Arm Candy

by Jill Kargman

  37

  Middle age is having a choice between two temptations and choosing the one that’ll get you home earlier.

  —Dan Bennett

  The next day, at her recon lunch with Allison at Fred’s, Eden picked at her French fries, oscillating between two poles of exhilaration and nonchalance.

  “So what are you going to do about this? This is such a reversal. I thought you said the cougar thing was gross. . . .”

  “It is! But this doesn’t quite feel like that. I mean, I’m not in Callie and Sara’s league of ordering beefsteak sandwiches.”

  “It’s so weird you’re with Chase Lydon. Talk about the opposite of Otto.”

  “I’m not with anyone.”

  “What’s he like?” Allison beamed.

  “He is so anal, God love him. It’s like he’s been tied up in gold twine his whole life. He’s just so . . . burning to open up, you know? He has this pent-up energy. He’s practically ready to burst. Sure, he’s been to the requisite New York institutional galas, but he’s living in this little Limoges box. But God, is he sweet. Just the most doting, kind, amazing guy. And gorgeous. And entirely too young for me. Otto would die of shock if he saw that this was who I’m shacking up with. That’s why I want to keep it under wraps.”

  “I love it. Clandestine romance. Hot.”

  “Well, it would be even worse with regard to his family. Can you imagine if his fancy parents saw my apartment with that nude portrait of me hanging in the living room?”

  “I heard his mother, Brooke, really puts the ‘cunt’ in ‘country club.’ ”

  “Great, see what I mean?” Eden said, throwing her hands up.

  “Yeah, but so what? What are you going to do, sneak around because his momma and Otto wouldn’t approve?”

  “I’ve got news for you: I don’t approve! I could be his mother.”

  “Eleven-year-olds don’t usually menstruate,” Allison assured her.

  “They do now because of all the hormones in milk and stuff. I swear. They go bra shopping now at, like, age nine.”

  “Oh God, I hope not. Please tell me my little Kate won’t have hooters in four years. Not possible. Anyway, we eat mostly organics,” Allison told herself.

  “The point is, I can’t go gallivanting around with this young guy on my arm! It’s wrong.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me. I must look ridiculous.”

  “He’s not so young that you’re, like, tasting Similac on his breath, he’s twenty-fucking-eight! That’s old enough,” attested Allison. “And furthermore, since when do you give a shit about what people think? You’re the last person to worry about gossip. You’ve led a fantastic, unconventional life, raised a brilliant, fabulous son, so what the fuck do you care what people say?”

  “You’re right. Plus, I have no clue where it’s going, if anywhere,” Eden said, thinking about her night with Chase. “I just know I love the way he makes me feel. I feel great. For the first time in a while, I’m . . . young again. He’s like a fucking time machine.”

  “And like a fucking machine, clearly,” said Allison with a wink.

  “You know, yes the sex is amazing, but it’s different. He’s not one of those guys who could unhook a bra with one hand in pitch-black. He’s not a player; he’s almost timid, a truly good person, gentle and kind. He’s got to loosen up a bit, but I see in there a spark locked inside.”

  “Just wait,” said Allison knowingly. “Sooner or later, like everything else, it will have to come out.”

  38

  I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.

  —Phyllis Diller

  “I can’t stop thinking about you, I mean, literally I can’t stop,” Chase whispered on the phone to Eden from work.

  While he sat lit by the glow of his computer screen, Eden lay on her couch covered with cashmere throws from India, resting on pillows still smelling of the lavender sachets she had packed them with for her move.

  “Is that so?” she asked seductively.

  “It is.”

  “I’m flattered. I miss you, too.” Eden giggled. She was not a giggler. Her schoolgirl chortle surprised even her. “But you have to do what you have to do! Whatever that is. Numbers stuff.”

  “Eden, let me take you out to dinner tonight. You can choose the place.”

  Eden didn’t think that would be such a good idea. “Let’s just stay in, no? I can cook something. I’ll head down to the farmer’s market—”

  “Please. I don’t want you to lift a finger. Let’s just go out.”

  “Great. Then everyone in the restaurant will remark what a nice mother-son dinner we are having. Until we start making out.”

  “We both know you are not old enough to be my mother, Eden.”

  “Okay, fine, but I am still most definitely a brown leaf next to your green one.”

  “Golden brown,” he teased. “Come on, you’re being ridiculous.”

  Eden paused. He was right. In this day and age, it shouldn’t matter. But Eden knew the world enough to know that it wasn’t as open-minded as she was. If she was spotted at a restaurant with him, news of their pairing would get out. Everyone would laugh that she, nearly four decades old, thought she could have Chase Lydon. It was setting herself up for humiliation. But then she thought of her old self. The stronger, more secure person who simply wouldn’t give a shit. Somehow, along the way, bouncing through the calendar year after year, Eden realized she had lost her shield. Had it been chipped away or did it vanish overnight? She didn’t quite know but she realized that it was time to get it the hell back. Allison was right: Fuck it. Since when did she feel like she wasn’t worthy of someone?

  “Where should we meet?”

  Eden wrote down the Second Avenue address and shook off her paranoia. It was all in her head; everyone else was too involved with their own lives to care about Eden’s, right? They have their own stuff to deal with, so why would they even notice her and Chase?

  Elio’s was aghast.

  Eden felt like a rotisserie chicken spinning before the heated gaze of the well-to-do onlookers.

  “Isn’t that Chase Lydon?” one blond, shoulder-padded matron whispered to her husband, who drank his straight vodka and could barely divert his gaze from Eden’s endless legs in her hip, strapless minidress.

  “Who’s that?” the hubby asked, watching as Eden moved her long hair to one side of her bare shoulder. Eden sat down at the bar and began reading a cocktail menu as Chase greeted the maître d’.

  “That’s Eden Clyde, the former lover of Otto Clyde, the painter. Took his name but had their kid out of wedlock! Carriage without marriage,” the patrician matron whispered back, brow arched. She knew Brooke Lydon casually from around the Colony Club and surmised her acquaintance would be . . . unthrilled.

  “Wait a second, hasn’t he been going with Bitsey van Delft’s daughter?” her friend asked, a polished finger tinkering with her pearls as she glanced at Chase and Eden, coral lips pursed in disapproval.

  “Oh, you didn’t hear?” the other Hermès-scarfed lady whispered loudly. “They split recently. Guess he’s not wasting any time.”

  Ralph Lauren and Matt Lauer both entered separately with their wives, and still all eyes were on Eden and Chase. Chase reached over and took her hand, sensing her awareness of the crowd of onlookers. His warm touch softened her discomfort about being plunged into the Upper East Side social center. She was certainly used to people noticing her, but in the downtown restaurants, where often Clyde’s drawings hung on the walls, where those who knew her sent over desserts and wine. Here all she was getting was ice. She felt like she was in another galaxy. A judgey one. The Chanel suits and MAC lipsticks may as well have been black robes and gavels.

  A young couple walked in holding a cherubic baby girl.

  “Oh, how delicious,” Eden cooed. She was so happy to see such an innocent face in what she suspected (rightly so) was a room full of vipers. “What’s her name?”
r />   “Piper,” the beaming mom replied. “She’s six months.”

  “What a cool name,” Eden said, looking at Chase. “You can’t not be happy with a name like Piper. I love it!”

  “Mr. Lydon, your table, sir. Follow me.” Eden waved good-bye to baby Piper, who smiled for her, and as Eden started to walk away hand in hand with Chase, little Piper lunged forward. Eden stopped to hold her tiny hands.

  “I just love babies,” Eden said wistfully. Otto had never let her have a second child, and in that moment, as Piper linked her cute fat fingers with hers, she secretly regretted giving up her campaign.

  “She likes you!” the young mother said, smiling. She turned toward her husband, who also needed a drool bib. “Gee, just like Daddy!” she joked in a whisper after Eden and Chase walked off.

  As the two gabbed the hours away, Eden grew more and more comfortable with the fact that people were blatantly watching their table. Let ’em stare, she knew Allison would say to her, live your life. And so she did, happily. Chase watched as Eden relished a mile-high pile of spaghetti, a dish he loved but that Liesel would never touch for fear of carbobesity come morning. And as the new couple held hands across the table, the cacophony of the restaurant faded away behind their doting glances, and the crowd, unsubtle in their conspicuous gazes, didn’t deter them, rosy with wine and amore, from feeling they were all alone.

  “RRREAR! Move over, Ashton and Demi! New York has its own pair of May-December stunners in eligible finance heir Chase Lydon and famed model/muse Eden Clyde. Just weeks after Lydon’s own breakup, both lookers turned heads at Elio’s last night when crowds beheld the pair canoodling at a corner table. Clyde, 39, and Lydon, 28, did not stop holding hands through the whole meal, sources say. No word on whether his socialite mom, Brooke DuPree Lydon, approves of his much older gal pal, or whether Eden’s ex, Otto Clyde, knows of his favorite subject’s new boy toy, but both got tongues wagging uptown and down after their cozy caresses. And from the look on their flirty faces, the crowd surmised, the new duo would be devouring more than penne pasta that night.

  39

  When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past.

  —Jean Anouilh

  The city went shithouse. Eden didn’t ever read the gossip columns. But they were Allison’s bible, taken before her daily bread (a croissant), with café au lait, skim milk.

  “Holy shit!” Allison said as she scanned the tabloid over the phone. Eden heard rustling tabloid papers and heavy breathing. “Okay, here it is—”

  “Ugh, I don’t even want to hear it, Alli, really,” said Eden, still bleary-eyed, as Chase had only just left her bed for work. “Really, I barely slept a wink last night, and it’ll only stress me out and make me feel gross.”

  “Fine,” Allison said. “But you better call Otto. Lyle Spence reads the news before he even drinks his three espressos. Call him.”

  “News? For real? This isn’t news, Alli. There is a whole world out there. This is ridiculous!” Eden protested, amazed anyone would care.

  “Maybe it’s a slow news day. Regardless, people want some spice in their lives. Everyone reads this!”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Seriously, Eden, you have to call Otto before he hears through everyone else. Fasten your seat belt. I bet you he freaks.”

  “He won’t freak. Why would he care? He’s seeing someone. We’re through, and he knew this was bound to happen.”

  “Just call him,” instructed Allison, suspecting Otto might not be so thrilled to see the woman he “created” out and about with a younger man. “Bye.”

  Eden hung up the phone and looked at it. Lyle, Otto’s gallerist, knew anyone and everyone and breathed in the tabloids like air, exhaling newsy gossip to all his friends. Okay, damage control. She reached for the receiver. But before she could lift it from its cradle, it rang. Great, here he was. She braced herself.

  “Otto?” Eden answered, heart pounding.

  “Mom, it’s Cole.”

  Shit. The blood ran from Eden’s cheeks. “Hi, Cole—”

  “Tell me it’s not true.”

  Eden started shaking silently, trying to find the words she was looking for.

  “A girl in my dorm, a friend of mine just saw online you’re dating some young guy?” he asked, incredulous. “It’s bullshit, right?”

  Eden didn’t know what to say. And in that five-second pause, Cole knew it wasn’t.

  “Mom! Seriously? You’re joking,” he said, clearly disturbed. “Are you nuts?”

  “Cole, it’s not what it seems—”

  “This guy is like MY AGE!”

  “He’s not your age. He’s older.”

  “He’s closer to my age than yours.”

  Eden quickly calculated in her head. Shit.

  “I thought these kinds of people were everything you and Dad detest.”

  “Cole, listen to me.” Eden thought she would drown in her desperation to get him to understand her side. But she paused. She couldn’t set the record straight without spilling all the stories of his father’s countless infidelities, some with girls way younger than Chase was. But she didn’t want to throw stones at her son’s father, so she tried to proceed calmly.

  “Your father has moved on. I have a right—”

  “Mom, I love you but you’re gonna be a laughingstock.”

  She sat silent on the phone, calmly trying not to cry.

  “Are you finished?”

  “Yes.”

  Eden could still sense his anger and discomfort with the situation.

  “May I speak now, please?”

  “Fine.”

  Eden felt tears well up in her eyes as her torments mounted. She was so angry at the double standard. Geezers had banged young girls since toga time and now she was a social leper, a pariah for simply being with a guy eleven years younger. Eden took a deep breath and tried to be strong.

  “Cole, did I ever as a mother judge you? Did I ever try to control you? Did I ride you to do your homework, brush your teeth, cut your hair, clean your room? No. I gave you more freedom than any other mother. I knew you were a mature, independent person, with a great mind and perfect grades, so I let you be. I didn’t ask where you were going, or give you fucking curfews or smell your breath or any of that shit. I trusted you. Now you have to trust me.”

  Her words were greeted with silence.

  She was right. Cole knew it. All his friends had naggy moms who rode them on everything, from who to date to what to wear, and Cole never had anything like that. His mom was different. She was young and his friend, and he loved her for it, but he felt threatened and protective now that this bombshell was in the press.

  “I’m sorry,” Cole said, and Eden exhaled in relief. She knew she hadn’t raised a judgmental son, but she privately acknowledged that it must be difficult for him to have such unorthodox parents, especially since their split.

  “I’m so sorry you had to find out that way, sweetheart, and I’m sorry this is uncomfortable for you. But, Cole, love, you are out west, finding yourself. And frankly, I’m doing the very same thing here on my own. I don’t even know what this is, where it’s going, if it will last. But for now . . . it’s good for me.”

  “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m just upset to have people thinking you’re like some—”

  “Cougar? Some hag preying on a younger man? Well, I’ve got news for you, it happens all the time in reverse. I’m not hurting anyone. Why does anyone even care?”

  “Because . . . they do.”

  “So what, I’m supposed to live my life by what complete strangers think?”

  It did seem silly once she said it so matter-of-factly. Cole didn’t really care what people thought. He just loved his mother and wanted the best for her.

  “You deserve to be happy, Mom.” And then he added, in a quieter, softer voice, “I know it hasn’t been easy. Dad is Dad. And that must have been hard for you. . . .”

  He knew. He knew his father had been a
cheater. Eden blinked a tear down her cheek.

  “You remember, Cole, when you were little and we’d go out to dinner just you and me, while Daddy was traveling, you remember what I’d say to you?”

  “You said . . . we were growing up together.”

  “That’s right. I said that. But it wasn’t true,” Eden said, wiping another tear. “You passed me by a long time ago. You had such a good head on your shoulders and you sprinted right ahead. And now I have to try to figure this all out on my own. I don’t know if this will last with Chase. But relationships are like experiments, really, or one of your math problems that now I have to work out. I mean, I’m trying to follow my instincts and see where the paths take me. I promise you, I’m a strong, centered person. I’m not just screwing around for the sake of it,” Eden confessed to her son, who listened guiltily, hearing her out.

  “I know, Mom. I trust you. You did a great job, and I’m sorry for freaking out. I just want you to be happy.”

  After they said their good-byes, Eden exhaled, wondering what that phantom desire was welling within her. She had checked off all those unattainable elements on her mental F List—family, fortune, fame—and now, while she didn’t know what she wanted next, she would have to do something anathema to her lifelong ambitious nature: Stop looking to the future, and take each day one at a time.

  40

  A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

  —Robert Frost

  Meanwhile, on Fifth Avenue, Brooke DuPree Lydon raged with an ire that made velociraptors look like fluffy kittens.

  “What is the meaning of this?” a steaming Brooke hissed into the phone in an attempted controlled whisper that echoed louder than a yelp.