“Tell me that when you’ve had a few less of these,” she said, tapping her very red fingernail against his empty martini glass.
Hubert smiled at her. “Want some lunch?”
“Sure,” she replied, looking around the dining room. “How come we don’t have any flowers on our table?”
Hubie clung stubbornly to a life that had brought him little happiness. Justine, back from Bedford, visited him daily.
“Beautiful,” he said about the large bunch of white peonies that Justine had brought him. “My favorite flower.”
“I remember,” said Justine.
“There was this guy in my class at Simsbury. Bobby Vermont. Do you remember him? He was Mom’s friend Teddy Vermont’s son by his third marriage. A sad, lonely guy at school. I probably would have become good friends with him if I hadn’t been kicked out.”
“I remember Bobby Vermont,” said Justine. “He threw up at my coming-out party.”
“Funny you should remember that. It’s the first thing he said to me. ‘Has your sister ever forgiven me for throwing up at her coming-out party?’ ”
Justine laughed. “What about Bobby Vermont?”
“I ran into him here at the hospital the other day.”
“What’s he here for?”
“Same thing I am.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Poor Bobby, but at least you have a friend here then.”
“Had a friend. He died yesterday.”
“Oh, dear.” Justine turned away from her brother and placed the white peonies in a vase. “Mummy sends her love.”
“Send her mine.”
“She’d come, Hubie, but she couldn’t cope after her visit. She doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that it’s too much for her.”
“The way I look, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters, but that’s the way she is.”
“You’re not trying to explain my mother to me, are you?”
They both laughed.
“What are you going to do about your money, Hubie?” asked Justine.
“Leaving it all to Juanito,” said Hubie.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t think I’d hear that from you, Justine.”
“Hubie, it’s ten million dollars.”
“So?”
“Leave him five hundred thousand dollars. A million even. But don’t leave him the whole thing. You know what Uncle Laurance will do. He’ll take it to court. He’ll call it undue influence on the part of Juanito. He’ll expose everything there is to expose about Juanito: the drugs, those terrible bars he goes to. He’ll find a way to prove that Juanito is the one who gave you the AIDS.”
“It’s not undue influence, Justine. No one is forcing me to do this. It’s what I want to do. That’s why I went to Herkie Saybrook to make out my will, rather than some gay lawyer in the West Village. Our own kind, that’s Herkie Saybrook. You don’t need the money. Certainly Mother doesn’t need the money. Who else am I going to leave it to?”
“You could do something marvelous with it, Hubie. Give it to medical research, or something like that.”
“I know,” said Hubie, looking off at the river outside, thinking about what his sister was saying. “There’s something in me that makes me want to get even with Uncle Laurance and young shitface Laurance. All my life they made me feel like I was nothing.”
“Think about it, Hubie,” said Justine.
Hubie looked at Justine and held out his hand. She took it and squeezed it. “What’s with the television announcer?” he asked.
“Flown off to wherever it is they fly off to these days for a quickie divorce.”
“Did you see him before he went?”
“Yes.”
“How’d it go?”
“We did not go down Memory Lane, if that’s what you mean.”
“You taking it okay?”
“I loved him, Hubie. I really loved him.”
Hubie looked at his sister. “One of the nicest things about you, Justine, is that with a mother like ours, you didn’t get tough.”
Justine started to cry.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” continued Hubie. “The rich Altemus kids, they used to call us, like we were something special. What happened to us, Justine?”
“I’m going to miss you, Hubie,” said Justine.
Still holding her hand, Hubie drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, Justine was still there.
“You were right about the money, you know,” he said. He could speak only in a whisper. “Can you get Herkie Saybrook to come down here? I can still leave Juanito well cared for, but the bulk should go to a hospice for all these guys here who have no place to go and no one to take care of them.”
“I’ll call Herkie,” said Justine.
“Better do it quick,” said Hubie.
She nodded. “Guess what, Hubie?”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Hubie, dying, was still interested enough in life to be amazed. “By Bernie?” he whispered.
“Who else?”
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“You going to tell him?”
“No. I don’t want him back like that.”
“Does Mummy know?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you going to keep the baby?”
“Oh, yes, and I’m going to be a wonderful mother.”
Hubie, tired now from the excitement of the conversation, could only pat his sister’s hand in admiration.
“Want to know what I’m going to name it if it’s a boy?” asked Justine. She knew Hubie was not strong enough to answer her, so she continued without an answer from him. “Hubie. Hubie Altemus Slatkin.”
Hubie nodded his head and signaled for his sister to come closer. She put her ear near to his mouth as he said, “Hubie Slatkin. It has a certain insouciant charm.” He smiled.
Later, leaving, Justine stopped at the door of the hospital room and looked back at Hubie. When he looked up at her, she said, “I’ve loved being your sister, Hubie.”
Hubie understood that it was Justine’s way of saying good-bye. He raised his hand and waved good-bye.
Justine nodded and looked away to avert a tear that was forming.
“I’m so proud of you, Hubie,” she said.
That night Hubie died. Herkie Saybrook never knew that Hubie wanted to make a new will. Only Juanito was with him at the end, holding on to his slight body. The last words Hubie heard were Juanito crying, “Don’t die, Hubie.”
37
Despite the prominence of the family, there was very little made in the obituary columns, at the family’s request, about the death of Hubert Altemus, Jr., the son of Mrs. Van Degan Altemus of New York City and Mr. Hubert Altemus of Bedford Village, New York, and the brother of Mrs. Justine
Altemus Slatkin. If it hadn’t been for Ezzie Fenwick, who read the obituary page before he read anything else in the newspaper, not just the prominent names in the news stories of the dead, but the long columns of names in the paid announcements, Hubie Altemus’s passing might have gone undetected, as the family wished, until after the funeral, by which time Lil would have left for Europe.
Ezzie, a surprisingly early riser for one who spent every night dining out, called Matilda Clarke with the news, and then Maude Hoare, and then, in lieu of Loelia Manchester, who had still not returned from Europe, Loelia’s mother Fernanda Somerset, and Matilda and Maude and Fernanda all made their six or eight calls, and by noon everyone who knew the Altemus and Van Degan clans knew that Hubie Altemus had died of AIDS, although that was a word not to be mentioned, under any circumstance, to family members, as the official story was that poor Hubie, who really never had much of a life, Ezzie commented over and over, had died of leukemia.
Leaving Lil Altemus’s apartment after paying a condolence call,
Ezzie Fenwick ran into Cora Mandell in the lobby of Lil’s building.
“Oh, Ezzie,” said Cora. “I guess I’m going to the same place you’re coming from.”
“Rather a sparcity of merriment in that household at the moment,” said Ezzie. “Not that it was ever a barrel of laughs at Lil’s, or at any of the Van Degans’, now that I come to think of it.”
“Who’s up there?” asked Cora.
“All the predictables. Aunt Minnie Willoughby. Matilda. Janet and Laurance. Dodo, and poor Justine. Get the pic?”
“Evangeline wanted to come, but she was too drunk,” said Cora.
“Just as well. Lil has enough to contend with, without Evangeline,” said Ezzie.
“How is poor Lil?” Cora repeated.
“Stoic. Absolutely stoic. Not a tear.”
“Lil always does things so well,” said Cora.
“I’m off to Sibila’s cocktail party,” said Ezzie.
Making her way down Madison Avenue to meet with Lorenza about flower arrangements for Hubie’s funeral, Justine Altemus, who had decided to return to her maiden name, ran into Bernie Slatkin, who was on his way to interview Max Luby for a future television segment on Wall Street practices, although that subject did not come up in their brief exchange. If Justine had not been lost in thought and had seen the approaching Bernie before he saw her, she would have ducked into a shop in order to avoid the encounter, as it was the first time they had met since Bernie returned from his tropical-island divorce. In advance, she had agonized over how she would behave when that meeting came to pass. Seeing him, she dropped her eyes and hoped that he would do the same, until they had passed each other, but, alas, Bernie was not born for such subtleties of behavior.
“Justine,” he said, reaching out to touch her arm.
“Oh, hellohoware?” she said, sounding more like her mother than herself, as she withdrew her arm from his touch.
“I’m so very sorry about Hubie,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied. Her words were polite, but her tone was impatient, as if he were delaying her mission.
“I know what a wonderful sister you were to him,” said Bernie.
“He was a wonderful brother to me,” replied Justine. She made a gesture of moving on. Bernie looked at her, struck by the change in her. Gone was the lovesick attitude he had grown to despise. She had returned to the remote and distant heiress he had first spoken to in an elevator leaving one of Maisie Verdurin’s parties. For an instant she looked beautiful to him again, and unattainable, or beautiful because she was unattainable. She met his eyes, as if understanding his thought.
There were things he wanted to know, even though he was no longer a member of her family: how had Lil taken Hubie’s death, had Uncle Laurance been helpful, what had happened to Juanito? But he dared not ask the questions, and she, once so full of news for him on all the inner machinations of her family, provided no information. He knew that she had ceased to love him, that if he put out a hand to touch her, she, who had craved his touch to the point of humiliation, would reject him, first as a woman rejecting a lover, then as an upper-class woman rejecting an upstart.
Bernie Slatkin was a man who examined his feelings, right at the moment of experiencing them. Within him, he held on to a strange feeling that he did not recognize, not letting it escape until he understood it. What is this feeling, he thought? It was not a pleasant feeling. And then its meaning came to him. It was loss, he realized. He repeated the word to himself. Loss.
“Do you think in time we could be friends, Justine?” he asked.
“No,” she replied.
“Why?”
“I wanted to stay married, and you didn’t, so we didn’t. Now you want to stay friends, and I don’t, so we won’t.”
Bernie nodded. “You’ve gotten tough, Justine,” he said.
“Don’t you think it’s about time?” she answered.
“When is Hubie’s funeral?” he asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“St. James’s.”
“Of course,” he said. St. James’s, where all the weddings, christenings, and funerals of the Van Degan family took place, and had always taken place. “What time?”
“It’s private,” said Justine. With that, she made her move and continued her way down Madison Avenue to Lorenza’s small shop to discuss the flowers. Peonies, she thought. Just white peonies.
Uncle Laurance made the decision that it would be far better for all concerned if there were no eulogy or hymns at the service, just the simple prayers for the dead, to be followed by cremation. Young Laurance, who would have been the logical person to make the eulogy, having been born the same year as his first cousin, was relieved by his father’s decision, because he and Hubie had never, for an instant, enjoyed each other’s company. Hubie’s father, Hubert, was offended that he was not consulted in any of the arrangements, although he would have arrived at the same decisions arrived at by the Van Degan family. He did, however, in a show of assertion, let it be known that he intended to have his wife, Belinda, by his side in the family pew.
Lil Altemus, in the front row next to Justine, looked up at the rose window that Alice Grenville had given the church in memory of her son, and fanned herself with a letter she took from her bag. In the extreme summer heat the black linen dresses and black straw hats that she, Justine, Dodo, Janet, and other female members of the family wore looked wilted, and perspiration scents could be detected through deodorants, bath oils, powder, and perfume. “Wouldn’t you think they’d air-condition this church?”
“Yes, Mother,” said Justine.
“The peonies are lovely,” said Lil.
“Yes, Mother,” said Justine.
“There’s no one like Lorenza for flowers,” said Lil.
“Yes, Mother,” said Justine. She didn’t tell her mother the idea for the white peonies had been hers.
“Wouldn’t you know Belinda would wear white instead of black?” asked Lil.
“I think she looks very nice,” said Justine.
“Make sure you ask. Boy Fessenden back to the house afterward,” said Lil.
“Yes, Mother,” said Justine.
“And Gus Bailey. Didn’t I see Gus Bailey? Sweet of Gus to come.”
Juanito Perez walked up the center aisle to the front of the church where the small congregation of mourners were gathered in the front ten rows. He looked on both sides to see where to sit. Juanito nodded to Lil Altemus who took no notice of him, nor did Hubert Altemus, seated behind Lil and Justine with Belinda, when Juanito nodded to him. Juanito was not one for going unnoticed and genuflected, in the Catholic manner, and crossed himself in the abbreviated fashion of a former altar boy, a point of his forefinger to his brow, his chest, his left shoulder, and then his right. “Name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost,” he could be heard whispering. Lourdes Perez, Lil Altemus’s ladies’ maid and sometime confidante, had never until that moment laid eyes on the lover of Hubie Altemus, and was aghast to realize he was the runaway son of her brother, Duarte, in Puerto Rico. Lourdes dropped her eyes and concentrated on her rosary, although she was in an Episcopal church.
“Who is that man with the diamond in his ear?” asked Lil.
“That’s Juanito, Mother,” answered Justine.
“What’s he doing here? Who asked him?”
“You don’t have to be invited to a funeral, Mother. A church is a public place. And he has as much right to be here as we have.”
Dodo Fitz Alyn Van Degan, who could be counted on to annoy everyone in the family, waved a little wave at Juanito and signaled him to sit next to her, while Laurance and young Laurance and their wives looked straight ahead as if they were unaware of his presence.
Behind them all, Ezzie Fenwick, who never missed a funeral, and enjoyed social drama above all else, nudged Matilda Clarke and Cora Mandell not to miss the family snub of Juanito Perez.
“I do not want that man back at my house afterward, Justine
,” said Lil, measuring her words.
“I’m not going to tell him that, Mother,” answered Justine.
“Tell Uncle Laurance to handle it,” said Lil. “One thing, we’ll never have to hear from him again.”
“That’s what you think, Mother,” said Justine.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Lil. The minister, the Reverend Doctor Harcourt, Adele Harcourt’s nephew, came out onto the altar.
“Hubie left everything to Juanito, Mother,” said Justine, quietly, picking up the book of psalms in front of her in the pew.
“What?” said Lil, in a voice loud enough that all the Van Degans heard her. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “You must be mad. Hubie wouldn’t have done anything like that.”
“Will you please rise?” asked Reverend Harcourt.
Justine lifted up the book of psalms and did not reply to her mother.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” said Reverend Harcourt, and the small congregation read along with him. Lil Altemus acted out giving her full attention to the service, but she was only half listening.
“Did you know Hubie Altemus?” Ezzie Fenwick asked Babs Mallett at Baba Timson’s party.
“Yes,” said Babs. “They lived near us in the country growing up.”
“He died, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Poor Hubie. Sort of a lost soul, didn’t you think?”
“He didn’t leave a thing to his family. Not even a memento.”
“Oh, dear.”
“All that furniture, all those pictures, and the silver were all Van Degan things his mother gave him. They say Lil is furious, all that family furniture going to that friend of his, Juanito quelquechose. Wears an earring.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Now, this is what I call a perfect crème brûlée.”
“I don’t understand how Herkie Saybrook could have allowed this to happen,” said Lil.
“Allowed what to happen, Mother?” asked Justine, who knew perfectly well what her mother was talking about.
“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about,” snapped Lil. “Those Charles the Tenth chairs came from the Altemus side via Aunt Minnie Willoughby. Imagine that ghastly Juanito having them.”
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