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  He was a self-made man who, while not yet successful, had been working since he was fourteen, helping to support his family since his father’s death, alone supporting his mother and sister. He had had no time for an education beyond the one which would win his bread and butter for him. He was sensitive, intelligent, keen, passionate, though uninformed on most of the cultural matters which are important to me, and six years my senior.

  There are a couple of misalignments in this assessment. For one thing, though far from “cultured” in the sense that Mother meant, Dad was an extremely well-read man. It might be that he thought orchestra conductors were show-offs, and, to be sure, his idea of classical music was pretty much limited to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet overture; his opinion of abstract art was that “a monkey could do that just as well.” But if you wanted to talk Samuel Butler or Dostoyevsky, he was your equal. And if you ventured further, into the realms of social philosophy, ethics, government, and certain arenas of psychology, Dad could beat you at your game as fast as Uncle Ira would whip me at chess.

  He was of his period and time. His politics were to the left of center, though nowhere as far left as those of some of his neighbors who formed a Communist cell. He believed in civil liberties and civil rights—in other words, what the Constitution said. When he was in his fifties, he led a strong organizational push for civil rights, even filing an amicus brief for his employer, the American Jewish Committee, in Brown v. Board of Education at the Supreme Court.

  He was elegant. My wife says his hands were two of the most beautiful she has ever seen. I am pleased to resemble him somewhat. There is a photo of Dad at his desk in the Fred F. French Building on Fifth Avenue when he is in his mid-thirties. Compare it with me at the same age and you can hardly tell us apart: thin, balding, severe.

  Dad was also an elegant speaker and writer. Mainly self-taught, he had learned how to create phrases for papers and speeches that went beyond mere rhetoric. His journal articles and speeches are models of engagement and clarity. He was an extemporaneous speaker of note. Whether at a graduation ceremony or an assemblage of colleagues, Dad could rouse, persuade, encourage, and damn the audience with what appeared to be minimum effort. Suddenly, before they knew it, people were with him in whatever cause he was espousing.

  SOON AFTER DAD AND MY MOTHER MET, Missy’s mother, Reba Bamberger, was introduced to my father and was charmed. Shortly afterward—much too shortly, to my mind—Edwin asked Elizabeth to marry him. She told him about Francis, and he asked her again. For three months he asked her, and one day she said yes. My mother wrote that “it seemed the only possible solution for everybody.” (Froelicher was clearly still in her heart and mind.)

  On February 4, 1931, at the ages of twenty-two and twenty-nine, respectively, Elizabeth Schamberg and Edwin J. Lukas became engaged. They went riding together in the Philadelphia and New York parks, each sitting erect on a good-looking horse. They went dancing and on cruises.

  IT WAS NOT A GOOD ERA for the country. President Hoover had failed to rescue the banks and the population from desperate times. Unemployment was at 25 percent. Hoovervilles, encampments for the dispossessed, had sprung up all over the United States. Average salaries plummeted. Food prices sank. Milk was fourteen cents a quart; bread, nine cents a loaf; steak, forty-two cents a pound. And even then, at those low prices, millions of people couldn’t afford basic commodities. Hoover nonetheless steadfastly insisted that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility. But there were no safety nets, and the country sank deeper and deeper into the Depression. Despite such nationwide desperation, Mrs. Bamberger had done well. A cousin had urged her to sell stocks while they were still high, and she had kept her money in safety during the terrible crisis of October 1929. Now she moved into the Langdon Hotel just off fashionable Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street in New York City, gave her legal affairs to my father to handle, and started dispensing sufficient sums of cash to Missy and to the engaged couple to allow them to forget that Hoover and the country were failing. Soon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt would ride in on his white horse to rescue the rest of the population.

  Like Mrs. Bamberger, Dr. Jay and Missy took to Dad immediately. What was not to like? He had begun his legal career smartly and was already being talked about in New York circles (Dr. Schamberg did his due diligence with friends in the city).

  My mother, in turn, fell for Dad’s mother, Anna, and my aunt Judy, both of whom reciprocated. She described them as “impecunious,” and her attitude was always a little condescending, but that was in part the attitude of all the Schambergs. Still, there was no doubting the couple’s rightness for each other, no “class” distinctions to be made. Dad, whatever his roots, was clearly a man for all seasons.

  The marriage might have gone ahead without a hitch except that Elizabeth began at once to have second thoughts. She was not really sure that she could ever love Dad as much as she had Froelicher.

  For his part, Francis tried to do the right thing. He knew now that my father-to-be existed and was engaged to his darling Elizabeth. He wrote the following letter to Missy:

  Feb. 1931.

  Dear Mrs. Schamberg:

  It was generous and kind of you to leave a message for me here in Philadelphia. I must try to believe that only my absence and silence will serve Elizabeth. I like to think of her as our Elizabeth, because I am sure that no one else can come to know her quite so well or love her quite so much. Reading and re-reading your letter has been a great comfort for me. It tells me that one person, the nearest to Elizabeth, has a pretty clear understanding of my situation. I know the natural effect of time. I cannot want her to forget or to put me entirely apart from her life; I do want her to be completely happy. But my life, in fact, belongs to Elizabeth.

  Francis.

  Missy was an endless romantic. That she was also a meddler did not come home to me until I read the following from my mother. Missy had apparently not only been in touch with Francis Froelicher but told my mother about his letter.

  Dearest Mother:

  There is one thing which you could do for me, if it doesn’t appear to you an unnatural or unpleasant task. I think Francis would appreciate it more than you can imagine, if you’d write him a note saying that you feel we’ve done unquestionably the wisest thing or however you want to put it. And saying also what you’ve so often said to me about his influences on my life. He has a real affection for you and I think if he felt your continued goodwill and friendship it would help him immeasurably to bear something which now seems intolerable to him. Could you do that? Don’t let him feel that you think it was my decision alone in the case of our separation because it wasn’t, or that it was yours or anyone else’s influence on me. F. and I made it alone. I am not writing to Francis or hearing from him.

  Calm and determined as her note to Missy sounds and feels, in the same envelope is a smaller letter in which she told her mother that “according to your instructions, I have gone to see Bernard Glueck,” my grandmother’s analyst.

  It has never been a good idea for family members to share the same therapist. Since Glueck and his wife were personal friends of the Schambergs, it was an even worse idea. The good doctor saw my mother for fifteen minutes, squeezing her in between other appointments. According to her, he felt that “the marriage was okay” and that it should “take place as planned.” Mother says she had asked whether it wasn’t too soon “as I’ve so barely recovered from the other thing.” But Glueck says he thought a delay would “gain nothing.”

  In what can only be considered a second bad judgment, the psychiatrist urged my mother to turn down a part in a play that Le Gallienne had offered because it would go on the road in the spring. Mother says she is “divided” in her feelings. Is it the tug between Francis and my father that divides her? Or between the play and staying with Dad? She doesn’t say.

  For my part, “living” these events many years after they occur
red, I feel as if there’s a bad genie at work. Someone is pulling strings from outside the frame. Given Mother’s oncoming mental disorder, the Froelicher affair could only have ended badly for all concerned. Nevertheless, Mother’s creative outlet in acting was a strong life force for her. What would have happened if Glueck had practiced in today’s world? Would he have still thought that a marriage and children were the most appropriate “escape” from a romantic tie to Francis, and would marriage to my father—so soon after breaking up with Froelicher—have been a remedy for depression? I doubt it, and it makes me angry that he interfered so strongly and so wrongly.

  The wedding was small, took place at the Langdon Hotel, and resulted in a $10,000 bearer’s bond passing from Reba Bamberger to the Lukases. It would be well used on a house five years later. For the next year, there were no letters between the newlyweds. I consider this a good sign. It means they were with each other, staying close to each other in their apartment in New York and planning their future together. But Mother said that all was not well.

  The next thing that went terribly wrong was that Dad was told Francis and Mother continued to be in touch.

  The person who did this was Caroline Lavenson, the woman who ran Tripp Lake Camp. Looking back, I cannot imagine why Caroline felt she needed to warn Dad about Froelicher. At this point, there is no evidence that Elizabeth and Francis were continuing the romance. Mother was emotionally beaten down, but she seems to have given herself over to Dad in every way that I can discern.

  I don’t know whether Dr. Schamberg and my grandmother found out about this indiscretion on Caroline Lavenson’s part, but I do know it would have profound repercussions on my parents’ relationship until the very end.

  And certainly it did not help the young couple’s relationship that, a few weeks later, Missy gave a huge box of letters and other material to my mother—labeled “The Private Papers of Elizabeth”—and told her to go through them to sort which she wanted to keep and which to get rid of. The letters from the clandestine year may have been thrown out at this time. Mother wrote to Dad, “I have spent the evening with ghosts, and though there is no fear in me there is much thought and speculation.”

  Speculation, indeed! How could Dad know what was going on in the mind of his beloved? How could he know what she was doing? Or thinking?

  What is clear is that the two of them now began a dialogue where a certain doubt had been injected into the relationship, and that doubt remained—permanently.

  Take the end of that year, for instance. It was almost New Year’s Eve, and, upset and perturbed, Mother had gone to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with her parents. Dad was not included. While there, Mother went to visit the Lavensons and from there phoned Dad. What transpired in the call is not known, but its character can be judged from the letter she sent him that evening:

  My darling:

  You break my heart with such talk as we have just had. I feel that I can have been only the most cruel and stupid of people to have allowed you to suffer like this. Certainly you must know, despite your protests to the contrary, that much, much has been done in this past year towards the rebuilding of my life. I have often said, and more often thought, that your understanding has been unbelievably self-effacing, and perhaps I’ve relied on that too much, much more than was fair to you. I want so much to make you happy, and yet I seem only to achieve the contrary. Any human relationship is a difficult thing to work out, and ours, having started out with certain added obstacles, needs more skill and patience and love than most. I’m spending these three days at home and hope to be rested enough in body and spirit to present a saner outlook on your return. I think my curious inexplicable feeling and behavior of the last weeks has been sheer weariness. Yes, I know I’m stubborn, but at least it’s put to one good use: I stubbornly persist in loving you.

  The recognition that she hoped to present a “saner” outlook gives some evidence that by now my mother was beginning to feel the more intense pulls that would soon blossom into full-scale bipolar disorder—that complex mental illness, sometimes called manic depression, in which waves of a depressed state alternate with some form of mania, the ups and downs coming without much warning, and sometimes getting deeper and higher and deeper and higher, without relief. A person who is bipolar can become catatonic—unable or unwilling to get out of bed or do the usual chores. Alternately, a manic-depressive can be ferociously active, sleeping very little, exhibiting a great deal of energy, sporting many creative ideas, spending money wildly, or madly performing sexual activity. Unfortunately, the science of psychology was too much in its infancy to be much help to my mother. Today, many medications are available to tame the bipolar beast.

  At the end of 1932, Mother and my father were in need of the kind of help they were never to get.

  Having gone to upstate New York with Missy, for a short visit to some friends, Mother wrote a letter to try to tell Dad what she needed from him, and what he could expect from her. She was, she said, beginning to discover in him some of the same worries and mental jumping jacks that pursued her from time to time.

  At this time, sick of “taking money from Mr. A. to give to Mr. B.,” Dad was planning to give up the civil cases that were bringing some money into the law partnership. It would be some years before he left the firm altogether, but he was already worried about his career, which he didn’t think allowed him to make a great enough contribution to society. He was also deeply worried about money. He didn’t want to depend on the Schambergs’ wealth to sustain his own family. He wanted to be independent.

  But my mother saw his financial doubts as only part of the problem:

  Edwin, you really worry me badly at times. I seem powerless to dispel your deep gloom. I think there is an alternative to letting this money thing possess your mind and soul. There is much beyond the ugly pettinesses of our existence which is waiting for us to explore and which remains full of reward to the curious seeker.

  By the time she wrote this letter, Mother had been pregnant with my brother for five months. Later, as winter bore down on her for her first delivery of a child, she felt compelled to write Dad again.

  It was a long epistle, written from a distance (again, she was with Missy), and clearly some troubled exchanges had preceded it. In it, Mother expressed dismay that Dad refused to believe that she loved him. “You are tormented by doubt of me.” My father would never lose that doubt. And my mother would, more and more, be sure that it was a failing in herself.

  ______

  J. ANTHONY LUKAS WAS BORN ON APRIL 25, 1933, two years after my parents’ wedding.

  Shortly after Tony’s birth, my grandfather’s heart gave cause for alarm. He was sent off to Stanford, New York, where it was cooler than Philadelphia and where Missy could take care of him. Mother and “the infant” traveled there, too. While Tony played in the sun with his grandfather, Mother watched them both and wondered if she could ever feel the joy that other mothers felt for their children—and for their fathers and husbands. As she wrote in her journal:

  She watched the aging man and the growing baby lying together on the lawn and wondered whether they would ever really know each other and whether Tony could give her father the love she wanted to and could not give.

  None of which is what she wrote to Dad. To him, she said:

  Your Tony boy has been angelic and he is the admired darling of the household. Grandma has him in bed with her every morning and he coos and gurgles vociferously in response to her rapturous adoration. But we both miss you, my darling, and he will coo and I will be glad when you are with us again.

  Soon, Dad and Mother began looking for a proper place to settle down. In the country. For a while, they rented places in Westchester for the summer. But Mother was certain the air and foliage would be better for everyone if they could find a permanent place outside New York. Dad didn’t want to commute, but Mother won the debate, and they found a year-by-year rental in New Rochelle, not too far by train from New York.
/>   Dad was stewing and worrying about his choice of career: whether he should do more for the outcasts of society and less for the rich and famous. He also worried about his wife. God knows he loved her, but he found that she was indecisive about house-hold matters, overspending when it was not called for, and then panicking. He worried—Caroline Lavenson’s warnings continually echoing in his ear—whether she was also indecisive about him, whether Froelicher was going to be a persistent, silent stalker in their relationship.

  Mother had her worries, too. One potential house rental had a wet bar in the basement. Dad wanted to take the place, and in a letter to Missy, Mother wrote, “I only hope I won’t have to seek refuge in your arms from the curse of a drunken husband.”

  In the fall of 1933, Mother decided to get a graduate degree in education so she could teach. She studied such newfangled psychological materials as Rorschach tests. Tony was left in the hands of Mary (whom he came to call Baba), a young black woman who also labored with cooking and other chores. In her autobiography, Mother says she used Mary’s presence as an excuse to stay away from the house and from Tony, with whom she began to feel she was “inadequate.”

  It was during this course of study that she wrote in the autobiography:

  Gradually a state of anxiety took hold of her and, though she continued to run to school each day and go through motions, she felt that she had ceased to dictate her own conduct.

  Mother lost her appetite and her ability to handle social situations. She would panic, her hands perspiring, her heart beating faster and faster. She felt she needed to learn from Missy how to deal with “the household,” perplexing problems such as the best cuts of meat, what to do about laundry soaps, the maid’s time off, the linen closet. By now, however, Dr. Schamberg was seriously ill, and Missy was needed elsewhere.