Gilded Age (23 page)

I should have known Viola would be thorough, consulting me on the menu and the flowers. She’d chosen to have it at the country club her parents belonged to and e-mailed me the guest list three weeks before the party.

“Looks like fun,” I said.

“Anyone I missed?” she asked.

“Well, it’s up to you, but you might include Ellie Hart.”

The phone went silent.

“I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t have space.”

“No, no,” Viola said with something I couldn’t place in her tone. “I’m happy to send her an invitation.”

“It’s just that I’ve known her my whole life. I feel like she should be there. You know she’s co-godmother with you and P. G.”

Viola became all business. “So Ellie Hart. Anyone else?”

O
n the day of the shower, I dressed the baby in a smocked jumper and put on a smart blue dress that I’d just recently found I could fit into again.

I drove up to the country club and struggled a bit at the mechanics of getting the baby and all his gear from the car and into the club while the teenage valets watched me with a mix of disgust and amusement. But I didn’t care. Though there were still patches of snow on the ground, the air held the warm promise of spring.

Viola had requested a long table for twenty in the conservatory, my favorite room in this club that I’d visited many times as a child. The
back of the room showcased three huge gilt aviaries filled with turquoise and yellow budgies. The birds hopped up and down flowering cherry branches, placed there for the luncheon, no doubt, a result of Viola’s attention to detail. They made a charming racket. Pale green cymbidium orchids in antique baskets were nestled in the corners of the room.

The guests’ Chanel handbags hung daintily on the backs of chairs, and YSL Muses and Hermès Birkins nestled together on the floor. I was seated next to one of the energetic Miller sisters, the blond one, who was telling me about her hiking trip in New Zealand. Viola was seated on my right. My mother had begged off the invitation, stating that the shower should be a chance for me as a new mother to enjoy some time with my friends without the older generation hovering about. I’d been slightly annoyed by this. Did she think we would be talking about boys, sex, and shopping? But she’d spent a small fortune on baby clothes for Henry already, and so I’d kept my thought to myself. Betsy Dorset attended, as ambassador of the elder generation I suppose, diamonds clasped to a baby-pink cashmere sweater. Or perhaps she’d felt bad that Diana couldn’t come—some important donors lunch at the museum. And so Betsy was there as representative of them both.

As I walked into the room filled with some of my oldest friends in Cleveland, I realized that as in so many things, my mother had been right. It felt cozy and like a fun time was about to begin with my friends.

Henry was passed around the guests. Genial baby that he was, he smiled and cooed until exhaustion set in. When he started to cry, I nursed him on the chaise in the ladies’ room, loaded him into his stroller, and one of the waitstaff volunteered to stroll the halls with him until he fell asleep.

We sat down to lunch, which was one half of a curried chicken salad sandwich and a small green salad dotted with strawberries arranged daintily on a painted bone-china plate so thin you could see through it. As a nursing mom, there was no way this was going to be lunch for me. I wondered, not for the first time, if this small amount
of food was really what my friends ate for lunch, or did they, like me, go home to a slice of cold pizza directly from the fridge? I was taking my seat when Ellie rushed into the room, late, clutching her cell phone and car keys in one hand and a slim lizard wallet and sunglasses in the other.

She kissed Viola on the cheek and was waved to the last empty chair, which was across from me. The gleaming black astrakhan around her shoulders looked Goth at this springtime soiree. I noticed the lining had come untacked and the hem was hanging out, frayed and tattered. She stank of smoke, even from across the table, and I saw her signaling the waiter for a glass of white wine. Everyone else was drinking iced tea. She smiled at me and winked, and it was then that she placed a neat stack of folded papers next to her water glass.

It was that day at the luncheon that my doubts about Ellie really started to creep in on me. I couldn’t get the picture of Jim’s blushing face out of my mind, and her careening appearance at lunch, the pills, and her drinking made her seem out of control. Her skin looked gray, she smelled like a bar, and she gave off the general vibe of someone on their way to a bad end.

Why I didn’t embrace her, my childhood friend, and try to get her some help, I don’t know. I was scared of her, exasperated, and I’ll admit it, disgusted. After lunch, when I saw her coming my way, I avoided her eye, grabbed the arm of Kips Wade, turned my back on her, and headed to the living room to open my baby loot. My life right then was an embarrassment of riches. It’s funny but every time I’ve thought my life grand, I’ve not failed to get a quick sucker punch in the gut. It’s kept me wary and not a little pessimistic. But turning my back on Ellie then is something I’m ashamed of, even now, and something I’ll always regret.

The News

W
hen Ellie got the invitation to the baby shower her first thought was that Julia Trenor would be there. If she was back in Julia’s good graces, if she could show her that there was nothing between her and Gus, if she could show her that Diana was spreading gossip and lies with her own agenda, maybe then Ellie could start out yet again.

Or maybe Diana would be there, though the prospect of a confrontation with her was daunting.

Ellie’d slept later than intended that morning and awoke with only a half hour to get over to the country club. Her head buzzed as if the sun outside was too bright. She decided to wear her chicest outfit—all black—knowing the sea of pastels and business gray that would be there in anticipation of spring. “Let them hate, so long as they appreciate” was her twisting of the Latin proverb. She was heading through her mother’s tiny yellow kitchen. She hadn’t been able to actually buy a condo in Murray Hill after her night with Gus in his former mistress’s condo. She’d realized then that she’d have to cut all ties to him.

Unfortunately he still had control over the majority of her money.

Her hand shook as she rifled a pile of junk mail looking for her
keys. It wouldn’t do to be nervous today. It wouldn’t help if she looked at all frightened, and so she decided she needed a quick nip to shore her up. She poured two fingers of vodka in the bottom of a dirty coffee cup and downed it in one gulp, feeling it burn all the way down. A small drink before something this nerve-wracking—it’s not like she did it often.

She was glad of the drink and her cigarette during the drive because when she walked into that luncheon room, her knees buckled ever so slightly. She caught herself and made for Betsy Dorset to kiss her cheek, but the woman waved her off to Viola, who shook her hand—that was strange—and ushered her to her chair. She scanned the room, noting Diana wasn’t there, which made her feel a little relieved actually. Once seated, Ellie signaled for a glass of wine, noticing only too late that she was the only one drinking at the table.

But never mind. She arranged herself, her phone, her keys, and next to her water glass the trim stack of folded papers, a pristine packet of insurance. She’d printed out Diana’s texts to Selden, complete with nude photo. She’d known they’d come in handy.

Scanning the table, she noted that Julia wasn’t there either.

But when Julia arrived, Ellie would gently let her know just what a nightmare her friend Diana was, cheating on her husband and chasing so desperately after Selden. That was why she was spreading lies about Ellie. Julia wouldn’t believe her. Hence the evidence—black and white, with the red bra, of course. Julia, who knew what it felt like to have a cheating husband, would not be pleased.

Barring that, Ellie thought, looking around, she might show them to Betsy Dorset, Diana’s mother-in-law. That would require a deft touch, but Ellie could do it. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have Betsy Dorset in your debt. In fact it could be a marvelous thing. Ellie could only imagine the lengths to which Betsy Dorset would go to keep her son from heartache and scandal. A savvy sixty-year-old like Betsy would be familiar with enough technology to know the dangers of YouTube and Facebook in such a situation. Perhaps she’d even make Ellie chair of the next benefit she had control over. Ellie’d be back in
Cleveland’s good graces—with a new platform from which she could search for love again. It’d be a difficult maneuver though. Betsy Dorset was no slouch.

But Julia still hadn’t arrived. It was strange as this was Julia’s natural habitat, just as the Antarctic is the natural habitat of the polar bear. Ellie turned to the Miller sister who was sitting next to her, the duller one who copied everything her energetic sister did. Conversation with her was excruciating no matter how hard one tried, and so Ellie thought she’d at least get some information.

“Isn’t Julia coming?” Ellie asked.

Her end of the table fell silent.

The Miller next to her shrugged. “She should be here. I don’t know where she is.” There was a forced, false note in her voice, as if she were performing.

Ellie felt the tension in the silence that followed and then the low chirping of the ladies started mingling with the chirping of the budgies in their cages.

“I was shocked,” someone said.

“He wiped out the McMasters. Did you know he had their money?”

“No one’s seen Julia in days. They said they went to Buenos Aires, but someone saw them in New York at a midtown law office.”

“I heard there’ll be more indictments.”

Ellie looked at the Miller sister with a frown. “What’s going on?”

“Have you been living under a rock? It’s all over the Internet and the front page of the paper,” she said. “Gus Trenor’s been indicted for securities fraud.”

“No, that’s not it,” her dining companion on the other side said. “It’s plain old fraud. It was like a Ponzi scheme or something.”

“It’s complicated. Apparently, people actually entrusted money to him. I always thought he just invested his own,” said someone else.

“He lost it all. Spent it all. Or I should say Julia spent it.”

“I heard she’s up in Ellicottville. No one can get her on the phone. Not even Diana …”

“Shameless too. He wiped out a pension fund for one of the old steel companies.”

Ellie took another sip of wine. Her first thought, the very first, was that her money was gone. After the night at the condo she didn’t know how she was going to get her divorce settlement back from Gus without Julia causing more scandal. Now there might not be anything to get back.

But taking the edge off her despair at her money being lost was schadenfreude at Julia’s downfall. Julia was as finished in Cleveland and as powerless as if she’d actually died. Of all the things you could do, you did not steal people’s money. Making up to Julia didn’t matter anymore and likely wouldn’t help Ellie’s situation. There was literally no coming back to Cleveland at all for Julia. Maybe she’d stay in Ellicottville. Ellie suppressed a smile.

But her schadenfreude didn’t help the problem of her money. She’d lost her job, and now she’d lost her divorce settlement. Her brain couldn’t really grasp the certainty of it. Surely Gus would be made to pay her back by the courts or something. She could stay at her mother’s, sure. But her mother didn’t have any money to loan her beyond that. And really it was beyond pathetic, hard to even admit to herself, let alone someone chattering away at her at a cocktail party, that she was still living in her mother’s house, with no security, no job, and no prospects—at her age.

When the ladies all got up to go into the other room and watch the present-opening, Ellie made for the refuge of the chintz-covered ladies’ room. The thought of the oohs and aahs over presents of smocking and ribbon was too much for her to take—at her age.

She was washing her hands when a flush announced the appearance of Betsy Dorset. She nodded at Ellie with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Ellie,” she said coolly.

Ellie smiled back, saying nothing. She’d piled her things—her wallet, her keys, her phone, her papers—on the marble in between the sinks, now wet with water and dripping soap.

“That’s getting wet,” Betsy said, nodding to the jumble with a touch of disdain. “You’ll ruin it all.”

There was something in Betsy’s voice, thought Ellie. A voice that said that Betsy knew so much more than Ellie, that she knew so much
better,
that Ellie couldn’t take care of things, that Ellie was hopeless, that she couldn’t take care of herself.

Ellie dried her hands, picking up her things from the mishmashed pile. On the bottom, the edges of the papers were gray with water. Ellie decided to leave them. Perhaps it’s time for Betsy Dorset to understand she doesn’t know better, Ellie thought. She doesn’t know at all, and there are things even she can’t take care of. It was a perfect maneuver.

Ellie walked briskly then, without turning around, out of the ladies’ room, past the gilt birdhouses, past the men’s bar, past the waitress pushing Henry in his stroller, and out into the parking lot. She thought she heard Betsy calling her back, telling her she’d forgotten something, that she’d left something behind.

The Country Party

T
he first true weekend of spring Jim and I received an invitation to a barbecue at Cinco Van Alstyne’s house in the country east of town. An offering of friendship, I thought, along with the flowers perhaps, after our talk at the museum.

During the ride to the country the baby slept soundly in his car seat amid the arsenal of toys, stroller, diaper bag, and all the other accoutrements of an infant. Jim kissed my hand, and we listened to the college radio station, the sunroof open, feeling younger than the new parents we were.

“You look nice,” Jim said, eyeing my white skirt and eyelet shirt.