The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  There was another thing she had learned about Ho Rothman over the years. His Russian accent came and went. At first, she had thought that his English became fractured—full of Yiddishisms and dropped articles—only when he was angry or excited. Then she saw that he was able to turn the fractured English on and off at will. He used it to befuddle an adversary, to confuse an opponent in an argument or in a deal, to put his opponent at a linguistic disadvantage, and to lure the unsuspecting adversary into supposing that he was dealing with an innocent, a naïf, or a scatterbrain—until Ho Rothman was ready to pounce.

  Dealing with his elder son, Herbert Joseph Rothman, was an entirely different matter. The trouble with Herb, Alex decided long ago, was that Herb had hated too many things for too long. He hated being his father’s son, hated having to grow up, and live so long, in his tiny father’s powerful shadow. His father was always called Ho, but Herb hated the nickname “Ho-Jo” he had been given at college, and flew into a rage whenever a reporter used that name in print.

  He hated his height—like his father, he was short in stature, for height had not entered the Rothman family until the third generation, with Steven, and Herb hated watching his son grow seven inches taller than himself. He tried to compensate for the shortness by working on his physique, and there was a fully equipped gym in his apartment at River House. He was proud, at sixty-seven, of his hard, flat belly, and his well-muscled arms, shoulders, and pectorals. His body, he hoped, made him physically attractive to women, but secretly he seemed to know it didn’t, and Herb was no Don Juan.

  Having gone to Yale, Herb was embarrassed by his parents. He hated his father’s fractured, heavily Russian-accented English, and he visibly winced every time either of his parents used a Yiddish word. He hated being Jewish, and once—Steven had told her this—had wanted to change his name, either by dropping the “th” to make it “Roman,” or else changing it to Ross. This proposal had provoked one of his father’s most furious tirades. “Change it! Change it!” Ho Rothman had bellowed. “Why don’t you change it to Shmuck!”

  At Yale, he was very athletic. He coxed on the crew, was on the golf team, and even played polo—six goals, it was said, before he gave up the sport—but he was not tapped for Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, or any of the other senior societies which he considered his due, and for this slight he blamed anti-Semitism, though there were other obvious reasons. Because of this, he hated Yale and, though he was one of the university’s richest alumni, and despite numerous entreaties and inducements, he had never given a penny to his alma mater. He had purposely sent his son to Princeton as the most effective way he could conceive of getting back at Yale.

  He was a man totally consumed by hate. He even hated being rich because of the time and trouble it took to turn down endless requests for philanthropy. For the last dozen or so years, for reasons Alex refused to become involved with, Herb also seemed to hate his wife, and he and Pegeen kept separate bedrooms at opposite ends of River House, with separate elevator entrances so that neither would have to encounter the other when they came and went.

  He hated his younger brother, Arthur. He hated black people. He probably hated women. And of course he hated Alex. She knew why.

  “Let me make a baby for you,” he had said. “My sperm count is exceptionally high. My baby would have the Rothman genes, which is all the family really wants. And after all, Steven is impotent.”

  Somehow, if he had tried to seduce her the idea would have seemed more palatable. Even rape would have seemed a lesser violation. Instead, he had offered her a deposit from the Rothman sperm bank. He had offered to empty his seminal vesicle into her. Her refusal—with a roar of angry laughter—was certainly the real reason why he hated her, but she saw no reason to tell Lenny any of that. Hell had no fury like Herb Rothman scorned, she thought.

  “Make your peace with him,” Lenny had told her. “Someday that will be very important, Alex.”

  Now, apparently, that day had come.

  But she would like to ask Lenny this: How—how in the world—how could any woman, any woman in the world—make her peace with a man like that? Was there anything at all you could do with a man like that?

  A magazine. What was it, after all? she asked herself as she lay, unable to sleep, in her dark bedroom, listening to the distant river sounds. Of course Mel was right, it was only words and pictures printed on glossy paper. She was under no illusions about what her creation was. Mode was not the Sistine ceiling. It was not immortal, it was not even art. Readers might save back issues for a while, but eventually they were thrown out, out with the garbage, out with the dusty and mildewed contents of attics, cellars, and garages. A magazine was nothing but a piece of show business. Like a Broadway musical, it had its run, then closed, and was replaced by something else. After a while, you even forgot the words to the songs.

  But words were living things created by living people, and so were pictures, and the words and pictures had to be gathered and assembled and arranged with faith and love. That’s it! Bingo! And she was back to love again. A magazine must enter into a long-distance love affair—millions of love affairs—with its readers. Like a clever lover, it must flirt. It must seduce. It must conspire and share little special secrets. It must whisper, stroke, inspire, thrill, and amuse, at exactly the right times and places. Like the perfect lover, it must feel needed. Like the perfect lover or perfect love affair, it should never seem boring, or settle into a routine, or be predictable, or take itself for granted. Like the perfect lover, it should never be cold, or unresponsive, or forgetful, or unfaithful. The perfect lover should always be surprising. The perfect lover should never grow old or fretful or cranky and complaining. On the other hand, the perfect lover should never be complacent. The perfect lover is strong, with a point of view, and a willingness to argue that point of view, defend it—even fight for it—for love is no lotus land, no Capri, but a stern landscape of precipices and perilous mountain steeps. Love was work, perhaps the hardest work of all, but between the lover and her beloved there always had to be, at the very bottom of everything, a profound and enduring respect and trust.

  Of course there were no perfect lovers, and no perfect love affairs, and there were no perfect magazines—never would be, Alex Rothman would be the first to admit—but one had to keep pushing, striving, climbing, working toward that impossible goal.

  And how many people truly loved the work they did? Damned few, Alex would reckon. That would make a good subject for a survey, a good question for a Harris Poll: How many people truly loved their work? Sometimes it seemed as though there were no more than one or two.

  And what was the editor’s role in sponsoring, abetting, and keeping alive all those long-distance love affairs? She was a kind of marriage broker between the people who contributed the words and pictures, and the readers who turned the pages of glossy paper. “I’m a kind of procurer,” she once said, “or, as the French say, une maquerelle. But I’ve tried to be an honest one.”

  At a seminar for college students interested in careers in journalism, Lenny Liebling once said, “Putting out a magazine like Mode is like having a new baby every month.”

  Alex had disagreed with him. “Having a baby is easy,” she said. “Putting out a magazine like ours is more like reinventing the wheel every month.”

  But even that hardly said it all. In the end, there was no definition for love.

  8

  The telephone beside her bed was ringing and, from the little flashing red light on the panel, she saw that someone was calling her on her private line. Though Mel groaned unhappily from his side of the bed, she picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?”

  Lily Rothman was one of those New York women who, when placing a telephone call, never troubled to identify themselves to the person being called, but just immediately began talking, and who, when they had finished saying what they had to say, simply replaced the receiver without troubling to say goodbye. “Alex,” she was saying, “I watched i
t all on television. I know how you must be feeling, and I know what you must be thinking. But don’t resign.”

  “He hasn’t given me much choice,” she said.

  “But don’t. Don’t do it. That’s what he wants you to do, don’t you see? Don’t play into his hand. Make him fire you.”

  “I don’t particularly like the idea of being fired, Aunt Lily!”

  “I mean make him think he’s going to have to fire you. Because he can’t fire you—not now, anyway.”

  “Why can’t he?”

  “Profit sharing. Don’t you remember profit sharing? Do you realize how much you have in your profit-sharing plan? Nearly three million dollars! If he fires you, he’ll have to give you all of that—in cash—right now. But he can’t afford to do that. Not now. Everything is tied up in the IRS case, and as treasurer of the company, I can’t release funds like that. The lawyers won’t let me. But if you resign, he doesn’t have to pay you a penny. That’s why he’s hoping you’ll resign. So don’t do that.”

  “But Lily, I—”

  “Listen to me. You mustn’t. You’re too valuable to us. You’re too valuable to me. You’re too valuable to Ho.”

  “How is Ho, Lily?”

  “Oh, dear. Don’t ask. Ho is just—a vegetable now, Alex. The doctors say he has the heart of a teenage boy, and the constitution of an ox. But it’s his mind that’s gone. I’m not even sure he recognizes me anymore, Alex.”

  “I’d like to come to see him.”

  “No, don’t. Visitors just make his blood pressure go up. The doctors say it’s because of frustration—frustration and anger because he can’t speak anymore, because he can’t recognize people anymore. You wouldn’t want to see him the way he is now, Alex. Just remember him the way he was, when he was strong and alert and on top of everything. Remember him when he was the Ho we both loved, not the way he is now, old and angry and frustrated, and just a vegetable. It’s the IRS business that did this to him, you know. It was the last straw. The man who advised presidents! And now having the government turn on him like this! It’s shocking, that’s what it is. If Ho dies because of this, I’m thinking of suing the IRS for manslaughter. Don’t laugh. They’re looking into it, the lawyers.”

  “I’m very sorry, Aunt Lily.”

  “So don’t resign. Promise me you won’t resign. Make Herbie sweat it out for a while, because he knows he can’t fire you, and meanwhile I’ll think of something.”

  “I’ve pretty much made up my mind—”

  “Don’t. Don’t make a single move. Do nothing. Promise me. Remember, you owe me a lot, Alex. And I owe you a lot, too. We both owe each other a lot. We’re in this together, which is why we’ve got to make this work, bubeleh.”

  “Would you be in a position to fire Herbert, Lily?”

  There was a brief silence, and then she said, “Not right now, I can’t. Right now, we need Herbie, too. It’s this IRS business, again, and it’s all too complicated to explain to you now. Just take my word—we need him. But we also need you. So promise me you won’t resign, and meanwhile I’ll think of something. Just don’t resign. Remember, you owe me.” And the line went dead, and Alex realized that Aunt Lily had terminated the conversation.

  In the apartment at the Gainsborough, Lenny Liebling lay in his tanning bed listening to a Mozart tape through his stereo headset. It was a nightly ritual, twenty minutes in the tanning bed just before bedtime, a time when Dear Old Lenny ministered to the special needs of Dear Old Lenny. The physical, and spiritual, needs.

  Dear Old Lenny. Everybody had always called him that, even when they didn’t mean it. Dear Old Lenny Liebling was not universally loved, nor did he for one minute expect to be.

  How old was dear old Lenny? “He must be seventy-five, at least,” they said. But naturally Lenny would never divulge that statistic. He was certainly older than Herbert Joseph Rothman, because Lenny sometimes dropped hints about Herbert’s teenage escapades. Still, with his carefully dyed and marcelled champagne-colored hair—all his own—styled weekly by Jerry at Bergdorf’s, and after at least two face-lifts, and in his corset, Lenny managed to look considerably (twenty years?) younger than Herb. And how many titles and positions had Lenny Liebling held at Rothman Publications over the years? Lenny himself had trouble keeping track of them all. Right now, his title was special projects editor for Mode, a job that could be described as loosely and imprecisely as one wished. What where the duties of a special projects editor? That depended. At Rothman, they said, there always had to be some sort of a job found for Lenny Liebling. Always. They said he must know where some significant corporate bodies were buried—how else would one explain it?

  Over the years, Lenny had worked, in some capacity or other, for nearly every one of the Rothman publications, the newspapers as well as the magazines. His titles had included features editor, managing editor, art editor, fashion editor, beauty editor, antiques editor, design editor, deputy editor, food & wine editor, roving editor, assistant editor, associate editor, society editor, contributing editor, and editor-at-large. For a while, he was even executive editor of Wanderlust, the Rothman travel magazine, and, for an even briefer period, he was given the editor-in-chief-ship of Mirror, Mirror, that ill-fated celebrity magazine that was the Rothmans’ attempt to challenge People and Us at the newsstands. In each of his capacities, furthermore, Lenny always commanded a corner office (not the largest corner office, to be sure, but always a corner), with his choice of drapes, furnishings, and carpet, and a secretary. The secretaries came and went, complaining that all they were asked to do was run personal errands for Lenny—to and from his tailor and his dry cleaner, fetching his regular luncheon hamburger from “21” (returning it if it was overdone), ordering his theater tickets, setting up the table in his office for the thrice-weekly visits from his masseur, making appointments with his hairstylist, misting and watering his plants. So many secretaries had come and gone that he no longer bothered to learn their names, and called them all “secretary.”

  From all the positions Lenny had held with the Rothmans, one might credit him with a certain versatility. Durability would be the better word. A mysterious survivability.

  Still, Lenny had not done badly for a little boy from Onward, Mississippi (pop. 512 and growing smaller by the day), who came to New York almost sixty years ago, knowing no one, without so much as a high-school diploma, with no more than fifteen dollars in his pocket and a hole in his shoe, where he suddenly became the darling of the Rothmans, and where—overnight, it seemed—he was transformed into the elegant, poised, sophisticated, witty, worldly, and polished Lenny Liebling whose name popped up regularly in Liz Smith’s, Cindy Adams’s, and Mona Potter’s columns. None of these ladies knew a thing about Lenny Liebling’s past, and by now it no longer mattered.

  Wasn’t it odd, people often said, that both Lenny Liebling and his boss, Alexandra Rothman, came from tiny midwestern and southern towns that almost no one had ever heard of. But it was a fact that many of New York’s most successful people came originally from obscure places. Was there something about small towns that spurred the clever and ambitious to set their sights on the big city, where one had to be willing to be lucky? The very smallness of the towns, and the openness of the open country, seemed to force the clever and ambitious into the claustrophobia of crowded sidewalks and jostling skyscrapers, where they seemed to thrive. Or at least the lucky ones did.

  Of course everyone knew how Alex Rothman had done it. She had married a Rothman. She had started out as a small-time model, had won some sort of contest, and had wound up on the cover of Mode, where her beauty had caught young Steven Rothman’s eye. But then she had done even more than that. She had not just settled, as so many young women of that sort do, for being a rich man’s wife, a part of his domestic decor. She had gone on to take over the editorship of her husband’s magazine, which meant that she had been lucky, and clever, and ambitious. No wonder certain women hated her.

  But how had Lenny Liebling d
one it? No one knew, and so naturally along the gossipy grapevine of the Rothman organization the rumors flew.

  He was Ho Rothman’s illegitimate son.

  He was Aunt Lily Rothman’s illegitimate son.

  He was Herb Rothman’s secret homosexual lover.

  He was Alexandra Rothman’s secret heterosexual lover.

  He was Joel Rothman’s father. Joel was blond, wasn’t he? Steven had been dark.

  And so on. Lenny was aware of all these rumors, did nothing to discourage or disprove them—rather enjoyed them, in fact. When people tried to excavate the truth, he was deliberately vague. A reporter once asked him how he spent his days at Rothman Publications.

  “Climbing,” he replied with a wave of his hand.

  “Climbing?”

  “Just climbing. Aren’t we all climbers, actually? Don’t you want to be better off tomorrow than you are today?”

  That was as far as he would go. Lenny Liebling didn’t mind being in the gossip columns. But when reporters tried to do “in-depth” stories, he was very clever at sending them down blind alleys, and leaving them with nothing but loose ends.

  And so, all that anyone knew for sure was that Lenny Liebling was the darling of the Rothmans, but even this was not quite true. He was not the darling of all the Rothmans. Herb Rothman, for one, barely tolerated him. On the other hand, both Ho and Lily Rothman appeared to find Lenny useful, and Alexandra Rothman clearly liked him. A better word than darling would be force. Lenny Liebling had become a force within the Rothman family, a power, a controlling influence in their lives—inescapable and indispensable—a force and a fixture in the Rothman family firmament.

  But it was not really true that Lenny knew where certain corporate bodies were buried, though there were one or two human resting places whose whereabouts he knew.

  What, then, was Lenny’s special usefulness? For one thing, he was an invaluable—and usually reliable—source of inside company information. His ear was always to the ground and, as he said, he had his spies. Who were Lenny’s spies? No one knew, exactly, but there were certain obvious suspects. The mail-room boys were one. Nearly every new male employee at Rothman Publications started in the mail room, and the mail-room boys were as eager to get ahead as anyone else. To keep track of who was who, and who was telling what to whom, the mail-room boys read all the mail and memoranda—even, and especially, those items marked “PERSONAL” and “CONFIDENTIAL”—before placing them in In boxes. (Lenny himself had started at Rothman as a mail-room boy, so he knew how it worked.) The mail-room boys knew all about those foreign magazines that arrived, in plain brown wrappers, addressed to Herbert J. Rothman and even spent time giggling over the pictures before slipping the publications back into their envelopes.