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  As if I didn’t have enough anxiety and distress, when the appointed time to go came Tony had a cold and couldn’t go with me. He had to stay in bed for at least a week, the doctor said. A cold! How sick does that make a young boy? Why couldn’t he still go with me? Why couldn’t I wait until he was well? No one ever answered those questions. Again, I felt betrayed.

  In 1935 the progressive educator Carmelita Hinton bought Elm Lea—a four-hundred-acre cattle and hay farm on the top of East Hill—to establish the Putney School. Based on ideas she had gleaned from John Dewey, the regimen included eighty-minute academic classes, work on the farm, heavy emphasis on the arts, attention to politics. Putney started with a few dozen students and became nationally known as the benchmark of a well-rounded, “progressive” co-ed education, in which graduates were urged to solve the problems of the world as humanitarians, not just as scholars. Mrs. Hinton was the widow of the man who had invented the jungle gym, thereby providing enough money when he died to start the school. Sebastian Hinton had killed himself, but none of us learned that until many years later. Mrs. Hinton’s younger brother, Phil, started a school for the elementary grades a few miles away, and it was actually to that branch of Putney—called Hickory Ridge—that we were going.

  Missy took me up to Putney and waited with me until Tony was well. For the first of nearly a hundred times over the next ten years, I climbed aboard a train at Grand Central and headed up the Connecticut valley to Vermont. As we went into the train, carrying just a small suitcase (the trunk would follow by Railway Express), I was comforted by the fact that my grandmother was with me, but I was terrified at what lay ahead. I did not really understand what a boarding school was, except that there would be all sorts of strangers, including boys older than I who might want to hurt me or tease me, and that my brother would not be there to protect me. And that my mother and father were—for all practical purposes—gone, vanished.

  Still, it must have been somewhat exciting to look out at the passing scenery as city gave way to town and town gave way to countryside. I found the world outside those windows vastly fascinating. Fields that stretched wide across flatlands and long sheds with tin roofs and slatted sides. These held tobacco, drying in the sun and fresh air.

  On future trips on the Cigar Valley Express, when we traveled alone, comic books became our solace. They reminded us that crime didn’t pay, that crooks and Nazis could be caught, that right always wins—and that lost little boys are always reclaimed. Comic books showed us that it was possible—if only in fantasy—to turn oneself from a weakling into a powerful force for good, a force that could twist its way into nooks and crannies, fly to distant spots, pierce solid substances, and always—always—triumph. For two little boys caught in the spiderweb of a world gone mad, they were an essential part of our survival kit.

  When Missy and I arrived at the Putney station in mid-September 1942, we found the village’s sole taxi waiting. It was a short drive up from the river to the town, which had been founded in 1753, long before Vermont became a state.

  The population in the town of Putney those days was small, but it was a wonderful place to learn about America. There were three churches—one Catholic, and two of Protestant denominations. There was a village hall, where the town selectmen met monthly and where, in true democratic fashion, a town meeting was held on the second Tuesday of every March. All laws had to pass before every voting adult. In the evening on Town Meeting day, a square dance was held, and to the delight of the children hot maple syrup, fresh from the local, wood-fired sugarhouses, would be poured over pure snow. The instantly crystallized sweet was as good a treat as any I have ever had. Black coffee, pickles, and plain donuts were offered to soften the potential shock to our systems of so much sugar.

  After our five-hour train ride, the coal dust was too clotted in our nostrils, and Missy too agitated, to go right up to the school. It is hard sometimes to realize that, despite her regal and controlled manner, Missy had only recently lost a daughter and that now—as she saw it—she was losing her favorite grandson. She had dared; she had asked to have us with her in New York and, having been refused that, must have felt both angry and bereft. Having a child die by suicide is both an accusation and an irretrievable loss. But since Tony and I had suffered our own losses, we didn’t think about her.

  Knowing there would not be accommodations befitting her at Hickory Ridge (outdoor plumbing was still in use that first fall), Missy had booked a bed-and-breakfast halfway up the hill above the village, just next to the co-op food store. The pleasant owner of that B and B was a longtime resident who welcomed us with a cup of tea for Missy, a cookie for me, and a comfortable cot in Missy’s room for me to rest on. I lay there for a while, in fitful day-dreams of what awaited me, but soon fell asleep.

  When I woke, it was dark, and I could see that Missy’s bed was empty. In fact, it had not been slept in. Thus began a recurrent shudder of fear that I was being abandoned again. In later years, that terror would send me to the bathroom with an instant case of stomach cramps. That night it simply propelled me into action: out the door, down the stairs, looking for my grandmother. She was nowhere in sight. I opened the front door, and a voice called to me from the kitchen. It was our landlady.

  “Have you seen my grandmother?” I sniffled.

  “She went out for a walk, darling,” the woman said.

  “Oh . . .”

  “She’ll be back soon. Do you want to sit here with me until she comes back.” I debated. Was the cold kitchen chair a place I wanted to wait, or the comfortable cot upstairs? I chose the cot, but I didn’t go to sleep until my grandmother came back and went to bed.

  The next morning we took a taxi to Hickory Ridge. It was the middle of September and the leaves were that dark summer green that comes with ample sun and water. Up toward the top of the hills, a few had begun to turn into the rust and gold that, within a month, would flood the landscape with unparalleled beauty. But even if they were already brilliant, I doubt that I would have seen them. Though the streams were full of sparkling water and the hills full of verdant growth, my heart was beating wildly. I feared what lay ahead.

  The road was made of packed dirt. We climbed for twenty minutes, and then came out on a clearing where a large yellow farmhouse had been modified to accommodate thirty student rooms. Carpenters were working on a dining-room/kitchen addition. A large red barn was nearby, and I could hear horses neighing in the paddock. We were directed to a small machine shed where Helen Chase, the headmaster’s wife, was preparing lunch in a makeshift kitchen. Missy showed her how to mix peanut butter and honey in a big bowl and spread the premixed mess on bread, rather than doing each slice individually. Mrs. Chase was grateful. Missy had asked the taxi to wait, and now set back off for town, saying she’d come by tomorrow. Who knows what was in her heart? I can only guess that she was dismayed to be leaving me behind, distraught that Dad had chosen to send a seven-year-old boy into this wilderness rather than leave him with her in the safety of her New York apartment. Later, I could understand why he had done what he had done. But at the moment I felt far from protected.

  I cried. Mrs. Chase chastised me. “I don’t like little boys who cry,” she said. I stopped crying, but I never learned to like her, not in the six years that I spent at Hickory Ridge.

  When Tony finally caught up with me, a week later, we were bedded down in the same room. The theory was that he could comfort me when I got too frightened or sad. And indeed, years later, Tony told me that he listened to my crying after lights-out as I revisited the pain that had been set upon us. I desperately wanted him to tell me everything was going to be okay, but I don’t remember that happening, ever.

  I would not let my brother out of my sight for long. As far as I knew, he was the only family member I still had. I did more than keep an eye on him: I strove to protect him from every possible ill. On cookouts, which were frequent, I made sure he had his food first. When classes were over for the day, I rushed to find him
, to make sure he was okay. This proved to be an annoyance to Tony. It was bad enough having a younger brother tagging after him, but a seven-year-old who turned the tables and tried to take care of a nine-year-old was infuriating. The pattern was set for years to come: I was concerned about him; he did not seem to be concerned about me.

  America had entered World War II. Big-time. Outside, in the “real world,” ration cards were issued; travel by car or train was limited; censorship was established. And millions of young men enlisted in the various branches of the armed forces, determined to throw Hitler and Tj from their thrones of power. Because we were isolated in this little Vermont town, we were spared some of the frightening aspects of wartime America: the brownouts, when all lights had to be hidden from view at night; air-raid siren testing; the establishment of air-raid shelters; talk of invasions or shelling from offshore submarines.

  And so, despite the fears that came at night, there were times at the school when we forgot that we had been sent into the wilderness. Exiled from parents, from comfort, from everything that “home” had meant to us—the excitement and freedom of boarding school life finally took over our spirits.

  In the winter, we all went skiing—a mandatory sport. Those early skis were long and cumbersome, with spring bindings that didn’t come loose when we fell. The poles, made of bamboo, came up to our armpits. Tony and I took to the slopes with gusto, but not with great skill. Later, I worked my way up to become a ski instructor and once won a downhill race against another school. But in general, I was not a speedster on the slopes, nor did I try ski jumping. I might have been graceful, but I was not courageous.

  Tony was never graceful; he was, in fact, ungainly. His arms and hands were carried forward of his body, not smoothly, but in jerks, rising and falling as his body twisted in an attempt to perform acts of physical skill. His body was out of rhythm, his legs pumping almost spasmodically. When he skied, he threw himself down the slope, his upper body trying to wrest his lower body into turns rather than melting into the slope as the best skiers do. At soccer he churned down the field, his lips taut, his brow furrowed, trying to reach, to kick the twirling ball, often as not sending it far afield from his desired target. Only when he played second base or shortstop did his longtime love of the game of baseball enable him to fire a hardball straight to first, angling for a double play. The rest of the time—at other sports—he was lucky if he just got the job done.

  However, in his face you could see the effort, the intensity, the will to succeed. With his eyes bulging, his lips tightly compressed, you couldn’t tell if he was angry or just concentrating on the job.

  I often thought he would fall onto the playing field or the slope out of sheer exertion or desperation to get it right, but he entered into sports and theater and even square dancing with a gusto reminiscent of the way in which he had bitten into an onion sandwich as a child, or the way in which he tackled his homework. For him, it was all or nothing.

  His lack of grace extended to his personal appearance. Tony did not wear clothes well. Even when, after his marriage, he bought the finest shirts and double-breasted jackets, there was something sloppy about the way he stood—hands crammed in his pants pockets, one hip lower than the other, his tie ever so slightly askew. Perhaps it was an image from that play about journalism in the old days, The Front Page, a jacket-off, shirtsleeves-rolled-up look, that attracted him. Or maybe he was just clumsy of body, the way he was elegant of intellect.

  Life at Hickory Ridge was harsh at first. The walls were full of leaks and took the full brunt of winter snows and autumn rains. In the middle of the night, wind screeched past the faulty caulking around our windows. It entered into our beds—the radiators having long since ceased their whistling warmth—and we wriggled in our deep sleep, feeling the chill. In the morning, we slipped on long johns, ran down the hall to the newly installed bathroom, and hastily washed our faces before descending to a stomach-warming breakfast of Cream of Wheat.

  Tony was no more fit to the north country than I, but the fact that he was two years older gave him a leg up on adaptation to cold and wind. While we both would learn to deal with winter chills and rough lodging, in those first two years I didn’t adapt to the emotional cold.

  Lying in bed, I tried to convince myself that I had concocted all this squalor. It was merely a movie of my life, over which I had control as some future film director, or, at the worst, a phantasm of loneliness and discomfort, not real life. But I remember distinctly that this did not, in the end, comfort me. The “movie” didn’t end; no fairy godmother came floating out of the sky. Only the headmaster, Phil, his crinkled, leathery Vermont face bending over the bed, coaxing me back to sleep, but promising a life of unease for years to come.

  Nonetheless, I formulated one firm idea: if I behaved like the good little boy everyone said I was (and that I knew I wasn’t; otherwise, why would my mother and father have abandoned me and sent me off into the freezing hell of Vermont?), eventually my mother would return.

  If not my mother, then surely my father would come here, make amends for his inept handling of my childhood, compensate us for the pain and sorrow. He would take us into his home, into his bosom, and pay us back for what had been stolen from us.

  AT HICKORY RIDGE, Tony began the intellectual and physical growth spurt that would take him to Harvard and the New York Times. Even his first report card makes the point. He is nine years old. Elizabeth Hamill, his English teacher, writes: “Tony is a very conscientious worker. His script is beautiful. His creative writing shows both thinking and originality and a happy feeling for the poetry in language.” And his history teacher, Ida Belle Hegemann, pens: “Tony is attentive and rather quiet in history class. His questions are always pertinent, which shows that he is interested in the subject. His comprehension is good and he gave a well thought-out talk in a history assembly. His papers are written with care and thought, and with attention to sentence structure.”

  They did not think the same about me. For ten years, I followed in his footsteps, academically, with the same courses, the same teachers; my footprint was never as big as his. “If only Kit would work harder,” they said. “You never quite live up to your potential,” one teacher wrote me directly. I was “scattered” in my organization.

  Of course, as I look back on it, we both had our strengths. I was easy to get along with. I had a spontaneous, almost instinctive sense of music, an inborn ear. Though I never became the professional conductor I aspired to be, I have always been able to enjoy all kinds of music and performing arts. And, unlike Mother, who complained of her “over-quick mind,” I found it enjoyable to make quick decisions, to get on with things, whether they were profound or not. Some things, after all, do not demand perfection or a lifetime to decide.

  One of those things was acting. At Hickory Ridge, I quickly entered the world of drama, performing plays like Toad of Toad Hall: efforts to encourage elementary school children to express themselves. I needed no encouragement. Mother’s plays on the window seat had prepared me. I loved the exposure to an audience. I loved approbation. Though I always wanted to be the hero, the serious one, it was with comedy that I began to win not only applause but laughter—and I loved it.

  WE WAITED FOR DAD to let us know when—if ever—he would be coming home. At Thanksgiving, that first year, we rode the sooty train to New York and stayed with Missy. The same occurred at Christmas. We conversed with Dad over the long-distance phone. He was in Phoenix, Arizona, at a tuberculosis sanitarium. He was getting better, he said.

  Our X-rays—taken before we left for school—were fine; only he had the disease. He hoped to be back within a year.

  A year! That seemed like an eternity to me. How would I survive? What would happen to me—and to Tony? I was on terra incognita.

  Children are resilient, or at least they appear to be. Looking back, I cannot be sure which was true of me, or of Tony. At the time, we appeared to go on with normal children’s lives—if “normal” can i
nclude seven- and nine-year-olds being sent two hundred miles away to a raw country life to live with strangers. But we did play and learn, and enjoy the benefits of a Vermont lifestyle.

  Underneath, however, I was coming to terms, in a very strange way, with the notion that my mother was dead and my father had gone away.

  In the spring of 1943, Dad showed up at school. He had returned only recently from Arizona and was eager to get to work again at the Society for the Prevention of Crime, pursuing his holy grail: preventing delinquents from growing up into adult criminals.

  When he came up to Hickory Ridge, Dad was thirty pounds heavier than the last time we’d seen him; he didn’t look like himself. Clearly, the bed rest, fattening foods, and other treatment at the sanitarium had improved his health. But when he left, I confided to Tony that I did not believe this man was our father. This was a trick that was being played on us. Our real father was still in Arizona, with Mother. We would never see either of them again. Tony looked askance at me, but did not tell anyone what I had said.

  My head was filled with nightmares. Just after Mother’s death, I dreamed of being buried alive. I would wake in a terror. Later, in adolescence and early adulthood, evildoers were after me, chasing me with spears. Luckily, I could fly, and I would hover just above their raised weapons, fleeing, just out of reach. In adulthood, the most intense dreams have been ones in which some beautiful girl or woman abandons me or is simply out of reach: she remains silent, never contacting me or letting me contact her. It was a video replay I could not turn off. The machine was on automatic.

  Clearly, I was not happy, and I was not particularly stable. Shortly after the visit from Dad, I started setting fires in wastebaskets in teachers’ rooms. I always put them out, but soon Phil Chase, the head of the school, and others noticed and started trying to figure out who was doing this dangerous trick. One evening, Phil sat me down in his tiny office and asked me to tell him whether I was in fact the arsonist. I admitted it. To my surprise, he was not angry. He sympathized with my fears and my grief. He knew I wasn’t happy. He asked for my cooperation in helping him keep the place safe. I had to say yes, and in fact I was pleased to do so. At last, I had received real comfort, real understanding.