The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  “But, Lenny,” she said, “I just can’t do that. I just can’t. Don’t you understand? Herb is a horse’s ass! He’ll destroy Mode. I can’t let him do that. I can’t let that horse’s ass undo everything I’ve done. It’s seventeen years, Lenny. Look—” She pointed to the bound volumes in the shelves. “Seventeen years—more than two hundred issues, each one bigger and better than the last. That’s me in those pages, Lenny. That’s me. If I let him destroy Mode, he’ll be destroying me.”

  “Well, then,” he said quietly, “the only other thing you can do is not resign. You’ll just have to realize that we both now have a new boss, that Ho Rothman is finally sailing off into his final sunset, and that Herbert Rothman is now at the helm of this little ship. And if you stay on, you’ll just have to play by the new rules, swallow your famous pride, and hope for the best. Who knows? Little Miss Louise Brooks Hair may fall flat on her face.”

  “No,” she said, pounding her fist against the mantelpiece. “I’ve always run this magazine by my rules. I’m not going to run it by his rules. I’m going to call my lawyer in the morning. I’m going to sue. The little midget bastard can’t do this to me. I made Mode what it is. Mode is mine. Mode would be nothing without me, and he knows it, and everybody else knows it. Did you hear what the little midget bastard said about me tonight? ‘Responsibilities too enormous for one mere woman to handle … the terrible toll those years have taken on her.’ He called me a used-up has-been. I’m not going to take that, Lenny. And of course it was typical—typical of Herb—typical of the little snake—to wait until his father’s practically on his deathbed before even daring to make any sort of move. Waiting till his father’s too weak to stop him. And then, after making his little announcement, what became of him? He simply disappeared—too cowardly to face what he knew I’d have to say to him. Well, he’ll find out soon enough when he hears from my lawyer!”

  Lenny shook his head wearily, but said nothing.

  “And who is she, anyway? I’ve never heard of her, and neither has anyone else. And this ‘leading British fashion magazine’ she supposedly worked for. Something called Lady Fair. Ever hear of it? I never have, and every fashion magazine that’s published in the world comes into my office. I have a detective friend, and I’m going to call him in the morning and have him run a background check on her. She’s obviously some little slut he’s sleeping with, and this is her payoff.”

  “If that’s the case, take comfort,” he said. “None of Herb’s girlfriends ever lasts very long. There’ll be a new one in another week or so.”

  “Actually, she seemed rather sweet,” she said. “She seemed genuinely shocked by the way Herb handled things tonight. But I know what he was saying. I could read the subtext, couldn’t you? He was saying that she’s next in line for my job. She’s going to be my replacement—that’s what he was saying. Well, I’m not about to be replaced.”

  “Your name would still be at the top of the masthead,” he said.

  “But I’m not going to share it with her—whoever she is. I’m not going to let him do this to me! I’m not going to let him destroy my magazine. Herb Rothman is a fool. Anyone who heard that speech tonight knew he was listening to a fool. Even his own father knew he was a fool. Ho fought Herb every step of the way. Well, I’m a fighter, too. I’ll fight him now.”

  “But, unfortunately, Herb seems to hold all the trump cards now.”

  Tears were standing in her eyes again. “Little midget bastard! Oh, I know—he’s been waiting for years to do this to me. He’s always hated me.”

  “Why has he always hated you, Alex? I know it’s true—but why?”

  “Oh, you know why. I was never good enough for Steven. He and Pegeen never thought I was good enough for their son.”

  “I’ve always thought,” Lenny said carefully, “that there must be more to it than that.”

  “And jealousy. Because Ho listened to me, and not to him. Because Herb wanted Mona Potter to have the job, and Ho gave it to me.”

  “Herb was sleeping with Mona at the time, you know.”

  “Which makes her eminently qualified to run a magazine! Ho saw through all of that.”

  “I still think there must be more to it than that,” Lenny said, “to have caused all these years of bitterness, when, if you recall, I advised you—” He broke off. “Are you sure there isn’t another reason, Alex?”

  She shook her head. There was silence in the room now, and finally Lenny said, “Think, Alex. Think hard.”

  “No,” she said. “There was nothing else. It’s just Herb’s vindictiveness.”

  He still looked doubtful. “Then what about Tarrytown?” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “What about what happened there September twentieth, nineteen seventy-three? Is there something that could provide you with a bit of leverage in that?”

  She stared at him. “Why?” she said. “Everybody knows what happened. It was in all the newspapers at the time.”

  “I’m talking about what really happened. The part that wasn’t in the papers.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said sharply.

  “I think you do. But I gather you don’t want to talk about that. I gather also that you’re not interested in possible ways to apply leverage.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Even though leverage may provide the easiest solution to this little problem. Ah, well.”

  “I’ve told you what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to show him that he can’t do this to me.”

  Lenny said nothing, but stared down at his feet in their crocodile Gucci loafers, and at the square of dark green carpet between them. What was Lenny thinking? Alex knew what he was thinking. He was thinking: He can’t do this to you. But, in fact, he already has.

  Now Lenny was gone, and Alex was alone in the library with her angry thoughts. Tarrytown, she thought. That was typically Lenny. Lenny was always dropping little hints that he knew more about what had happened that afternoon in Tarrytown than any of the others knew, but how could he possibly? The only people who knew the truth were the ones who were there, and one of these was dead, and the other two had never spoken of it to any other living soul. It was their shared secret, and of what possible use could that secret be to anyone else? If, say, Alex were to go to Aunt Lily and say, “I’ve decided to tell the truth about what happened that afternoon in Tarrytown,” what would that accomplish? Alex would simply lose Aunt Lily as her friend, and that would certainly do nothing to help the present situation. Alex unclasped her silver Navajo belt and tossed it in a chair, and ran her fingers through her hair. She glanced briefly at the portrait in the oval frame. You are not me, she thought.

  You are me, and she moved to the bookshelves that held the bound morocco volumes, and ran the tip of her index finger along the spines, the embossed lettering in gold—Mode: 1973, Mode: 1974—feeling the volumes grow fatter as her finger moved; and now he was trying to take that me away from me. On the bottom shelf were the card catalogues—the table of contents of every issue, indexed and cross-indexed according to date, subject, writer, photographer, production cost, subscription and newsstand sales, revenues, reader response, and other facts and figures about each issue, and each story, so arcane that only an editor would find them meaningful—cryptic notations such as “10/84 prod. 1,680,000; n/s. ret 32,164; sub. refs. 106, ltrs pro 240, ltrs neg, 987.” Which could be translated to mean that for the October 1984 issue, there was a production run of 1,680,000 copies; newsstands had returned 32,164 copies unsold; 106 subscribers, for whatever reasons, asked for refunds after that issue; 240 readers wrote favorable letters about that issue, while 987 wrote negatively. In the beginning, it had worried her that the negative letters always outnumbered the positive. Then she realized that readers usually took pen in hand only when they were angry. When they were happy, they said nothing.

  “When did you publish that Robert Graves profile of Ava Gardner?” someone
might ask her, and a quick glance at the card file would tell her everything: the date, the page numbers, how much Graves had been paid for the story, how many photographs had been used, the photographer’s name, how much he had been paid, the word length, the column inches, the reader response, and on and on. Of course, at her office, computers could supply the same data, but Alex had started her card-file system before the magazine had been able to afford computers, and she still liked her system best. Using her card catalogue, she could reconstruct an issue of a magazine more quickly than if she were running it off on a spool of microfiche.

  Of course what neither her card catalogue nor the computers could contain were the feelings and the memories—the disputes, the disappointments, the fits of artistic temperament, the photographers who walked off the sets, the art directors who threatened to quit, the wheedlings, the cajolings, the bargaining, the pleas, the tears, the raging storms, the stamped feet, the curses, the prayers, the threats and teapot tempests—and, oh yes, the laughter and the joy—that went into assembling each issue of the magazine, piece by piece, word by word. All these were locked in Alex’s head and heart. Because editing a magazine was like a love affair—passionate, forgiving, hurting, healing, angry and orgiastic, all-consuming and all-rewarding. Her magazine, she often thought, had become the last great love of her life. This was no exaggeration. The love was not as overpowering and terrifying as that first love, perhaps. But wasn’t the last love supposed to be the most stable and enduring? And, like any love, it grew more precious when someone threatened to take it away.

  She thought: Every impulse I ever had, every feeling I ever felt, has somehow spilled over into these volumes. I am all here. I am not a high priestess, I am not a legend, I am simply a woman who worked hard for something I loved. I am just a woman who wanted to make her ailing lover healthy, and I did, and this is it, and this is me. This is what I created. This is what created me.

  “Make your peace with your father-in-law,” Lenny had told her years ago. “Make this first on your list of priorities. You have Ho and Lily on your side already. That’s all very well and good. But now you must engineer some sort of peace with Herbert. It won’t be easy. But you must do it, Alex.”

  But how could any woman make peace with a man like that?

  “An heir. A male heir. That’s the only other thing the family wants from you,” Herbert had said to her that day in Tarrytown.

  It sounded so pompous, so Old World, so old-fashioned—the whole idea of a dynasty—that she had laughed at him.

  “I’m quite serious,” he said, and seized her wrist. “If you are having trouble doing this with Steven, I could help you.”

  “How? How could you help me? Please let go of my arm. You’re hurting me.”

  But he had not let go. “How?” he said. “Don’t you know where babies come from? Let me show you how.”

  How—how—could a woman make peace with a man like that?

  And would anything have been any different if she had let him do what he wanted? Ah, that, of course, was the sixty-four-million-dollar question.

  From the entrance hall, she heard the lock turn as Mel let himself in with his own key.

  He walked into the library and went immediately to her and took her in his arms. “Oh, my darling,” he said. “What a helluva night you’ve had!”

  “You heard?”

  “Heard. Watched. Saw everything on the monitor.”

  “Herb’s speech? They aired that too?”

  “Everything. And then the boating accident. It was their full ‘This Is New York’ segment. Well, if that’s New York, let’s get out of this cesspool. I mean it, Alex. Marry me, and let’s get the hell out of this Rothman shit. I’m not going to let you put up with any more of it.”

  “I realized tonight that Herb has been waiting a long time to do this to me.”

  “Well, he chose a helluva time to do it, didn’t he? As usual, his timing was perfect.” He released her and went to the drinks cart, dropped ice cubes in a glass, and poured himself a stiff Scotch, filling the glass to the top. “I mean, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said, still with his back to her. “I couldn’t believe what those ungrateful bastards were doing to you. I mean, thank God the station didn’t send me to cover your party. I think I’d have thrown the camera in the little son-of-a-bitch’s face, rammed the microphone down his throat.” He turned to her now, and his face was livid. “Goddammit, Alex, aren’t you mad? Aren’t you furious? Aren’t you ready to kill those Rothman bastards?”

  “Oh, I’m mad all right. But I’m also—kind of numb.”

  “Little son-of-a-bitch comes to your party, the party that was supposed to celebrate what you’d done for him and his magazine, and right in your house he stands up in front of your guests, including people who work for you and with you, plus half the Goddamn media in this town, and tells everybody that you can’t do your job anymore—that it’s gotten too big for you, and that he’s taken on some Brit bimbo to give you a hand. I mean, that’s the way the Rothmans show their gratitude for everything you’ve done for them—a kick in the face! And in public! On television! Oh, I know why the ungrateful bastards did it the way they did—because they’re too fucking cowardly to tell you to your face. They need a crowd of extras around to protect them. May I tell you something about your in-laws, Alex—something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long, long time? They’re all loathsome. Marry me, and I’ll give you some in-laws who are at least decent people, for God’s sake! They’re all loathsome—every last Jack-shit one of them, and that includes that old fake Ho, and sweet old Aunt Lily who has a cash register for a heart, and that bastard Herb and his Jack-shit brother Arthur—all of them. Do you realize how much the Rothmans are hated in this town, Alex? I mean really hated? It’s a lucky thing Arthur Rothman doesn’t run a TV station in New York—that the closest Rothman station is as far away as Memphis—or he’d have been strung up by his testicles long before now. How you’ve put up with that family for as long as you have is a mystery to me, Alex. They’ve never given you sweet fuckoff, and you know it—and now this! The insult! The humiliation! Well, the only thing you can do now is resign, Alex. He’s finally done you a favor—given you a golden opportunity to do what you should’ve done a long time ago, and get yourself out of this chickenshit Rothman operation, and into something where your talents are finally appreciated—out of the Rothman snake pit. Out of this hellhole world of drunks and faggots and shit-kickers and ass-kissers. Did you hear how the NBC announcer introduced their segment on your party? ‘Welcome to the fashionable world of Alexandra Rothman, where, tonight, the cream of New York’s fashion elite has gathered.’ Fashion elite? Drunks! Faggots! Shit-kickers! Ass-kissers! That’s all they are,” he said, and paused to catch his breath. “There. I’ve said it. Of course, in some ways it was kind of great—watching that lowdown, loathsome little fart showing off his loathsomeness in front of eight million television households in the Tristate Area! That was the greatest part—watching him stand there, showing eight million viewers what a loathsome lowlife he really is. There. Okay, I’ve let off my head of steam.”

  He smiled now and raised his glass. “Cheers,” he said. “Welcome to your new freedom. You are now emancipated from the Rothmans—the whole damn pack of them. Marry me. We’ll fly off somewhere and celebrate. We’ll lie in the sun and turn brown as berries, and make love in the sand.”

  She sat very still, arms crossed over her bosom, her hands hugging her shoulders. “I have a contract,” she whispered.

  “A contract? Are you out of your mind, sweetheart? Are you going to honor a contract with some little prick who tells you—in the most insulting, public way possible—that you can’t do your job anymore? Who is this British bimbo, anyway?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Some money-grubbing Brit bimbo who’s been kissing Herb Rothman’s ass, and probably sucking his dick as well. No, you’re well out of it, darling. Well out of it. If you as
k me, this is the luckiest day of your life.”

  She shivered. “Somehow, I can’t think of it that way—yet,” she said.

  “And I only say that because I love you,” he said. “Hell, if I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t give a damn. But after all, you’re Alexandra Rothman. You’re the greatest fashion editor in the country, and everybody knows it. You took a lousy little fashion sheet that was practically brain dead in the seventies, and made a success of it, turned it completely around, made a winner out of a loser. Has anyone else in publishing ever done that?”

  “Yes. Helen Gurley Brown.”

  “But you’re bigger than she is! Five million circulation! You’re number one! So—you did it, darling. You proved it to the world. Now it’s time to move on to something else. Fuck the Rothmans!”

  “I could always work with Ho.”

  “Yeah, and where was Ho tonight? Ho had to be behind this. Ho Rothman never lets that little shit son of his go out the door alone without knowing what his instructions are. Ho was behind this. He just let Herbie do his dirty work for him. Typical Rothman.”

  “No, you don’t understand, Mel. Ho is really much sicker than we thought. He’s had another stroke. He can’t see anybody anymore.”

  “He’s probably faking it, if I know the old bastard.”

  “Darling, remember that Ho is ninety-four years old.”

  “So now he’s brain dead, too.”

  “Apparently. It’s hard to believe, but Lenny says it’s true.”

  “And so it’s new-broom time at Rothmans. Some new broom they’ve got, I must say—worse than the old worn-out one. But what the hell difference does it make? It’s still the same old ball game, but with meaner rules, and a crookeder umpire. Anyway, it’s time for you to shake hands with the whole Rothman mishpachah, and get out of the ring. Matter of fact, it might be kind of fun for you to watch—from the sidelines—and see what happens next.” He was grinning now. “Think of that, darling! It really could be fun.