People Like Us (48 page)

There were things he wanted to know, even though he was no longer a member of her family: how had Lil taken Hubie’s death, had Uncle Laurance been helpful, what had happened to Juanito? But he dared not ask the questions, and she, once so full of news for him on all the inner machinations of her family, provided no information. He knew that she had ceased to love him, that if he put out a hand to touch her, she, who had craved his touch to the point of humiliation, would reject him, first as a woman rejecting a lover, then as an upper-class woman rejecting an upstart.

Bernie Slatkin was a man who examined his feelings, right at the moment of experiencing them. Within him, he held on to a strange feeling that he did not recognize, not letting it escape until he understood it. What is this feeling, he thought? It was not a pleasant feeling. And then its meaning came to him. It was loss, he realized. He repeated the word to himself. Loss.

“Do you think in time we could be friends, Justine?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

“Why?”

“I wanted to stay married, and you didn’t, so we didn’t. Now you want to stay friends, and I don’t, so we won’t.”

Bernie nodded. “You’ve gotten tough, Justine,” he said.

“Don’t you think it’s about time?” she answered.

“When is Hubie’s funeral?” he asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“St. James’s.”

“Of course,” he said. St. James’s, where all the weddings, christenings, and funerals of the Van Degan family took place, and had always taken place. “What time?”

“It’s private,” said Justine. With that, she made her move and continued her way down Madison Avenue to Lorenza’s small shop to discuss the flowers. Peonies, she thought. Just white peonies.

Uncle Laurance made the decision that it would be far better for all concerned if there were no eulogy or hymns at the service, just the simple prayers for the dead, to be followed by cremation. Young Laurance, who would have been the logical person to make the eulogy, having been born the same year as his first cousin, was relieved by his father’s decision, because he and Hubie had never, for an instant, enjoyed each other’s company. Hubie’s father, Hubert, was offended that he was not consulted in any of the arrangements, although he would have arrived at the same decisions arrived at by the Van Degan family. He did, however, in a show of assertion, let it be known that he intended to have his wife, Belinda, by his side in the family pew.

Lil Altemus, in the front row next to Justine, looked up at the rose window that Alice Grenville had given the church in memory of her son, and fanned herself with a letter she took from her bag. In the extreme summer heat the black linen dresses and black straw
hats that she, Justine, Dodo, Janet, and other female members of the family wore looked wilted, and perspiration scents could be detected through deodorants, bath oils, powder, and perfume. “Wouldn’t you think they’d air-condition this church?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Justine.

“The peonies are lovely,” said Lil.

“Yes, Mother,” said Justine.

“There’s no one like Lorenza for flowers,” said Lil.

“Yes, Mother,” said Justine. She didn’t tell her mother the idea for the white peonies had been hers.

“Wouldn’t you know Belinda would wear white instead of black?” asked Lil.

“I think she looks very nice,” said Justine.

“Make sure you ask. Boy Fessenden back to the house afterward,” said Lil.

“Yes, Mother,” said Justine.

“And Gus Bailey. Didn’t I see Gus Bailey? Sweet of Gus to come.”

Juanito Perez walked up the center aisle to the front of the church where the small congregation of mourners were gathered in the front ten rows. He looked on both sides to see where to sit. Juanito nodded to Lil Altemus who took no notice of him, nor did Hubert Altemus, seated behind Lil and Justine with Belinda, when Juanito nodded to him. Juanito was not one for going unnoticed and genuflected, in the Catholic manner, and crossed himself in the abbreviated fashion of a former altar boy, a point of his forefinger to his brow, his chest, his left shoulder, and then his right. “Name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost,” he could be heard whispering. Lourdes Perez, Lil Altemus’s ladies’ maid and sometime confidante, had never until that moment laid eyes on the lover of Hubie Altemus, and was aghast to realize he was the runaway son of her brother, Duarte, in Puerto Rico. Lourdes dropped her eyes and concentrated on her rosary, although she was in an Episcopal church.

“Who is that man with the diamond in his ear?” asked Lil.

“That’s Juanito, Mother,” answered Justine.

“What’s he doing here? Who asked him?”

“You don’t have to be invited to a funeral, Mother. A church is a public place. And he has as much right to be here as we have.”

Dodo Fitz Alyn Van Degan, who could be counted on to annoy everyone in the family, waved a little wave at Juanito and signaled him to sit next to her, while Laurance and young Laurance and their wives looked straight ahead as if they were unaware of his presence.

Behind them all, Ezzie Fenwick, who never missed a funeral, and enjoyed social drama above all else, nudged Matilda Clarke and Cora Mandell not to miss the family snub of Juanito Perez.

“I do not want that man back at my house afterward, Justine,” said Lil, measuring her words.

“I’m not going to tell him that, Mother,” answered Justine.

“Tell Uncle Laurance to handle it,” said Lil. “One thing, we’ll never have to hear from him again.”

“That’s what you think, Mother,” said Justine.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Lil. The minister, the Reverend Doctor Harcourt, Adele Harcourt’s nephew, came out onto the altar.

“Hubie left everything to Juanito, Mother,” said Justine, quietly, picking up the book of psalms in front of her in the pew.

“What?” said Lil, in a voice loud enough that all the Van Degans heard her. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “You must be mad. Hubie wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

“Will you please rise?” asked Reverend Harcourt.

Justine lifted up the book of psalms and did not reply to her mother.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” said Reverend Harcourt, and the small congregation read along with him.
Lil Altemus acted out giving her full attention to the service, but she was only half listening.

“Did you know Hubie Altemus?” Ezzie Fenwick asked Babs Mallett at Baba Timson’s party.

“Yes,” said Babs. “They lived near us in the country growing up.”

“He died, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Poor Hubie. Sort of a lost soul, didn’t you think?”

“He didn’t leave a thing to his family. Not even a memento.”

“Oh, dear.”

“All that furniture, all those pictures, and the silver were all Van Degan things his mother gave him. They say Lil is furious, all that family furniture going to that friend of his, Juanito
quelquechose
. Wears an earring.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Now, this is what I call a perfect
crème brûlée
.”

“I don’t understand how Herkie Saybrook could have allowed this to happen,” said Lil.

“Allowed what to happen, Mother?” asked Justine, who knew perfectly well what her mother was talking about.

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about,” snapped Lil. “Those Charles the Tenth chairs came from the Altemus side via Aunt Minnie Willoughby. Imagine that ghastly Juanito having them.”

Justine had heard the conversation over and over again since the reading of the will in Uncle Laurance’s office. She had pretended not to hear when Uncle Laurance called Juanito “your brother’s catamite.”

“I’ve known Herkie Saybrook all his life,” Lil continued, with or without a reply from Justine. “His mother and I came out the same year. He should have told us that Hubie was going to leave everything to Juanito whateverhisnameis, and we could have done something about it.”

“It’s what’s called client privilege, I believe. Hubie hired Herkie. Hubie paid Herkie.”

“But Herkie Saybrook is one of us,” said Lil.

“So was Hubie, Mother,” replied Justine.

Lil turned away from her daughter.

“I’ll never speak to Herkie again,” she said, after a moment. “I think Uncle Laurance should talk to him about this will. I also think Uncle Laurance should have him put out of the Butterfield. I never liked him anyway. Arrogant.”

“You wouldn’t have minded if I’d married him at one time, I seem to remember,” said Justine.

“Let’s not get into whom you should and should not have married, if you please. I can only concentrate on one thing at a time.”

“What are you concentrating on now, Mother?”

“I’m concentrating on that horrible man with the earring performing unspeakable acts in Grandmother Van Degan’s bed from the house in Newport.”

38

The Renthals took a cream-colored villa in Monte Carlo and chartered a yacht. They sailed to parties in St. Jean Cap Ferrat, and Beaulieu, and Villefranche, and Antibes. The kind of people they met had not heard of the impending investigation, or, if they had heard, didn’t care, so pleasure-bent were they. Americans always took those things more seriously than they did. It was for the Renthals a period of calm before the storm.

At first Elias claimed to not take seriously the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He thought he was being persecuted by a self-righteous district attorney with political ambitions, hoping
to bring him down simply because he was so rich. “I’m smarter than most of the people trading today,” he said, “and all those SEC people can’t stand that.”

When Ruby read in the
Wall Street Journal
that Elias had been implicated by a young lawyer from Weldon & Stinchfield called Byron Macumber, she remembered the night of her ball when Gus Bailey had asked to meet with her the next day. “Give me a hint, Gus, quick. You’ve got me curious,” she had said to him when the Albanian prince had cut in on her. “Byron Macumber,” Gus had replied. She knew now that Gus was trying to warn her. She also remembered that Byron Macumber had called once at the apartment when she was dressing for a party and Elias had acted strange when she told him, as if he didn’t know who Byron Macumber was, when all the time they had been in cahoots.

Elias thought of himself as a member of the establishment. He pointed out his membership in the Butterfield. He pointed out his friendships with people like Laurance Van Degan. “People like that, you see, are not about to allow anything to happen to me,” he explained to Ruby, pointing out that members of the establishment stood together. He pointed out the innumerable acts of charity he had performed in the past few years, all carefully recorded in the pages of the newspapers. “Maybe we should get that guy Bus Bailey to do another article on us, talking about all our charity work,” he said, making a mental note to check on whether or not Max had stopped payment on the check to Faye Converse for AIDS.

“Gus,” said Ruby.

“What?”

“It’s Gus Bailey, not Bus Bailey,” she said, quietly.

“Whatever. We could fly him over here in the plane.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Ruby.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think Gus Bailey’s the kind of guy who’s
going to do a puff piece on us at this moment in time,” she answered.

“What makes you say that?”

“Did you read this piece he wrote on Jorgie Sanchez-Julia?” She held up a magazine with a photograph of Jorgie Sanchez-Julia dancing with the clubfooted Geraldine.

“Jorgie Sanchez-Julia was a fucking gigolo who stole an old lady’s money, for Christ’s sake,” said Elias, as if Ruby’s reasoning was flawed.

Ruby stared at Elias, without answering, but the words, “You’re a fucking thief who stole a lot more money, for Christ’s sake,” were in her thoughts.

Elias looked away, as if he could read her thoughts. “I’m going to call Laurance Van Degan right now to let him know I’ll be at the Paris apartment all next week. We’ll get this all figured out.”

Miss Wentworth said that Mr. Van Degan was in a meeting and not available. When Elias called an hour later, Mr. Van Degan was still in a meeting and still not available, Miss Wentworth said. Elias left his Paris telephone number with Miss Wentworth for Laurance to call him there. Mr. Van Degan was out of the office when Elias called from Paris the next day. No, he could not be reached at home either. Mr. Van Degan was at the Van Degans’ fishing camp in the Adirondacks. No, there was no telephone there, Miss Wentworth said.

Ruby, who had grown quiet and withdrawn, went where Elias planned for them to go, but she no longer arranged their social life with the passion she once had, as her passion for it had diminished, and her participation in it was obligatory rather than exuberant. Within her, she felt shame about the things that were being said about her husband, but, since Loelia, she no longer had anyone to talk to or to confide in. It was now Elias who insisted on going everyplace, saying that it was important for them to be seen. Ruby was content to follow Elias rather than lead him. Her sense of social reluctance
was favorably interpreted, especially by the grand ladies she met who thought she was impeccably mannered.