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into the Langdon Hotel just off fashionable Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street in New York City, gave her legal affairs to my father to handle, and started dispensing sufficient sums of cash to Missy and to the engaged couple to allow them to forget that Hoover and the country were failing. Soon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt would ride in on his white horse to rescue the rest of the population.
    Like Mrs. Bamberger, Dr. Jay and Missy took to Dad immediately. What was not to like? He had begun his legal career smartly and was already being talked about in New York circles (Dr. Schamberg did his due diligence with friends in the city).
    My mother, in turn, fell for Dad’s mother, Anna, and my aunt Judy, both of whom reciprocated. She described them as “impecunious,” and her attitude was always a little condescending, but that was in part the attitude of all the Schambergs. Still, there was no doubting the couple’s rightness for each other, no “class” distinctions to be made. Dad, whatever his roots, was clearly a man for all seasons.
    The marriage might have gone ahead without a hitch except that Elizabeth began at once to have second thoughts. She was not
really
sure that she could ever love Dad as much as she had Froelicher.
    For his part, Francis tried to do the right thing. He knew now that my father-to-be existed and was engaged to his darling Elizabeth. He wrote the following letter to Missy:

    Feb. 1931.
Dear Mrs. Schamberg:
    It was generous and kind of you to leave a message for me here in Philadelphia. I must try to believe that only my absence and silence will serve Elizabeth. I like to think of her as our Elizabeth, because I am sure that no one else can come to know her quite so well or love her quite so much. Reading and re-reading your letter has been a great comfort for me. It tells me that one person, the nearest to Elizabeth, has a pretty clear understanding of my situation. I know the natural effect of time. I cannot want her to forget or to put me entirely apart from her life; I do want her to be completely happy. But my life, in fact, belongs to Elizabeth.
    Francis.

    Missy was an endless romantic. That she was also a meddler did not come home to me until I read the following from my mother. Missy had apparently not only been in touch with Francis Froelicher but told my mother about his letter.

    Dearest Mother:
    There is one thing which you could do for me, if it doesn’t appear to you an unnatural or unpleasant task. I think Francis would appreciate it more than you can imagine, if you’d write him a note saying that you feel we’ve done unquestionably the wisest thing or however you want to put it. And saying also what you’ve so often said to me about his influences on my life. He has a real affection for you and I think if he felt your continued goodwill and friendship it would help him immeasurably to bear something which now seems intolerable to him. Could you do that? Don’t let him feel that you think it was my decision alone in the case of our separation because it wasn’t, or that it was yours or anyone else’s influence on me. F. and I made it alone. I am not writing to Francis or hearing from him.

    Calm and determined as her note to Missy sounds and feels, in the same envelope is a smaller letter in which she told her mother that “according to your instructions, I have gone to see Bernard Glueck,” my grandmother’s analyst.
    It has never been a good idea for family members to share the same therapist. Since Glueck and his wife were personal friends of the Schambergs, it was an even worse idea. The good doctor saw my mother for fifteen minutes, squeezing her in between other appointments. According to her, he felt that “the marriage was okay” and that it should “take place as planned.” Mother says she had asked whether it wasn’t too soon “as I’ve so barely recovered from the other thing.” But Glueck says he thought a delay would “gain nothing.”
    In what