Riverside Park

by Laura Van Wormer

10

  The Secret Life of Cassy Cochran

  “THANK YOU FOR coming,” Cassy said politely, shaking hands with the fourth set of producers shown into her office this morning. It was pitch day for DBS Sports, a time when freelance producers tried to convince corporate there was a sports program that broadcast television could not do without. It seemed to Cassy the program ideas this year had more to do with the entertainment division than sports. The head of the division complained the other networks had all the good sports coverage locked up. At DBS the idea had never been to do what everyone else was doing, but to offer some kind of quality program the others didn’t. They had made money, for example, by covering key overseas professional soccer matches and had also done well with occasional forays into collegiate hockey, baseball and even tennis. They also had some modest success covering Formula One qualifiers. But the division head, Cassy realized, was looking for a big score, the sports programming that would make waves in the industry and generate advertising dollars.

  The last pitch had been for a TV reality show about a collegiate football camp with special emphasis on fistfights and catching players in the bushes with their pants down.

  The pitch being thrown now was for a weekly how-to show on sports betting. Cassy didn’t presume to know the legality of such a show (and DBS legal was here for that reason), and while she understood that millions of gamblers across America might like such a show she doubted the Darenbrook family would. They were particularly sensitive about gambling since their father had begun the media dynasty by winning a newspaper in a poker game, after which the previous owner had killed himself.

  This was a team doing the presentation, a man and a young woman. She was reeling off the statistics about sports betting in America while he supplied dramatic enthusiasm and video snippets on his laptop computer of what the show would be like. They were persuasive; Cassy could see a brouhaha on this one. Some were going to say, “It will make us a lot of money,” and others, “This is irresponsible,” while Cassy, ever negotiating the line, would observe that betting on sports was not a sport, so if such a show was truly viable for DBS it should be produced out of the news department as an educational series. (That should kill it.)

  She felt a nudge at her elbow and looked over at her brother-in-law by marriage, Langley W. Peterson. He tapped his pencil on his legal pad.

  We can put it on after Stair Diving and before Make Your Own Moonshine.

  Cassy covered her smile with her hand, cleared her throat, and then lowered her hand to look back at the presenters to reassure them they still had her attention (although they did not).

  Few at Darenbrook Communications would believe that Langley Peterson, their Chief Operating Officer, ever made a joke, he was so straightlaced, but Cassy knew he had a fine sense of humor. It was just that Langley was so very, very shy. Jack considered Langley his best friend and Cassy counted him among her closest as well, which only underscored how bad she felt about deceiving him. Simply put, the reality of the Darenbrook marriage would shake all the faith Langley and his wife, Belinda, had in the world. They would be shocked and then outraged that Jack had not, as advertised, been reformed into a faithful husband. They would be shocked and disappointed the Darenbrooks had never made it to marriage counseling, and as far as Cassy carrying on with…

  No. Langley would never understand.

  Cassy first met Alexandra when Michael, Cassy’s former husband, had hired her to anchor the New York news for WWKK. Alexandra had been intimidating to Cassy. She was twenty-eight, intellectually gifted, packaged in poise and beauty and possessed that ineffable aura of all-American class. Once Cassy knew for sure the young anchorwoman had not slept with her husband, Cassy relaxed a little, but then felt uncomfortable when Alexandra demonstrated some knowledge of the shambles Cassy’s marriage was in. The situation became more uncomfortable when Alexandra confided in Cassy that she was bisexual. And then things became positively surreal when Cassy realized Alexandra was telling her about walking both sides of the street because she was hoping Cassy might cross over to see her.

  After her initial surprise Cassy had been deeply flattered. She was forty-one at the time and at a very low ebb. Michael was bottoming out on his drinking and was almost a constant source of embarrassment and humiliation. Then Michael was fired from WWKK. And then he ran away. And it was not long before Cassy found herself starting to fall under Alexandra’s spell. Perhaps, she had rationalized at the time, because Alexandra was a woman it would not really be cheating.

  Well, whatever she had rationalized at the time, the point was Cassy did cross that street to see Alexandra. And how. For part of the spring and all of that summer.

  When Henry returned from a summer spent hiking in Colorado and Michael returned from Lord only knew where to be hospitalized, Cassy had brought the affair to an end. She felt she had to. For one, however deeply she may have felt about Alexandra (which would take her years to sort out), Cassy was too emotionally beaten up to suddenly start swimming against the tide of social approval that had governed her entire life. Second, Alexandra’s love had been so all-consuming, so endlessly deep that Cassy had begun to feel as though she was losing herself all over again, much in the same way she had when she’d married Michael. And third (which she tried to convince herself at the time was first), to encourage that side of Alexandra’s sexuality would do her a severe disservice. If Alexandra were to have any chance of fulfilling her dream, to become the first woman to have her own national nightly broadcast newscast, then she would have to meet at least four of the five unspoken mandatory qualifications:

  1) Must be male.

  2) Must be white.

  3) Must be Christian.

  4) Must be from anywhere except the East and West Coast.

  5) Must be married and heterosexual.

  The fact that Alexandra had graduated summa cum laude from Stanford had no bearing whatsoever on anything. It was perfectly fine if the men got C’s or had even dropped out of high school. No, what would count in Alexandra’s favor was her race, her religion, where she was born and a husband.

  When Alexandra left WWKK in New York to become a Congressional correspondent for one of the Big Three in Washington D.C., her old boyfriend moved in and Cassy was profoundly relieved. Michael by this time had gotten sober; the Cochrans stayed in touch with Alexandra and Cassy began to feel better about any wrong she may have imagined she had done her.

  In his second year of sobriety Michael left Cassy for a much younger woman and asked for a divorce. That was right around when Alexandra and Jackson approached Cassy about coming on board the proposed DBS network as executive producer of the news division. When Alexandra and Gordon Strenn announced their engagement, Cassy accepted their offer and threw herself into building DBS News.

  How had Cassy really felt about Alexandra at that point? She knew she loved her as a friend.Very much so. In fact, Cassy may have been somewhat wistful when she recalled certain things, but she had learned to simply shut that side of herself down in the same way she had shut down so many other feelings in her lifetime. Perhaps that was why Jackson’s attentions made such an enormous impact on her. Falling in love with him—at least falling in love with the idea of falling in love with America’s most dashing media tycoon—could and would solve so many problems.

  Cassy was genuinely in love with Jackson by the time they got married and she considered herself heterosexual, with a mere blip on the screen otherwise, a time when she had been very down.

  “Are you,” one of her therapists asked, “heterosexual?”

  “Yes,” Cassy said.

  “And you come to this conclusion how?”

  “Because women have made passes at me before and I never responded. It was just that one time.”

  “You’ve said that all of your life men have been making passes at you.”

  Cassy nodded. That had also been part of why she had married Michael so young; she was sick of trying to deal with it on her own.
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br />   “Were you ever tempted by any one of those men?”

  Cassy thought a moment. “Yes.”

  “And did you act out with any of those men?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was married and respected my wedding vows. That was the way I was brought up.”

  “But you had an affair with Alexandra.”

  “That was different. Michael had just run out on me.”

  “Okay. So what you’re saying is, after Michael ran out on you, you felt you could break your marital vows.”

  “I think it was because she was there.”

  “There were no men you could have turned to?”

  The question hung there for quite some time. “Yes,” she finally said, “but Alexandra was a woman so it didn’t really count.”

  “Yes, but you’re heterosexual. You said.”

  And so on it went for years in therapy until Cassy was sick of talking about it. About talking about everything. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t just get a fresh start and get on with her life. And Jackson Darenbrook was the opportunity to do just that.

  For more than a year after learning about Jack’s infidelities Cassy had felt frozen inside. She could see now that it had been a period of grieving, mourning the death of what she had believed to be her new life. One night she stayed late with Langley to sit in the control room of Studio A to watch the nightly newscast. By this time Alexandra had long since broken off her engagement to Gordon and had been treading water it seemed, dating no one in particular for any length of time. That night Cassy watched Alexandra on the monitors, wondering if she could ever allow herself to think about Alexandra in that other way again. Or rather, when had she begun remembering so much of what had happened between them? The thrill and the joy, the pleasure and the comfort. She tried her best to also recall the fear, the guilt and the hurt, but it didn’t seem to be happening.

  After the newscast she had gone home to 162 Riverside, opened a bottle of wine and went next door to sit in the living room of her old apartment. She had sat there looking out at the night lights glimmering on the Hudson, much as she had done so many nights over the course of her marriage to Michael, wondering what was the matter with her, why she was not more grateful, as if the answer was out there somewhere, maybe on a passing barge or in one of the apartments on the Jersey side of the river.

  It was an incredibly romantic view from this window in particular, one that had always stirred a longing so deep inside her Cassy wondered why she had so long subjected herself to the torture of it. It never mattered how much Cassy longed for anything, because in the end she always did what she had been brought up to do as a wife, a mother and a professional: be true to her marital vows, care and protect her child and supplement the family’s income in an honorable way—which translated into keeping up pretenses for the child’s sake and making sure there was at least one paycheck that got to where it was supposed to go.

  Only once had Cassy looked out this window with longings she had given in to. That had been six years ago, when she had given in to the longing to be loved by Alexandra.

  Now she was back at that window, subtly horrified by the feelings that had been building. Circumstances were very different now, the consequences potentially even more disastrous on all fronts. Of all the people in the world was there no one else she could think about except Alexandra Waring?

  The subject required more wine to contemplate.

  The truth of the matter was, with the exception of Jackson, there had never been anyone else in her thoughts since Alexandra. The ferocity of those thoughts on that particular night were disturbing. The disturbance had finally given way to a quickening pulse in response to the impending danger of what she was about to do.

  She called Alexandra. At half past one in the morning. And asked if she could come over. Alexandra had said yes, not asking a single question.

  Cassy had taken a cab to The Roehampton on Central Park West. Alexandra’s hair was wet when she arrived. She had wondered if Alexandra had simply come home from West End and taken a shower to wash off the studio makeup and hair spray, or if she had taken a shower after Cassy called. The first possibility made Cassy feel as though she had no right to be there, no right to interfere with Alexandra’s life again, and the second made Cassy consider the possibility that Alexandra might be hoping she would interfere in her life again.

  She asked Alexandra for a glass of wine, which Cassy was given, and when she was finally asked what was the matter, Cassy answered, “I’m here because I would like to make love with you.”

  The shock on Alexandra’s face had made Cassy feel ashamed. Alexandra had no way of knowing that her marriage to Jackson was anything other than idyllic. And Cassy also knew she should be able to tell Alexandra up front about what, if Cassy got her wish and was taken to bed, Alexandra could expect to happen afterward. But Cassy did not have a clue. All she knew was that after trying to lock Alexandra out for so long she desperately wanted her back in. It wasn’t very honorable. It wasn’t even sane.

  She waited for Alexandra to ask about Jackson but she didn’t. She waited for Alexandra to ask her if this meant Cassy was in love with her, but she didn’t. Alexandra simply stood up and offered Cassy her hand. Cassy waited for her to state some kind of condition, but she didn’t do that, either, only led Cassy into her bedroom and, by the lights of the city, took her clothes off.

  They made love for most of the night and when Cassy sat in a ten-o’clock management meeting the next morning she could still feel the imprint of Alexandra’s mouth on her own. She managed to get through the day and felt both weak and elated when she saw Alexandra and Will come into the cafeteria in the late afternoon to join her for a cup of coffee. While they talked budget concerns the glint in Alexandra’s eye and the slight puffiness of her mouth filled Cassy with a desire so intense it frightened her. She later sat in a finance meeting with Langley and the company controller and took inventory of the sensations in her body, knowing she had better go home and pull herself together. She did leave early and went home to lie down and think about what she had done. Six and a half hours later she was back at The Roehampton, twisted in the sheets, feeling herself rising again and again, crying out because she no longer cared about anything but this.

  At five o’clock in the morning she had opened her eyes to find Alexandra watching her. She smiled that glorious smile and Cassy’s heart ached. She got scared and told Alexandra that she was. And then she started to cry while Alexandra held her. She told Alexandra everything about Jackson, what had happened and what state their marriage was in. They agreed they needed to slow things down a bit until they could get their heads fully around what was happening. They agreed not to see each other until the following week, but Cassy canceled her plans and went out with Alexandra to her farm in New Jersey to spend the weekend, and caught up on a six-year absence. By late Sunday night the exhilaration and adrenaline finally wore off, the lovemaking lost its magic and the creeping sense of doom finally caught up with them.

  Was Cassy going to divorce Jackson? Cassy needed time to think. Their marriage entailed a great many things that necessitated great care.

  Was Cassy going to tell Jackson about them? Never. She was afraid of what he might do. To Alexandra.

  Did Cassy love her? Yes, absolutely she did.

  Did Cassy want to be with her? She didn’t see how that could happen. For the time being this was all she could offer Alexandra.

  So she was supposed to be Cassy’s mistress? No (smile). Cassy would be hers.

  Dazed, exhausted and progressively more nervous with each working day at the network, the tryst lasted another two weeks before Alexandra said it was intolerable that Cassy stay in that marriage. Cassy said she wasn’t prepared to change things yet. Alexandra said then that was it, until Cassy at least separated from Jackson she couldn’t—and wouldn’t—go on like this. By that time Cassy had felt so many familial and professional pr
es sures to keep the marriage going—at the very least she would have to figure out how to replace herself at DBS—and she told Alexandra she completely understood how she felt and did not blame her in the least.

  So it ended as abruptly as it had started. However heartbroken Cassy felt, a couple of months later, when they briefly succumbed again over a long weekend, she felt a great deal better, thinking at least perhaps they could hold this pattern until Cassy felt she could make the break. They sated themselves three more times before Alexandra met the actress Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres. By that point it had become obvious that Cassy’s affair with Alexandra had dramatically and inadver-tantly improved Cassy’s relationship with her husband.

  “Jackson was regaling the newsroom this morning with tales of nonstop romance with his wife on the high seas,” Alexandra had informed her.

  The tales were true. After sailing in a race in the Caribbean, Cassy and Jackson had taken off by themselves for a couple of days, cruising in the islands, and, well, things just sort of happened.

  “So what do you think, Cassy?” Langley Peterson said.

  Cassy looked at him, drawing a blank.

  “About The Sports Gam.”

  She snapped back to the present. “The Sports Gam? Oh, the gambling show. I’d like to sleep on it, if I may.”

  “So you’re not against it,” the division head of sports said.

  “I won’t discount it until I’ve had some time to think it over,” she told them.

  When it really dawned on Cassy that Alexandra was serious, that if Cassy didn’t leave Jackson she was going to pursue a full-time relationship with the beautiful Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres, Cassy had felt dangerously near becoming unglued.

  “What do you expect me to do? Spend the rest of my life waiting for Jackson Darenbrook’s leftovers? I won’t do it, Cassy. It’s not fair, and it’s not right. Either you leave him or you let me go.”

  That night, in Alexandra’s bed, Cassy thought maybe she could leave the marriage, but in the morning they both knew she wouldn’t do it. So it was over. Really over.