No use putting off a trip to the dentist.)
Brian put the briefcase down on the dining table. “We can spread them out here.” He sat down.
I sat down on his left; Marian sat down opposite me. I said, “No, Marian, I want to go over these in private. So you are excused, dear. And do please keep the children out.”
She looked blank and started to stand up. Brian reached out, stopped her. “Maureen, Marian is an interested party. Equally interested.”
“No, she’s not. I’m sorry.”
“How do you figure?”
“What you have there, what is represented by those papers, is our community property, yours and mine, what you and I have accumulated in the course of our marriage. None of it is Marian’s and I don’t care to go over it in the presence of a third party. At a later time, when she divorces you, she’ll be present at the divvy-up and I will not be. Today, Brian, it is between you and me, no one else.”
“What do you mean?—when she divorces me.”
“Correction: If she divorces you.” (She did. In 1966.) “Brian, did you fetch home an adding machine? Oh, all I really require is a sharp pencil.”
Marian caught Brian’s eye, left the room, closed the door behind her. He said, “Maureen, why do you always have to be rough on her?”
“Behave yourself, Briney. You should not have attempted to have her present for this and you know it. Now…do you want to do this politely? Or shall we wait until I can call in a lawyer?”
“I see no reason why it can’t be done politely. And even less reason why a lawyer should look at my private business.”
“And still less reason why your fiancée should look at mine. Briney, stop behaving like Woodie at age six. How did you plan on whacking this up?”
“Well, first we must plan on the marriage allotments for the kids. Seven, that is. And Marian’s five. Six, now.”
(Each time we had “rung the cash register”—received a baby bounty from the Ira Howard Foundation—Brian had started a bookkeeping account for that child, letting that amount enhance on his books at 6 percent compounded quarterly, then passed on the enhanced amount to that child as a wedding present—about three times the original baby bounty. In the meantime Brian had the use of the money as working capital for eighteen or more years…and, believe me, Brian could always make working capital pay more than 6 percent, especially after 1918 when he had Theodore’s predictions to guide him. Just one word—“Xerox” or “Polaroid”—could mean a fortune, known ahead of time.)
“Wups! Not out of this pile, Briney. Richard received his marriage allotment from us when he married Marian. Her children by Richard are our grandchildren. What about our other grandchildren? I haven’t counted lately but I think we have fifty-two. Are you planning to subsidize all fifty-two out of what we own today?”
“The situation is different.”
“It certainly is. Brian, you are trying to favor five of our grandchildren at the expense of all our other grandchildren and all our remaining unmarried children. I won’t permit it.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“No, you will not. It will be a real judge, in a real court. Or you will treat all our children equally and not attempt to favor five grandchildren while ignoring forty-seven others.”
“Maureen, you’ve never behaved this way in the past.”
“In the past you never broke up our partnership. But now that you have done so, that breakup will be on terms that strike both of us as equitable…or you can tell it to the judge. Brian, you can’t cast me off like an old shoe and then expect me to continue to accept your rulings as docilely as I have done all these years. I say again: Quit behaving like Woodie as a child. Now…stipulating that we have agreed, or will agree, on what is earmarked for marriage allowances, how do you want to divide up the rest of it?”
“Eh? Three equal portions. Of course.”
“You’re giving me two portions? That’s generous of you, but more than I had expected.”
“No, no! A share for you, a share for me, a share for Marian. Even all the way around.”
“Where is the fourth share? The one for my husband.”
“You’re getting married again?”
“No immediate plans. I may.”
“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Briney, Briney! Your needle is stuck in a groove. Can’t you get it through your head that you cannot force me to accept your fiancée as co-owner of the property you and I have accumulated together? Half of it is mine. Fair is fair.”
“Damn it, Mo’, you cooked and kept house. I am the one who got out there and struggled to build up a fortune. Not you.”
“Where did the capital come from, Briney?”
“Huh?”
“Have you forgotten? How did we ‘ring the cash register’? For that matter how did it come about that you knew ahead of time the date of Black Tuesday? Did I have something to do with it? Briney, I’m not going to argue it because you don’t want to be fair about it. You keep trying to hand over to your new love some of my half of what you and I accumulated together. Let’s take it into court and let a judge decide. We can do it here, a community property state, or in California, another community property state, or in Missouri where you can count on it that a judge would give me more than half. In the meantime I will ask for temporary alimony—”
“Alimony!”
“—and child support for six children while the court determines what my share, plus alimony, plus child support, adds up to.”
Brian looked astounded. “You intend to strip me bare? Just because I knocked up Marian?”
“Certainly not, Brian. I don’t even want alimony. What I do want…and expect…and insist on—or we go to court over it—is this: after an equitable arrangement for support of the children and for their marriage allowances, based on what we have done for our married children in the past and based on what you are now sending to Bett
y Lou for our children in Kansas City…once the kids are taken care of, I want exactly half, right down the middle. Otherwise we let a judge settle it.”
Brian looked grim. “Very well.”
“Good. Make up two lists, two halves, and then we can draw up a formal property settlement, one we can file with the court. Where do you intend to divorce me? Here?”
“If you have no objection. Easiest.”
“All right.”
It took Brian all that weekend to make the two property lists. On Monday night he showed them to me. “Here they are. Here is a summary list of my half, and here is yours.”
I looked at them and could see at once that the totals matched… And I suppressed a need to whistle at the totals. I had not guessed even to the nearest million how wealthy we were.
“Brian, why is this list mine and that list yours?”
“I’ve kept on my list the properties I want to handle. On your list are things that don’t require my expertise, such as commercial bonds and municipals. It doesn’t matter; it’s an even split.”
“Since it is even, let’s just swap them. I’ll take everything on your list, you take the half you listed for me.”
“Look, I explained to you why I—”
“Then, if there are properties on my list that you really want, you buy them from me. At a mutually agreeable price.”
“Mo’, do you think I am trying to cheat you?”
“Yes, dear, you have been trying to cheat me from the moment this matter of a divorce and property settlement came up.” I smiled at him. “But I shan’t let you; you would regret it later. Now take those two lists and rearrange them. Make the division so meticulously fair that you really do not care which list I take, which list I leave to you. Or, if you prefer it, I will make the division and you can take your choice. But you are not going to put all of the goodies into one list and then claim that the list with the goodies is yours. So—Do I make the lists and you choose? Or do you make them and I choose?”
It took him a week to do it, and the poor man almost died of frustration. But at last he produced new lists.
I looked at them. “This suits you, Briney? You now have our community property divided so perfectly that you really don’t care which list I choose?”
He smiled wryly. “Let’s say that I will wince and shudder and bleed equally either way.”
“Poor Briney. You remind me of the donkey and the two piles of hay. There are ample liquid assets in each list; you can buy from me anything dear to your heart.” I reached for one list while watching his eyes—then picked up the other list. “Here’s my half. Let’s start in on the paperwork.”
Brian squawked again when he wanted to buy from me some of the items on my list and I agreed to sell but insisted on dickering over the prices. But my memory serves me well, and I had made a point of remembering and looking up the name “D. D. Harriman” after I heard Theodore mention it on that sad, glad, mad Sunday he went away and never came back. At the time we divided our property I knew exactly which companies Mr. Harriman controlled, whether they were listed on the NYSE or not.
So I sold Brian what he wanted, but not at nominal book value. At replacement value, plus a reasonable profit. I’m not totally ignorant about business. But Brian had never left enough cash in my hands for me to treat it as capital. However, for years I had found it entertaining to speculate on paper. The game made reading the Wall Street Journal quite entertaining.
Brian divorced me the middle of 1946 and I went back to Kansas City. He did not hold a grudge and neither did I and neither did Marian. Briney had not truly been a bad boy; he had simply fought as hard for Marian as he had once fought for me…and I had done the same, once I realized that I was on my own and that my beloved husband was no longer my champion.
No point in holding grudges. Once the ship lifts, all bills are paid.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Starting Over
My daughter Susan married Henry Schultz on Saturday, August second 1952, in Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, The Paseo at Sixty-third in Kansas City. Brian was there and gave his daughter in marriage; Marian stayed behind in Dallas, with her children…and, I must add, with an acceptable excuse: She was at or near term with her latest baby, and could reasonably have asked Brian to stay home. Instead she urged him not to disappoint Susan.
I’m not sure Susan would have noticed, but I would have.
Over half of my children were there, most of them with their spouses, and about forty of my grandchildren and their spouses, along with a sprinkling of great-grandchildren—and one great-great-grandchild. Not bad, for a woman whose official age was forty-seven. Not bad even for a woman whose actual age was seventy years and four weeks.
Impossible? Not quite. My Nancy gave birth to her Roberta on Christmas Day 1918. Roberta married at sixteen (Zachary Barstow) and bore Anne Barstow on November 2, 1935. Anne Barstow married Eugene Hardy and had her first child, Nancy Jane Hardy, on June 22, 1952.
Name Birth Date Relationship
Maureen Johnson (Smith) Jul. 4, 1882 great-great-grandmother
Nancy Smith (Weatheral) Dec. 1, 1899 great-grandmother
Roberta Weatheral (Barstow) Dec. 25, 1918 grandmother
Anne Barstow (Hardy) Nov. 2, 1935 mother
Nancy Jane Hardy Jun. 22, 1952 daughter
According to the archives Nancy Jane Hardy (Foote) gave birth to Justin Foote, first of that name, on the last day of the twentieth century, December 31, 2000. I married his (and my remote descendant, Justin Foote the forty-fifth, in marrying into the Lazarus Long family in Gregorian A.D. 4316, almost twenty-four centuries later—my hundred-and-first year by my personal time line.
The Schultz family was almost as well represented at Susan’s wedding as the Johnson family, even though most of them had to fly in from California or from Pennsylvania. But they could not show five generations, all in one room. I was delighted that we could, and I did not hang back when the photographer, Kenneth Barstow, wanted a group picture of us. He seated me in the middle with my great-great-granddaughter in my lap, while my daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter hovered around us, like angels around Madonna and Child.
Whereupon we got scolded. Ken kept shooting pictures until Nancy Jane got bored with it and started to cry. At that point Justin Weatheral moved in and said, “Ken, may I see your camera?”
“Certainly, Uncle Justin.” (Honorary uncle—first cousin twice removed, I believe. The Howard Families were beginning to reach the point where everyone was related to everyone else…with those inevitable defects through inbreeding that later had to be weeded out.)
“You can have it back in a moment. Now, ladies—you especially, Maureen—what I have to say is strictly among ourselves, persons registered with the Foundation. Look around you. Is the lodge tyled? Are there any strangers among us?”
I said, “Justin, admission to this reception is by card only. Almost anyone could have been at the wedding. But it takes a card to get inside this room. I sent them out for our family; Johanna Schultz handled it for Henry’s relatives.”
“I got in without a card.”
“Justin, everybody knows you.”
“That’s my point. Who else got in without a card? Good old Joe Blow, whom everybody knows, of course. Is that Joe behind that table, ladling out punch?”
I answered, “Of course there are hired staff inside. Musicians. The caterer’s people. And such.”
“‘And such.’ Exactly.” Justin lowered his voice, spoke directly to us five and to Ken. “You all know the efforts all of us are making to keep our ages optimized. You, Maureen, how old are you?”
“Uh…forty-seven.”
“Nancy? Your age, dear?”
Nancy started to say, “Fifty-two.” She got out the first syllable, bit it off. “Oh, shucks, Papa Weatheral, I don’t keep track of my age.”
“Your age, Nancy,” Justin insisted.
“Let me see. Mama had me a
t fifteen, so—How old are you, Mama?”
“Forty-seven.”
“Yes, of course. I’m thirty-two.”
Justin looked at my granddaughter Roberta, my great-granddaughter Anne, and my great-great-granddaughter Nancy Jane, and said, “I’m not going to ask the ages of you three, because any way you answer would emphasize the impossibility of reconciling your very existence with Nancy’s claimed age and Maureen’s. Speaking for the trustees I can say how pleased we are with how thoroughly all of you are carrying out the purpose of Ira Howard’s will. But, again speaking for the trustees, I must again emphasize the necessity of never calling attention to our peculiarity. We must try to avoid having anyone notice that we are in any way different.” He sighed, then went on:
“So I am forced to say that I am sorry to see you five ladies all in one room at one time, and to add that I hope that it will never happen again. And I shiver at the idea that you are being photographed together. If that photograph wound up in the society section of next Sunday’s Journal Post, it could ruin the careful efforts of all our cousins to avoid calling attention to ourselves. Ken, don’t you think it would be well to kill that picture?”
Ken Barstow was outgunned; I could see that he was about to let the Foundation’s chief officer have his own way.
But I was not outgunned. “Hey! Justin, you stop that! You’re chairman of the board, surely. But nobody appointed you God. Those photos were taken for me and my kids. You kill them, or get Ken to, and I’m going to beat you over the head with his camera.”
“Now, Maureen—”
“‘Now Maureen’ my tired feet! We’ll keep it out of the papers, certainly. But I want five copies of Ken’s best shot, one for each of us. And Ken is entitled to a copy for his own files, if he wants it.”
We agreed on that and Justin asked for one to place in the archives.
I thought at the time that Justin was being unnecessarily cautious. I was wrong. Justin, in instituting and stubbornly pressing the policy later known as the Masquerade, caused our cousins to enter the Interregnum of the Prophets with 80 percent having public ages under forty, only 3 percent with public ages over fifty. Once the Prophet’s thought police were active it became both difficult and dangerous to switch backgrounds and change identities; Justin’s foresight made it usually unnecessary to attempt it.