One Fifth Avenue

by Candace Bushnell

  “Billy Litchfield?” Annalisa asked. “Probably too much alcohol.” The air conditioner was turned up high, and she snuggled under the down comforter. “Anyway, I like him.”

  “That’s good,” Paul said, getting into bed.

  “Do you think they liked us?” she asked.

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “I don’t know. The women are so different.”

  “They seemed nice enough.”

  “Oh, they’re perfectly nice,” Annalisa said.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul said, yawning loudly. “You sound insecure. That’s not like you.”

  “I’m not insecure,” she said. “Just curious.” After a moment, she said, “What if Billy Litchfield is right, Paul? About the money thing?”

  But Paul was asleep.

  The next morning at breakfast, Annalisa learned that they were expected to play tennis in a small tournament with some of the guests from the night before. Paul, who was not athletic, was eliminated in the first match against Sandy. Annalisa sat in the bleachers, watching. She’d been a high school champion. Her competitive nature rose to the fore. I’m going to win this, she thought.

  The tournament went on for five hours. The sun came out and the temperature rose. Annalisa won four matches in a row and was faced with Sandy in the final. As she stood on the baseline, bouncing the ball, she assessed her opponent. His playing style indicated that he’d had a lot of lessons, and his aggression made up for his lack of skill. But he didn’t have a natural ability for tennis. She could win if she kept him off balance.

  You might be rich, but I can still beat you, she thought, tossing the ball into the air. She brought her racket up behind her and, just before the moment of contact, flicked her wrist so the ball sliced across the net and bounced right on the sideline.

  “Ace!” Billy Litchfield shouted.

  Thirty minutes later, it was over. As they clustered around her, congratulating her, Annalisa thought, You can do this. You can really do this. You can succeed here as well.

  “Good job,” Paul said. He hugged her distractedly, with one eye on Sandy.

  They all headed back to the house.

  “Your wife moves well,” Sandy said.

  “She’s good,” Paul ventured.

  “Yeah,” Sandy said. “She’d be great in a war.”

  Billy Litchfield, who was strolling behind them, shuddered a little on hearing their conversation. At that moment, Annalisa stopped and turned, waiting for the group to catch up. She looked unabashedly triumphant. Billy took her arm. “Well done,” he said. And then, apprising her of the age-old rule at house parties, said, “Of course, it’s always a good idea to let the host win.”

  She stopped. “But that would be cheating. I could never do that.”

  “No, my dear,” he said, steering her along the path. “I can see that you’re the kind of girl who plays by her own rules. It’s wonderful, and you must never change. But it’s always wise to know what the rules are before you break them.”

  4

  Billy Litchfield arrived back in the city at six o’clock on Sunday evening. Taking a taxi to his apartment, he was content, having had an unexpectedly fruitful weekend. Connie Brewer had agreed to buy a small Diebenkorn for three hundred thousand dollars, from which he would take a 2 percent commission. Mostly, though, he was thinking about Annalisa Rice. A girl like her rarely came along these days—she was a true original, from her auburn ponytail and light gray eyes to her keen mind. Feeling a little rush of excitement, Billy guessed that with his guidance, she might even become one of the greats.

  Billy’s apartment was located on Fifth Avenue between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets; his narrow brown building, a former residence for single ladies, was dwarfed into invisibility by the fine redbrick buildings on either side. His building had no doorman, although a porter could be summoned with a buzzer. Billy collected his mail and climbed the stairs to his apartment on the fourth floor.

  In this building, every floor and every apartment were the same. There were four apartments per floor, and each apartment was a one-bedroom of approximately six hundred square feet. Billy liked to joke that it was an early-retirement home for spinsters such as himself. His apartment was comfortably cluttered, furnished with the castoffs of wealthy ladies. For the past ten years, he’d been telling himself that he would redecorate and find himself a lover, but he never seemed to be able to get around to either, and time passed and it mattered less and less. Billy had had no visitors for years.

  He began opening his mail as a matter of course. There were several invitations and a couple of glossy magazines, a bill for his MasterCard, and a legal-size envelope that was hand-addressed, which Billy put aside. He picked out the most promising invitation, and instantly recognizing the heavy cream stationery, turned it over. The address on the back was One Fifth Avenue. The stationery came from Mrs. Strong’s, and there was only one person he knew who still used it—Mrs. Louise Houghton. He opened the envelope and extracted a card on which was printed PRIVATE MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR MRS. LOUISE HOUGHTON, ST. AMBROSE CHURCH, with the date, Wednesday, July 12, written in calligraphy below. It was so Louise, Billy thought, to have planned out her memorial service in advance, down to the guest list.

  He put the card in a place of honor on the narrow mantelpiece above the small fireplace. Then he sat down to the rest of his mail. Picking up the legal-size envelope, he saw that the return address was that of his building’s management company. With growing dread, Billy opened it.

  “We’re happy to inform you…a deal has been closed…building will go co-op as of July 1, 2009…you may purchase your apartment for market value…those not purchasing their apartments will be expected to vacate by the closing date…” A dull throb started up in his jaw. Where would he go? The market value of his apartment was at least eight hundred thousand dollars. He’d need two or three hundred thousand as a down payment, and then he’d have a mortgage payment and a maintenance fee. It would add up to several thousand a month. He paid only eleven hundred dollars a month in rent. The thought of finding another apartment and packing up and moving overwhelmed him. He was fifty-four. Not old, he reminded himself, but old enough to no longer have the energy for such things.

  He went into the bathroom and, opening his medicine cabinet, took three antidepressants instead of his usual dose of two. Then he got into the tub, letting the water fill up around him. I can’t move, he thought. I’m too tired. I’ll have to figure out how to get the money to buy the apartment instead.

  Later that evening, clean and in a better frame of mind, Billy called the Waldorf-Astoria, asking for the Rices’ room. Annalisa answered on the third ring. “Hello?” she said curiously.

  “Annalisa? It’s Billy Litchfield. From this weekend.”

  “Oh, Billy. How are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering,” Billy said. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘A lady should appear in the newspapers only three times in her life—her birth, her marriage, and her death’?”

  “Is that true?”

  “It was true a hundred years ago.”

  “Wow,” Annalisa said.

  “Well, I was wondering,” Billy said. “Would you like to go to a funeral with me on Wednesday?”

  On Monday afternoon, back in her office after having spent the weekend with her family at Redmon and Catherine Richardly’s house in the Hamptons, Mindy opened a new file on her computer. Like most jobs in the so-called creative glamour business, her work had become increasingly less creative and less glamorous and more organizational; a significant portion of her day was devoted to being kept in the loop or keeping others in the loop. Originality was met with smug politesse. Nevertheless, due perhaps to her perplexing weekend, Mindy had had an idea that she planned to pursue. It had popped into her head during the ride back to Manhattan in the rental car, with James driving and Mindy mostly looking at her BlackBerry or staring straight ahea
d. She would start a blog about her own life.

  And why not? And why hadn’t she thought of this before? Well, she had, but she’d resisted the idea of putting her mincey little thoughts out there on the Internet with her name attached for all to see. It felt so common; after all, anyone could do it and did. On the other hand, very good people were doing it these days. It was one of the new obligations, like having children, for smart people to make an effort to get some sensible opinions out there in the ether.

  Now Mindy typed in the title of her new blog: “The Joys of Not Having It All.” Not wholly original, perhaps, but original enough; she was quite sure no one else was nailing this particular female lament with such preciseness.

  “Scenes from a weekend,” she wrote. She crossed her legs and leaned forward, staring at the mostly blank computer screen. “Despite global warming, it was a spectacular weekend in the Hamptons,” she typed. It had been nearly perfect—eighty degrees, the leaves a halo of dusky pinks and yellows, the grass still very green on the two-acre expanse of lawn on Redmon Richardly’s property. The air was still and lazy with the peaty scent of decay, a scent, Mindy thought, that made time stand still.

  Mindy and James and Sam had left the city late on Friday night to avoid the traffic, arriving at midnight to red wine and hot chocolate. Redmon and Catherine’s baby, Sidney, was asleep, dressed in a blue onesie in a blue crib in a blue room with a wallpaper band of yellow ducks encircling the ceiling. Like the baby, the house was new but pleasantly reassuring, reminding Mindy of what she didn’t have—namely, a baby and a pleasant house in the Hamptons to which one could escape every weekend, and to which one could someday make the ultimate escape: retirement. It was, Mindy realized, becoming harder and harder to justify why she and James didn’t have these things that were no longer the appurtenances of the rich but only of the comfortable middle class. The ease of the Richardlys’ life was made all the more enviable when Catherine revealed, in a private moment between her and Mindy in the eight-hundred-square-foot kitchen, where they were loading the dishwasher, that Sidney had been conceived without the aid of technology. Catherine was forty-two. Mindy went to bed with a pain in her heart, and after James fell asleep (immediately, as was his habit), Mindy was consumed with examining this riddle of what one got in life and why.

  Just after her fortieth birthday, in the midst of a vague discontent, Mindy began seeing a shrink, a woman who specialized in a new psychoanalytropic approach called life adjustment. The shrink was a pretty, mature woman in her late thirties with the smooth skin of a beauty devotee; she wore a brown pencil skirt with a leopard-print shirt and open-toed Manolo Blahnik pumps. She had a five-year-old girl and was recently divorced. “What do you want, Mindy?” she’d asked in a flat, down-to-basics, corporate tone of voice. “If you could have anything, what would it be? Don’t think, just answer.”

  “A baby,” Mindy said. “I’d like another baby. A little girl.” Before she’d said it, Mindy had had no idea what was ailing her. “Why?” the shrink asked. Mindy had to think about her answer. “I want to share myself. With someone.” “But you have a husband and a child already. Isn’t that so?” “Yes, but my son is ten.” “You want life insurance,” said the shrink. “I don’t know what you mean.” “You want insurance that someone is still going to need you in ten years. When your son has graduated from college and doesn’t need you anymore.” “Oh.” Mindy had laughed. “He’ll always need me.” “Will he? What if he doesn’t?” “Are you saying I can’t win?” “You can win. Anyone can win if they know what they want and they focus on it. And if they’re willing to make sacrifices. I always tell my clients there are no free shoes.” “Don’t you mean patients?” Mindy had asked. “They’re clients,” the shrink insisted. “After all, they’re not sick.”

  Mindy was prescribed Xanax, one pill every night before bedtime to cut down on her anxiety and poor sleep habits (she awoke every night after four hours of sleep and would lie awake for at least two hours, worrying), and was sent to the best fertility specialist in Manhattan, who preferred high-profile patients but would take those recommended by other doctors of his ilk. At the beginning, he had recommended prenatal vitamins and a bit of luck. Mindy knew it wouldn’t work because she wasn’t lucky. Neither she nor James ever had been.

  After two years of increasingly complicated procedures, Mindy gave up. She’d tallied their money and realized she couldn’t afford to go on.

  “I can count the days I’ve been truly content on one hand,” Mindy wrote now. “Those are bad numbers in a country where pursuing happiness is a right so important, it’s in our Constitution. But maybe that’s the key. It’s the pursuit of happiness, not the actual acquisition of it that matters.”

  Mindy thought back to her Sunday in the Hamptons. In the morning, they’d all gone for a walk on the beach, and she’d carried Sidney as they labored in the soft sand above the waterline. The houses, set behind the dunes, were enormous, triumphant testimonials to what some men could achieve and what others could not. In the afternoon, back at the house, Redmon organized a touch-football game.

  Catherine and Mindy sat on the porch, watching the men. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Catherine said for the tenth time.

  “It’s amazing,” Mindy agreed.

  Catherine squinted at the men on the lawn. “Sam is so cute,” Catherine said.

  “He’s a good-looking boy,” Mindy said proudly. “But James was cute when he was younger.”

  “He’s still attractive,” Catherine said kindly.

  “You’re very nice, but he isn’t,” Mindy said. Catherine looked startled. “I’m one of those people who won’t lie to herself,” Mindy explained. “I try to live with the truth.”

  “Is that healthy?” Catherine asked.

  “Probably not.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. The men moved clumsily on the lawn with the heavy breath that marks the beginning of real age, and yet Mindy envied them their freedom and their willingness to pursue joy. “Are you happy with Redmon?” she said.

  “Funny you should ask,” Catherine said. “When we were pregnant, I was afraid. I had no idea what he’d be like as a father. It was one of the scariest times in our relationship.”

  “Really?”

  “He still went out nearly every night. I thought, Is this what he’s going to do when we have the baby? Have I made another terrible mistake with a man? You don’t really know a man until you have a child with him. Then you see so much. Is he kind? Is he tolerant? Is he loving? Or is he immature and egotistical and selfish? When you have a child, it can go two ways with your husband: You love him even more, or you lose all respect for him. And if you lose respect, there’s no way to get it back. I mean,” Catherine said, “if Redmon ever hit Sidney or yelled at him or complained about him crying, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “But he’d never do those things. Redmon has so much pride in being civilized.”

  “Yes, he does, but one can’t help thinking about those things when one has a baby. The protective gene, I suppose. How is James as a father?”

  “He was great from the beginning,” Mindy said. “He’s not a perfect man…”

  “What man is?”

  “But he was so careful with Sam. When I was pregnant, he read all the parenting books. He’s a bit of a nerd…”

  “Like most journalists…”

  “Well, he likes the details. And Sam has turned out great.”

  Mindy sat back in her chair, taking in the hazy warmth of the summer day. What she’d told Catherine about James was only half the truth. James had been neurotic about Sam, about what he ate and even the kind of diapers he wore, so much so that Mindy would find herself arguing with him about the best brand in the aisle of Duane Reade. Their resentment toward each other was always just under the surface. Catherine was right, Mindy thought: All the trouble in their marriage went back to those first few months after Sam was born. Likely, James was as scared as she was and didn’t
want to admit it, but she’d interpreted his behavior as a direct assault on her mothering abilities. She worried he secretly thought she was a bad mother and was trying to prove it by criticizing all her decisions. This, in turn, inflamed her own guilt. She’d taken her six weeks of maternity leave and not a day more, returning to work immediately, and the truth was, she secretly relished getting out of the house and getting away from the baby, who was so demanding that it scared her, and who elicited such love from her that it scared her, too. They’d adjusted, as most parents do, and having created little Sam together was ultimately big enough to astonish them out of their animosity. But still, the bickering over Sam had never quite gone away.

  “I don’t have it all, and I’m coming to the realization that I probably never will,” Mindy wrote now. “I suppose I can live with that. Perhaps my real fear lies elsewhere—in giving up my pursuit of happiness. Who would I be if I just let myself be?”

  Mindy posted her new blog entry on the website and, returning to One Fifth for the evening, caught sight of herself in the smoky mirror next to the elevators. Who is that middle-aged woman? she thought. “I have a package for you,” said Roberto the doorman.

  The package was big and heavy, and Mindy balanced it precariously on her forearm as she struggled with her keys. It was addressed to James, and going into the bedroom to change, she dropped it on the unmade bed. Seeing it was from Redmon Richardly’s office, and thinking it might be important, she opened it. Inside were three bound galleys of James’s new book.

  She opened the book, read two paragraphs, and put it down, feeling guilty. What she’d read was better than expected. Two years ago, she’d read half of James’s book in first draft and had become afraid. Too afraid to go on. She’d thought the book wasn’t so good. But she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings, so she’d said it wasn’t her kind of material. This was easy to get away with, as the book was a historical novel about some character named David Bushnell, a real-life person who’d invented the first submarine. Mindy suspected that this David Bushnell was gay because he’d never married. The whole story took place in the seventeen hundreds, and if you weren’t married back then, you were definitely homosexual. Mindy had asked James if he was going to explore David Bushnell’s sexuality and what it might mean, and James had given her a dirty look and said no. David Bushnell was a scholar, he said. A farm boy who was a mathematical genius and had managed to go to Yale and then invented not just the submarine but underwater bombs. Which didn’t quite work.