Capote by Gerald Clarke Read Free Book Online Page A

letter to the judge himself, reminding him that he had been a friend of his own father. “Little Truman,” he told him, “is every inch a Persons—the image of my late father—and we do not propose to have him forced to adopt this Cuban as his father–in fact.” As the day of the hearing approached, he radiated confidence. The judge was reported to be on his side, and lawyer Ratcliffe guaranteed victory. He was further heartened by Lillie Mae’s general unpopularity thereabouts. After Truman had described the “fast life” she was leading in New York, her reputation, which had never been high, had sunk still further, he triumphantly reported to John. Lillie Mae, he predicted, would be in for a bad day.
    That day was Thursday, August 24. Lillie Mae and her relatives testified in the morning, Arch and his friends in the afternoon. He tried to sell the judge as he had everyone else in his life. As he warmed to his subject, all of his disputes with Jennie were forgotten, and that house of ill and aging eccentrics was portrayed as the ideal place for a young boy to grow into adolescence. “I have never appreciated any home as much as theirs and probably never will,” Arch said. “And I feel that his best interest would be served to keep him here among his kind of people. If the court were to award me the custody, the full custody, to have him to do with as I saw fit, I would take the child and place him in the same hands that I am asking that he be placed. I would not accept full custody.”
    He must have suffered a few uneasy moments when Lillie Mae’s lawyer pressed him to admit that he had not contributed to Truman’s support for sixteen months. He must have experienced a few more such moments when he was forced to own up to his collisions with the law. He had been arrested “five or six times,” he said, but “just for foolishness every time.” Nonetheless, when he walked out of the courtroom, Arch was convinced that he had won, and believed Lillie Mae thought so too. He accepted her invitation to dinner at the house that night as her graceful bow to defeat. The day was marred for him by only one thing: Truman’s mail, he noticed, was addressed “Truman Capote.”
    Once again, however, he had succeeded in selling only himself. He did not want his son, but he did not want Lillie Mae to have him either, and the judge saw through him completely. The decision, which was handed down the following Monday, gave Lillie Mae absolute custody; Arch was given nothing. “I think it would be a calamity for the child to be placed in boarding school for months on end with not even a weekend at home,” the judge declared. “No lonelier, more forlorn situation can be pictured. There is nothing in the record indicating unfitness on the part of the mother. Her present husband appears to be a man of means and responsibility, and willing to spend his means on his stepson. The best interest of the child lies with the mother.” Almost immediately after hearing that, Lillie Mae and Truman left for New York.
    Angry and bitter, complaining that he had been done in by small-town politics, Arch blamed everyone but himself. “I didn’t know a man could be robbed of his child in a civilized country,” was his despairing comment to John. Yet even Arch’s mother, who had no more liking for Lillie Mae than anybody else in the Persons family, privately applauded the decision, telling John that she would not want to see a boy as young as Truman locked away in a boarding school. Lillie Mae would take care of him, she said, adding something Arch had either forgotten or considered too unimportant to take into account: Truman loved his mother.
    Still, Arch persisted, more eager, it seemed, to get back at Lillie Mae than he was to have Truman. When he heard that Truman would be spending the summer of 1934 in Monroeville, he began plotting a second time to keep him there, convincing himself that Lillie Mae would give Truman up voluntarily