Lily White (56 page)

As I was about to leave, around six, the phone rang. I picked it up, an act that I invariably discover is folly. “Lee?” It was Barbara Duberstein, and she sounded wiped out. Of course, I thought: It’s the end of the workday, and she still has two adolescent children at home.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Did you hear about it?”

“About what?”

“Mary.”

In a theatrical gesture my daughter would have abhorred, I slapped my forehead. But I sensed this was drama. Maybe tragedy. “What happened?”

“She tried to hang herself.” I couldn’t find a thing to say. “They found her just in time.”

“Did she say why she did it?”

“No.” I could hear Barbara take a deep breath. “All she said is that she wanted you.”

T
ake any group of associates—girlfriends, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, professional bowlers—and set them to talking about treachery. A single truth emerges: Once someone betrays you, you can never trust him again. You can try to understand the reasons behind the double dealing, of course. Forgive it, even. (You really don’t have much choice if you’re a bishop.) But you can never forget, not entirely.

Hogwash. Maybe in those troubled, dark-souled nations where widows wear black the rest of their lives, they tend perfidy like a living flame. But Americans, those optimists who clothe themselves in bright team colors, are always ready for a do-over. Certainly, in the days and weeks following the discovery of defalcation or adultery, the torment seems unbearable; there is no hurt like being stabbed in the back by someone you trust. But then it is allowed to subside, so superficial relations can resume. In the months to follow, the absence of acute pain
feels so good that you begin, now and then, like any good American, to let a smile be your umbrella. And your compatriots, seeing you happy, relieved that you are no longer a loser, pat you on the back and take you out to lunch, and pretty soon—providing the lying, cheating, unprincipled bastard doesn’t act up—you are your old self again.

This is not to say that Lily Rose White would not have been wounded if someone had given her
The Collected Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
for her birthday. And Jazz had enough sense, when they spent the evening in Manhattan, not to drive up Madison Avenue; that would have brought them right past the Hotel Carlyle. However, by October of 1980, six months after her terrible discovery, Lee was a happy wife again. Sex, if not as frequent, was again becoming lively and satisfying. Jazz was, she had to admit, a devoted father, coming home early to take pictures of three-year-old Val dressed up for Halloween, in a garish pink costume Lee had tried to talk her out of. But Val had insisted on being Strawberry Shortcake, and so she was Jazz joined Lee in taking the little girl around the neighborhood trick-or-treating. As they stayed back to allow Val to stand on tiptoes and try to ring each doorbell by herself, their shoulders touched and their hands sought each other out. After the neighbors stopped oohing and aahing over Strawberry, they beamed at her young and, obviously, very much in love parents.

By the beginning of November, Lee was thinking it was time to have another child. She even mentioned something to Chuckie Phalen: You know, at some point I’ll probably have another kid. Chuckie said: I thought as much. A little concerned, Lee could tell, and when she told him she planned on taking no more than a three-month maternity leave, he seemed more comforted by the reassurance that everything would be hunky-dory with Phalen & White than dismayed that she was capable of leaving not just one but two little tykes.

A week later, on a Sunday night, sitting on their living room floor before a roaring fire, the first of the season, Lee kissed Jazz and whispered: Do you think it’s time we had a burn-the-diaphragm party? He took her in his arms and said: “Wonderful!” Just like that. No hesitation, no catch in his voice to suggest reluctance. She heard what she wanted to hear, total agreement. “Wonderful!” offered with Jazz’s typical exclamation point. Lee did not allow herself to think: Gee, he’s being pretty casual about such a big decision. Or that “Wonderful!” was the same lyric, the same tune he used with department store buyers from Milwaukee when they upped their order (Wonderful! You’ll see how they’ll fly off the floor!) and with old customers who allowed him to charm them into fun fox for those occasions when their new mink was too serious (Wonderful! Call me in February and tell me how much you’re enjoying it!).

Wonderful? So? She was right between periods. Ripe and ready. But the next night, Monday, was football, played on the West Coast. She understood that. Tuesday and Wednesday, Jazz had to go to Minneapolis and Detroit. They were big accounts, he told her proudly. Now they’re bigger. And Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and now, Sunday, he was exhausted, enervated, fluish, finally just plain out of sorts. Not himself.

So by the time she got a good look at him the following Thursday across her parents’ Thanksgiving table, handsome, broad-shouldered in a cashmered interpretation of a Harris Tweed sports jacket, beaming up at Greta as she served her pineapple-sweet potato casserole, Lee could see: Definitely not himself. “Wonderful!” he enthused to Greta. Yes, Jazz was being the movie star, putting on the shine for the plainest girl in his fan club, but as Greta moved on, Jazz’s light went out. He was not a good enough actor to sustain his role.

Not himself? Then who was he?

Weary. Irritable, losing patience with Kent, insisting on getting
rid of him for the holiday. His own brother, who made his home with them: Get rid of him for a few days, he commanded Lee. She had complied, but she felt sick at having double-crossed Kent, sticking him with his parents who did not want him.

Lee watched Jazz staring at his plate. Why wasn’t he able to look into the eyes of her family? Leonard, stroking the sleeve of his double-breasted blazer, a new design by the latest
enfant terrible
of European menswear. Sylvia, holding her knife and fork daintily between the pads of her fingertips so as not to chip her nail polish: Pure Pomegranate, the latest tropical shade, so she could leave for Palm Beach the next morning and not be seen with northern nails. And Robin, pale and absolutely lovely in layer upon layer of intricate Italian knits, her exquisite little purple and blue and green vest alone costing more than the average day care aide’s monthly salary, waving at Val across the table.

Jazz could not keep his eyes off the food mounded on his plate. He seemed defeated by a glob of cranberry-raspberry relish the size of a human heart. Not himself. This feast was a torment for him. It was only then that Lee permitted herself to understand: Jazz was indeed himself. And that self was a cheat and a liar. But a passionate one. The cause of his terrible pain was deep, deep emotion. Not an emotion like guilt over mere fornication: No, the biggest of all emotions. Her husband was in love. Not with her.

“You’re sure?” Will Stewart inquired. He added more brandy to her snifter so discreetly that she did not notice until she took the next sip.

“Yes.” She set down the brandy.

“Don’t worry. I’ll drive you home. I’ll figure out how to get your car back tomorrow.” She had left Jazz in front of the television, a dead man watching the Giants. When she told him she
was running over to the office for an hour or two, his “Fine” was replete with relief.

“He wants out,” Lee said. “That’s what all his pain is about.”

“Pain about getting divorced?”

She heard herself laugh—Ha!—the harsh, snorting noise lonely women make. “Are you kidding? No, he’s in the fashion business. He’s nothing if not
au courant.
Being divorced once or twice shows you’re not a home-loving, uncool schmuck.” She would have to watch herself. She was sounding so bitter. On the other side of his small living room, Will was observing her with concern. “Jazz has got a bigger problem,” she went on. “Even if he’d made a fabulous impression at his old law firm—which he didn’t—he hasn’t practiced in almost five years. For a good reason; he hates the law. It would be very hard for him to get back to being a lawyer, even with his father’s help.”

“But he’s doing so well in the fur business—” Will stopped and corrected himself. “Your father’s fur business.”

“It’s not that he couldn’t get another job. They’re so thrilled to have someone like him in the industry, they all but raise the Episcopal flag every time he walks into a room.”

Will got up from his chair and threw a couple more logs into his wood-burning stove and poked them in place. Not a plain black iron stove, of course, but a tall ceramic one, yellow and white, an antique he had bought in Sweden. His whole house, on an inlet of Middle Bay on the south shore of Long Island, was like that: modest, manly but simply beautiful, a home for one—but one with very good taste. She had been there only once before, for a Chinese banquet Will cooked for his old crew from the Homicide unit, but she had fallen in love with the place. “So Jazz can leave your father’s company, but wherever else he goes, he’s not going to be the son-in-law.”

“I don’t think it’s only the money that made him hold back so long—although he is getting about three times what he could
make elsewhere. It’s the perks. The best restaurants, the best seats in town to whatever he wants to see, the car and driver: He goes in every day with my father, and before they get picked up, the driver buys two
New York Timeses,
two
Wall Street Journals
and two
Women’s Wear Dailys
—so they don’t have to lower themselves to read already fingered newsprint. It’s a whole way of life he has to give up. He can charge anything he wants to the business. …” She stopped and closed her eyes, listening to the never ceasing rush of water outside Will’s back door.

“You mean his charging his entire affair?”

“Yes,” she whispered, not trusting her voice. Lee was less afraid of crying than of making some hideous gargling sound that would repulse yet another man. Not that Will ever seemed unrepulsed. He was her friend. Her best friend. Not a day went by now that they did not speak at least twice. But not a glimmer, not the faintest undercurrent, at least not on Will’s part. Maybe, Lee thought, sitting up straighter, trying to swirl her brandy in a sophisticated gesture, hoping it did not slop over the rim of the snifter, if I looked more like Maria—a bust of Nefertiti, not an Easter Island statue—he’d want to poke something white beside the damn stove.

She must be drunk, she realized. She did not feel drunk, yet she sensed that under normal circumstances, she would not be so aware that she had nostrils. Jazz loved someone else. She had loved him from the time she was fifteen years old and miraculously, he had married her. He loved someone else. Another woman would be getting dressed and she’d feel Jazz pressing against her back. She’d drop her panties and turn around and kiss him and then lower herself, her tongue trailing down his neck, his chest, his belly.

She might be drunk. She was sensing ears on the sides of her head. Lee fingered her earlobe. Soft, as soft as Valerie’s sweet skin. Soft as a rose petal. Her middle name: Rose.

“Will?”

“What?”

“Do you know what my real name is, the one I was born with?”

He shrugged. She had to admit he was not exhibiting a pressing need to know. Fuck it, she’d tell him anyway. “Lily.”

“Oh,” he said politely. But then he must have said her name to himself: Lily White. He threw back his head, and for the first time since she’d known him, he laughed out loud. “Lily White.” A deep and wonderful roar. “No shit!”

And she threw back her head to join him, but it didn’t work, because she had already begun to weep.

Lee was not thinking clearly, but Will was. He drove her almost home but let her off a little more than halfway up the rutted hill to her house. Your car died, he coached her. Since you knew Jazz was watching the game, you called a cab. It’s better if he doesn’t see you get out of my car. When you open discussions about the possibility of splitting up, you don’t want him to think: Hmm, she said she was going to her office Sunday. How come her close male friend drove her home? Don’t give him an excuse to feel less guilty.

Okay, Lee said.

Obviously, Will went on, you only have to offer the whole broken-down-car-cab story if he notices you didn’t get home under your own steam.

Obviously, she said. It wasn’t obvious to her at all. She was relieved that Will was advising her. She wanted to be told exactly what to do and what to say, because otherwise she would be too afraid to go home.

You can handle this, Will assured her.

I know. She did not know.

Will made her promise—swear, insisting she actually raise
her right hand—that she keep mum. You are Unfit to Think, he decreed. Wait till tomorrow. Then, when you’re calmer—to say nothing of sober—you’ll speak to my partner, Joe Clark. He handles our matrimonial work. Then Will waited while Lee trudged up to the house, his headlights illuminating her way, his Porsche purring like a protective mother cat.

Lee walked around the house so she could enter through the side entrance, as if coming from the garage. Evening was becoming night, and a cold wind was blowing in from the sound, but it was still crisp, perfect Thanksgiving weekend football weather. Twigs crackled under her feet. She inhaled the pungent rot of the leaves, smoke from the fire Jazz must have built. She hugged her blazer around her. Good smells. Before her mind could censor, her body reacted to the late-autumn air: Ah, how lovely. A night to cuddle up and keep warm. Then she shivered.

As she passed the den, she saw Jazz where she had left him, sitting on the couch staring at the television set. Concerned because Cherry, the nanny, had the day off, Lee was immediately relieved when she walked into the kitchen and found Robin sitting with Val, patiently watching the little girl interact with a bowl of the chicken noodle soup Lee had made that morning. A moment later, Val was in her arms. Lee went over to Robin and, as she usually did, touched her cheek to her sister’s and chirped into the air, in their standard mockery of their mother’s kisses.