The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  “I don’t care about any of that. I need to see you. When can I see you?”

  “Are you in some other kind of trouble, Skipper?”

  “No! Not at all. I have a great new life, a whole new career. Just tell me when I can see you.”

  “That’s going to be difficult,” she said. “Because I have a whole new life, too.”

  “I know. I know all about that. But I do need to see you. There are things I need to tell you. Things we need to talk about. It won’t take long.”

  “It’s been over ten years, Skipper.”

  “I know, I know, and you’ll probably hardly recognize me now. But I do need to see you, Alex. Please. For old times’ sake. For all the things we used to be to each other. For the afternoons on the bluff, where the two rivers meet. Please.”

  She felt her head spinning. “It would have to be on a weekday, when the rest of the family is in the city—you understand,” she said.

  “Of course. Just tell me when.”

  “Thursday,” she said. “The servants here take Thursday afternoons off. Thursday at three. I’ll meet you in the boathouse.”

  “Fine. Just tell me how to get there.”

  “When you come through the gates, don’t take the drive to the right that leads up to the main house. Take the drive to the left, down the hill, past the pool and the tennis court. The drive ends in a circle, and you can park there. There’s an underground walkway, under the railroad tracks, that leads to the boathouse.”

  He laughed. “Sounds like you live on a real estate,” he said.

  “Well, I do,” she said. “It’s called ‘Rothmere.’ You can’t miss it. As you come up the Old Albany Post Road, just before the village of Tarrytown, there are big wrought-iron gates on your left—gates with big double-R’s on them. I’ll see that the gates are left open.…”

  And now, nearly twenty years after all of that, whatever it all meant, she was sitting in the green library at 10 Gracie Square with Rodney McCulloch.

  “Nineteen seventy-three,” she said. He had just asked her the date of the Bouché portrait.

  “Well, you haven’t changed one bit,” he said. “You’re just as pretty as ever. Ha-ha-ha.”

  “I think I’m a little smarter now,” she said.

  He sat forward in his chair. “Now you know me,” he said. “I don’t like to beat around the bush. I’ve been thinking, Alex, and here’s what I think. I think you should put up some of your own money into this project of ours.”

  She smiled. “You’re changing the terms of your offer, Rodney,” she said. “The last time we met, you offered to finance it with—‘all the money in the world,’ I think you said.”

  He scowled. “Figure of speech,” he said. “But I was just thinking that you might feel better about this project of ours if you had a few million of your own in it. Psychologically speaking, I mean. It would give you the feeling that you were partways working for yourself, and not just for me. Besides, the market’s down, and—”

  “Do you mean the great Rodney McCulloch is feeling the great economic crunch of the nineties?”

  “Not really, but—ha-ha-ha.”

  “A few million of my own? But I don’t have that kind of money, Rodney—nothing of the sort that would be more than a drop in the bucket for what it would cost to start up a new magazine.”

  “Whadda ya mean? The Rothman millions?”

  “I don’t have the Rothman millions, Rodney. As far as anybody can figure out, the Rothman millions are pretty much all in the hands of Ho Rothman.”

  “But he’s about to check out! He’s a goner.”

  “That may be, but he isn’t gone yet, and nobody’s seen his will. There was supposed to be a trust fund set up for Joel and me, but nobody can seem to find it. That trust may all be in Ho Rothman’s head.”

  “The head of a vegetable!”

  “And since I last talked to you, I’ve learned that I don’t even own this apartment. The company owns it. I could be kicked out at any time, I suppose.” She spread her hands. “So, if you’re thinking of me as an investor, you’ve come to the wrong woman.”

  He looked crestfallen.

  “But look, Rodney,” she said. “I’ve been thinking, too, about your offer. And—this is hard for me to say, because I like you, Rodney, and I also like your wife. And I hope she finds what she—what you both want for her, in terms of New York society. I was glad to help her in whatever small way I could, and I’ll be happy to help any other way I can. But I just don’t think I could ever work with you or for you, Rodney. Our personal styles and personalities don’t mesh.”

  He jumped to his feet. “What?” he roared. “You’re saying that you can work with a son-of-a-bitch like Herb Rothman, and you can’t work for me?”

  “I work for Mode,” she said simply.

  “Well, you’re soon gonna be out of a job,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? Everybody on the street knows that. All the cards are stacked against you.”

  “Well, if I lose this one, Rodney, at least nobody can say that Alex Rothman went down without a fight,” she said.

  “Dammit, I am not fucking gay, Fiona,” Joel was saying to her. “Please let me see you, and prove it to you.”

  “I think you’re gay, but trying to deny it.”

  “But dammit, I’m in love with you, Fiona. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you. How could I be in love with you if I were gay?”

  “It’s called compensation,” she said.

  “But, dammit, wasn’t everything fine between us before you started shoving stuff up my nose? Wasn’t everything fine before then?”

  “Well, I guess so. It was all right, I suppose.”

  “I just don’t get turned on by drugs, Fiona.”

  “Why not? Everybody else does.”

  “Maybe I’m not like everybody else, Fiona.”

  “Obviously not,” she said.

  “Please let me come up,” he said. He was calling from the lobby of the Westbury.

  “Not tonight,” she said. “I’m busy tonight. Maybe some other time.”

  “And what you said about my father. That really hurt, Fiona. Saying he was gay, just because—”

  “Everybody says he was gay, but trying to deny it. You know how he died, don’t you?”

  “He killed himself. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “But don’t you know how he killed himself?”

  “Yes! He hung himself in the boathouse at ‘Rothmere’—in nineteen seventy-three! But, Christ, I was only sixteen months old, Fiona. I don’t even remember—”

  “But don’t you know how he hung himself? The scandal?”

  “What scandal?”

  “Well, if you don’t know about it, I’m certainly not going to be the first to tell you. It was in all the papers. Not the Rothman papers, of course—they tried to cover it up. But it was in all the other papers. You could look it up in the library—you’re supposed to be such the little scholar. Look-it up. I even remember hearing about it when I was a little girl in England. Look it up—and tell me he wasn’t gay!”

  “Fiona,” he said miserably, “tell me what’s wrong. We started out so—wonderfully. But now you seem so angry at me. What’s wrong?”

  “Well!” she said sharply. “It’s funny you should ask! You ask me what’s wrong. I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I let you seduce me, which was perhaps my first mistake. Then I let you come back—and come back again. I’ve let you treat me like your personal toy—your personal sex kitten. Now you think I’m at Joel Rothman’s beck and call. All I am to you is a convenient lay, an easy fuck. You’re like every other spoiled rich boy I’ve ever known—take, take, take, and give nothing back. And meanwhile, what have you done for me? Nothing! Nothing! And here I am—desperate! Desperate! In a desperate situation here, in the middle of a horrible situation, with your mother coming after me with lawyers—with detectives! Have you been any help to me at all? No! I may have to go back to England, you know! I
may be forced to go back—by your mother! Back to my father’s wrath, back to the hell I knew there. But do you care? No! Have you offered to help me? No! All you want is an easy fuck! And you have the nerve—the bloody nerve—to ask me why I’m angry with you! Because you’re a bloody selfish brat who thinks he can fuck me whenever he feels like it, and give me nothing in return. Well, I’m just not that kind of girl!”

  “Fiona,” he said, “I love you. I’ll do anything I can to help you—anything. Anything in the world, Fiona.”

  There was a brief pause on the line. “D’you mean that?” she said, almost sweetly. “Even after I’ve just given you ruddy hell?”

  “Of course I mean it. I promise you.”

  There was another brief silence. Then she said, “Lenny Liebling. Is he your mother’s friend?”

  “Uncle Lenny? One of her oldest. He’s been almost like a father to me. When I was a kid, he used to tuck me into bed at night.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Then maybe there is something you could do for me.”

  “Just tell me what it is, Fiona, and I’ll do it.”

  “You are sweet,” she said. “I’d forgotten how sweet you are. Will you forgive me for blowing off at you? I’m under such a strain.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then come on up. I’ll cancel my other plans.”

  When Alex entered the anteroom of her office the next morning, Gregory sprang to his feet and blocked her path. “Don’t go in there, Alex,” he said. “Please go home! Something awful has happened! Just go home! Don’t go in that office!” With shock, she saw that tears were streaming down his face.

  “Gregory, what in the world—?”

  “Please, Alex!”

  She pushed him aside, and stepped to her office door. Painters were at work in there, and her furniture was draped with drop cloths. The antique Mode covers had been scraped from the walls and ceiling, and lay in damp curls and wads on her office floor. And her office was being painted in a bright Chinese red.

  35

  When Moe Markarian built the boathouse at what later would become “Rothmere,” his plan had been to acquire an ocean-worthy yacht, on which he would make the leisurely commute between his estate in Tarrytown and his office in Manhattan. He had envisioned inviting influential Westchester neighbors, such as the Rockefellers, to join him on these cruises. He had also planned on a yacht big enough to carry him and his wife down the Intercoastal Waterway for winter vacations in Florida, and sufficiently seaworthy for even longer voyages—across the Atlantic, into the Mediterranean and Aegean.

  Of course none of this had ever come to be, but a channel had been dredged, and a berth had been dug deep enough to handle the future yacht’s draw—both of these long since silted-in—and above the berth had been erected the boathouse.

  But the building that rose above the yacht’s berth was designed for more than dockage. It had been planned as a house to accommodate overflow guests. There were two full guest bedrooms on the upper floor, each with its own private sitting room, dressing room, and bath. On the lower floor, there was a fully equipped kitchen with a pass-through bar, a dining room, a powder room, and a long glassed-in living room, cantilevered out over the water, with a magnificent three-sided view of the river, upstream and down, and across to the Palisades and where they dipped at the Tappan Zee. Though the rooms in the boathouse had been kept furnished, they had never, to Alexandra Rothman’s knowledge, been used. Aunt Lily complained that the rooms in the boathouse, built over the water as they were, were always damp. Also, the Hudson River was still tidal at that point, and so there was often a brackish smell. Below, in what was to have been Mr. Markarian’s yacht’s berth, the largest vessel ever parked there was a somewhat leaky canoe, which now lay on its side on the dock.

  Alex heard the sound of his tires on the gravel drive that afternoon, and went to the door to greet him.

  “Alex,” he said, and he started to take her in his arms, but she pushed him gently away.

  “Come in,” she said, and led him into the glass room. “Can I fix you a drink?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Vodka on the rocks?”

  She fixed his drink at the bar, and then, though she didn’t usually have a drink that early in the day, she fixed another for herself, thinking: liquid courage. She returned with their filled glasses, and they sat opposite each other on two Chippendale sofas in the great glass room. He lifted his drink, and smiled a little shyly at her. “Well, here’s to old times,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “This is quite a place,” he said, looking around. “It’s a little like being on the prow of a ship.”

  “Yes. I believe that was the architect’s intention,” she said, and the words sounded stilted and formal. “In fact, on the plans, it’s called the Deck Room.”

  “The Deck Room,” he repeated carefully.

  He had changed somewhat. His hair was darker than she remembered it, and his nose seemed straighter, but he was, if anything, even better looking than she remembered. And his speech seemed to have lost some of its western twang, but he was still the man she had once thought she would love forever. “Oh, here,” she said quickly, reaching into the breast pocket of the pink Brooks Brothers shirt she had thrown on over white slacks. “Before I forget it—it’s the passbook for the savings account I set up with your money. I haven’t had the interest posted on it for several years, so the balance is going to be more than what shows there.” She slid the bankbook across the coffee table to him.

  “I don’t want your money,” he said, pushing it back to her. “That’s not what I came for.”

  “But it’s not my money. It’s yours,” she said, and for several moments they pushed the passbook back and forth across the tabletop between them until, with both their fingertips pressing against it, it seemed to become a sort of connective tissue. “It’s from your money belt. I put it in a savings bank—even though you said you didn’t believe in banks,” she said.

  “I left that for you, in case you needed anything while I was—away,” he said.

  “But I didn’t. Oh, I did use a little of it to buy a small sewing machine, because you’d promised me I could. But otherwise—”

  “You saved it for me. All these years.”

  “Yes. Because it was your money. You’d earned it. I saved it, even after I’d decided I’d never hear from you again. Please take it, Skipper. I didn’t need it then, and I don’t need it now.”

  He sighed, and picked up the passbook and placed it in his shirt pocket without opening it. “Who’da thunk it,” he said.

  Occasionally, she noticed, he still lapsed back into his more countrified way of speaking. But he was certainly better dressed now, with an air of casual elegance she had never noticed before, in gray flannel slacks, an open-collared white button-down shirt, a black V-necked cashmere pullover, and black Gucci loafers. He looked as though he had been doing well. He looked prosperous. The room was silent now, except for the sound of waves lapping against the concrete piers that supported the boat-house.

  He sipped his drink. “You still sew?” he asked her.

  “Hardly ever anymore. I’m too busy helping my husband edit his magazine.”

  “Your husband …”

  “My husband, Steven Rothman. And what are you doing these days, Skipper?”

  “Right now, I’m sort of between jobs. But I’m doing okay.”

  “Good.”

  “You know, I almost didn’t come,” he said. “I figured, why would you want to see me now? I almost didn’t call last Saturday. I figured, why would you want to hear from me? But somehow—the more I thought about it—I had to call you. Alex, I had to come.”

  “Why?”

  “Just thinking of the great times we had together—even as short as it was. The way I live now—well, it’s not the greatest setup. I have a couple of roommates, a couple of gay boys. They’re okay, but they bicker a lot, and—well, I guess thinking of the great times we ha
d together, short as it was, I came wondering if you still feel the same.”

  She shook her head. “No. As I told you on the phone, I have a whole new life now.”

  “I came wondering if you’d ever take me back.”

  She shook her head again. “No. Too much time has gone by, Skipper. Perhaps, if you’d ever written to explain what happened. If you’d ever telephoned—”

  His eyes widened. “But I wrote you! I wrote you every day! I explained everything. But when I didn’t hear from you—”

  “I never got any letters from you,” she said.

  He sat quickly forward. “But I wrote to you,” he said. “I wrote to you that very day they arrested me, and the next day, and the next. Telephoning was harder because, from where I was, they made you call collect. But I did call—more than once. I got a woman’s voice, not yours, who refused to accept the charges. And so I wrote more letters. For at least six months, I wrote you letters. But when you never answered them—”

  “My mother,” she whispered. “I suppose she—” She left the thought unfinished. She thought: Did my mother also open and read his letters? Probably. “I’m sorry, Skipper,” she said, “but I never got your letters.”

  “If you had, would it have made a difference?”

  “I don’t know. You said your letters explained everything. What was the explanation for what happened that night in Wichita? I’ve never had a clue.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose it matters now, but I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

  “Naturally I’m curious. It isn’t every young wife who has her motel room raided in the middle of the night by the police, and sees her husband carried off in handcuffs, and doesn’t hear from him again until ten years later.”

  He stared at his fingernails, which were smooth and manicured now, not dirty and cracked as they often were when she first knew him, and she noticed beads of sweat on his forehead, though the day was not warm. He took a quick swallow of his drink. “I was set up,” he said. “It was a classic setup—I was accused of a crime I didn’t commit. You see, there was this woman I was involved with in Brownsville, Texas, about a year before I met you. She was kind of a possessive type—wanted to run off with me on the rodeo circuit. But she was also married, and I didn’t want to get involved any deeper than I already was with a married woman. So I told her that morning that I wanted to break the whole thing off. Well, she got real angry and said she was going to tell her husband all about the two of us—make it sound like I’d raped her, or some cockamamie thing. Now I knew her husband was a real mean son-of-a-bitch. He beat up on her a lot—she was really what you’d call a battered wife. But I figured I was leaving town early the next morning for my next gig, and I figured I’d be safe out of town by the time he got around to doing anything. But late that night I got a phone call from her. She was hysterical. She said, ‘Please come quickly. I need your help. Something terrible has happened,’ or something like that. So I got in my car and drove over to her house. Willa—that was her name—and her sister Loretta were in the living room, and they were both hysterical, but, my God, poor Willa was a mess. Her nose was bleeding, and she looked like it was broken, and there was blood coming from one of her eyes. A big hunk of her hair had been yanked out, and a couple of her front teeth had been knocked out. All over her face and arms were more cuts and bruises—he’d really let her have it that night.”