Great Families

Robert Osborne

“There is so much weight to these things,” Molly told me after the funeral of her mother. “It’s oppressive.”

Today, as with that day sixteen years ago, everything is jumbled and chaotic. The lid of the old Steinway is stacked with unlabeled boxes. The sword Molly’s great-great-grandfather captured on the battlefield at Gettysburg leans against the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the tarnished iron of the scabbard further dimmed by the bubble wrap I’ve taped around it. Where I’ve removed the daguerreotypes of Molly’s long dead relatives from the walls, faint outlines remain as if of their ghosts. Half the furniture is already on the moving truck, but I’ve kept the things we really need like the wingbacks that lord over the living room, the settee the cats like, and the brass clock sitting patiently by the cherry wood bar cart (also very much needed).

“Dad, why are we getting rid of Mom’s stuff?” Trevor asks me.

“I’m not getting rid of it. I’m just moving some of it to storage.”

After her mother died and we drew back the velvet curtains of her mother’s home in Arlington Heights, Molly physically sagged as we surveyed all the old furniture and ephemera packed into the house like a 3D jigsaw puzzle. A lifetime of things, generations really, each with their own meaning, each freighted and burdened.

All those items became ours, and today I sag under the same weight, all that history now in my loft apartment, all of it screaming: Molly. It’s too much. Throwing the furniture out or selling it aren’t options, but neither is keeping everything. And so, I’ve been slowly replacing everything, moving items to storage in shifts, diminishing Molly into something I can handle, one piece of furniture at a time.

Trevor hasn’t emotionally processed his mother’s death. Or maybe he has, and I’m the one who hasn’t. He sits now in front of the television, his arms around his girlfriend Madeline as they watch some anime movie. It bothers me that Madeline is blonde and white, a young woman right out of middle America except with heavy eye makeup and an expensive manicure, and also the fact that she lives on the Upper West Side and has probably never been to the Midwest. Trevor’s mom was blonde and white, too, so to be bothered by Madeline’s appearance shows how far my hypocrisy will go. But I’d dated a Latina, a South Asian, and three Black girls before I fell in love with Molly. The white girl just happens to be the one I ended up with. Trevor has only ever dated white girls.

Since Molly’s death a year ago, he’s kind of gone on his way. His grades dipped a bit. He stays out a little later than he used to, but I haven’t really seen him mourn. I know I should be concerned about the lack of outward sadness, but we each grieve in our own way. He seems heavier, more mature, more determined to get on with his life.

Me, I miss Molly every day. Prior to Molly’s death, I could count the times I’ve cried in my adult life on one hand, but now it feels like it’s all I do. I keep it to myself. When Trevor’s around, I’m a rock.

“You two want some lasagna?” I ask. I’m all about the casseroles. Molly used to do the cooking, and it’s about my least favorite thing, so I’ve figured out how to minimize it. Big pots of things, big pans of things, and then there is always delivery.

“We’re going out, Dad.”

“It’s a school night.”

Trevor doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes. He just goes back to watching television and pulls his girlfriend a little closer.

A few years ago, this decorating blog came by the loft for a photo shoot. I reluctantly agreed to it because I knew it was important to Molly and she was going to do it, anyway. For certain things, I had absolutely no veto. This was one of those things and so I sat around the apartment, posing awkwardly, as these two photographers took pictures of everything in the loft, including me. The old family Bible; Molly’s family, not mine. All the Queen Anne chairs and the settee, of course. The Chippendale armoire. I was wearing a suit because I had come from work and didn’t feel like changing, and because I had no idea what you wore to something like this. I wondered if I looked like some family administrator standing there in front of one of the toile upholstered wingbacks.

The two photographers pointed their camera at everything, commenting on what an amazing collection of late colonial furniture we had, and what an amazing family she came from.

They clicked away, but then paused at the lineage society documents. Molly had them framed, and they lined a wall, under the scattered light of one of the more intricate chandeliers Molly restored. Daughters of the American Revolution. Colonial Dames. The New England Society. The Mayflower Society. These social clubs all cleaned themselves up, of course. Blacks, Asians, Jews, all were theoretically welcome now, assuming they had the proper ancestry. I wasn’t sure about the Confederate societies, but Molly’s family made their money cattle ranching in Nebraska, so her family seemed to have steered clear of the more egregious crimes of this country, or at least the well-documented ones.

“Can you both stand next to this wall?” the photographers asked. “The lighting is perfect.”

I doubted you’d be able to read the words on any of the certificates, but I declined. I told them I’d had enough photography for one day. Molly waved me away and then smiled in front of her pedigrees.

The first time I met Molly’s mom Bunny was right after we had gotten engaged, but also three months into Molly’s pregnancy. She greeted us at the door of her Arlington Heights home, framed by camellias and azaleas that were just beginning to blush on a cool spring day. She smiled at me and gave me a hug, the little diamonds in her ears flashing, the pearls around her neck producing a gentle pressure against my chest. The hug was warm and real.

The house felt identical to our loft in downtown Manhattan, but on a larger scale. We sat and drank lemonade on the same toile upholstered wingbacks that would later be ours, the rug under our feet as white and untouched as the Antarctic.

“We never sit in here,” Molly said of the room that looked like something out of a 1950’s Doris Day movie. Bunny seemed right out of the same movie, blonde, petite, poised, and if not exactly relaxed, knowing she was in her element.

“Not true, honey,” Bunny said. “We do when we have important guests.” She winked at me, and I joined in the conspiracy and smiled back.

Bunny was delighted that Molly was pregnant. She chatted away about baby names and how much she was looking forward to having a little person to show off to her friends. She was excited about the baby maybe looking like Wentworth Miller or Mariah Carey. I thought maybe it would be cool if the baby had blue eyes or was one of those kids that have blonde highlights. Maybe both. We all got excited about some kid who might not look too Black, although none of us came right out and said it.

The kid we got about five months later was this light-skinned, dark eyed, straight-haired little boy who got darker and whose hair got kinkier as the years went by. Once he was born, I didn’t think too much about it one way or the other. He was beautiful, and he was mine.

When I had Trevor, I thought about all the talks I would need to have with him. Driving while Black, the handshake, the magic of the nod as you pass another Black person on the street. But how many of these really apply to his life? We live in TriBeCa in Manhattan and the only time he sees the police they’re in their cruisers or else on a subway platform, keeping an eye out for other Black people, sure, but not for him in his J. Crew. The kid has all kinds of privilege thanks to the business I own and generations of family money on Molly’s side. The neighborhood is teaming with two mommies, two daddies, and every mix you can think of. Cuban-Israeli. Chinese-Peruvian. Norwegian and Tamil. On and on. It’s a bubble and then there’s the world outside, but Trevor doesn’t see it that way.

“You’re Black,” I tell him. I want it to be an assertion, but it feels more like a plea.

What are we going to do with the fucking Chippendale armoire? It’s a beast and it glowers from the corner of the bedroom. I want to move it to storage and it seems to threaten to take us with it. Trevor and I both eye it warily and I can’t for the life of me remember how we got it in here in the first place.

“You may want this one day,” I tell him. “Or at least your future wife may.”

Trevor eyes the hunk of cherry and brass skeptically and then nods, no doubt picturing it in some suburban McMansion he’ll share with his cheerleader wife. But this is probably not giving him enough credit. McMansions were anathema to Molly, as were cheerleaders, and she has almost definitely passed her sense of taste down to her son. So, most likely it’s some farmhouse in Connecticut with a barn and a stone fence that meanders around the grounds. Let’s chuck in some horses while we’re at it. I could picture it. The horses wouldn’t be for him, but for the wife. I can see him tolerating it, taking a smug satisfaction that his job at Goldman has paid for it all.

“Okay, so let’s keep it then,” he says. “Why can’t we just leave it here? Can’t you use an armoire?”

I can, but what to say to him about the quiet campaign I’ve been waging to remove the obvious memories of Molly from the apartment, to blunt the impact of her going? I think if I store pieces bit by bit, one day the last of it will be gone and Trevor will be in college. It’s not that I want to erase her, it’s just that her constant presence is unbearable. This was her loft even if the deed was in both of our names. To recover, to find myself again, I need for her to be more in the background.

“Sure,” I say to him. “We can leave it.”

Trevor gives me a look, like he knows exactly what I am trying to do, and then shrugs and goes into the kitchen to make himself a snack.

I love my son and like my son, although it may seem as if I feel some resentment towards him. Maybe. Maybe there is something there. But the kid’s a wonder. Handsome, straight As, off-the-chart SAT scores. He can realistically consider most of the Ivy’s and, thanks to Molly’s family money, I can even pay if he gets in. No, I admire the kid. But what is hard for me is how easily he’s had it. I think about that all the time. Did I prepare him for what the world has in store for him? Is he ready?

When I expressed these doubts to Molly, she would smile at me and clutch my hand.

“We’re giving him the best chance,” she would say. “This is what we want for him.”

It is what I want for him. It is.

Trevor and I take some time to tour the UPenn campus on a day as pleasant as a bath, the sun alone in the sky, a breeze taking the edge off the heat. On the train ride there, he stares out the window with his headphones on as the remnants of industrial America scroll by. I read my book, listen to my podcasts, and take occasional glances at Trevor to see if I can figure out what he’s thinking. I know he’s excited about the tour because he’s excited about going to college. He’s excited about leaving home. I know I shouldn’t take it personally, that it’s a normal reaction even if your mother didn’t just die of a sudden illness. I don’t blame him for not wanting to stick around, for wanting to get on with his life. Some kids would have wanted to cling to what was left of home, but that’s not Trevor. It wasn’t Molly either and she would have been glad he is reacting this way. But me, I’m the type who does want to cling. What am I going to do now? My wife is gone and soon my son will be, too.

We walk around the leafy campus while a small young woman whose name tag reveals she’s from Plano, Texas, explains the significance of various buildings and tells us about student life. Trevor has that quiet, blank face he gets when I know he’s really taking something in.

I remember my college tours with my mother, although we never toured the kind of schools I tour with Trevor. Mostly I applied to small schools in the northeast whose names sound vaguely familiar to folks, but didn’t elicit any special reaction. College was a very mediocre, at times traumatic, experience for me, not much different from high school, and I wonder to this day why I didn’t think of investigating schools with more Black people.

I asked Trevor at the beginning of this journey if he’d thought about any of the HBCUs.

“I think I can get into any Ivy,” he’d said. “Or maybe Stanford.”

“Sure, but there are some really strong schools made up of people who look like you.”

“Like me? What’s that?”

He knew what I meant. But I also knew what he meant, too.

Trevor wants to go away for the Christmas break with Madeline and some friends, a skiing vacation. He asks me sheepishly on a late September afternoon as we both watch some police procedural, the mac and cheese I prepared balanced on trays that rest on our legs. We haven’t eaten at the big dining room table since Molly died. This is a failing, I realize, one of many. The domestic situation is just this. Two people watching TV, seeing each other only when there isn’t work, school, or the girlfriend.

I pause and let what he’s asked sink in. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Okay, that’s not true. I know exactly how I feel about it, but what can I do about it? What do I offer the kid in the way of home, of domesticity, except mac and cheese served with no vegetables in front of the TV? Still, I’m hurt he’s asked.

“If that’s what you want to do,” I say.

“I’ll be here for Thanksgiving,” he says quickly.

“Sure. But I’d like to meet her parents.”

“Whose parents?”

“Madeline’s parents.”

He pauses again, considering this, and then nods as if this is an acceptable price to pay. I’m not sure why I even said it. The kids roam around NYC at all hours, doing who knows what, and I want to meet the parents? Still, it feels like I need to make some concession to good parenting. I have to try, even if it’s just going through the motions.

Molly was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last winter. Stage Four. Three months later, we were at her funeral on a rainy April morning outside of Chicago. We buried her on the Amberville’s ancestral plot in a large mausoleum the family bought generations ago in the shade of cedars and cypress planted just as long ago. The entire clan turned out, as did my parents, and some of my cousins and uncles I was closest with. We stood around, shocked into silence by the circumstances and the icy wind coming off Lake Michigan. Birds wheeled in the sky, and I had this feeling of surreality. It felt off, my family and Molly’s family standing in the cold together, staring at a large stone structure while the family pastor went on about God’s plan. Molly would have agreed with me that the whole thing was a strange collision of circumstances, and we would have shaken our heads about it later, sitting at a lively bar, sipping wine.

As it was, Trevor and I said goodbye to her, went to the reception and stayed long enough to not be rude, and then headed to the airport. We were originally supposed to stay at a hotel, but neither of us could stand the idea of sharing a room together. I don’t think we took it personally. We just needed to mourn quietly by ourselves without having to worry about the other. We had the rest of our lives to be alone together.

Except maybe we don’t. He seems eager to move beyond all this, and maybe that means moving beyond me, at least for a little while. I don’t know. I am struck by how bad men are at discussing their feelings with each other.

I tell Trevor I love him while we are packing up some of Molly’s china. We both agree we have little use for it, given my cooking and entertaining skills. He looks me in the eye and tells me he loves me too and then we are silent, wrapping plates and platters in bubble wrap and placing them in boxes.

We go to Trevor’s girlfriend’s house together. When I said I wanted to meet them, I meant a phone call, a basic conversation to feel them out and make sure they were responsible, non-sociopathic people. Instead, we were invited to dinner. I bought a nice Barolo at the local wine store. One thing about being rich is you better bring some good wine. Even if your good wine will be brought into the kitchen to sit on the counter while they pour you some mediocre Cabernet. Which is exactly what happened.

Madeline’s parents live in one of those big twenty-story buildings with a doorman, and that take up a good portion of a block. Their apartment is tastefully decorated with a modern aesthetic, leather couches and chairs in the living room, and what looks to be originals of modernist painters on cream-colored walls.

Jerry, Madeline’s father, is a tall man with a shaved head, fit, with only a slight gut pushing against the pinstriped button-up shirt he is wearing. He takes the bottle and returns with glasses of the aforementioned Cabernet and with a Coke for Trevor, who stands awkwardly by in his khakis and a solid blue sweater. Together we take a seat, and I wonder where Madeline and her mother are.

“Madeline and Suzanne should be out in a minute,” Jerry says. “I think they’re putting together some kind of cheese plate.”

He has a deep voice and the air of confidence I find all white men of his stature have. I have more money than him but can’t duplicate the same confidence in myself. For me, the money is a justification; for him, it is a birthright.

“Thanks for having us over,” I say. “We just love Madeline.”

I like her well enough, but don’t really know her. And who was the “we” I am referring to?

Jerry seems to wonder the same thing. “I was sorry to hear about your wife. Your mother.”

I shrug, nod.

Madeline and Suzanne walk in then with the promised cheese plate on a wooden board, with prosciutto, dried salami, and some candied apricots. They are the spitting image of each other, with their long blonde hair, pink faces, and petite bodies sensibly clad in trousers and their own button-down shirts. Madeline sits awkwardly next to Trevor, and I know both of them are waiting for the moment when they can be dismissed from the presence of these adults and do whatever the kids do these days in the privacy of Madeline’s room.

We chat amiably about the weather, the kids’ school, about the upcoming ski trip.

“Where do you and Trevor usually ski?” Suzanne asks me.

“I don’t ski,” I say and then add by way of further explanation. “I grew up in the Bronx.”

“Oh, I thought Trevor knew how to ski.”

“He does. I don’t. He knows how to play squash, too, and chess, and can do a bunch of things it never occurred to my parents to teach me.”

“It’s ridiculous what we teach these kids,” Jerry says with a laugh. “For Madeline it’s fencing. She plays soccer, too, but frankly, there are a million girls who are exactly like her, who do the same thing.”

Ridiculous maybe, but necessary all the same. At least if you are Trevor and me. The Ralph Lauren Trevor is wearing, the Gucci loafers I have on, the niche sports, are all tickets into a club. Madeline and her family are members of that club; I was just a guest of Molly’s. We’d have to see about Trevor.

“It’s a great group of kids coming with us,” Suzanne says. “Very New York. I love that they all have so many friends from diverse backgrounds.”

Both Madeline and Trevor roll their eyes, and I have to show some restraint to not do the same. You want to take these comments at face-value, but you can’t.

“And the place we stay in Aspen is this wonderful lodge we rent every year. It has separate bedrooms for the boys and the girls. We let them have a little drink, but only when they’re with us, if that’s okay. And Trevor will meet some other great kids, some people from great families.”

He will. He comes from a “great family” himself. I remind myself this is what I want for him, this is what Molly and I deliberately set out to do. All the trappings of the elite will be his. All but one.

Later, Trevor and I take a car home. He’s quiet and asks me what I think, and if it’s okay to go on the trip. I tell him that Madeline’s parents seem like nice people. I tell him it seems like it will be a good experience. I tell him he’s free to go.