Gossip (6 page)

It could have been a power breakfast, but why at a tiny hotel on a side street? And the girl wasn't dressed for business; she was wearing a long skirt and flat sandals and a newsboy cap which, I must say, became her. And there was the way they kissed good-bye as Richard put her into a cab.

What a bite of poisoned apple. As the cab pulled away, Richard straightened, smiling, and looked at the spring sky and the flowering trees on the street, scattering white petals on the sidewalk like a shower of warm snow. For a moment he was a man on top of the world. Then he saw me standing across the street, thunderstruck.

What would
you
do?

There was no right answer. No one is thanked for bearing news like that. What did I know about what went on in that marriage? And of course there was my own situation. I was in no position to tell tales.

But. I was Dinah's friend. How could it be right for me to know something so important about her life that she didn't know? What did the office of friendship require in this case?

I went to visit Dinah and the boys that weekend. Nicky was now two and a half. His hair had stayed dark and his eyes had stayed blue, and he had the world's longest eyelashes. We took the children to Carl Schurz Park and talked while Dinah pushed Nicky on a swing and five-year-old RJ raced around whooping. She was talking, I remember, about wanting to get back to work. She had some book ideas; we always thought someday she'd be on the best-seller list. Making the rounds of talk shows. Maybe having a talk show of her own. I asked if Richard had been out of town that week. Just for a night, she said. He was working on a deal in Toronto.

I asked if he supported her going back to work. She seemed surprised by the question. Whatever she did was fine with Richard. Richard was Richard.

And when Richard came home that afternoon and found us sitting together in the kitchen, drinking tea while the boys played with Legos at our feet, he looked at me as if I were a poltergeist, rattling the silver spoons in the drawer and causing the lights to flick on and off in his marriage. Dinah noticed nothing unusual. Richard made an excuse and left the apartment again, as if he didn't expect the place to be still standing when he got back.

I never told her. That left me the dislikable quandary of whether to come around as often as usual or stay away. I didn't want to stay away; there might be a time coming when Dinah would really need me. But what if she found out how long I had known, and had sat smiling and chatting while a bomb was ticking away under her chair? If it blew it was going to cover us all with scalding slime, not just Dinah.

Damned no matter what you do. Why do people think knowing secrets is fun? It was a miserable summer for me, as I guess it was for Richard too. The spark didn't get to the end of the fuse until one evening in October, when he hired a sitter and took Dinah out to dinner so they could “talk.” People say that the betrayed spouse already knows on some level, but Dinah didn't. She thought he was going to say he wanted another child.

She was shattered. And if Richard thought she would take it quietly because they were in public, he was dead wrong about that. There are still people thirty years later whom Dinah won't speak to because they were in the restaurant that night. On some molecular level, she blew apart, and when the pieces settled, which took years, she was never again the person she'd been before.

You could say that if she'd paid more attention to Richard she would have known, or it wouldn't have happened, but that doesn't make it true. I believe Richard was stunned to learn he could hurt her that much. He doesn't have an unkind bone in his body, Richard, but you can still do plenty of damage by failing to imagine other people's realities.

At least he was serious about the girl, who has the old-fashioned name of Charlotte. She had worked for the decorator who was redoing his office. He married her as soon as the divorce was final, and they moved to Ardsley, where she tends her garden and raised their three daughters. Richard seems to be very content with Charlotte, and looking back it's hard to imagine that he and Dinah ever thought they could build a life together. It's hard to suppose that a man as involved in playing squash and watching golf on television as he is could ever have been just as happy at Dinah's Sundays.

Dinah kept the rent-controlled apartment and has never left it. She pays less than a thousand dollars a month for space that would go now, at market rates, for, oh, twenty times that. For decades her friends have said that if she was ever hit by a bus or a falling piano, the police would instantly arrest her landlord.

Richard felt so guilty about the divorce that he didn't make a very good advocate for himself. Dinah got full custody of the boys, child support for as long as they lived at home, full tuition for wherever they wanted to go to school, and alimony until she remarried, with cost of living adjustments built in. And it can't have occurred to Richard, fundamentally fair as he is, that she would stay so angry for so long that he'd be supporting her for life.

Chapter 6

T
hat was a difficult winter. My friend's very imposing wife, Althea, had a health event and came home to be treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Surgery and chemo didn't seem to slow her down. She turned up in
Women's Wear Daily
every five minutes, wearing a series of turbans on her bald head that were so becoming to her it started a craze. For a while half the fashionable women of New York looked like escapees from the Kasbah.

Naturally, I kept a low profile, avoided Althea's haunts, and was on my own a great deal. I took piano lessons and conversational French. Suddenly without plans for the weekends, I took a ballet class with Dinah for exercise. Thanksgiving was a can of turkey hash in my apartment. I thought if I stayed home all day my friend might shake free for an hour or two, but he didn't. I began to hate my silent answering machine.

I did go to Dinah's for Christmas and took too many presents for Nicky. Christmas night she and I went out to see
The Buddy Holly Story
so that Richard could spend time at the apartment with RJ and Nicky. When we got back both boys were in tears, and by the time he left, we all were, Richard included. Christmas is a cruel time for sad people.

Nicky was a terror that winter. At a birthday party for an older child in the building, he came unglued because none of the shiny presents was for him. When the birthday girl wouldn't give him a wooden puzzle he'd fastened onto, although she wasn't playing with it herself, he ran at her and bit her hard on the arm. The child's mother got to Nicky in a flash, pulled him off her daughter, and bit him back, yelling, “How do you like it?” as Nicky howled in disbelief. Then Dinah snatched Nicky, shouting, “Don't you touch my child!” as the hostess yelled that it was the only way children would learn what it felt like. For years afterward the two families wouldn't ride in the same elevator. And I'm sorry to report that Dinah began to dine out on the story, so Nicky quickly learned that the whole thing had been somehow funny.

Mrs. Bachman retired in the spring, and though she'd recommended me, the store thought I was too young to head the department; they brought in a woman from Neiman Marcus named Marylin Coombs. We had a rocky start together and never entirely recovered. Different manners, different styles. She had a big sense of humor, and many of our out-of-town clients adored her.

It was also that winter when I ran across Avis Binney again, after so many years, at the opera. January 1979,
Luisa Miller
; I recently found the
Playbill
. I still remember the way the colors of the women's costumes drew your eye to Luisa, who alone was wearing blue. A client had given me tickets at the last minute, two in the middle of the fifth row. The price of each one was about what I paid to rent my apartment for a month. Having failed to find an escort at such short notice, I'd put my coat on my empty seat and sat reading the program, waiting for the lights to dim. “I'm just alone because this was so last-minute, you see . . .” I explained in my head to no one. “My friend would have loved to come, but he . . .” and a couple arrived at the seats on the other side of my coat chair. I kept my eyes down but could see that the lady was turning a very expensive fur inside out and preparing to stuff it under her chair. “Please,” I said, “share my personal closet,” and I patted the spare seat.

“Are you sure?” said the grateful couple, who were already piling their coats on top of mine. They were silver people, with gleaming gray hair and expensive teeth. “How nice of you.”

Then came a tap on my shoulder from the row behind me. I turned, and Avis said, “Lovie French? I
thought
that was your profile . . .”

As the house lights went down and the chandelier rose I was suddenly part of the fabric of the great city, not an odd pea alone in a pod, but the sort of woman who runs into pals from boarding school at the opera. The sort of woman who is remembered by the glamorous older girls. Though I knew, of course, that her remembering reflected well on Avis, not on me. She is a woman who notices the quiet soul in the corner.

Avis was wearing a cushion-cut diamond on her wedding ring finger, but her companion that night was Teddy Tomalin, a dapper young bachelor who later became a great friend of mine. She insisted I join them in the Belmont Room at intermission. No standing in line at the lobby bar with the hoi polloi for us.

“So you're in New York now,” said Avis while Teddy went to get us champagne. “Tell me everything, what are you doing?”

I gave her my card, dreading her reaction. Surely she supposed, given my fancy orchestra seats, that I was some rich man's wife, spending my days lunching at Le Cirque. But she read the card and cried, “How wonderful! Does that mean you get to run barefoot through the collections and buy everything on discount? I will come straight to you for my clothes from now on.” And she did.

She dresses very well, Avis. She is a realist in the fitting room. Her figure is slim, with no bottom to speak of. Even now, she never wears trousers in town. She wears skirts just below the knee, and beautiful shoes that show off her narrow calves and feet. She knew to avoid the big-shoulder styles of the 1980s, when so many women looked as if their jackets still had the hangers in them. Armani is too masculine for her, but Chanel is very good, and now she mostly wears a German designer I've found, who does feminine clothes with clean lines but beautiful details.

She made a professional appointment with me soon after the opera night, and we spent several hours trying clothes for day and for evening. She'd say, “Oh, isn't that pretty, I've always wanted to wear that color,” and try on whatever I'd brought her. Everything that season was a gray-green color called Wintermint and it was a disaster on her; it made her skin sallow and her eyes dull, as she had known it would. Gradually I learned. She is marvelous in strong warm colors or black. Black more and more, now that her hair is white. Now, black probably forever.

Next, she invited me to a Sunday luncheon party. Her apartment was on Fifth Avenue. The dining room windows are just above treetop level with a charming view of the Children's Zoo in Central Park. The living room was done in glowing brocades with real Empire French furniture and everywhere vitrines full of objets d'art. I met two new clients that day who have stayed very faithful over the years. Marylin gets the high rollers from South America, but I've built up a steady base of the ladies who live between Carnegie Hill and East Fifty-seventh Street, and Avis helped a lot.

The lunch was not just for ladies. It was much more like a dinner party, with ten at table, a cocktail beforehand, four courses, and three kinds of wine. As I remember, Teddy Tomalin the opera buff was there, as well as Avis's business partner, the art dealer Gordon Hall, the zillionaire collector Victor Greenwood with a vavavoom lady friend, and an aging literary lion who had once shot one of his wives and had just published a memoir. I was seated on the right hand of Avis's husband, Harrison Metcalf. He was twenty years older than Avis, in a bespoke tweed jacket and Lobb shoes, with a beautiful head of reddish blond hair. We talked about his pre-Columbian art collection, which was all around us, and about which he was fascinating, at least early in the meal. His other great passion was polo, about which I also knew a little. After that lunch I was often included when Avis entertained important clients, because I was “good with Harrison.” He and I truly liked each other, I think, though by the time I got home that first Sunday I was wishing desperately for a nap, and wondering who these people were that they could eat and drink like that for hours in the middle of the day.

Avis had season tickets to the Met, very good ones as I've said, and Harrison didn't indulge, so Avis was often looking for a companion. She was good enough to put me on her list, and she enjoyed educating my taste. Later we sat through the entire Ring together, but I was a less successful student of Wagner than of the Italians. She forgave me. It was during my first
Otello
when she told me shyly at intermission that she was pregnant.

“Harrison wants a boy,” she said. He had twin daughters by a former marriage, girls now in their early twenties. “We're calling the bump Cyril.”

“What do the older sisters say?”

She laughed. “They call him The Little Trustbuster.”

The daughters were good-natured blonds, very much the image of their father. They also called Avis “Wicked Stepmummy” and appeared to be very fond of her. We met at the Metcalfs' Christmas party and bonded at the eggnog bowl. Hilary was at Bank Street taking a teaching degree, and Catherine was working at
Glamour
magazine. Avis's own stepmother, Belinda Binney, was at that party as well.

Belinda had snow-white hair, like Avis's now, beautifully coiffed. She was wearing a long evening dress in bottle-green velvet, evidently going on to a formal dinner. She looked me up and down that evening in a way I've seen people look over horses they might buy. I almost showed her my teeth. “I'm pleased that we meet at last,” she said.

“Yes, I'm so glad Avis and I have reconnected.”

“That's not what I meant. I'm on the board at the Public Library with Gil Flood.”

My friend. For a moment my heart seemed to stop in my chest. I thought,
This is it, this is what I've been dreading
. She's going to call me a harlot and have me removed and thrown into a snowbank. She went on, “I must come and see you. Avis is looking so well since you've taken her in hand.”

Naturally I said that would please me. “Madame Philomena says wonderful things about you too,” she added, as if I'd applied for work at the CIA and she was in charge of my background check. Then: “I don't suppose you've
met
Althea?”

I didn't dare react.

“I can't bear her,” said Mrs. Binney. “Never trust a woman who is disliked by her servants.”

More useful information from another planet. But Belinda and I were friends from that evening until her death, and I miss her still.

C
yril was a girl. She was born in March 1980 and named Graciela for her paternal grandmother, and called Grace by everyone. She was entered for Miss Pratt's the week she was born and had more hand-smocked dresses than any child I've ever known. One evening, fresh from her bath, she escaped from her nanny and ran up the hall, pink and naked, clutching her yellow bath duck. She succeeded in getting all the way to the den where her parents were having cocktails, and proudly presented her trophy to her mother, saying, “Duck! Duck!” Avis was so enchanted she had little yellow ducks embroidered on Grace's bathrobe, her sheets, her towels, and the hems of her dresses.

I
t hadn't taken me long to understand why Avis never entertained at night. I would present myself at the Metcalfs' in the evening when Avis and I were going on together to the theater or opera. “Will you pop up for a minute so Harrison can see you?” Avis would ask; we carried on the conceit that Harrison was devoted to me. We'd go into the den where he was ensconced at that time of day and have a drink, our first, his tenth. Avis and I would exchange the latest gossip, light and bright, while Harrison sat in his chair with his glass in his hand, appearing for most purposes asleep, except when he belched or scratched himself. From time to time he'd become animate, lurch to his feet, and make his way with surprising cunning around his ottoman and past the coffee table to the bar, where he'd upend the vodka bottle into his glass, then thread the needle back to his chair. Avis never mentioned the situation, unless she had to explain to a new acquaintance why Harrison couldn't accept some kind invitation to dine, in which case she'd say that he “wasn't well.”

“You can't invite them to dinner,” said one client of mine. “Because what if they both
came
?”

Though she never complained, this was isolating for Avis. One winter she installed Harrison at a beachside house in Hobe Sound with a cook/driver, made sure his friends all knew he was there, and came back to New York to go back to work. Three days later, he was home. “It was all so
sportif,
” he said with contempt. “All that blaring sunlight, all that . . .
tennis
. Everyone rushing around half-dressed, looking cooked and chasing balls. No conversation.” He couldn't exactly remember how the airline thing worked, so he'd chartered a plane. He said he missed Grace. Avis pretended it was a normal anecdote about a semiretired husband.

When he wanted more drink and wasn't sure he could walk to the bottle, he'd ring for the butler. Did Avis ever tell William not to respond? Since Harrison paid the servants' salaries, I suppose that was a lost cause. Did she ever say a word to Harrison herself? Did she ever try to cut off the vodka supply? I don't know, we never talked about it.

When Grace was little, her birthday parties were at restaurants, because “Harrison wasn't well.” At least not after lunch. When they were planning her debut, her father ordered a new tailcoat, determined to waltz with her at the Assemblies. Avis conducted herself as if that were a plausible plan until Grace said that if her father went, she wouldn't.

Grace and Avis were here at the shop when she said it. I imagine she felt safer with witnesses about. Avis gave Grace a look that would have quelled Attila the Hun, not for what she'd said, but because she had said it in public. (Public in that case being me and Mrs. Oba.) It turned out to be a moot point, because early in Grace's senior year at Nightingale, Harrison was found on the floor in the den, bleeding from his eye sockets. He went by ambulance to the hospital, where as soon as he was compos mentis an intervention at last was held, organized by Grace and her half-sisters, with Harrison's doctor assisting and Avis standing by, looking pained. He went from the hospital to a dry-out clinic in Westchester. They thought he was safely sequestered there because he didn't have any street clothes or money. After three weeks, he walked into town in his robe and slippers, got a sympathetic druggist to place a call to a car service in the city where he had a charge account, borrowed money from the driver for a quart of vodka, and was three sheets to the wind by the time he made his way back to the apartment and into his chair in the den.