Hope had arrived the night before and was staying at Christina’s house, along with Pinky Tyson and Maggie. Pinky had resumed taking her meals with her friends in the dining hall, so the three veterans of one of the strangest springs any of them would ever experience had breakfast together in the sunroom, quietly reading the papers and bracing themselves for the day.
The campus around them was full of dressed-up families strolling in the sun. The seniors were mostly still in their dorms, trussed into their white dresses and sobbing in one another’s arms at parting, writing in each other’s yearbooks and pledging eternal devotion. Hope and Maggie left Christina to attend to a million last-minute crises and went to find Pam Moldower.
The faculty was to be seated at the side of the dais, and they went in early to find seats and watch the assembling crowd. It was an odd moment for Maggie, so familiar and yet so changed from her years as a young teacher. She’d grown fond of many of her girls in the weeks she’d been with them. They wouldn’t remember her in years to come, but she would be keeping track of them out in the world. And she had found an entertaining ally in sardonic Pam.
The families of seniors began to claim their seats. The Hollisters came in, led by a pretty student usher. Hugo kept a proprietary hand on the back of his wife’s waist as they walked down the center aisle. Lily walked a little behind them. Suddenly a beaming young woman with swinging dark hair rushed toward them, tapped Lily on the shoulder, and embraced her. She was embraced with warmth and surprise in return as Maggie grabbed Hope’s hand to be sure she had seen this. Hugo turned now and joined his daughter, also smiling widely, as he and the young woman exchanged a hug. Caroline, who had already taken her seat, looked up briefly from her program, smiling and waving her fingers at the newcomer.
“Who is that with the Hollisters?” Maggie demanded of Pam Moldower.
“Her name is Connie Pierce.”
“Is she a student here?”
“She was Lily’s Old Girl. She’s at Amherst now, I think. I have no idea what she’s doing here today, though.”
But Maggie did. Connie Pierce was the girl with Hugo in the photograph on Florence’s thumb drive. Lily’s Old Girl, her assigned senior mentor and protector the year she first arrived. Well, wasn’t that special.
As eleven o’clock drew near, most of the seats were filled with women and girls in flowered dresses and men in blazers and ties already fanning themselves in the heat. Hope nudged Maggie and gestured with her head toward the far side, where Detectives Phillips and Bark had come in and found seats with good views of the stage and especially of Hugo Hollister. Hugo was pink with contentment, flush with that special pleasure of cuckolding someone who is right there, unsuspecting, missing what’s right under her nose. He was spoken to often by fellow trustees, sharing a joke with one, making a note and nodding after a request from another. Caroline mostly read her program.
Christina and Emily George took their seats on the dais, along with other dignitaries, and a mildly distinguished alum who was to give the commencement address. Greta and Honey came in together and found seats with the rest of the faculty, and around the edges there were flashes from big professional cameras, though what the press found to interest them at this juncture, Maggie couldn’t guess. The sound system began to broadcast “Pomp and Circumstance.”
The senior girls, all in white and arranged in pairs according to height, began to march down the center aisle. The underclassmen were now weeping as they watched their senior favorites prepare to leave them. The invocation, the speeches of welcome, the Bruce Springsteen song performed by the school a cappella group, all went smoothly. The mildly distinguished alum maundered on too long to not much purpose, but Maggie had heard worse. No one tripped ascending to receive her diploma or tottering back to her seat on spongy grass in too-high heels, and the seniors didn’t scratch or woolgather too obviously when the school videographer was recording them. All the while, Maggie hoped against hope that Bark would rush down the aisle and clap Hugo into handcuffs, but instead the whole performance ground uneventfully to its conclusion, the senior girls were once again weeping in the arms of their friends or their parents, and the tent began to empty as the whole crowd straggled out toward whatever came next.
Alison Casey was making her way toward the faculty seats. As Maggie had predicted, her furious parents had withdrawn her from school when they dropped their lawsuit, but to everyone’s surprise Alison had asked to finish the year. Now she edged down the aisle against the flow of traffic to where Honey Marcus stood with Greta and a young math teacher in a bow tie who was telling them a joke.
Honey laid a hand on the man’s arm and stepped a little away as she saw Alison’s expression. Alison stopped before her and began to cry. She took a blue box out of the pocket of her skirt and held it awkwardly toward Honey. Greta watched in surprise as Honey paused for a moment, then folded the girl in her wiry arms. When Alison pulled back, she pressed the blue box into Honey’s hands, then turned and walked away. Still weeping, it looked like. Maggie’s eyes followed the girl out of the tent to where her father, perpetually fuming at the school and also his daughter, waited to drive Alison away from here forever.
Maggie and Hope moved toward the sunlight, looking now for Bark and Phillips. They found themselves close enough behind the departing Hollisters to see a reporter pounce on them, and Hugo smoothly steering Caroline away without breaking stride, interrupting his sentence, or seeming to notice at all.
“That guy writes for Gawker,” Hope said.
“How on earth do you know things like that?” Maggie asked.
“I’ve seen him at parties. I’m going to have a word with him,” Hope said.
Maggie found the two detectives at the edge of the crowd, wearing their Sunday best and looking as if they were both battling severe attacks of nausea. They looked at each other. Each one was hoping the other had something to say, to add, that would change things. None did. Finally Bark held out his hand and Maggie shook it. With Phillips she did the same. And they parted.
Greta Scheinerlein, alone in the emptying tent with Honey, who was looking after Alison, said, “Well? What did she give you?”
Honey looked at the box in her hand as if she’d just remembered it, then untied the white ribbon and pried off the lid. Inside was a silver bracelet with gold screws, and a tiny gold screwdriver.
“Wow,” said Greta. “That’s not your box of homemade fudge.”
“Proof that these girls get entirely too much allowance,” said Honey. She looked in the direction that Alison had gone, as if she thought to follow her and thank her, but there was no sign of the Caseys.
“You going to put it on?”
“I don’t know. Should I?”
“Do you like it?”
“I kind of do,” said Honey, a note of surprise in her voice, as she was not a dressy woman. “But no. I can’t be bothered taking it on and off when I’m working.”
“Are you kidding? Once you put it on, you need a tool kit to get it off.”
Honey stared at it, not sure how it worked.
Greta said, “Come out where we can sit down and I’ll do it for you.”
It was a while before Hope and Maggie found each other again.
“Was the Gawker guy after Hugo?” Maggie asked.
“No. Some Wall Street guy I never heard of.”
“Damn,” said Maggie.
They said their good-byes to Christina and to Pinky Tyson and Pam Moldower.
“I just want to stop and see Margot McCartney,” Hope said. “Okay with you?”
“Fine.”
“She’s divorcing Lyndon,” Hope added.
“I guess that’s for the best.”
“Very much so.”
“I wish this whole thing hadn’t ended in such a mess,” Maggie said. “It’s colossally frustrating.”
“The world is full of bullies and liars getting away with disgusting things.”
“I know. But I’ve lived my
whole life telling young people that there is justice.”
“And the world is a better place if we behave as if that’s true,” said Hope, “even when it isn’t. Oh, I’ll tell you one good thing—”
“I’m ready.”
“Avis Metcalf is going to the Costume Gala with Angus.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Not. He just called me, he wanted to tell someone, and his sister isn’t speaking to him. He was so pleased. I felt like his mother.”
The night before he left on his train journey to California, Hugo made love to Caroline. He had always prided himself on his finesse in that department but he took special care on this occasion to treat her with passion and tenderness. As they lay in a postcoital embrace, he whispered, “You are so good for me.”
Caroline kissed him on the forehead and murmured wordlessly. As he drifted toward sleep, he felt particularly content with his performance.
Hugo’s train pulled into Chicago Thursday in time for him to have a leisurely breakfast in the city, then make his way to the Art Institute. He spent a good long time with the Frederic Remingtons (a style of art he’d never liked) because he knew Randy Beemis was a fan. Then he devoted himself with pleasure to the Sargents and Whistlers in the permanent collection, and paid an homage visit to the Monet haystacks. In the museum shop he bought a pair of Murano glass earrings for Caroline. They were cheap, but she would treasure them because they were from him, and because he’d spin her a tale about the glass blowers of Venice. He chose a set of Georgia O’Keeffe note bricks as a hostess present for Linda. He didn’t know what they were taking to Randy for his birthday, but he was sure Caroline was on top of it.
He had slept well, and he enjoyed a stroll in the sun after a light lunch with a very acceptable half bottle of chenin blanc in the museum café. He stopped in a bookstore to stock up on magazines for the rest of the trip, and by two-thirty in the afternoon, he was once again rolling west, feeling sleepy and content.
When the train pulled into L.A.’s Union Station Saturday morning, he was showered, carefully dressed, and wearing the Hermès aftershave he knew Caroline liked. He hadn’t eaten; supper on the train had been quite enough, but he could have brunch when he got to the hotel, before they left for the ranch. He had slept well and long, and as he felt and heard the miles receding, all that had seemed to have him in a death grip had loosened and relaxed and fallen far behind. Before him was bright weather, a day of pleasures, and a new world to conquer.
He walked up the platform toward the station with his monogrammed suitcase rolling obediently behind him. He felt like a million bucks as he scanned the handful of drivers holding signs, seeking his name and wondering if he would have time for a dip in the Pacific before they left this afternoon.
He couldn’t see his driver, but here was a man in a shirt and tie who was waving to him.
“Hugo Hollister?” said the man, and smiling, Hugo agreed that that was he and tried to give the man his suitcase.
Instead the man handed him a thick document and said, “You are being sued for divorce in the state of New York by Caroline Westphall Hollister. You have been served.” While Hugo was still speechless, the man turned and wove himself into the crowd of arriving passengers and disappeared.
He looked at the thing in his hand. He could hardly adjust his sense of what was possible to take it in, but there didn’t seem to be any doubt about it. Part of his mind was still eyeing the crowd, expecting a limo driver to appear, tug the forelock, and drive him off to Santa Barbara.
He needed to sit down. He walked into the station, feeling the need to hurry but with no idea toward what. He stood in line for a cup of coffee at an outpost of one of the more reliable chains, though no coffee you bought on the street was as good as the coffee he ground fresh and brewed himself at home.
There was a small sticky table available in a corner and he took it. He found his reading glasses and applied himself. There it was in officialese: he was being sued for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty, spousal abuse, and adultery.
WTF?
Spousal abuse? What was she thinking? Mental cruelty? Really? And adultery, didn’t you have to prove that? She couldn’t prove that. She knew nothing about his dalliances, never had a clue, the patsy. New York was not a no-fault divorce state. He could fight this, and he could get her back. That, or countersue and get a big fat alimony settlement. That would be second best and wouldn’t go down well with Lily the snoop, but putting a little distance between himself and Lily might not be a bad idea just at the moment.
He drank his coffee. He got out his phone and called a lawyer friend back in New York, someone he’d gone to Harvard with and played squash with a couple of times a year. But of course, New York was at lunch or out in the Hamptons right this minute.
He should just go back there. He went to the ticket wicket, took out his travel envelope, and said to a weary black woman who needed to lose about fifty pounds, “I’ve had some bad news and I have to change this ticket. I have to go back to New York right away. What is available?”
The ticket had been issued by their travel agency, and he hadn’t really looked at it, just handed it to the conductor when he was asked. The woman in the cage looked at it back to front, and said, “What is it you want to change?”
“The return itinerary. I need to go back today, not on Monday.”
She handed it back to him. “Your itinerary is complete. This is a one-way ticket.”
“It’s a what? No.” He took it back, still in its reassuring jacket from Caroline’s travel agent, and flipped through, looking for the return ticket. There was no sign of one. He was so used to traveling on the Westphall magic carpet that he hadn’t even noticed.
He felt a rising bilious desire to ruin the fatso’s day for disrespecting him, although she had only pointed out what he should have discovered himself.
He tamped down the feeling and reached for his wallet. “All right, I’d like to book my return for the next train out with a private room.”
She looked at the schedule and said, “There’s one in two hours that will get you into New York on Monday at noon.”
“How much?”
“Sixteen hundred dollars.”
“Fine.”
He took out the black American Express card that always got him such attentive service. The fatso took it and swiped it. She swiped it again. Then she stepped away from the wicket and made a phone call. When she returned she said, “I’m sorry, sir, that card has been canceled.”
“What? No. That’s impossible. Give it back, I’ll give you another.”
“I can’t do that, sir,” she said as she took a pair of scissors from her drawer and cut the card in half. Hugo was now quite red, as if an attack of some kind might be imminent. He handed her a platinum Visa card. The fatso went through the whole routine again, up to and including the scissors; all his high-credit-line cards were actually companion cards on Caroline’s accounts. But he had his own. He had about fourteen of his own. Every time a credit card company offered him one, he accepted, even though they were charging sky-high interest rates and had credit limits in very low ranges, given that he used them to pay the interest on previous cards. When you kept kiting like that, it didn’t do much for your credit rating.
None of the cards he had could make a dent in the price of the ticket. Even when he had downgraded to a coach seat and an itinerary that would get him home on Tuesday, he couldn’t cover the price, even if he combined cards. And how was he going to eat for the next four days? He left the woman, throwing his one-way ticket into a trash can like so much used tissue and went to look for someplace where he could talk on the phone in private. He tried to call his bank, but of course it was Saturday. His private banker wasn’t available, and the weekend gum chewers couldn’t seem to understand the problem. He needed them to wire money, or extend him a line of credit, or whatever your banker does in an emergency, but they said his card wasn’t linked to the savings ac
count that used to guarantee his overdrafts and there wasn’t enough in his checking to . . . he hung up.
He found a locker, stowed his luggage, and walked out of the station. He walked all the way around it, feeling distinctly out of place and out of his depth. He needed a pawnshop. This ought to be the right kind of neighborhood. Counting his clothes and his shoes and his watch he was worth a couple of thousand on the hoof; he could deal.
He wanted to find a pawnshop by coming upon it; he didn’t want to have to explain to a stranger what he needed, but finally he went into a betting parlor and said he needed to raise some fast cash; did they know a place? They did. They didn’t even seem very interested. Apparently guys wearing clothes like his needed to raise ready cash as often as the guys with the pint bottles of Thunderbird in paper bags.
At the pawnshop he offered his wedding ring. The pawn broker laughed. Reluctantly, he offered his watch, a Patek Philippe. A present from Caroline; he didn’t know what she paid for it, but he expected at least a thousand. The guy laughed again. Finally he left the shop with enough cash to cover a coach ticket home and food if he ate only hot dogs and yogurt.
Luis was on the door Tuesday evening when Mr. Hollister got out of a taxi. Luis was surprised to see him. Hugo looked tired and ill and as if he hadn’t had a proper shower in days.
“Need help with your bags, sir?” Luis asked, standing very straight in his uniform, holding the heavy outside door. Mrs. Missirlian on twelve, with the three Maltese fluffballs, was just going out, and Hugo had to stand aside to let her pass.
“No thank you, Luis,” Hugo said. He couldn’t wait to get out of these clothes, brush his teeth, and have a long hot bath, and he didn’t want to talk to anybody until he had done that. He wondered if Caroline would be home. Would she have stayed in California with her friends? Laughing at her little joke with Linda and Randy? Probably. She wouldn’t be here, she wouldn’t have the nerve, because she knew he could work her. He could always get her back. This was Angus’s trick; Caroline would never do this to him. He’d had a very long couple of days to think about how he’d get around her, and he knew he could do it. First a bath, clean clothes, and a drink, and then he’d find her and go to work. Then tomorrow he’d get with his lawyer and see where they were.
The Affliction Page 33
