Mortal Friends

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  It was true, I had been Violet’s guardian angel in school because I was on top of the world then, and my word was law. I recalled what my father once told me. He said: “If you look back on your school days as the best days of your life, it means you never really grew up. You always see the world a certain way, no matter how it really is.” Dad stopped short of saying that people who constantly reminisced about the glory days of their youth were failures, because he was not a judgmental man. But I wondered if I was somehow living in the past, hoping for those brighter days of my youth to come back in another incarnation.

  “What’s this going to do to Tee?” she said plaintively. “I can’t imagine how he’s going to take it.”

  “He’s a strong, good kid. He’ll be okay.”

  “He’ll probably blame me,” Violet said.

  Tee was closer to Grant than he was to his mother, which was another reason the affair with Cynthia hurt Violet so badly. I think she feared her son would take his father’s side.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. I was wrong. I guess I should have told you.”

  “I don’t know…. Maybe not,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d have done in your place. You did what you thought was right.”

  “I tried to, but maybe I fucked up…. Can you forgive me?”

  We stared at each other for a long, emotional moment. I think that Violet and I always saw each other the way we were when we first met. Sure, our faces had crumbled with time, but those older masks couldn’t hide our youthful souls or all the things we’d gone through together. Few things are more precious than a good friend of long acquaintance. We were like a little country of two with our own secret history. No matter what happened around us, it was important to both of us to defend that precious turf. I think we both realized this at the same moment because we spontaneously burst into tears and fell into each other’s arms, sobbing. We had a good cry, then a serious talk. Scraping the barnacles off a long friendship is a painful but necessary process that often occurs after a shipwreck.

  After we dried our tears, Violet admitted she’d hacked into Grant’s computer and found all these e-mails between him and Cynthia. Their affair had been going on at least a year, maybe more.

  “How did you get his password?” I asked her.

  “He’s so unoriginal. It’s ‘Potomac.’ Surprise, surprise.”

  Grant’s e-mails were terse and functional, obviously setting times and places of assignations, like “3:00, Rockville,” or “4:30, Days Inn.”

  Cynthia’s e-mails were more forthcoming. She wrote things like, “You are all-powerful, the master of your fate and mine,” and “I am in awe of your strength and your wisdom. What a brilliant and sensitive man you are! I am totally in your hands.” She signed hers “C.”

  I’m sure Grant believed it when she told him how marvelous he was. Either that, or he just wanted to hear it. In her e-mails, Cynthia came across as a helpless little southern belle, when in fact it was so clear to me she was the puppet mistress pulling his strings.

  Violet then pulled up the Web site for the Cynthia A. Rinehart Foundation, which Grant had bookmarked. The screen lit up with a picture of Cynthia standing in front of the Kennedy Center—an enhanced and retouched version of the one that was used for the big article on her in the Washington Post. A blue banner floated above her head with “The Cynthia A. Rinehart Foundation” written in gold letters. Off to the side was a list of information links, including “Board Members,” “Golden Key Awards,” “News and Events,” and “The Art of Dying,” a nod to the original source of her wealth. Violet clicked on the list of board members, and an impressive array of names came up with pictures and biographies. Senator Pomador headed the field. There was a large picture of the senator, a portly, white-haired man with teeth that looked like tiny tombstones. Violet was about to click on another link when we both looked at each other, and without saying a word, she shut down the computer. We’d had it.

  We went back downstairs. Maureen made us a soothing cup of tea, and we sat in the living room. Violet told me she never had a clue about the affair until she and Grant got home from the party they’d gone to last night, and he abruptly announced he was leaving her on the spot. It was so like Grant to think he could avoid unpleasantness by simply packing his bags and withdrawing.

  “I threatened to follow him and make a scene unless he told me the whole story. Soup to nuts. When he started talking, he couldn’t stop—just like some adolescent kid with a crush who needs to tell you every detail of a first date, including what he ate for dinner and the color of his socks. When he told me you’d gone to see him, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach,” she said.

  As Violet described Grant’s version of our meeting, it was easy to see why she’d gotten the impression I was on his side. He’d twisted my expressions of sympathy to make them sound like I was cheering him on. I set her straight fast and made her understand that I was only thinking of her and how I could best help her.

  I still blamed Cynthia much more than I blamed Grant. I told Violet I was sure that Cynthia had made the first move, and probably several moves after that. I pictured Grant as a granite boulder it took many pushes to dislodge. However, once he started rolling downhill, there was no stopping him. I told Violet she’d just have to make it super-tough for Grant to divorce her. It was then she admitted something to me I never knew before.

  “I can’t make it that tough. We have a prenup.” She sighed.

  “You’re kidding. You never told me that.”

  “I know. I didn’t think it was very romantic. I signed it the day of the wedding. It’s generous enough. I won’t starve.”

  I recalled the day Violet got married. The four o’clock ceremony took place in the Episcopal church on O Street. I was Violet’s matron of honor. Violet wafted down the aisle in a high-necked, old-fashioned dress studded with seed pearls, on the arm of Mr. Bolton Sr. Her own father had refused to attend when Violet forbade him to bring his gym teacher mistress. The church was packed with Grant’s friends and relatives, and a sprinkling of Violet’s pals—mainly the people she’d recently met in Washington through me.

  I remember Violet’s mother, a tense and tired-looking woman in a faded blue dress. She sat in a corner during the reception, chain-smoking and looking at her watch. She hardly spoke to a soul. Rainy Bolton was the one who had organized the wedding. The large tent on the back lawn of their sprawling house in Chevy Chase was decorated with ivy-covered columns and trellises. Everyone agreed the event was a model of understated elegance. Violet seemed so happy. Yet now I wondered if that last-minute prenuptial ambush had somehow put a crease in the ivory satin memory of that day.

  Violet sipped her tea, looking morose. “If I divorce Grant, I go back to being nobody again,” she said.

  I found this comment as sad as it was untrue.

  “You aren’t somebody just because you married Grant, you know. You’re a wonderful person, Vi. And besides, I know Grant still loves you.”

  “I have a flash for you. Grant never really loved me.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “No, hear me out. I’d only admit this to you, Rev. Grant never wanted a wife in the traditional sense. He wanted a partner in the Bolton firm. I understood that on our very first date, when all he talked about was the bank and his family and his mother. He wanted someone who was ambitious but subservient. I made myself into that person. I had Rainy pegged right off the bat. She wanted a daughter-in-law she could boss around, but one who’d reflect credit on the family as well. I was always careful to kowtow to Rainy, because I knew that Grant would never marry anyone she didn’t approve of. Rainy wants to be the star of this family, let’s face it.”

  Personally, I thought Lorraine “Rainy” Bolton was cyanide in a bun. I couldn’t stand her. She’d been a pill to me when Grant and I were dating, going out of her way to tell me that I’d have been better off “getting a real education” rather than going to design school, which s
he considered on a par with peeling a peach correctly and pouring tea. Thanks, Rainy. The Boltons didn’t really respect anyone who hadn’t been to graduate school or law school. That’s why they adored Violet, of course, because Violet was such an academic achiever. Rainy deemed Violet fit to carry the Bolton colors right from the git-go—but under her command.

  “I wonder what old Rainy will think of Cynthia,” I said.

  “I’m worried about that,” Violet said.

  “She’ll loathe her!”

  “I’m not so sure. For one thing, the Boltons consider themselves great philanthropists, and they like people who give away money.”

  “Yes, but not so ostentatiously. You never hear about the Boltons, because they do it all so privately. That’s one thing I really do respect about them. They don’t court publicity for their good works. They just donate and shut up about it.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Rainy loves publicity. She just doesn’t want to appear to love it because she thinks it’s unseemly for the family to draw attention to itself. But secretly, she wants people to find out about all the good they’ve done. Cynthia’s her golden opportunity. She’ll throw all this reflected light on the family, and Rainy will bask in it while pretending to shun it the whole time. The Boltons will be compared to Cynthia as two sides of the philanthropic coin—the ones who want credit, and the ones who don’t. And besides, Rainy’s impressed with Cynthia. She’s told me so herself.”

  “Let’s see how impressed she is when she finds out what’s happened.”

  “I hope she tells Grant he has to ditch Cynthia. She’s the only one he’ll listen to, believe me. She can be bossy.”

  Calling Rainy Bolton bossy was like calling Hurricane Katrina a squall. The woman was a steamroller. She always got her way.

  Violet hung her head. “I know Grant’s in love with Cynthia.”

  “No. He’s in lust with her. It’ll burn itself out. You watch.”

  Violet shook her head and said, “I wish I knew a hit man.”

  “Right!” I laughed.

  Violet glared at me. “I’m serious, Reven. If I could get rid of her, I would.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Not really.”

  “You don’t know me. I’d do it in a heartbeat if I knew I wouldn’t get caught. Wouldn’t you—if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?”

  I thought for a second. “No. I’m too paranoid. I still feel guilty about that comic book I stole when I was in the fourth grade.”

  “Guilt’s not my problem. My problem is, I know too much about forensics,” Violet went on. “They get you on the tiniest thing now. Have you heard of ‘touch DNA’? If I touch you like that,” she said, brushing my arm, “I leave invisible skin cells. They found them on JonBenet Ramsey’s pajamas and they matched the other unidentified fluid at the crime scene…. Oh, I wish Cynthia was a jogger so the Beltway Basher could have a shot at her.” She sighed.

  I didn’t take Violet seriously when she talked like that. But I did take this situation seriously, and Grant’s departure presented real problems for me as well. I was still working for Cynthia. I had that damn house to finish.

  “Well, I’m going to quit working for her. I have no intention of making a love nest for those two,” I said.

  “You’re the best, Rev. Thanks for being so loyal.”

  “I just have to figure out how I quit and get her to pay me the money she owes me.”

  I was thinking about this when I suddenly had a brainstorm! As I often say, there are four ways to get to know someone quickly: sleep with them, travel with them, gamble with them, and—last but not least—decorate for them. Houses can tell you more than résumés, if you know where to look.

  I flicked my eyes onto Violet’s and said three words: “Mary Lou Lindsay.”

  Violet flinched and went white as a sheet at the mention of that name. No surprise there. It was like mentioning Dr. Mengele to a concentration camp survivor. If there was one person above all who’d made Violet’s life a living hell in school, that person was Mary Lou Lindsay.

  Let’s face it, hate for hate’s sake is a fact of school life. It happened quite a lot at Wheelock, where we were all sequestered for long periods of time without a break. One girl would take a hate on another for no apparent reason. Mary Lou Lindsay was our class hater-in-chief. She was a porky, egregious bully with dung-colored hair and eyes like smoke. She ruled a faction of girls who found her bossy ways and scary gift for mimicry charismatic. She took a hate on Violet the minute Violet arrived in our sophomore year. To the other girls, Violet was just a weirdo they teased whenever she crossed their path. To Mary Lou Lindsay, Violet was a victim to be hunted down in corridors, classrooms, and stairwells, and tortured with taunts and pranks and worse.

  True, Violet was quirky and unattractive in those days, which made her an easy target. But Mary Lou’s hatred was shimmering—almost sexual in its intensity. She made Violet’s life utterly miserable, playing every sort of rotten trick on her, including setting fire to her bed. Complaints to the authorities only made matters worse. Mary Lou was crafty. She could never be blamed for the acts she perpetrated. Like some Mafia don, she often ordered other people to do her dirty work for her.

  Finally, it got so bad I took matters into my own hands. I disliked Mary Lou, but I purposely befriended her in order to gain her confidence. She was suspicious at first because I was so close to Violet. Mary Lou and I were biology lab partners, and when we were dissecting a pig, I made some crack about Violet looking like the pig, knowing that meanness was the way to Mary Lou’s heart. I pretended to be sick of Violet and purposely shunned her to hang out with Mary Lou.

  Mary Lou was thrilled to be my friend, because everyone wanted to be my friend in those days. She was anxious to impress me. She liked to brag that she could drink any man under the table and that she knew enough about mixing drinks to be a bartender. I then discovered that she had a bottle of gin hidden in her locker—information I promptly shared with the proper authorities. Mary Lou was expelled.

  People were surprised at how upset she was at being kicked out. Her tough-girl facade crumbled. She ranted and raved that her life was over. She pleaded with the headmaster to give her another chance, saying that her parents had sacrificed so much to send her to a private school and how it meant so much to them that she go to a decent college. Strangely enough, she didn’t blame me. She blamed Violet. I figured that was because Violet had been the object of her irrational hatred all along. Old hatreds die hard. I remember her screaming at the top of her lungs down the corridor: “You’re gonna pay for this, Violet McCloud! One day you’re gonna pay!”

  Mary Lou left Wheelock, never to be heard from again.

  I figured we had another Mary Lou Lindsay on our hands in the person of Cynthia Rinehart, who had set fire to Violet’s bed in the metaphorical sense by sleeping with Grant. I told Violet that instead of quitting the job, the thing for me to do was to keep on working for Cynthia to try and uncover something bad about her, something that would put Grant off.

  “He likes her now because of the sex and because he thinks she’s such a hot shit around town. But what if he found out something horrible about her? He’d leave her in a flash.”

  We both knew that Grant was a priggish coward at heart, and that ultimately the most important things in life to him were his reputation and the reputation of his family. One of the main reasons he married Violet was because she’d been so squeaky-clean in all areas.

  Violet seemed frozen as I shared my brainstorm with her. I asked her if she was okay.

  “I was just thinking about Mary Lou Lindsay,” she said, her gaze drifting downward. Clearly, neither one of us had forgotten the pains and glories of our early school years. Those memories were etched in our psyches as deeply as a first love affair.

  I finally convinced her to see the wisdom of my plan. We called it “Operation Mary Lou Lindsay.”

  When I thought we’d covered everything, and Violet was feeling better,
I started telling her about Bob. She listened to my concerns about him, and my feeling that he was distancing himself from me.

  “I still haven’t heard from him, you know, and it’s been almost a week. Of course, he did give me the bracelet,” I said, trying to buoy my spirits. “I shouldn’t forget that, should I?”

  Violet just looked at me. “You know what your problem is, Reven? You’re forty, and you still feel like you’re eighteen. When I was eighteen, I felt like I was forty. I never expected life to be anything but hard, whereas you were always shocked when things didn’t go exactly your way. You’re still looking for some Prince Charming to come and save you from your own existence.”

  “That’s harsh,” I said, hurt.

  “No. What’s harsh is to marry the prince and have him turn into a total toad. Why do you think Princess Diana captured the imagination of the entire world—because she cared about land mines? She married a land mine. So did I.”

  I disagreed with her about Prince Charles, but I didn’t feel this was the moment to mention it. I guess there are times when you have to be there for a friend and not immediately expect reciprocation, irritating as that may be. So I forgave her. I was relieved that everything was out in the open between me and Violet at last. Secrets corrode relationships.

  It just goes to show you how personal history repeats itself, and how the covert actions of one’s youth can become the models of maturity. In a way, Violet and I were right back where we started from: two schoolgirl conspirators angling to bring down a bully.

  Violet left Washington the next day. She said she was going up to the Millbrook School to break the news to Tee in person. But I figured she just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. It was going to be interesting to see what the adolescent boy made of all this sexual mischief and betrayal. I wondered what he would think of Cynthia.