The Family Cupboard

Summary

In a cavernous Fifth-Avenue mansion that clangs like a bank vault every time the butler snaps the lights on, Charles Nelson—architect of his own fortune, lacquerer of his own loneliness—waits for echoes that never arrive. His wife, a society vampire in chinchilla, drains the coffers with soirées that glitter like broken glass; his son Kenneth pirouettes through clubland on rivers of rye; his daughter Alice pirouettes through opera boxes on rivers of champagne. The house breathes receipts, not affection, so Charles seeks oxygen in the sawdust glow of vaudeville, where Kitty Claire—singer, smiler, survivor—knows how to make a man feel like the only aisle in the theater. Rumors travel faster than subway sparks: a kept woman, an uptown nest, a father turned sugar-daddy. Kenneth, drunk on gossip and gin, spews bile at his mother’s companion, then spews worse at his father, detonating the marriage with a single slurred accusation. Mother and son lock arms in self-righteous fury; Alice, suddenly sober with understanding, follows her banished father into exile. The Alpine Apartments become a purgatory of mahogany and regret, where Kitty drifts in like stray music and confesses the affair is ash. Meanwhile Kenneth, hungry for revenge against the woman who rejected him, pursues Kitty into a Bohemian underworld of rooftop saxophones and dawn-pink absinthe, only to discover that the rival for her heart is the man whose name he has been spitting in disgust. Gunmetal glints, a mother bursts in, telephone wires tremble, and in the marble lobby of a cheap hotel a family—fractured, bankrupt of pride—reassembles itself in the flicker of a single Edison bulb, learning that love, like currency, can be squandered but also, if clenched hard enough, re-minted.

Synopsis

Charles Nelson is a self-made man and has amassed a fortune. His family consists of his wife, son Kenneth, and daughter Alice. His wife has become absorbed in society, requiring all the money her husband can made to support the large establishment and entertain. The wife, son, and daughter are out night after night, leaving Mr. Nelson much alone; while he pays the bills, he has little of the society of his family. He turns to vaudeville performer Kitty Claire for consolation and companionship. His son Kenneth gets into an argument with a friend at his club and hears that his father is keeping a woman in an establishment uptown. Kenneth returns home under the influence of liquor and insults his mother's companion, Mary Burke. Mr. Nelson enters, sees the situation and asks him what it all means. Kenneth turns on him and tells him that everyone knows he is keeping a woman in an apartment uptown. This conversation is overheard by Mrs. Nelson, who asks Mr. Nelson if it is true. He replies, "Yes." They agree to part. Kenneth clings to his mother. His sister Alice sympathizes with her father. She realizes that it is their own fault; they have given him nothing in return for all his labor in their behalf. Mr. Nelson is now living at the Alpine apartments, to which comes Kitty Claire. He tells her that the end has come. Meanwhile Kenneth, has come to see his father. Kitty, going out, hears him ask if his father is in, and seeks an acquaintance with Kenneth, who becomes infatuated with her, moves to the same hotel, and begins to live a Bohemian life with Kitty Claire and Dick LeRoy, another vaudeville performer. He finally asks Kitty to become his wife. She replies, "It is impossible, there is another man." The boy, crushed and brokenhearted, demands the man's name. Mr. Nelson enters at the point when Kenneth demands the name of the man. Kitty points to Mr. Nelson. Humiliated and ashamed Kenneth decides to end his life. He is about to write a letter when his mother arrives; she sees the pistol and tries to keep him from carrying out his plan. They are interrupted by a knock at the door; Kenneth is called down to the office by the clerk; while he is gone Mrs. Nelson seizes the opportunity to telephone Mr. Nelson, who arrives with Alice. Kenneth and his father are reconciled, also Mrs. Nelson, and her husband and the family are reunited.