Rupert and Eleanor disagreed now and again—politically, Eleanor was more liberal—but never acrimoniously. There wasn’t enough heat to raise the temperature of an argument and there was so much money smoothing the way. The boys were a source of pride. “Not a duffer among them,” Rupert would say, “even if they’re all Democrats.” Henry (Harry) came first, in 1962, eleven months after they were married; the rest followed in two-year intervals: William (Will), Samuel (Sam), John (Jack), and Thomas (Tom). When Tom was a year, Eleanor had her tubes tied. “I take it there will be no Guy,” Rupert said. “Five in ten years is an excellent sufficiency,” she said. They were good-looking boys—tall, dark, and lean, like their mother, athletic and brainy. People used to say they had Eleanor’s looks and Rupert’s brains. My brains too, Eleanor thought, but she let it pass. Rupert took mild exception. “Where are the rosy-cheeked towheads?” he would ask now and then.
As expected, Eleanor’s mother disapproved of Rupert and the match, but her father, who had been a phantom presence in her childhood, gave his blessing, firmly quashing any maternal interference. He insisted on having a big wedding and then offered to support the young couple for the first five years while Rupert was getting his footing. Eleanor wondered if he was making amends for closing ranks with her mother against Jim; she drew closer to her father. Rupert never forgot this kindness, and his regard for his father-in-law, as with Reverend Falkes, approached love. They lunched together at least three times a month and Rupert went to Mr. Phipps for advice on investments. Mr. Phipps had spent his career, more than forty years, at the family bank, Phipps & Co. He had studied chemistry in college, thinking he would be a doctor or scientist, but his father and grandfather pressed him to join the bank and his early marriage forced his hand. His wife would be expensive. He had a genius for identifying coming companies and industries, which his father and grandfather recognized, and by the time he was thirty, he was director of new investments. This position, with its spending clout, kept him from growing restless or careless. At fifty, he was chairman of the bank. He made himself and many others very rich. In 1966, Mr. Phipps recommended that Rupert invest eighty thousand dollars in McDonald’s, and offered to loan him the money interest-free if he didn’t have it. Rupert took the loan and bought the stock. By 1973, it was worth five and a half million dollars. Rupert insisted on paying back Mr. Phipps; he gave him five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Mr. Phipps gave the money to Eleanor. “A sunny-day fund,” he said. Both men loved to sail and would often spend their Sundays together on the Sound, off Kings Point, where the Phippses had a house and Mr. Phipps kept a sloop. The second and last time Eleanor knew her husband to weep was at her father’s funeral.
Mrs. Phipps grew wary of Rupert, who played with her as a cat with a mole. If she was in a hectoring mood, criticizing one of the boys or, more likely, Eleanor, he would deliver a “Granny slap-down,” as the boys called it, asking her repeatedly to repeat herself—“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you”—until she sounded stupid even to herself. At those times, Eleanor felt something approaching real love for him. Only once did Rupert lose his temper with his mother-in-law. It shut her down in his presence. She never again said anything to him other than “How are you?”
In marrying Rupert, Eleanor had accepted his limitations. He was capable of expressing gratitude, appreciation, generosity, even affection, but not stronger emotions, even if he felt them. He had decided, at twenty-one, he would be a successful man in ways New York society respected, and this he had achieved. He did what he could with what he had.
Their last conversation before the morphine shut him down was fittingly valedictory. Afterward, Eleanor wondered if he had planned it, holding out as long as he could. She was sitting by his bed in the hospital. Schubert’s Trout was playing on the radio.
“I wasn’t always a good man,” Rupert said. “I wanted to be but couldn’t do it.”
“Good enough,” Eleanor said.
“My life turned out to be much better than I had any right to expect,” he said.
“Mine too,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said.
Eleanor leaned over and kissed him. He reached up and touched her cheek.
“I wish I could stay,” he said.
“I do too,” she said.
—
Eleanor’s boys not only looked like her, they looked like one another. Acquaintances seeing the older or younger brothers together often took them for twins, even triplets. Ancient cousins frequently got their names wrong. Eleanor found this annoying but she came to see that on the surface, by their looks and close age, they invited confusion in the inobservant. Her mother was always mixing them up, whether out of weak-mindedness or spite Eleanor couldn’t tell. Her father, embracing grandfatherhood, kept them straight, buying each of them every year the perfect birthday gift. For Sam’s ninth, Mr. Phipps bought him a real stethoscope, sending Sam into paroxysms of joy.
To Eleanor, the boys were nothing alike, each vividly himself. Harry taught law at Columbia, specializing in constitutional law and conflicts of law, “Torts for Pedants,” he called it. He was smart, canny, competitive, confident, at ease everywhere, a quick study, and a natural leader. Job offers came his way often; he was good at lunch. His law school colleagues saw him as a future law school dean or circuit court judge. He married Jewish. “We were sent to Trinity to meet Jews, right?” he said to his parents one night at dinner, graduation looming. He had invited Jane Levi to the senior prom. He thought he was his mother’s favorite, the fulfillment of the famous Freudian dictum: “A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.” He felt a conqueror. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Will was literary, witty, astute, and stealthily ambitious. At eleven, he announced at dinner: “I’m a Marxist.” The table fell quiet; everyone looked at him. He grinned. “A Groucho Marxist.” Will had been an editor in New York at Random House, but then went off to L.A. to be a talent agent. He loved making deals; he felt most alive in the middle of a deal. Every year on the anniversary of the day he sold his first book to the movies for a million dollars, he and his wife, Francie, went to dinner at the Polo Lounge. He’d gone there to celebrate with his boss after that first big sale. The place never changed; it was Hollywood, unapologetic and unadulterated, with its dry martinis, aged steaks, plush banquettes, and lavish flowers. “I read Dickens and Eliot in college so I could sell Thane and Gordon,” he told Eleanor. “Plot,” he said. “?‘A gun in the first act.’?” In 1999, he had three bestselling authors with seven-figure movie options. Eleanor thought he was the smartest. He was the most intellectual, Thane and Gordon notwithstanding.