Franklin Affair Page 4

  R resisted a temptation to tell Harry about Dear Audience, a one-man Ben show he had wanted to write patterned on Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight. On a high school class bus trip to Hartford, R not only visited Twain’s home, now a museum, he saw a special afternoon performance of Holbrook’s show at the famous Bushnell Theater. The whole experience had made a lasting impression. R still had a fairly new CD and an old LP of Mark Twain Tonight, as well as VHS copies of two versions that were broadcast on network television. Later, as a historian, R had come to believe that dramatic performances built around important historical moments and people were very effective ways to connect young people to history.

  R had dreamed of Pat Hingle playing Ben in Dear Audience, but the whole thing never went beyond a very rough first draft. That was because most of the Ben Crowd who read it had not been happy with it. Wally declared it “fun and possibly entertaining” but disrespectful of Ben and his legacy. To fool with it now would probably be disrespectful of Wally, too.

  He saw Johnny Rutledge enter the room. Johnny had studied under Wally and then gone on to join the staff of Benjamin Franklin University Press, where he was now editor in chief and publisher. BFU had published both of R’s books and several other academic ones that had been written about Ben in the last thirty years. Serious Ben books were their specialty.

  R greeted Johnny with a vigorous handshake and warm manner that clearly took Johnny aback. They had been colleagues, collaborators with similar professional interests, and they were friends—but not buddies. Johnny was R’s size, just under six feet tall, and in his mid-forties, but, to R, had a perpetually eager—and annoying—graduate-student look and manner. He was all corduroy, work shirt, blond hair over the ears and collar, large round rimless glasses. R, in contrast, kept his emotions as well as his dark-brown hair cropped, his clothes casually upscale and pressed. He had never had to wear glasses, not even for reading small print.

  “Anything new on the search?” R asked Johnny. As a research sideline, Johnny was obsessed with running down the identity of the mother of William, Ben’s illegitimate son. R had always found that quest to be interesting but not of critical importance.

  Wally’s letter certainly changed that.

  “I’m down to trying to arrange some DNA sample work on a few possibilities,” said Johnny, clearly delighted over R’s interest.

  “Keep me posted,” said R.

  “I will. You bet I will. Thanks.”

  “Maybe I’ll give you a call someday soon,” R added. And he gave Johnny a hearty we’re-buddies slap on the back and moved on to speak to someone else.

  His way was blocked by Rebecca. Her physical size gave the word blocked its full sports meaning. R, at 195, may have outweighed her by nearly forty pounds, but the hit would have been a crunching one.

  “I deserve some help, some slack from you, R,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “For simple reasons of loyalty among Wally’s students and assistants, if nothing else.”

  R shook his head.

  “What does that mean?” she asked. Some red was appearing in her cheeks.

  “It means I can’t talk about this with you. It’s improper.”

  Calling on his old skills as a high school quarterback, he feinted to the left and then moved to the right.

  She said as he passed by, “I swear on Wally’s costumed remains, R, that I will not go quietly. I really meant what I said about the throwing of stones.”

  He just kept walking.

  FOUR

  Spontaneity with and toward women did not work for R. Think ahead, plan ahead, stay ahead—keep a head. Those were his guiding principles now, after a lifetime of going for the moment, the thrill. That practice had, from time to time, caused pain, put him in jeopardy, helped end his first two marriages, and was now among the things putting strain on a potential third.

  I will not make a move on this woman.

  That was his vow as, back in his Philadelphia hotel room, R prepared to meet Clara Hopkins for dinner at Brasserie Perrier on Walnut Street.

  He had made the mistake of calling Samantha at Glenhaven, the upscale country inn in northwestern Pennsylvania. She was holed up there for three weeks to finish the first draft of her book on John Hancock. She and R shared a love of revolutionary history as well as of good chardonnay, superior scholarship, Mercedes-Benzes, Amtrak, American Express Platinum perks, and privacy. But after two and a half years of cohabitation storm and conflict over all the things they did not share, the relationship was falling apart.

  “I’m in the middle of writing up Hancock’s funeral at the moment,” Samantha had announced, making it clear to R that he was interrupting. She had specifically gone to Glenhaven, the 1,200-acre estate of a wealthy oil family now open to the public, in order to avoid interruption. Unlike R, who could write anywhere anytime under almost any circumstances, Samantha required stretches of solid isolation to get the best of her writing done.

  “I’m part of the group working on Wally’s funeral,” said R, determined to force a conversation. “Isn’t that a coincidence? Here we are, both of us doing funerals at the same moment. Are you coming to Philadelphia for Wally’s? It’ll be on Monday—four days after his death—on the twenty-first, of course, like Ben’s.”

  “Of course,” said Samantha. “How did your inquisition of Rebecca go?”

  “She was her usual Rebecca self. So was Sonya. Both of them will probably be on hand for Wally’s funeral.”

  He pressed Samantha for an answer about her coming.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Let me see how things are going with my friend John Hancock. I don’t want to lose my concentration again. Wally sure won’t miss me. As you well know, he shared your disdain for Hancock and the rest of the Massachusetts group.”

  Yes, R knew all about Wally’s strong views about the anti-Franklin leanings and whinings of John Adams and Hancock, among others. Both Hancock and Adams were persona non grata among the Ben crowd for their supposedly joking remarks about Ben’s being asleep during many of the most important sessions of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and other key events of the Revolution. It wasn’t true and it wasn’t funny.

  “I will miss you—I miss you now,” said R to Samantha.

  Samantha only breathed into the phone. But R could read her breathing. Liar! it exclaimed. Samantha didn’t believe for a second that he actually missed her. Nobody—no woman, that is—ever believed him when he said things like that. He saw it as the cross of his past misdeeds with women that he had to bear. Unfairly bear, for the most part, in his opinion.

  “How is the writing coming?” said R.

  “Slowly, as always,” Samantha said, her voice now transmitting a fervent desire to hang up. She hated it when he asked her how the writing was coming.

  “Hancock was a fascinating figure—”

  “Stop it, R. We’ve been through this many horrible times. ‘John Hancock deserves but a brief couplet or two in any history of the American Revolution,’ unquote. So sayeth the great, the one, the only R. Raymond Taylor, speaking not only for himself but also for the great—and now late—one and only Wallace Stephen Rush.”

  Now it was R’s turn just to breathe into the telephone receiver. She had quoted him accurately. That was what he believed about Hancock and, unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to resist what he considered a professional obligation to tell Samantha so. It was one of those disagreements that continued to rupture their relationship. So be it. Not even love should be able to bend the integrity of a truly serious scholar of hisory! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  “Who have you picked up tonight?” Samantha asked.

  “Samantha, please!”

  “Just an early dinner in the room, a little Law & Order on television, and right to bed. Is that it, dearest?” Samantha’s words were drenched in hostility.

  “Sure, something like that. I’ve got my new laptop, so I might also do some work on my Washington Post op-ed piece. I
told you about that, didn’t I? They want something on why Franklin is finally getting the popular as well as the serious scholarly attention paid to Washington and Jefferson.”

  “You told me about thirty times—but who’s counting?”

  R took a deep breath of honesty and said, “I am, in fact, meeting a colleague for dinner at Brasserie Perrier.”

  “A female colleague?”

  “Yes, Wally’s chief assistant, Clara Hopkins. You probably will have met her at some function or other. She’s involved in planning the post-funeral arrangements. As you know, Wally appointed me to be his literary executor. I’m pretty sure I’m going to do it. What choice do I have, really—”

  R stopped talking when he realized there was no longer anyone on the other end of the line.

  So much for honesty.

  I will not make a move on Clara Hopkins!

  A short while later they were at the restaurant. R loved the feel of Brasserie Perrier as much its food. It had a fun happy-hour bar with purple walls, velvet bar stools, and a cracked glass mirror. The dining room served high-class French food amid small columns, sparkling wall lanterns, and a huge ripoff of the painting Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp.

  No matter what!

  “I guess you’re not going to tell me what was in the letter Bill Paine gave you?” Clara said, after they were in the dining room and into their first course and second glass of chardonnay, a dry tight 1997 Meursault.

  Even if she comes on to me.

  “That’s right,” he said lightly. “Wally wanted it kept confidential, and I believe strongly in honoring the wishes of the dead.”

  “That’s quite an honor, being his literary executor.”

  Even if she propositions me.

  “That’s what he wanted,” said R, trying to avoid touching her left knee with his right. She had moved it up to his under the table. “I haven’t decided for sure whether I will accept it. I have so much on my plate right now.”

  How old is she anyhow? Not even thirty?

  “You do so much, you really do. Books and articles and op-eds, lectures and speeches here and there. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “I feel an obligation to Wally, though,” R said.

  If she’s only twenty-five I’m almost fifteen years older than she is.

  “Wally was worried deeply about something he had been working on concerning Ben,” Clara said. “I’d bet almost anything his letter to you concerns that.”

  Even if she cries and pleads with me.

  “No comment,” said R.

  “You have just confirmed it.”

  “I have confirmed nothing.”

  “I’d give anything to know what Wally was worried about. He struggled so hard to write that letter. I offered to let him dictate it to me, but no. He carried it around with him even when he slept, as if it were the secret to the atomic bomb. It must have been really important.”

  “Forget it, Clara,” said R. “I have nothing to say about that letter.”

  “I know Wally’s concern seemed to begin after he went over to a museum in Eastville to look at some papers. But he said there was nothing in the papers, nothing at all. Still, that must have had something to do with it. He was already losing it mentally and, I guess, physically as well. Maybe that was what was happening and not the papers. What do you think?”

  R kept his eyes and attention on his food and drink. It was crucial to give away nothing—not a hint that she was close.

  “Enough about Wally and me,” he said, in his best charming move-on manner. “I understand you plan to devote yourself to Deborah Franklin. That’s an interesting passion.”

  “I know, I know,” said Clara, smiling right into R’s face—into, it seemed, the DNA of his skin, eyes, eyelids, nose. “The conventional wisdom is that she was a boring woman whom Ben ignored for good reason.”

  R grinned knowingly and nodded. That was it exactly. No historian in his or her right mind would devote more than ten minutes to finding out anything about Deborah Franklin. In comparison, John Hancock was George Washington. This young woman’s decision to probe the life of Deborah Franklin flowed directly out of a growing trend among historians to find new, newer, and newest narrow angles of historical figures and events over which to obsess. That’s why Samantha went for Hancock: He was available.

  “I plan to work on Deborah Franklin’s story, but not to give my whole being to her,” said Clara, still smiling right at R. “I plan to save my passion for living persons of the present, not dead ones of the past—even if they were married to Ben.”

  R was struck by how beautifully blue Clara’s eyes were. They reminded him of the summer sky over his parents’ retirement house in the Berkshires near Great Barrington. His dad’s parishioners had hired the great architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen to design for them a white and glass delicacy of a house on a mountainside that seemed to invite the sky into every room.

  The waiter came to remove their first courses. R welcomed the interruption. He whipped his captivated brown eyes from her beautiful blue eyes down to the plate where once had been a thinly sliced tomato carpaccio. Clara had put down her spoon after having sipped half of her bowl of French onion soup.

  “Should I assume you’re going to take Wally’s place on the faculty and in the world of BFU?” whispered Clara.

  “Assume nothing,” said R, in a voice only slightly above a whisper. “That’s always the best policy, particularly for those of us involved in historical scholarship.”

  She made a sound slightly below the magnitude of a laugh. “Rest assured I am available to continue my research and other duties under a new regime,” she said.

  “Let’s rest it there.”

  She seemed puzzled by that response. He meant her to be.

  He took another two sips of chardonnay.

  “How goes the witch hunt against Rebecca Lee?” Clara asked, in a tone no different from the one she had just used in applying—with inconclusive results—for a job. “I saw you talking to her at Gray House.”

  “Witch hunt?”

  “Everyone knows that four out of five or twenty-one out of twenty-four or one thousand and seven out of one thousand and twelve male historians have done, now do, or will do what Rebecca did,” said Clara, as the waiter set down their main course before them. “And everyone knows, of course, that ninety-five percent of what Ben himself put in his almanacs was lifted from others either in words or meaning.”

  “You’ve been well briefed, Clara,” said R, a growing edge in his voice. “That’s exactly Rebecca’s argument.”

  He wanted this dinner to be over.

  “Haven’t you yourself, the distinguished R. Raymond Taylor, done at least once what Rebecca is accused of doing?”

  “No,” said R, as he quickly went to work on his spiced rubbed skate wing and roasted-pepper pomme purée in an olive vermouth sauce.

  He very much wanted to get away from this young woman with the long legs.

  • • •

  Back in his room, R immediately opened the big TV cabinet and clicked on the set with the remote control.

  No Law & Order. Not on NBC or any of the many cable channels that, between them, always seem to have at least one of their many teams of cops and DAs pursuing and prosecuting bad people in New York City. Watching these one-hour episodes, mostly repeats with a variety of casts, had become one of R’s obsessions, the only one involving television. It was another sticking point between him and Samantha. She couldn’t understand how a man with a mind and a mission would waste both by watching mindless TV cops-and-robbers shows. He argued that Law & Order was anything but mindless.

  It was nine-fifty. Maybe he’d get lucky and a Law & Order episode would be on at ten.

  He muted the television sound, moved over to the desk, and switched on his laptop.

  With a few clicks of the mouse he was into the file that contained his notes and the beginning draft of his Post op-ed piece. Samantha hated the
fact that he could come back like this after an evening out and do some writing. It drove her nuts; at times she was hateful. Envy is clearly the worst of sins between writers.

  On the way down through the op-ed working file, he came once again to Timothy Morton’s 1977 essay on Ben in Yesterday, the University of Chicago’s long-gone historical journal.

  For years Benjamin Franklin has been the least appreciated Founding Father. He’s known mostly as the kite-flying, French-leaning, dirty old man who created electricity, firemen, libraries, stoves, and aphorisms but left the heavy intellectual and political lifting of the American Revolution to Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, and others.

  This factually inaccurate and grossly unfair characterization of this remarkable man must be corrected. I hereby call upon my fellow historians and scholars to step up to the public plate and do so.

  They can begin by raising hell with the fools who created that ridiculous Broadway musical 1776. Franklin was portrayed as a buffoon whose contributions to the debate over declaring independence from Great Britain were mostly one-liners.

  Second, they can proclaim that it is a national disgrace for there to be no monument in Washington, D.C., honoring Benjamin Franklin. There’s not even a federal office building or major national institution of any kind that bears his name. None of his homes in Philadelphia escaped the destruction of progress, so there is no shrine comparable to Washington’s Mount Vernon or Jefferson’s Monticello.

  Franklin was a superb writer, inventor, scientist, philosopher, politician, diplomat, and printer. Much is said, for instance, about the magnficient prose of Thomas Jefferson. That’s true. But let the record reflect that Franklin’s autobiography, though in the self-serving mode of the genre, is a masterpiece of the literature of its time that should be read by every American schoolchild. . . .