August 19, 1962
Ruth sat in the bank manager’s office, staring in shock at him and the Bukaters’ accountant, John Cooper. Even after her husband’s will had been read, she hadn’t been prepared for what she would learn at the bank.
Tom Bukater had built up a massive amount of debt before he died, much of it in the past few months. Ruth understood now why she had seen him looking worried so often, why he had spent so much time holed up in his study with the accountant now sitting beside her. His financial problems had been worse than even Mercer had known.
"Two million?" she asked, hardly able to believe her ears. How did a person get to be two million dollars in debt?
"Two million," Cooper confirmed grimly. "He made a number of bad decisions over the past four years, each compounding the one before it."
"And how much is in his accounts?"
"One and a half million," the manager told her, looking at the bank book before him.
"One and a half million…" Ruth echoed, her face paling. Even if she used every penny they had to pay back the debts her husband had accumulated, there would still be half a million dollars in debt—and nothing for the family to live on. There was life insurance, but that was only a hundred thousand dollars.
Thinking back over the past year, she realized she should have known that something was wrong. Her husband had curtailed her lavish parties, insisting that she throw them only on important occasions and telling her that she should accept more invitations from other people, that she should give others a chance to host the parties she was famous for. He had refused to sign the checks for many of her charitable donations, making the excuse that he did not agree with their goals. Two weeks earlier, when they had gone to buy Rose’s car, he had steered her away from the most expensive models, pointing out that Rose wanted a convertible more than anything, and when he had gone to pay for it, he had spent a long time negotiating the price with the salesman, rather than simply paying the asking price.
She should have realized that something was wrong, but she hadn’t. She had never paid much attention to the family’s finances, aside from running the household and paying the servants. The money had just always been there. There had never been any need to budget, to worry about paying the bills. What most would consider luxuries were commonplace for the Bukaters.
She had never asked her husband about their finances, and he had never been forthcoming with information. She had been raised to simply accept what she was told—or not told. Even if he had discussed their financial situation with her, she wouldn’t have known what to do. Ruth, like her mother and grandmother before her, had married a wealthy man and let him worry about money. It wasn’t her place to question him, to ask what they had or how he earned it. She knew nothing about handling such matters; she had never even had a job.
Ruth Wolper-DeWitt had met Tom Bukater in 1939, when she was a first-year student at Radcliffe College and he was finishing his MBA at Harvard. Her parents had sent her to Radcliffe after she finished school, though they were less interested in their daughter earning a degree than they were in her finding a suitable husband. Ruth herself had never been terribly interested in college, taking courses in literature and art but far more interested in her social activities and in searching for a husband.
Ruth and Tom had met in October of 1939, and Ruth had immediately been smitten. Tom was six years older than her and from a wealthy Philadelphia family—even wealthier than the DeWitts, who were scions of Boston Brahmin society and had weathered the Depression well. Her parents had approved of the match, even though it would mean that their daughter would be moving several states away. In June of 1940, Ruth had dropped out of college and married Tom Bukater.
Now, twenty-two years later, a widowed Ruth DeWitt-Bukater sat in a bank manager’s office, looking at the remnants of the once-vast Bukater fortune and wondering what she was going to do. Finally, she looked at Cooper.
"Did he have any other assets?" she asked, half-holding her breath. She knew there was the house, of course—but if she mortgaged it, there would be no way to pay the mortgage, and if she sold it, she and the children would have no place to live.
"Not as much as he once had," Cooper replied, looking through his briefcase, "but there are some. He sold a great deal of his stock trying to recoup the money he’d lost, but he did keep enough to receive about five thousand dollars a month in dividends—most of which went into paying his debts. The value of the stock right now, if you were to sell it, is about six hundred thousand dollars. The house, unfortunately, is mortgaged. He owed five hundred thousand dollars on it when he died, with monthly payments of about forty-two hundred dollars, it being a ten-year mortgage." Upon seeing Ruth’s expression, he added gently, "I take it you didn’t know about this, either?"
Ruth pressed her fingers against her temples, trying to ease her building headache. "No. He didn’t tell me anything."
She knew the stocks provided a comfortable monthly income, though far less than what she was used to—but not enough to pay the mortgage, and if the bank foreclosed on the house, they would have nowhere to go. She would have to sell the stock to pay off the mortgage, and use the money in the bank accounts to pay the other debts.
Handing Cooper a sheet of paper, she asked, "Will the bequests be paid out before the creditors can get the money from the accounts?"
He nodded. "Yes." Reading from the paper, he wrote down the numbers and calculated the amount. "Five thousand dollars for Tom DeWitt-Bukater, paid out immediately. Five thousand dollars each for Rose, Lucy, and Julie DeWitt-Bukater and for Jack Dawson, to be held in trust until they go to college or turn twenty-one. One thousand dollars each to Paul and Mariah Inglett, your former chauffeur and nanny, and one thousand dollars to Sophia di Rossi, your housekeeper. That comes to twenty-eight thousand dollars. Everything else is yours—once the debts are paid, of course."
Ruth nodded, her mouth tightening at the sound of Jack’s name. She still couldn’t believe that her husband had left such a sizable amount of money to a boy who wasn’t even a member of the family—money that the DeWitt-Bukaters could have used.
"If I use the money remaining in the accounts to pay off the debts, how much stock will I have to sell in order to be free of debt?"
Doing some calculations, Cooper replied, "Five hundred fifty thousand dollars worth, once you figure in taxes."
"Taxes?" That was another thing Ruth had never dealt with, other than sales taxes on her purchases.
"Taxes on the income from the stock sales. Ordinarily, in cases like yours, there would also be an estate tax, but your husband owed so much that the remaining value of the estate is well under a million dollars, so you’re spared that."
"So, I will be left with fifty thousand dollars in stock and the hundred thousand dollars from the life insurance."
Cooper nodded. "Plus whatever tangible assets you have—cars, works of art, antiques, jewelry—anything you can sell."
Ruth nodded, her face grim. She didn’t mind parting with most of her husband’s collection of automobiles, but the other things…she had no intention of giving her belongings up if she could avoid it. She had lived in luxury all her life and wished to maintain at least the appearance of continuing to do so.
"You will still have a monthly income of five hundred dollars from the remaining stocks, and the interest on the life insurance money, if you don’t spend it, will be about a hundred and sixty-seven dollars a month."
A hundred thousand dollars in life insurance money and fifty thousand dollars in stock would have seemed a fortune to many people, but to Ruth, who was used to so much more, it seemed a pittance. Many people would have found the monthly income adequate to live on—though money would have been tight—but Ruth didn’t know how she would manage on so little.
But what could she do? She still had family in Boston, of course—her mother was there, and her two brothers and their families—but she had never been particularly close to her brothers, who she had not even asked to come to her husband’s funeral, and they were the ones who now owned the banks that had made the DeWitts their fortune. Her brother Milton would help, she was sure, but his twin, Morton, had far more power and would undoubtedly consider her a poor relation now, giving help only grudgingly and expecting every cent to be paid back—which she could not do.
Sarah Wolper-DeWitt, Ruth’s mother, would be far more forthcoming with help, but that help would come at a price—she would insist that Ruth and her children move to Boston, as Ruth had learned long ago when, after quarreling with Tom, she had gone home to her mother for a short time, Tom Jr. at her side and Rose still growing within her. Her mother had been shocked that she had walked out on her husband and horrified at the idea of divorce—though Ruth had not actually been contemplating ending her marriage and had only been trying to get away from her husband for a few days until their tempers cooled—but had nevertheless told her daughter that if she did divorce her husband, the DeWitts would help her…provided, of course, that she moved back to Boston.
Ruth had returned home after a few days and made up with Tom, but she had never forgotten her parents’ stipulation that any help she received depended on her returning to Boston to live. Much as Ruth cared about her mother, Philadelphia was her home now and she had no intention of leaving.
She could not ask her family for help, but there had to be something she could do. Looking at the papers Cooper had passed to her and the copy of the will Mercer had left with her, she realized that although she had inherited her husband’s debts along with what was left of his estate, she hadn’t inherited all of his obligations. There was something she could do.
*****
That evening, Ruth called her children and Jack into the library to talk to them. Opening the folder of documents she had brought with her, she looked at them across the table.
"I talked to your father’s accountant, Mr. Cooper, today," she began, glancing at the papers. "What he had to tell me was not encouraging. I was able to pay off the debts, but there isn’t much left. For that reason, there will have to be some changes here."
The four younger DeWitt-Bukaters and Jack looked at each other, then back at Ruth, wondering what changes she was referring to, though Jack had an uneasy feeling that he knew what at least one of them was.
"The remaining stocks and the life insurance money will provide us with a small monthly income, but not enough to continue with the way things have been. I will be letting the servants go with the exception of Mrs. di Rossi and Fabrizio, so you will have to keep your own rooms clean and do some chores around the house. It’s not what any of us are used to, but there isn’t much choice."
The three girls looked at each other unhappily; none of them had ever done chores in their lives, aside from the few tasks Rose had been assigned in home economics at school and the duties they had performed with other campers at the summer camp they went to each July. Tom just shrugged; he was going to back to Okinawa tomorrow and chores were a part of the daily life of an enlisted man. Jack was equally unimpressed—his parents had given him chores to do from about the age of five, gradually giving him more and harder tasks as he got older. It was nice to not have to do anything, but it wasn’t the end of the world to have to help out a little. If that was all he had to do, he wasn’t going to raise a fuss.
Ruth looked at the expressions on the five young faces at the table, growing increasingly uncomfortable with what she was going to say next. It’s for the best, she told her herself, trying to justify her decision.
"After looking at the cost of schooling and other necessities, I have concluded that I cannot afford to support four of you. Therefore, as your father’s obligation to the Dawson family ended with his death, and as he never took any steps to legally make Jack a part of this family, I have made arrangements for him to move to another home."
"What?" The twins and Tom looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but it was Rose’s reaction that caught everyone’s attention.
"No, Mom!" she cried, grabbing Jack’s hand so hard that he winced and pulled away. "You can’t! He’s a member of the family! You can’t just make him leave!" Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t try to hide them; instead, she stared at Ruth pleadingly. "Dad promised…"
Ruth stiffened, looking at the way her eldest daughter clung to Jack. She wasn’t unsympathetic to Rose’s feelings—her daughter, along with the rest of them, had been through a lot lately—but the attachment Rose had to Jack was more than just sisterly. Though she was sure both would deny it, there was an attraction between them that she could not allow to continue. Not only had they been treated as siblings for the last ten months, but Jack had no real prospects, no real future as far as Ruth could see, and Rose, she was sure, could do much better.
"That’s enough, Rose," she told her daughter. "I’ve already talked to Social Services—"
"He already has a home, Mom!" Rose was on her feet now, her chair tumbling over behind her. "Dad promised Jack’s father that he would take care of him! You can’t break that promise!"
"Rosalind DeWitt-Bukater…" Ruth’s voice was dangerously calm. "Pick up that chair and sit down."
"No!" Rose wiped her eyes, smearing her mascara across her face. "No, I won’t! You never liked Jack, and you’re just making an excuse that you can’t afford to keep him here! You can afford to keep a housekeeper and gardener and send us to private school, but you won’t even try to keep Jack here! You—"
"Go to your room, Rosalind." Ruth was standing now, too, staring down her daughter. "Now."
Rose shoved her chair out of the way, not bothering to set it upright. "I hate you!" she shouted, running from the library and slamming the door so hard that a picture fell off the wall, the glass in the frame shattering.
Ruth watched her go, then sank back into her chair, more shaken by Rose’s reaction than she cared to admit. She wasn’t about to show it, though.
"Jack, please pick up Rose’s chair," she said quietly, shuffling the papers in front of her.
"Why should he?" Lucy burst out. "You’re making him leave!"
"Yeah," Julie added, looking from Jack to her mother unhappily. "Rose is right. You just don’t like him."
"Girls, I’ve told you why I made this decision. It has nothing to do with my feelings. Your father left us with very little, and I have to make do somehow," Ruth responded, wondering even as she did why she had to justify herself to a pair of twelve-year-olds.
"I don’t think that’s it at all." Tom suddenly spoke up for the first time that evening. "You and Dad both wrote to me about Jack, each of you saying something different. I could tell from your letters that you didn’t want Jack here, that you wished Dad had left him in Wisconsin. Dad always had good things to say about him. I didn’t know what to expect when I came back here for the funeral, but now that I’ve met him, Jack seems like a good kid. Dad made a promise to Mr. Dawson to help him if he ever needed it, and it sounded to me like he was happy to take Jack in. Dad’s gone now, but I think his obligation to Mr. Dawson fell to you."
Ruth stared at her son for a moment, anger beginning to rise in her. Her children were right that she had never much cared for the boy her husband had taken in, but she also felt it was for the best for all of them that he be sent away. Their resistance to the idea was doing nothing to make her change her mind; on the contrary, it was making her dig her heels in.
"You’re a fine one to talk about obligations, Tom DeWitt-Bukater," she said, going on the offensive.
Her son looked at her in confusion. "What?"
"Your father and I worked for years to be sure you would get into Harvard. When you applied, your father made sure that your application was at the top of the pile of those considered, and called in favors with old friends to be sure you were accepted. Then, after all that we did for you, you decided that your need for adventure meant more than your duty to your family, so you ignored your acceptance letter and joined the Navy instead."
"Don’t talk to me about obligations, Mom," Tom told her, a dangerous edge to his voice. "I told you when I enlisted that I have more of an obligation to my country than to the business world. I’d been trying to decide whether I wanted to go to college or join the military for a couple of years before I made up my mind. I applied to several universities—all of them accepted me. I didn’t need you and Dad to get me into Harvard. They would have taken me anyway—just like Yale did. But after I talked to Mr. McNamara, I knew that joining the Navy was the right thing for me to do. You should be glad I did. Think of how much more debt you would have if I had gone to Harvard—the Ivy Leagues are very expensive."
"If you had gone to Harvard," Ruth replied, "you would be about to start your final year. You would already have the education and contacts to get a good job, where you could earn enough to help support us."
"Is that what obligation means to you? Making sure you have enough money to stay rich?"
"Tom—"
"Do you want the money Dad left to me? It wouldn’t do you much good—you’d go through five thousand dollars in a few weeks."
"I don’t want your money."
"Then what the hell do you want?!" At his mother’s affronted look, Tom took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "The Navy does pay me, Mom. I can send you some money each month. It won’t be enough for you to live in luxury, but it will help you pay the bills and put food on the table."
"You could do so much more if you came home and got a job."
"I have a job, Mom. I’m in the Navy. I couldn’t come home even if I wanted to. I signed up for six years, and I’ve only completed a little over three. I won’t be done until July of 1965, and considering that I actually like being in the Navy and am doing pretty well at it, I may just re-enlist."
Ruth’s mouth tightened. "There must be some way for you to get out of your enlistment."
"Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said, Mom?! I like what I’m doing. I plan to keep doing it, whether you like it or not. And even if I didn’t like it, I couldn’t just walk away. That would get me into a lot of trouble. You have to have a good reason for leaving to get an honorable discharge. ‘My mother wants to live in luxury’ is not a good reason."
"Your father is dead, and you’re an only son. Surely—"
"I’m not even going to look into it. I’ll send you money to help pay the bills, Mom, but I won’t do more. In spite of everything, Dad left you enough to live on if you learn to budget. But you’re using it as an excuse to push away a family member, and I won’t stand for it." Tom stood up, shoving his chair back. "This discussion is at an end."
That said, Tom turned and walked away. After looking at her mother cautiously for a moment, Lucy got up and followed him, Julie soon going after her. Ruth and Jack were left alone.
Ruth looked at the boy sitting across from her. He was fidgeting, his fingers tapping nervously on the table.
"Stop that!" she snapped after a moment.
Jack’s hands stilled. He looked up at her, his expression unhappy but resigned.
"Jack, I want you to know that my decision has nothing to do with my personal feelings about you. I have to look out for my girls, and under the circumstances, it was the only choice I had."
Jack didn’t believe her for a moment. He was well-aware of how she felt about him—she had never resigned herself to his presence—and her attempt to send him away from the family on the day of the funeral had told him loud and clear just how much she disliked him and resented his presence.
There wasn’t anything he could do to change her mind, though, and since he didn’t want to add to the tension that had filled the house since Tom Bukater’s death, he simply asked, "Where am I going?"
He guessed that he was being sent back to Chippewa Falls to live with his mother’s relatives, or perhaps to Minnesota to live with his father’s family. It didn’t make much difference to him, though he hoped he wouldn’t have to live with his Uncle Paul and Aunt Nancy, with whom he had never gotten along well.
Ruth’s answer, however, shocked him. "Social Services is searching for a suitable foster home for you in Philadelphia."
"What? But…why? I have relatives…"
"It would take too much time and money to track them down."
"But you don’t need to track them down. I know where they are. I have all their addresses, and I write to them all the time."
"I’ve already made arrangements with Social Services, and it’s too late now to make any changes. They should have a place for you within a week."
"But—"
"Don’t argue with me, Jack. My decision is final. Now, I want you to go to your room." She pushed the papers back into the folder and closed it. "I have more work to do."
Setting his jaw, Jack got up and left the library, stalking towards his bedroom. He had grown used to living here and wasn’t happy about leaving—and he was even less happy that he would soon be living with strangers again. The only good thing about staying in Philadelphia, as far as he was concerned, was that he would still be near Rose.