Chapter One: A Child is Born

Merritt Lane McGraw was born just as the Great Depression of the 1930s was beginning, a result of an infatuation his plump, young mother had with a dashing young man from the rich Highlands area of the city. She met Drake Kosgrove while working as a waitress at the Riverdale Country Club, the exclusive club for the richest of Riverdale’s families.

Drake had already been known widely as the community’s most audacious playboy, who adopted the 1920s as his own personal play time, rushing about in his yellow Packard roadster with the top down, a scarf flowing as he sped down the narrow roadways of the era. No girl, if she was attractive, was immune to his passes, and all of the cute rich girls in their flapper style outfits played up to this roué.

Thus it was a surprise when Drake fastened his attention on Evelyn McGraw, the pert Irish waitress whose family lived down along the railroad tracks of Riverdale where so many of the tannery workers resided. Young Evelyn’s father, Thomas McGraw, had been forced to quit working in the Kosgrove Tanneries, (owned by the Kosgrove family) due to a terrible skin disease he had contracted most likely from work in the hidehouse. The only job he could get then was tending bar at Mickey’s Tap, a tavern that served the Irish workingclass neighborhood. In 1929, with prohibition still in effect, tavern income from selling soda and near beer was minimal, and her father’s earnings were miniscule. Thomas McGraw, was able to pickup some occasional cash by running bootleg liquor, but the income could not be depended upon. Evelyn’s mother began taking in wash and developing a sewing business to help the family finances.

Upon graduation from Riverdale West High School, Evelyn was lucky to have been hired as a waitress at the Country Club, no doubt the result of her young body, light complexion, blonde hair and friendly disposition. Adding to her allure was a plump, but well-proportioned body that drew men’s attention quickly. The ancient Clubhouse Manager, Courtney Jameson, was known to hire only the prettiest of girls for waitress jobs, partly due to his own still rank desires and also to the fact that he knew the tycoon members of the club would also be thrilled. Evelyn secretly hated these tycoons, but she knew the tips would be great, and the family needed her income.

Evelyn hadn’t been at the club more than two days in the June after her graduation when young Drake Kosgrove began to pay attention to her. Evelyn served Drake with his third Tom Collins as he sat with two other young men at the pool after a morning golf match, and found her arm grabbed suddenly by Drake:

“And where did you come from, my young angel?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Evelyn asked, puzzled, trying to discreetly free her arm from his grip. She knew better than to protest loudly; the club member could easily cause her to be fired.

“I asked you, where did you come from? Here in Riverdale?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, her arm still in his grip.

She could feel his eyes wandering, searching her with undisguised lust; and, she saw the two companions, also glassy-eyed with too much lunchtime drink, begin to laugh, and also cast eyes on her legs and chest.

Evelyn blushed noticeably, and that caused Drake to relax his hold.

“Can I get you anything else, sir?” Evelyn asked, quickly retreating.

She heard the three men laugh. “That’s trouble, Drake,” she overheard one of the young men say.

“She’s just tannery trash,” said the other.

*****
Two days later, Evelyn left work as dusk was descending and she scurried down the long entry road as fast as her small feet would take her, hoping not to miss the 9 p.m. bus into town. In the northern states, the summer days were long, and Evelyn was glad for the daylight, since she hated the idea of being alone in the dark, as would be the case if she was still working in the autumn and winter.

She could hear a car coming from behind her, and she moved to the shoulder, making sure the driver had room to pass. Instinctively, she knew many of the men leaving the club had been drinking and was always concerned about being hit.

She heard the car slowing down, and from the corner of her eye she recognized the yellow roadster of Drake Kosgrove.

“Miss Evelyn, can I give you a lift?” It was Drake’s voice, slightly slurred.

“No thanks, I’m in time for the bus,” she yelled back, not bothering to look at him.

The car pulled alongside her, slowing down to match her walk, and Evelyn kept looking ahead, avoiding a temptation to look at Drake.

“Aw, come on, Evelyn let me give you a ride.”

Just then she saw the Orange bus pass along the highway, and Evelyn cursed to herself, knowing she’d have a half hour wait for the next bus.

Grudgingly, she accepted the ride.

“You live along the river, right?” Drake asked.

“Yes,” she said in a grunt.

“Look, don’t be mad, Evelyn,” Drake said, his voice still a bit slurred.

She looked at him; his smile was soft, compelling. Though he had been drinking, he seemed to be in control, she felt.

He didn’t begin to move the car immediately, and turned toward her to speak. “Look, I was wrong to talk to you like that a few days ago. I shouldn’t do that. You’re working and it’s not right.”

Evelyn looked at him; he seemed sincere, almost like a little boy, telling his mother how sorry he was for breaking a glass or something. He was almost pleading.

“That’s OK,” she said simply.

Thus began a friendship, actually a secret friendship. His parents would be appalled if they knew Drake was finding interest in the daughter of one of the tannery workers; for their part, the McGraws would be just as upset with the friendship, their democratic tendencies being violated if their daughter was seen to be fraternizing with the community elite. Besides, Drake’s reputation as a womanizer and drunk was well known in the community, as well as the fact that he was nearly 30 years old and Evelyn just turned 18 that June.

By September, Evelyn was pregnant, which in 1929 was the cause of all sorts of problems. The McGraws, being traditional Irish Catholics, were particularly angry; the girl would have to complete the pregnancy, and then what?

“Remember Ruthie?” Mrs. McGraw asked her husband after Evelyn confessed her pregnancy.

“Yes, of course. When she got pregnant she went to the House of Good Shepherd.”

“The church runs that and they can arrange for an adoption of the child,” her mother said.

“Who’s the father?” her husband asked.

“She won’t tell me.”

Her husband was perplexed. He couldn’t understand how his daughter, an “A” student, a girl who had no regular boyfriend, and seemed either to be studying or working and being involved in school activities could find time to become pregnant.

“Is she a slut, or something?” he asked angrily.

“No honey, she’s not, and I know she was a virgin as recently as three months ago.”

“My God, who could it be?”

*****
Evelyn McGraw was sent to live with her grandmother in Green Bay, Wisconsin, about a two-hour train ride from Riverdale, and to assist in her grandmother’s bakery. As her pregnancy continued, her belly expanded, but most people just blamed it upon the temptation to eat sweets while working in the bakery.

Once the pregnancy became obvious, Evelyn smiled benignly when asked about the father, stated only that he was a young man she met while working the previous summer, and that he had left town when he couldn’t find work. “We’ll get married when he finds a job, and then he’ll send for me,” she explained.

Evelyn cried herself to sleep many nights at her grandmother’s house, but with the Depression heightening, she soon became grateful for her grandmother’s protections and love. As far as anyone knows, Evelyn maintained her secret: the father was forever unidentified.

Merritt Lane was born on June 22, 1929, ironically the same day as his mother’s 19th birthday. He was small even in birth, just six pounds, two ounces, and 19 inches in length.

Her parents rode the Chicago & Northwestern’s 400 train to view the child in Bellin Hospital in Green Bay.

“What a pretty child!” her mother exclaimed as a nurse presented them their first grandchild, having brought the infant into the four-bed ward where Evelyn was resting.

“A boy?” her father wondered aloud.

“Oh yes a boy, Mr. McGraw,” the nurse said. “These dainty ones at birth will grow to play tackle for the Packers. You’ll see.”

“Oh, dad, is he beautiful?” Evelyn explained, still groggy from the birth the day before. “I don’t want him hurt playing football, daddy.”

“Evelyn,” he said sternly, “He’s a boy and he’ll get dirty and get into fights and probably play football.”

The nurse nodded in agreement.

Evelyn, used to keeping her own counsel, said nothing. Her boy, to be named Merritt Lane, after both of his grandfathers, would be protected from harm, she told herself.

*****
In the era just before the Depression hit, Merritt Lane was considered an “illegitimate child,” something to be shamed, and sometimes even shunned. Evelyn was counseled by the nuns at Mother of Precious Help Convent, where she spent some time after the birth, to give the boy up for adoption.

“That’s what decent girls do,” Sister John Marie said. “You will be shamed when you return home with a baby and no husband.”

“But he’s so pretty and so cute, sister,” Evelyn pleaded.

“You’ll not be able to give him a good home,” the nun replied. “How can you afford it?”

Evelyn was a sensible girl, and she listened closely to the nun. Everything the nun said made sense to her; the nation was in the first year of growing unemployment after the stock market crash of 1929, and jobs were hard to come by. Her father’s income had dropped so steeply, after his illness forced him out of the tannery, and just recently, her father’s sometimes income bonanza from running bootleg liquor had ended when the bootlegger he assisted was arrested by the Feds.

“How can I keep you my pretty one?” she cried as she held him tightly as he suckled eagerly from her healthy young breast.

“My dear, I don’t want you to get too attached to the boy,” Sister John Marie said.

When the boy fell asleep, the nun took young Merritt Lane from Evelyn without ceremony, and marched him out of the room to the nursery.

Evelyn was able to see and hold the child only during those moments when she nursed him; as soon as that was finished, the baby was snatched away. Sister John Marie urged Evelyn to bottle-feed the child, but the boy refused to take the rubber nipple. His home, it seemed, was at the breast of his mother.

“He’ll starve if I can’t feed him,” she protested to Sister John Marie in the third week of young Merritt’s life.

“He’ll eat when he’s hungry enough,” the nun replied.

“I love him, Sister,” Evelyn said, her sadness growing as she watched how contented he was on her breast.

“Evelyn, listen to me. You’re leaving here Saturday and you’ll be leaving the baby with us.”

“But, sister, I can keep him,” she said, her tears rolling down her face, dropping on her breast and upon Merritt’s head.

Evelyn gently brushed her hand over the boy’s head, a reddish tint to his fine hair, a color almost matching Evelyn’s own strawberry blonde hair.

The truth was that Evelyn was 18 years old and, legally, did not have to give up Merritt to the nuns; it was just expected that she do so. “Decent young women do not bring home an illegitimate child,” she was told over and over.

And, she knew, the boy might be tainted with an even nastier slur: he would be a bastard.

*****
How could the McGraws, steady communicants at St. Michael’s Church with Thomas an usher at the 9 a.m. mass and mother Patricia a member of the Altar Society, let a bastard child into their good Catholic home? How could Evelyn’s younger brother, Frank, go to St. Michael’s School with the other children knowing his sister had been a whore and brought into life such an unwanted child?

“You’re a whore, a slut, a shame upon us all,” thundered her father when she had to admit her growing belly and sometimes debilitating nausea came from the fact of her pregnancy.

“Now, Thomas,” her mother cautioned, as Evelyn burst into tears on that fall Sunday morning when morning sickness had been severe, and the truth came out.

Her father was a kind man who rarely raised his voice to either her mother or she and her brother, and this burst anger was uncharacteristic. He demanded to know who the father was and quizzed her about her boy friends, but Evelyn remained mum.

It wasn’t that Evelyn didn’t know who the father was. She had been a virgin until that one night in the car with Drake. She had had only one kiss in her life, an awkward one from Billy McDonnell after the junior prom.

She hadn’t enjoyed the night in the car with Drake for a minute; she hurt and the blood scared her; worst of all, in her young, naíve mind, she had offended God and her family in a most offensive way. How often had she been told that good girls “don’t do that” until their wedding night? Of course, they never told her what “that” was. She learned that from her friends. Her family was typical within the prudish Irish Catholic society of the early 20th Century.

In her few times with Drake, she found him to be a caring, almost shy boy, not the bore and “womanizer” of his reputation. He was approaching 30, and asked her about her family, life, what her future would be. He asked all sorts of pleasant questions, asked by a man who did not seem to be selfish at all and seemed to care about her.

They had three dates, before the romance got serious. It was a summer Sunday and she told her parents she was to be with a girl friend as an excuse to get out of the house and go to a touring carnival which had set up rides and booths in the area. After a short time at the carnival, they found a quiet spot along a country road just as it was getting dark. Then, Drake fortified by whisky turned into a monster, forcing himself upon Evelyn and impregnating her in his roadster. It was all over in a few minutes, but to Evelyn, what started out as warm, sweet romance, turned into a horror, in which she screamed hopelessly into the growing darkness. She cried all the way home, and Drake was smart enough (apparently having planned ahead) to help her clean up.

Despite the good money she earned with her tips at the club, Evelyn realized she could never return to the club; she quit her job, telling Jameson, the manager, she was sick. Her parents were mystified at the time; they needed her money, but there was no way Evelyn felt she could return to the club and ever face Drake and his friends. She was shamed!

She finished the summer working at the Ben Franklin dime store for 25 cents an hour. It wasn’t a bad job, and she could stay working parttime after the summer, if she wished.

“I’m not a slut, daddy,” she finally admitted as Christmas neared. “I only did it once.”

“Who was the boy?”

“I did it only once. I didn’t want to.”

“Who was the boy?”

“He forced me.”

“Nice girls don’t let themselves be forced. Who was the boy?”

She ran to her room, crying but still refusing to give up Drake’s name. Her mother followed her into the room and comforted her, as Evelyn crawled into a fetal position, sobbing in her pillow. “It was Drake Kosgrove,” she finally whispered.

“Who? The boss’ son, Drake?” Her mother was incredulous.

Evelyn nodded, still sobbing into her pillow. Eventually she told her mother the whole story, and she, in turn, shared the story with her husband, Thomas. As it turned out, her father had tamed his volatile Irish temper, and now seemed even more understanding than her mother, who still was upset with her daughter for allowing the situation to happen.

“Oh, the shame of it all!” her mother cried. “What will everyone think?”

“Patti,” her husband said, using an affectionate tone he often used to calm her down. “Let’s not worry about the shame to us. We need to figure out what to do about Evelyn and her baby.”

“But the Altar Society? Will I have to quit that?”

“Altar Society, be damned,” he said. “Your daughter’s more important.”

“I know Mamie McGillicudy’s daughter . . . remember her, Emma, I think?”

“Yes, what about Emma?”

“The story is Emma got with child the year after she graduated high school, but the McGillicudy’s found someone to take care of that?”

“What? An abortion? No way!” Her husband thundered.

“Well, I was just . . .”

“Get that out of your mind, Pat,” he said. “Not only is it against God and the Church, but Evelyn could die from some quack in a back alley. No way.”

Thus, it was decided that Evelyn would carry the child and that during the pregnancy she’d move in with Grandma McGraw in Green Bay.

*****
To be accepted in society, even in the working class Irish and Italian neighborhood of 1929, a single mother had to be a widow, or at least one who once had a husband who had now abandoned her. Evelyn, now almost 19 years old, was neither.

She was a shame to the McGraw family; never would she marry and have proper husband, her mother feared. The child, as pretty and lovely and bright-eyed as a child could be, would forever be tagged as a “bastard,” one born out of wedlock, out of the sanctity of the Church, and one to be shamed. Why not let the child up for adoption, the Priest who came in as a chaplain at the Mother of Precious Help Convent, asked Evelyn several days after the birth?

“But Father,” Evelyn replied, still in the hospital and holding the child who had fallen asleep in her arms while she nursed him. “Isn’t he the most precious child you ever saw?”

“Yes, my child,” Father Cletus said. He was an old man who had never run a parish, but had won the hearts of all the girls at the Convent.

Father Cletus was almost emaciated in appearance, his freckled skin, showing the dryness of age. His eyes sparkled and his smile was ever-present. It was not a phony smile; he seemed genuinely to like people. The story around the Convent was that he was “too nice,” and that was why he had never had a parish of his own, and always was relegated to serve either in poor neighborhoods or for institutions that served the unfortunate of society. More ambitious priests went to parishes in nicer neighborhoods where the “moneyed Catholics” lived.

“He’s God’s child,” Father Cletus said simply.

“Oh is he, Father? Even though there is no father, no husband for me?”

“Yes, my child,” he said, gently brushing his hand on little Merritt’s hair, now all fuzzy with light blonde hair. “We’re all God’s children. This little one is a gift to all of us, and we will assure his baptism before you leave.”

“Thank you Father. My parents said they’d come up again on the train, and Grandma wants to be here too.”

“You need to choose Godparents for your son, Evelyn,” he said. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I think so,” she said. In truth, she didn’t know who to ask. None of her friends knew of the child; she had cousins in the Green Bay area, and they might be a choice, she thought.

“But, Evelyn,” the priest asked again. “Are you sure you don’t want to give this child up for adoption? He’s such a pretty infant, I’m sure we could find a good home for him.”

Evelyn looked down at Merritt, his eyes closer, a tiny snore rhythmically coming from his breathing. She mused that the boy would likely have the asthma problems of herself and her father, not serious problems but just perpetually seeming to be full of bronchial problems. The boy, she knew, might indeed be better off in the home of adoptive parents, but no one could love him as she could.

She tightened her hold on the child as the Priest talked, as if this kindly old man was about to snatch Merritt Lane from her grasp.

“No father, I’ll love him as no one else can,” she said boldly, though in her heart she was frightened that she’d fail.

*****
“I think your Guardian Angel is looking out for you, honey,” her mother said, as she entered Evelyn’s tiny bedroom, now cluttered with a crib and diaper pail and her own single bed. Evelyn, when the baby was a month old, returned to live with her parents in their lower in the river “flats” neighborhood, where homes were cluttered, two and three to a lot, many of them duplexes and triplexes.

The sweet-sour smell of dirty diapers, baby powder and sweat permeated the room, in spite of efforts by Evelyn and her mother to keep the room clean; it was just too small and confined to do much about it as there was only one window, and it had to be kept closed so the breeze wouldn’t blow on baby Merritt.

“Oh, mom, what do you mean?” Evelyn said, looking up her mother as she nursed the child.

“Sister John Mary thinks she has a good spot for you,” her mother said.

“What mother? I don’t wanna go to the convent.”

“No honey, that’s not what Sister John Mary had in mind.”

“Oh, what then?”

“Well, it seems Mrs. Buckner needs a live-in maid, and Sister John Mary thought you might like that.” Her mother smiled as she mentioned it. Viola Buckner was a youngish widow who lived in one of the richest houses along the Lake; she had two young daughters.

“I can’t leave Merritt,” she said. And, Evelyn was not too keen on the idea of being a housemaid, realizing the work it might involve caring for a family of three in a big house.

“You can take Merritt with you honey, and Mrs. Buckner is nice,” her mother said. “She’s active in the church and works with the Ladies’ Sodality.”

“Oh but mother,” Evelyn protested. “The Buckners are so rich. I'll be so alone.”

“Viola is a really nice person, Evelyn,” her mother persisted. “And, she’s happy to have you bring little Merritt along.”

*****
Evelyn had no choice in the long run. The Buckner family, still in the throes of the Roaring 20s, had sufficient money to maintain their large estate along Lake Michigan, complete with a coach house. The family retained a cook, as well as a yardman-chauffeur; they were Mike and Mary O’Hara, a middle-aged couple who lived in the coach house, and served the Buckner family as Mike’s father had done before them.

The McGraws lived along the river flats in a neighborhood called “Tannery Flats,” mainly for the working families who lived there. There was a strong Irish enclave in the “Flats.” It seemed every front porch was filled with families on the early evening in mid-June when the huge Packard automobile pulled up in front of the McGraw house, and Mike O’Hara, neatly dressed in a white shirt, tie and dark pants emerged from the car to assist Evelyn and baby Merritt into the car.

“Is that the Buckner’s chauffeur?” Molly O’Shaughnessy asked her husband.

“Yeah, looks like it Mike, all right,” her husband said, glancing over the evening newspaper to survey the scene. He knew Mike from Mickey’s Tap, where the chauffeur often spent his off-hours from the estate.

Evelyn was aware the entire neighborhood — already in full knowledge of her sin and the bastard child she bore — was watching. The event had caused her parents to become the subject of catty gossip in the neighborhood, but the family’s otherwise well-known decency and friendliness had seemed to immunize them from being outrightly ostracized. Evelyn reddened as she walked to the huge Packard with Merritt in her arms and her father carrying the baby’s belonging and a suitcase that contained everything Evelyn owned.

*****
Viola Buckner was a tall, slender woman, and when Evelyn first saw her, she was truly intimidated. The woman was dressed in the flapper style of the era, her hair completely formed and plastered to her head, while she wore a light frock in the highest style. It was light peach colored with a high neck and a full skirt that went to her ankles; due to the unusually warm June night, the dress seemed to be almost transparent in its gauzy format.

“Well, young lady, let me see you and your sweet child there,” she requested as Evelyn was shown into the huge sitting room, in which all of the French doors were wide open to accept whatever breeze was in the night air. June bugs pounded against the screens of the doors, their wings buzzing accompanied by the staccato of plops as the bugs hit against the screens.

Evelyn was surprised when the woman eagerly accepted Merritt in her arms, taking him and cuddling him warmly against her bosom, which was quite small. Viola was a muscular woman, and in her youth had been a tennis champion, but she showed a warm motherly attention to young Merritt, who seemed to accept her as well.

“He’s such a pretty child,” Viola Buckner said, letting the boy suck on her finger as she held him comfortably tight against her modest breasts.

Evelyn was impressed with the ease with which the older woman clutched the child, gently, but firmly. She smiled as Viola cooed gently at the child and ran her fingers through his curly hair, saying quietly, soothingly, “So sweet, so lovely, so sweet, so lovely.”

Evelyn stood patiently watching Mrs. Buckner caress the child, who looked so tender and soft in her arms. Suddenly, a strange vision came before her eyes; the child was six years old in her vision, walking hand in hand with Mrs. Buckner through rows of spring flowers, yellows and bright red, interspersed with lavenders and greens. The child was Merritt, now six years old, but he was not a boy: He was a girl, skipping along joyfully in a yellow summer little girl's dress, her pretty legs moving lightly, wearing Mary Janes and white socks; she smiled again to herself: what a pretty picture it was.

“Evelyn,” she heard her name spoken loudly, pulling her out of her stupor, out of her pretty dream.

“Oh . . . ah . . . yes, Mrs. Buckner, I'm sorry.”

“I called you three times, Evelyn,” the older woman said. “Are you all right?”

“Oh yes, guess I was day-dreaming.”

“I guess you were, but are you sure you're OK?”

Evelyn regained her composure, reaching out to take the baby in her arms.

“I don't know what came over me, ma'am, but you made such a pretty picture holding my Merritt.”

Viola Buckner nodded. “And he's such a sweet child, my dear. I'm happy you're able to join our family.”