Too Much Money (21 page)

“My word, look at all these people,” said Lil as she stepped out of the car. “Did you tell the driver to wait for us and take us to the reception at the Butterfield Club?”

“Yes, Lil,” said Kay Kay. “It’s the fourth time you’ve asked me that.”

“This is the biggest funeral they’ve had here at St. James’ since Ann Grenville killed Billy,” said Lil. “Ann was so trashy she wanted to come to the funeral after she shot him with a twelve-gauge shotgun, but Alice simply wouldn’t allow it. Just look at these people behind the barriers. Everyone’s behaving so well. The people loved Adele. It’s really so touching, isn’t it?”

“End of an era,” said Kay Kay. “I’m going to run over and say hello to Petal Wilson and tell her I can’t go to the matinee tomorrow because my daughter’s coming to town unexpectedly from St. Louis. Something must be wrong with the marriage, I suppose. This is her third marriage, for god’s sake, and she’s only thirty. You’d think she’d learn to get it right eventually. I’ll look for you in the vestibule, Lil. Don’t go up to the seats without me.”

“Oh, no, I won’t. Addison Kent is saving us places. I’ll look for him,” said Lil.

“Mrs. Altemus?”

Lil recognized the voice and turned around to see Gert standing in the crowd. She had not seen or heard from her since Gert’s unpleasant leave-taking to go into the employ of Ruby Renthal, who had offered her more money and a room with a sitting room and free trips to Ireland on Elias Renthal’s G550, which Lil had considered a betrayal. Several times she had felt guilty that she had screamed at Gert, and fired her, and told her to get out of her apartment right then and there after Gert had been with her for so many years, but always the outrage of Gert’s perfidy squashed the competing thought. She firmly believed that Gert had betrayed her by going to work for the Elias Renthals. She had often wondered what she would do if she ran into Gert at Grace’s Marketplace, where Lil now did her own marketing. In her thoughts of the imagined meeting, she snubbed her, walked right by pretending she didn’t see her.

“Oh my goodness, hellohowareyou?” said Lil, in a distant tone of voice she sometimes used with servants.

“I had to come, Missus,” said Gert nervously, who understood Lil’s tone of voice from the many years she had worked for her but was determined to go on with what she had to say. “I had to pay my respects to Mrs. Harcourt. She was always so good to me, and she fell and broke her hip in my kitchen. I mean
your
kitchen, excuse me. I feel that somehow I played a little part in her story.”

“Yes, I suppose you did,” said Lil. “Knowing Mrs. Harcourt as I did, I’m sure that she would have been very touched that you came. Actually, I was with her when she died.”

“I read that in Kit Jones’s column,” said Gert.

As Lil started to move off to the steps of the church, Gert said quickly, “Mrs. Altemus, before you go into the church, I’d like you to meet my niece, and your namesake, Lillian Hoolihan, who has just moved here to New York from Roscommon in Ireland, where the whole family is from.”

Lil turned toward the young woman, whom she had not looked at before.

“Hello, Mrs. Altemus,” said Lillian Hoolihan. “My late mother, bless her soul, always said it was Gert who wanted me to be named after you. At home in school, at Our Lady of Sorrows, they called me Lil, just like you. It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am.”

Later, Gert said to her niece that she thought she had seen the beginning of a tear in Mrs. Altemus’s eyes. “Thank you, Lillian. Thank you. That’s very nice,” said Lil, looking ahead. “Oh, Kay Kay, wait up a second, and we’ll go in together. Addison Kent is an usher, and he knows exactly where I’m supposed to be seated. Third row, right-hand side, directly behind Adele’s nephew and his wife from Wyoming or someplace. Good-bye, Gert.”

“Bye, Missus.”

“Wasn’t that Gert you were talking to?” asked Kay Kay Somerset. “I thought you were never going to speak to her again, ever, ever, ever, after she walked out on you to work for Mrs. Renthal, leaving you high and dry.”

“You can’t imagine what happened. That girl with her is her niece, the one she was always going to Ireland to visit every year,
and she’s named Lillian after me, but the girls in her school called her Lil. Don’t you love it? I didn’t know which way to look. I will say that Adele always loved Gert’s fig mousse.”

“Adele’s butler, George, told my maid that Adele thought Gert’s fig mousse was good for her bowels,” said Kay Kay.

“Make sure you tell that to Gert on the way out after the service,” said Lil.

“Oh, hello, Addison. I hope you’ve saved us our seats. Third row, right-hand side, right behind the Wyoming nephew and his wife. I knew you would. You know Kay Kay Somerset, of course. It’s just too sad. It’s too sad for words. I can’t imagine New York without Adele. You were so sweet to her, Addison. Taking her to the movies in the afternoon, all those nice things you did. Do I take your arm to go up to my seat or just follow you?”

Still rattled by her encounter with Gert and caught up in mourning for darling Adele, as well as excitement over her plum seating assignment, Lil chose to be warm to Addison Kent, whom she normally found contemptible.

“I have something for you, Lil,” said Addison as he took her arm and walked up the aisle. “Adele asked me to give it to you, and there’s one for Loelia. Here. Just slip it in your purse.” He handed Lil a small leather box.

“What is it?” asked Lil.

“An emerald and diamond ring that Adele wanted you to have,” said Addison, happy to be in such an enviable position. “Loelia got the ruby and diamond one. This way there’s no tax and no wait and no family and no lawyers involved.”

“Well, I certainly hope the police won’t be tracking me down looking for stolen goods,” said Lil, who would have preferred to have received the emerald and diamond ring from a lawyer, saying it had been bequeathed to her by Adele Harcourt, accompanied by a lovely note from Adele on her blue Smythson stationery,
telling her the history of the beautiful jewel. Receiving it from Addison Kent in such a manner was furtive, she felt, especially while walking up the aisle to her seat at Adele’s funeral.

Once seated in the third row, she nodded to the young couple from Wyoming, who returned her greeting. “Topher and Diane Abernathy, this is my great friend Kay Kay Somerset. Topher is Adele’s nephew. Your aunt Adele is watching over us today. You can be sure of that. She told me all about your avocado ranch. Tell me about your mother. She and I were in the same class at Farmington. We called her Ticky in those days. I didn’t make the fiftieth reunion, I’m afraid, or I would have seen her. I read all about it, though, in the alumnae bulletin, and I saw that Ticky was there. Do please give her my love.”

She settled back into her seat next to Kay Kay and showed her the leather box.

“What is it?” asked Kay Kay.

“Oh, look. There’s Laura Bush. She looks good in purple, don’t you think? She’s so much better dressed than when she first came east from Crawford. A little Crawford goes a long way for me. Once Oscar started dressing her, he gave her a whole new look.”

“What’s in the leather box?” asked Kay Kay.

Lil opened the box and was overcome by the beauty of the ring. She remembered having admired it many times when Adele had worn her emeralds.

“Put it on,” whispered Kay Kay.

“Don’t you think it would be a little much to wear it at her funeral?” asked Lil. She indicated with her head the young relatives from Wyoming and mouthed the name Topher.

“Just to see how it looks, and then take it off again and put it in your bag,” said Kay Kay.

Lil put it on. “Look,” she said, holding her hand low behind
the pew lest anyone see what she was doing and find it distasteful.

“It’s beautiful,” said Kay Kay. “Why aren’t you more excited?”

“Do you know what I don’t like about Addison Kent? He’s far too inside for such an outsider, if you know what I mean. Imagine him handing me this ring from Adele when he’s walking me up the aisle at her funeral,” said Lil, abandoning the feeling of kinship she’d had with Addison just moments earlier. “Of course I’m going to keep it, but I wonder how much I could get for it.”

“Shhh,” whispered Kay Kay, pointing with her finger at the pew in front of them.

“Oh, listen to that music,” said Lil, shifting the conversation. “Isn’t it heavenly? I hear Renée Fleming’s going to sing the Ave Maria. Adele adored Renée Fleming. She went to every Renée Fleming concert, and she went to every opera she sang at the Met. She used to have her to tea, even. Oh, look at those choirboys in their red cassocks and their white surplices. Aren’t they adorable? Adele planned the whole thing, you know, with a little help from Ethan Trescher, of course, who knows how to run big events like nobody else. Look how beautiful the altar looks. The flowers are to die for. I see the fine hand of Brucie arranging all the flowers. There’s Lita and Otto Aksam. There’s Bunny and Chiquita Chatfield in the same pew with Mrs. Bush. Have you met Chiquita? She’s a riot. She’s his fourth, I think. They must have come all the way from London for the funeral. There are the Sandovals, back together again, thank God. Ormolu and Percy Webb.”

“Wonderful suit on Ormolu, don’t you think?” asked Kay Kay.

“It’s Oscar’s. There’s Perla Zacharias with the face-lift of the decade,” said Lil, assuming a look of disapproval. “She has
no shame, that woman. She thinks her money can buy her way in anywhere. There’s such a thing as too much money, you know. This business at the library is really too much. I told you Adele’s reaction when I told her. She just died, there and then. Ethan had to invite Perla. Oh, listen. The music’s changing. They’re bringing in the casket soon. I don’t know if I can look at the casket. Poor Adele. I’ll miss her so. I think I’ll just look at the lilies of the valley. Oh, my god, there’s Xavior Branigan, the one walking in front of the casket. He’s the assistant funeral director at Grant P. Trumbull’s.”

“How in the world do you know the name of the assistant funeral director at Grant P. Trumbull’s?” asked Kay Kay.

“Well, I’ll tell you how I know his name,” said Lil, leaning over to whisper in Kay Kay Somerset’s ear. “He’s having an affair with my stepmother. Can you imagine?”

“With Dodo? I can’t believe it. It’s too hilarious,” said Kay Kay.

“Isn’t it killing? And she’s mad about him.” They shook with silent laughter at the absurdity of poor Dodo, the widow of Ormond Van Degan, one of the great men of New York, being besotted with Francis Xavior Branigan, the assistant funeral director of the Grant P. Trumbull Funeral Home. “He looks a little light on his feet if you ask me,” said Lil. “Oh, my god, I can’t believe my eyes, what I’m seeing. I just might faint.”

“What do you see?” asked Kay Kay.

“Elias Renthal, fresh from prison, looking for a seat far too near the front so everyone can see him,” replied Lil. “Look at the look on Ethan Trescher’s face. He’s furious, simply furious. Renthal just pushed by him as if he didn’t exist. Prison manners, that’s what I call it.”

“Look, he’s trying to say hello to you, Lil,” said Kay Kay. “He’s even waving, with a big smile on his face.”

“I looked right through him, as if I didn’t know who he
was,” said Lil. “Who do these people think they are? They’re nobody anymore, but they don’t seem to know it yet. Elias Renthal didn’t even know Adele. Isn’t it typical he’d come here on his first day out of prison?”

“You’re wrong, Lil. He did know Adele,” said Kay Kay. “He gave a large donation to the library, several million I think it was, and Adele had him and Ruby to dinner. You were there. I remember seeing you.”

“He was there exactly one time, as a payback,” replied Lil. “At least he won’t have the nerve to go to the Butterfield Club for the reception afterward. They only invited three hundred, and the Renthals were definitely
not
on the list. They kicked Renthal out of the Butterfield, don’t you remember? It was my dear brother, Laurance, who wrote the letter.”

“Ruby’s still quite pretty,” said Kay Kay. “I haven’t seen her for years. I wonder who did her face. Whoever it was did a fabulous job. That’s a marvelous suit she’s wearing, with the sable on the collar and cuffs.”

“Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel Couture, eleven thousand dollars. Addison Kent told me. That Baroness de Liagra orders Ruby’s clothes for her in Paris. You’ve heard the
on-dit
on the baroness, haven’t you?” Looking directly at her old friend, she mouthed but did not say the word
lesbian
, about the baroness. Again they shook with silent laughter.

“Lil, how do you know all these things?” asked Kay Kay.

“Winkie Williams would have loved this funeral,” said Lil, ignoring her friend.

R
UBY, MARCHING
up toward the front on the arm of Addison Kent, looked straight ahead. “Just don’t seat us in the same row with Perla Zacharias,” said Ruby to Addison. “We can’t give people that kind of ammunition on our first day back. Elias, be
more careful and dignified. It looks like you’re climbing over people just to get to our seat.”

“Lil Altemus didn’t acknowledge me,” said Elias to Ruby, when they were settled in a third-row seat over on the far right under the rose window. Simon Cabot had made the seating arrangement for the Renthals from London over the telephone with Addison Kent, who had become the full-time walker of Perla Zacharias since Adele Harcourt had taken ill and stopped going out socially. “I leaned over and waved to Lil and she saw me and then looked straight ahead. Is that’s the way it’s going to be for us?”

“How did you like your first dinner in the new house last night? All your favorite things: crown roast, asparagus,” said Ruby.

“Great, great. I told you last night it was great. What the fuck does that have to do with what I’m talking about, that Lil Altemus just snubbed me?”

“Shhh. Forgodssake, don’t say ‘fuck’ in St. James’ Church. That’s the rose window that Alice Grenville gave after Ann Grenville shot Billy Grenville,” said Ruby, pointing upward.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” said Elias, impatiently.

“Well, the delicious meal last night, where you had three helpings of the crown roast, three helpings of asparagus hollandaise, and two pieces of apple pie, was cooked by the famous Gert Hoolihan, who was Lil Altemus’s cook for twenty-five years, or something like that, when Lil lived in the big apartment on Fifth Avenue,” said Ruby.