thing to do.”
“Are you trying to make me feel dumber than I am?”
“No, but see how smart you are to think so?”
Veronica, Pamela, and their late brother, Lawrence, were children of Julia Sullivan, a poor Irish Catholic girl from Arbor Hill, and David Morgan, son and heir of a German
immigrant peddler who built a fortune making scouring powder.
Pamela Marion Morgan, the second child of Julia and David, gave birth in 1933 to a son in a lying-in clinic in the elite Condado section of San Juan, Puerto Rico, near the beachfront house she
won in a divorce settlement from her second husband, a Puerto Rican sugar baron. She lived the last five months of her pregnancy there with Esmerelda Rivera, a Puerto Rican cook and maid of
temperate personality who, by the end of the fifth month, had been transformed into a quivering but well-paid wreck by the rages of Doña Pamela. Obsessively secret about her pregnancy,
Pamela went out rarely, and wore a black wig when she did. She received few visitors, among them her wealthy fiancé, Danilo Yusupov, an exiled Russian prince who, like Pamela, was
thrice-wed; both he and she famous for being married splashily and often. Pamela’s festive blond hair and Yusupov’s mustache were recurring images in New York society pages.
Veronica, Elisha, and Roscoe also visited Pamela, the first time to have her sign the agreement Roscoe had drawn up, and to arrange its filing with San Juan’s birth registry. It
legitimized Veronica and Elisha’s custody of this child of anonymous mother, without Pamela’s yielding her right to repossess the child. Veronica went to Puerto Rico a second time, with
Roscoe but without Elisha, whose duties as Lieutenant Governor kept him in Albany, to register the child’s birth and bring him home. The boy was given the first name of Gilbert for John
Gilbert, the silent-film star with whom Pamela claimed to have exchanged passions after he broke up with Garbo; middle name of David, in memory of his grandfather; and fraudulent surname of Rivera,
expropriated from Pamela’s maid.
When Pamela told Veronica she was having the child—“I don’t want it but won’t abort it, do you want to raise it?”—Veronica read this as Pamela’s
sympathy for Veronica’s loss of her five-year-old daughter, Rosemary, in 1928, and for Veronica’s ongoing inability to conceive another child. Then, in the beach house after the birth,
Veronica watched Pamela, propped in bed on pillows, eyes exhausted, her dark-yellow hair a bag of strings, her face flushed and blotched, throwing peeled hard-boiled eggs at the overweight poodle
she saw by appointment. The poodle caught the eggs on the fly or chased them like tennis balls and swallowed them without a chew. Pamela smiled with her bee-stung lips, painted for her visitors,
and said with great verve to Veronica and Roscoe, “Thank God, thank God I’m no longer a mother,” and threw the poodle another egg. Veronica, ecstatic with the infant in her arms,
understood then that motherhood would be a splotch on Pamela’s social canvas and, should the splotch become an out-of-wedlock scandal, her marriage to the royal Yusupov would not happen.
Also, Prince Yusupov, with two children from other marriages, had only contempt for this bastard son, and wanted no more children. Veronica clutched Gilby closer as she realized this. Then she and
Roscoe spirited him out of Pamela’s life and onto Elisha’s private plane back to Albany.
“First they take my beautiful daughter, then my husband, now they want my son,” Veronica said to Roscoe at poolside.
“The law may say he’s Pamela’s son.”
“She gave him up. We have it in writing.”
“It wasn’t a legal adoption, Vee. All you have in writing is permission to raise Gilby. She could always change her mind. Mothers have clout.”
“After twelve years? I’m his only mother.”
“That’s what the court hearing will be about.”
“No, the hearing will be about
“Are you trying to make me feel dumber than I am?”
“No, but see how smart you are to think so?”
Veronica, Pamela, and their late brother, Lawrence, were children of Julia Sullivan, a poor Irish Catholic girl from Arbor Hill, and David Morgan, son and heir of a German
immigrant peddler who built a fortune making scouring powder.
Pamela Marion Morgan, the second child of Julia and David, gave birth in 1933 to a son in a lying-in clinic in the elite Condado section of San Juan, Puerto Rico, near the beachfront house she
won in a divorce settlement from her second husband, a Puerto Rican sugar baron. She lived the last five months of her pregnancy there with Esmerelda Rivera, a Puerto Rican cook and maid of
temperate personality who, by the end of the fifth month, had been transformed into a quivering but well-paid wreck by the rages of Doña Pamela. Obsessively secret about her pregnancy,
Pamela went out rarely, and wore a black wig when she did. She received few visitors, among them her wealthy fiancé, Danilo Yusupov, an exiled Russian prince who, like Pamela, was
thrice-wed; both he and she famous for being married splashily and often. Pamela’s festive blond hair and Yusupov’s mustache were recurring images in New York society pages.
Veronica, Elisha, and Roscoe also visited Pamela, the first time to have her sign the agreement Roscoe had drawn up, and to arrange its filing with San Juan’s birth registry. It
legitimized Veronica and Elisha’s custody of this child of anonymous mother, without Pamela’s yielding her right to repossess the child. Veronica went to Puerto Rico a second time, with
Roscoe but without Elisha, whose duties as Lieutenant Governor kept him in Albany, to register the child’s birth and bring him home. The boy was given the first name of Gilbert for John
Gilbert, the silent-film star with whom Pamela claimed to have exchanged passions after he broke up with Garbo; middle name of David, in memory of his grandfather; and fraudulent surname of Rivera,
expropriated from Pamela’s maid.
When Pamela told Veronica she was having the child—“I don’t want it but won’t abort it, do you want to raise it?”—Veronica read this as Pamela’s
sympathy for Veronica’s loss of her five-year-old daughter, Rosemary, in 1928, and for Veronica’s ongoing inability to conceive another child. Then, in the beach house after the birth,
Veronica watched Pamela, propped in bed on pillows, eyes exhausted, her dark-yellow hair a bag of strings, her face flushed and blotched, throwing peeled hard-boiled eggs at the overweight poodle
she saw by appointment. The poodle caught the eggs on the fly or chased them like tennis balls and swallowed them without a chew. Pamela smiled with her bee-stung lips, painted for her visitors,
and said with great verve to Veronica and Roscoe, “Thank God, thank God I’m no longer a mother,” and threw the poodle another egg. Veronica, ecstatic with the infant in her arms,
understood then that motherhood would be a splotch on Pamela’s social canvas and, should the splotch become an out-of-wedlock scandal, her marriage to the royal Yusupov would not happen.
Also, Prince Yusupov, with two children from other marriages, had only contempt for this bastard son, and wanted no more children. Veronica clutched Gilby closer as she realized this. Then she and
Roscoe spirited him out of Pamela’s life and onto Elisha’s private plane back to Albany.
“First they take my beautiful daughter, then my husband, now they want my son,” Veronica said to Roscoe at poolside.
“The law may say he’s Pamela’s son.”
“She gave him up. We have it in writing.”
“It wasn’t a legal adoption, Vee. All you have in writing is permission to raise Gilby. She could always change her mind. Mothers have clout.”
“After twelve years? I’m his only mother.”
“That’s what the court hearing will be about.”
“No, the hearing will be about
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