The business of America is business.
• Calvin Coolidge
CHAPTER 6
The following week passed without incident. I went to my law office in Locust Valley on Monday, then commuted by train to my Manhattan office on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday found me back in Locust Valley. I follow this schedule whenever I can as it gives me just enough of the city to make me a Wall Street lawyer, but not so much as to put me solidly into the commuting class. I am a partner in my father's firm of Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds. The firm is defined as small, old, Wasp, Wall Street, carriage trade, and so on. You get the idea. The Manhattan office is located in the prestigious J. P. Morgan Building at 23 Wall Street, and our clientele are mostly wealthy individuals, not firms. The office's decor, which has not changed much since the 1920s, is what I call Wasp squalor, reeking of rancid lemon polish, deteriorating leather, pipe tobacco, and respectability.
The Morgan Building, incidentally, was bombed by the anarchists in 1920, killing and injuring about four hundred people – I can still see the bomb scars on the stonework – and every year we get a bomb threat on the anniversary of the original bombing. It's a tradition. Also, after the Crash of '29, this building chalked up six jumpers, which I think is the record for an individual building. So perhaps along with prestigious, I should add historic and ill-omened. The Locust Valley office is less interesting. It's a nice Victorian house on Birch Hill Road, one of the village's main streets, and we've been there since 1921 without any excitement. Most of the Locust Valley clientele are older people whose legal problems seem to consist mostly of disinheriting nieces and nephews, and endowing shelters for homeless cats.
The work in the city – stocks, bonds, and taxes – is interesting but meaningless. The country work – wills, house closings, and general advice on life – is more meaningful but not interesting. It's the best of both worlds. Most of the older clientele are friends of my father and of Messrs Perkins and Reynolds. The first Mr Perkins on the letterhead, Frederic, was a friend of J. P. Morgan, and was one of the legendary Wall Street movers and shakers of the 1920s, until November 5, 1929, when he became a legendary Wall Street jumper. I suppose the margin calls got on his nerves. My father once said of this incident, 'Thank God he didn't hurt anyone on the sidewalk, or we'd still be in litigation.'
Anyway, the second Mr Perkins, Frederic's son, Eugene, is retired and has moved down to Nags Head, North Carolina. The Carolinas seem to have become a respectable retirement destination, as opposed to Florida, most of which is considered by people around here as unfit for human habitation. And the last senior partner, Julian Reynolds, is also retired, in a manner of speaking. He sits in the large corner office down the hall and watches the harbour. I have no idea what he's looking at or for. Actually, he occupies the same office from which Mr Frederic Perkins suddenly exited this firm, though I don't think that has any relevance to Julian's fascination with the window. My secretary, Louise, interrupts Mr Reynolds's vigil every day at five, and a limousine takes him uptown to his Sutton Place apartment, which offers an excellent view of the East River. I think the poor gentleman has old- timers' disease.
My father, Joseph Sutter, had the good sense to retire before anyone wanted him to. That was three years ago, and I remember the day with some emotion. He called me into his office, told me to sit in his chair, and left. I thought he had stepped out for a moment, but he never came back. My parents are still alive, but not so you'd notice. Southampton is on the eastern side of Long Island, only about sixty miles from Lattingtown and Locust Valley, but my parents have decided to make it further. There is no bad blood between us; their silence is just their way of showing me that they are sure I'm doing fine. I guess.
As you may have gathered or already known, many white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the upper classes have the same sort of relationship with their one or two offspring as, say, a sockeye salmon has with its one or two million eggs. I probably have the same relationship with my parents as they had with theirs. My relationship with my own children, Carolyn, age nineteen, and Edward, seventeen, is somewhat warmer, as there seems to be a general warming trend in modern relationships of all sorts. But what we lack in warmth, we make up for in security, rules of behaviour, and tradition. There are times, however, when I miss my children and wouldn't even mind hearing from my parents. Actually, Susan and I have a summer house in East Hampton, a few miles from Southampton, and we see my parents each Friday night for dinner during July and August whether we're all hungry or not.
As for Susan's parents, I call Hilton Head once a month to deliver a situation report, but I've never been down there. Susan flies down once in a while, but rarely calls. The Stanhopes never come up unless they have to attend personally to some business. We do the best we can to keep contact at a minimum, and the fax machine has been a blessing in this regard.
Susan's brother, Peter, never married and is travelling around the world trying to find the meaning of life. From the postmarks on his infrequent letters -
Sorrento, Monte Carlo, Cannes, Grenoble, and so forth – I think he's trying the right places.
I have a sister, Emily, who followed her IBM husband on a corporate odyssey through seven unpleasant American cities over ten years. Last year, Emily, who is a very attractive woman, found the meaning of life on a beach in Galveston, Texas, in the form of a young stud, named Gary, and has filed for divorce. Anyway, on Friday afternoon, I left the Locust Valley office early and drove the few miles up to The Creek for a drink. This is a tradition, too, and a lot more pleasant one than some others.
I drove through the gates of the country club and followed the gravel lane, bordered by magnificent old American elms, toward the clubhouse. I didn't see Susan's Jag in the parking field. She sometimes comes up and has a drink on Fridays, then we have dinner at the club or go elsewhere. I pulled my Bronco into an empty slot and headed for the clubhouse.
One of the nice things about having old money, or having other people think you do, is that you can drive anything you want. In fact, the richest man I know, a Vanderbilt, drives a 1977 Chevy wagon. People around here take it as an eccentricity or a display of supreme confidence. This is not California, where your car accounts for fifty percent of your personality. Besides, it's not what you drive that's important; it's what kind of parking stickers you have on your bumper that matters. I have a Locust Valley parking sticker, and a Creek, Seawanhaka Corinthian, and Southampton Tennis Club sticker, and that says it all, sort of like the civilian equivalents of military medals, except you don't wear them on your clothes.
So I entered The Creek clubhouse, a large Georgian-style building. Being a former residence, there is nothing commercial looking about the place. It has instead an intimate yet elegant atmosphere, with a number of large and small rooms used for dining, card playing, and just hiding out. In the rear is the cocktail lounge, which looks out over part of the golf course and the old polo field, and in the distance one can see the Long Island Sound, where The Creek has beach cabanas. There is indoor tennis, platform tennis, possibly skeet shooting, and other diversions for mind and body. It is an oasis of earthly pleasure for about three hundred well-connected families. Someday it will be a housing subdivision and they will call it The Creek Estates. Anyway, I went into the lounge, which was filled mostly with men who were in that Friday mood that reminds me of grinning idiots at a locker room victory party.
There were the usual hellos and hi, Johns, a few backslaps, and assorted hale-fellow-well-met rituals. More interestingly, I caught a wink from Beryl Carlisle, whom I would dearly love to pop if I weren't so faithful. I looked around the room, assured once again that there were still so many of us left. An Englishman once said that he found it easier to be a member of a club than of the human race because the bylaws were shorter, and he knew all the members personally. That sounds about right.
I spotted Lester Remsen sitting at a table near the window with Randall Potter and Martin Vandermeer.
I thought the best thing to do regarding Lester, whom I hadn't heard from since Sunday, was to just go over and sit down, so I did. Lester greeted me a bit coolly, and I had the impression the other two had just gotten a
