Will gave all his brothers nicknames, mostly as a cover for giving Harry nicknames. Harry was most famously “the Blurter,” but also “First Brother” or “First.” Will had numbered all the boys, after The Five Chinese Brothers, and they often called one another by their numbers. For two years, Jack was known almost exclusively as Fourth Brother, or, when his brothers were feeling more kindly toward him, Perfect Fourth Brother. Tom was in heaven; he wasn’t the butt. Sam refused to play along. “You have no respect for numbers,” he said to Will. “You don’t know the difference between an irrational number and an imaginary number.” Rupert occasionally called them out by their numbers, to quiet them down, in the manner of Mr. Darling in Peter Pan. “A little less noise there, First and Second, a little less noise.” He didn’t tease. Eleanor never used the numbers. “No way,” she said. “I’d only get in trouble calling you by numbers. Another example of Refrigerator Mom when you came to write your memoirs.”
Will had worshipped Harry when he was little, following him everywhere, doing whatever he did, setting the pattern for his younger brothers, who came to worship him too. Harry accepted their homage with princely condescension and ruthlessness. He was harder on Will than the younger ones, but with all of them he shouldered his responsibilities as the oldest. He might goad or punch or bully or tease them, but no one outside the family could do it. He instilled in his younger brothers a sense of their specialness; they were the Five Famous, Fierce, Forceful, Faithful, Fabled, Fortunate, Fearless Falkeses. He left off “fantastic.” “We’re not comic-book heroes,” he said to Eleanor. He was ten. Well into his teenage years, Will was under Harry’s thrall, safe and surly in his thralldom. The mocking nicknames were the earliest signs of revolt. Will wondered if he hadn’t gone to law school because Harry had.
—
Will came east for the Fourth of July. It was only his second time back since his father’s death, more than two years earlier. He felt bad about that, but also relieved. He’d only had to deal with the Wolinskis secondhand. Francie stayed in L.A. The first trimester had been rough. “All I want to do is sleep for a week without throwing up,” she said. “Off with you.” The second day there, Will went through the family photos. Eleanor had them in boxes, by decade. She had photos of everyone dotting the apartment, on tables, mantels, and bookshelves, but she’d never made up albums. Her mother made albums. In an ancient, tattered, straw suitcase with a luggage tag marked “R. H. Falkes, The Rectory, St Pancras, Chichester,” Will found relics of his father’s early life: his English driver’s license from 1954; a photo of him, age twenty or so, punting on the Cam; another photo of him at the same age, standing next to an aged priest; a clipping from the Chichester Observer, August 3, 1940, with a photo of five small boys in V-neck sweaters, shorts, high socks, and sandals, under the headline “St. Pancras Home for Orphaned Boys Collects 200 Tins for War Effort”; a faded baby blanket and bonnet. The blanket and bonnet had never been laundered. Eleanor picked them up. “They smell stale, like old books,” she said. “There’s no baby smell left.” She laid them back in the suitcase.
“What does the H stand for?” Will asked. “Dad never used it.”
“Henry. Reverend Falkes gave Dad his first and last names, fronted by ‘Rupert,’ for Rupert Brooke or Prince Rupert, Dad was never sure which,” Eleanor said. “The name was the making of Dad. Without saying it, he and the Reverend took it as a special relationship, a claiming. And Dad could call him Father.”
“Is that Reverend Falkes in this photo, with the collar?” Will asked. “He looks so proud of Dad.” He laughed. “Dad looks so serious.”
Eleanor picked up another photo. “That’s Dad in the orphans’ photo, second from right,” she said. “No smile. He never smiled to please anyone.”
“I remember Dad smiling,” Will said. “Where are the wedding photos? I’ll bet he’s smiling there.” Eleanor pulled them off the shelf. Will was right; in photo after photo, Rupert was smiling at Eleanor. “My mother wanted us to face the photographer. Dad wouldn’t. ‘Why should I look at him?’ he said. ‘Who is he to me?’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘Look at me.’ And I did. I think this is the photo. Look at us. We were so young.”
“This is my favorite,” Will said, pointing to a photo of his parents dancing. They were laughing, as if they had a secret.
“You look so in love,” Will said.
“Do we?” Eleanor said.
Will nodded. “You know how kids, when they’re seven or eight, never think or want to think their parents had sex? Most of our friends had only one or two siblings, which meant their parents only had sex two or three times, max.” Will laughed. “I punched out Trip Fitzgerald for saying, ‘Yuck, your parents had sex five times.’ I felt I was standing up for the family honor.”
“It’s mutual, you know, or reciprocal, one or other of those,” Eleanor said. “Children don’t want their parents to have sex and parents don’t want their children to have sex. At least, they don’t want to think about it; the mind recoils.”
Will looked sideways at his mother. “I thought you and Dad had a good sex life,” he said. “Not when I beat up Trip. Later. You were so undemonstrative in public. I took that as proof. I’ve always distrusted public displays.”
“Are we ready for this?” Eleanor said. “What we talk about when we talk about sex.”
“Did I put my foot in it?” Will asked.
Eleanor shook her head.
“Those earrings you’re wearing,” Will said, pointing to a wedding photo, “you’re wearing them now.”
“Dad gave them to me. His wedding present. I wear them all the time.”
“I bought a pair like them for Francie last year.”
“Did you?” Eleanor said.
“She doesn’t wear them,” Will said. “Occasionally she does. She said they were beautiful.”
“Ah,” Eleanor said. “The old spousal gift fallacy.”
Will laughed. “What fallacy?” he said. “It would have helped if we had a sister or two. Susanna came too late to civilize us.”
Eleanor smiled. “Not all men but most, when they’re buying their wives a gift—a necklace, a nightgown, a handbag, it doesn’t matter—are buying their mothers a gift. And when their wives show their disappointment, by returning it or burying it in the back of the closet, the men are baffled, hurt. ‘What woman wouldn’t want a Tiffany tennis bracelet?’ they ask. Wrong question. ‘What woman would want it?’ Dear old Mom. Dad didn’t fall into that trap. A benefit of being an orphan.” Eleanor looked at Will. “You look abashed. We can talk about sex instead, if you like.”
“Francie admired the earrings on you,” he said.
“On me, yes,” Eleanor said.
“Are we all buying our wives gifts you would like?” Will asked.
“Not Jack and Sam,” Eleanor said. “Jack buys his wife gifts he would like. A laptop, a big-screen TV, a BMW, a turntable. I’m surprised he never bought Kate a trumpet mouthpiece. Sam and Andrew don’t buy each other gifts. But the rest of you, yes.”
“Mama’s boys, that’s what we always say we are,” Will said. “A bevy of mama’s boys.”
Eleanor didn’t say anything.
Will looked again at the photo of his parents dancing.
“You were a baby,” he said. “And the next year, you had a baby.”
“We were the old young,” Eleanor said. “We liked it. Your generation wants to be the young old.”
“We want to be the beautiful young,” he said, “and the forever young.”