Mortal Friends

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Violet McCloud showed up at Wheelock in our sophomore year. She was from Natick, Massachusetts, a town whose great claim to fame at the time was that it was the home of Tampax. Needless to say, compared to Natick, New York was the clear winner in the cosmopolitan sweepstakes. Violet was a very odd girl, which is probably why they stuck us together as roommates, because I was so popular and she was such a geek. They thought I’d help her along. And they were right.

  Violet was smart as a whip, but clumsy—one of those girls who’s either tripping over her own feet or getting under yours all the time. Her thick mole-colored hair looked as if someone had put a bowl over her head and cut around it. Her face was pudgy and very pale, but her eyes were sharp and blue, like two sapphires stuck in the middle of a tapioca pudding. When she first arrived at school, she was very unhappy and gloomy, and she cried all the time. I called her “my little rain McCloud.” She made no effort to fit in, and our classmates roundly shunned her. I didn’t much like her either at first, and I was pissed off at the school for sticking me with her.

  However, I soon discovered that Violet had this wonderfully macabre sense of humor, which I really appreciated, even if others didn’t. She had honed the art of amusingly gruesome conversation, and she could really make me laugh. Despite her flaccid appearance, she was sharp as a tack, and she never missed a trick. I learned that her quirky personality had a lot to do with all her problems at home. She told me her father had left her mom for a gym teacher half his age who worked in the local high school. Violet was wounded and mortified by the whole situation, which is why she never invited anyone home with her on vacations and also why she hated to go home herself.

  God help me, I always love an underdog, so I insisted she be included in the cool group of girls, of which I, of course, was the undisputed leader. Everyone understood that if you were mean to Violet, you had to deal with me.

  Throughout our three years at Wheelock, Violet and I became inseparable. People would see us walking together and say, “There goes Reven and her handmaiden.” We looked like a champagne flute and a Toby jug. Then I went off to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design to study art and interior design. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew it would definitely be something creative and probably earth-shattering. Violet applied to five colleges but only got into one: DePaul University in Chicago. The day of our graduation from Wheelock, I think it’s safe to say that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including my own, that I would sail through life and Violet would sink like a stone.

  But something happened. Or didn’t happen, as the case may be. With so many possibilities open to me, I found it hard to choose one particular path or one particular person—if you don’t count my brief marriage to a painter, which ended in a quick divorce. Just when I got a foothold somewhere, I balked, thinking something or someone better would come along. I drifted along under the mistaken impression that my youth and beauty would never end, and that I would succeed in life just because everyone said I would. I felt entitled to great things, whereas Violet was always astonished when anything good happened to her. She beavered away, one step at a time, forging a path that was actually leading somewhere. I was just going with the flow, as we used to say.

  Even though we lost touch for a few years after graduation, I always knew what Violet was up to because of the long and detailed entries she sent in to Passages, Wheelock’s alumnae bulletin. No one wrote in to our “Class Notes” more frequently than Violet. And no one had more positive news. It was almost as if she wanted to make up for her rank unpopularity by showing everyone there was indeed life after boarding school.

  I followed Violet’s career—from her graduation magna cum laude from DePaul University, to the University of Southern California Law School, to her pro bono stint on the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma, to her move to Washington, D.C., as an environmental lobbyist on Capitol Hill, with interest and, I have to say, hefty amounts of incredulity. I never thought that Violet, a moody, mousy girl, had it in her to do so unbelievably well—and honestly, much better than yours truly.

  I was the one who had a series of unsuccessful careers tethered to a string of ghastly boyfriends and one brief marriage, while Violet not only distinguished herself on the work front but managed to snag Thomas Grant Bolton Jr., the handsome and wealthy heir to the Potomac Bank, thus becoming a young grande dame of Washington. The irony was that I actually introduced her to Grant, who was an old beau of mine. Violet now had a family and a settled life, while I was divorced and childless. My biological clock, once ticking like a time bomb, lay unexploded in the dust of failed relationships. Go figure.

  I like to think that I haven’t changed all that much since our school days. I’m still a tall, willowy clotheshorse with long legs, an ample bust, and a luxurious fizz of golden hair. (Okay, I dye it.) But Violet is vastly improved. When she first came to Washington and looked me up, I almost didn’t recognize her. She’d completely transformed herself from the pudgy, mousy girl I’d defended all through boarding school. She was actually good-looking, if a tad overdone for D.C. She’d lost weight and made the most of her body through exercise. Her sharp sapphire eyes were no longer mired in a pudding face, but the most striking feature of a slim and very attractive woman. Plus, her quirky personality lent a certain charm to her face, so that the more you got to know her, the better looking she became.

  Though Violet was working as an environmental lobbyist, she didn’t know many people. I introduced her to my friends. After she met Grant, she was desperate to fit in. Her clothes left a lot to be desired. She had this one brown suit with green flecks in it that made her look like a diseased tree frog. I introduced her to Lisa, a personal shopper at Saks, who refined her look. I also took her to Ury’s Hair Salon, where Sara, a great stylist, reshaped and colored her hair. Violet adapted to her surroundings with astonishing speed and compliance. She was a quick study. I watched her assemble her new image, piece by piece, imitating the style of people she admired and taking the advice of those she respected—mainly me. I had her looking like an appropriately elegant Washingtonian in a matter of weeks.

  Still, the ongoing mystery to me, of course, was how Violet had done so well for herself while all my natural looks and sparkle had failed to secure me a better perch in life. It slightly irritated me when she went on and on about Grant and what a wonderful husband he was. I sometimes wondered if I hadn’t made the biggest mistake of my life by not grabbing him for myself when I had the chance. But Grant just wasn’t my type.

  I’d grown up around boys like Grant Bolton Jr.—stiff scions of privilege who felt burdened by their wealth and were constantly trying to overcome the improbable hardship of too many advantages. He was a workaholic even way back then, desperate to prove himself on his own and show the world he wasn’t simply another rich man’s son, but a contender in his own right. Grant was too boring for me in those days, too much of a WASP, too uptight, and too repressed. I was looking for someone much more exciting and interesting, an uninhibited lover with a wild sense of adventure and a streak of glamour—a shit, in other words.

  I could hardly believe it when Violet and Grant fell in love, even though I was the one who fixed them up. It was the most tepid, uninteresting courtship you could ever imagine. The only real sparks came from Violet’s determination to get Grant. I was there. I saw that steely one-track mind of hers steaming toward him like smokestack lightning.

  You want my honest opinion? I believe the main reason Grant married Violet when he could have had his pick of artful beauties was because she was simply so determined to get him. I watched her tailor herself to fit his needs as well as the needs of his family. I marveled at how quickly she understood that Grant wanted a wife who would not outshine him as his heritage had always done, but who would also complement that heritage by fitting neatly into the Bolton clan and advancing its interests. Knowing how much Grant valued his parents’ opinion, Violet also courted them almost as skillfully as she courte
d Grant—particularly his mother, Lorraine “Rainy” Bolton. Grant always wanted to please his parents, daunting as that task often was.

  The fact that Rainy Bolton liked Violet right off the bat was a huge plus. Rainy considered herself an infallible judge of character. She was renowned for her snap judgments about people. Her word was law to Grant, who once said to me, in all seriousness, “Mother can’t admit she’s wrong, therefore she never is.”

  Violet knew how to be deferential without appearing sycophantic. Rainy loved it that Violet was so community spirited, yet she didn’t put herself forward in any way. In Rainy’s eyes, it was important for her son to marry a substantial person, but definitely not “a show horse,” as Rainy termed people who flaunted their accomplishments. Rainy was the star of the Bolton family, and she was determined to remain so. Rainy didn’t like me on sight, and she immediately took to Violet. Grant, eager to please his mother, took to Violet too. His mother’s approval may have been the decisive factor in his decision to marry her.

  Back in the day, I never could have imagined that my handmaiden in boarding school would become my queen in real life. Our roles had totally reversed. I sometimes think that had fate been kinder, or had I been less picky, I, not Violet, would be Mrs. Grant Bolton now. But fate had other plans for me, and as my divorce lawyer used to say, “You must start from where you are, not from where you wish you could be.” And right now, I was in debt and hoping for a phone call from a man I knew to be Lothario incarnate. Not the greatest place in the world—but not the worst.

  Chapter 7

  Later that week, Violet came into the shop with Cynthia Rinehart in tow. It kind of irked me to see them so palsy-walsy together, but I understood that Violet had a weakness for celebrities, and Cynthia was definitely the celebrity du jour. Celebrity or not, however, Cynthia seemed to understand that Violet was socially influential, a good person to cultivate if you wanted to break into the older, more permanent social circles of Washington, which included most of the city’s big philanthropists.

  I figured the two of them had come in to browse around, but in fact they’d come with a definite purpose in mind. Violet proudly announced to me that Cynthia had just bought Gay Harding’s old house. I was stunned.

  The late Gay Harding, heiress, philanthropist, and kingmaker, was the last of Washington’s great grande dames. Her locally televised funeral at the National Cathedral some years back was tantamount to a state occasion. Set back on six acres of prime real estate on R Street, her house had been sold to a dot-com billionaire from Virginia who never moved in. It had been discreetly on the market for the unheard-of sum of fifteen million dollars for a couple of years now. This purchase was clearly part of the tsunami Cynthia was riding into Washington.

  I congratulated Cynthia and told her how much I loved that house. At which point, Cynthia asked me if I wanted to decorate it for her.

  “Violet says you’re the best,” Cynthia said. “And that’s good enough for me. You interested?”

  This was like asking a starving person if they’d be interested in a banquet. Violet knew all about my financial woes, of course. She’d offered to help me on several occasions, but I wouldn’t hear of it. The “neither a borrower nor a lender be” credo had been drummed into me since childhood by my parents. However, Violet knew full well that a big decorating job like this was the answer to all my debts, and I was grateful she’d strongly recommended me to Cynthia. Violet was truly my best friend.

  “I’m interested,” I said brightly.

  I’d only taken a couple of decorating jobs since opening my shop, because I just didn’t have the time. Neither was as major as this one, but they’d both turned out extremely well. The clients were pleased, plus I’d managed to make some extra money because I was able to furnish the jobs with some of my own stock. Monetary benefits aside, however, I knew it would be fun to redo Mrs. Harding’s old house, not to mention a big feather in my cap.

  We all agreed to meet at the house that afternoon. As Cynthia browsed around the shop, Violet took me aside and asked me if I’d heard from Bob Poll. When I told her I hadn’t, she said that she and Grant had taken a table for the PEN/Faulkner evening at the Folger on Friday night. She suggested I call Bob and ask him if he wanted to be my date.

  “Sometimes you have to give these guys a little push,” she said.

  Call me old-fashioned, but I never think it’s a good idea to call a man when he hasn’t called you first. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done it, of course. I rationalized calling Bob by remembering he’d sent me those roses. He seemed to enjoy the company of social heavy hitters, and the Boltons certainly qualified as such. I knew that Grant would put together a good table, with a sprinkling of political luminaries as well. I bit the bullet and called Bob’s office, since his home number was unlisted. I was put through to his secretary, an officious-sounding woman who clearly thought of herself as Cerberus at the gate. When I asked to speak to Bob, she asked me who I was, why I was calling, if “Mr. Poll” knew me, and so on. I answered her questions politely and issued my invitation. She said that she was sure that Mr. Poll had “something on his calendar that night,” but that she would “pass along” my request. She asked for my telephone number and my e-mail address, “just in case Mr. Poll doesn’t have them.”

  I told Rosina what I’d done. Naturally, she thought it was a bad idea. “You should always wait for a man to call you. Otherwise you set a bad pattern.”

  I didn’t really disagree with her, but I had to defend my action. We were arguing back and forth about the merits of women making the first move when the phone rang. It was Bob’s secretary, Felicity, as she introduced herself. She informed me that “Mr. Poll would be pleased” to attend the dinner with me and that he would “have his chauffeur” pick me up at my house at six thirty sharp on Friday evening. They had the address.

  “See how fast he got back to me,” I said to Rosina after I hung up.

  “He didn’t. His secretary did. Not a good sign.”

  Rosina was like a freaking soothsayer. Still, I was pleased.

  As I walked over to Gay Harding’s house that afternoon, I wondered if Cynthia was aware that Violet had her own little history with that property. Right after Mrs. Harding died going on ten years ago, her heirs put the house on the market. Grant and Violet wanted to buy it. But Rainy Bolton had been a great friend of Mrs. Harding’s, and for some reason she considered it unseemly for her son to own such a well-known property. She famously proclaimed: “That house will always be Gay Harding’s house, no matter who owns it.”

  At the time, Violet suspected that her mother-in-law was just jealous and didn’t want her son to have a grander house than she did. But Violet saw this as an opportunity to further ingratiate herself with the Boltons, so she sided with them against Grant, which I thought was a big error. Violet explained she had her reasons, however, and I have to say it was impressive watching Violet tell Rainy that she too didn’t think it was appropriate for her and Grant to own Gay Harding’s house, when all the while I knew she coveted that house more than anything in the world. Violet was a master at not letting her true feelings show.

  Grant got back at Violet years later after the house came on the market again for fifteen million dollars and he refused to buy it for her, even though she begged him to and even though he loved it too. By that time Rainy’s opinion didn’t matter to her so much.

  Grant told Violet, “Yes, I love it. Yes, I want it. And yes, I can afford it. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay fifteen million dollars for a house I could once have bought for six.”

  The Harding house sat in the middle of a big wooded lot on the corner of Twenty-ninth and R, directly across the street from the old Oak Hill Cemetery and Montrose Park. I arrived first, and believe me, I checked to make sure no one was lurking around in the bushes. It was impossible to forget that a murder had occurred very recently and very nearby—practically across the street. The four-story limestone was in pretty bad s
hape. Withering ivy had clawed its way over most of the facade, and untended bushes mushroomed throughout the grounds.

  Gay Harding had been a friend of my parents. Gay and my mother always stayed in touch, even when my parents moved back home to New York. When Gay heard that I’d moved to Washington, she invited me to several of her parties. At first the high-powered company terrified me, and I felt very out of place. But Gay made me feel right at home. In fact, it was at her house that I first met Grant Bolton and his parents. I don’t know if she’d purposely wanted to fix us up, but Grant and I did wind up having a few dates.

  I was standing on the front steps recalling those carefree days of my youth when a black stretch limo pulled into the gravel driveway. Violet and Cynthia got out. Stretch limos were not remotely Violet’s style, and we exchanged a knowing glance as she walked up to the house. Cynthia looked around the grounds like a conqueror surveying captured territory. The three of us paused in front of the door with its antique brass lion’s-head knocker while Cynthia fumbled for the key in her large crocodile bag. As she opened the door, Violet joked, “Shall we carry you over the threshold?”

  “No one carries me anywhere, honey,” Cynthia snapped. “I go places all by myself.”

  Violet and I just looked at each other. This gal had no humor. None. Nada. Zero. Zippo. But she did have this great house, which tells you something.

  It had been several years since I’d been there. The interior reeked of mildew and neglect, a sharp contrast to the delicious aroma of baking apples that had once greeted visitors in autumn. My mother told me how Mrs. Harding had ordered her chef to keep a pot of apples simmering on the stove in the fall so their delicious scent filled the air. Run-down as it was, there was still an aura of Old World grandeur about the place. We walked through to the famous living room, whose walls had once been described as “the color of burnt roses” by Folly Pritchard, another Georgetown socialite, also gone.