One Fifth Avenue (11 page)

“I’m one of those people who won’t lie to herself,” Mindy explained. “I try to live with the truth.”

“Is that healthy?” Catherine asked.

“Probably not.”

They sat in silence for a moment. The men moved clumsily on the lawn with the heavy breath that marks the beginning of real age, and yet Mindy envied them their freedom and their willingness to pursue joy.

“Are you happy with Redmon?” she said.

“Funny you should ask,” Catherine said. “When we were pregnant, I was afraid. I had no idea what he’d be like as a father. It was one of the scariest times in our relationship.”

“Really?”

“He still went out nearly every night. I thought, Is this what he’s going to do when we have the baby? Have I made another terrible mistake with a man? You don’t really know a man until you have a child with him. Then you see so much. Is he kind? Is he tolerant? Is he lov-ing? Or is he immature and egotistical and selfish? When you have a child, it can go two ways with your husband: You love him even more, or you lose all respect for him. And if you lose respect, there’s no way to get it back. I mean,” Catherine said, “if Redmon ever hit Sidney or yelled at him or complained about him crying, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“But he’d never do those things. Redmon has so much pride in being civilized.”

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“Yes, he does, but one can’t help thinking about those things when one has a baby. The protective gene, I suppose. How is James as a father?”

“He was great from the beginning,” Mindy said. “He’s not a perfect man . . .”

“What man is?”

“But he was so careful with Sam. When I was pregnant, he read all the parenting books. He’s a bit of a nerd . . .”

“Like most journalists . . .”

“Well, he likes the details. And Sam has turned out great.”

Mindy sat back in her chair, taking in the hazy warmth of the summer day. What she’d told Catherine about James was only half the truth.

James had been neurotic about Sam, about what he ate and even the kind of diapers he wore, so much so that Mindy would find herself arguing with him about the best brand in the aisle of Duane Reade. Their resentment toward each other was always just under the surface. Catherine was right, Mindy thought: All the trouble in their marriage went back to those first few months after Sam was born. Likely, James was as scared as she was and didn’t want to admit it, but she’d interpreted his behavior as a direct assault on her mothering abilities. She worried he secretly thought she was a bad mother and was trying to prove it by criticizing all her decisions. This, in turn, inflamed her own guilt. She’d taken her six weeks of maternity leave and not a day more, returning to work immediately, and the truth was, she secretly relished getting out of the house and getting away from the baby, who was so demanding that it scared her, and who elicited such love from her that it scared her, too.

They’d adjusted, as most parents do, and having created little Sam together was ultimately big enough to astonish them out of their animosity. But still, the bickering over Sam had never quite gone away.

“I don’t have it all, and I’m coming to the realization that I probably never will,” Mindy wrote now. “I suppose I can live with that. Perhaps my real fear lies elsewhere—in giving up my pursuit of happiness. Who would I be if I just let myself be?”

Mindy posted her new blog entry on the website and, returning to One Fifth for the evening, caught sight of herself in the smoky mirror next to the elevators. Who is that middle-aged woman? she thought. “I have a package for you,” said Roberto the doorman.

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The package was big and heavy, and Mindy balanced it precariously on her forearm as she struggled with her keys. It was addressed to James, and going into the bedroom to change, she dropped it on the unmade bed. Seeing it was from Redmon Richardly’s office, and thinking it might be important, she opened it. Inside were three bound galleys of James’s new book.

She opened the book, read two paragraphs, and put it down, feeling guilty. What she’d read was better than expected. Two years ago, she’d read half of James’s book in first draft and had become afraid. Too afraid to go on. She’d thought the book wasn’t so good. But she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings, so she’d said it wasn’t her kind of material. This was easy to get away with, as the book was a historical novel about some character named David Bushnell, a real-life person who’d invented the first subma-rine. Mindy suspected that this David Bushnell was gay because he’d never married. The whole story took place in the seventeen hundreds, and if you weren’t married back then, you were definitely homosexual. Mindy had asked James if he was going to explore David Bushnell’s sexuality and what it might mean, and James had given her a dirty look and said no. David Bushnell was a scholar, he said. A farm boy who was a mathematical genius and had managed to go to Yale and then invented not just the sub-marine but underwater bombs. Which didn’t quite work.

“So in other words,” Mindy said, “he was a terrorist.”

“I guess you could say that,” James said. And that was the last conversation they’d had about the book.

But just because you didn’t talk about something didn’t mean it went away. That book, all eight hundred manuscript pages, had lain between them like a brick for months, until James finally delivered the copy to his publisher.

Now she found James on the cement pad in the back of the apartment, drinking a Scotch. She sat down next to him on a chair with metal arms and a woven plastic seat that she’d purchased from an online catalog years ago, when such transactions were new and marveled over (“I bought it online!” “No!” “Yes. And it was so easy!”), and wriggled her feet out of her shoes. “Your galleys have arrived,” she said. She looked at the glass in his hand. “Isn’t it a little early to start drinking?” she asked.

James held up the glass. “I’m celebrating. Apple wants to carry my 74

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book. They’re going to put it in their stores in February. They want to experiment with books, and they’ve chosen mine as the first. Redmon says we’re practically guaranteed sales of two hundred thousand copies.

Because people trust the Apple name. Not the name of the author. The author doesn’t matter. It’s the opinion of the computer that counts. I could make half a million dollars.” He paused. “What do you think?” he asked after a moment.

“I’m stunned,” Mindy said.

ı

That evening, Enid crossed Fifth Avenue to visit her stepmother, Flossie Davis. Enid did not relish these visits, but since Flossie was ninety-three, Enid felt it would be cruel to avoid her. Flossie couldn’t last much longer, but on the other hand, she’d been knocking at death’s door (her words) for the past fifteen years, and death had yet to answer.

As usual, Enid found Flossie in bed. Flossie rarely left her two-bedroom apartment but always managed to complete the grotesque makeup routine she’d adopted as a teenaged showgirl. Her white hair was tinted a sickly yellow and piled on top of her head. When she was younger, she’d worn it bleached and teased, like a swirl of cotton candy. Enid had a the-ory that this constant bleaching had affected Flossie’s brain, as she never got anything quite right and was querulously insistent on her rightness even when all evidence pointed to the contrary. The only thing Flossie had managed to get partially right was men. At nineteen, she’d snatched up Enid’s father, Bugsy Merle, an oil prospector from Texas; when he passed away at fifty-five from a heart attack, she’d married the elderly widower, Stanley Davis, who had owned a chain of newspapers. With plenty of money and little to do, Flossie had spent much of her life pursuing the goal of becoming New York’s reigning socialite, but she’d never developed the self-control or discipline needed to succeed. She now suffered from heart trouble and gum infections, wheezed when she spoke, and had only television and visits from Enid and Philip to keep her company. Flossie was a reminder that it was terrible to get old and that there was very little to be done about it.

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“And now Louise is dead,” Flossie said triumphantly. “I can’t say I’m sorry. Nobody deserved death more than she. I knew she’d come to a bad end.”

Enid sighed. This was typical Flossie, completely illogical in her analyses. It came, Enid thought, from never having had to really apply herself.

“I would hardly call her death ‘just deserts,’ ” Enid said carefully. “She was ninety-nine. Everyone dies eventually. It’s not a punishment. From the moment we’re born, life only goes in one direction.”

“Why bring that up?” Flossie said.

“It’s important to face the truth,” Enid said.

“I never want to face the truth,” Flossie said. “What’s good about the truth? If everyone faced the truth, they would kill themselves.”

“That might be true,” Enid said.

“But not you, Enid,” Flossie said, pushing herself up on her elbows in preparation for a verbal attack. “You never married, never had children.

Most women would have killed themselves. But not you. You go on and on. I admire that. I could never be a spinster myself.”

“ ‘Single’ is the word they use now.”

“Well,” Flossie said brightly, “I suppose you can’t miss what you never had.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Enid said. “If that were true, there would be no envy in the world. No
unhappiness
.”

“I was not envious of Louise,” Flossie said. “Everyone says I was, but I wasn’t. Why would I be envious of her? She didn’t even have a good figure. No bosom.”

“Flossie,” Enid said patiently. “If you weren’t envious, then why did you accuse her of robbery?”

“Because I was right,” Flossie said. Her wheezing increased, and she reached for an inhaler on the coffee table. “The woman,” she said between gasps, “was a thief ! And worse.”

Enid got up and fetched Flossie a glass of water. When she returned, she said gently, “Drink your water. And forget about it.”

“Then where is it?” Flossie said. “Where is the Cross of Bloody Mary?”

“There’s no proof the cross ever existed,” Enid said firmly.

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“No proof?” Flossie’s eyes bulged. “It’s right there. In the painting by Holbein. It’s hanging around her neck. And there are documents that talk about Pope Julius the Third’s gift to Queen Mary for her efforts to keep England Catholic.”

“There’s one document,” Enid said. “And that document has never been shown to be authentic.”

“What about the photograph?”

“Taken in 1910. About as real as the famous photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.”

“I don’t know why you don’t believe me,” Flossie said, looking at Enid with hurt eyes. “I saw it myself. In the basement of the Met. I shouldn’t have let it out of my sight, but I had the Pauline Trigère fashion show in the afternoon. And Louise did go to the Met that day.”

“Flossie dear,” Enid said firmly. “Don’t you understand? You might just as easily have taken the cross yourself. If it exists at all.”

“But I didn’t take it,” Flossie said stubbornly. “Louise did.”

Enid sighed. Flossie had been beating this rumor drum for fifty years.

It was her stubborn insistence that Louise had stolen this cross that had caused Flossie’s eventual removal from the board of the Metropolitan Museum in a charge led by Louise Houghton, who had subtly suggested that Flossie suffered from a slight mental impairment. As this was generally believed to be true, Louise had prevailed, and Flossie had never forgiven Louise not only her supposed crime but also her betrayal, which had led to Flossie’s permanent fall from grace in New York society.

Flossie could have worked her way back in, but she refused to let go of her crazy idea that Louise Houghton, a woman above reproach, had stolen the Cross of Bloody Mary and kept it hidden somewhere in her apartment. Even now Flossie pointed out the window and, with a wheeze, said, “I’m telling you, that cross is in her apartment right now.

It’s just sitting there, waiting to be discovered.”

“Why would Louise Houghton take it?” Enid asked patiently.

“Because she was a Catholic. And Catholics are like that,” Flossie said.

“You must give this up,” Enid said. “It’s time. Louise is dead. You must face the facts.”

“Why?”

“Think about your legacy,” Enid said. “Do you want to go to your grave O N E F I F T H AV E N U E

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with everyone thinking you were the crazy old woman who accused Louise Houghton?”

“I don’t care what people think,” Flossie said proudly. “I never have.

And I’ll never understand how my very own stepdaughter continued to be friends with Louise.”

“Ah, Flossie.” Enid shook her head. “If everyone in New York took sides over these petty, insignificant arguments, no one would have any friends at all.”

ı

“I read something funny today,” the makeup artist said. “ ‘The Joys of Not Having It All.’ ”

“Not having it all?” Schiffer asked. “I’m living it.”

“A friend e-mailed it to me. I can e-mail it to you if you want.”

“Sure,” Schiffer said. “I’d love that.”

The makeup artist stepped back to look at Schiffer in the long mirror.

“What do you think?”

“It’s perfect. We want it natural. I don’t think a mother superior would wear much makeup.”

“And after she has sex for the first time, we can make it more glamorous.”

The red-haired PA, Alan, stuck his head into the makeup room.

“They’re ready for you,” he said to Schiffer.

“I’m ready,” she said, getting out of the chair.

“Schiffer Diamond is on her way,” Alan said into a headset.

They walked down a short corridor, then went through the construction department. Two tall metal doors led to one of the six sets.

Inside, behind a maze of gray plywood walls, was a white backdrop.

Several director’s chairs were set up a few feet away, clustered in front of a monitor. The director, Asa Williams, introduced himself. He was a brooding, gaunt man with a shaved head and a tattoo on his left wrist.