Gilded Age

by Claire McMillan

  But Julia still hadn’t arrived. It was strange as this was Julia’s natural habitat, just as the Antarctic is the natural habitat of the polar bear. Ellie turned to the Miller sister who was sitting next to her, the duller one who copied everything her energetic sister did. Conversation with her was excruciating no matter how hard one tried, and so Ellie thought she’d at least get some information.

  “Isn’t Julia coming?” Ellie asked.

  Her end of the table fell silent.

  The Miller next to her shrugged. “She should be here. I don’t know where she is.” There was a forced, false note in her voice, as if she were performing.

  Ellie felt the tension in the silence that followed and then the low chirping of the ladies started mingling with the chirping of the budgies in their cages.

  “I was shocked,” someone said.

  “He wiped out the McMasters. Did you know he had their money?”

  “No one’s seen Julia in days. They said they went to Buenos Aires, but someone saw them in New York at a midtown law office.”

  “I heard there’ll be more indictments.”

  Ellie looked at the Miller sister with a frown. “What’s going on?”

  “Have you been living under a rock? It’s all over the Internet and the front page of the paper,” she said. “Gus Trenor’s been indicted for securities fraud.”

  “No, that’s not it,” her dining companion on the other side said. “It’s plain old fraud. It was like a Ponzi scheme or something.”

  “It’s complicated. Apparently, people actually entrusted money to him. I always thought he just invested his own,” said someone else.

  “He lost it all. Spent it all. Or I should say Julia spent it.”

  “I heard she’s up in Ellicottville. No one can get her on the phone. Not even Diana …”

  “Shameless too. He wiped out a pension fund for one of the old steel companies.”

  Ellie took another sip of wine. Her first thought, the very first, was that her money was gone. After the night at the condo she didn’t know how she was going to get her divorce settlement back from Gus without Julia causing more scandal. Now there might not be anything to get back.

  But taking the edge off her despair at her money being lost was schadenfreude at Julia’s downfall. Julia was as finished in Cleveland and as powerless as if she’d actually died. Of all the things you could do, you did not steal people’s money. Making up to Julia didn’t matter anymore and likely wouldn’t help Ellie’s situation. There was literally no coming back to Cleveland at all for Julia. Maybe she’d stay in Ellicottville. Ellie suppressed a smile.

  But her schadenfreude didn’t help the problem of her money. She’d lost her job, and now she’d lost her divorce settlement. Her brain couldn’t really grasp the certainty of it. Surely Gus would be made to pay her back by the courts or something. She could stay at her mother’s, sure. But her mother didn’t have any money to loan her beyond that. And really it was beyond pathetic, hard to even admit to herself, let alone someone chattering away at her at a cocktail party, that she was still living in her mother’s house, with no security, no job, and no prospects—at her age.

  When the ladies all got up to go into the other room and watch the present-opening, Ellie made for the refuge of the chintz-covered ladies’ room. The thought of the oohs and aahs over presents of smocking and ribbon was too much for her to take—at her age.

  She was washing her hands when a flush announced the appearance of Betsy Dorset. She nodded at Ellie with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Ellie,” she said coolly.

  Ellie smiled back, saying nothing. She’d piled her things—her wallet, her keys, her phone, her papers—on the marble in between the sinks, now wet with water and dripping soap.

  “That’s getting wet,” Betsy said, nodding to the jumble with a touch of disdain. “You’ll ruin it all.”

  There was something in Betsy’s voice, thought Ellie. A voice that said that Betsy knew so much more than Ellie, that she knew so much better, that Ellie couldn’t take care of things, that Ellie was hopeless, that she couldn’t take care of herself.

  Ellie dried her hands, picking up her things from the mishmashed pile. On the bottom, the edges of the papers were gray with water. Ellie decided to leave them. Perhaps it’s time for Betsy Dorset to understand she doesn’t know better, Ellie thought. She doesn’t know at all, and there are things even she can’t take care of. It was a perfect maneuver.

  Ellie walked briskly then, without turning around, out of the ladies’ room, past the gilt birdhouses, past the men’s bar, past the waitress pushing Henry in his stroller, and out into the parking lot. She thought she heard Betsy calling her back, telling her she’d forgotten something, that she’d left something behind.

  • 22 •

  The Country Party

  The first true weekend of spring Jim and I received an invitation to a barbecue at Cinco Van Alstyne’s house in the country east of town. An offering of friendship, I thought, along with the flowers perhaps, after our talk at the museum.

  During the ride to the country the baby slept soundly in his car seat amid the arsenal of toys, stroller, diaper bag, and all the other accoutrements of an infant. Jim kissed my hand, and we listened to the college radio station, the sunroof open, feeling younger than the new parents we were.

  “You look nice,” Jim said, eyeing my white skirt and eyelet shirt.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Haven’t seen you in a skirt in a while,” he said, something knowing right behind the sugar in his drawl.

  The thing was, I’d been thinking about Cinco Van Alstyne when I’d gotten dressed. For some reason, my new-mother slovenly kit wouldn’t do for seeing him.

  We pulled up at the Van Alstyne estate, which must have been fashionable in its day—a 1920s faux-Cotswolds-style house with beige stucco, leaded glass windows, dark brown shutters, and a pitched roof. It was immense, I guessed at least fifteen thousand square feet, surrounded by a thousand acres of pasture now overgrown with grapevines and weed trees.

  But as we drove up a driveway nearly disintegrating with weeds, I could see the stucco house was chipped and had been mended poorly with gray gashes of cement. Some leaded windows were cracked, and the shutters were peeling.

  Jim whistled low. “Decomposing Tara ain’t got nothin’ on this.”

  “Didn’t southerners practically invent the whole notion of shabby chic?”

  “This here’s a little more like shitty chic,” Jim said, smiling. “Darlin’.”

  We parked in a soggy snowmelt field next to Detroit steel and German luxury metal that crushed the sprouting grass, dotted with newly emerging clover and rue.

  He unloaded the baby. I took the diaper bag. “Leave the other stuff,” he said. “I’ll come get it if we need it.

  “You got to love these white elephants,” he said as we walked across the muddy field, the house looming in front of us. “Bleed you dry.”

  “Be nice,” I said.

  We walked into the dank front hall of the house. A cape buffalo head hung on the wall, its bullet-black eyes reflecting us, a moth-eaten bearskin rug on the floor.

  Cinco smiled and came forward wearing seersucker trousers and a white shirt frayed at the cuffs and collar. His clothes had changed little since we were young, I now realized.

  He smiled and kissed my cheek, shook Jim’s hand, and made a great fuss over the baby. Looking over the guests, I noted that his wife, Corrine, was the only one in all black and silver chunky jewelry amid the sea of white, Lilly Pulitzer, and pearls that comprises most Clevelanders’ warm-weather wear. Cinco’s parents were there, as were some of their friends. Good old Cinco, I thought, always doing his duty.

  “Babies agree with you,” he said.

  “I’m exhausted.”

  “Don’t look it.”

  “That’s because I’m the night nurse,” Jim chimed in.

  I rolled my eyes. “He lacks the proper equipment
for nighttime duty.”

  Jim took Henry from me, put a floppy hat on the little guy’s head, and went through the house out into the overgrown gardens where more guests mingled. Watching my husband in his jeans that hung loosely off his hips, with his feet in sandals firmly planted on the ground and the baby securely in his arms, I felt a moment of happiness.

  “You’re lucky, you know.” Cinco nodded toward Jim and took a sip of his gin and tonic.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Not everyone gets the happy marriage.”

  I cocked my head at him, raising an eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?”

  He snorted. “Even I don’t think this place is paradise, and I’ve wanted to live here my whole life.”

  I doubted him. This surely was his paradise. I wondered why he resisted admitting it.

  He pecked my cheek. “Can’t tell you how flattered I am about the name. Now all he needs is the right nickname.”

  “We didn’t name him after you.” I laughed.

  “I know. I’m just flattered that I’m not such a disaster that you thought ‘There’s no way I can name a child Henry, it will remind me of that awful Cinco Van Alstyne.’”

  “No one thinks of you as a Henry.”

  “Well, it’s flattering nonetheless. It also confirms …”

  “What?”

  “That you’re over me.” He was joking with me, but his eyes held mine. “Can’t give a child a name that will remind you of the love of your life.” He grinned at me.

  “We were never that way.”

  “No.” He sighed. “I see that now. But Corrine was kind of upset.”

  I focused on his wife standing on the threshold of the French doors. She held a platter of vegetables in one hand; the other gestured wildly to Ellie, who stood just inside the doors.

  I hadn’t seen Ellie since the shower. Even from this far away her clothes looked a wrinkled mess, like she’d been on a weeklong bender.

  “She shouldn’t be,” I said. “For all the reasons you just gave me.”

  “So I told her, but she’s jealous of you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please. Maybe she likes to get upset about stuff like that? Adds spice—yes?”

  He nodded. “There’s plenty of spice.”

  I smiled. “Spice is a good thing.”

  He smiled at me, and I felt such affection for him then. I felt a shift between us. An easing back into comfort based on shared history, recent understanding, and the hope of being friends.

  Ellie saw me and waved. She and Cinco’s wife made their way inside the living room to me.

  Corrine hugged me. “Where’s little Henry?”

  I waved out toward the gardens. “With Jim.”

  “We were just talking about Gus Trenor,” Ellie said.

  “It’s all anyone’s talking about out there,” Corrine said in a whisper.

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “Clevelanders and their money …”

  “Don’t hate. Anyone and their money,” Cinco said. He took his wife’s arm, and they set off on their hosting duties.

  “So,” Ellie said, turning to me. “Sorry I had to leave your shower early. I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. Truth be told I hadn’t noticed that she was missing. I tried to remember what she gave me so I could thank her now, but I couldn’t.

  She nodded. We were silent. The volume of the party rose around us.

  “Ells,” I said. “The night of the squash tournament.” I needed to ask her about Jim. I don’t know what I expected her to say—“Yes, I made a move on your husband”?—but she interrupted.

  “Not you too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So I slept with a squash player, so what?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “The fuck?” she said, and turned toward the party. “I sleep with men,” she announced loudly to all. “Imagine that.” A man and woman getting drinks next to us smiled and quickly walked off.

  She took a glass and sloshed a good inch and a half of vodka in the bottom. This alarmed me. She was already quite drunk.

  I took hold of her arm and directed her into the first room we came to. Gun racks behind glass cases lined the walls, dark Turkey rugs on the floor, faded damask covering the Victorian love seat and chairs, an old-fashioned stick-and-handle telephone attached to the wall. I wondered in passing if it worked.

  “Ells, what are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” she said right back. “Clevelander to your core, aren’t you?” Heavy curtains were drawn against the bright spring day. But in a slant of sunlight, I saw a little pouf of dust rise as Ellie sat down in a low club chair.

  “El—”

  “You really give a shit that I slept with some squash player?” She set her drink down and took a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one with her silver lighter.

  “I know I don’t give a damn,” I said, even though I actually did. “But people—”

  “I am so sick of people.” She slurred her S’s ever so slightly, leaning back in the chair and kicking her feet over the arm. “I don’t know what I was thinking coming back here.”

  A heavy lock of dark blond hair hung in her face, and I saw the tired wrinkles I’d first seen when I’d visited her at work.

  She inhaled on her smoke. We were both silent. I was racking my brain trying to think of something to say.

  “Have you noticed,” she asked without looking at me, “that Cinco seems a little unhappy?”

  At Cinco’s name I focused in on her eyes. My breathing got quicker. “You mean his wife does? I saw you two talking,” I said, hoping she didn’t catch the panicky edge in my voice.

  “Well, she is unhappy. She hates it out here. Can’t get pregnant. Hates the country. His family’s all over them.” She picked up a little porcelain frog on the table next to her and hefted it in her hand. “Makes you think he would have been happier if he’d chosen the right person. Someone who could make a go of all this.” Here she gestured around the room with the frog. “Instead of constantly bitching about it. Someone who enjoys house renovations, vegetable gardening.”

  “That’s not you,” I said firmly, my mind whirring. Ellie and Cinco, it made me feel sick. Cinco was mine, I thought. And then I realized he wasn’t actually. He was Corrine’s.

  She raised an eyebrow. “But it could be.”

  “You don’t want Cinco Van Alstyne.” I felt anger at the thought of Ellie going after him—not because I felt my stomach drop at the mere thought of it. No, my instinct was one of protection. I didn’t want Ellie hurting him.

  “Just because you didn’t want him …,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Cinco and I were never like that.”

  “Once when he was visiting in New York it seemed like he wanted it to be exactly like that.”

  Blood rushed in my ears, to my face.

  “Look at this place,” Ellie said, gesturing around with her cigarette. “And he was always sweet, a guy who’d take care of you. Plus, from what I gather, he likes sex—probably is a little twisted. Those perfectly mannered ones usually are.”

  “You don’t need someone to take care of you.”

  She set the frog back on the table and her feet back on the floor.

  I didn’t want her to leave the room. I thought she might go out there and begin her campaign for Cinco right away. So I started a pep talk. “You could go back to New York.”

  She hesitated. I realized what I’d just said. I was suggesting she leave town. And I understood in that moment how relieved I’d feel if she did go.

  “I told you, no,” she said evenly.

  “L.A.?”

  “I don’t know anyone in L.A.”

  “It’s becoming a fashion capital.”

  “It’s not. Besides, there are no husbands out there. All the women are young, blond, tanned … silicone.”

  “I’m talking about a job. Your career.”

&
nbsp; “I’ve tried. I’m not good at that.”

  “You haven’t tried.”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re letting your life be defined by men,” I finally said, desperate that she wake up, pay attention, and stop wallowing.

  Smoke blew out of her nose in an angry little snort. “Look who’s talking.”

  “What?”

  “You’re talking all this ‘take care of yourself’ crap to me. But what are you doing? Having Jim’s children. Now you’re a stay-at-home mom. Now you’re living in service to a man and a little boy. Now you’re defined by men.”

  I felt like I’d been slapped. “Are you drunk?” I asked, and then leaned in closer. “Or stoned?”

  Ellie put her smoke out in her vodka and got up out of the chair. She didn’t look at me as she straightened her crumpled clothes and walked to the door. She turned when she reached the threshold.

  “Careful what you say. Some things can’t be unsaid.” She walked out.

  I was pissed. So hypocritical given what she’d just said to me. She was the closest thing I had to a sister in Cleveland, like family, but in that moment I never wanted to speak to her again. I sank down in the chair Ellie’d been sitting in, gulping air.

  When my heart calmed, I went into the front hall, but no one was there. When I walked out onto the grass, I saw Jim with an arm around Ellie, her tear-streaked face on his shirt.

  I walked forward and when she saw me she broke free of his arms, turned her back, and walked toward the cars in the field.

  “El,” he called after her.

  “Where’s Henry?” I immediately asked Jim.

  He pointed to the side of the house, where Cinco held my little boy.

  “Go catch her,” Jim said, still watching as Ellie walked in between the cars in the upper field. “She’s really upset.”

  “I’m not catching her. You wouldn’t believe what she said to me just now.”

  “She’s in trouble.” He gave a little push on the small of my back.

  “Why do you suddenly care so much? You didn’t want her to be godmother.”