People Like Us (18 page)

Loelia and Fernanda had always enjoyed the closest of mother-daughter relationships, and it was no secret
that Fernanda took great pride in Loelia’s social accomplishments. She was, furthermore, greatly attached to her son-in-law, Edward Potter Manchester. Even though she found his constant talk of sport dull at times, she admired his country ways, especially as she spent more and more of her own time in the country, so she could be near Ned and Loelia’s children, on whom she doted, especially Bozzie, their teenage son.

Fernanda and her daughter lunched that day at a table set up in a corner of the room Fernanda called her garden room, with its antique bamboo furniture, orchid plants, and blue-and-white porcelain garden benches. A René Bouché portrait of Fernanda arranging flowers, wearing trousers and a straw hat, that had been painted thirty years before in this same room, dominated the wall behind her, reminding Loelia of how beautiful her mother had been. The topic that was the purpose of this country lunch had not been broached, although Loelia knew when she was summoned from the Rhinelander, where she now lived, by a note from her mother delivered by her chauffeur that the conversation she dreaded was at hand.

“Have you had another facelift?” Fernanda asked her daughter.

“Don’t you think it’s a good one?” Loelia replied.

“You didn’t need it.”

“Oh, but I did. It’s a new way Dr. James does it. He cuts up here on the scalp and then pulls it all back, and your hair covers all the scars. Too marvelous.”

“Your eyes look like they’re popping out of your head.”

“They do not!”

“They do. And your hair is much too blond.”

Loelia’s hands went to her hair, defensively. “Mickie likes it this color,” she said.

“I’m sure,” said Fernanda. “Stop taking food off my plate.”

“I’m not taking food off your plate.”

“You’ve taken two shrimp, half my roll, and now you’ve scooped up a spoonful of my cheese soufflé.”

Loelia, nervous, pushed back her bamboo chair from the table, and it made an unpleasant screeching sound on the terrazzo floor of the garden room. “Mother, why are you being so cranky with me?” she asked. For an instant she thought she was going to cry.

“Let’s get down to brass tacks, Loelia. What is going on in your life?” asked Fernanda.

“I’m going to marry Mickie Minardos,” said Loelia.

“What a grotesque announcement,” said her mother.

“I didn’t think I’d hear that from you, Mother!”

“Yes, you did. You knew perfectly well that was what you were going to hear from me. Isn’t this man younger than you?”

“Yes.”

“How many years?”

“Ten.”

“He’s a gigolo.”

“He is the most successful shoe designer in the world.”

Fernanda shook her head impatiently. A shoe designer was not a person who was going to impress Fernanda Somerset, no matter how successful he was.

“Someday he is going to design for the theater and the ballet,” insisted Loelia.

“A lady can take her chauffeur to bed, but she can’t take him out to dinner, Loelia,” said Fernanda. “I’m surprised you of all people don’t understand that.”

“How incredibly unkind that is, Mother.”

“You’re going to be kicked out of the
Social Register
if you marry this man.”

“You know that means nothing to me.”

Fernanda looked at her daughter, whose greatest achievement had been as a figure in society, and disbelieved her.

“What do you know about his family?”

“His father is a banker,” said Loelia proudly, playing
her trump card, to prove that her fiancé was not a fortune hunter.

The flowered uniform on the maid who came in carrying demitasse cups matched the flowered tablecloth and the flowered napkins of the luncheon table. “Just leave the coffee there, Adoración, and don’t bother to clear,” said Fernanda to the maid, waving her off.

“You know, Loelia. There are Greeks and Greeks, and none of the Greeks we know, like Stavros and Christina and Alecco, have ever heard of the family of Mickie Minardos.”

“I don’t care,” said Loelia quietly.

“I do,” replied her mother, just as quietly.

Fernanda Somerset was not an impractical woman. She understood the callings of sexual desire and recognized it as that in her daughter’s attachment to Mickie Minardos. She had herself briefly enjoyed a discreet indiscretion during the time her husband had engaged in his affair with Matilda Clarke. When the affair ended, after Sweetzer came out of the alcoholic institution in Minnesota where he had lingered for six months, both marriages resumed into the companionship that all successful marriages become, with neither the children having to suffer the trauma of divorce, nor the Somerset fortune having been dissipated as it would have been by divorce.

“Take a trip with your Greek,” said Fernanda. “And when it’s over, as it will be over, come back to your husband and children. Ned will wait for you. He loves you.”

“I’m going to marry Mickie Minardos.”

“You have crushed your family.”

“Help me, Mother.”

“No, I won’t help you, Loelia. And there is something else I have to remind you of, though I had hoped that I would not have to.”

“Money, I suppose,” said Loelia, picking up her things, as an indication of leaving.

“Yes, money. What you have is all you’re ever going to have, if you go through with this, Loelia.”

Loelia Manchester was horrified when she learned from her lawyer a week later that Ned had asked for half her fortune before he would agree to the divorce she wanted so much, so that she could be free to marry Dimitri Minardos. Ned Manchester was already rich, although not as rich as Loelia, and it was uncharacteristic of him to ask for money from a woman. In the years of their marriage, he had never shown any sign of avarice. Loelia knew immediately that her mother had joined forces with Ned to block the divorce, as neither he nor her mother wanted Loelia to leave him.

Loelia had countered with an offer of half as much as he had asked, but Ned, again through the lawyers, had turned down her offer and declared that he was sticking to his guns. All her friends told Loelia that Ned was acting the way he was because he was so hurt and didn’t want a divorce at all and certainly didn’t want her money, but none of that information was of any comfort to Loelia. She had given herself up to a passion she had never experienced before and wanted to marry Dimitri Minardos more than anything else in the world. Of course her children had to be considered and proprieties to be observed. She had moved out of the beautiful Manchester apartment, leaving behind everything but her clothes, and moved into a large suite in the Rhinelander Hotel, where everyone they knew who was getting a divorce moved. Her friends consoled her with lovely baskets of flowers, and needlepoint pillows, and scented candles, and pieces of china to use for ashtrays to make the suite more homelike, and Lil Altemus, who didn’t even approve of the romance with Mickie, lent her pictures to hang on her walls after she confessed to Lil that she found the hotel pictures too dreary for words.

One afternoon Loelia was on her way to meet her realtor, Helene Whitbeck, to look at an apartment on
Fifth Avenue that had just come on the market. Helene said it might be the ideal place for Loelia and Mickie to live after they were married. When she stepped into the Rhinelander elevator, Elias Renthal was standing there. She was impressed that he took off his hat when he spoke to her.

“I’m Elias Renthal, Mrs. Manchester,” he said, making a slight but courtly bow.

“Yes, of course,” Loelia replied. “Howareyou?”

Elias could see right away that Loelia was unhappy and, when the elevator came to the lobby, he asked her she wanted to have a drink in the bar, which was always quiet at that time of the afternoon. Loelia was amazed to hear herself say that she wouldn’t have a drink but she would have a cup of tea. She hoped that Elias didn’t know that it was she who had blackballed him from being elected to the board of directors of the New York Art Museum, even though he had been a generous contributor. Since then, she had heard from Jamesey Crocus and others that he had become very polished in the interim. “That wife of his, Ruby, is sandpapering the edges,” Jamesey had said.

In no time at all Loelia and Elias were talking as if they were old friends, and Loelia poured out her heart to the famous financier about her troubles with Ned and the divorce. Loelia became so engrossed in her conversation that she forgot all about her appointment with Helene Whitbeck, who was waiting for her in the lobby of the Fifth Avenue apartment building.

“I can’t believe he’d hold me up for money,” Loelia confided to Elias about her husband. “Ned really never had any interest in possessions. I told him he can have the house in the country, and the house in Bermuda, and he wants them, but he also wants I-don’t-know-how-many million on top of that. Imagine Ned acting like that after all these years. It’s not as if Ned doesn’t have any money of his own.”

“His pride’s hurt, and he’s being vindictive,” said Elias.

“I’m deeply sick of hearing about Ned’s pride being hurt,” replied Loelia. “After all, we are not the first couple in the world to get a divorce.”

“Why not call his bluff? Why not offer him more than he’s asking? It’s not how much you pay them,” Elias said, “it’s how you pay it out to them.”

“I don’t understand what that means, Mr. Renthal,” said Loelia.

“Let’s say, for instance, you offer Ned twenty million in alimony,” Elias began.

“Twenty million!” exclaimed Loelia. “Please, Mr. Renthal!”

“A ballpark figure. Now hear this through,” said Elias patiently, taking a cigar from a case. Elias enjoyed talking about money. It was the one area of conversation in which he bowed to no man in his opinions. He opened the button of his gray pin-striped suit and made himself comfortable. Loelia noticed, while he was lighting his cigar, how much better dressed Elias had become than when she first met him. His suit was beautifully cut, and his pale pink shirt with white collar and cuffs and discreet rose monogram on his chest, and his enamel-and-gold cuff links could all have been things Mickie Minardos might have worn.

“However much money it is, you have no choice in the matter if that’s the only way Ned’s going to divorce you so that you can marry Mickie. You don’t give him the five million or the ten million bucks all at once. You spread it out. You work it out so you pay him a million a year for ten years, or even half a million a year for twenty years, but you can afford a million a year with your kind of money.”

She wondered how he knew how much money she had, but she felt sure that he did know. In time she would discover about Elias Renthal that he knew exactly how much money everyone had.

“Understand?”

She did understand. She could afford a million a
year. Suddenly it was all beginning to fell into place. She wondered why her expensive lawyers had not come up with so simple a solution as Elias Renthal had come up with in ten minutes.

“And then,” Elias continued.

“Yes,” said Loelia.

“In a year or so, Ned will meet someone and probably remarry, and then, when he’s happy again, he won’t hold you to this agreement. After all, everyone says Ned’s a gent.”

“Yes, of course,” said Loelia. It had not occurred to her until that moment that Ned would fall in love again and even marry again. She had only imagined him alone, or with the children. “Do you live here in the Rhinelander, Mr. Renthal?” Loelia asked when she was gathering up her gloves and bag.

“No, no, Ruby and I are just camping out here while Cora Mandell is doing over the new apartment we bought from Matilda Clarke. We thought we’d be in in time for Easter, but you know what a perfectionist Cora is. She’s got nineteen coats of persimmon lacquer on the living-room walls, and the rugs are being woven in Portugal, and things like that take time. Not to mention all the faux marble,” Elias added with a grin that charmed Loelia. “She’s got some guy she brought over from Rome just to paint all the faux marble. The truth of the matter is, Loelia, I never heard of any of these absolutely essential refinements like persimmon lacquer and faux marble six years ago, and now they’re dictating our lives.”

Loelia laughed. “And Mrs. Renthal? How is she?”

“Her name is Ruby. And I’m Elias, Loelia.”

“Yes, of course, Elias.”

“Ruby’s over in London bidding on a pair of eighteenth-century console tables at the Orromeo auction.”

“Oh, yes, I heard about those tables from Jamesey Crocus. Inlaid, aren’t they, with ram’s heads on the legs?”

“I dunno.”

“Sad about the Orromeos, isn’t it?”

“I dunno.”

“They’ve lost everything.”

Elias shuddered. There were very few things in life that could make Elias Renthal shudder, but the thought of losing his fortune, as the Orromeos, whoever the Orromeos were, had lost theirs, was one of the things that could make him shudder.

“How?” he asked.

“How what?”

“How did the Orromeos lose all their money?”

“The usual thing that happens several generations down the line,” replied Loelia.

“Spoiled brats that don’t work? Like that?” asked Elias.

“I suppose. Too many divorces. Nothing depletes a fortune like divorce these days.”

“As we were just saying,” agreed Elias.

“When is Mrs. Renthal, I mean Ruby, coming back?” asked Loelia.

“She’ll be back in time for Justine Altemus’s wedding. Ruby wouldn’t miss that event for all the tea in China,” said Elias, stubbing out his cigar.

“Oh, I didn’t know Ruby was a friend of Justine’s,” said Loelia, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice.

“She’s not. Never met her.”

“Oh, Bernard, then, of course. You’re friends of Bernard Slatkin’s.”

“No, don’t know Bernie Slatkin either, except on TV, of course.”

“You’re not a friend of Lil’s, are you? I’ve never seen you at Lil’s, have I?”

Elias laughed. “We’re not planning on crashing, Loelia, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Of course that’s not what I’m thinking, Elias!”

“I’m involved in a couple of business deals with Laurance Van Degan, and he arranged for Ruby and me to get invited.”