In the spring of 1944, Margaret and Michael were living peacefully together. Margaret’s time away in Maine and her cozy writing refuge in the city allowed her ample opportunity to reflect and write. Michael, too, was happily working on her performances. They told themselves they were allowed one drink per day, although sometimes they gave in to an extra martini or two, especially if they asked Bill to join them for dinner or drinks.
Michael didn’t want to be the sole focus of Margaret’s romantic desires—she thought the younger woman too needy. Margaret doubted Michael’s love for her on an almost daily basis. What she didn’t question was her love for Michael.
In the moment she saw Michael lying back in her bed like a God in repose—noble, beautiful, and free—Margaret understood why people would die for another and why she fought so hard for this relationship. She prayed that if Michael’s words once again speared her heart, she would remember that moment—remember Michael’s swept-back hair, her lean face, the way she lifted her head, and the tone of her voice.
*
In April, Michael’s son Robin died in his sleep. His boyfriend, Billy Rambo, had committed suicide the prior year by jumping off the Empire State Building. Billy had been questioned in a murder case that was making tabloid headlines. After that tragedy, Robin began drinking more heavily and almost never left his house. Michael brought a priest by to talk to her son and tried to cheer him up, but nothing she did lifted his spirits. He sank deeper into a depression and rarely got out of bed. He complained to Michael that he felt abandoned not only by his lover but also by her. He confessed that he was jealous of Margaret.
On the night he died, he wrote farewell notes to friends, his mother and sister, and one to Margaret. Then he took an overdose of sleeping pills. He said that he wanted to be with Billy, and he requested that his body be buried next to his lover’s in Indiana. In the letter to Margaret, he apologized for treating her with such bitterness.
Grief-stricken, Michael moved into Robin’s house and stayed for months. Margaret and Diana implored her to come back to New York, but Michael wanted to be alone with Robin’s things. She wrote letters on Robin’s stationery and had everything in Robin’s bedroom moved to the study in the Connecticut home. She kept everything exactly as it was in his house, down to the papers on his desk. The only change she made was to swap her bed for his.
Margaret tried to assuage Michael’s grief the only way she knew how—by memorializing Robin in a story. She asked Leonard over to lunch, but when he arrived she told him he would not get to eat unless he agreed to illustrate a manuscript she had written called Robin’s House. It was the story of an inventive boy who turned the rooms of his house into a creative paradise. He never needed to leave his home because it had everything he needed. Leonard knew right away why she had written the book and refused to agree without thoroughly considering the story. Margaret caved and served him lunch anyway.
Many of Margaret’s male friends were serving in the military, but Leonard didn’t pass the physical exam for service. Bruce Bliven and Margaret spent Bruce’s last night before deployment traipsing around the city. Clem Hurd was to be stationed in the South Pacific, so Posey also left for the West Coast to stay with her parents. That way she could be closer to her husband.
Most everyone was involved in the war effort one way or another. Michael was a volunteer with the Red Cross, and Dot was an official spotter along the Connecticut coast. Margaret wrote a series of stories for children who might be frightened while huddling in bomb shelters, but “The Bombproof Bunnies” never made it past the rough-draft stage. Neither did “The War in the Woods,” a comical story in which a bear declares that all the animals in the forest must behave like him, even the bees. All the other animals try to be gruff and eat bark like a bear and follow the bear’s ridiculous ultimatums, such as one that states wildflowers may no longer be wild. Eventually, the bear realizes that it is best for the animals to be themselves, and peace is again restored to the woods.
Like most businesses during the war, publishing had to adapt to the reduction in materials, as well as in sales. To reduce the cost of printing, some publishers decreased the number of pages in their children’s books. Margaret railed against the reductions—it was almost impossible for her to reduce the conventional forty-eight-page storybook to twenty-four pages. In addition, fewer books were being published in general.
The economic slowdown of publishing during the war, coupled with Margaret’s earlier failure to agree to contracts, took a toll on her finances. Frustrated with a now-unreliable income, she worked out an agreement with Golden that guaranteed her a monthly payment. She struck a deal that paid her $300 per month on future royalty earnings. In exchange, she granted Golden the rights to three books per year.
*
When Michael returned to the apartments in the fall, she teased Margaret about her prolific nature. If Bank Street wanted Margaret to write four hundred pages on a mouse’s squeak—she could do it. This time, Margaret was good-natured about the jab. It was unlikely Margaret would ever leave children’s books for a career as a serious author of adult literature. Like Michael, it seemed everything came easier to Margaret than writing something of merit for adults. When Michael suggested they work together on a musical for children based loosely on the Bible, Margaret leaped at the idea. Michael could forgive her anything except faults that were her own, and this would be a good distraction.
Lucy Mitchell sent Margaret copies of the textbooks they had written and edited for D. C. Heath, along with the teacher’s editions she’d been paid extra to write. In those, Margaret created ways for teachers to use her material in the classrooms—projects, discussions, and questions were a few of the ways she guided the teachers to make the textbooks more interesting. In the package, Lucy added a note relaying how disappointed she was by the final product and a comical eulogy she wrote about the demise of a textbook. Her dream was dashed, but her sense of humor had returned.
In the textbooks was the beguiling word-patterned poem “Good Night, Room” Margaret wrote as a substitute for one of the nixed songs. Being reminded of the nighttime ritual she shared with her sister so long ago spurred an incredibly detailed dream that night. In the dream, the room was hers, but the color scheme was that of her downstairs neighbor’s—bright green walls in the living room accented by red furniture with yellow trim. It felt like stepping into a colorful Spanish painting.