The First Wives Club (25 page)

Annie leaned forward and said, “It hasn’t been easy for Elise, either, Brenda.”

Brenda looked over at her and said, “Not now, Annie. Don’t do good girl’ now.”

”I can take care of myself, Annie. Besides, Brenda has a point,” Elise said, and turned her attention back to Brenda.

Brenda continued, her voice now more subdued, ‘Do you know what I think, Elise? I think this is just a game to you. Something to do until you get over losing your man. Something to do instead of going to the south of fucking France, or taking a three-month tour around the world on your fucking yacht.

It’s like another toy. Well, I’m fighting for my life here, little Miss Rich Spoiled Brat. This isn’t a game.” Brenda took a quick gulp of water from the stemmed goblet. She put it down and looked at Elise, squinting her eyes just the way her father used to. ‘So don’t pussy’ me. When you’re willing to lay everything you own on the line, then you can criticize me. But until then, keep your righteousness to yourself.”

Elise continued to look directly at Brenda. Brenda saw something in Elise’s eyes, something she hadn’t really noticed before. “I’m sorry, Brenda,” Elise finally said, speaking slowly. “I was thoughtless and insensitive. You are right, you know. I don’t know what it’s like to be at the mercy of a man for my financial security.” Elise blinked her eyes quickly, lifted her head, and said, “Please forgive me, Brenda. I should have thought.”

Brenda, surprised, leaned back in her chair, her breath coming slower.

‘Sure.

Yeah, it’s okay, Elise.”’ Brenda instantly regretted her outburst. ‘I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.”’ ”But I do know what it’s like to depend on a man for emotional security. To depend on a man for anything is degrading, it appears.” Elise smiled. ‘So that’s that.

We don’t do anything about Morty until after he settles with Brenda.

Agreed, ladies?”’ Annie smiled back at the two women and nodded.

Somehow, when they had decided to get together, she hadn’t quite foreseen this. In fact, she realized uncomfortably, the whole thing seemed to be getting beyond her control. And her years with Dr. Rosen had taught Annie she was nothing if not a control freak.

Annie shook her head, as if to dislodge something in it. Thinking of Aaron and Dr. Rosen was a dangerous business. She kept herself busy, but at night, alone in the apartment, he was there in her thoughts. He had been so funny, so witty. He had made her laugh. And he had understood her, gotten her own mild jokes, admired her wit. At least at one time he had. No one had really known her since.

”Well, what are we looking for?” she asked now.

”I don’t think we’ll know yet. I mean, in general, we’re looking for the chinks in their armor, aren’t we?” Elise asked.

“The soft white underbelly,” Brenda added, patting her own.

Elise pursed her lips. “For Gil, it’s obvious. I say we move on two fronts, we find out who his next takeover target is and screw that up, and also see how he’s been a bad boy on past offerings or takeovers.

Involve the SEC, and if we can mole into his personal finances, maybe the IRS. I don’t think that we can do much with the police—I mean, that note from Cynthia proves it was a suicide. But socially we may have something. The new wife, what’s her name?”’ She consulted her notes.

”Birmingham. Mary Birmingham,” Brenda prompted.

”Yes. Well, she wants a new apartment on Fifth. Lally is on that board. Maybe we can keep them out of the building. And I think we can blackball her from any social function that matters.”

”I can get all the old stuff I have on Morty’s company. I used to save it all. Maybe there will be something there,” Brenda offered.

”Great. And Annie, didn’t you say you were dining with Stuart Swann?”

”Well, he invited me out,” she answered, blushing slightly.

Brenda noticed the blush and wondered. Is Annie feeling guilty because she has a date and we don’t?

”Good,” Elise said. ‘Pump him. Let’s find out who Gil is about to gobble up next.” Annie nodded reluctantly. “Maybe I’ll talk to my uncle Bob about Gil, too,” Elise said. ‘He might help.”’ She looked at her notebook again.

“Now, Bill is more difficult. Of course, I’ve cut him off without a sou, and I’m pulling my business out of Cromwell Reed. But I think we might be able to do something with the Van Gelders.”’ ”Break up their love nest?” Brenda asked.

”Break up the trust fund, more likely.”’ “Do you know she’s a drug addict?” Brenda asked.

“So you say. That might be useful. How do you know?” Elise asked.

“We are not without resources.” Brenda smiled imperiously.

“Maybe I could mention the problem to Dr. Girton on my next visit.

He’s the Van Gelder family physician, too. I think it’s my duty to help them help the girl, don’t you? Could there be a Ford in her future—as in Betty’s detox place? That ought to hold Bill and his fiancee’ for the present. He’s clean on taxes, and he has no friends to alienate, so that’s him for now.” She paused, flipping pages.

“Brenda,” Elise continued, “your husband isn’t unimpregnable. After your settlement goes through, let’s have my boys go over those business papers and the entire offering. We might take down two birds with that stone. And you could sue him for more.”

“No, Elise. Let me just get what he’s promised. I don’t want to screw up the deal.” Brenda was getting nervous again.

Elise looked at het with understanding. “Well, of course not. No sense in cutting off your nose to spite your spouse. So we can’t use the IRS either?”

“No.” For once, even Brenda didn’t make a joke.

”Well,” Elise said cheerfully, crossing that off her list, “we can at least have him kept out of the Union League Club, and the Maidstone.”’ ”Has he applied there?” Brenda asked incredulously.

“Apparently. The wife wants in.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m not without resources.” Elise smiled back at her airily. “They wouldn’t have been accepted, anyway.” She shrugged. “You know the attitudes there—NOKD … not our kind, dear.” We can also try to get his wife’s new art gallery panned. We can make sure when they give a party nobody comes. And I understand she’s applied to the Junior League.” She looked over at Annie. Brenda knew that was the most exclusive women’s club in New York. “She is not going to be accepted,” Elise said. “Not a husband stealer.” She paused and looked at Annie.

“Speaking of husband stealers, there’s the good doctor’s new husband.

Shall we try to close down Aaron’s agency?”

”No, Elise. That isn’t fair,” Annie said. “It would make his partner suffer.

Jerry’s a good guy.” Annie couldn’t add that she still didn’t want to think of Aaron hurt.

”We’re not playing fair,” Elise reminded her. “They didn’t.”

“No. Nothing like that,” Annie protested. “He’s the father of my children, after all.”

”A penis is no longer a passport to safety.”

“Was it ever?”

“Well, perhaps we’ll save Aaron for last,” Elise said, snapping her book shut.

“Now, Miss Elliot,” Brenda said, dimpling. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”

Elise smiled at Brenda. “No. Mostly they liked me passive. But those days are over, my friend. I’m changing.” She looked around her at the elegant, tasteful room. ‘I don’t want to roll over anymore. I want blood.”

”Anger mutation,” Brenda said, nodding. “Very common during nuclear holocaust or divorce.”

”So, are we now MiddleAged Mutant Ninja First Wives?” Annie asked.

“Cowabunga,” Elise answered.

Dinner at Eight The sun was setting on the glittering city, putting on a spectacular sky show, as Annie turned from John Finley Walk onto East Eightyfourth Street and headed for her apartment building on Gracie Square. As she got into the elevator, she looked at her watch, realizing she’d lost track of time again. With Sylvie gone it was easy to do.

It was six. Only an hour till she was to meet Chris for drinks, then dinner with Stuart Swann at eight. She had cut it too close, but she always found it hard to leave the hospital. Hard to go to, hard to leave, she thought ruefully. Now she’d have to rush to get ready. But better be rushed than nervous, she thought. I don’t want to think about this date too much.

Annie hadn’t dated since the separation. In fact, she’d rarely dated before her marriage. Serial monogamy was more her style. She’d met a nice Amherst boy when she was at Miss Porter’s, and they had necked and written to one another.

They’d managed to make love once, right in the living room of his parents’ New York pied-a-terre, but it had still been a furtive affair.

Then she had met Stuart on a weekend visit to Cynthia’s home, and they had dated until she met Aaron. But they had never slept together. It had embarrassed her to tell Dr. Rosen how inexperienced she really was.

And here she was, even more pathetic now, divorced and obviously incompetent at mating.

Well, she wouldn’t consider this a date, it was simply a dinner between old friends. And if something came of it, well …

Men. There was something wrong with men Aaron’s age. Something that she didn’t think—something that she hoped—wouldn’t eventally prove to be wrong with her sons.

Well, of course, the men of Aaron’s generation had grown up with a set of different expectations, they expected both to dominate women and to be cared for by them. At least that was the example Aaron’s father had set for him.

Then the rules changed, but the men didn’t. Annie could see that both Chris and Alex had less need to prove themselves, more willingness to share with their girlfriends.

Still, Aaron and Morty and Gil and Bill all went on, needing to be looked up to yet resenting the burden. Annie supposed that the new wives were light to carry but still kept that glow of idol worship going. Was Stuart just another angry, resentful member of that club, or was he different? God, she thought, is my view skewed with bitterness, or is that exactly what’s been happening to men and women in the last decade?

Maybe tonight she would uncover something useful, what Gil was up to, where he might be vulnerable. Corporate Espionage R’ Us, she thought.

But she would also do her best to enjoy the evening. Heaven knows, there hadn’t been many opportunities to enjoy men, but that was what happened to middleaged women who lost their husbands. Of course, a few of her friends had made “suggestions.” But Annie shrank from the idea of men like Felix Boraine, an unattractive, wealthy seventy-year-old widower, or Georges Matin, an amusing but obviously gay social escort. Such men were beneath her after Aaron. She’d rather be alone.

Once inside her apartment, Annie longed to remain there. She had things to do, the mail to go through, her letter to Sylvie to write.

She longed for her daughter. She tried to write each day. Well, she’d have no time for that or the mail now. She’d make it an early night and do it when she came home. The order and beauty she had created here made spending a comfortable evening at home a sure thing. With Stuart she couldn’t be so sure.

But God, she knew she should go out. She spent so many evenings, had so many dinners, alone. Lunches were no problem, and the days were slowly getting filled by her work at the hospital, her plants, her writing, and the First Wives Club, but the evenings! She had to start doing something. Aaron gets remarried and I don’t even date, she chided herself.

Although she had less than an hour, she poured herself a tall glass of Evian and sat down in her favorite chair. She wanted to think, about Sylvie and her life at Sylvan Glades, about herself and her own life without Sylvie, even without Pangor. She not only missed her daughter, she missed her sweet Siamese cat as well. Yet she hadn’t the heart to get a new kitten. That’s me all over, she thought. The torn is gone but I can’t replace him. She drank the water down. Chris would be at the Russian Tea Room at seven, then Stuart at Petrossian at eight.

Damn, and I have to get there, she moaned, getting up.

She hadn’t engaged Hudson for the evening, so she’d have to take a cab.

She hoped she could get one, that it wouldn’t smell, that the driver would speak English, that he’d have change for a twenty. She’d better hurry.

It never took her long to dress. At 6,35, Annie slipped into a pair of slim ivory silk trousers and pulled a matching silk knit top over her still-damp curls. She sat at her dressing table and opened the velvet box that contained the jewelry she’d been left when her mother ran off.

he gold ear clips and necklace set that she’d seen so often on her mother were now her favorite pieces. She looked at her reflection in the mirror as she put them on and almost saw her mother there. But I’m not as tan, she noted. Or as beautiful.

No, the nose is too long, the face too round, the chin too short. Best I can do is pretty, if that. Maybe only attractive. But tonight is a night of intrigue. Perhaps I’ll look more the part if I put on more eye makeup, she thought. But her round eyes refused to look mysterious, no matter how much eyeliner she applied.

She glanced at her Waterford clock and quickened her pace. Scent, keys, bag.

Over her silks, she put on a modified Japanese kimono by Hanae Mori, beige with subtly colored, widely spaced markings in pale rust and ocher. She saw herself in the hall mirror and was pleased. I can still pull this off. She smiled at herself trying to build her own confidence. I look great. Aaron was a fool to leave me. As if to match her positive mood, a cab pulled up as she stepped out of the lobby. Perhaps this would be fun.

The Russian Tea Room was decorated for Christmas. This wasn’t jumping the season, as so many New York retailers did. The Tea Room was always decorated for Christmas because the owner, Faith Stewart Gordon, liked it that way.

The desirable tables, always surprising to Annie, were not the ones at the center of the long, narrow restaurant, but the red semicircle banquettes at the entrance corridor. Well, as at Le Cirque, see and be scene, she supposed, but the draft was terrific on your legs there, despite the beautifully polished brass revolving door. No, Annie didn’t mind that she was always seated in the back. Tonight, though, she’d just take a seat at the bar, she thought.