The Old Lady Learns to Drive

The Old Lady Learns to Drive

a short story by

Matthew T. Hastings

When she was twenty-five, and her husband was killed in an air raid over Berlin, Charlotte froze with grief. After a month of being shell-shocked Mummy, as she could be counted on doing, decided that enough was enough. She told Charlotte that when people hold on to their pain they embrace it and cultivate it, the way an orchid lover patiently tends and nurtures his blooms. If they are blessed it becomes something positive, something beautiful, something precious. But other times pain is like a familiar ache or twinge. You live with it and tell yourself it is nothing. But it never really goes away, it is always there and you can count on it to leave a vacuum, a burning black hole in your heart, a cancer. She told Charlotte to either join a religious order or move on, she was becoming boring.

As years passed Charlotte Shippen Rush became hard to miss and even more difficult to avoid. She was now somewhere between fifty and eighty, hit five feet on a good day and just might tip the scales at 100 pounds. She had a signature panda skunk look --- with Dusty Springfield thickly mascaraed eyes and raven-black hair with a white streak down the middle in a snood. On anyone else it would look slightly demented; on Charlotte it was elegant and chic.

During the Rehoboth summer Charlotte made at least two public appearances daily. At ten every morning in front of the library the door of her enormous, mirror-polished 1949 Packard woody was opened by her stately black chauffeur, also her butler, and she emerged camera-ready to conduct her errands. Rare was the day when she could walk half a block without being stopped to chat or asked to pose next to her car with a tourist’s family; thus immortalized on countless Christmas cards.

Few could remember a Rehoboth summer without Miss Charlotte. She was as much a local institution as the Dollies salt-water taffy sign or the World War II invasion guard towers or the speed traps. The thing about Charlotte was that she was always delighted to happen upon you. If she had met you twenty years earlier she would remember you and the conversation. She was interested in whatever was going on with you, your family or your business. She never judged and even though she was richer than Oprah, be you the Vice President or a waitress, everyone got the same treatment. She was quick to tease, compliment, and encourage. You found yourself smiling and laughing, even when you disagreed with her. You walked away feeling good, feeling optimistic. She was, however, anything but a kind, harmless little old lady. When something occurred in Rehoboth that she felt inappropriate it rarely occurred twice.

About an hour before sunset her bathtub on wheels with a one-digit license place would sail down Rehoboth Avenue and gracefully berth in a spot strictly forbidding parking. People on the beach and boardwalk, thinking a reality TV show was being filmed, would stop swimming, shopping and sun burning to watch as her driver emerged and proceeded to set up a blue-and-white striped cabana, matching chairs with an enormous hamper on the beach. Charlotte and two plump, indulged Westies, always named Fergus and India, made a little parade following the driver as he gently carried Charlotte’s paraplegic brother Lucas Shippen, a frail-looking elderly gentleman in white flannel trousers, blazer and straw boater to the Riviera-quality tableau. The patrician siblings sipped ice-cold martinis, talked and laughed as they nibbled on artisanal hors d’ oeuvres, celebrating the end of a day together.

The Shippens had always been a law unto themselves--never feeling the need to explain nor justify. One was, therefore, rarely surprised by what a Shippen did or said, but a month after her death, when Charlotte’s beneficiaries were made public, even the most stalwart blinked twice. The size of her estate was no surprise and included a big chunk of downtown Philadelphia. What was outrageous was who was got the loot. Charlotte, some said, had gone too far; even for a Shippen.

Two sisters from Manitoba, one a nurse and one a schoolteacher, who could vaguely remember their late parents mentioning some lady in Delaware, hadn’t a clue why they were left a third of her fortune. The second third—including the Packard woody, the eight-bedroom cottage, and the current Fergus and India went to the children of her butler of seventy years. The final third was left to endow rabbinical school scholarships to honor the late great Hasidic scholar Simon Burshtin.

Leaving your money to strangers and your servants is one thing. Leaving it to honor the memory of an arch conservative leader of Hasidic Jews who certainly had no time for the liberal, liberated, free-spirited philosophy of someone like Charlotte was quite another.

After Angus was killed Charlotte had spent the war in London, where as she had been told to say she trained nurses. She returned home in the spring of 1946 and did what was expected; she resumed her life of responsible privilege in her parents’ Main Line mansion. Mummy had decided that what Charlotte needed was a replacement for Angus, her dead, war-hero husband. To Mummy it was a miracle that Charlotte had ever married, and to a Rush at that, without her guidance. Mummy was not waiting for a second miracle.

Charlotte and her mother were not cut from the same cloth. Mummy was silk. Charlotte was boiled wool. Charlotte spoke to strangers and she could do so effortlessly in three languages. Charlotte’s friends were “interesting” and not always in the Social Register. She could keep a confidence. She majored in Chemistry at Wellesley. She found something interesting in every person she met. She got right to the point. Kind people said she was “refreshing” and “original.” Others simply said “strange.”

Mummy was stunned when Charlotte announced there would be no husband-hunting campaign. Her excuse was that no man under forty would marry a woman that could not have children. In reality no man would measure up to Angus, who as time passed was becoming more perfect in every way. Charlotte announced that she would start new life by spending the summer in Rehoboth and take the butler’s son, who needed a job, and Emma, his pretty English war bride wife who’s cooking was addicting, with her. That Mummy didn’t do Rehoboth, she did Isle au Haut, was not entirely coincidental.

Angus and Charlotte had fled to Rehoboth as soon as the wedding bouquet had been tossed. There they played house until Angus shipped out. When his will was read Angus had bequeathed her the old Rush family cottage in the Pines and so much money that even Mummy gasped.

Settled in Rehoboth with a brand new butler and cook, Charlotte felt a little less sad. She gardened, gossiped at the market, took painting classes at the Art League, played tennis and bridge, read Jane Austen for the umpteenth time and gave and went to parties. Every afternoon she’d take the butler’s and Emma’s sweet café au lait son for a boardwalk stroller ride. She secretly enjoyed staring down the disparaging looks and ugly mutters from people who thought the baby was hers. “I should be so blessed,” she thought.

Then.

everything.

changed.

She had seen him on the beach three nights in a row on her sunset walkies with the wee beasties. He stood at the water’s edge, fully clothed in a formal dark suit and old-fashioned hat, staring statue-like at the far-off lights from ships and Cape May. At first she imagined him to be Amish; but then not. On the fourth night Charlotte stopped and introduced herself. He looked at her as if she had said something obscene. His hair was a shade of red she’d not often seen. The silence was broken only by the waves. Charlotte was not deterred.

She mentioned that he was the first Hasidic person she’d seen in Rehoboth and asked if this was his first summer. His eyes bore into her, saying nothing. Charlotte decided that propriety had been met and began to walk away. A few steps away he spoke.

In a Spanish accent he asked her if she knew the stars. He was searching for Capricorn. His voice was kind, firm and somehow tender. He apologized for his rudeness. No one had spoken to him in the two weeks he had been in Rehoboth. Charlotte was the first.

He had an eight sentence life story. He had been a diamond cutter in Antwerp. He escaped to Cuba and waited seven years for a visa and was alone; his family was exterminated. He’d arrived in America six months before. He had been lent a cottage in Rehoboth for the summer by a friend’s friend. He was recovering from a drawn-out influenza. He was studying to become a rabbi. He was to marry in September. For one of the few times in her life Charlotte did not know what to say.

She was a war widow. He was engaged to a woman he had never met. She was a grieving 12th generation blue-blooded Philadelphia debutante who rode with the hounds, sailed competitively, and took her bridge game a tad too seriously. He was an off-the-boat religious scholar, with no family; in a conservative, almost reactionary Jewish sect where the men dress in black with tall hats and distinctive locks of hair on either side of their heads and the women shaved their heads and wore wigs when they married. She was bright, sparkling and independent. He was reserved, commanding and austere. They had nothing in common. Their worlds were chalk and cheese, not only different, they conflicted. To her his world was strange, forbidding, mysterious and almost cultish. To him her world was empty, superficial and devoid of meaning. That they would have a love affair was utterly inconceivable.

And yet they did. The next night she asked him to join her on her beach walk. Soon they were sharing their most private and intimate thoughts and fears and worries and dreams. They agreed on nothing. They couldn't remember laughing so much. After much prodding and encouragement he agreed to remove his shoes and socks to walk with her in the surf, always in his suit. After the first week they met nightly at his cottage. Just before dawn, after they were together, he walked Charlotte home through the woods. They could taste the salt in the sea mist as they shared their last hidden kiss. Her loss of Angus seemed bearable; she felt alive again. With her he was a stranger to himself, both frightened and intrigued. They did not discuss the future.

In late August he said that in ten days he must return to Brooklyn. The wedding rituals must be observed. Charlotte insisted they spend every moment together, day and night, until he left. If her butler and Emma thought anything unusual about Miss Charlotte having an Hasidic holy man as a houseguest they did not let on. Charlotte’s friends were so accustomed to her eccentric behavior that while this fellow was different, he was just one more oddball in Charlotte’s ever expanding world of oddballs. No one would imagine the two of them being anything more than friends. After all, they were from different worlds.

On their last day together they each took a roll of snap shots of the other with his father’s Leica. He went to the train station alone and was gone. They had not exchanged addresses. It was over.

In their two months together Charlotte was two months wiser, two months happier, two months less empty. She resumed her life of good deeds and counted the days to confirm what she had been told all her life would never happen. Six weeks later she was stunned when the doctor in Salisbury, diplomatically ignoring the lack of a wedding ring on Mrs. Smith’s finger, told her the impossible had in fact occurred.

This would be the only child she would ever have. It would be a child she would never know. Rehoboth was a small town, and her Philadelphia friends had smaller minds. Suspicion would certainly be cast his way, and such talk would destroy his marriage and his life.

One advantage of being a law unto themselves was that Shippens didn’t particularly care what other people thought of them and what they did to secure happiness. Charlotte would have kept the child, scandalizing her world without a second thought, but the risk of destroying the man she loved was too great.

She left before Thanksgiving and by late June Charlotte was back in Rehoboth from an extended European tour. She bought a small farm in the countryside that Andrew Wyeth painted and slowly spun out of Mummy’s orbit. Later, when Lucas was crippled in a car accident he decided to live with Charlotte. Always close, now they would be together for the rest of their lives.

Her ginger-haired lover had become a renowned scholar and professor. His books were best-sellers and he was labeled the Jewish Billy Graham and counted Eleanor Roosevelt as a friend. They saw each other only once in sixty years, on the wooden escalators at Macys in New York. She was headed down; he was coming up. They stared silently at each other as they slowly faded away. Charlotte abandoned her opera companion and fled home on the next train.

Three days after she turned seventy a letter arrived from Brittle, Manitoba, written by a lady veterinarian making a genealogical inquiry. Only she wasn’t. Her research had led her to the name Caroline Smith. She hoped Mrs. Rush might have knowledge that she could share.

As it happened Mrs. Rush did. Caroline Smith was the name she’d used when the adoption papers were signed. Despite the layers of secrecy this woman had found her. Charlotte was excited, terrified, ashamed and confused; most unlike a Shippen.

She wrote and told the veterinarian that if she was who she claimed to be, then Charlotte was who she hoped she was. She wrote that the woman’s father had been engaged to another and had never known she had their child. She wrote that she had thought of her daughter every day of her life and that she was overjoyed to connect. She asked to correspond before they spoke or met; to take this slowly. Charlotte was afraid of losing her daughter a second time.

For three months they exchanged two or three letters weekly. They sent one another photographs, sketches, book reviews, poetry and favorite recipes. Well, Emma’s favorite recipes. They shared secrets, hopes, fears and dreams. Her daughter never asked about her father and Charlotte never revealed more. She was very interested in Charlotte’s family medical history. They teased one another about how different they were. Charlotte was shocked and then pleased when it became apparent that her daughter was very much like Mummy, only sensitive to others’ feelings, and her granddaughters were very much like her, only more self-confident.

The letters stopped as abruptly as they started.

Then a ‘phone call from Manitoba; her daughter’s husband was calling. He told Charlotte his wife had died an hour before after a long battle with cancer; she was the first to be told. Charlotte’s letters had meant the world to his wife, filling a hole in her heart. Charlotte felt like she had when Angus had died, numb and then angry and then resigned. She could not intrude into her daughter’s family; her loving adoptive parents and her daughters had never been told about Charlotte. The husband promised to keep in touch with news and photos. Her granddaughters would be told she was an only family friend. And that was that.

Ten years later Lucas and Emma were dead. Charlotte could no longer pretend she would live forever. Time was running out. She had put it off too long. He had a right to know. Her lawyers wrote to him, indicating that Mrs. Rush was interested in endowing a scholarship at his rabbinical college. Mrs. Burshtin responded with the news that her husband was quite ill. He had been humbled by Mrs. Rush’s generous offer and he asked if they could meet; sooner rather than later.

Standing in the rain three days later his wife shyly answered the door. Charlotte was shown into the library of a well-maintained but very simply furnished Brooklyn brownstone. He apologized for not rising. She couldn’t think of what to say. His wife poured tea and then left the room, closing the door, leaving them alone.

They sat in silence. Suddenly he spoke. His voice had not changed; it was still soft, still gentle. He asked if she had ever worn a different perfume, he remembered this one so well. He asked if she ever finished the landscape she started on their picnic on Assateague. He asked if she still liked to sing and if she still sang off-key. He asked if she still had the cook whose food was magical. He asked if she had ever admitted that her only fear was that of driving. He asked if she had ever published her beautiful haiku poems and if she still shopped at Macy's. He kept asking questions and Charlotte sat there, like a bump on a log, saying nothing. Finally he asked why she had come.

Charlotte opened her purse and with her hands shaking slowly removed five photos; three of their daughter and two of their granddaughters, each with the same shade of red hair as his. He took them one at a time and stared intently. His face had been a pasty white; it suddenly became flushed and almost as red as a flash sunburn.

He knew without being told. He asked their daughter’s name was and if their granddaughters and she were all as spirited as Charlotte. He asked to hear the story. Charlotte told him everything. Her words seemed to have a life of their own. She finished with the death of a daughter neither had met, neither had held, neither had known.

His eyes were filled with tears and he reached for her hands. His voice was broken, almost a whisper. He looked her in the eyes and slowly said that in his life two people had loved him and sacrificed their lives for him; his brother ,who gave him his visa to Cuba and was swept up in the Holocaust and Charlotte, who had given up the only child she would ever have to protect his marriage and reputation. He said that he was grateful and undeserving and sad. He looked up and smiled, he said at the same time he was so happy to know that G-d had created a part of them would live on.

She asked if he still had the photos they had taken their final day. He smiled and opened a drawer in his desk and removed his roll of film. It had never been developed. Charlotte reached into her purse and showed him her roll of film; also never developed. They both laughed. All those years and only their memories and their moment at Macy's to hold on to; no photos, no tokens, no souvenirs.

They sat and talked and laughed as if it were days, not decades, between Rehoboth Beach and Brooklyn. Too soon it was time to leave. He thanked Charlotte again for her bravery and her love. He began to say that he wished, but then he stopped. It needn’t be spoken; they both knew that in a sense they’d never parted, never forgotten. They held one another very tightly one last time.

Her sunglasses hid her wet eyes as she walked out of the house into the bright sunshine in a daze. She slid into the backseat and hardly noticed as the door was closed and they drove away. A few blocks away she snapped out of her trance and asked her butler/chauffeur to stop. She got out and sat in the front seat.

The butler/chauffeur was not surprised; if there was one thing certain about Miss Charlotte it was that you could count on her doing the exact opposite of what was expected. “I’m going to watch you very carefully.” she told him. “And when we return to Rehoboth would you be so kind as to teach me to drive?”