“I think he must have said something to her that upset her. She started drinking—”
“Oh, dear,” Carol says. “And she’s been sober now for—what? Seven years?”
“You mean she’s had a drinking problem before?”
“Oh, yes. But I thought—we all thought—”
“Well, she’s been drinking steadily ever since. Oh, she’ll pass out for a few hours, but then she’ll wake up and call for us—for Ector and me—to join her. At all hours of the day and night.”
“You don’t drink with her, I hope.”
“Oh, no. She just wants us to listen to her, and to listen to the most awful—garbage, Aunt Carol. She blames her father for all her troubles. She says her father destroyed her first marriage. She says her father destroyed her second marriage, too, to the only man she really loved—Giulio, who was the count. She says it was her father’s fault that Giulio committed suicide, because her father wouldn’t pay Giulio the alimony he wanted, and that she’d promised him in a prenuptial agreement. Wouldn’t pay because she was underage when she signed it and lied about her age on the marriage certificate.”
“I’m afraid I’ve heard all these stories before, Becka,” Carol says with a sigh.
“And Ector—poor Ector—Ector is some kind of saint, really—says we should listen to her. He says I owe it to my mother to listen to her stories. He says he wishes he’d listened to his mother when she was alive. In a funny way, I think Ector is actually in love with Mother. But I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Yesterday she came up with a really bizarre idea. She said she’d decided to adopt Ector. She said she’d even called a lawyer to draw up the necessary papers. Ector says he’s willing to go along with this, since he has no real family of his own. But, nice as Ector is, I really don’t think Mother ought to get involved that way with a man like that—do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Carol says. “I think that’s a really bad idea.”
“But, you see, I’m such a stranger in this family—such an outsider, really—that I don’t really feel I’m in a position to say things like that to her. I mean, she’s my mother, but she’s also a person I hardly know at all. But she says she always wanted two children, a daughter and a son. She told us that after she divorced Giulio, she discovered she was pregnant with his child. The pregnancy was aborted, but the fetus was male. She says that it’s as if Ector was sent to her by his escort service to replace her baby boy. I mean—craziness! But how can I tell my mother she’s crazy?”
“It’s the drinking,” Carol says. “Whenever she drank, she used to get very—grandiose.”
“How rich is she, Aunt Carol?”
“She has a trust fund, from which she gets an income. I really don’t know how much that income is, but I imagine it’s—considerable.”
“She has enough to be able to afford to fly off on these crazy tangents, then. But this morning she had an even crazier suggestion. She wants Ector and me to get married! She says we should get married, and then we could live with her and take care of her for the rest of her life. I honestly think Ector would go along with this. Of course, I told him it was out of the question. All I want to do is get out of here!”
“Where is she right now?”
“Passed out in her bedroom. That’s why I took this opportunity to call you.”
“Maybe you should take this opportunity to get out of there, Becka. Make your escape.”
“But she says she’ll kill herself if I leave. Ector thinks she’s serious. Do you think she is?”
Carol hesitates. “Well, yes,” she says at last. “She might be.”
“She’s threatened suicide before?”
“Yes.”
“Tried it?”
“Once. No, twice, that I know about.”
“So you see, Ector is right! I can’t leave my mother, Aunt Carol, if she might try to hurt herself. Even though I hardly know her, I can’t leave if she might try something like that. After all, she is my mother.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“But I have a life of my own on the West Coast. I can’t just stay here forever. Aunt Carol, do you suppose if you came over, you could talk to her? I know she likes you.”
“Not if she’s been drinking, I can’t. It wouldn’t do any good. You’ve got to catch her when she’s sober. That’s the only way.”
“Perhaps—when she wakes up?”
“I have a twelve-thirty lunch. Then I have to drive to Connecticut. I’m having some problems with my own mother, at her nursing home. They telephoned this morning and asked me to come up.”
“What about my Grandmother Liebling? Would she be able to help?”
“That,” Carol says firmly, “I would not recommend. Ruth’s relationship with her mother has always been very fragile, to say the least. As you may have noticed at dinner at my house the other night. Bringing Hannah in on this could only make matters worse.”
“Is there anyone else? Does Mother have any friends? Is there anybody who—”
“Tell you what,” Carol says. “My husband’s been away all week, but he’ll be home tonight, though it probably won’t be until quite late. He’s always been able to handle his sister better than anyone else. In fact, he’s always been able to handle everybody in this family better than anyone else. I’ll speak to him about this when he gets home and see what he suggests.”
“Well, perhaps,” Becka says doubtfully. “But I think Mother’s a little angry at your husband right now.”
“Angry at Noah? Why?”
“She didn’t say. But the other night she called him a—well, never mind what she called him.”
“That was probably just the drink talking. Noah will know how to handle it. If you can stick it out for a few more days, Becka, I’m sure Noah will come up with something.”
“Well … all right,” she says.
“And in the meantime, if you can catch your mother in a sober moment, ask her to describe the twelve steps in her program. Ask her to recite the little Serenity Prayer. And ask her for the name of her sponsor in A.A., if she has one, and try to get her to call that person.”
“You have a beautiful apartment, Mrs. Van Degan,” Anne is saying.
“Thank you, dear.” Georgette Van Degan unbuttons her fisher jacket. “Here, let me hang up your coat.”
Anne steps to the stairwell that curves upward from the entrance foyer, and looks up at two blood-red vases, each of which stands in a recessed niche of its own in the stairwell, lighted by hidden spots. “Oh, look!” she says. “Lang Yao sang-de-boeuf. Late seventeenth century?”
“I see you know a thing or two about porcelains, dear,” Georgette says.
“My mother,” Anne says. “It’s something of a hobby of hers. She has books and books on the subject.”
“It’s very rare to find a pair,” Georgette says. “In fact, these two are the only pair in existence, as far as we know. I had my architect create those niches just for them.”
“Beautiful,” Anne says, and steps up the stairs for a closer look.
“Don’t touch them!” Georgette says a little sharply.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, Mrs. Van Degan.”
“I don’t even let my maids dust them. I do that myself.”
“They’re signed, of course.”
“Of course. And by the same potter, which makes them so rare. Now, shall we see what friend cook has fixed for our lunch?” She leads the way down the long gallery, where more porcelains are displayed in vitrines and lighted cases, toward the dining room. “The collection was started by my husband’s grandfather,” she says.
“These pieces should be in a museum, Mrs. Van Degan. Look—that’s a Sung bowl, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Tenth century. Nine-sixty A.D., actually. Some of this may end up in a museum, if your mother plays her cards right.”
“Nine-sixty! The very beginning of the Sung period. Just think, that bowl is over a thousand years old.…”
“Uh-huh. Sit down, dear. Oh, yum-yum. She’s fixed her famous watercress soup. Now, let’s talk about our party, dear,” she says, picking up her spoon. “It’s not going to be just the party of the year, or even the party of the decade. I’m talking up this party as the party of the century, since the twentieth century is beginning to wind down. Roxy Rhinelander has agreed to give us a double spread in the News, with lots of photographs, of course, and so we’ve got to make sure we give a party that won’t let Roxy down. Now, I realize, dear, that you haven’t done as much entertaining as I have, and so there’s one thing you need to remember. It doesn’t matter what you serve for food. It doesn’t matter who does the music. It doesn’t matter what you do with flowers, with the decor, with the waiters’ uniforms, or anything else. What matters is the guest list. Everything else can be the best, the most expensive you can buy, but if you don’t have an important guest list, you’re dead in the water. So that’s what we’ve got to make sure we have—an absolutely drop-dead guest list. People who are now. People who are on the cutting edge. People who people are talking about—like your friend Bill Luckman, for instance. People who are today. We can’t afford to have any of yesterday’s people. To get a guest list like that, one has to be absolutely ruthless. One has to slash, slash, slash. To get a guest list like the one we want, friendships have nothing to do with it. That’s what I want to talk with you about today.”
“Sure,” Anne says, lifting her spoon from the array of silver.
“Your friend Melody Roberts.”
“Richards,” Anne says. “She’s my best friend.”
“Yes. Well, she’s our first casualty, I’m afraid. She winds up on the cutting-room floor.”
“But I couldn’t have a party without Melody, Mrs. Van Degan!”
“Well, you’re going to have to. As I said, friendships just can’t count in something as important as this.”
“But Melody’s my roommate, Mrs. Van Degan. She’s my roommate and my muse! She’d be terribly hurt if I didn’t ask her.”
“Then she’ll just have to be hurt,” Georgette says, reaching for a thin round of Melba toast. “She just won’t do, dear. I’ve done a little research on her family. Her people are nobody. It’s not just that they don’t have any money, and she probably couldn’t afford the right kind of dress to begin with. Her people have no style. Her father has some sort of minor job with the State Department. I looked him up in both Who’s Who and the Social Register, and he isn’t in either, so you see they can’t be anybody. They have no social value, and no publicity value, and we want a drop-dead guest list. And then, of course, there’s the fact that your friend is having an affair with your father.…”
She drops her spoon in her saucer. “With my father?”
“Which makes her a rather—well, inappropriate guest at our party, don’t you think? I mean, people would giggle. People would laugh at us, and that’s the last thing we want, isn’t it?”
“You’re saying Melody is having an affair with my father?”
Georgette looks at her from across the table, her soup spoon poised in midair. “You mean you didn’t know?” she says. “Oh, dear, I thought surely you knew. Everybody else does. She’s with him right now in Atlantic City, in fact. I gather it’s been going on for some time.”
“My father would never—”
“Now, you mustn’t blame your father, dear. All men do this when they reach your father’s age. It’s called male midlife crisis, or something like that. My husband went through it years ago. He wanted a younger woman, and that was yours truly. But I held out for this,” and she taps and twirls the big diamond solitaire on her ring finger, which has several more diamond guard rings surrounding it. “Forty carats,” she says. “And we’re not talking West Forty-seventh Street, honey. We’re talking Van Cleef and Arpels.”
“Mrs. Van Degan, I just can’t believe this.” Tears are welling in her eyes. “It just can’t—it just can’t be true.”
“What can’t be true? Oh, you mean about your father and your friend? Well, it’s the truth, so you can see why we simply cannot invite her, can’t you? Your darling friend Bill Luckman is the one who told me, when I called him to make sure he saves the party date, and thank God he did! He wanted to spare us the embarrassment of including her on the list. He says she’s just a smart little cookie who knows the ropes, and who’d probably go to bed with anything in pants, particularly if he was rich. Why, Bill Luckman told me that she even tried to put the make on him—can you imagine? So you can see what kind of a friend she is of yours—a girl who’s not only shacking up with your father, but also making a pass at your new best beau! So, if you want to blame somebody, you mustn’t blame your poor father. Blame her. Why, honey, you’ve hardly touched your soup!”
“I think—I think I’m going to be sick,” Anne says.
18
Hannah’s Way
The newly installed automatic elevators at 1000 Park Avenue have turned out to be something of a mixed blessing to the tenants of the co-op. Yes, they are faster. And, as the members of the building’s board pointed out at the meeting, by eliminating six full-time and three part-time elevator men—a vanishing breed to begin with—the building should have been able to trim its payroll considerably.
But then the building’s three full-time and two parttime doormen complained, and their union backed them up, that they deserved higher wages, since now the major responsibility for the building’s security rested with them. Also, the doormen pointed out, if a single on-duty doorman happened to be out in the street, trying to flag a cab for a tenant, it would be possible for anyone to walk into the building from the street unchallenged, and then into the elevators and up into the apartments. The doormen demanded backup men in the entrance lobby. And so in the end, with this new personnel, and with the cost of the new elevator cabs factored in, everybody’s maintenance charges went up anyway.
Now two women, one older, and one younger, enter the south elevator car together, press the buttons for their respective floors, and the elevator doors slide closed. The elevator starts upward smoothly enough, but suddenly there is a little jerk, and a little bump, and the car stops abruptly. Both women press their buttons again, and when nothing happens they look at each other.
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere between nine and ten, I think.”
“These are brand-new elevators.”
“Yes, I know.”
“There should be an alarm button.”
The younger woman finds it and presses it. But no alarm sounds, and the elevator remains at a standstill. Both women laugh nervously.
“Is there a telephone in that little box on the panel there?”
The older woman opens it and lifts the receiver, jiggling the hook up and down. “It doesn’t seem to be working, does it?”
“Well!”
“Well!”
“Maybe there’s been a power outage, do you think?”
“But the lights are still on.”
“You’re right.”
“Well.”
“Well.”
“Here we are.”
“I’m sure someone will notice this sooner or later, won’t they?”
“Oh, I’m sure. And I’m sure there’s plenty of oxygen in here for us. Isn’t there?”
“Oh, I’m sure. These things are ventilated, aren’t they?”
“I’m sure they are. I wonder where the ventilation comes from, though.”
They laugh nervously again. “The main thing is not to panic.”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you live in this building?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“Should we try—screaming, or something?”
“I don’t know. That might use up too much oxygen. Because, frankly, I don’t see where any ventilation could be coming from, do you?”
“No.”
“So. Let’s just stay put until someone notices that this elevator�
�s out of order.”
“Yes.”
There are little benches in the corners of the car, and each woman takes a seat on one of these daintily padded triangles.
Silence.
Then the younger woman says, “Since we may be here for a while, we might as well introduce ourselves. I’m—”
“As it happens, I know who you are,” the older woman says. “You’re Carol Liebling. My name is Bathsheba Sachs.”
“Oh,” Carol says.
“I’m on my way up to have lunch with Cyril.”
“And I’m on my way up to have lunch with Hannah.”
“What an odd place for us to finally meet,” Bathy says.
“There’s not much we can do about it, is there?” Carol says.
“No.”
There is a little silence, and then Carol says, “Of course, I’ve heard a lot about you, Miss Sachs.”
“I’m sure. And not all of it good, I’m also sure.”
“Yes, I must admit that’s true.”
“And please call me Bathy. Everybody does. Or Aunt Bathy. We don’t have to be friends, but it wouldn’t hurt us to be friendly, would it?”
“No. I quite agree.”
“I know how Noah resents me, and I know perfectly well why. And I imagine you do, too.”
“Yes, I do, Bathy. Noah told me all about it years ago. You sent him a Christmas card. He tore it up.”
“I was his father’s mistress. For quite a few years. One morning he arrived at Grandmont from college unexpectedly—he’d been booted out, in fact, after that motorcycling escapade—and he came into a room where he found his father and me in—well, let’s just say he found us in a situation that would have been difficult to misinterpret. He never spoke to me again.”
“I know. Noah told me all that.”
“I’m sorry he feels that way. I was always very fond of Noah. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. One can’t undo one’s past.”
“No, but you see the thing is, Bathy, that Hannah has no idea why he feels the way he does about you. He doesn’t feel up to telling her, and I certainly don’t think it’s my place to tell her.”
Bathy’s eyebrows go up. “Really?” she says. “Hannah told you that? That she has no idea why Noah resents me?”
The Wrong Kind of Money Page 40
