The Hole in the Middle (10 page)

I raise my mask back up to the center of my forehead and try again.

“Fund-raising is not a nine-to-five job, Sophie,” says Barry. “Whoever takes this job will be expected to attend a lot of evening events, regardless of family commitments.”

“Again, I'm sorry to have come into the debate late,” I say, “but has she said that she can't attend events after hours?”

“No. That would have disqualified her from the outset.”

“Are you going to ask her directly whether being a single mother is going to prevent her from fulfilling her responsibilities?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Barry snaps. “That would be completely inappropriate!”

Jenny rolls her eyes at the end of the table. Everyone else is looking down; I'm on my own here.

I remind myself that I am a person who once Cared About Issues exactly like this one, a person who wrote articles condemning injustice in all its insidious forms. I was informed about current events. I was passionate. I marched and sat in and made people sign petitions. Since I rarely even glance at the news these days, other than the occasional MSN celebrity headline, I am gratified to feel a tiny little flame of rage ignite in the recesses of my brain—likely in the part that stores nostalgic recollections of the person I once believed I could become, a person who is certainly not someone who swears at minimum-wage employees at the check-in desk and who feeds her children nothing but processed food. “I think it would be fair to give her an opportunity to respond to your concerns if they are serious enough to make you think that she can't do the job,” I say.

“Absolutely not,” says Barry, coldly. “All candidates will be asked the same questions. We are not going to give this lady a reason to say that our process was sexist or some other garbage. Margaret Anderson is the weakest candidate in the group and that's why she's not going to get this job. You need to eat a reality sandwich here, Sophie. Smarten up.”

I lower my mask and sit back in my chair, agreeing with Barry for perhaps the first time in our entire unfortunate acquaintance. I definitely need to smarten up.

Barry runs through the list of questions, which are all standard chestnuts designed to elicit platitudes and generalities: What three strengths do you possess that would insure your success in this job? What would your goals be for your first hundred days on the job? How
would your employees describe you? How has your experience prepared you to lead the advancement department? At least Barry hasn't insisted that we ask the candidates what animal they would be, although it's not clear that the questions we have selected would be much more illuminating. The meeting finally ends, and as I prepare to leave, I notice a flurry of activity at the end of the table.

Lil is awake and rising with difficulty from her chair; Patti and Jenny flutter at her side. I join them. “Oh, dear,” she says in a quavering voice, “I'm sorry to be such a bother! I wonder if I could impose . . .” Her hand locks onto my arm. “Would you mind helping me down to my car, dearie?”

“I'd be happy to,” I say, and Lil beams. She says nothing as we head out of the room and down the hall, leaning heavily on my arm. But as soon as the elevator doors close and we find ourselves alone, she straightens up and grins at me.

“You have some explaining to do,” I tell her.

“So severe,” she says, laughing. “All will be revealed, I promise. Sooner rather than later, if you join me for an early lunch. Shall we?”

wednesday, december 4, 2013

Lil's car is waiting outside the building. It's a new one, a stretch Mercedes in a lovely smoky blue. Her driver, Anil, meets us and holds out his hand.

“Ah, Ms. Sophie. How nice to see you again.”

It has been years since I last saw Anil, and he is exactly as I remember him. He emigrated from India to North America in his twenties, with a wife and two young children in tow; I would say that he has been one of the lucky ones, but he has made his own luck. He started driving a taxi in the early days, but quickly figured out that the money and the hours were better in the private service business. With his impeccable manners and chiseled good looks, he soon had the most popular car service in the city, a position that he has maintained—although the day-to-day operations are now managed by his son, an MBA, and his daughter, a graphic designer. Lil pays Anil a generous annual salary to be available to drive her whenever she is in town, which is around six months a year.

Anil seems completely unfazed by Lil's bizarre appearance. “Where would you like to go, Lillian?” he asks. Anil has his own code when it comes to formal address. Lil has always been Lillian, and I have always been Ms. Sophie, although in my left-wing student days I practically
begged him to call me Sophie and let me sit in the front seat. He would have none of it.

“The Four Seasons, please, Anil,” says Lil.

“Your bag is in the back.”

“What a treasure you are, Anil,” says Lil.

Lil turns to me and says, “So. It has been far too long. You seem tired. Are you working too hard?”

“It's a busy time,” I reply. “I'm operating at a fairly high level of stress.”

“Stress,” she repeats. “This is a new invention. My generation was never ‘stressed.' Busy, yes. But not stressed.”

“How old
are
you, Lil?” I ask. I've probably asked her this question twenty times over the twenty years of our acquaintance and I still have no idea of the answer. I know that I'm not going to get one today, either. Lil grins.

“A lady should never tell her age,” she says, as she always does. The car pulls up in front of the hotel, and Lil hops out, takes a large bag from Anil, and gives me a wink.

“I'll join you in a jiffy. Get a good table and order the pink Veuve.” She vanishes into the lobby.

I wave good-bye to Anil and head inside. It's busy in the bar, but when I mention Lil's name, the crowd parts and, amazingly, a table for two with a view of the street becomes available.

“Will Ms. Parker be having her usual this afternoon?” asks the server who materializes instantly at my elbow.

“She asked for pink Veuve,” I say.

“Of course,” he murmurs, and vanishes.

And then Lil is back, and looking much more like herself with a steel-gray pixie cut, a velvet ink-blue pantsuit, a chunky silver cuff, and just a hint of makeup. I cast my mind back and am dismayed to realize that it's been more than three years since we've seen each other. It's a testament to how wild my life has been since Scotty was born. I hadn't anticipated that having a second child would be like driving our old life off a cliff; we'd done that once already when we had Jamie, but everyone we talked to swore that having two kids was more like having one and a half. It's
breathtaking how often people lie when it comes to kids. I drag my attention back to Lil, who hasn't really aged since she decided to let her hair go gray about ten years ago.

“Where's the fox?” I ask.

Lil laughs. “My beastie? Isn't he fantastic? I found him at a costume shop in London's West End a few years ago. I thought it would go perfectly with my mother's old Chanel suit, and I was right, don't you think?”

“I think the beehive wig was a nice touch,” I say.

Lil looks thoroughly delighted. “I'm so pleased that I was able to get you onto this infernal search committee,” she says. “I know Marvin, of course, but he doesn't get the joke. He thinks I've gone senile. It will be so much more fun with you there.”

“This is your doing?” I ask, knowing that this should have been obvious to me the second I realized that Lil was in the room. Things rarely happen by accident when she is around. “I hope you weren't expecting me to thank you. I need another committee assignment like a hole in the head.”

Lil shakes her head, amused at my ferocity. “Where is your sense of adventure?” she asks, and I bristle inwardly at the criticism, although I'm careful not to show it. I don't take criticism well, but as Jesse has observed on countless occasions, you'll never get me to admit it. “I did try to fill you in ahead of time. Didn't you get my message?”

“No,” I lie.

“I'm just hopeless with those awful machines,” she says. “Oh, well. Sorry for surprising you.” She grins, not at all sorry. “How
do
you work for that Barry character, by the way? He really is an insufferable incompetent. And the fellow before him! It should have been evident to anyone with eyes in their head that there was something seriously off with him.”

The waiter, introduced as Bradley, materializes with the Veuve, and Lil applauds. “Lovely.” She beams. “My favorite.” Bradley fills her flute and she takes a long sip. She nods with pleasure. “Thank you,” she says. “And I believe we are ready to order. Would you mind bringing me a Cobb salad? Extra bacon, please.” She gestures to me. “My friend will have the same, won't you, Sophie?”

“Sure,” I say. My head feels woolly with congestion, and in any event, being with Lil always makes me feel a bit slow on the uptake. It's so much easier to just go along. “What's up with the ‘Mrs. Baxter,' by the way?” I ask. “I didn't think you still used that name.” This is a delicate way of saying that Lil has been married a few times since she was Mrs. Baxter.

Lil leans back in her chair and cradles her glass in her hands. “Have you ever heard the story of Madame Clicquot?” she asks. “It's a very old story, but a good one, I think. At least, I've always liked it.” She takes another sip. “In France, around two hundred years ago, there was a young girl who was very lucky. Her family was rich and moved in all the right circles, and when the time came for her to marry at the age of twenty-one, her father made sure that she married well. Her husband's father was ambitious and had built up a very profitable business in wine, wool, and banking and various other things. For the next six years, the girl did everything that was expected of her. She had babies and hosted dinner parties and learned how to manage a household. Her husband was thoughtless and absent, but so were most other men that she knew, and she had plenty of responsibilities to keep her busy. And then one day, her husband went and killed himself. The girl thought about her options. She could retreat into seclusion, or go into mourning for a polite period and then remarry. She had lots of money, which even in 1805 meant freedom of a kind. But this girl had the inkling that she might try to forge a new kind of life for herself. So she rolled up her petticoat, and went down to the wine cellar and invented a whole new way to make champagne. And over time, she built her business into the most powerful champagne house in Europe, made herself a large fortune, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty-nine. She put her name on every bottle, so that people would remember her forever.” Lil reaches over to the ice bucket and taps the label on the bottle.

“Veuve?” I ask.

“Tsk, tsk, Sophie, have you forgotten all of your French?” Lil scolds. “Widow Clicquot,
‘veuve
'
en français
.”

“Does this have anything to do with whatever you're doing on this search committee?” I ask, hopefully.

Lil smiles at me. “Maybe just a little bit,” she says. “You can tell me once I'm done.”

My sinuses hurt, and I cover my eyes with my hands, massaging my fingers gently into the sockets. “It's your show,” I say, relaxing into the cushions.

“You know that my first husband was a Baxter,” says Lil. “Monty Baxter, to be precise.”

“
Montgomery
Baxter?” I say, stupidly. “You were married to Montgomery Baxter?” I am stunned that this bit of information has somehow eluded me. The Montgomery Baxter Foundation is the single largest donor to the children's hospital that bears its name, and it continues to fund virtually every major research project that we do.

Lil laughs. “I understand your feelings. Honestly, it still mystifies me whenever I think of it, and it really was a very long time ago.” She looks a little bit wistful. “He was such a type. The most handsome man I ever knew. Absolutely incapable of holding down a job or keeping his pants on. Not that he had to, really. He had an enormous trust fund and women literally threw themselves at him.”

“He doesn't sound like your type.” Lil's friends tend to be artists and writers, or patrons of the arts, at least the ones I've met over the years.

“He wasn't.” A shadow of sadness passes over her face, and she's quiet for a moment, lost in the past. Then she shifts and meets my eyes again. “Monty's parents wanted him to settle down before he came into his inheritance at twenty-five, and my parents disapproved of my preferred type; I was spending all of my time with actors and writers and others that they regarded as unmarriageable. So it was strongly suggested that Monty and I spend more time together. Everyone else in our social circle was getting married, and in the moment it seemed like a good idea to accept his proposal.”

It's hard to square this story with everything I know about Lil. Even as a very young woman, it's hard to imagine that her spirit could be bent to marry a man not of her choosing.

“Six months after the wedding, Monty got access to his trust, and after that, I rarely saw him,” she continues. “He was out all night, every
night, drinking and playing cards.” She leans back in her chair and takes a long sip of champagne. “And here is where Madame Clicquot and I begin to have something in common. That summer, fourteen months after our wedding, Monty went up to his family cottage. He would stay up for weeks at a time, and it was one endless party. I couldn't bear to be there, so I stayed in the city, and I wasn't there when the accident happened. But I'm told that Monty dared his friends to a midnight race across the lake. So they got out the launches in the pitch black and gunned the engines. And Monty slammed right into an island and killed himself. Boom! Just like that.” She smacks her hands together loudly, and the sound makes both me and Bradley—who has appeared at last with the Cobb salads—jump.

Bradley puts our plates on the table. “Enjoy your lunch,” he says.

“Thank you,” says Lil. She takes a bite and her face brightens. “Is there a better lunch in the world? I ask you.” We eat for a moment, and then she continues. “So there I was—a widow at the age of twenty-three. It was a very strange time for me.”

“I had no idea,” I say. “I'm so sorry. That must have been awful.”

“Not for the reasons you might think,” says Lil. “I knew that I had made a terrible mistake in marrying Monty, but I had no way of getting out of the marriage. It really was a different time then, and unlike the widow Clicquot, I had no money of my own, and I couldn't get a job. But when Monty died, I inherited a small fortune. Which is why, at the end of the day, I have no regrets about Monty whatsoever. In fact, I remember him rather fondly.”

I take a moment to digest all of this. “How is it that I never knew any of this?” I ask.

“I don't like to tell my tenants about my secret identity,” she says. “People have odd reactions to wealth. Not to mention that the Baxters are mostly nuts. Too much inbreeding.”

“The search committee?” I prompt her.

“Patience, Sophie,” says Lil. “I'm getting there as quickly as I can. Monty's family was somewhat less than thrilled when I inherited all of his money after such a short marriage, and they were showing signs of making things difficult for me, legally I mean. His sister, Penelope, had
always disapproved of the marriage; we had been friends and she knew that I didn't love Monty. She was right about that, although not about my reasons for marrying him. I never cared about his money.”

“Why
did
you marry him?”

“That's a story for another day,” she says. “We need to finish this one, so you can get back to the office. How is your lunch?”

“Delicious.”

“Good,” she says. “After Monty died, I decided to create a foundation in his name dedicated to the promotion of children's health, using half of everything I had inherited. His parents had been long-standing supporters of the local children's hospital, so the idea had some philosophical appeal, and then I asked Monty's father to manage the foundation's investments.”

“Did it work?” I ask.

“Like a charm,” answers Lil. “Even half the estate was an enormous sum of money, and I was free to live exactly as I wished, while Monty's family felt invested in the creation of his legacy. It helped them with their loss.” Lil pauses and takes a bite of her salad. “In the end, I became rather attached to his parents. Penelope and her siblings were all every bit as spoiled as Monty, and their parents ended up being quite lonely in their later years. They volunteered a lot of time with the foundation, and when they died, they left their entire estate to it. It was rather a lot of money to begin with and now—well, it's a staggering amount of money. We give out at least ten million dollars every year, all to the Baxter Hospital, which is why they eventually named it after us.”