I'll Take Manhattan (23 page)

But a secret known to three people is only safe if two of them are dead. And this secret was too good to be confined to the grapevine, this secret was too tasty not to be savored and rolled on the tongue by people to whom debauchery was only a word, a fantasy they would never dare to act out. It became a suspicion, it became almost—but not quite—known, and then, as words written in invisible ink become legible with the application of fire, it came, as inevitably it must, to Candice’s ear.

Almost from the beginning of her marriage she had endured the scenarios of Cutter with another woman, but
the woman was always faceless. For years all her strength and all her emotional energy had gone into nonacknowledgment; her only solace alcohol, her dogs and her pride. Now her pride could sustain her no longer, for now that faceless woman had a face, that of Nanette. Nanette herself had told her, not showing how much she enjoyed the pseudo-confession. Candice’s haughty surface had become so perfect that Nanette couldn’t resist—didn’t try to resist—shocking Candice out of her self-satisfied contentment. Venomously, as if by accident, she left behind a Polaroid shot of herself and Cutter, his face distorted by his orgasm.

She could not endure more, Candice realized. It was not to be lived with. There was no possible hideous future to a life that contained this certain knowledge. She would never stop seeing that picture. It could never become a memory. It would live before her eyes, the purest of agony. Hell had entered the room and eliminated any doubt and without doubt there was no hope.

Candice dressed herself in a beautiful suit, combed her gleaming hair, put on her makeup, went to a hotel on the far side of Union Square, checked into a room on the sixteenth floor, drank half a bottle of Scotch and jumped out of the window into the empty alley behind the hotel.

It would have been considered a case of temporary insanity, of suicidal depression so well hidden that even her mother hadn’t suspected its existence. But while she was swallowing the alcohol that she needed to make it easier to open the window, Candice thought of her dogs and scrawled a letter giving instructions for their care, a rambling letter in which her desire to punish her sister won over her desire to maintain to the end that she did not know what sort of husband Cutter had been, a letter in which she accused Nanette.

The detective who found the letter gave it to James Standings III. He had no choice but to believe that Candice was wrong about Nanette, for he had only one child left. All his vengeance turned toward Cutter, now senior vice-president of his firm. In order to avoid a further scandal out of what he could still manage to have treated as a tragedy, all that James Standings III could do was to expel Cutter from the firm and vow that never again would he be hired by any
other of the many San Francisco banking houses in which he exerted considerable influence.

James Standings III never realized it but his vengeance was as effective as any other he could have achieved, without a gun, for he took away from Cutter that sure future presidency of Standings and Alexander toward which he had been purposefully moving in so many ways from the day he first met Candice.

Jumbo Booker had never given up the borrowed glory he derived from his position as Cutter’s best friend. Enclosed as Jumbo was in the tight pattern of a comfortable marriage, the sinfully exciting life that he could only imagine that Cutter led—for Cutter never boasted—gave him the illusion of participation without the problems that actual participation would have posed. Now, with Cutter so abruptly and inexplicably out of a job, Jumbo exerted himself to find something for his friend, enjoying this welcome sign that his own position, if less glamorous, was still superior.

Jumbo had fund-raising connections with the Nixon administration and he found Cutter an appointment in Belgium within the complicated bureaucracy of the Agency for International Development. Brussels, hospitable if singularly gloomy in its almost perpetual fog, suited Cutter’s state of mind and he was soon involved in the complicated diplomatic life of the busy, well-fed capital. Eventually Jumbo got him the opportunity to work for an investment bank in London and there, after a few years, the faithful Jumbo got him an opportunity to return to New York and work in the local office of Booker, Smity and Jameston. It was 1981 and Cutter judged that it was time to go home. Neither the welcome of the NATO wives nor the friendliness of the British quite made up for the advantages he could still hope for as an Amberville on his native soil.

In 1969, twelve years before Cutter came back to Manhattan, Nina Stern had turned thirty-five. Her love affair with Zachary had been conducted so quietly that it had become
part of the mosaic of Manhattan life, taken for granted by those in the know and undreamed of by anyone else. Whatever tidal waves of gossip there must certainly have been some ten years earlier had become mere wavelets as Lily and Zachary remained undramatically married. Nina and Zachary were like a minor, little-known institution, some obscure historical society located on a side street which had no fund-raising functions and no inquiring scholars. Only the two of them knew the treasures concealed behind the façade they had built, and as far as Zachary was concerned he asked no greater happiness.

But Nina Stern at thirty-five was not the same free spirit as Nina Stern at twenty-five. She was just as beloved, daily more successful, sure to succeed Zelda Powers as Editor-in-chief of
Style
, but her loathing of everything domestic had not resisted the attack of her hormonal heritage. She had reached the age at which the unmarried career woman faces that classic, unavoidable realization:
now or never
. On the eve of her thirty-fifth birthday Nina had taken stock, asking herself where she would be in ten years, and the answer hadn’t pleased her: exactly where she was now, still successful, still with Zachary, but forty-five years old. With fifty fast approaching. Atavistic voices sounded in her mind.
Now or never
. Could she reconcile herself to the
never
? Must she change her mind about what she had believed she wanted just because the sands of time kept running? Nina Stern took a long, honest look at herself. Unclouded by illusion, she realized that, alas, she too was just like other women after all. She wanted the
now
—she couldn’t hold on to the
never
. Even if marriage and children would not, in the end, make her happy, she must find out for herself. She was disappointed in this evidence of her ordinary humanity but a little relieved at the same time … perhaps, just perhaps, it would turn out to be an interesting experiment.

She broke with Zachary as quickly, as neatly and as sweetly as she knew how, and soon married the most eligible of the many men who had continued to pursue her over the years.

Only her daughter Nina, Mrs. Stern triumphantly told her friends, could have produced twin boys and held on to
her job in the first year of marriage. Only Nina, thought Zachary, could have made the break with such decency and such honesty that he was able to go to the wedding and—almost—feel happy for her. Only Nina, thought Nina, could continue to care so deeply for Zachary and yet give her new husband the exclusive—almost exclusive—love he deserved. It was, after all, possible to have the best of both worlds … it was all a question of having the right sense of timing.

Lily Amberville saw an opportunity and did not fail to take advantage of it. The wedding invitation would have told her that Zachary was free of his mistress even if she hadn’t been able to read the poignant loneliness in his eyes. From the time of Cutter’s marriage, six years before, she had lived in a gilded, adorned, extravagantly bedecked emptiness. Now Zachary was as lonely as she and slowly the two of them came together and made their peace with each other, a silent peace—since there had never been any formal rupture to repair—a peace that grew more solid year by year, a peace of dry, resigned, but somehow rewarding contentment. They had each had their great romance. Now they had each other and their children and it was better, so very much better, than being alone.

One spring day in 1972 Zachary Amberville and Nina Stern Heller had lunch together, meeting unselfconsciously at one of the restaurants they had often gone to during the years of their love affair, an unfashionable place where it was unlikely that they would be seen by anyone who knew either of them. During the years that they had been together they had discovered that there were dozens of such places in Manhattan, neighborhood places, comfortable
and warm, with fairly decent food. Now, there was no longer a reason to avoid attention, nor was there a reason to abandon the restaurants they both liked. If an element of nostalgia, a few moments of remembered pain, of remembered joy, crept into these lunches of the Editor-in-chief of
Style
and the head of Amberville Publications it only added a particularly bittersweet flavor to the feast.

“You have to admit,” Nina said, choosing her words carefully, “that Maxi has potential.”

“So did Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Come on, Zachary, don’t be too hard on her. I think she needs to be motivated, focused on something so she can use everything she has. After all, when she’s interested in a subject in school she can get straight A’s …”

“And when she isn’t, she just won’t bother to study, which adds up to a D-plus average. What kind of college is going to accept her with that record?” Zachary wondered miserably.

Nina considered Maxi and sighed. A most perplexing, puzzling minx, deeply and fundamentally lovable yet always in some kind of trouble, managing, even in this permissive society, to get herself thrown out of a succession of schools and summer camps; not for drugs or stealing or cheating, but for organizing groups of her peers into inspired, effective mischief. “She’s always elected president of her class,” Nina reminded him cheerfully.

“Usually just before she’s bounced. All the future I can see for her is to be voted Miss Congeniality but she’s not a type they allow in the Miss America contest.”

“If only …” Nina ventured and then stopped.

“Yup.” They both knew that they didn’t want to discuss, yet again, the difficulties that existed between Maxi and Lily which made Zachary almost totally responsible for his daughter.

From the time Lily found out about Toby’s inexorable eye disease she seemed to have abandoned her unquenchable healthy daughter for the boy who needed her. Maxi was barely three when this happened and, as the months and years passed, she never stopped yearning with all her heart for her mother’s inaccessible affection. On Toby, Lily lavished
a possessive, watchful, anxious love that was on alert as long as he was awake.

After Justin’s birth, her youngest child too became an object of an adoring, excessive passion. Consumed by her two boys, who, like lovers, changed the colors of her world and demanded infidelity, Lily no longer even tried to make the time to read to her intrusive small girl child or let her play dress-up with her jewels.

Maxi had her father all to herself, Lily thought in self-justification when Maxi tried to claim her attention. If she had to cope with Maxi, it would be just too much for her sanity. The child was indestructible, she assured herself as she gave brief, firm, fruitless instruction to one of the procession of nannies she hired for her daughter, and turned quickly back to Toby’s learning problems and Justin’s health, for he had been premature and frighteningly frail for long after his birth.

But at no point during her childhood did Maxi stop craving and needing Lily’s love. She strove for her mother’s consideration in every naughty way she could think of, but only managed to get herself punished by her father, whose heart wasn’t in it, as well she knew.

She never tried being a “good girl,” for she understood that the better she was, the less chance she had to be noticed. Yet from birth Maxi had been bound by the rules of fair play. Some tangible thing called “fairness” was utterly and indelibly precious to her and as she grew older she tried to convince herself that it was “fair” that Toby and Justin should so preoccupy her mother. She had tried very hard indeed to make herself believe this, but she’d never totally succeeded and, at some early time in her life, she began to stop hoping for Lily’s love. She never gave up completely but her hope diminished year by year until it was buried so deep that it almost stopped hurting.

Nina stopped eating her osso buco and turned to Zachary.

“There’s one thing you’ve never tried. Every summer you send Maxi away to some new place … tennis camp, theater camp, wilderness survival camp, riding camp … 
and every year she’s returned to you by air mail. Why not give her a real challenge—I’ll bet she’d rise to it.”

“What I love about you, among a billion other things, is your optimism.” Zachary smiled at her. A beautiful, warmhearted wonderful woman, damn that husband of hers.

“A job, a summer job,” Nina continued excitedly. “It would use up all of that crazy energy of hers on something she could sink her teeth into, something that would give her a sense of accomplishment.”

“Who would hire her?” Zachary asked. He couldn’t imagine anyone deliberately adding Maxi to any business endeavor.

“You, Zachary, you.”

“Oh no! Not me! Not Maxi!”

“You know perfectly well that you always have summer jobs available for kids with pull, kids of major advertisers. It’s an understood thing. I’ve got a half-dozen set for this summer on my staff alone, Miss Better Dresses, Miss Panty Hose, and four others, not any one of them as smart as Maxi.”

“Pull is one thing, nepotism is another.”

“That’s a cop-out. I’ll talk to Pavka and between us we’ll find a place for her. At least try it … you’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Nothing to lose?” Zachary asked, amused by her Girl Scout madness.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Nina demanded.

“She’ll fuck up,” he said.

“But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Nina insisted, looking at him with a special kind of love that her husband had never seen, would never see, in her eyes.