Bitter Business (9 page)

By the time I arrived at my mother’s door, I was twenty minutes late and in an evil mood. A maid I’d never laid eyes on answered the door, but that didn’t surprise me; in domestic-employment circles, having once worked for my mother is akin to having been wounded in combat. Rocket, our ancient and arthritic black Lab, skittered across the polished marble of the foyer to greet me. He was an old, fat dog that wheezed like a freight train and hobbled like an old man. I dropped down on one knee and scratched his head.

I introduced myself to the maid, who, unimpressed, took my coat and disappeared with it. I stood beneath the graceful curve of the staircase and checked my reflection in the large gold mirror that has always hung there. Growing up in that house, I distinctly recall catching glimpses of myself in that mirror and for a fraction of a second seeing my mother’s face looking back at me. But when I’d stop and really look, I would see what was actually there reflected in the glass.

My mother is a great beauty. Even closing in on sixty, she possesses the miraculous alchemy of skin and bone that is a magnet to the eye. I have her eyes, her skin, her hair, the same expression of irritated petulance when someone crosses me, but somehow when it was all put together and passed along to me, the magic got left out. Today the face I saw in the mirror was tired. My hair was working itself loose from its customary French twist. I pushed the hairpins back into place; then I walked the hallways of my childhood home to find my mother.

7

I followed the sound of voices into the music room, so named because Vladimir Horowitz had once played there for Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat. I vaguely remember meeting them—a dark little man who I told my nanny looked like a monkey and his sour-faced wife, so sad and thin. The room, like all of the places in my mother’s house, was beautiful. The walls were covered in yellow silk the color of dull gold and the cabbage-rose chintz of the sofas was offset by the blue-and-white-striped damask of the side chairs. There was an antique Steinway baby grand piano at one end of the room, and beyond that, French doors that opened out onto the lawn, rolling out into a bluff that dropped precipitously at the edge of Lake Michigan.

We had moved into this house from an apartment downtown when I was five years old. My older brother, Teddy, was nine. Up until then our building on Lake Shore Drive had been my entire world. Gladys, the elevator operator, would take me on rides, and Winston, the doorman, would slip me lemon drops and tell me stories about growing up the eleventh child of an Arkansas sharecropper.

The move to Lake Forest seemed to me an exile to the end of the earth, and all the years I lived there it never really felt like home. When I was twelve my little sister, Beth, was born—a bonus baby, as Daniel had called Lydia. After that a steady stream of mademoiselles entered our life, sweet French girls who came to nanny in America in order to improve their English, and left once they were fluent enough to give notice to my mother.

And still the house held memories that would not pass. My brother Teddy killed himself when he was fifteen. He hanged himself in the garage on a Saturday night so that he could be sure, at least once, of commanding my parents’ attention when they rolled in drunk after a party. And it was in this very room that my mother and I had the most vitriolic of all our arguments. It was an hour before my wedding and all the regular furniture had been taken away, save the piano, and replaced with tables for the reception. They were covered in white linen, decorated with white roses, and set with antique silver and Spode. I’d fled there from my mother, trailing twenty feet of satin and tulle, after the stress of the day had led her to pick fights with the caterer, the minister, the photographer, and finally with me. In front of a handful of terrified waiters, Mother accused me of deliberately marrying into a family of overweight Poles who spoke no English for the express purpose of humiliating her in front of her friends. When I ventured to protest, she grabbed a fistful of silverware from a nearby table and threw it, grazing the bodice of my dress with a butter knife, so that a half-dozen pearls were cut loose from their moorings and clattered noisily to the floor.

But today the music room was free of ghosts and filled with people—more than a dozen, all women. They were all dressed like the businesswomen you see in the movies, their daring little suits much more fashionable than anything I could wear without comment to work. Their hand-sewn Italian pumps showed no signs of having climbed in and out of taxicabs. I was secretly amused.

My mother made a great show of happiness at my arrival in order to make me feel my tardiness all the more. She saved her look of disappointment at my dowdy work clothes for when none of her friends could see her face. I knew that I had met all of the committee members on countless other occasions but found that except for Sonny Welborn, I could recall none of their names. I always had that problem with my mother’s friends. Their elegant clothes, their expensively understated jewelry, their perfect hair all lent them a homogeneous quality in my mind. Kissing the air next to their powdered cheeks, I made the circuit of the room. Then, taking a seat, I waited expectantly for the meeting to begin.

It rapidly became clear that the business of the Children’s Hospital Building Committee would be conducted on Lake Forest rather than Chicago time. Sonny Welborn gave a report, designer by designer, on the clothes she and my mother had seen on the runways of Paris. Two uniformed maids appeared to serve tea and sandwiches. Someone else launched into a bitter complaint about the number of foreigners who were buying houses in Palm Beach.

When, after repeated pleas on my part about moving things along, we finally got down to business, I was horrified to learn that everyone in the room felt an overwhelming need to restate the obvious. After an hour I felt like I’d been nailed to my chair for an eternity. I was seized by a distinctly unladylike desire to scream.

When one of the maids came to tell me that I had a phone call from the office, I made my excuses gratefully and realized that truly, any business crisis was better than this. I ducked into the library and picked up the phone. It was Cheryl.

“I thought you might need rescuing,” she announced. “Bless you,” I replied fervently.

“Besides, I had a question.”

“What?”

“Does Daniel Babbage like you very much?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you ever do something terrible to him? You know, something for which he might want to exact revenge?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“I just got off the phone with Jack Cavanaugh. What a jerk. I can’t imagine why Babbage would dump him on you unless he was trying to punish you for something.”

“What did Cavanaugh want?”

“He wanted to talk to you.
Now!
When I told him that you were out of the office and unavailable, he threw a blue fit and started screaming at me. I hate guys who do that. The asshole would never raise his voice to you, his attorney. But I’m just a secretary, so he thinks it’s okay to treat me like dirt.”

“Does he want me to call him back?”

“No. You don’t have to. He didn’t really need to talk to you in the first place. It turns out he just wanted to set up a meeting between you and his daughter Lydia. I’d already set it up for nine o’clock tomorrow morning, just like you asked.”

“Is he going to be there?”

“I don’t know. He said he’d fax you instructions. I’ve got to leave for class in about half an hour, so I’ll just put them on your desk.”

“Anything else?”

“Anything else? There are so many elses I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’m running out of excuses. People are starting to notice how behind you’re getting.”

My stomach churned.

“I’ll be leaving here in ten minutes,” I said, looking at my watch. “Have Daniel’s secretary bring me the three most recent binders in the Superior Plating file and leave them on my desk—also all of their incorporation documents. I’m planning on working until midnight so that I can get caught up on some of this stuff.”

“No you’re not. You’re meeting Stephen for dinner at L’Auberge at seven o’clock.”

“Tell me you’re making this up,” I said. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I could have sworn that dinner with Stephen was Tuesday night.”

“Today is Tuesday.”

“Shit. You’ll have to call him and tell him I can’t make it.”

“Last week when you told me to put this on your calendar, you made me swear a blood oath that I wouldn’t let you cancel. Those Swiss guys flew in especially for this.”

“You’re right. I have to go.”

“I guess it’s safe to assume that you forgot to bring clothes to change into. L’Auberge is very dressy and the Swiss are very formal.”

I swore.

“I guess you’ll just have to borrow something of your mother’s,” said Cheryl. There was no mistaking the amusement in her voice.

I was standing in my mother’s dressing room in my underwear. Of the two of us, she was the one who was having a good time.

“I can’t believe you wear that cheap-looking brassiere,” she lectured. “Wherever did you get it? Victoria’s Secret?”

“It’s beige, for God’s sake, Mother,” I protested. “How can you look cheap in beige underwear?”

“I didn’t mean that kind of cheap. I mean that it’s of poor quality. I don’t know what it’s made out of, but it’s probably some sort of synthetic. I believe they make it out of old panty hose. I don’t know how you expect your clothes to fit correctly when you don’t have the proper foundation garments.”

I looked at her hard to see if I could detect even a hint of self-mockery, but for my mother the business of getting dressed was deadly serious. She turned to reach for a bare slip of a fuchsia cocktail dress with spaghetti straps.

“Where’s the rest of it?” I demanded. “I can’t wear that to a business dinner with a bunch of pharmaceutical executives.”

“Tonight, for once, you’re going to wear what I tell you to wear,” declared my mother, her eyes flashing with pleasure. “And after we’ve picked a dress, I’m doing something about your hair!”

A cat on hot bricks is nothing compared to what I felt like by the time my mother had finished her ministrations with the hot rollers and her makeup bag. When at last she had declared herself satisfied, I practically flew out of the house, desperate to be free of her and anxious to get to the restaurant on time. The Swiss may be formal, but they are punctual as well.

From the minute the parking attendant swung open the door of my car I knew that something strange was going on. The doorman practically clicked his heels as he greeted me. The maître d’ sprang to my side and gallantly swept my mother’s coat from my shoulders—a full-length Russian sable that she’d pressed upon me at the last moment. As he escorted me to the table where Stephen and the two executives from Gordimer A.G. were waiting, heads turned. But I hadn’t completely realized the full extent of what Mother had done until I saw Stephen rising to his feet, a look of undisguised wonder in his eyes.

In Stephen’s face I saw what, in my hurry, I hadn’t noticed in the mirror of my mother’s dressing table. In the slinky dress and skyscraper heels, with Mother’s dark red lipstick and my hair now all soft curls cascading in torrents over my bare shoulders—I looked sexy. It was a completely new experience for me.

Dinner was very odd. We were meeting to discuss financing options for the proposed joint venture between Azor and Gordimer. But while I outlined the international tax implications for various capitalization structures the two businessmen from Switzerland took turns looking down my dress.

Men, I reflected, are really very simple, obvious creatures.

* * *

After Stephen had handed the gentlemen from Gordimer into their taxi, we stood beneath the striped awning of the restaurant and waited for our cars to be brought around.

“I don’t have to tell you that the big pharmaceutical houses have seen their profits go soft in the last couple of years,” I advised him. “Gordimer’s no exception. They’ve all been gobbling up small, research-oriented companies with good product in their pipeline. Companies like Azor. I think you should keep that firmly in mind while you’re deciding whether or not to jump into bed with them.”

“I love your hair like this,” Stephen said, marveling. “Why don’t you follow me home for a drink?”

“Have you been listening to what I’ve been saying?” I demanded.

“You told me I should be careful before I jump into bed. Would you rather we dropped your car at your office?”

“I have to go back to the office and work. I have a meeting with Lydia Cavanaugh tomorrow morning. I have to review the file.”

Stephen bent his head and kissed my neck. I was flabbergasted. I had never known Stephen to be affectionate in public.

“You can pick up the file when we drop the car. I’ll wake you up early—when I get up. That way you’ll be able to read the file when you’re fresh.”

“I am never fresh in the morning.”

“Please?” Stephen whispered, sliding his hand down my spine to the small of my back.

Out of the comer of my eye I noticed one of the red-jacketed parking attendants watching us with great attention. He was licking his lips.