“We did,” Veronica says. “Back in the late seventies, the early eighties, it was a swear-on-your-life secret. Your father has this fantasy that either of you could be his, maybe both of you, by some miracle. Mixed sperm, both times. The men, the husbands, they were told that.”
“Mom’s right, it must have been tricky for Dad,” Aubrey says. “I mean, his work, his rental buildings, he has those employees who love him, while he knew he had failed.”
“Dad is respected in Palm Beach. This can’t get out, we have to be loyal to him,” Veronica says. “A place that makes your father proud of himself, among other successful men; a lifestyle that helps to forget—I owe him that.”
I look at Aubrey. She’s chewing on her right thumb, which she hasn’t done since I bought that sickly nail solution when she was eleven. I used to put it on when she was asleep at night, and she stopped gnawing at her cuticles.
“Well, I mean, the gossip. How the Lestats clawed their way back. Did anyone ever truly forget about Faith and Edward Harrison? Look at Faith now, spending half her time in Delray. Remember when Maria T. fled town with her boys? Your mother-in-law talked about it an entire season.”
Scandals—one of this type would be juicy because it isn’t the usual sort. Unlike prenups that don’t hold up, husbands who lose the money, affairs, mistresses, illegitimate children, false identities.
Aubrey tips her chin, as if she’s considering the significance, as if she’s not thought of it before. “I read a book—a study—about secrets and how women do it, keep them, lie carefully.”
“You get used to it,” Veronica says.
I have never seen her so raw and real, her pleasant breeziness shattered. Not when her own mother died. In the circles where the Veronica and Simon Show travel—Palm Beach, Sag Harbor, Aspen, New York City—their secret was airtight for decades. The length of our lives.
Again, Veronica reaches out to take Aubrey’s hand, to take my hand, too. Her fingers are bony; they’ve aged since we sat down. This isn’t the moment to ask about the sperm donor, what she knows about Aubrey’s, what she knows about mine.
“Dad’s ego, how he needs to be strong to his daughters. Never a failure.”
“If you hadn’t married Dad, you would have had other children, yours with another husband,” I say. That would apply to James, too. Had he had a fertile wife, he’d have what he wants, readily.
“Yes, other children,” Veronica says.
“Other lovely children,” Aubrey says.
Veronica is doing that stare she saves for funerals and other bad news. “You are my children; I can’t say it enough. You are my children with Dad. There’s a path, our path. I’m asking you girls to consider his feelings. You both have partners. Consider it.” Veronica holds our hands too tightly. “You cannot tell your father that you know, please, girls.”
* * *
“Well, good morning.” A wind gust blows our father’s voice into the semicircle where we are locked together. His greeting is palpable even though he is still four feet away. Watching one another, we must have missed his entrance. Tugging down his tennis hat on his head, Simon reaches us.
“There you are. I didn’t know you both were coming for breakfast.” He speaks quietly.
Aubrey begins to check her iPhone. “Dad! Hey!”
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
“It’s a high-velocity wind until noon,” Aubrey says, holding the phone up, attempting to defuse the situation. I try to measure how her voice carries toward him and away, blustering in every direction. Was he able to hear us?
“Simon.” Veronica gives him a capable, Palm Beach smile. As polished as she is, the scene challenges her.
“Please join us. Before we go indoors.”
“Absolutely. I will.” Our father walks to the curved sofa.
We ought to get up and keep pretending. Yet both Aubrey and I, who move at our own paces, are identically stuck. Trying to fathom what we know, our parents’ commitment to each other, to having children, to what festers beneath. We are immobile.
“Great, Dad.” Aubrey lets go of Mom’s hand first. She draws out “greeeaat” and gets up.
Simon is watching us, exactly the way he watched me the night I married James. From afar, although it is momentous. I remember how Veronica and her sister, my aunt Lett, unbuttoned every silk-covered button on the back of my gown when the wedding was over. Then Veronica, in a motherly whisper, said, “Be vigilant. This is the end of one dream. You’ll have to start another.”
CHAPTER 21
ELODIE
Not four hours after the poolside chat with my mother and my sister, it’s as if I’m wading through four feet of mud. The incessant wind off the ocean whips around the island; on the west side, the Intracoastal is frothy. Mrs. A., Priscilla, Cecelia Norric, and Lara Mercer waltz into the Society, searching for the latest fiction and the Distinguished Lecturer Series spring calendar. Snowbirds file in, complaining that the weather has diminished their perfect Palm Beach day. Any weather that isn’t optimal proves successful for the Literary Society, as it does for the merchants. Several women race through the stacks of new titles before heading over to Neiman’s and Vintage Tales. I am displaced, an alien on my own soil, seasick, lost, sorry. Agent Orange. Every gesture, every step today is to get myself into my office to wildly google the effects, to understand my father’s plight.
“Thirty-five new sign-ups,” Laurie whispers. “Mostly for the breakfast series.”
“That’s great.” I attempt to be myself—whatever that is. The members’ conversations—their voices—often a soothing mantra for me, are disquieting, piercing.
“Are you all right?” Laurie is eyeing me. “Have you eaten something that doesn’t—”
“I’m fine,” I lie, close to telling her that I need a day in bed with three Milky Way bars, an iPad, and an evaluation of who I am—beyond the reveal of 23andMe. What were the “controls” for sperm donors forty-one years ago? Was it like dress shopping at Bloomingdale’s? I’ll try this; no, that. I want a child with a high IQ, a short nose, an athlete. How it works today. I know instinctively it wasn’t like that when my parents chose my donor, if he wasn’t assigned to them. I’m not sure about Aubrey’s donor, whether eight years demanded another method.
“Do you want something?” Laurie drifts past the reception area, costumed in her weekday gray-sky “uniform,” a navy print McLaughlin shift and Jack Rogers wedges.
“Such as?”
“Well, we can’t open a bottle of wine, but maybe a Fioricet?”
In her hand she is carrying a small mosaic pillbox and holds up a round blue pill.
“And not the generic.”
“I don’t know what you mean, but no thank you.” I shake my head.
Laurie presses her lacquered fingernails into my palm. “You seem distraught.”
“Isn’t this for migraines? I don’t have a headache.”
“One time, Elodie, try it one time. It will help,” she whispers. “Whatever it is, you are not yourself today.”
Exactly right.
Across the main entrance and great room of the Literary Society, life is per usual on a buzzy indoor day in season. I smooth my thumb over the tablet. Agent Orange. Our father not our father. Aubrey and I half sisters. Aubrey, visibly pregnant, jounces around my mind. After our mother’s statement this morning, I want our baby plan to be disclosed. Practically advertised—proudly advertised. Anyone in town who has questions will be told about our decision. No secrets or reproach—not after how corrosive the masquerade has been for our parents. Suffocating both of them, playing a mind game with Aubrey and me.
When I swill from my small Perrier bottle, the tablet bounces down my throat. Within an hour, I am floaty, disengaged, my thoughts muted, forced downward. Rain starts hitting the paned windows in the Great Room. Although the lights are on, there is this dim quality filtering in from outdoors.
* * *
“The valets are slow at the Jade Bar, don�
��t you think?” James asks as he steers his BMW along the A1A. “A pain in the ass. I should look for parking up the street.”
“There’s no easy place nearby,” I say. Although it is seven hours since I took the Fioricet, I hardly recognize my trained “willing to endure” wife voice. I resist shouting, Who gives a fuck how or where we park. You’ve no idea what happened today with my mother. With my family.
“Don’t fret,” I say instead, my tone upbeat.
What would Aubrey say to a husband about deficient valets at a restaurant? She wouldn’t, because she hasn’t got that type of person in her life. She wouldn’t, because parking is more egalitarian in her world, in South Beach. Or so I imagine. Aubrey, my pregnant half sister. We share 25 percent of our DNA. Our baby is at 12.5 percent.
“Happy to be celebrating?” James asks as he steps on the gas.
Sworn to secrecy with Veronica and Aubrey, I’m trying to be appealing, collected. “I wouldn’t speed. Around this bend, there are police and—”
“It’s our anniversary; maybe you could stop worrying.” James slows down slightly.
“You’ve seemed exhausted these past few days—that’s why I booked this. You like the Jade Bar.”
“Thank you for making a reservation. I do like it—I like the idea of it,” I say.
“Well, we might run into a lot of investors if they’re over forty-five, maybe some Literary Society members,” James says.
“This is the first place your parents took us when we moved to Palm Beach. It had just opened and it was impossible to get a table. Somehow Simon managed to get us up front, best table there is. I like it because of your father.”
* * *
I look out at the ocean view as it slips into twilight. The hole in my being, the dread of what Aubrey and I learned today, is unrelenting. Trailing up and down my body, squeezing my heart, swelling my tongue. How my father never talks about the war—now we know why—it weakened him, made him less. How pictures of my mother pregnant are sparse or tucked away, along with the few pictures of my father in uniform. The Veronica and Simon Show is a ruse, a cover-up, an escape from their lonely secret. The one that has determined my life and my sister’s. Every choice we have made, including where to live, friends, men. Men—yes, my husband. It is a fortunate perk, a by-product, that I love him, since in part I chose him to please my parents, chose him because he fit in—Ivy League, tall, ambitious. His fussiness—over cars, couches, houses, sports—is familiar to me. Without effort, James belongs with the Veronica and Simon Show more than I do. In truth, I’ve been contorting myself to fit their mold, to please their fantasy since I was eight. I’m tired.
There is one car ahead of us in the valet lineup and James has worried for nothing. Within minutes I’m whisked out of my seat by a young, fast-moving man who needs to park the car pronto. The frenzy is over. James claps his right hand over my left wrist and we walk inside.
Dipped in the orange and darkened woods of the boutique hotel, the Winchester, is the Jade Bar, a jewel within a jewel. James and I come here for our more precious occasions. When he mentioned he’d reserved a table for tonight, I realized it was our wedding anniversary—an event I have not missed in the past. Beneath the soaring ceiling, we pass the dance floor. The music of Madonna, John Mellencamp, and Dave Navarro graces the clubby, posh surroundings. Aubrey would be pleased with the lineup, Aubrey, who is at the center even when she is off to the side.
“Elodie? C’mon.” James holds out his hand.
* * *
Tonight James must remain clueless, an uninformed husband. I pray the dinner can be about us, pre–baby lust, when life flowed as a couple. Before our function was making babies and there was a glaze over anything else. When we were curious beings who promised each other a future with or without a child. At what price is a baby craving? “No one can know,” Veronica said five times this morning. “Girls, promise me, no one tells anyone, not James, not Tyler. Not a friend, no one.” We pinkie-swore, made it sacred.
The captain, who is not the usual one, steers us to our table. We pass some clients of James’s and he gives them a confident, not too warm smile. They seem pleased and wave at him as if he’s a minor rock star. The crowd is diverse for Palm Beach; that alone is worth noting. Two women from the board of the Literary Society, Chandra Vive and Brenda Pearl, greet me eagerly. I smile as if I’m happy. Happy to be here, happy to see them. We keep moving into the room; I don’t believe I’ve ever gone so deep into the Jade Bar. To forgo a front table is unlike James, unheard of by my parents. Perchance my husband and I will have a real conversation tonight, perchance we will be able to hear each other if we sit away from the groove.
Our banquette is covered in tea green ultrasuede. James puts his arms around me while I look into the bar room where the young, trendy beauties cross their long legs. Along with an older crowd, women who are too sunburned, men with elaborate comb-overs. James is more handsome than when we met. His hair falls on his forehead in the same clumps and his features have matured. He has a face that shows thought; the crinkles around his eyes are surprisingly becoming. He stares at me more profoundly today than thirteen years ago, more willing to appreciate me. In his white starchy button-down shirt and navy blazer, he is rather stiff and old-school for this place. My black dress might skim my body, but it’s mid-calf, not mini, and my tan suede booties might be high heeled, but not five inches high, not notable in a sea of younger women in stilettos. There’s nothing trendy or artistic about us except our ability to admire the Damien Hirst on the wall. I can’t imagine the lives of the others, but I understand my own existence very well.
“You and James are regal,” Aubrey used to say. Not anymore does she admire us. Lately she’s been busy, working with Tyler, being pregnant, carrying a full-term baby. Her means to an end is real, something I never sensed about my own pregnancies. The baby, our baby. No matter what Aubrey and I learned today, I walk with a lighter step, imagining how life will be for the three of us. Our baby on a swing, at the beach tossing shells, being read Dr. Seuss.
“You look better than the night we met.” James speaks under his breath. The candlelight flickers.
“I was thinking that about you.”
And I’m not sure where to put it. Where admiring each other’s appearance, based on memory, belongs in our multilayered lives.
“Better than ever.” He is truly enthused.
“Is that a line?” I wish this could satisfy me. It used to.
“Maybe. It’s how I feel,” he says.
“I’d say the same thing back at you, James.” In this brief second, I’m there with him, I’m flattered.
I tug on my hair clip, and my hair spills out around my shoulders. The last time I wore it down was two months ago. Then, suddenly, I can’t focus on James and me. I feel ill. Worse than morning sickness or a stomach flu—it’s bottomless, bilious. I am proof of the con—Aubrey, too. We are shocked by what we now know, followed by pity for our father. Add that our mother and father are deceivers who cling to their story.
The server brings two fluted champagne glasses to the table and pours into James’s glass. Since we’re not spontaneous or gushy, I wait. During the pause, I’m not in this room, I’m with Aubrey and Mom, wherever they are. “Not our biological father,” Aubrey whispered after the mystifying news. “Not our biological father.” Her voice was sharper, higher as she spoke. “Did he ever love me?”
“Aubrey, please don’t, please stop,” I said. Because I felt as awful as she did. Because neither of us could bear to know.
James, proud of this night, tastes the champagne, nods his approval. I reel myself back to our banquet, our dinner. “Celebratory,” I say.
“The baby,” James answers. He hands me a jewelry box, an innocuous box, not one marked Graff or David Yurman. A small navy leather box with gold trim. “Open it, Elodie.”
I unlatch it and look at a multi-stone heart ring. Not a Vhernier Freccia, which is the rage, or a David Webb Geodesic
Dome ring. Not what one would find on the Avenue.
“Try it on.” James takes my right hand. “For this period of our lives,” he says. “I hunted it down, I didn’t consult Veronica or Mimi. I called a few shops. Out of town.”
How funny, how daring. As if we could exist under glass. I hold it up in the dim light of the Jade Bar. Pink and green stones, diamonds and sapphires sparkle in a cluster. Somewhere between vintage and trendy. He slips it on. “Do you like it?”
I keep staring at it. “It’s perfect.”
“We’ve been talking about a baby for so long, we never focus on much else. I know years ago you didn’t want an engagement ring—and how our mothers convinced you to have a solitaire, to want one, so maybe a baby ring?”
“Maybe Aubrey’s having a girl.” I turn the ring toward me. “Or a boy—there’s blue, too.”
“Either way.” James smiles. It’s awkward, being together happily, knowing what I know. If I could separate out the Elodie of Elodie from the Elodie of the Cutler family, it might be easier. Aubrey could separate herself out and finesse this—she has that knack.
“Nights in White Satin,” by the Moody Blues, becomes a few decibels louder. A favorite of mine, not as much for James. Although it is the song he played the first time we ever made love. That day, I thought if we left each other, I’d fade into oblivion. As someone who slotted from one boyfriend to the next in college, meeting James in New York, a month after grad school, was already more “adult.” He waited, he didn’t pounce upon me like the others. We went to dinners for a month before he began to kiss me, undress me. His patience made me want him. He was mindful of me, meticulous.
“The song,” I say, “it’s so unlike the Jade Bar.”
“Do you remember what I said to you that night when the song was playing?”
“Yes, I do,” I say. “You said you would be the last guy, not the first. You announced you’d be around for the ‘duration.’ And I thought, Duration? Hmmm.”
A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel Page 17
