Page 396 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
concluding of a Thanksgiving dinner (at Harry and Sylvia’s new apart- ment at 25 Sutton Place in Manhattan), with all three offspring couples present, by announcing that the men (note: the men) should all lift their plates. We dutifully would and would find the envelopes that we were ordered to open simultaneously. At that point we would then each dis- cover a check for which public appreciation would be shown in a chorus of adulation. I liked the money. I didn’t like the spectacle.
That need for public display of generosity, combined with public display of appreciation, was most evident when it came to an entity that everyone knew as Arabel. Arabel (which did sound a lot like our patron’s name, didn’t it?) was a device through which Harry both gave his money to the children and continued to treat it as his. Arabel, it turns out, was the source for the money that the Rebells gave us for decorating. (Money, which may or may not have been part of Arabel, had gone to Phyllis years before, but when Harry gifted it to her, he simultaneously had her execute a power of attorney through which he invested and disbursed it; Phyllis viewed the money not as hers but as her father’s, and, except for tax purposes, she was in effect right.)
Arabel was a particular sore spot with me when it came to my notions of privacy and the way in which Harry dealt with Phyllis. Each year, Harry would take advantage of the fact that the entire family had gath- ered at his considerable expense (paid, to my amazement, in cash) in Birkenhaus Inn at Stratton Mountain to talk to us about the financial results for Arabel for the year. This was not done individually. Harry, not just to save himself time, would gather us in his suite at Birkenhaus to go over the numbers, an exercise that entailed announcing how much money each subfamily had taken out and the use to which that money was put. This practice discomfited me, but when I politely and privately suggested that Phyllis and I did not want to know everyone else’s busi- ness, and did not want anyone else to know ours, Harry told me in no uncertain terms that that was the way in which matters would be handled.
Moreover, the “us” that Harry would gather in his suite consisted of Arthur, Michael, and Harvey but not Adele, Susan, or Phyllis. Of course, one could see that method of grouping as a way of accepting me as a
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