Arm Candy

by Jill Kargman

  Feeling guilty for being less affectionate with her, Chase kissed her up sixty floors until the ding of the roof destination sounded. As the double doors were about to open, Liesel abruptly pulled back and smoothed her hair, lest, heavens forbid, someone spy their unseemly PDA.

  “Liesel, come here,” Chase said, trying to kiss her again.

  “Chase, people are looking!” Liesel unfastened the toggles of her Dennis Basso fur coat. “Sweetie, will you check this for me? I’m going to run to the Ladies’ quickly.”

  Chase knew her lipstick had to be refreshed; Liesel simply couldn’t make an entrance without being preened to perfection.

  As he waited, Chase surveyed the scene, watching one couple cuddle sweetly, while another was reunited across the bar with a huge hug and passionate kiss.

  “I’m back! Did you miss me?” she cooed in an almost childlike tone.

  “Like the Sahara misses the rain,” he said sarcastically, hand on heart.

  “Stop teasing me!” she squealed jokingly, mock-whacking him with her Fendi clutch.

  As the years wore on, Chase started to get a creeping feeling about that allegedly perfect word: satisfaction. Isn’t life supposed to be more than “satisfying”? Isn’t there supposed to be an elated surge of heated passion, a crazy, scream-from-the-rooftops, jump-on-Oprah’s-couch epiphany of utter besotted amore? Little by little, the white peonies on Liesel’s birthday, the bracelets from Tiffany at Valentine’s Day, the necklaces at anniversaries, and the trips for Christmas felt rote. He had tried, a few months back, to do something crazy and surprise Liesel with a helicopter ride, but she had declined, saying she didn’t much like surprises. Or choppers, apparently.

  Throughout Chase’s entire life, any latent impulses toward adventure had been summarily quashed by his family, and now Liesel was doing the same thing. When he wanted to travel abroad, The Family warned him of cousin Barrett, who had gone to the Amazon on an ecotour and disappeared; no one knew if he had fallen into a ravine, OD’d on drugs, or encountered some tribal, bone-through-nostrils headshrinkers who rendered his aristocratic melon the size of a clementine. Barrett’s disappearance, along with his great-aunt’s falling asleep cuddling her boyfriend, Jack Daniels, and a cigarette, plus his uncle’s bungee jump gone awry, caused speculation in the press of a DuPree curse. So paranoid was this family tree that its powerful branches swayed with fear when even the slightest threat appeared on the horizon. When Chase subtly floated the idea of parasailing by the family home at Round Hill in Jamaica, Brooke looked at him with squinted eyes.

  “Surely, you jest.”

  “Mom, please: It’s no big deal! Countless people have businesses doing parasailing all over the island. It’s their living. If people got killed, they wouldn’t do it,” he pleaded.

  “Do what you must,” Brooke said with a crisp, passive-aggressive shrug. “But if you smash into the dock and shatter both legs, don’t come running to me.”

  Needless to say, Chase decided to skip it.

  Sometimes Liesel was, in a far less manipulative way, similar to Brooke in her slight puppeteering.

  “Really, you want to play golf today?” Liesel would say with a sad face. It was clear that little pout had worked with Daddy since babyhood. “Okay, fine. I was so hoping to play tennis together with Wills and Becky, but it’s fine, we’ll do that another time, sweetie. You go play golf.”

  “No, no, no, you’re right,” related Chase. “I’d be psyched to play tennis, too. I’ll call Wills.”

  But while Liesel gently floated one café over another or perhaps a different activity instead of the one Chase had envisioned, she found ever-so-annoyingly that forcing her boyfriend’s hand to take her hand was proving slightly more difficult.

  “I’m so excited for Phoebe Nordstrom,” she said at La Goulue one night. “She and Roddy got engaged! She seems sooo happy.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” Chase replied, not sensing the nudge-nudge. “Roddy’s fine, though all he wants to talk about is business. I’m not sure if he has any other interests.”

  Liesel felt her face growing red. “Well, he’s interested in Phoebe, clearly.”

  All of the pressures came to a head one cold January evening. Chase had just walked into his parents’ apartment for the weekly family dinner, when Brooke soberly took his arm and sat him down, relaying to him the sad news that Ruthie DuPree, his maternal grandmother, had just suffered a stroke. He was devastated. Chase was extremely close to Ruthie, a whip-smart firecracker of a woman with an old body but a young soul. She always inspired him, conspired with him, and made him laugh out loud.

  “You know what keeps grandkids and grandparents so close?” Ruthie once asked him, rolling her eyes as Brooke prattled on to the staff about florists. “We have a common enemy.” Life with Ruthie was filled with winks and code speak. She and Chase had their own unique rhythm and bond, a close-knit connection that he cherished, especially now: After decades of political programming and social censorship, Ruthie’s edit button had started to jam, and she just said whatever the hell she wanted. Sometimes it enraged Brooke to hear her mother and son laughing hysterically at the dinner table, wielding swear words and whispered jibes. She felt left out of some wildly hilarious, and often dirty, joke.

  “Your mother has to, what do you kids say? Chill the hell out! Why’s she so angry all the time? Always complaining, your mother. Never had a dish she didn’t send back to the chef. Twice.”

  Once, at dinner at the now-shuttered La Caravelle, Chase reeled in embarrassment as his mother cruelly berated a waiter publicly over undercooked meat. Equally horrified, Ruthie leaned in to her favorite grandson and said under her breath: “Brookie’s karma’s so bad, when she was little and I gave her a bowl of alphabet soup, the noodles all swam together and spelled out FUCK YOU.”

  Chase almost spat out his soup en croute.

  “What’s so funny?” Brooke probed, aghast not only at her silly food issue but also more gravely over the generational conspiracy that repeatedly had her feeling like the left-out monkey in the middle. “You two are always thick as thieves.”

  Chase loved it. While he remained ever respectful of his mother, that didn’t mean he didn’t love listening to his beloved grandma Ruthie slinging a little shit on occasion. No one had a grammy as cool as Ruthie. Sometimes Chase would laugh so hard he had stomach pains, which then morphed northward into his throat, forming a sad lump in recognition that his days with her would be numbered and he couldn’t imagine life without her clever barbs.

  As Chase digested the shocking news of her stroke, he was grief-stricken. Brooke put her arm around her son.

  “Who knows how much time she’ll have left now,” Brooke said ominously. Offering comfort was never Brooke’s strong suit.

  “Maybe you should consider proposing to Liesel sooner rather than later,” she continued. “You know Grandma’s ring is ready when you want it.”

  Chase knew a vault on Madison and Sixty-second held the birthright for the hand of his intended, three D Flawless boulders for each of the boys, all collecting dust. And while it was an enormous privilege to not have to hit cheesy Zales like so many other knee-bending grooms-to-be, the silent presence of Ruthie’s Cartier-designed ice rink in Box 2736 felt like a huge burden. A rock, so to speak, that weighed heavily on his shoulders and conscience. He loved Liesel, sure, but he always secretly dreamed of a woman who had a bit more chutzpah, a bit more sass, more edge. Someone who understood him the way his grandmother Ruthie did versus the way his mother saw him. Someone who challenged him. Someone who made him feel a longing so strong it was akin to an ache. He had no idea what that would be like. But something boiling within his blue blood was dying to find out.

  12

  You’ve heard of the three ages of man—youth, age, and “you are looking wonderful.”

  —Francis Cardinal Spellman

  The zenith of Otto and Eden’s fame came when he painted her (not her likeness but her actual body—boobs,
pubes, and all) for a historic cover of Vanity Fair’s Art Issue when Eden was thirty-five. It was her apex—of beauty, of confidence. Her shiny chocolate brown hair was waist long and flowing, and she was buck naked but for his impassioned brushstrokes on her breasts, torso, and long legs. Otto stood beside her in his jeans and paint-splattered T, running a hand through his trademark shock of prematurely gray hair. The photograph, shot by Annie Leibowitz during the peak of exorbitant canvas price tags harvested by hedge funders, became nothing short of iconic.

  Inside the thick issue was a twenty-page portfolio of the world’s top artists and their muses, inspirers who ranged from children to friends to lovers to a cadre of sexy sycophants hoping to be in the presence of the next Francesco Clemente. They lolled around shirtless, doe-eyed, and languid as the old CK One ads of the early nineties, overbred and underfed, gamine and gorgeous. But of all the muses, it was Otto Clyde’s who was the most striking. Even on the page, she was charged and alive. The glimmer in Eden’s piercing mint green eyes, the arch in her thin brow, and a sexy pout on her full lips rivaling Angelina’s obsessed many a reader. Her Latin cursive tattoo down the inside of her upper arm—more certa, non vita: “death is certain, life is not”—lent her a live-in-the-moment passion that made her seem to jump off the cover and inside pages.

  The magazine sold more issues from the newsstand than ever before, launching a nationwide wave of interest in Eden; she had always been famous among the intelligentsia and fashionista clan, but now it seemed the whole country wanted to know more about her, as the name Eden Clyde yielded millions of Google hits, and prices for Clyde’s portraits skyrocketed.

  Eden couldn’t believe how far she’d come.

  It was the height of heights. But the problem of reaching that coveted summit is of course that there is nowhere left to go . . . but down.

  Not that the thought even entered their minds at first; they were still flying high. Unlike It Boy artists who came and went, Clyde had reached quasi-Picasso, godlike stature with his alluring persona and boundless talent. Photographers snapped pictures of him and Eden, holding hands or eating dinner at Da Silvano with handsome Cole. There were legendary parties in warehouses where the backdrop was cocaine, deafening mixed music, and blinding hues of fashionistas’ too-bright wardrobes. When Eden wasn’t spending time with Cole, taking him to and from school or to museums or to the park, she was part of the Otto Clyde machine. She was entertaining their friends or collectors with Moroccan feasts, Chinese New Year celebrations—any excuse to have a bash. Otto needed the buzz of people around him, fluttering their wings to stroke his ego, their voices building to a chorus of how talented he was.

  But what onlookers might not have known was that Otto and Eden’s relationship was very, ahem, alternative—although what Otto did (fucking countless women) couldn’t be called cheating because they weren’t married, and Eden knew all about it. He was a sexual omnivore who worshipped Eden but craved variety. She couldn’t know for sure since Otto was as discreet as he was lustful. But the first time he actually admitted it was probably right around when Cole was twelve or thirteen, and Eden was cruising into her mid-thirties.

  “Sweetness,” he said, kissing her hand. “You look ravishing. This has nothing to do with you, but . . . ,” his voice trailed off.

  “I know. Daddy’s gotta get some,” she finished. She pretended to be chill and shrugged as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  “See? There is no one like you. You get it,” he said, kissing her. “You’re a modern woman. How did I get so lucky?”

  “I don’t know, you are pretty damn lucky,” she said, flopping on the bed. He climbed on her and kissed her neck. For the first time, she felt sick about her complicit participation in this lousy deal. He was sucking the best years out of her and still getting some on the side.

  “I love only you, though,” he said each night, sliding into their bed in the darkness. Sometimes she pretended to be asleep. “There is no one like you, my Eden.”

  Eden knew by that point he had plenty of lovers, but one by one she’d bested those beeyotches and had him to herself at the end of every night. That was their unspoken rule. Roll in the hay but come home to roost. Eden knew that this was the deal she had made in exchange for her life, one people would kill for. One that exceeded her wildest Shickshinny dreams. But the truth was, she hadn’t been dreaming much at all lately, because she hadn’t slept in ages. She had been a total insomniac her entire life but it was getting worse than ever. Not even the latest drugs could help her. She consistently woke up at 3:13 every morning, heart pounding. She’d toss and turn for an hour, flip her pillow over, do Jane Fonda-style leg lifts to combat cramping and even a yoga-esque bridge to crack her stressed back. Then, after her mind raced till 5:00, she’d fall back asleep as the sun started to pierce the gray night.

  “How is my darling, sweet little honey this morning?” Otto kissed her awake.

  She slept in the nude and sat up in the sheets to give him a kiss hello.

  “Fine,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Tired.”

  “I’ve made us some espresso and Alonzo just brought in some fresh pains au chocolat. Let’s get to work!” He clapped.

  Yeah, sure, she thought. With his hot lay last night of course he’s charged and ready to go. As she hauled herself to the bathroom mirror, noticing the grooves in her forehead looked slightly deeper than they had even yesterday, she rubbed her neck, which was incredibly sore. How ironic, she thought, kneading the painful spot on the right. The body echoes the mind. She had been looking the other way for far too long.

  13

  The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines.

  —Plato

  In a sunlit East River-facing room of New York Hospital, Ruthie DuPree lay in her Craftmatic, watching soaps. Not one, not two, but seventeen flower arrangements from L’Olivier, Renny & Reed, and Plaza adorned her suite, the cards from various charity boards Ruthie sat on all sending well wishes and hope for a speedy recovery. Chase sat beside her, holding his grandmother’s hand as the nurse drew blood from her left arm. He watched a huge tugboat move up the river in silence, its wake muted by the thick wall of glass. But the quiet moment was punctuated by beeps from the IV and various calls on the speaker system as the vials filled with a dark red liquid that J. Crew would call oxblood. But it wasn’t an ox, it was his beloved and frail Grammy, and it pained Chase to see this strong, vibrant woman with tubes and needles stuck in her papery skin.

  After the nurse exited, she turned to Chase, gesturing weakly.

  “Promise me you’ll yank the plug if I get all loony,” she said seriously. “I don’t want to be some drooling vegetable like Helen Sinclair from Maidstone. If I ever get to the point where I don’t recognize you or your brothers, just rip it out. Promise.”

  “Grandma, please. Don’t talk like that, I can’t stand it.” Chase winced. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “C’mon, Chasie. I’m ninety-two, I’ve lived my life! Why stick around and have the personality of a hothouse tomatah?”

  Some say tomayto, some say tomahto, but Ruthie said tomatah. She was sophisticated New York but was so down-to-earth and no bullshit; she almost sometimes sounded off the farm. Chase took his grandmother’s thin, veined hand and held it tightly, saying nothing.

  “You know,” she said, looking at her beautiful grandson’s perfect but somewhat sad face. “You’re too darn serious. Why so serious? You’re young. You’ve got the world in your hand.”

  “I’m . . . not so serious.”

  “Baloney. Always the good son. Since you were a little boy with your poncy little suit and your violin case. You were always so serious. Maybe it’s because those darn brothers of yours were so damn reckless. Your mother put too much of a burden on you. So much pressure! I told her, ‘Brookie, let the boy breathe,’ but you were her star, always.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Chase said bashfully.

  “Take it from me
,” she said with a wink. “It all goes by so fast, Chasie. You’ve been old since you were a kid! Even with your young face, up here, in your head, you’ve always been an old fogey. Don’t wait till your body is, too. Don’t wait till you’re in this bed hooked up to all this junk to realize you could have had some fun, could have lived a little.”

  Chase sat quietly, digesting his grandmother’s words.

  “Look, I loved my life, I’ve had a great run,” she said, smiling. “But if I could do it over, I’d live it up a little more, go nuts. Rock the boat,” she confessed. “I had so many obligations to your grandfather, so many duties, the campaigns, the political fund-raisers, the attention. It was all wonderful, but sometimes I was itching to break free—just a bit—and I hope you will, Chase. Everyone—all the people you know—will be old, lying here like me one day. What’s it all for, unless you eat it all up? Devour each day. Loosen up, my boy! You don’t know how to have any fun.”

  “That’s not true. I can have fun, Gram.” He smiled, trying to assure her with his boyish grin that he wasn’t some robotic drone drowning in duties.

  “You can’t really have fun if you’ve never broken a rule or two. Now I don’t mean laws, don’t go getting arrested, not like your dumb brothers. I mean rules, the way things are. The status quo. Your schools, your job, your gal are all things that Mom and Dad wanted for you. But do you want that for yourself?”

  “Sure, I mean, what’s not to like about my life?” he asked somewhat defensively. She had touched a nerve.

  “Like? You just said it yourself. You think you should like life or love it? Ya know how I spell like? B-O-R-I-N-G. Like is bland. Like is yellow cake without the chocolate frosting. Dress it up. Rev it up a notch, kiddo!”

  Chase looked at her hand in his. He was so hardwired to be The Good Son that he couldn’t even divorce his wishes from those of his parents. They were deeply intertwined, like two necklaces that get tangled into a ball of indistinguishable links.