People Like Us (15 page)

“Fine,” said Ruby. She began folding the floor plans and then pushed them away from her to Cora for Cora to fold. “I don’t care how much it costs to remove the tiles, Mrs. Mandell. I want a bidet in that bathroom.

I’m going to have a bidet in that bathroom, and don’t bring up the matter to me again.”

If Ruby Renthal could have read the thoughts of the distinguished older woman, who had decorated all the Van Degan, Manchester, and Altemus houses, she would have read, “I’ve seen these people come, and I’ve seen these people go,” but she could not read Cora Mandell’s thoughts, and Cora Mandell was not the type to make known such thoughts.

“Of course, Mrs. Renthal,” said Cora, folding the plans and putting them in the bag where she carried her needlework.

“One other thing,” said Ruby.

“No, there’s no one-other-thing, Mrs. Renthal,” said Cora, rising from her place and moving toward another seat in the back of the empty plane.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” asked Ruby. Looking after the retreating figure, she was instantly aware that she had offended her one precarious link to the world of Loelia Manchester and Lil Altemus.

“Your next decorator can deal with whatever your one-other-thing is,” said Cora, seating herself. She reached into her bag and brought forth a copy of Nestor Calder’s book,
Judas Was a Redhead
, and proceeded to read.

“I don’t want another decorator, Cora. I want you. After all these months, we can’t stop now. Think of the delays, just trying to get to know someone else. And there’s the Orromeo auction coming up in London. You promised you’d go with me. Besides, you’re the best. The very best. Everyone says so. Forgive me if I appeared rude. I have the curse, you know, and every time I get my period, I don’t behave well. Just ask Elias. He’ll tell you. Please don’t go, Cora. Please. There’s the big party that Elias and I are giving, and we have to have the apartment finished by the party. Please.”

“You know, poor Ruby hates me to smoke cigars,” said Elias. “So she’s fixing up this room for me to smoke in
to my heart’s content. I think it’s called a fumary, or some goddamn fancy name like that.”

Ruby had made a rule that no one would get in to see the new apartment until Cora Mandell had finished all the decorating, but Elias took advantage of Ruby’s being out of town on a shopping trip with Cora to bring a young man called Byron Macumber from the law firm of Weldon & Stinchfield up to the new place and give him a tour. It was, he thought, a safer place for a first meeting than a restaurant, or even a coffee shop, where he might run into someone he knew.

Byron Macumber, thirty-four, was dressed in a bankers’ gray suit, with a blue shirt and dark red tie. Looking around at the unfinished rooms, he was dazzled by the magnificence of the Renthal apartment.

“I’d love to bring my wife here sometime, after you all get moved in,” he said, showing the trace of a Georgia accent.

“I’m sure in time that could be arranged, Byron,” said Elias.

“She would drop dead seeing a place like this.”

“Do you have children?”

“Two little girls. Kimberly, three, and Sharon, one.”

“Where do you live, Byron?”

“We have a condominium in Bronxville, but one day, if I ever strike it rich, I’d like to build a house on the water in Fairfield, or Darien, or someplace like this,” said Byron.

“And have a tennis court and a swimming pool. Right?”

“Something like that,” said Byron, laughing.

“For the arrangement I have in mind, Byron, there would be nothing risky. All that you would have to do is identify certain companies that retain Weldon and Stinchfield for protection from the predators, not to mention guys like me.”

Byron Macumber, nervous at being in such an intimate conversation with a man of Elias Renthal’s wealth, took out a handkerchief from his pocket and
wiped his forehead, at the same time nodding an acknowledgment that he understood Elias’s request.

“Timing is everything, you see,” continued Elias, as if he were giving a lecture in finance. “I want to get into situations so early that my activities couldn’t possibly attract attention from,” he paused, and shrugged, and then finished his sentence, “whomever.”

In the room that would be Elias’s smoking room when the apartment was finished was an antique pool table that had recently arrived from England. Byron Macumber rubbed his hand across the mahogany of the table and the faded green felt.

“This is beautiful,” he said.

“Used to belong to Edward the Seventh,” said Elias. “That’s the original felt.”

“Beautiful,” repeated Byron.

“It’ll happen to you too,” said Elias, meaning possessions. “Whatever profit I make on a tip you give me, I will pay you five percent. Five percent, paid in cash, on, say, eighty thousand shares of Tennessee Natural Gas, is a very handsome amount of money. Enough to have a nanny for your kids and pay her for a year, and to take your wife on a nice vacation to Mustique, and maybe even buy her a mink coat for Christmas. And that’s only one tip.”

“Holy smoke,” said Byron Macumber.

13

As the wedding day approached, with the heightened activity that surrounded the coming event, Lil Altemus’s enthusiasm for Justine’s marriage increased, or, to be more exact, her enthusiasm for the wedding increased, while her enthusiasm for the marriage remained tepid, as she was of the school that firmly believed in what her own mother used to call marrying your own kind.

The nuptials were frequently mentioned in the social columns of Dolly De Longpre and Florian Gray, when friends of Justine’s gave dinners and cocktail parties, most of which, but not all, Lil attended. She chose to have a headache on the night of Violet Bastedo’s dinner, and did have a “nasty cold” on the night Bernie’s Aunt Hester and Uncle Sol entertained a small group of Bernie’s relations and friends from the television station in a favorite steak house of Bernie’s. She attended all the Van Degan family celebrations and most of the parties given by her friends, like Loelia Manchester’s dinner at the Rhinelander, and the old friends of Justine from school and debutante days.

She took a particular interest in the wedding gifts as they began to pour in, judging each one accordingly. Grandfather Van Degan sent gold candlesticks, and Uncle Laurance and Aunt Janet Van Degan personally dropped off a tiny Renoir, “marvelously framed,” as Lil was the first to point out, from their own collection. Pearls came from Aunt Minnie Willoughby, who said she saw no point in waiting until she died to leave them to Justine, and Lil’s great friends the Todescos, with whom she always stayed in Rome, sent a Chinese export vase that Lil explained to Bernie was of museum
quality. Pieces of silver in vast quantity, old and new, large and small, ornate and plain, came from cousins and friends, as well as from business associates of Bernie’s. From Justine’s father, whom Lil never saw again after her divorce and his unfortunate second marriage, came a vermeil clock that Lil recognized as having belonged to his mother. Hubie sent something frightfully modern, as Lil described it, from his art gallery in SoHo, which Lil asked Justine to pretend to like, and Lil herself, after much deliberation, decided to give Justine an Aubusson carpet that had been in storage since she gave up the house in Newport, after Hubie’s unfortunate incident with the lifeguard at Bailey’s Beach, as well as the diamond-and-sapphire bracelet with the clasp that never worked that Fulco de Verdura had made for her from her Granny B.B.’s old tiara.

Bridesmaids were something of a problem for a girl of Justine’s age. The friends of her school and debutante years were all long married and having their second and even third child by this time. The thought of all married bridesmaids only pointed out the lateness of Justine’s journey to the altar, and the notion of pregnant bridesmaids was abhorrent to Lil. On one thing both mother and daughter, who rarely agreed, agreed totally. No matter what pressure was brought by the family, Dodo Fitz Alyn, poor Dodo, the poor relation, would not, absolutely would not, waddle up the aisle in the bridal party. Of all people, Lourdes, Lil’s maid Lourdes, came up with the idea of having only children as attendants, and the idea thrilled Lil. There were several Van Degan nieces, she pointed out to Justine, and little Nina Willoughby, and Violet Bastedo’s daughter, and the Trefusis twins. “It will be divine, and so chic, little taffeta dresses, like shepherdesses,” said Lil. “They could even carry crooks, and Lorenza could do something marvelous with trailing ivy and rosebuds.” Lil, who loved to organize, was in heaven.

“Justine,” she said, in a voice that Justine recognized as a prelude to a request.

“Yes, Mother,” replied Justine, who seemed to lose all the wedding decisions.

“I think Herkie Saybrook should be an usher,” said Lil.

“Herkie Saybrook, Mother? Bernie doesn’t even know Herkie Saybrook. A groom can’t have an usher he doesn’t even know.”

“There has to be someone from our side who knows who all our friends are. You can’t expect that Chinese weatherman, excuse me, Korean, to know where to seat Aunt Minnie Willoughby and the Todescos.”

“Hubie knows who all the family are, Mother,” said Justine.

“Hubie is not an usher. Hubie is going to take me down the aisle and sit with me. I am most certainly not going to sit with your father.”

“Hubie can take you down the aisle, sit with you, and still be an usher, Mother.”

“Will you please just talk to Bernie about Herkie? For me? For your mother, Justine?” asked Lil.

The tension between mother and daughter was broken when Lourdes walked into the room carrying another wedding present.

“Oh, heaven,” cried Lil, clapping her hands, which she did each time a new present arrived.

“Look how beautifully wrapped this box is, Mrs. Altemus,” said Lourdes. “Save me the paper and ribbons.”

“Who’s it from?” asked Lil, still in bed with a breakfast tray.

“Young Laurance and Laura Van Degan,” said Justine, reading the card.

“Good wrapping, cheap gift, wait and see,” said Lil, sipping her hot water and lemon juice.

“Oh, Mother,” said Justine, tearing apart the white satin ribbons and gold and white paper.

“They’re so tight. They sent Baba Timson a lucite paperweight, after Baba had lent them her house in Barbados for their honeymoon. Save all those ribbons
and wrappings for Lourdes. God knows what she does with them. Where’s it from?”

“Scully and Scully,” said Justine.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” said Lil, holding her hand over her eyes. “A wastebasket with a horse print by Stubbs.”

“Wrong,” said Justine.

“A white bamboo breakfast tray with a place for the
New York Times
.”

“Wrong again,” said Justine.

“Five dinner plates from your Morning Glory pattern.”

“A cut-glass vase,” said Justine, holding it up.

“I knew it. I knew they wouldn’t spend over sixty dollars,” said Lil. “The Van Degans are all the same. Let me see it.”

Justine handed the vase to her mother.

“Not bad,” said Lil, handing it to Lourdes.

“It’ll be marvelous for anemones,” said Justine.

14

Gus Bailey, working at his computer, heard the telephone ring several times before he remembered he had forgotten to put on his message machine.

“Hello?”

“Is that Gus Bailey?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Ceil Somerset. Do you remember me?”

“Yes,” he answered, but he didn’t actually remember. She had the fashionable voice of someone he had probably been introduced to at a fashionable party, and he knew before the conversation began that she was going to invite him to another fashionable party, probably as a last minute fill-in.

“We met at Justine Altemus’s engagement party,” said Ceil Somerset.

“Oh, yes,” replied Gus. He still didn’t remember, but it didn’t matter. If he was free, he would go. It interested him to see how the various groups of New York overlapped.

“I was the one who loved your article about the movie star who gave up booze.”

“Oh, yes.” Gus was fifty by the time people started to recognize him by name, and even face, and it never ceased to amaze him.