Well Bred and Dead

by Catherine O'Connell

  “Well, if they do, I’d like to help out monetarily,” she said, taking me by surprise. “And if you need any other help, I’m available for that too. Like sorting out his things. I did that when my mother died, and I know it’s a lonely job.”

  “That’s a really lovely gesture, Whitney,” I replied, thinking of the time Ethan had compared her table manners to those of a third-world refugee. I wondered if it would be fitting to accept her money. “I had no idea you and Ethan were so close.”

  Her expression fell as if I had told her to go to the devil. “Ethan and I had a closer relationship than most people knew.” Then in the next moment she was carving out a perfect white-toothed smile. “Promise you’ll call me if I can do anything.”

  I was still at a loss as to why she wanted to be so helpful. Funerals were expensive and cleaning out his apartment would be an unpleasant task at best. And then it dawned on me. Perhaps she was more interested in me than in Ethan. After all, despite her lofty marriage, Whitney was still for the most part an outsider. I had true societal standing, and with Ethan gone, I was available for friendship.

  “I promise to call you, Whitney,” I said, looking up at that moment to see Sunny heading toward the door. I quickly excused myself and ran across the room like a madwoman to catch the traitorous wretch before she got away.

  “I have some bones to pick with you,” I said, standing her down in the deserted restaurant doorway, blocking her exit.

  “What is it, Pauline?”

  “First off, why did you invite Connie Chan to lunch?”

  She turned defensive. “Connie called me this morning and asked if she could join us for a feature article she’s working on. I didn’t see any harm in it.”

  “I found it to be in incredibly bad taste, seeing how the main topic at lunch was going to be Ethan, and you knew it. You know how much he hated her. And speaking of Ethan, why didn’t you tell me last night you’d already told Elsa about the birth certificates?”

  “Oh, what does it matter, Pauline? After all, he is dead,” she said defensively.

  In my anger, I let the feline in me free. “Well, I just hope it wasn’t lunch with you that put him over the edge.”

  Her pupils turned to mere pinpricks as her fury reached her eyes. I’d hit a nerve and I was glad. That is until she spewed her venom at me. “You know the more I think about it, Pauline, the more I think Ethan was a fraud. And he played us all for chumps, made fools of us—especially you. Personally, I doubt we will ever know who he was, and I don’t know that I care.” She turned her back to me and stormed off.

  I was so enraged, I did something highly undignified. I cursed aloud, referring to Sunny several times in the term applied to the ever popular female dog. When I finished with my outburst, I turned to see Whitney standing behind me, looking like a child who has interrupted her parents in the act. She smiled at me sheepishly and walked out the door.

  Despite the wind blowing off the lake, I walked the six blocks home, Sunny’s spiteful words echoing in my brain the entire way. I had an ardent desire to inflict mortal harm on her. The very gall of her to speak to me that way. And just as I had managed to touch a nerve with her, she had jabbed an even larger one in me. My mind was so filled with questions about Ethan I thought it might burst. Forget about the funeral. Was it now my job to defend his honor as well? Not to mention save my own face?

  “Damn you, Ethan,” I cursed into the wind. I resented being put into this situation. And then in an instant I decided what to do. The truth would be mine no matter what it took. I would get answers and I knew exactly where to start.

  Jeffrey fought valiantly to hold the door as the wind and I blew into the lobby, my hair swirling in great spirals above my head while my skirt floated halfway up my thighs. The moment the door closed behind me, the room stilled as though the wind had been turned off by a switch. I brushed my fallen hair off my face and tugged my skirt into place.

  “Jeffrey. It seems I need to go out of town for a few days. Would you be able to look after Fleur for me?”

  “No problem, Mrs. Cook. The same as always?”

  “Yes, a half a can of albacore tuna in the morning and a half can in the evening along with a bowl of dry cat food.”

  “Happy to do it. When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Going anyplace exciting?”

  “London,” I replied.

  7

  Flying Economy (No) Class

  The flight to Heathrow left at seven the next evening. The price of my ticket was outrageous, especially since it was in coach, but it was the best I could do at such a late date. Naturally, the cabin was jammed. Seems tout le monde wanted to experience London in the spring. I wondered how much less my fellow economy travelers had paid with their advance purchases. I squeezed into my narrow window seat and avoided eye contact with the woman in jogging attire seated beside me. Though she appeared to be nervous, the last thing I wanted was to get trapped into a transatlantic conversation with the person I would be struggling over the armrest with.

  I damned the misfortune that relegated me to the back of the plane, and pined for the days when all my travel was first-class. The sad truth was I could no longer afford to do so. My most closely guarded secret, and one shared only with Ethan and my accountant, was that my financial affairs were in a sorry state. Actually, I was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Though I still had a few assets, my portfolio had dwindled to a frightening level, one insufficient to support my lifestyle.

  Financial turmoil and insecurity have been the story of my life. My father was a strikingly handsome man with a grandiose imagination and few skills. He could handle neither his liquor nor his bank account. Mother used to say that Father made Black Jack Bouvier look like a teetotaling skinflint. Due to an inheritance, he was of modest wealth when he married my mother, but by the time I turned six he had squandered every penny on can’t-miss horses and business deals that went south. Soon after his money was gone, he divorced my mother for another woman, a very rich one I might add. Since he had no assets for Mother to lay claim to, this left us poor.

  Grandmother disapproved of my father from the very beginning. I understand now she saw through his charms. And being a DAR Episcopalian, the worst thing she could envision was her daughter marrying an Irish Catholic. She was no great fan of the Kennedy family and used to go on ad nauseam about their uncouth manners. When Mother announced her intention to marry Father, Grandmother told her in no uncertain terms she would be disinherited if she went through with the wedding. But Mother was strong-willed and did as she wished. So did Grandmother. Mother eloped and Grandmother wrote her out of the will that very same day.

  After Father left us, with no breadwinner in the picture, Mother was put in the awkward position of having to crawl to her mother for financial help. Grandmother did help us out enough to keep us fed and clothed and a roof over our heads, and to see to it that I received a proper classical education. But she begrudged Mother every penny, forcing her to endure endless I told you so’s every time she had to go begging for money. As a result, Mother went to her as seldom as possible and luxuries were in short supply. I recall the shame of wearing last season’s fashions while all my peers were dressed in the latest arrivals.

  When Grandmother died, Mother remained disinherited, with the exception of a small trust set up to see that she had enough to survive. The rest of Grandmother’s vast fortune went to my mother’s brother and his children. A lawsuit by my mother did little to change that except cost us more money and sever all relations with my uncle forever. For the rest of her life, my mother drilled it into my head that the most important thing in life is financial independence. She didn’t want to see me make the same mistake she had made. “Before you marry know his financial situation as well as his bad habits,” she said. “And make sure he loves you more than you love him,” she added, no doubt thinking of how my father had broken her heart on top of ruining her financially.

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nbsp; When I met Henry Hamilton Cook III at a party in the Hamptons, I thought I had hit the jackpot. Henry was young, well-established, and to all appearances had scads of money. We shared a love of opera, Shakespeare, Bordeaux wines, and travel. The only downside of marrying him was having to move to the Midwest, but he had a sumptuous mansion in Lake Forest and a charming summer home in Lake Geneva. When I pined for the activity of New York, he bought the East Lake Shore Drive co-op. Better yet, not only did I love him, he adored me. He lavished me with expensive gifts, Mikimoto pearls, original paintings, furs. Winters were spent skiing in St. Moritz or Aspen, and summers sailing off Palma or sunning in Cap d’Antibes.

  We had been married ten years when his behavior started to change. The once adoring man suddenly became testy and sometimes verbally abusive toward me. Then one afternoon we got into the Jaguar, and Henry realized he didn’t remember how to drive. X-rays revealed a brain tumor. It was an aggressive one, and over the next few months I watched the vital, handsome man turn to a shell before my very eyes. He died at the age of forty in Lake Forest Hospital with me sitting next to him holding his hand.

  His death bore no resemblance to the film deaths one sees where the character slowly closes his eyes and then is gone. As he lay dying, his face grew long and his mouth formed an O, like a baby bird awaiting a worm. His eyes remained fixed on me, and I told him I loved him one last time as he slipped from this world. A nurse came in to shut his eyes, passing her hands over them like a magician over a hat.

  Immediately following Henry’s death, I felt relief to think he was at peace. The relief changed to misery once the funeral was over and the vacuum of free time descended upon me. Life seemed nothing more than a string of empty days. But if I thought I felt badly then, my suffering grew worse the day I learned far more was empty than my heart. Namely, our bank accounts.

  Henry, as it turns out, had been living on the edge. He was leveraged to such an unbelievable degree, he made Donald Trump look conservative. This unpleasant state of affairs was brought to my attention when we got to probate. Throughout our entire married life, Henry never even hinted at any financial problems. Perhaps it was because he didn’t want to see himself lessened in my eyes, but I prefer to believe that his carelessness was caused by the brain tumor.

  Whatever the case, instead of finding myself a rich widow, I was faced with the harsh reality of having to sell the Lake Forest house and the Lake Geneva cottage just to pay off his debts. If they brought in enough, I could keep the East Lake Shore Drive co-op. Luckily the realtors earned their hefty commissions. Still, after all was said and done, I found myself with just slightly over a million dollars in my coffers. I cursed myself for not listening to my mother’s mantra about being aware of his financial situation, but up until Henry’s illness, everything seemed so secure.

  I understand that to many people a million dollars may sound like a great deal of money, but it truly isn’t. One must consider that even if one makes the extraordinary return of 10 percent on one’s investment, one million dollars only generates a hundred thousand dollars a year, pre-tax income. This is not much to live on when one takes into consideration a lifestyle where my suits cost well over a thousand dollars each and visits to Francesco for my hair average a hundred dollars a week. Add to this travel expenses, entertaining costs, and the high price of charity balls. This does not include housing-related expenses such as property taxes, assessments, insurance, or the cost of maintaining the car. At the end of the day, I would have sailed through the interest on my million and be forced to dip into my principal, the ultimate taboo. With Mother’s words about financial independence echoing in my ears, I concluded there were only two avenues I might take to remedy the situation. Remarry someone rich or make more money off of mine.

  Since I wasn’t feeling up to a new husband yet, I decided to invest. This is where my real trouble started. A friend told me her broker had put her in derivatives, and she said her money was doubling practically daily. This seemed like the perfect solution to my dilemma. It would certainly beat the pitiful six percent that tax-free municipals were paying.

  Rule of thumb. Whenever something sounds too good to be true, one should know that it is too good to be true. Against my broker’s advice, I insisted he buy me some derivatives. At first the returns were right in line with what I had been promised. My bottom line doubled in two years. I was delighted, drawn in by the easy money. I continued putting larger and larger chunks of my nest egg into derivatives until they finally made up the bulk of my portfolio.

  Need I say what happened next? The derivative market came crashing down. One day I was worth four million dollars, the next barely several hundred thousand. Not only was the experience devastating, but humiliating. In the end, I took what was left and put it into the tax-free municipals after all. Now, after barely making ends meet for the past few years, I was on the brink. Unless some miracle occurred, I was looking at selling my beloved residence. That’s why Detective Malloy’s joke about giving him a call if I ever wanted to sell hit so hard. He couldn’t have known how close to home he had struck. The very thought of losing my precious home broke my heart.

  One might wonder why I hadn’t gone for the marriage option. For one, I had loved Henry, and we had a good marriage, despite his leaving me destitute. And the market for available, attractive, rich husbands was slim to say the least. But there was another thing I had learned after being unmarried. I enjoyed the freedom of not answering to anyone. When I was growing up, I always had to do as Grandmother said because I couldn’t risk angering her. When I was married, though it seemed fine at the time, we always did what Henry wanted. Since his death, I had grown accustomed to making all my own choices. I took care of my own affairs, and chose my own affairs. If not for the money, I wouldn’t have traded places with any of my married friends for anything. Take Sandy St. Clair for instance. She spent her life turning her head to her husband’s infidelities. I could name countless other pawns who tolerated philandering and worse, selling themselves short for financial security and status. They answered to unreasonable demands, entertained people they didn’t care for, and put up with daunting criticism, merely because they feared poverty. Ethan once told me about a well-known Barrington woman who was beaten senseless by her extremely wealthy husband, and when the emergency room doctor asked her if she would like the police called in, she told him to mind his own business.

  Anyhow, until now I had enjoyed the freedom of the single life. But as the plane taxied down the runway and I felt its massive bulk shudder to free itself of the earth I shuddered too: at the thought of being poor. Or might I find being destitute even more liberating than being single? That I sincerely doubted.

  Though my seat mate was still indicating that she would welcome some conversation, I feigned ignorance to the signs. Foregoing the dismal airline meal, I took a Halcion, donned my eyeshades, and slept the entire way across the Atlantic.

  I awakened to the captain informing us that we would arrive at Heathrow presently and to prepare for landing. Buckled in, with my seatback in the upright and locked position, I watched the tranquility of the English countryside pass below like an enormous green patchwork quilt. The moment the wheels of the jumbo jet made contact with the runway, the people around me began to clap. I had never heard clapping on a plane before, leaving me to wonder if my fellow passengers in coach thought there was something exceptional in the captain’s performance of getting us overseas safely. Whatever the reason, it was just another sorry reminder that I was seated in the back of the plane and not in the front where I really belonged.

  After clearing customs, I phoned my dear friend Lady Charmian Grace. Though it was an indecently early hour I wasn’t worried about disturbing her. One of the staff would answer the phone if Lady Charmian was still sleeping. Happily, she was awake and took my call cheerfully.

  “Pauline,” she cooed in a clipped British accent pleasurable to the ears. “When did you arrive in London?”

 
“Just now actually,” I said. “My trip was very last minute. I wanted to call you right away, because I’m only here for a few days and I hoped to see you.”

  “See me! Please come stay with me. Where are you booked? Let me call and cancel for you.”

  “I hadn’t reserved anything. I was just now going to call over to the Connaught.”

  “Darling, they’re full. I know it. One of Lord Grace’s business associates was just turned out, a ghastly Irishman who is staying with us now because of it. But I promise to keep him out of your way. There is plenty of space for all of us. Now please do say you’ll stay with us. I wouldn’t hear otherwise.”

  “Well, how can I say no to such a gracious offer?” I replied.

  “Lovely. We’ll have to arrange for dinner tonight then. I must get on the telephone. I’m so glad we’re in the city and not off in the country. Would have been rotten luck to have missed you. How long did you say you will be staying?”

  “A few nights at the most. I have to run up to Bury St. Edmunds tomorrow and may have to spend a night up there.”

  “Bury St. Edmunds! Whatever for? Never mind, you can tell me all about it when you get here. Would you like me to send my driver out?”

  Though I would have liked to save the quid to get into the city, I didn’t want to impose on Charmian any more than I already was. Besides, there would have been quite a wait by the time the car made it through the London traffic to Heathrow. I regretted not calling ahead from the states, but my British friend could talk up a storm and I wanted to avoid a crippling international phone bill. “No, Charmian. I’ll take a taxi.”

  “I do wish you would have let me know you were coming. I would have had Maxwell meet you. Oh, well, no matter. About an hour then?”