The First Wives Club

The First Wives Club [067-011-5.0]

By: Olivia Goldsmith

Synopsis:

A national bestseller with close to one million copies in print, The First Wives Club was hailed for its “deliciously icy message—revenge is a dish best served cold” (Los Angeles Times). Now it’s a major fall release from Paramount starring three of the most talented and popular actresses working today—Bette Middler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn.

Three first wives who have all been jilted by their husbands and replaced with younger versions band together to take revenge on the men who wronged them.

Pocket Books;

ISBN: 0671002481

Copyright 1996

BOOK ONE.

The Wives Getting Mad.

Annie.

Manhattan, island of glittering dreams, slept in the predawn darkness.

It was an island where dreams came true, where dreams were outgrown and discarded and sometimes turned to nightmares. Right then, in the darkness of a May night in the late 1980s, it was an island where many women slept alone.

Annie MacDuggan Paradise’s bedroom had the simplicity that took a great deal of both taste and money to achieve. The floor was finished in an unfashionably dark chestnut color, gleaming with a dull richness, perfectly setting off the satiny Chinese rug that rested upon it.

Other than the stunning exception of the mauve and cream and sapphire of the rug and the deep green of Annie’s carefully tended bonsai trees, the room was a quiet oyster white, from the upholstered walls to the raw-silk curtains to the damask bedclothes.

Everything about the room was immaculate, even the fire in the beige marble hearth had burned down neatly to a fine white ash. Only the bed itself was disheveled, the duvet rucked up, pillows on the floor, under the sheets.

Everything in the room was in exquisite taste, and calming, with one exception, beside the bed a pile of books towered up from the marble-topped nightstand. Buddhism and cology, A Way to Save the Planet, The Wounded Woman, Women Who Love Too Much, Jung’s Symbols and the Collective Unconscious, The Dance of Anger, and Women of Japan.

Juxtaposed incongruousy beside the garishly dustjacketed pile was a tiny crystal vase with three delicate sprays of miniature Cymbidium orchids, the exact oyster white of the room. The serene tiny blooms seemed to float against the lurid backdrop of the book jackets. Then the phone beside the vase trilled.

A thin, tanned arm snaked out from under the blankets, reaching expertly for the receiver without upsetting the flowers or the books.

The hand at the end of the arm was also brown and thin but, though a closer look revealed the thousand tiny lines of a certain age, was shaped much like a child’s hand, the fingers small, the nails blunt and unpainted. The hand clutched the phone before it trilled again and pulled the receiver under the untidy mound of bedclothes.

“Hello.” Her voice was a croak. She cleared her throat. “Hello.”

“Anne? This is Gil.” In the pause that followed, while Annie cleared her mind and came to full consciousness, he elaborated. “Gil Griffin.”

She had been dreaming, deep in another world, a place she didn’t want to leave. With reluctance, however, she let it go. Gil Griffin.

”Gil. Hello.” This couldn’t be a social call, she thought. Annie couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to Gil Griffin.

Certainly not in years, not since long before his divorce from Cynthia.

And never on the phone at—she looked at her wristwatch—half past five in the morning. Something must be very wrong.

“I need your help. It’s Cynthia. She’s dead, Anne.”

Annie couldn’t quite take it in. Something wasn’t jibing, the words and the tone were so at odds. No emotion at all. A weather report. A cold front sweeping south from Canada. Then it hit her.

“Oh, my God. What happened?” It wasn’t possible. Cynthia wasn’t sick. At least Annie didn’t think so, hadn’t seen any signs. And Cynthia was only a year older than she was. Maybe it was an accident.

Had Cynthia been drinking too much? No, she reminded herself, it was her friend Elise who was the drinker.

“It was suicide,” Gil said, and for a moment Annie couldn’t speak. In the silence, dryly, he gave a few dreadful details. Bathtub.

Wrists.

Almost two days dead. “I’d rather not discuss it.” His voice was bland, uninvolved.

Intermittent rain across the Midwest, she thought. He’s reporting the weather.

Then, “I need you to do something.”

“Of course. How can I help?” It was her automatic good-girl reaction.

My God.

Cynthia is dead. Cynthia is dead and I’m being polite. Annie shivered under the blankets, though it was the end of May. “What can I do?”

“The funeral is tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning, Gil? So soon? But people will need time—” He cut her off. ‘Could you call some of her friends and let them know? I’ve been out of touch with her circle for a while.”

”Certainly, I’d like to help, but it’s almost Memorial Day. People are leaving town early. And …” She thought of her own trip to Boston to see her son graduate. And Sylvie. The packing. These were their last few days together. Oh, no. Not now. The week had been so very hard already. Now this.

Then she felt a wash of shame at her thoughts. She cleared her throat.

“With so little notice I’m not sure that …”

”Do the best you can. I’m absolutely flooded myself,” he reported tonelessly.

Flood warnings in New York, Annie thought, an unpleasant joke. She sat up. Why the rush? Why so awfully quick?

”But are all the arrangements made? No one will know about flowers and things. I mean …” She felt herself begin to choke up, tears rushing to her eyes. She tried to calm herself. “And what about the eulogy, Gil?”

“I’ve handled it, Anne. Just call her friends. So, Campbell’s, tomorrow at ten.”’ ”At ten?”’ She shook her head, as if that would clear it. “So quickly? “Do the best you can. And thank you.”

He hung up. She was dismissed. Annie continued to hold the dead phone in her hand. She could hardly breathe. You bastard, she thought. You cold bastard. Slowly she replaced the receiver.

Cynthia has taken her own life. Cynthia is dead. Annie huddled in bed, shivering, despite the duvet. She would just lie here for a minute, in the safe darkness under the bedclothes and try to take this in. Feel my feelings, as Dr. Rosen, her ex-therapist, told her to do.

She stretched out under the quilt. Her Siamese cat, Pangor, silently crossed the room and jumped onto the bed beside her. Cynthia, dear, sweet, funny Cynthia, was dead. It was awful.

But surprisingly, the tears didn’t come.

Just the memories. Cynthia, her friend at Miss Porter’s. Her roommate. Cynthia had been so kind to her. On their first night at school, when Annie, ashamed, stripped down to her undershirt, Cynthia hadn’t mocked her. Silently, she’d handed her a bra, turned away, and said, ‘You’ll probably want to wear that, or the other girls might tease you.”’ She and Cyn had doubledated together. Cynthia’s brother had introduced Annie to Aaron, and when they married, Cynthia had been her maid of honor. Then Cynthia had married Gil. And they’d each had a daughter at the same time.

Cynthia’s daughter, her only child, had come late in life. She would have been the same age as my Sylvie, Annie thought. They had gone through their pregnancies together. Cynthia’s daughter, Carla, had been a beautiful, perfect baby. It was ugly to admit it, but it had hurt Annie to see Carla grow and develop, while Sylvie was so slow.

Then, one March day, Carla had been hit by a car while getting off the school bus. Annie felt doubly guilty over her secret envy. She had gone to sit the week-long vigil at the hospital in White Plains where the child lingered in a coma, brain-dead.

Eventually most of Cynthia’s other friends had stopped going, but Annie kept it up, she knew she couldn’t do any good, but couldn’t bear to think of Cynthia alone.

Then, one morning at the end of May, Cynthia had come into the sunny room paler even than usual, her eyes deep in their shadowed sockets.

From across the room she spoke to Annie in a loud, flat voice. “He wants her off the respirator,” she said. “Gil wants it finished.”

Annie stood up and opened her arms. Cynthia walked into the embrace and bent her head low to reach the comfort of Annie’s shoulder. Then she cried completely silently, but her tall body shook, and her tears were so hot that even Annie, always cold, was too warm. Still she stood there and held Cynthia for what seemed like a long time. When at last Cynthia stopped crying, she took a deep breath, looked directly at Annie, and said, “My mother never loved me.” Annie had nodded at the non sequitur. Then Cynthia shrugged, took out a handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

They took the child off the life support system that afternoon, and she died early that evening. Soon after the funeral the Griffins had left for Europe.

Shortly after they returned, they sold their house and bought another, grander one in Greenwich.

Meanwhile, Annie’s two boys had gone off to school, and she and Aaron and Sylvie had moved to Manhattan. Of course she saw Cynthia for lunches, and occasionally for shopping in town, but Cynthia seemed to freeze, somehow. She spoke less and less. And after the divorce from Gil she was even quieter.

Silent Cynthia.

Now Cynthia was dead. And by her own hand. It wasn’t a coincidence that Carla had also died at the end of May.

Oh, God, she realized, it was the anniversary of Carla’s death’ She should have remembered ! How could she let herself get so distant from a friend? How could she not know? Why was it that the deepest pain, the despair, was so shameful even good friends kept it secret? She turned over in bed and groaned.

Annie was forty-three. She was five foot four, exactly average height for an American woman, but she weighed only 109 pounds, not any more than she had weighed at Miss Porter’s School more than twenty-five years before. She was compulsive about her weight, as she was about a lot of things, clothes, apartment, cottage, bonsai trees, writing, therapy. Now, as her therapist had instructed her, she let the waves of grief roll over her. Oh, God, it hurt. Cynthia, dead. If only she had called, Annie thought. I haven’t seen her much lately. I should have …

Tears began to roll out of her eyes, down her cheeks. She began to sob, the noise tearing out of her. She pulled the comforter over her face, hoping to muffle the ugly cries. It wasn’t only out of concern for her daughter, asleep down the hall. Annie herself couldn’t bear to hear the sound.

The pain seemed unbearable, she thought as she wept. Images came to her mind.

The flick of steel on skin. Blood snaking through bathwater. It was too awful.

Why hadn’t I called her? Oh, Cynthia, why didn’t you call me? Lying on her back, crying, the blanket pulled over her face. Annie’s tears moved down her cheeks, following the fine lines at the sides of her eyes, and rolled into her ears. They itched. She had to put a finger in each one to stop the tickle. At last her sobbing slowed, the tears stopped, and she slowly sat up.

She looked across her immaculate room toward the tall windows, where the early light was just beginning to tint the sky. She was exhausted, and the day hadn’t yet started. “Fuck,” she said as she threw off the comforter, and got out of bed.

Below her, the city was just beginning to awaken. Lights were still twinkling across the gray river over in Queens, making it look like a fairyland. In reality, much of Queens was a grim little borough that Annie had only been through on her way to the airport, so she knew how deceptive that view was.

Things weren’t always what they seemed. From her penthouse window, Annie could see the few predawn joggers making their lonely way along the rainy promenade.

The whole previous week had been miserable, wet and chilly. Gray as death. She hugged herself and turned away.

How do you get through your oldest friend’s suicide? she wondered as she padded across the soft carpet to the bathroom. Well, she’d do her usual routine. She’d keep busy. There was so much to do. She’d have to call Brenda and Elise and as many of Cynthia’s friends as she could think of.

Who were Cynthia’s friends? Annie admitted to herself that she rarely saw any of that old Greenwich crowd now. Just Brenda Cushman, who had never fit in up there, and Elise Elliot Atchison, who also had a place in town. But she’d had the most history with Cynthia. Cynthia was a real friend in a city where friendship was based on whom you knew, whom you married, what you had, and what you could give or get. Annie wished—well, it didn’t matter what she wished now. Cynthia was dead.

When Annie emerged from the bathroom, swathed in beige terry cloth, her hair curled from the humidity, she looked drawn, her skin blotchy, her eyes red.

She shook her head at her own reflection, but didn’t pause. She walked down the long hallway that led from the master suite to the rest of the penthouse.

She passed the closed door of Sylvie’s bedroom, where she still slept.

In just a few days she’d be gone. Annie knew she would have to mourn not only Cynthia’s death but also the loss of her daughter.