Manhattan Monologues Read Free Page B

you're afraid of everything. You have been brave enough in other things. It means that you were afraid to be killed or mutilated in the most hideous carnage the world has ever seen. You shared that fear with countless others. Some overcame it; some didn't. The world is made up of heroes and non-heroes. They are equally real. Go back, my son, to your real life and your real family, and
live!"
    I felt so immediately lifted up by this clear solution to the problem of a lifetime that I became greedy. How is it that, with salvation in sight, we double our demands for entry?
    "Of course, it was easier for Father, wasn't it?"
    "What was easier?"
    "Why, being brave. He was born brave, wasn't he? He never knew fear. And if you don't know what fear is, is it really so brave to face dragons? Mightn't one be like Siegfried and even like it?"
    Mother became very grave at this. "Oh, my Ambrose, lay not that flattering unction to your soul! No one is born fearless. Your father made himself a hero by grit and will power. And don't you ever dare to take it from him!"
    I bowed my head in bitter but accepting silence. It was not only myself that I should have to accept; it was she as well. The man she really admired, the man she would always admire, was Father. That was what I would have to live with: that I could never compete in a woman's eyes with a hero. Was I even sure that Ellen, deep down, didn't share that feeling? No, I was not sure.

The Heiress
    W HEN WALTER DIED, shortly after the atomic bomb that ended World War II, in the terrible course of which his exhausting diplomatic missions to allied and neutral nations had fatally weakened his old heart, several publishers tried to interest me in writing a widow's account of our life in public affairs. But Walter had already published a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his career as a foreign affairs expert and roving ambassador, in the foreword to which he had, with his usual graciousness, acknowledged his "never-to-be-forgotten debt to a wife and partner whose value to me in my hours of toil and rest can never be adequately expressed." That is about all a consort of my era—and though I was a decade younger than Walter, I was born in 1880—can expect as a tribute to marital services that, like those of the bulk of my contemporaries, amounted to little more than a footnote to their husbands' careers. That is not to say that Walter Wheelock was not a perfect gentleman, a faithful and devoted spouse, one who encouraged me in all my interests and hobbies. It was just the way things were. I was always aware—and I am sure he was, though it was never mentioned—that the only real boost he got from me in his rise to the top was the money for which he had married me.
    If I had had children, I wouldn't have written that. Why should I wish to hurt their feelings? But this memoir, which, if read at all, will be read posthumously in some historical archive, will have no value to anyone unless it is strictly true. So I may as well put it on the line, that it was widely accepted in my day, both here and abroad, that any ambitious and impecunious young man who elected to enter an unremunerative career, such as government, teaching, the armed forces or even the church, would do well to avail himself of a dowry. In Europe this was frankly spoken of as an accepted thing, but in New York, where persistent lip service was given—uptown, if not downtown—to romantic notions, it was distinctly muted. This was the cause of considerable confusion and much unhappiness to some of our young heiresses who wanted to be loved for themselves. In Europe they wanted only to be loved—it didn't so much matter for what. All I can say for myself is that I was a bit more of a realist than my sisters and cousins. At least I got a good man. Perhaps a great one.
    Who or what I was or thought I was, as a young girl, appears to be what today is called an identity crisis. I was and still am rarely