At seeing the look on my face he laughed. “Don’t be shocked that some people need a little assistance. Not everyone has a hot DILF at home, you know.”
“Like MILF?” I asked, laughing. “‘Dad I’d Like to Fuck’? Why have I never heard that before?”
“Brad Pitt would be on the poster, with child, of course—though I prefer Gavin Rossdale. Now, come,” he said, taking my hand. “We’ll see if we can possibly get Diana to shut up. Plus, we’ve been gone too long and I don’t want her forming a search party.”
We emerged from the kitchen and attempted to mingle, but our absence was as conspicuous as if we’d been playing seven minutes in heaven. Luckily Steven’s preferences were well known.
Diana all but attacked us with Steven’s glass of water. “You disappeared.” She sniffed and then smiled in understanding.
“Quick chat outside,” Steven said with a wink.
“So I was saying about Ellie …,” Diana started in again, and I was shocked at her doggedness. She was intent on grinding Ellie to dust.
Suddenly the idea of staying and eating her food, of spending the rest of the evening with her, of being beholden to her in any way, was awful. I was angry with her and disgusted with the whole scene.
Steven had gotten Diana off the Ellie topic and onto some actress and the dress she recently wore at an awards show.
“You know,” I said, putting my glass of untouched water down on an inlaid table, “I should find Jim.”
“You okay?” they both asked in unison.
“Fine, I just feel a little woozy all of a sudden.”
This had the effect I intended as Jim was summoned instantly. Diana bundled us into our coats and whipped us out the door with zealous concern for my health.
When we got in the car Jim asked, “What was that about?”
“I miss the baby,” I said, which was true. “I think it was just a little too soon for me to be out.”
“We could have called the sitter.”
“I didn’t want to call. I want to hold him,” I snapped. A tear slipped down my cheek.
“Are you crying?” Jim said, looking at me, horrified, and almost missing a stop sign.
“No. Hormones.”
“Seriously, what happened back there?” he said, pulling over.
I explained about Diana. “She was so mean tonight,” I said, drying my eyes, getting ahold of myself.
“Well, that’s Diana. You don’t get too close,” he said, taking my hand.
“She’s just destroying El, and why? Because she’s jealous? Diana’s married, for God’s sake.” In saying the words out loud to Jim, I realized that the panicky feeling I had was born of the suspicion that should I ever step even the slightest degree out of line, Diana Dorset would hesitate not one instant to grind me into gossip hamburger as well.
Jim was silent. The sodium streetlights cast a golden glow on him. “Okay, I hesitate to tell you this because I do think you are a little fragile right now, but I think I have to.”
“Tell me what?”
“You remember that squash tournament at the club two weeks ago?”
My heart beat in my ears. My breath got short.
Jim continued. “I think she really is out of control.”
“Oh God,” I whispered, images of Jim and Ellie together filling my mind. “You’re scaring me.”
“Ellie drank a lot. Although now that you mention it, sweetheart, she could have been on something too.” I thought of the pills she’d filched from my bathroom. I hadn’t mentioned it to Jim. “She was wearing this corsetlike dress thing. The chest was on display. Everyone wanted to meet her. I think because of the museum thing. Even the old codgers—especially the codgers. Anyway, I was introducing her around and the top-ranked traveling player—young guy, just out of Brown—comes up. The attraction between the two of them was pretty clear.”
Relief started to seep into my brain as I tried to focus on what he was saying. Was he saying nothing had happened between him and Ellie?
“I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d be mad at me for not stepping in and trying to get her out of there, but the rumor is she slept with him.”
Relief took over my brain, followed by love for my husband.
“So she slept with some guy, so what?”
“She slept with him in the club.”
This may not sound so bad, but it was bad in Cleveland. Jim’s club was an all-male holdover from the 1920s, housed downtown in an immense Tudor brick mansion, the halls lined with taxidermy. It had been like a fraternity for industrialists—a place where they could play squash, play cards, shoot pool, smoke cigars, tell dirty jokes, and drink. They’d once held hunting dog trials—complete with live birds and ammunition—inside the club. Now nice young men, many the great-grandsons of the founders, still went there for the same distractions. Every once in a while wives were invited for an evening, but it was rare. There were bedrooms upstairs where, in the 1920s, members housed visiting friends for a society wedding or debutante season. Now when professional squash players came for a tournament, or professional boxers, as the club hosted a smoker every year, the contestants stayed in the bedrooms.
“What do you mean she slept with him in the club?”
“She’s the first woman to actually stay overnight in the club. I’ve caught hell from the governing board since she was my guest. I think they’ve decided not to do anything formally to me. She almost got the squash player thrown off the professional tour. I was going to tell you, but I thought you’d worry. After what those guys were saying tonight, I thought you should know.”
I was repulsed, I admit it—repulsed that Ellie’d be so stupidly promiscuous. She had to know everyone would find out. But I was also a little disgusted with myself for showing my provincial stripes, because I didn’t care that she had a one-night stand. I cared that she’d done it in a men’s club. I was scandalized, but something else was peeking out at me from behind the shock.
“Are you sure she didn’t make a pass at you?” I asked, remembering the women at the estate sale, remembering Jeff with his bow tie, Diana from the dinner party.
My husband is the unflappable southern gentleman. I’ve seen him blush only one other time, when his mother inadvertently misused the word “freak.” Now I could see under the streetlights that he was red to the tips of his ears.
“No,” he said, leaning his head back against the car seat.
“You’re sure.” The blush worried me. Protectiveness was ingrained in him. If Ellie, my oldest friend, had thrown herself at him, he’d not want to tell me.
“I’m sure,” he said, staring at the ceiling of the car. “I’m embarrassed for her.”
After a moment, he leaned forward, started up the car, and we drove through the dark, tree-lined streets.
At home we paid the sitter, and I went in my dressing room and put on my white flannel pajamas with the French blue monogram on the pocket and tiptoed into the nursery. My chest ached with milk, and I stared at my son in the dark, watching his breath rising and falling before I picked him up, waking him—something I never did. I settled in the rocking chair and latched him on, feeling the now-familiar tug. Some feedings I felt like a milch cow or a food port, but that night as I rocked I thought of how hard it is to help someone you love—how they never will let you close enough, or they won’t listen to you, or they don’t think they need help, or you don’t know how to help them. Watching my infant son sleepily feed I thought, Here is someone I can help right now. Here is someone who, for this moment, will let me help.
• 20 •
The Baby Shower
Jim and I approached Viola and P. G. about being the baby’s godparents, and they were touched but slightly concerned that they were only affianced. A nonmarried couple as godparents, even if they were soon to be married—was that done? Jim and I assured them it would be fine, and I began planning the small baptism.
As I knew she would, Viola took her role very
seriously. “I’m throwing you a baby shower,” she announced the next day on the phone.
“The baby’s already here. I don’t need a shower.”
“Sure you do. You haven’t had one.”
“Vi, I have everything I need. It seems ridiculous.” Truth was I hated showers, though attending them was better than having one hosted for you. I remembered my two bridal showers with a wince: one where I’d had to enthuse over dish towels and a salad spinner, the other where Jim’s sister had given me a complicated set of black French lingerie that I could never bring myself to wear. The presents seemed oddly ill suited for the married life I was planning to embark on. I was going to need kitchen gadgets and underwear fit for a courtesan? Until then I’d had no use for either. Was my personality really going to change that drastically?
“Well, people can also bring a little something for the new women’s shelter I’m working on if they want. But people want to give you things, you know, your friends. It’s your first baby. You should let me.”
There couldn’t be any lurking pitfalls—could there? And I adored baby clothes. I found, much to my surprise, that I was starting to look forward to a baby shower.
I should have known Viola would be thorough, consulting me on the menu and the flowers. She’d chosen to have it at the country club her parents belonged to and e-mailed me the guest list three weeks before the party.
“Looks like fun,” I said.
“Anyone I missed?” she asked.
“Well, it’s up to you, but you might include Ellie Hart.”
The phone went silent.
“I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t have space.”
“No, no,” Viola said with something I couldn’t place in her tone. “I’m happy to send her an invitation.”
“It’s just that I’ve known her my whole life. I feel like she should be there. You know she’s co-godmother with you and P. G.”
Viola became all business. “So Ellie Hart. Anyone else?”
On the day of the shower, I dressed the baby in a smocked jumper and put on a smart blue dress that I’d just recently found I could fit into again.
I drove up to the country club and struggled a bit at the mechanics of getting the baby and all his gear from the car and into the club while the teenage valets watched me with a mix of disgust and amusement. But I didn’t care. Though there were still patches of snow on the ground, the air held the warm promise of spring.
Viola had requested a long table for twenty in the conservatory, my favorite room in this club that I’d visited many times as a child. The back of the room showcased three huge gilt aviaries filled with turquoise and yellow budgies. The birds hopped up and down flowering cherry branches, placed there for the luncheon, no doubt, a result of Viola’s attention to detail. They made a charming racket. Pale green cymbidium orchids in antique baskets were nestled in the corners of the room.
The guests’ Chanel handbags hung daintily on the backs of chairs, and YSL Muses and Hermès Birkins nestled together on the floor. I was seated next to one of the energetic Miller sisters, the blond one, who was telling me about her hiking trip in New Zealand. Viola was seated on my right. My mother had begged off the invitation, stating that the shower should be a chance for me as a new mother to enjoy some time with my friends without the older generation hovering about. I’d been slightly annoyed by this. Did she think we would be talking about boys, sex, and shopping? But she’d spent a small fortune on baby clothes for Henry already, and so I’d kept my thought to myself. Betsy Dorset attended, as ambassador of the elder generation I suppose, diamonds clasped to a baby-pink cashmere sweater. Or perhaps she’d felt bad that Diana couldn’t come—some important donors lunch at the museum. And so Betsy was there as representative of them both.
As I walked into the room filled with some of my oldest friends in Cleveland, I realized that as in so many things, my mother had been right. It felt cozy and like a fun time was about to begin with my friends.
Henry was passed around the guests. Genial baby that he was, he smiled and cooed until exhaustion set in. When he started to cry, I nursed him on the chaise in the ladies’ room, loaded him into his stroller, and one of the waitstaff volunteered to stroll the halls with him until he fell asleep.
We sat down to lunch, which was one half of a curried chicken salad sandwich and a small green salad dotted with strawberries arranged daintily on a painted bone-china plate so thin you could see through it. As a nursing mom, there was no way this was going to be lunch for me. I wondered, not for the first time, if this small amount of food was really what my friends ate for lunch, or did they, like me, go home to a slice of cold pizza directly from the fridge? I was taking my seat when Ellie rushed into the room, late, clutching her cell phone and car keys in one hand and a slim lizard wallet and sunglasses in the other.
She kissed Viola on the cheek and was waved to the last empty chair, which was across from me. The gleaming black astrakhan around her shoulders looked Goth at this springtime soiree. I noticed the lining had come untacked and the hem was hanging out, frayed and tattered. She stank of smoke, even from across the table, and I saw her signaling the waiter for a glass of white wine. Everyone else was drinking iced tea. She smiled at me and winked, and it was then that she placed a neat stack of folded papers next to her water glass.
It was that day at the luncheon that my doubts about Ellie really started to creep in on me. I couldn’t get the picture of Jim’s blushing face out of my mind, and her careening appearance at lunch, the pills, and her drinking made her seem out of control. Her skin looked gray, she smelled like a bar, and she gave off the general vibe of someone on their way to a bad end.
Why I didn’t embrace her, my childhood friend, and try to get her some help, I don’t know. I was scared of her, exasperated, and I’ll admit it, disgusted. After lunch, when I saw her coming my way, I avoided her eye, grabbed the arm of Kips Wade, turned my back on her, and headed to the living room to open my baby loot. My life right then was an embarrassment of riches. It’s funny but every time I’ve thought my life grand, I’ve not failed to get a quick sucker punch in the gut. It’s kept me wary and not a little pessimistic. But turning my back on Ellie then is something I’m ashamed of, even now, and something I’ll always regret.
• 21 •
The News
When Ellie got the invitation to the baby shower her first thought was that Julia Trenor would be there. If she was back in Julia’s good graces, if she could show her that there was nothing between her and Gus, if she could show her that Diana was spreading gossip and lies with her own agenda, maybe then Ellie could start out yet again.
Or maybe Diana would be there, though the prospect of a confrontation with her was daunting.
Ellie’d slept later than intended that morning and awoke with only a half hour to get over to the country club. Her head buzzed as if the sun outside was too bright. She decided to wear her chicest outfit—all black—knowing the sea of pastels and business gray that would be there in anticipation of spring. “Let them hate, so long as they appreciate” was her twisting of the Latin proverb. She was heading through her mother’s tiny yellow kitchen. She hadn’t been able to actually buy a condo in Murray Hill after her night with Gus in his former mistress’s condo. She’d realized then that she’d have to cut all ties to him.
Unfortunately he still had control over the majority of her money.
Her hand shook as she rifled a pile of junk mail looking for her keys. It wouldn’t do to be nervous today. It wouldn’t help if she looked at all frightened, and so she decided she needed a quick nip to shore her up. She poured two fingers of vodka in the bottom of a dirty coffee cup and downed it in one gulp, feeling it burn all the way down. A small drink before something this nerve-wracking—it’s not like she did it often.
She was glad of the drink and her cigarette during the drive because when she walked into that luncheon room, her knees buckled ever so slightly. She caught herself and
made for Betsy Dorset to kiss her cheek, but the woman waved her off to Viola, who shook her hand—that was strange—and ushered her to her chair. She scanned the room, noting Diana wasn’t there, which made her feel a little relieved actually. Once seated, Ellie signaled for a glass of wine, noticing only too late that she was the only one drinking at the table.
But never mind. She arranged herself, her phone, her keys, and next to her water glass the trim stack of folded papers, a pristine packet of insurance. She’d printed out Diana’s texts to Selden, complete with nude photo. She’d known they’d come in handy.
Scanning the table, she noted that Julia wasn’t there either.
But when Julia arrived, Ellie would gently let her know just what a nightmare her friend Diana was, cheating on her husband and chasing so desperately after Selden. That was why she was spreading lies about Ellie. Julia wouldn’t believe her. Hence the evidence—black and white, with the red bra, of course. Julia, who knew what it felt like to have a cheating husband, would not be pleased.
Barring that, Ellie thought, looking around, she might show them to Betsy Dorset, Diana’s mother-in-law. That would require a deft touch, but Ellie could do it. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have Betsy Dorset in your debt. In fact it could be a marvelous thing. Ellie could only imagine the lengths to which Betsy Dorset would go to keep her son from heartache and scandal. A savvy sixty-year-old like Betsy would be familiar with enough technology to know the dangers of YouTube and Facebook in such a situation. Perhaps she’d even make Ellie chair of the next benefit she had control over. Ellie’d be back in Cleveland’s good graces—with a new platform from which she could search for love again. It’d be a difficult maneuver though. Betsy Dorset was no slouch.
Gilded Age Page 18
