The Rothman Scandal (36 page)

Soon they were off the expressway, on Route 27, heading for Riverhead and the various Hamptons. At a service station, they stopped, used the rest rooms, filled Cronkite's water bowl, and Mel brought out two cans of ice-cold Coke to the car.

“That was wonderful, what you did,” she said.

“What'd I do?”

“Calling for help for those women. Nobody else would have done it.”

“One of them had a
baby
, for Chrissakes!”

“When you do something like that, I fall in love with you all over again,” she said. “Nothing seems wrong anymore.”

He pulled out of the service station with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other cupping his can of Coke.

“Straight to the Van Zuylens'?” he asked.

“Straight to the Van Zuylens'. We're going to be a little late as it is.”

They did not slow up again until they reached the Van Zuylens' entrance gate in Southampton, and joined the line of expensive automobiles that was proceeding down the long graveled drive toward the front door where the car-parking boys scurried efficiently about. It was seven fifteen. They had been on the road for more than eight hours, which was surely something of a record for a trip to the Hamptons.

18

“Finisterra,” the Van Zuylen estate on Gin Lane in Southampton, was one of the legendary residences on Long Island's South Shore. It had been much changed since Maggie Van Zuylen purchased the property in the 1960s, at a distress-sale price.

Maggie had started by completely gutting the interior of the main house, and adding the great double staircase that swept upward, with handrailings especially created for her by Steuben Glass, from the dramatic front entrance hall with its floor of polished chrome squares. Then she decided that she didn't care for the house's exterior, either. When the house was built in the 1920s, it had been in a vaguely Mediterranean style, with a façade of pink stucco. And so, as soon as the interior rooms were completed, the exterior façade was removed, and replaced, in a classic Georgian style, with geranium-colored brick that had been sun-baked in Siena, and six white marble columns were added across the front of the house. The windows of the house were custom-made in Belgium. The slate roofing tiles had come from a château outside Épernay.

She had done much more. In the basement, where the original owner's pistol range had been, she created an indoor tennis court. Outside, on the grounds, Maggie had supervised the construction of her English water garden, where a series of man-made streams, ponds, and waterfalls led down the terraced hillside on which the house stood, past the grass tennis court and a croquet lawn to the swimming pool, and the pool house, which Maggie also built. Beyond the pool house lay the ocean, and at the edge of the beach was Maggie's beach house, a sort of miniature version of the main house, with an arched loggia facing the sea. The beach house contained men's and women's changing rooms for the beach, and also doubled as a guest house, with two guest suites, each with a bedroom and bath, a sitting room, dining room, and kitchenette. Each time Alex Rothman visited “Finisterra,” it amused her to remember that it had all been paid for from a fortune made with a popular brand of mouthwash, called Breath-o-Kleen.

Maggie had designed “Finisterra” for entertaining, and the entire estate had been laid out so that guests, entering for the first time, would make their way from one architectural or landscaping surprise to another, for Maggie expected an appreciative gasp at every turn in the house, at every new vista in the garden. Guests tonight approached the main house up the long gravel drive, where they were met by the parkers, then up the wide marble steps and between the white columns, into the entrance hall with its chrome-tiled floor and the Steuben staircase. “I didn't know Steuben made staircases,” someone murmured. “Neither did they, till I ordered it!” Maggie Van Zuylen laughed her big laugh. Then they made their way through the principal rooms on the ground floor, where they could pause to admire some of the major paintings from Maggie's collection—the four Braque still lifes, Picasso's
Arlequin au Violon
, Modigliani's
Portrait of a Girl
, Seurat's
The Bathers
, Gauguin's
la Orana Maria
, Cezanne's
L'Éstaque
, Monet's
Grapes and Apples
, and, one of the many gems of the collection, which hung in the mauve-silk-covered dining room, the famous
Danseuse sur la Scène
, by Degas. The version that hung in the Louvre, Maggie liked to explain, was a copy.

Then they moved out into the garden, down the series of terraces with their accompanying waterway, past Maggie's collection of specimen rhododendrons and azaleas—now, of course, in full bloom—the hedges of hybrid hydrangeas, the parterres planted with boxwood and yew, through the trellised rose garden, past the grass tennis court and croquet lawn, past the pool and pool house, and on through the beach house to the beach, where tonight's party was being held. In the women's changing room, it was suggested that the women leave their purses and shoes, for dinner would be served out on the sand, under the stars.

On the beach, tables had been set up, lighted by Hawaiian torches. Under a white tent, a dance floor had been erected on the sand, and a five-piece jazz combo was playing, while strolling musicians in bright shirts moved among the guests with guitars and ukuleles playing Hawaiian tunes. “Look at that!” someone gasped, pointing to a spot, near the water's edge, where an elaborate sand castle had been built, complete with moat, towers, minarets, belvederes and battlements and flying buttresses, nearly twelve feet high. Toy soldiers, in full battle regalia, and in perfect scale with the castle, guarded the castle's ramparts and gates. Maggie had had the castle floodlighted, and more floodlights were beamed directly into the foaming surf.

“Who in the world built your sand castle for you, Maggie?” someone asked.

“I had my florist do it,” Maggie said. “It took ten men.”

“I didn't know florists built sand castles.”

“Neither did he, till I ordered it. When the tide starts coming in at ten o'clock, it'll all be washed away, which should be fun to watch, shouldn't it?”

At one end of the beach, over a driftwood fire, a whole pig was being roasted, turned on a spit by barefoot, white-coated members of Maggie's staff. In another spot, a large pit had been dug in the sand. All day long, Maggie's staff had been heating stones over charcoal until the stones were white-hot. Now the hot stones were being placed across the bottom and along the sides of the pit, and the stones were being covered with fresh wet seaweed which sizzled on the hot stones and sent bursts of live steam into the air. Now, on top of the steaming seaweed, more barefoot, white-coated men were tossing live lobsters, handfuls of steamer clams and mussels, fresh corn on the cob, pieces of cut-up chicken, and new potatoes in their skins. Then came another layer of seaweed, and a final layer of hot stones to complete the clambake.

“Just a simple little picnic,” someone commented.

“I hope it doesn't get too chilly later on,” Maggie Van Zuylen said. “But in case it does, I've had this section of the dunes heated.”

Alex saw that she wasn't kidding. Large electric braziers stood in readiness at the periphery of the party, to be moved closer to the tables should the need arise. Alex was making mental notes of all of this, for possible use in her picnic issue.

“Alex, darling,” Maggie Van Zuylen said, “I have a special surprise for you this evening. But I seem to have lost her for the moment. I'll see if I can find her.”

More barefoot, white-coated men were circulating among the guests, passing trays of hors d'oeuvres and taking drink orders. Alex accepted a glass of champagne from one of them.

“She's using her Baccarat on the beach!” she heard someone say and, through the crowd, she spotted the metallic cage of orange curls that belonged to Mona Potter. Across one section of sand, a volleyball net had been set up, and a group of bikini-clad young men had started a game, and Alex could see why lifeguards referred to men's bikinis as banana hammocks. She made a mental note: No men in bikinis in my picnic issue.

She was also, naturally, noticing what the women were wearing. It was, as Mel had said, mostly shorts and cutoffs, halters, cotton T-shirts, and tank tops. But she spotted one young woman, who had the figure for it, wearing what was obviously a white cashmere T-shirt, something new. She made a mental note of that.

Maggie Van Zuylen had roped off her section of the beach—from the waterline to her seawall—with velvet-covered chains hooked to stanchions, like those used to control crowds in a theater lobby. This was probably quite illegal, since all American beaches technically belonged to the public, at least as far up as the high-water mark. But no one would have the temerity to cross Maggie's barriers and crash such an elaborate party, though a small group of onlookers had gathered on the other side of the stanchions to watch the goings-on.

If these outsiders had joined the party, they would have heard very different conversational gambits than one heard at parties in Manhattan. In Manhattan, the talk was generally of divorces, love affairs, interior designers, and security systems. In the Hamptons, it was usually about real estate.

Moving through the crowd, brushing lips with some of the guests, squeezing the hands of others, Alex listened to them.

“They're asking fifty thousand for July first through Labor Day—
unfurnished
.”

“Memorial Day, I could see that much. But July
first?
”

“If it doesn't have an ocean view, I say forget it.”

“Frankly, I'd rather be on a pond than on the ocean. The damned
salt spray
. Maggie has to have her windows washed twice a week.”

“And what about Mel Jorgenson's house? He must have to have his windows washed every
day!
” Mel's glass house on the dunes in Sagaponack had caused much local comment ever since he built it.

“They'll never develop that property. It's zoned one-A residential.”

“Well, his brother-in-law is on the zoning commission, so we'll see.”

“The Allertons will sue if anybody tries to put condos there.”

“Frank says let 'em sue. The publicity will help him sell his condos.…”

“They're asking four-point-nine? For that
dump?
They'll never get it.…”

“She paid eighty thousand for her pool, and it's only one-third filtered.”

“She should sue the contractor.”

“I don't care what you say. Keeping a pool at eighty degrees is one thing. But ninety is ridiculous.”

“You think your taxes are bad. Mine are sixteen thousand a
month
.”

“There's Alex Rothman.”

“Darling, she's about to be
history
.”

The sun was going down, and the smell of steaming seafood was in the air. Very carefully, the white-coated young men were scraping the hot stones away from the top of the clambake with long-handled rakes. Others were lighting the Hawaiian torches, while still others were turning the roasting pig on its spit, the fat hissing and flaming as it hit the live coals.

“I didn't know Zabar's would sell a whole boar,” someone was saying.

“Neither did they, till I ordered it!” said the hostess in her farmerette's outfit of blue velvet coveralls and many gold chains. Alex had a thought: a story on outrageous picnics?

Mel touched Alex's arm. “I'm going up to check on Cronkite's water before we eat,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

“Who're
you
?” Mona Potter was saying, on her fourth glass of wine, peering myopically at a guest she did not immediately recognize. “Are you supposed to be anybody?”

Mel Jorgenson made his way back through the gardens carrying water in a large Baccarat highball glass. Floodlights lit some of the specimen rhododendron bushes, and low, invisible lighting illuminated the boxwood parterres, while other floodlights beamed up into the trunks and canopies of some of the larger trees. It was a far cry from the picnics of his youth—hard-cooked eggs on a paper plate, laid out on a sandy towel at Coney Island. He could still feel the sand in his teeth from the eggs. “You've got to eat a pound of dirt before you die,” his mother said.

Even in the fading light, it was easy enough to pick out Scarlett O'Hara from the two hundred—odd cars in “Finisterra” 's parking lot, and he headed toward her with his water glass, and opened the door on the driver's side. “Ho, Cronkite,” he said.

Then he jumped back with alarm, and dropped the glass, which shattered at his feet on the pavement. A pile of glittering fabric lay across his front seat, and it was moving.

Then he realized that it was a woman's body sprawled across the bucket seats, and that she was sobbing uncontrollably.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. And then, “Can I help you?”

She gave a little startled cry, and looked up at him, her eyes streaming. Immediately she reached for a pair of oversize sunglasses that lay beside her on the seat, and put them on, and he recognized her. “Miss Fenton,” he said.

“Oh, please,” she sobbed. “Please forgive me! I didn't know where to go. Yours was the only car I could find that was unlocked, with the windows open. I just had to get away from that party. I didn't know where to go. I came here.”

“What happened?”

“Look at me!” she sobbed, sitting up and gesturing to her dress, which was full and floorlength and glistening with gold and silver embroidery.
“Just look at me!”

“What's wrong with you?”

“It's my new Chanel. I bought it just for this party. And look at my shoes!” She lifted her long skirts to show him her shoes, which were gold pumps with high, thin stiletto heels. “Look at me! I'm supposed—supposed to be going to work for the—the leading fashion magazine in the
world
, and I came dressed like this. I look like a fool, I look like a clown!”