VC01 - Privileged Lives (33 page)

Ash, poking dubiously at her shrimp, raised a glance at the newcomer and smiled. “Faith—look who I’ve brought you.”

The woman stood there in her dove gray crepe de chine dress looking at Babe. Expression left her eyes and was replaced with guardedness.

“Babe,” Ash said, “it’s dear old Mrs. Banks.”

For a moment Babe’s breath stuck in her throat. She told herself it couldn’t be: the woman was too poised, authority emanated from her like a perfume, Mrs. Banks would be in her sixties by now. But then she saw the faint erasures on the face, the surgical blankness around the eyes and chin and forehead. She realized this ice statue was her old friend and servant.

“Sit with us,” Ash pleaded. “Do have a glass of champagne. This is auld lang syne.”

Mrs. Banks gave just a nod of her head. The deep red ruby on her brooch was the size of an acorn. She pulled out a chair and sat and Ash poured an inch of champagne into a water glass and pushed it toward her.

“You’re looking well, Mrs. Devens.” The tone of Mrs. Banks’s words fell in an emotional dead center, without a trace of remembering or affection.

“You have a lovely restaurant,” Babe said.

“God’s been good to me. So have the columnists. But then, that’s what I pay a press agent for.”

“Could we meet sometime?” Babe said. “Have tea and talk?”

Mrs. Banks fixed her with a stare. “I don’t talk about the past.”

“It’s true,” Ash said. “A publisher offered Faith a fortune to do the book on you and she turned him down.”

“Enjoy your meals,” Mrs. Banks said.

And without touching her champagne she had gone on to another table.

“Isn’t it too divinely much?” Ash said. “Mousy old Mrs. Banks! Everyone calls her Faith now and she gets interviewed and invited everywhere.”

Babe watched her former servant greeting patrons, moving through the tables in a pattern that was planned and intricate and swift. She was so caught up in the transformation of Mrs. Banks that she didn’t pay attention to the relaxed, good-looking, vaguely aristocratic man who had approached the table. He tapped Ash on the shoulder.

Ash turned, saw him, and whooped. “Dobbsie, you devil, where have you been?”

She offered her face and he kissed her.

“I’ve been holding poor dear Jeannie Astor’s hand. Her poodle died.”

“Well, tell her not to overeat. She always stuffs when she’s depressed. Dobbsie, this is Babe Vanderwalk. Whoops, Babe Devens. She knows all my secrets, so you can be as dreadful as you normally are.”

Dobbsie’s dark eyes met Babe’s. “How do you do?”

Babe held out her hand. “How do you do?”

He took the hand lightly. “Gordon Dobbs. Better known as Dobbsie.”

“Dobbsie and I go way back,” Ash said. “It was love at first sight.” She tapped an empty chair. “Sit,” she commanded.

Dobbsie drew out the chair and sat, taking a moment to adjust the crease in his gray cotton slacks. He looked at Babe, his gaze interested and curious, and he smiled a half smile. She saw that his receding brown hair was going gray at the temples.

“Babe is my absolutely oldest chum in the world,” Ash said.

“And the two of you were hellraisers at Miss Spence’s,” Dobbsie said, “smoking cigarettes in the back of study hall.”

“You only know that because I told you,” Ash said. “Tell him about the school uniforms we had to wear, Babe. Tell him.”

“They were gray flannel skirts,” Babe said. “With green woolen blazers.”

“Not the skirts,” Ash said, “tell Dobbsie about the socks.”

“They were gray too,” Babe said.

“Scottish wool from Abercrombie’s,” Ash said. “Our family chauffeurs took turns driving us to school together—and in the back seat of the limo we’d scrunch down—”

“And undress,” Dobbsie said.

“And exchange left socks,” Ash said. “And on laundry day my fraulein and Babe’s mademoiselle went out of their respective
skulls
trying to solve the mystery of the socks that wouldn’t pair off!”

“You two were quite the lost generation,” Dobbsie said.

“Well, we were almost not confirmed,” Ash said. “Really. We used my father’s CBS passes to get into Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show and we passed Elvis’s autograph around confirmation class.”

“And Reverend Endicott Lewes phoned our mothers,” Babe said.

Ash imitated Lucia. “‘Where did you get
hold
of such a terrible thing?’”

“I don’t see that Elvis was so terrible,” Dobbsie said.

“At the time he was considered a threat to the morals of the republic.” Ash giggled. “He was certainly a threat to mine.”

“Come on, you were only twelve,” Dobbsie said.

“I’d already had the curse.”

“Excuse
me.”

“Mr. Lewes didn’t think we were ready to be confirmed into the Episcopal Church,” Babe said.

“Our mothers were terrified we’d have to become Methodists,” Ash said.

“You jest,” Dobbsie said.

“Our fathers had a talk with the bishop,” Ash said. “It cost an
entire
stained glass window in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine to smooth the whole thing over.”

“And for six months,” Dobbsie said, “you both were punished by not being allowed to have dessert at Sunday supper at the Cosmopolitan Club.”

“How did you know?” Ash cried.

“I have sources,” Dobbsie said.

“Oh, I told you, I know I told you, you wrote it all down the way you’re writing it all down now.”

Babe observed Dobbsie’s hand, half-hidden by the tablecloth, writing on a small notepad on his lap.

“Babe, tell Dobbsie about sneaking off to Arthur Murray’s to learn the twist.”

“We sneaked off to Arthur Murray’s to—”

“And at my big sister Dina’s coming-out, Lancelot and Doonie Farquharson were so impressed with our wild dancing that they took us to the penthouse suite and ordered up martinis from the King Cole Room. And when we got back to the party Lester Lanin was playing “Good Night, Ladies” and everyone was convinced we’d gone all the way with the Farquharson boys right there in the Saint Regis!”

“I should hope to hell you had,” Dobbsie said.

Suddenly Ash seemed almost shy. “Oh, no one did that in those days. It was the fifties, after all.”

“Come on, Dina’s coming-out must have been in the sixties. Didn’t you two flower children at least star in a few freakouts or one or two love-ins?”

“It was the
early
sixties,” Babe said.

Ash, pink-faced and sparkling-eyed, was deep into her fourth glass of bubbly. “I was a virgin till I met Dunk, and Babe knew it.”

“And you knew I was a virgin,” Babe said.

Ash giggled again. “Till
you
met Dunk. No, we are not going into that, that is
too
sordid. And Dobbsie you will
not publish it!”
Ash reached under the table and grabbed Dobbsie’s pad. She frowned at it. “Shorthand—how did you learn that?”

Dobbsie gracefully lifted his pad out of Ash’s hand. “By studying.”

“Why do you know shorthand?” Babe asked.

“It makes my work a little easier.”

“Dobbsie writes books.” Ash cupped her hands around her mouth and pretended to whisper. “He wrote the book that Mrs. Banks wouldn’t. The book about your murder.”

The silence was dense and extraordinary until Dobbsie burst into a comfortable basso rumble of laughter. “Ash didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”

“Oh yes I did. Dobbsie is the only man in town who doesn’t call a spade a gardening implement. Murder it was and murder he called it. And Scottie didn’t have the guts to sue.”

Ash rose teeteringly from her seat.

“You two get to know one another. I have to go to the little girls’.”

Dobbsie watched her weave through the tables. “What a sensational woman. I’m absolutely in love with Ash. Pity she’s drinking so much.”

“Ash has always liked to get tiddly at lunch.”

“Tell me when she’s
not
tiddly. The only gal who comes back for seconds at Communion. Poor kid, the reconciliation’s just not going to work.”

Babe had a premonition she was about to hear something that was going to make her feel disloyal to Ash.

“Ash ran away from Silver Hill three times.” Dobbsie had lowered his voice. “She won’t admit she has a problem. Dunk’s really just enabling her. She’s got to hit her own bottom and admit the booze has got her licked. But she’s so chock-full of denial. Refuses to join the Fellowship.”

Fellowship, Babe sensed, had a capital
F.

“I’m a member.” Dobbsie lifted his glass of Perrier and lime. “Not ashamed to admit it. Most sensible thing I ever did in my life. Haven’t touched a drop in eleven years, grace of God.”

“That’s admirable,” Babe said, feeling a compliment was desired. The minute she said it she had an odd sense that she had just turned a corner.

Very smoothly, Dobbsie leaned across the table until his face was only inches away from hers. “There’s a terrific meeting at Saint Bart’s. Yes, Saint Bart’s, where you two almost flunked Confirmation. Liz and Lee and Liza and Mary are regulars. I’ve tried to get Ash to come with me, but she says she can’t sit in a room with Bowery bums. As if it were a poor person’s disease. Twixt thee and me, half the Social Register has the same problem and you’ll find a hell of a lot of them in the Fellowship. The first step is, you’ve got to admit you’re powerless over the sauce and
get spiritual.
I’ve been trying to twelfth-step Ash for six years.”

“Ash can be contrary,” Babe said.

“I hope you don’t mind my being frank,” he said. “About her problem.”

“I think there are times when it’s appropriate to be frank.”

“Babe, you’re terrific. Just the way Ash described you. Now Ash said you want to know about Scottie’s trial.”

“I want to know what happened after they closed the courtroom and sealed the record.”

“I can give you a few facts and some gossip and some theories. Why don’t we get together and talk about it at my place, so I don’t have to lug my notes around town.”

He gave her his card. She looked at the address.

“But that’s the museum,” she said, surprised.

“It’s the museum plus Beaux Arts Tower. We’re going through a little notoriety these days—had a murder over Memorial Day weekend.”

Ash returned to the table. Her eyes were clear, bright, and calm, and she was walking a straight line. She settled smoothly into her chair. There was a curious smile on her face. She signaled the waiter for another bottle of Moët.

Dobbsie chatted about some Texans who were funding the Metropolitan Opera’s new
Il Guarani
and who were hooked on cocaine, and then he saw a woman across the room and waved. “That’s the Duchess de Chesney, used to be Anita Starr, showgirl slash schoolteacher slash porno star, now
there’s
a story I want to get. Will you girls excuse me?”

“Have you got his book?” Babe asked as soon as she and Ash were alone.

“Dobbsie’s book on you? It’s divine, of course I have it.”

“May I borrow it?”

29

T
HE LAMPLIGHT LAY STILL
and liquid on the bedsheets. Propped on two pillows, Babe opened
Mortal Splendor: Inside the Babe Vanderwalk Devens Affair.

She read slowly, carefully.

It is in the nature of beginnings,
Dobbsie wrote in his prefatory note,
that they begin … somewhere. Every comedy, every tragedy, every act of life-giving or life-taking, has its beginning in some other event. The Freudian tells us it all began in the unconscious where forgotten childhood trauma festers. The Marxist tells us it all began in the class struggle that shapes the destiny of every human, be he capitalist drone or proletarian drudge. The Bible tells us, not unwisely, that it all began in the cataclysm of the Creation.

Where then did the chain of events begin that climaxed in Babe Vanderwalk Devens’s drug-induced coma?

In the needfulness of a six-year-old little princess who had every luxury but parental love? In the ambition of a Kentucky mountain boy who preferred martinis to beer, the music of George Gershwin to the twang of a guitar? In the grinding three-hundred-year poverty of Appalachia? In the Babylonian glitter of New York City that has dazzled and appalled the world ever since the Robber Barons burst upon the scene?

Maybe the Bible gives us the clue. Maybe it all began … in the beginning.

Babe frowned and turned the page. In the first chapter, “By Their Roots Shall Ye Know Them,” Dobbsie examined bloodlines.

Through marriage licenses he had been able to trace Scott Devens’s ancestry back through three impoverished Kentucky generations; he said that research further back had been made impossible by “a wall of illegitimacy.”

Dobbsie then turned to Babe’s family tree. He had unearthed the name Pieter Isaak Valk in the register of the Shearith Israel Synagogue of Amsterdam—a remarkable congregation where, almost seven decades earlier, the name Jan Jakob Astor had been similarly inscribed—
Jan,
of course, being the Dutch form of
John.
(The name
Valk,
Dobbsie explained, was related to the Dutch word for falcon, which also served as a slangy Lowlands pejorative for a sharp operator.
Imagine,
he said,
a young American called Peter Isaac Shark, and you have the picture.)
Pieter Isaak, the youngest son of a peddler, had been bar mitzvahed in 1830 and in 1833 had emigrated to New York on a ship of the Dutch West Indies Company. He went into the fur-trading business, hauling barrels of Dutch rum into the Indian reserves in upper New York State and Quebec; he bartered liquor for animal pelts, shrewdly extending credit to the tribes, and forged a monopoly.

In 1848 Valk, now a stock market millionaire calling himself Peter Isaac Vanderwalk, rescued the United States Treasury from bankruptcy, forming a consortium to buy up the largest bond issue ever floated by the federal government. From 1860 to 1864 he bankrolled Abraham Lincoln’s Union government in its struggle against the Confederacy.