Gilded Age (22 page)

I was about to object that there was no affair when Steven came over and air-kissed Diana on the cheek. “You’re stunning tonight,” he said to her.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m wearing your clothes.” She turned back to me. “We were just talking about Ellie.”

“I’m worried about her,” Steven said. “She looks awful.” His tongue darted out over the viper bites in his lip. “She stopped coming to work. I had to fire her. Didn’t want to; goddamned accountant made me.”

Diana smiled. “She’s having a rough patch.”

I realized then how far Ellie had fallen if both Steven and Diana were comfortable talking about her like this to me, one of Ellie’s oldest friends.

“We’re concerned,” Diana said, assuming a cozy solidarity with Steven.

“And you’re close to her,” Steven said.

“You should talk to her,” Diana said.

“I just worry about her health,” he said. He turned to Diana then and said, “Darling, would you get me a glass of water? I’m parched.”

Diana was taken aback. No one broke up a hostess’s conversation at her own party. He could have easily flagged down a waiter.

“You’re sure just water?”

“Yes, I don’t drink alcohol,” he said flatly.

She registered what he meant, that he was in recovery. And I knew then they couldn’t be that close if she hadn’t known about his past.

“Thank you, beautiful,” he said, all but patting her head and sending her off. When she was gone, he steered me into Diana’s kitchen. It was hot, food spread everywhere and the caterers bumping into each other and us—giving us dirty looks for crowding their working space.

Steven led me into Diana’s laundry room, clicking on the light.

“Have you talked to Ellie?” he asked, real worry in his voice.

I shook my head.

“She won’t take my calls. I think she’s mad as shit that I fired her. But I can barely make the business work right now, and I had to. I just need a couple more of these bitches”—he twirled his finger in the air—“to start wearing my shit, and I’ll get my head above water. I mean, I love Ellie, and she’s the world’s best walking advertisement. But I can only give away free clothes for so long.” He hopped up on top of the dryer next to a basket of folded white towels. “So what have you heard?” He nibbled at his piercings nervously.

“Nothing.”

“After that boy left, that Selden? She fell apart.”

“I’m getting that,” I said.

“With a history like hers there’s a real possibility of relapse at times like these. I mean, I should know,” Steven said. I’d not thought about Ellie’s recovery. She seemed to be doing well enough. But Steven’s well-informed comment filled me with dread.

“She was at my house the other day,” I offered.

“She looked like shit, right?”

I nodded because she did, but I felt a little disloyal, though I shouldn’t have. Steven seemed genuinely worried about her, even if he had used her at the museum to shock and drum up publicity. “She seemed worried about rumors going around about her.”

Steven groaned and said, “Why? I mean, why would a girl like that care what people say about her? Everyone wants her to get married. They’re obsessed with it. Like this is the eighteen hundreds or something. It’s so not modern. A girl like Ellie? All she’s ever been
told is that she’s beautiful.” He frowned into the open washing machine next to him, as if pondering this. “She’s spent so much time getting people to want her, to like her. She doesn’t even know what she wants.” He pulled a pack of organic cigarettes out of his jacket. “Smoke?” he asked.

I shook my head no, and he lit up right next to the basket of clean towels.

“These people work at time-filling, bullshit jobs, if they work at all. No children, except for you. None of them have a goddamned original thought in their heads. Stupid fuckers.” He rested an arm on the basket. “She should have said yes to Leforte. At least the man made his own money.”

“I agree she should have married him,” I said.

He gave a little sneer. “You think she’s getting old? Past her shelf life? A woman better catch her man before she’s forty or she’ll be alone her whole life?”

I’d thought I was agreeing with him, and he’d turned on me with acid. I moved to go, but he grabbed my wrist.

“Not you,” he said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes it all gets to me, watching it.” He exhaled. “I agree she’d have been comfortable with Leforte. I just don’t know if safety should be Ellie’s thing, you know? You’re the only one who was ever a real friend to her. That’s what she said. And I could see it at lunch. You’d help her, I know.”

He stuck the cigarette in the side of his mouth opposite the little hoops.

“What’s there to do?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Fuck if I know. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let that witch Diana take her down.” He put the cigarette, only half smoked, out on the bottom of his shoe and rinsed it down the laundry sink. “Diana came down to the studio sniffing around, asking where Ellie was. It’s the greatest pity I had to tell her I fired Ellie. Luckily I managed to get her to buy some clothes, so it wasn’t all for naught. God knows what her malfunction is. I think she needs Lexapro, or a vibrator, probably both.”

At seeing the look on my face he laughed. “Don’t be shocked that some people need a little assistance. Not everyone has a hot DILF at home, you know.”

“Like MILF?” I asked, laughing. “‘Dad I’d Like to Fuck’? Why have I never heard that before?”

“Brad Pitt would be on the poster, with child, of course—though I prefer Gavin Rossdale. Now, come,” he said, taking my hand. “We’ll see if we can possibly get Diana to shut up. Plus, we’ve been gone too long and I don’t want her forming a search party.”

We emerged from the kitchen and attempted to mingle, but our absence was as conspicuous as if we’d been playing seven minutes in heaven. Luckily Steven’s preferences were well known.

Diana all but attacked us with Steven’s glass of water. “You disappeared.” She sniffed and then smiled in understanding.

“Quick chat outside,” Steven said with a wink.

“So I was saying about Ellie …,” Diana started in again, and I was shocked at her doggedness. She was intent on grinding Ellie to dust.

Suddenly the idea of staying and eating her food, of spending the rest of the evening with her, of being beholden to her in any way, was awful. I was angry with her and disgusted with the whole scene.

Steven had gotten Diana off the Ellie topic and onto some actress and the dress she recently wore at an awards show.

“You know,” I said, putting my glass of untouched water down on an inlaid table, “I should find Jim.”

“You okay?” they both asked in unison.

“Fine, I just feel a little woozy all of a sudden.”

This had the effect I intended as Jim was summoned instantly. Diana bundled us into our coats and whipped us out the door with zealous concern for my health.

When we got in the car Jim asked, “What was that about?”

“I miss the baby,” I said, which was true. “I think it was just a little too soon for me to be out.”

“We could have called the sitter.”

“I didn’t want to call. I want to hold him,” I snapped. A tear slipped down my cheek.

“Are you crying?” Jim said, looking at me, horrified, and almost missing a stop sign.

“No. Hormones.”

“Seriously, what happened back there?” he said, pulling over.

I explained about Diana. “She was so mean tonight,” I said, drying my eyes, getting ahold of myself.

“Well, that’s Diana. You don’t get too close,” he said, taking my hand.

“She’s just destroying El, and why? Because she’s jealous? Diana’s married, for God’s sake.” In saying the words out loud to Jim, I realized that the panicky feeling I had was born of the suspicion that should I ever step even the slightest degree out of line, Diana Dorset would hesitate not one instant to grind me into gossip hamburger as well.

Jim was silent. The sodium streetlights cast a golden glow on him. “Okay, I hesitate to tell you this because I do think you are a little fragile right now, but I think I have to.”

“Tell me what?”

“You remember that squash tournament at the club two weeks ago?”

My heart beat in my ears. My breath got short.

Jim continued. “I think she really is out of control.”

“Oh God,” I whispered, images of Jim and Ellie together filling my mind. “You’re scaring me.”

“Ellie drank a lot. Although now that you mention it, sweetheart, she could have been on something too.” I thought of the pills she’d filched from my bathroom. I hadn’t mentioned it to Jim. “She was wearing this corsetlike dress thing. The chest was on display. Everyone wanted to meet her. I think because of the museum thing. Even the old codgers—especially the codgers. Anyway, I was introducing her around and the top-ranked traveling player—young guy, just out of Brown—comes up. The attraction between the two of them was pretty clear.”

Relief started to seep into my brain as I tried to focus on what he was saying. Was he saying nothing had happened between him and Ellie?

“I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d be mad at me for not stepping in and trying to get her out of there, but the rumor is she slept with him.”

Relief took over my brain, followed by love for my husband.

“So she slept with some guy, so what?”

“She slept with him in the club.”

This may not sound so bad, but it was bad in Cleveland. Jim’s club was an all-male holdover from the 1920s, housed downtown in an immense Tudor brick mansion, the halls lined with taxidermy. It had been like a fraternity for industrialists—a place where they could play squash, play cards, shoot pool, smoke cigars, tell dirty jokes, and drink. They’d once held hunting dog trials—complete with live birds and ammunition—inside the club. Now nice young men, many the great-grandsons of the founders, still went there for the same distractions. Every once in a while wives were invited for an evening, but it was rare. There were bedrooms upstairs where, in the 1920s, members housed visiting friends for a society wedding or debutante season. Now when professional squash players came for a tournament, or professional boxers, as the club hosted a smoker every year, the contestants stayed in the bedrooms.

“What do you mean she slept with him in the club?”

“She’s the first woman to actually stay overnight in the club. I’ve caught hell from the governing board since she was my guest. I think they’ve decided not to do anything formally to me. She almost got the squash player thrown off the professional tour. I was going to tell you, but I thought you’d worry. After what those guys were saying tonight, I thought you should know.”

I was repulsed, I admit it—repulsed that Ellie’d be so stupidly promiscuous. She had to know everyone would find out. But I was also a little disgusted with myself for showing my provincial stripes, because
I didn’t care that she had a one-night stand. I cared that she’d done it in a men’s club. I was scandalized, but something else was peeking out at me from behind the shock.

“Are you sure she didn’t make a pass at you?” I asked, remembering the women at the estate sale, remembering Jeff with his bow tie, Diana from the dinner party.

My husband is the unflappable southern gentleman. I’ve seen him blush only one other time, when his mother inadvertently misused the word “freak.” Now I could see under the streetlights that he was red to the tips of his ears.

“No,” he said, leaning his head back against the car seat.

“You’re sure.” The blush worried me. Protectiveness was ingrained in him. If Ellie, my oldest friend, had thrown herself at him, he’d not want to tell me.

“I’m sure,” he said, staring at the ceiling of the car. “I’m embarrassed for her.”

After a moment, he leaned forward, started up the car, and we drove through the dark, tree-lined streets.

At home we paid the sitter, and I went in my dressing room and put on my white flannel pajamas with the French blue monogram on the pocket and tiptoed into the nursery. My chest ached with milk, and I stared at my son in the dark, watching his breath rising and falling before I picked him up, waking him—something I never did. I settled in the rocking chair and latched him on, feeling the now-familiar tug. Some feedings I felt like a milch cow or a food port, but that night as I rocked I thought of how hard it is to help someone you love—how they never will let you close enough, or they won’t listen to you, or they don’t think they need help, or you don’t know how to help them. Watching my infant son sleepily feed I thought, Here is someone I can help right now. Here is someone who, for this moment, will let me help.

The Baby Shower

J
im and I approached Viola and P. G. about being the baby’s godparents, and they were touched but slightly concerned that they were only affianced. A nonmarried couple as godparents, even if they were soon to be married—was that done? Jim and I assured them it would be fine, and I began planning the small baptism.

As I knew she would, Viola took her role very seriously. “I’m throwing you a baby shower,” she announced the next day on the phone.

“The baby’s already here. I don’t need a shower.”

“Sure you do. You haven’t had one.”

“Vi, I have everything I need. It seems ridiculous.” Truth was I hated showers, though attending them was better than having one hosted for you. I remembered my two bridal showers with a wince: one where I’d had to enthuse over dish towels and a salad spinner, the other where Jim’s sister had given me a complicated set of black French lingerie that I could never bring myself to wear. The presents seemed oddly ill suited for the married life I was planning to embark on. I was going to need kitchen gadgets and underwear fit for a courtesan?
Until then I’d had no use for either. Was my personality really going to change that drastically?

“Well, people can also bring a little something for the new women’s shelter I’m working on if they want. But people want to give you things, you know, your friends. It’s your first baby. You should let me.”

There couldn’t be any lurking pitfalls—could there? And I adored baby clothes. I found, much to my surprise, that I was starting to look forward to a baby shower.