The First Wives Club (23 page)

Annie had offered to come with her today knowing how anxious Brenda was, but Brenda had declined. She would have liked the support, but she was too frightened about the things that might be said. Morty was sure to make a scene. And he might even bring up her father’s imprisonment. If this was going to get dirty, and chances were it might, best not to expose Annie. Unlike Elise and Annie, she hadn’t grown up in a chintz-ruffled country home where feelings were never expressed, let alone at the top of the lungs.

Coming upon a particularly lovely display room done like an English manor house bedroom, Brenda checked the price tags on each item and suddenly smiled to herself. Nothing like Romano’s Furniture Store in the Bronx, she thought.

There, where her mother and her aunts bought their furniture, everything was sold in sets, bedroom sets, living room sets, dining room sets. Her aunt Sally had called them “suites,” but then, she had gone to Hunter College for a year.

Now, looking at the Bloomingdale’s price tags, Brenda remembered when she and Morty were first married and living in the semi-attached house her father bought her off Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Her favorite aunt, Rose, her father’s sister, had taken her to Romano’s. Aunt Rose waddled her way past the salesman to the manager’s office in the back, greeting him like long-lost family, which he probably was.

“Anything she wants, Sonny. The best,” Aunt Rose had said. Brenda knew exactly what bedroom set she wanted, the one displayed on the raised platform in the center of the store. She had, in fact, picked it long before she and Morty got engaged. She was so excited about her home, her first home. She pored through magazines and agonized over color schemes and swatches.

But weeks later, when the matching off-white and gold furniture arrived, it was a disappointment. It didn’t look like the pictures in the magazines.

Something was wrong, but Brenda didn’t know what. In the magazines, she noticed, things weren’t in sets. But where did you get the stuff that they showed in those beautiful pictures? Disappointed, she decided that the right sheets might do it. Armed with an ad from a bride’s magazine, she went to Bloomingdale’s for the first time and found her way to the linen department.

The set of Porthault sheets for her wedding bed had cost almost as much as the bed itself, but Brenda felt delicious as she carried them home.

Her dad her given her plenty of money. For the first time she felt that not only had she spent a lot of money but also, at last, had got quality. She was so proud, she showed them to Morty.

Morty had almost swallowed his cigar when he found out how much the sheets had cost. “Are you fucking crazy? You spent that kind of money for bedsheets that no one will ever see? No way, take them back.”

She should have known. What else could she expect from Morty, who had his shirts custom-made, but bought his underwear cheap at Job Lot?

Cheap underwear because “nobody sees them but you, baby.” Ha ha.

Right. Cheap was good enough because it was only for her. Brenda had gritted her teeth to hold back the anger. But she never forgot that lesson, nor the pain of returning the sheets. For the rest of their married life, she had decided, she would never again tell him the true cost of anything she had bought. And she never did.

Fruit of the Loom irregulars might be good enough for him, but not for her.

And not for her kids. So the struggle began. And continues, she observed wryly to herself. Morty had paid Angie’s tuition, but instead of letting her go to Europe for the summer, he’d gotten her a job at that Park Avenue law firm. Cheap bastard. Well, she’d keep fighting him. She better get her fat ass over to Leo Gilman’s office. Today she and Diana were meeting with him and Morty to try to adjust her settlement.

Morty stepped off the elevator at the forty-ninth floor of his lawyer’s office building on Central Park South. He stood, damp from the rain, the end-of-August heat, and his own nervous sweat, facing the receptionist. He shrugged his suit jacket up snugly on his shoulders, giving himself a moment to control his nervousness, and walked to her desk. The receptionist sat in front of a window wall that, on a clear day, offered an unparalleled view of Central Park. They pay through the nose for that, Morty thought, and then corrected himself. I pay for it, he realized angrily. And because of today’s misting rain, the window was only a gray phosphorescent backdrop, despite the trees, lake, and lawns in the park below. Views! Christ, he wondered at what people paid for. Well, he paid plenty for Leo Gilman, the rat bastid, and even so, it wasn’t Park Avenue prices. Plus, he watched those hours. Leo better not bury him with them, not at a hundred and seventy-five bucks per. Bet Bill Atchison, that stiff, got two hundred or more.

At the thought of Bill Atchison, he turned away bitterly from the grayed glass. He and Gil still hadn’t cut him in on any other deals.

Hadn’t even given him a nibble. You work your whole life, you build nothing into something, and then all those weaseling accountants and lawyers and brokers and momzers in general took their cuts, leaving you bleeding. He didn’t trust one of them. He smiled. He’d put it over on them. His money was safe in Switzerland. He just wished he could get in on another big deal, a Gil Griffin kind of deal. Those two, Bill and Gil, had made almost as much from his offering as he had. And that should count as dues, but he still wasn’t in the club. Like the time he called Gil about the Nabisco deal. “Too late, Morty.

Everything’s committed.” Morty almost smiled to himself, remembering the conversation he had overheard between Gil and the guy at the Wall Street Journal. Gil wouldn’t even cut Morty in on that deal, so Morty would cut himself in. I can play their game, he thought.

Now Leo had better not fuck him. He’d handled the divorce real well, Morty had to hand that to him. Of course, Morty had known that Brenda wouldn’t want to go to trial. She got hives just passing a cop car.

But what was this new business? Brenda wanting to reopen ths cussions on her settlement? And she got herself a lawyer? Sure, she was greedy like all the other maggots.

It had been easy to keep most of the financials from her. But he couldn’t keep the public offering a secret. Still, he’d put it over on her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t smart, she was. It was just that he was cagey and had been preparing for the move for a long, long time.

His accountant had been the one who had first given Morty the idea of going public. Of course, Morty never gave his accountant credit, just like he never gave Brenda any. And he didn’t give her anything else either. Just the lousy, cheesy co-op, in return for which she had signed over all her shares. So if she wanted something more now, it was just too goddamn bad. She could forget about it. I don’t care how good this La Gravenesse dame is supposed to be.

”Mr. Cushman?”’ a secretary asked. Morty nodded. “Mr. Gilman will see you now.”’ As he followed the secretary down the hall to Leo Gilman’s office, Mort began picking nervously at the seat of his pants.

His underwear always crawled up his crack. Brenda hated that habit, he remembered suddenly, and stopped. He wondered if Brenda and her new lawyer had yet arrived. He began to feel the rush of adrenaline that always came when he geared up for a fight over money.

Since Leo’s call on Monday arranging this meeting, Morty had gone over and over in his mind the terms of the divorce settlement with Brenda.

No matter how many times he considered it, he still believed that he’d done just fine by the fat bitch. She couldn’t deny that she was better off for having married him. And lucky. After all, he was Morty the Madman. He’d done that. So maybe her father, that little Mafia wop, had helped at first, but it had been his sweat that made it work.

Brenda had done well enough. After all, she had maybe been a beauty, but she’d never been thin.

He and the secretary walked to the glass door in the glass-brick walls.

The place was trendy. More of my money, Morty thought. Maybe Shelby can sell them something for their walls. It shouldn’t be a total loss.

When he walked into the office, Leo got up from behind the glass-topped table that served as his desk and came, smiling, toward Morty, his hand outstretched. Morty was never so aware of how unlike himself Leo was as now. Salt-and-pepper hair fastidiously cut at La Coupe, Giorgio Armani suit, handmade Italian shoes.

He’s going to cost me a bundle, but it’s cheaper to pay him to blow Brenda off than it would be to give her more money, Morty figured.

“Morty, good to see you. You’re looking great. You’ve been working out?”

“Hey, Leo, don’t grease me up before you stick it in. What does Brenda want?

How much is it going to cost me to get rid of her? And who is this La Gravenesse lawyer? What are we dealing with here?”

Leo did what he did best and began reassuring Morty.

”It’s taken care of, Mort, I promise you. The agreement is airtight, not to worry about a thing. I’ll take care of La Gravenesse, you just sit tight.”

“Yeah, that’s what they told Donald Trump. I paid you plenty, Leo. I thought this was over.”

“Look, Morty, anyone with twenty-five bucks and a resentment can file a suit.

We expected this. Your ex-wife saw the offering, she got mad, she got greedy, she found a greedy lawyer.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“Hey, Mort, I may have cost you, but I saved you plenty. Right?”

Morty reluctantly nodded. “Just make sure the deal holds.”

”We’ll hang tough while her lawyer makes noises and sees we mean business.

You say Brenda doesn’t like courts. And she’s got no bucks for fees.

They’ll back down.” Leo patted Morty’s shoulder. “And Mort”—he paused—“no scenes, okay? Whatever she says, just stay cool. It’s all talk.”

Morty nodded.

“So let’s go. They’re waiting for us.”

Morty and Leo walked across the hall to a conference room. Brenda and the woman lawyer—a big woman lawyer, Morty noticed immediately—sat together on a sofa at the far side of the smooth lacquer table placed in the center of the room. Morty gave Diana a quick look, trying to size her up. Their eyes met for a moment and Morty felt a brief chill run down his spine. He shrugged it off as Leo greeted them. Morty just grunted and sat down. He stretched his legs out, crossed them at the ankles, and lit a cigar. Finally, he looked over at Brenda, seeing her through the haze of smoke.

She sat on the sofa, her legs pushed apart by the fat on her thighs, both hands clutching her pocketbook on her lap. Her eyebrows were slightly raised, and Morty could see a glistening of moisture on her upper lip. Twenty-one years of marriage was enough to tell him she was nervous. Good. That’s how he liked her. But there was something else there he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something new. The same subtle unreadable energy he caught on Diana’s face. She has too much, that’s what wrong with her, he thought. Never enough.

“You cheap fuck,” he heard her growl, startling him. So this is how it’s going to be, he thought. Pick up right where we left off?

Brenda had dropped her purse. Seeing Morty sitting there, smoking his goddamn eighteen-dollar cigar and acting like a shtarker while Angela had sweated all summer long, was too much. Who the fuck does he think he is? Well, he wasn’t. Brenda thought she’d been angry before.

Forget about it. Just thinking about it now made her want to kill him with her bare hands.

“So, how many boxes of cigars did you buy this month while your daughter was working for four bucks an hour?” Brenda spat.

Turning to Diana, she continued, as if for the first time, ‘He always had more money than he knew what to do with, but he wanted to take Angela and Anthony out of private school to save money. That’s the year he wanted to buy a boat instead.”

”That public school on Madison Avenue was only two blocks from our apartment.

It was good enough for those UN chinks and Arabs. Why shouldn’t it be good enough for two Jewish wops? You went to Julia Richman High School for chrissake.” Morty always knew how to hurt Brenda most—through the kids. They were always the last ammunition he would use, but he would use them if necessary.

”Because I had to, not because I waned to. Our kids didn’t have to so why should they? Because you grew up with nothing? Because my parents didn’t know any better? It’s good enough? Well, it’s not. Not for our kids, not for mine.”’ Leo Gilman gave Morty a look. “Okay, folks, let’s all take a deep breath and start again.” The shit, thought Brenda. He’s the one who helped Morty screw me the first time. Well, never again. She looked at the two self-satisfied men.

She hated them. She hated all of them. Her anger felt good, empowering. And Diana would get them. She just knew it.

Diana leaned slightly forward, giving Brenda’s knee a single calming pat, and said directly to Leo Gilman, ‘We’re here because my client would like her financial needs and those of your client’s children reassessed. In light of the huge windfall Mr. Cushman received when his company went public so soon after the settlement was signed, we would like you and your client to put aside that agreement and offer a more equitable distribution.”

Morty snorted. “If it were equitable, she’d get nothing. She’s worth nothing.”’ ”If settlements were based on worth, Mr. Cushman, you’d be bankrupt.” ”Who the fuck do you think you are?” Morty shouted at Diana, his face flushed with rage.

Good, Brenda thought, Let him get nuts. I hope he has a stroke. Does little Shelby remind you to take your pressure pills?

Leo Gilman quieted Mort down again, then coldly turned to Diana. “Ms. La Gravenesse, the settlement agreement was duly signed and notarized, and subsequently entered into the judge’s divorce decision. That was more than three years ago,” he said. “There is nothing you can do about it. It’s a legal document, carrying with it the full force of the law.” Morty watched Leo snap his Bijan shirt cuffs forward, first one, then the other, as if making exclamation points at the end of his statement. Morty enjoyed that gesture. It looked like Gilman was earning his money, he thought. Maybe we’ve got this one nailed shut.

But Diana continued without missing a beat. “Hardly. Mr. Gilman,” she continued in her deep, soft voice, “it’s our contention that Mrs. Cushman’s legal representation might be in conflict of interest. As I understand it, you represented Mr. Cushman in the divorce, and my client, at your suggestion, was represented by a young man just out of law school, who you had engaged for her, a Mr. Barry Marlowe. Now we find that he also became an associate of your firm only a few months after the divorce decree. We think these facts may change the perspective of the settlement.”