The White Rose

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “Where’s Frieda?” Mort says, sipping his coffee and grimacing.

  “In the kitchen. I mean the command center. Doing what she does best.”

  “And why aren’t you there with her? Don’t you have a hundred things to do?”

  Sophie considers this question. Actually, she can’t think of a thing she needs to do, other than hit her marks and say her lines. And pretend to be happy. She is saving her strength for that.

  “Frieda’s good at this, Dad. You know that. She likes to expose incompetence.”

  “Oh, I know that,” says Mort. “Are we seeing Bart tonight?”

  Sophie shakes her head.

  “No? Wasn’t he coming to dinner?”

  “He was. But he canceled. He said he had too much to do at The Retreat. For tomorrow night.”

  “Ah,” Mort says. “That’s going to be splendid. So much more personal than a hotel.”

  “Inn,” Sophie corrects.

  “Still a hotel. The Retreat is going to be your home. It means more to have your family and Bart’s family meet in your home.”

  Sophie, fighting tears, nods. She looks determinedly at the fire. Then, composed, she looks at Mort. And he actually is crying.

  “Daddy,” she says, surprised.

  “No, I was just thinking how much she would have loved this.”

  Sophie says nothing. She knows who “she” is. They don’t often talk about “she.”

  “You’re going to wear the pearls? With your dress?”

  She flinches. Her mother’s pearls aren’t even here. They’re at home. At her childhood home, that is, in her old room. They’re in an old Leon Uris hardcover fitted to hide jewelry. (“Burglars,” said Frieda, who gave it to her, “are not book-minded.”) Sophie has forgotten them. Her mother’s pearls, for her own wedding. She is a terrible daughter. And she loves him so much, Sophie thinks. “Daddy…,” she begins. “Dad, I need to tell you something.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Mort puts up his hand. “It’s a fashion thing, is that it?”

  “No, that isn’t it.”

  “I’m too sentimental. And you know, I don’t even believe that stuff. There in spirit. There is no spirit. You know that, right?”

  Soundlessly, Sophie nods.

  “We’re alive, then we’re not alive. No in-betweens. Yes?”

  “Yes,” she says, one hand at her throat, as if the forgotten pearls were there.

  “It’s just that she would have loved Bart, too. She would have loved so many things about him. She loved men who acted like gentlemen.” He chuckles. “I wasn’t much of one, myself.”

  “That’s not true!” Sophie says, defending her living father to her dead mother.

  “Oh, it was true. Back then it was true. I married up, no question.”

  He looks at her.

  “My God, she loved you.”

  All semblance of control evaporates, and Sophie bursts into tears.

  “Hey!” her father says.

  “Sophie!”

  She turns, blubbering. Frieda stands at the edge of the room, phone in hand.

  “I’m okay,” Sophie says mechanically. “Is that for me?”

  “No,” Frieda says, looking at Mort. “For you.” She covers the phone with her hand. “I am not quite sure how best to handle it.”

  This statement, from Frieda, might be considered tantamount to Einstein expressing uncertainty about the theory of relativity. Sophie abruptly forgets why she is crying. “Who is it?” says Mort.

  “It’s that woman from the Ascendant,” Frieda says.

  “She’s not invited,” says Sophie.

  “Yes, but I don’t think she’s calling about that. She says it’s in reference to a story about Barton, for tomorrow’s edition.”

  Sophie frowns. “She just wrote a story about Bart.”

  “She said to me,” Frieda announces, with hostility just tempered by confusion, “that Mr. Klein will be very unhappy if he is prevented from commenting on the story, and I will want to put him on the phone.”

  All three of them contemplate this notion in silence. Then Mort stands up. “All right,” he says, holding out his hand. Frieda hands the phone to him and he puts it up to his ear. “This is Mort Klein,” he says.

  Sophie watches him. He does not move, but his face begins to tighten.

  “No,” he says curtly. “Absolutely not.”

  Frieda, for once, looks unsure of herself. This is just novel enough to distract Sophie, but only for a second.

  “That is an absurd and extremely offensive assertion,” Mort says. “Whoever is feeding you such an obvious falsehood can’t possibly be a legitimate source.”

  Sophie can hear the sound of her own breathing, open-mouthed and fast.

  “Dad?” she says.

  Mort puts up a hand.

  “Does Richard Stevenson know you’re preparing to publish such a libelous and unsubstantiated rumor? Do I need to phone him right now?”

  He doesn’t look good, Sophie thinks. She hates that he looks like this.

  “Yes, of course I’m saying it. Other than that, I wouldn’t dream of commenting. Now I need to end this conversation. I need to telephone your employer.” With a punch of his thumb he disconnects the call and then throws the phone onto the couch. All three of them stare at it.

  “Daddy,” Sophie says, mystified. “What was it?”

  “Frieda,” he says, “would you run and find me Richard Stevenson’s phone number? New York and also Sag Harbor.”

  Frieda takes the phone and walks briskly away.

  “Daddy?”

  “You’re not to worry about it,” Mort says with false nonchalance. “I’m not convinced she’s writing anything at all. She’s probably just offended not to be invited to your wedding, after claiming in her column she’d be here.”

  “Writing what, Dad?” Sophie says. “What did she say?”

  “You’re not to worry about it,” he says again, more sternly. “It’s just lies.”

  “About me?” Sophie asks, frantic.

  “No,” he says, his tone softening. “It’s not about you. It’s something about Barton. Something obviously untrue. There’s some lowlife who smells money, trying to get himself in the paper. That’s all it is, sweetheart. I’m going to call Stevenson and see if I can nip this in the bud. Good,” he says, “here is Frieda.”

  But Frieda, who has indeed returned and with the phone still in hand, is not wearing her usual expression of disapproving command. She is merely disapproving, and she looks at Sophie.

  “Your florist is on the phone. For some reason, we are not permitted to phone him back in a few minutes.”

  Mort looks at Sophie. Sophie looks at the phone in Frieda’s hand.

  “I don’t know why he won’t let me handle it. I told him I am in charge.” She speaks loudly enough to be heard on the other end of the line.

  “I’ll take it,” Sophie says, getting to her feet.

  “Why he can’t talk to me I don’t understand. He says he will speak only to the bride. I told him, the bride is busy.”

  “It’s okay, Frieda.”

  Frieda gives Sophie the phone, then goes to sit beside Mort. They are both watching her. “It’s…about the flowers,” she says lamely. The phone is warm in her palm, she notes. Oliver is in the phone. “I’ll go…I’ll go take it in the kitchen.”

  “Keep it short,” her father says. “I need to phone Richard Stevenson.”

  “Okay.” Sophie nods. She turns and walks back to the kitchen, the Oliver phone in her hand. She does not know what to say to him.

  “Sophie?” she hears, from the farthest distance.

  She puts the phone to her ear.

  “Sophie?”

  “I’m here,” Sophie says.

  “Sophie, I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”

  Days, she thinks, calculating. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That’s accurate. There was a message Tuesday night, two on Wednesday, one just this m
orning. She heard it as she lay in bed, in her apartment.

  “Sophie?”

  “I saw her,” Sophie hears herself say. “I was at the shop on Monday. I saw her. Your…the woman you’re involved with.”

  His silence tells her she isn’t wrong.

  “Sophie…”

  “No!” she says brightly. “I’m not mad. You told me. I mean, you were honest.”

  “Sophie, listen, that’s…I wanted…” His voice trails off.

  “Things are pretty busy here. With the wedding,” she says evenly.

  “No! Sophie, listen to me, it’s going to be all right.”

  She nods, as if he can see her. “Thank you for…everything, Oliver. I mean it. And I’m glad you called, because…I mean, about the flowers. Maybe, under the circumstances, I should let Millbrook Floral do this.” She hears herself actually laugh, a strained, strange sound. “Maybe they have enough poinsettias left.”

  “Sophie…,” she hears him say.

  “And Oliver, I’m sorry to be abrupt, but we’ve got kind of a crisis going on here, so I need the phone.”

  “Jesus Christ, Sophie. Will you listen to me?”

  It is the aural equivalent of a slap. She grips the phone, staring down at the legal pad on the table in front of her.

  “Sophie,” says Oliver, “I wish…I wish so much that you hadn’t seen that. But you did, and it means I’m going to have to tell you some things I didn’t want to tell you.” He pauses. She can hear him breathe. “Not right now, though. That’s not why I’m phoning you. This is about the call you just got. From Valerie Annis.”

  Sophie stiffens. She can feel rage surging through her, shooting to her extremities. “How do you know about that?” Her voice comes out hissing. “Oliver, did you have something to do with that? Did you give her this number?”

  “Don’t worry about Valerie,” Oliver says. “In a few hours she won’t have a source.”

  “What?” Sophie says, still furious but now unsteady, too.

  “Sophie,” she hears him say, “do you trust me?”

  Then the anger just leaves, gone the way it came, in a flash of heat, and she finds herself sitting there at her own kitchen table with a white plastic phone mashed to her ear, listening for his voice. She trusts him. She doesn’t want to, particularly, but she does. There seems to be no helping that.

  “Oliver?” Sophie says. “Is this for me?”

  “Yes,” says Oliver. “For you.”

  She nods to the legal pad, the kitchen table. “Okay.”

  “Go back to where your father is. Tell him you’ve just gotten off the phone with Barton, and Barton wants to meet with him. It’s very urgent.”

  She frowns at the legal pad. “Barton’s at home. He’s setting things up for the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night.”

  “No. He won’t be at home. At six-fifteen he’ll be in the Cavalier Suite at the Black Horse Inn, in Stanfordville.”

  She shakes her head, horribly confused. “No, it isn’t there. It was going to be there, but he moved it.”

  “Don’t worry about any of that,” Oliver says. “Just say it all back to me.”

  And she does, surprising herself with the flat, efficient way it comes out. Barton wants to see him. Urgent. Six-fifteen. The Black Horse Inn. Cavalier Suite.

  “One more thing, Sophie. The timing is really important. He has to get here after six-fifteen, not before.”

  It’s the “here” that wakes her up. Maybe the thought of what she doesn’t know. Maybe just the notion that he isn’t so far away, as far as she’d imagined. “Oliver?” Sophie says. “Where are you calling from?”

  He says nothing, but she can hear him there, wherever he is.

  “Are you…somewhere close?”

  “I love you,” he tells her, and then the line clicks shut.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Two Lovely Women

  Oliver sits by the phone, his head between his knees. For hours, his most pressing physical wish has been to throw up whatever lingers of his lunch at the Millbrook Diner. (STOP! TIME TO EAT! said a sign over the clock on the diner’s storefront, and Oliver, who had arrived hours in advance of his own schedule, unfortunately did just that.) Relief not forthcoming, he sits this way in his chair, listening to his own shallow breathing and willing the minutes to pass. It’s 5:30. Not long before it begins. Not long, he fervently hopes, until it ends.

  The inn is so private and lovely—every bit as “restrained” as Barton suggested—that he almost regrets bringing such a sordid pantomime to its elegant rooms. It looks, thinks Oliver, like somebody’s private country home, but so opulently maintained that it’s ready at all times in case twenty- or thirty-odd dear friends happened by, needing haven. Those friends might be elsewhere on this particular night, but unfortunately the inn is not quite so vacant as the man who took his reservation had indicated a few days before. Across the landing, with its long comfortable couch and stately chairs, a tasseled DO NOT DISTURB sign hangs from a gilded doorknob. One other traveler, then. Not ideal, but better than an inn full of wedding guests. Just stay where you are, Oliver silently instructs the occupant. Whoever you are, whatever you might hear, it’s none of your concern.

  Oliver wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and takes a final look around. The Cavalier Suite is not large, but it suits his needs perfectly. The sitting room has green striped silk on the walls, and green ticking on the armchairs flanking the fire, and even a pretty good still life above the mantelpiece. He takes a moment to assess his own still life, on the low table before him: two champagne flutes with a swallow left in each, the bottle emptied (down the sink, despite temptation) and on its side, a decimated box of Godiva chocolates. Too obvious? he worries suddenly. Too patent? Even so, this is a Norman Rockwell tableau compared to what lies behind the bedroom door, an installation worthy of the Whitney Biennial. With its once pristine sheets twisted to the ground, the bed is strewn with evidence of a variety of unwholesome acts. There are smudges of lipstick, patches of rubbed-in Vaseline, a leather belt studded with very scary metal points draped across the pillows and even a black riding crop Oliver plucked, in a moment of opportunistic improvisation, from the inn’s own stand of whips and boots just inside the front door. On the bedside table lies a half-squeezed tube of K-Y jelly, an unsubtle product placement. Reviewing it all now, his nausea returns. Oliver leans forward again and closes his eyes.

  The point, he thinks, trying to reassure himself, is that once he goes into the bathroom and changes into his clothes—into Olivia’s clothes—there should be no trace of himself, of Oliver Stern, in sight. The only reality here must be the reality of Olivia and Barton and the hours they have evidently just spent, in these rooms, in each other’s affectionate company. It is a reality of visual evidence: a billboard declaration to Mort Klein that the favored almost-son-in-law has been withholding certain critical facets of his character. This room—and the bedroom, of course—are the world Oliver has made, for the purpose of his purpose, and after the purpose has been served, the created world will dissolve before his eyes. If he is fortunate, thinks Oliver, Mort will stay just long enough to verify the content of Valerie Annis’s phone call. If he is very, very fortunate, Mort will not linger long on Barton’s correspondent, a young person of uncertain gender in a red cashmere sweater and a beige skirt. Then, after it’s over, after they have all fled, Oliver will put on his jeans and boots and sweater, make a final phone call to Valerie Annis, and disappear back into his own life. His life, he can only hope, with Sophie.

  Five forty-five. Oliver’s head is pounding. He is falling behind, unable to think through the necessary plot points, the rehearsed material, losing the traction of his motivation. He understands, vaguely, that he should be ready by now, dressed already, his own clothes safely stashed in the under-sink cupboard in the bathroom, but he is having trouble getting up out of his chair, and it may no longer be possible to blame the Millbrook Diner. So, as a catalyst, he tries to sum
mon back the thin ribbon of pleasure that attended Olivia’s first appearance, the moment he left Marian’s tiny office and walked, alive with anticipation, through her kitchen and dining room to the waiting audience of Barton Ochstein. He thinks of his walk through the Village, and the reflected Olivia in the window of Christopher Wines, in the stare of that tall man who purposely brushed against him in the crosswalk, in the warm interest of Valéry, the waiter.

  Then he remembers Sophie, who was there, too.

  Oliver shakes his head quickly. He can’t think about that now. He can’t let himself fall into self-recrimination, or wonder how he managed to miss her on that small and familiar street when he should have been paying attention. He can’t worry about how he will explain Olivia to Sophie. He has to concentrate on now. Barton is en route to see Olivia, and Mort is en route to see Barton. Oliver gets one chance to do this right.

  But even as he thinks this, it’s too late. Outside, a car crunches heavily on the gravel behind the inn, followed by the smart slap of a car door. Barton is here, Oliver thinks. He claws at his wrist, pulling back his sweater and fumbling with his watch: 5:48. Barton is early, and Olivia is late. Oliver jolts to his feet, rigid with panic. He hates Barton for being early, for his eagerness, though this is no one’s fault but Oliver’s own. He stands in sick paralysis, listening. At least, he thinks, the wig. He can get to the wig if he moves now, but he still doesn’t move. The inn’s back door groans open, then shut. The stairs begin to creak. He will never forgive himself, Oliver thinks. He takes a pointless step, then stops again. The wooden floorboards are creaking, an atonal chamber piece. Someone comes to the door, and knocks.

  Barton.

  And Oliver is merely standing still, a man in man’s clothing.

  “I’m not quite ready, Barton!” he manages to say. “Can you wait just a minute?”

  “Oliver?”

  The voice knocks all other sound from the air. Oliver stares at the door. That must be wrong, he thinks. The nausea, the nerves. So why can’t he move?

  “Oliver, is it you?” She calls again, and this, at last, brings him reeling across the room. He takes hold of the doorknob, opens the door, and gazes at her, stricken. Sophie looks back at him. She appears pale and horribly tired, her hair pinned up at the back of her head, but without precision, so the coil of hair is off center and fraying, threatening disintegration. Oliver, too stunned to gather the meaning of her appearance, focuses instead on this detail. “I wasn’t sure,” she says, finally. “I thought you might be here, but I also thought I might be coming to see Bart.”