Mortal Friends (24 page)

“People hate parting with money,” she was quoted as saying. “It’s the reason philanthropy still isn’t commensurate with the vast fortunes that have been made in this country in the past twenty years. I made a lot of money, but instead of spending it on myself, I created a foundation to give it away. I’ve given away tens of millions of dollars and done a lot of people a lot of good.”

However, the last line was the coup de grâce. After Corinna inquired whether Cynthia was using her foundation’s money to pay for some of the perks she personally enjoyed, Cynthia said: “Everything I do is aboveboard. There are strict rules governing foundations, and I
abide by every single one of them. If people don’t like the way I spend my foundation’s money, they can take it up with Congress!”

That same afternoon, Senator Grider issued a statement: “I’m Congress, and Ms. Rinehart can take it up with me!”

You could almost hear the scaffold trapdoor drop.

V
iolet was ecstatic about the article and about Senator Grider’s response.

“You have no idea how many people dislike this woman,” she said when I spoke to her. “And now they’re all coming out of the woodwork, I’m thrilled to say.”

Violet and I both agreed that Grant would never in a million years be able to withstand the heat. He was so squeamish when it came to his image in the community that even if he were still madly in love with Cynthia, he’d have to give her up after this. We got a good laugh over what his parents were thinking after having embraced Cynthia so quickly.

“I bet I’m looking pretty darn good to Rainy again,” Violet said with more than a little satisfaction.

Two days after the article appeared, Constance Morely invited me and Violet to a ladies’ lunch at the British Embassy. I was surprised, because ambassadorial wives are scheduled within an inch of their diplomatic lives. It’s rare they can make time for a small private meal on such short notice.

It was a hot, sunny July day. Violet and I arrived together. Araminta Upton greeted us and showed us outside to the grand Palladian stone portico overlooking the sprawling back garden of the embassy. Nouria Sahala and Peggy Myers were standing on the terrace, enjoying mint iced teas with our hostess, Lady Morely. We all exchanged cordial hel
los. Though it was extremely nice to be there, I kind of wondered why we’d all been asked. My tacit question was answered a few minutes later when Corinna Huff walked out and joined us on the patio.

Corinna, who thrived on the controversy her articles created, looked positively radiant that day. Controversy became her. The fact that her article had stoked the wrath of Congress was a crowning peacock feather in her cap.

Luncheon was served in Lady Morely’s private dining room, just off the main hall. The square white room had been used as an office by the former ambassador’s wife. Constance made it into more of a sitting room, easily converted to a dining room for small lunches and dinners. We were halfway through the first course of asparagus vinaigrette when Constance got the ball rolling.

“Corinna, any word from Ms. Rinehart about your article?” she inquired in her soft, pretty voice. She sounded as innocent as a Wordsworth poem.

We all perked up like prairie dogs, eager for Corinna’s answer.

“I hear she’s none too pleased,” Corinna said with an air of pride.

“I can tell you who’s really upset,” Peggy said.

“
Who?
” we all said in bright unison.

“Marge Horner,” Peggy replied. “Marge told me you misquoted her, Corinna.”

Corinna laughed. “Sorry, Marge, it’s on tape. You can’t have your quote and deny it too.”

“What did Marge say exactly? I forget,” I said, not forgetting at all, but rather wishing to pay Marge back for the mean and calculating way she’d broken the news to me about Bob and Melody.

“Oh, you remember, Reven,” Violet said. “She described those hideous invitations to the Golden Key dinner as looking like invites to the opening of a whorehouse.”

“Bordello,” Corinna corrected her. “And she made some other snide comments about Ms. Rinehart that I didn’t print.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Oh, just stuff.”

“Come on, Corinna. For heaven’s sakes, don’t go discreet on us now,” Violet pressed her.

It wasn’t like Corinna to be shy. But she was clearly hesitant for some reason.

“Inquiring minds want to know,” I said.

“Yes, we’re all friends here. Consider this room a tomb, ladies. Nothing goes beyond it,” Constance assured her.

Corinna sighed. “It’s not that, it’s…Okay, I warned you. Marge said that it was amazing how Grant Bolton followed Cynthia around like a lapdog, and you could practically see his tongue drooling.”

Corinna flung Violet an uneasy glance. No one quite knew where to look.

“Oh, my God, why didn’t you put that
in
, Corinna?” Violet shrieked with glee.

“I was trying to spare certain people’s feelings,” Corinna said, pointedly. “Always a mistake.” She popped an asparagus into her mouth.

“Well, that was nice of you. But I really wish you’d used it,” Violet said. “If Grant saw that in print and thought people were talking about him that way…? He’d have a heart attack, believe me!”

“And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” I added.

Everybody laughed, and the tension was diffused. But I saw that Violet’s laughter was forced. I knew she still cared for Grant, even though she pretended not to.

“I didn’t put a lot of other stuff in either,” Corinna said, pausing for effect. You could have heard a crumb drop.

“Such as?” Peggy asked.

“She rents her jewelry,” Corinna announced to collective gasps.

“Don’t tell me those klieg-light earrings she wears all the time aren’t
hers
?” I said.

“I do believe they belong to Pearce’s in New York, and she rents them on a year-round basis. But I only got this from one source, so I couldn’t use it. And did you know that she’s Pianissimo’s biggest customer? She sends their scarves and cashmere slippers to people at the drop of a name,” Corinna said.

“Those slippers aren’t cheap. Rolly loves them,” Peggy said.

“The real question is, does she charge all this stuff to the foundation?” Corinna said. “’Cause if so, it’s bye-bye, Cynthia…. But Reven, you probably know more about this than any of us. What does your friend Senator Grider say?”

Everyone knew I was seeing Grider. People just assumed we were having an affair. I didn’t dispel that notion because in Washington, it’s always good for people to think you have intimate friends in high
places. Violet knew the truth, of course, which was that Zack and I enjoyed each other’s company, but there wasn’t much else going on.

“I really haven’t spoken to him since your article came out. He’s talked more to the press than he has to me. But you all know he’s got a bee in his bonnet about foundation abuse. So if she’s done things she shouldn’t have, fasten your seat belts,” I said.

“I tried to interview him, but no dice,” Corinna said. “I also happen to know that Ms. Rinehart is getting tired of Washington. She’s referred to it as being ‘too provincial.’ She may be headed for New York or L.A.”

“Not with Grant, she’s not. Rainy would kill him,” Violet said under her breath.

Nouria Sahala had been uncharacteristically silent for most of the lunch. She’d had a discreet chat on her cell phone, arranging some fête at her embassy, from the sound of it. But other than that, she’d sat quietly, soaking up what the rest of us were saying without contributing any tidbits of her own. I knew she was a friend of Cynthia’s, and it occurred to me she might be offended by our conversation. I wondered if she was keeping her mouth shut out of respect for her pal. However, as dessert was being served, Nouria weighed in with one of those sentences that immediately grab attention.

“You know, I used to like Cynthia,” she began. The conversation stopped dead. We all leaned toward her like flowers toward the sun. She went on. “Yes, I thought she was a bit pushy, and yes, she was a bit full of herself. But let’s face it, there are a lot of pushy people who are full of themselves in Washington.”

“They hold the majority,” Violet said.

“Being Otanni, I’m very loyal.” She paused. “But, honey, cross me and you’ve had it,” she added.

We all nodded; it was so true. Nouria had a reputation for defending her friends when it was inconvenient or even dangerous for her to do so. She famously excluded anyone who attacked a pal of hers. She twisted the famous old Arab proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” into her own Nouria-esque variation: “The enemy of my
friend
is my enemy.”

She went on: “The other night, when Cynthia came to my reception for our foreign minister, she didn’t behave at all well. First, in my opinion, it’s very bad form to criticize the hostess in her own house. A guest who does that is really not possible.”

“Yes, I think we can all safely agree with that,” sniffed Constance Morely.

Nouria spoke a fluent, staccato English. No one was eating the raspberry mousse dessert for fear of missing so much as a syllable.

“So Yasmin, the wife of our foreign minister, who is a very old and dear friend of mine, came over to me during the party and pointed to Cynthia and asked me who she was. When I told her, she made a face, you know? I know Yasmin so well. I said to her, ‘Why are you asking?’ And Yasmin looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Nouria, is this woman supposed to be a friend of yours?’ And I said, ‘Yes, you know, she’s not a
great
friend, but she is a friend.’ So Yasmin looks at me and says, ‘
No, she’s not
.’ Just like that! And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ Well, apparently, that night Cynthia was going around saying that my chocolate fountain was tacky. Can you imagine? She said to Yasmin that it was ‘too Willie Wonka’ for an embassy. And Yasmin said to me, ‘And what the hell is Willie Wonka?’”

When our collective laughter had died down, Nouria added, “Let me tell you something, girls. You don’t criticize a hostess in her own house no matter what you think. That’s the
last
time Cynthia Rinehart ever sets foot in our embassy.
Ever!
”

“She’ll never come here again either,” Constance said.

Violet leaned in and whispered to me, “Grant’s such a rabid Anglophile. He’d die if they thought he’d been banned from the Queen’s soil.”

We had coffee out on the terrace. The mood was jubilant. There’s nothing like a good dishy ladies’ lunch. We all said good-bye and thanks to Constance, feeling as if we’d just had the full treatment at a rejuvenating spa. As Violet and I were walking out, Nouria pulled us over into the ballroom behind one of the large ocher faux marble columns so she could talk to us alone.

“Violet, I wanted to tell you something,” Nouria began in a low voice. “I didn’t want to say it in front of the others, but I think I can say it in front of Reven because I know you two are best friends.”

“Absolutely. Reven’s like my sister.”

“Okay. So…Grant asked about you at my party.”

Violet flushed. “What did he say?”

“He wanted to know if you were coming.”

“Oh.” She deflated. “That’s probably just because he didn’t want
to run into me.”

Nouria shook her finger at Violet. “No, no, no! Trust me. He was looking for you. He was anxious to see you.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“I can tell. I’m an Otanni witch,” she said with a wink. “So even though I knew you’d regretted, I told him, well, yes, she might come.”

“You didn’t!” Violet said, obviously thrilled with the mischief of it.

“I did. I wanted to see his reaction. Well, my dear, he stood off in a corner by himself the whole night, just staring at the door. I’m sure he was waiting for you to come in. Really. He hardly spoke to anyone.”

“He never speaks to anyone,” Violet said.

“Well, darlings, I must go. But I am telling you that woman will never set foot in my house again! Never, ever, ever, ever! Oh, and you’re both invited to my party for the new head of the World Bank next month!”

“We love your chocolate fountain!” Violet cried as Nouria ran off. Then Violet turned to me and said in a plaintive little voice, “Maybe there’s hope.”

I wasn’t entirely sure if she was referring to Grant or the fact that Nouria was still inviting her to the embassy.

I
n September, the Wheelock twenty-fifth reunion was finally upon us. Like all the milestone—or
millstone
—reunions, as I called them, this one was marked by a big get-together on campus, plus an excursion to another city to see the sights. The twenty-fifth is the one where even the most determined flower child realizes that she is now old enough to be her own mother. There are those who go to reunions, and those who don’t. I don’t. At least, I never had. I’d missed the fifth, tenth, fifteenth, even the twentieth, for which Violet flew to Boston to the home of Madeleine Pine, our most brilliant classmate, who was a curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

I’d happily managed to avoid all contact with my classmates except Violet for the past twenty-five years. Not that I didn’t want to see them. I just didn’t want them to see me. I wanted them to remember me for my potential, not for my failed promise. But Violet held me to my word that I would come and help her get through it. Truth be told, I was kind of curious to see what some of my old classmates looked like after all this time.

Nouria’s comment that Grant seemed to be pining after Violet haunted my friend the entire week. As we were stringing together the school motto in big gold cardboard letters, Violet said to me, “Do you really think Grant misses me, Rev? Do you think he’ll come back?”

It was the zillionth time she’d asked me that question, and I gave her my stock answer. “Of course he misses you. And can you imagine how he feels about Cynthia and this whole scandal? He’s probably ruing the day he ever left you.”

“Yes, but do you think he’ll come back to me? Do you?”

Sometimes Violet reminded me of a child who asks the same question over and over, paying no attention to the response. She was driving me nuts.

We completed the gold-lettered school motto—
AD VITAM PARAMUS
—and hung it up over the entrance to the living room. It meant, “We are preparing for life.” I stared at it thinking that a better school motto would have been:
FUCK ALL PREPARES YOU FOR LIFE
,
AND YOU MIGHT AS WELL KNOW IT NOW
. But that would have been too long in Latin.

I took more time getting ready for that reunion than I ever had for any date. I wanted to make sure I looked my very, very best and that I was in just the right outfit, so that when the girls saw me, I wouldn’t be a disappointment. I put on a chic, form-fitting little black dress and pearls—demure and yet revealing that I’d kept my figure. Just the ticket, I thought.

Against my advice, Violet decided to give a tea party instead of a cocktail party. I knew that was because she wanted to show off the Tiffany tea service that had belonged to Grant’s grandmother. But I told her to have plenty of booze on hand. I said, “Believe me, at a twenty-fifth reunion, people don’t want tea. They want drugs and alcohol.”

I arrived at Violet’s house half an hour early to see if I could help with any last-minute details. A bunch of white and purple balloons were tied to the front gate, white and purple being the school colors. Inside, Maureen and a small staff hired for the occasion seemed to have matters well in hand. Lush bouquets of roses and tulips had been strategically placed around the house by Sue Bluford, one of the best floral designers in Washington. I’d insisted that Violet use Sue, fearing she might resort to supermarket carnations just to save a buck. Her impending divorce had made her question little luxuries she’d always taken for granted.

“You want to impress them. Now is not the time to economize,” I told her.

A tape of songs from our high-school era was playing softly in the background—classics like “Every Breath You Take,” “Ghostbusters,” “The Glamorous Life,” and what I facetiously dubbed Violet’s personal theme song, “Like a Virgin.”

Violet hadn’t come down yet. I went upstairs to see how she was doing. She was sitting on the bed half dressed, talking on the phone. The second I came into the room, she cupped her hand over the receiver and waved me away, saying, “Not now! Please close the door!”

I knew something big was up, because usually Violet never minded if I listened in on her phone conversations. On the contrary, she liked to have me there so she could make funny faces to me while being treacly sweet to the poor unsuspecting soul on the other end of the line. I can’t count the number of times Violet had chatted up someone on the phone as though she were their long lost friend, then hung up and turned to me without missing a beat, saying, “God, what a bore that woman is!”

I walked back downstairs to the living room, where I found Gunner sitting on the couch, reading. I was surprised to see him there. He was wearing a pair of thin tortoiseshell reading glasses, which struck me as an incongruous and rather touching sight set against his dreadlocks.

“Well, well, well, I don’t remember you at Wheelock,” I said to him, teasingly.

He looked up. “I was a few classes behind you.”

“Chivalry is so dead…. What are you reading?”

He held up a little purple and white booklet I recognized all too well. It was an issue of
Passages
, the school alumnae bulletin.

A few more issues were stacked up on the coffee table in front of him, and there were several others scattered around on tables throughout the room. Violet had saved every single one of those semi-annual time bombs. She’d even had a set of purple archival boxes made for them, with the word
Passages
embossed in gold on the spines. For someone who had endured near Dickensian humiliation at Wheelock, Violet’s devotion to these glossy little odes to school spirit was touching, if not perverse. I plunked myself down beside Gunner on the couch and read over his shoulder. He was engrossed in the section called “Class Notes.”

I have to admit that I always glanced at the “Class Notes” before chucking
Passages
in the garbage. I did so out of curiosity just to see what my old schoolmates were up to. In the early days, right after we graduated, a lot of girls wrote in to the magazine, telling of their college careers, job choices, travels, and marriages. After a while, the correspondence tapered off as careers heated up and families
“thrived”—the adjective du jour. Then there was that period when contributors wrote about “stopping to smell the roses.” It was my impression that people only stopped to smell the roses when they hit a great big rock in the garden. There were far fewer contributors now. The women who wrote in often had sadder, smaller tales to tell.

I pictured our class as a bunch of swimmers battling the tides of life. Some had surged ahead, while others had barely kept their heads above water. A few had drowned—or at least they were never heard from again.

Violet and I were the Class of ’84. Our class correspondent was the officious Jenny Tilbert, who took the job no one else wanted and started out all our “Class Notes” with the same bossy exhortation: “Come on, Ladies, let’s hear what you’re up to! Now! Write!”

Over the years, “Ladies” changed to “Sisters,” and “Write!” changed to “Write/Fax/E-mail/Text!”

I was one of the “Ladies/Sisters” who never wrote, faxed, e-mailed, or texted any information whatsoever. Let people imagine what had become of me. I sure wasn’t going to tell them. But Jenny could always depend on Violet, who wrote in faithfully twice a year with snapshot accounts of her achievements woven into Jenny’s breathy prose. In fact, it was through those alumnae magazines that I’d followed Violet’s progress through life way before she arrived in Washington—the schools, the travels, the honors, the months she devoted to working pro bono for various causes. Her brief but informative entries had the cool detachment of real success.

Gunner chuckled as he read aloud from the issue in his hand: “‘Violet McCloud writes
: Graduated with honors from DePaul University for the second straight year. Off to London for my Junior Year Abroad. Wish me luck!
We do, Violet! Good luck!’” He paused and peered at me over the tops of his glasses. “Perky stuff. This how you gals manage to keep tabs on each other?”

“Yup. So, Gunner, are you living here now? You never drop by to say hi to me anymore? Is this how you treat all your CIs?”

He wasn’t listening. “So then she went to law school, eh?”

“Who, Violet? Yeah. University of Southern California.”

“What were you doing then?”

“Me? I was singing my youth away like the idiot grasshopper while army ant Violet marched on single-mindedly.”

I picked up one of the magazines and fanned it to “Class Notes.”

“Violet never missed an issue, bless her heart. Look, here she is again…Listen to this…‘Violet McCloud writes
: The environment is an increasing concern of mine, as it should be of everyone’s. I am moving to Washington to try and instigate some real changes on Capitol Hill.
Go for it, Violet. Show them we Wheelock girls can effectuate real change in the world!’ That’s Jenny Tilbert cheering her on. I think Jenny’s coming today. Stick around, and you’ll meet her.”

Gunner had his nose in another bulletin. He read the entry aloud to me: “‘Violet McCloud is now Mrs. Grant Bolton Jr. Her husband is a vice president of the Potomac Bank of Washington, a family concern. Violet writes to us:
Please come look me up in Washington, classmates. I long to see you. Grant is a wonderful man and we are expecting in August.
We wish Violet and her new family all the best! Go look her up, girls! I know I will if I can ever pry myself away from my consulting practice.’”

Gunner shook his head and said, “Whoa.”

“What?”

“I was just thinking what my ‘Class Notes’ woulda been like.”

“What do you mean?”

“The kids I went to school with…? We had kind of a different career path—more like stepping off a cliff,” he said with a mordant little chuckle.

“You did okay,” I said.

“I was one of the lucky ones. For a while, anyhow.”

A wave of sadness suddenly washed over Gunner. He tried to cover it up with a joke.

“Here are my ‘Class Notes.’ ‘Jeff’s in jail. Lakisha’s working in a burger joint. Oren got shot. Willie’s driving a truck. Annie’s in rehab. Melvin’s out on bail.’…Like that. Oh, maybe that’s not quite fair. Some of us made it up to a decent pay grade, but not enough.”

“I’ve told you before. Violet was the biggest loser in school. I mean, nobody ever
dreamed
she was going to do so well in life. You wanna know the real reason she wanted to give this reunion?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”

“So all the girls who wouldn’t spit on her back then could envy her now. You know she gave Wheelock the highest sum ever contributed by an alumna in a single year? Two million dollars.”

“Impressive,” Gunner said.

“She did it through the Bolton Foundation, of course. When Grant left her, she wanted to call the whole thing off. That’s why I’m here—breaking a vow to myself I’d never go to one of these things. But, hey, I had to come and support her.”

“That was nice of you. Tell me something. Why do you think Violet did so well if she was so pathetic in school, like you say?”

“I’ve thought about that. I think it’s precisely because things
weren’t
so easy for her. Violet had to work harder than anyone for every little thing, which meant she valued the things she got a lot more than those of us for whom things came so easily in the beginning.”

“Like you?”

“Yeah, like me. I didn’t value what I had because I always had it. It was all too easy, too accessible. I never had to fight for things the way Violet did. So I never really appreciated any of the gains I made. I just kinda took them all for granted. I’ll tell you a little secret, Gunner—when you don’t appreciate something, you eventually lose it. I wish to God I’d been a little smarter and less careless about my life. I admire Violet and what she accomplished.”

Gunner patted my hand, as if he sensed my regret. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve done just fine.”

“Thanks.” His opinion meant a lot to me.

Seeing all those bulletins there, pristinely preserved in those custom-made boxes, I realized that contributing to
Passages
had been Violet’s way of telling a story. The “Class Notes” were her mini autobiography—her résumé, if you will. They left no doubt that the homeliest, weirdest, most unpopular girl in school had bested the lot of us. Her life was a trifecta of revenge, inspiration, and glory. She was like the hundred-to-one shot who comes from behind to win the Kentucky Derby.

“You ever go visit her when Violet was working out in, let’s see—” Gunner flipped through one of the bulletins and found the entry he was looking for. “Oklahoma. She writes in: ‘
I’m tutoring on the Osage Nation reservation in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. My work is both sad and inspirational. I love working with these children and helping them find the skills to discover their own rich heritage.
’”

“See? That’s what I mean about her. She just took all of her own sadness and turned it toward helping others. And it paid off.”

“So you never went to see her out there?”

“No. I don’t know where the hell I was when she was there. Probably in some sort of boyfriend hell. But she called me up the minute she got to Washington. It was so great to hear from her after all those years.”

“So you guys didn’t really keep in touch.”

“No. When she moved here, we hadn’t spoken to each other since graduation. But you know what? It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. We took up right where we left off…. Like with you, Gunner. I mean, here we are all friendly again, even though I hardly ever see you anymore,” I teased him.

“And you were the one who introduced her to Grant, right?”

“Yes, indeedy.”

“But you went out with him first, right? Why didn’t you marry him? Rich, good-looking guy like that?”

“Puh-leeze. I’d rather die of starvation than of boredom. I was much too much of a handful for Grant. Violet’s perfect for him. He is, like, the most uptight person in the entire world. And totally insecure.”

“He’s a good-lookin’ guy, he owns a bank, and he’s insecure?
Shiiit
,” Gunner drawled.