covers and stay there for the day. But he could not. He was, after all, a Gillet.
Being a Gillet could be something of a chore. It seemed, on its face, quite impressive. Often people assumed he was the heir to the guy who invented the razor blade, or something like that. He was not. He was, instead, the great-stepgrandson of the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. On his mother’s side were two United States senators, Millard Tydings and Joseph Tydings. His father’s father was a big war hero in World War I. His stepfather, John Schapiro, owned racetracks and lived with his mother and siblings on an enormous horse-farm estate. Warrington’s home was not just a home; it was Tally Ho Farms in Worthington Hills, four hundred acres of stark white fences and green, with the Schapiro/Gillet family horses cantering in the misty dawn. It was a lot, this image of impregnability. And what was worse? It was just that—an image.
There was a part of Warrington that was happy that he lived at the headmaster’s little apartment. He was aware that if he were, in fact, living at home like all the other kids, he’d never see his mother and stepfather anyway.
They were always away at events—fox hunting, charity parties, that sort of thing. His stepfather preferred to spend his time at his racetracks rather than at Tally Ho. Whenever Warrington ate dinner at home, he’d sit down at the table with his real sister and stepbrother and the food would be prepared and presented by servants. Mom and Dad simply weren’t part of that scene. Even calling them Mom and Dad seemed wrong. Thus Warrington had convinced himself that staying at the Gilman School was not such a bad thing. At least you didn’t have to confront the empty chairs every night at the dinner table. At least you could pretend that you didn’t really care.
“Those values did not get instilled,” Warrington said. “Everybody’s busy on a highfalutin lifestyle. They’re too busy. The kids of these types of families get lost in the shuffle. The parents are too busy to sit down for three hours to do math homework . . . Rich people do not have time to run around with children, to run around to Little League and soccer and football. On the weekend, you’d go fox hunting. You were misled into thinking that you were just like everybody else.”
Of course, not caring wasn’t so easy on this particular morning. The schism between the Gillet family image and the Gillet family reality had hit home hard the previous weekend. At the age of seventeen, Warrington III had met Warrington Junior for the first time in his life.
His real father had just shown up, out of the blue. He might as well have been the last emperor of China. Here he was presenting himself to his son, who was by now a junior in high school and who had not seen his father during his entire conscious existence. Kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, almost all of high school—no father. Now here he was, this stranger with the same name, blown up on the doorstep like a guy with a subpoena. Of course when Warrington saw his father for the first time in seventeen years, he knew immediately who he was. This stemmed in part from the fact that Warry Junior looked exactly like Warry III.
He was a handsome guy, this stranger, with a Kirk Doug las chin and all his hair at age forty-five. The man had perfect posture for a tall guy, and even more perfect teeth. He wore a very nice suit jacket but no tie and appeared self-confident and yet informal at once. He was charm personified. He was the prodigal dad.
Warrington couldn’t really call him Dad. He knew the man solely through washed out photographs and bitter stories told by his mother. When he was a toddler, probably two years old, his mother had discovered that Big Warry was screwing around as much as possible with as many women as he could track down. Warrington’s mother, herself the daughter of money and privilege, wasn’t going for
Being a Gillet could be something of a chore. It seemed, on its face, quite impressive. Often people assumed he was the heir to the guy who invented the razor blade, or something like that. He was not. He was, instead, the great-stepgrandson of the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. On his mother’s side were two United States senators, Millard Tydings and Joseph Tydings. His father’s father was a big war hero in World War I. His stepfather, John Schapiro, owned racetracks and lived with his mother and siblings on an enormous horse-farm estate. Warrington’s home was not just a home; it was Tally Ho Farms in Worthington Hills, four hundred acres of stark white fences and green, with the Schapiro/Gillet family horses cantering in the misty dawn. It was a lot, this image of impregnability. And what was worse? It was just that—an image.
There was a part of Warrington that was happy that he lived at the headmaster’s little apartment. He was aware that if he were, in fact, living at home like all the other kids, he’d never see his mother and stepfather anyway.
They were always away at events—fox hunting, charity parties, that sort of thing. His stepfather preferred to spend his time at his racetracks rather than at Tally Ho. Whenever Warrington ate dinner at home, he’d sit down at the table with his real sister and stepbrother and the food would be prepared and presented by servants. Mom and Dad simply weren’t part of that scene. Even calling them Mom and Dad seemed wrong. Thus Warrington had convinced himself that staying at the Gilman School was not such a bad thing. At least you didn’t have to confront the empty chairs every night at the dinner table. At least you could pretend that you didn’t really care.
“Those values did not get instilled,” Warrington said. “Everybody’s busy on a highfalutin lifestyle. They’re too busy. The kids of these types of families get lost in the shuffle. The parents are too busy to sit down for three hours to do math homework . . . Rich people do not have time to run around with children, to run around to Little League and soccer and football. On the weekend, you’d go fox hunting. You were misled into thinking that you were just like everybody else.”
Of course, not caring wasn’t so easy on this particular morning. The schism between the Gillet family image and the Gillet family reality had hit home hard the previous weekend. At the age of seventeen, Warrington III had met Warrington Junior for the first time in his life.
His real father had just shown up, out of the blue. He might as well have been the last emperor of China. Here he was presenting himself to his son, who was by now a junior in high school and who had not seen his father during his entire conscious existence. Kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, almost all of high school—no father. Now here he was, this stranger with the same name, blown up on the doorstep like a guy with a subpoena. Of course when Warrington saw his father for the first time in seventeen years, he knew immediately who he was. This stemmed in part from the fact that Warry Junior looked exactly like Warry III.
He was a handsome guy, this stranger, with a Kirk Doug las chin and all his hair at age forty-five. The man had perfect posture for a tall guy, and even more perfect teeth. He wore a very nice suit jacket but no tie and appeared self-confident and yet informal at once. He was charm personified. He was the prodigal dad.
Warrington couldn’t really call him Dad. He knew the man solely through washed out photographs and bitter stories told by his mother. When he was a toddler, probably two years old, his mother had discovered that Big Warry was screwing around as much as possible with as many women as he could track down. Warrington’s mother, herself the daughter of money and privilege, wasn’t going for
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