Private Lies (8 page)

Whatever had to be done, Carol did. She was the avid
listener, the charming companion, the passionate lover, the giving friend. For
her, it would always be "On with the show." Catering to his
contentment was not without effort. Eliot Butterfield, notwithstanding his
efforts to "make the world a better place," was a committed snob. And
yet there were moments of wilting beneath the makeup.

The strain of deception was sometimes exhausting. The
pattern of lies had to be preserved. He was forty-two when he married her and
assumed he was twenty years older than she. "My child-bride," he
often told others. This meant elaborate subterfuge, falsifying documents,
monitoring the mail, managing her past.

There was physical subterfuge as well, feigning sexual
passion, showing interest as basic as faking her climaxes. She had, after all,
the memory of her experiences with Ken Kramer to draw from. That had been the
zenith of her sex life. After him her body had gone into a kind of sexual
paralysis. Not that Eliot was an unattractive man. It helped, but never to the
point of pleasure for her.

The old habit of discipline served her well. Perhaps, one
day in the future, she might be secure enough to tell him the truth, that she
had invented herself for his pleasure and comfort. And her own. She hoped he
would pat her on the cheek and laugh and they would go on to live happily ever
after.

She had made it her business to learn Eliot's moods, his
needs, his eccentricities, and she tried to do her job accordingly. Just
another discipline, she assured herself. Maybe it was against nature, like ballet,
but as long as she showed the ease of grace and balance, how could he suspect?
She was, after all, giving him good value.

She had also succeeded in making a good impression on his
children, who, thankfully, would spend most of their time at schools in Switzerland or with their mother.

There were, of course, revelations and disappointments. The
rich, she had discovered, were very adept at preserving their fortunes. Eliot
Butterfield was no exception. Accountants and lawyers were good buffers and
could fashion hundreds of ways to prevent a fortune hunter from taking
advantage of a situation.

She had been baffled by the prenuptial agreement put in
front of her in his lawyer's office on the eve of their wedding.

"It protects everyone," Eliot's lawyer had explained.
Reading it, she had been surprised at the language and had difficulty
pretending indifference.

The document indicated that in the event of Eliot's death
she would inherit everything that was acquired in her name exclusively, such as
gifts, artwork, antiques, and real estate, during the lifetime of the marriage.
The rest was tied up in family trusts for the benefit of Eliot's children. But
if the marriage ended because of her adultery, she would get nothing.

"My adultery!" she cried. She had turned toward
Eliot. "Really, Eliot." He shrugged and made no comment.

"A standard protective device," the lawyer told
her. "We have to cover every contingency." He was a small man with
tiny hands and wore rimless glasses and a pinstriped suit with a polka-dot bow
tie on a white shirt. "Especially in the light of Mr. Butterfield's first
divorce."

"It's unthinkable," she said indignantly.
"That I would ever..."

"I know, darling. It's all pro forma nonsense."

"But it also holds true if Mr. Butterfield ends the
marriage on the grounds of his adultery," the lawyer pointed out. "In
that case, it would be he who forfeits any rights to any property you had
acquired during the life of the marriage."

"I insisted on that. It's only fair." Eliot
laughed, squeezed her hand, and kissed her cheek. "A completely farfetched
premise. This marriage is for keeps."

"And if the marriage ends on other grounds?" she
asked the lawyer, trying to make the question sound facetious.

"At your instigation?" the lawyer asked
seriously.

She nodded.

"You would get five thousand dollars a year for five
years," the lawyer said, pointing out the language in the document.
"And, of course, give up all rights to the articles."

The lawyer paused and looked at Eliot, then continued.

"And if Mr. Butterfield instigates the divorce, you
would still get the stipend ... and"—he cleared his throat—"the
inheritance right to the articles providing you do not marry before Mr.
Butterfield's demise."

"It's all so complicated," she had sighed.

"We don't intend it to end on any grounds," Eliot
said. "Do we, darling?"

But the lawyer was still in the middle of his explanation.

"Mr. Butterfield has chosen"—again the lawyer
cleared his throat, and it was clear that he was about to say something that he
disagreed with—"to provide you with this inheritance even if he remarries.
Indeed, he has the use of these articles, but cannot dispose of them in any
way."

It struck her as oddly generous, though in a backhanded
way, and she did not dispute it. There would be no point. She hoped none of
these eventualities ever came to pass. But she did understand the reasoning
behind the agreement. The rich knew how to hold on to their money and their
possessions. They were simply closing any loopholes for transferring assets
with sinister intent.

"One would think I'm a fortune hunter," Carol had
commented, turning indignantly to the lawyer. "Haven't you ever heard of a
love match?"

"Many times."

"Don't expect a lawyer to understand feelings,"
Eliot sighed.

"Of course Mr. Butterfield can choose to change the
rules as time goes on, and with your consent," the lawyer said. Carol was
growing impatient with the discussion, but the lawyer droned on.

"There is one other item to be considered," the
lawyer said with a cryptic glance toward Eliot, who, Carol noted, had nodded
for him to continue. He cleared his throat. "The issue of children."

"Children?" It puzzled her. She had already met
Eliot's two children by his first marriage. "You mean about their trusts.
Eliot has informed me about that. Of course, they should be adequately provided
for."

"He means our children," Eliot said, avoiding her
eyes.

It had been the one overriding fear of her deception. She
was on the cusp of child-bearing age, but she had no desire for them, not only
on the grounds of personal danger and the possible ruination of her figure. She
had absolutely no wish to be a mother. Nor had the issue ever come up in their
discussions, largely, she thought, due to her deliberate evasions.

Her reaction was to scan the agreement to determine whether
she had missed something.

"It's not in the document," the lawyer said.

"I've had a vasectomy, Carol," Eliot said. He was
obviously apologetic. Her first reaction was enormous relief, which she hid
under a façade of contrived regret. "I was still married to Helen,"
he explained. "It wouldn't do to have more children."

It surprised her that he would have chosen this moment and,
of all places, his lawyer's office for his confession. It had been entirely
unexpected, which both disturbed and alerted her. So Eliot, too, had his little
deceptions and agendas.

"We already have two children, Eliot," Carol said
solemnly, certain that she had struck exactly the right note.

She had, of course, signed the agreement. What did it
matter? She had no intentions of ever walking away from this marriage. And the
issue of adultery was hardly worthy of consideration. Protection and liberation
from economic stress had compensations after long years of struggle. She
intended to keep this marriage intact at all costs. And since she had taught
herself discipline, she had no trouble teaching herself obedience and
sublimation. So what if it flew in the face of modern trends of female
behavior? Consciousness-raising does not put bread on the table.

Nor was it penal servitude. Eliot, who spent most of his
time in his office on Lexington Avenue, a few blocks from their apartment, was,
basically, a loner, a thinker, and an intellectual. Thankfully, she did not
share this life with him. Nevertheless, she was always on tap when he emerged
for his forays into the "real" world of sophisticated pleasures.

She wasn't called upon often to act the hostess, but when
she was, her performance was smoothly elegant. She could run their ten-room
apartment on Fifth Avenue with efficiency, could pack his clothes with
dispatch, and arrange for tickets for his various conferences. Most of all, she
had learned to perform cleverly all acts of availability—availability for
meals, for conversations that were mostly listening, for adornment, and for
what passed for companionship. She had learned to be available for
availability.

Eliot's sense of the aesthetic extended to food, wine, art,
classical music, opera, and, of course, ballet, all the highly rarefied
cultural refinements. She was really knowledgeable only about music and dance,
but that gave her enough of a cachet so that she could fake the rest.

Eliot had wide-ranging scientific interests as well,
appropriate to his professed idea of himself as a Renaissance man. This gave
rise to certain enthusiasms, such as an overwhelming concern for ecology and
wildlife preservation. She had accompanied him on a number of safaris in Africa, grueling treks to an increasingly disappearing world. On these occasions, too, she
had learned to be a good soldier, feigning intense interest. She was always
feigning something or other.

She did not view her life in terms of happiness or
unhappiness. If Eliot, to her, was sometimes dull and self-absorbed, moody,
cranky, distracted, withdrawn, demanding, so be it. Her compensations by
comparison with her earlier life were considerable. If there was hypocrisy in
it, there was no unkindness on her part, no meanness, no cruelty, no indecency
or disloyalty. She gave him no cause for dissatisfaction. From his perspective,
she hoped he saw her as dutifully admiring, caring, loving, and concerned.

She was not, of course, without guile. She was certainly
entitled to it, especially when it came to accumulating possessions in her own
name. Under cover of aesthetic compulsion, she had piled works of art and
antiques into their apartment, carefully procured with expert advice, often by
perfectly legal sleight of hand. Not being privy to Eliot's total financial
picture, she assumed that, since he did not protest, there were ample funds
available for this purpose. He seemed proud of her taste and what he thought
was her canny eye for beauty. Considering the huge rise in the art and antique
market, she had accumulated quite a tidy personal nest egg. She thought of it
as security for her old age, since it was both chronologically and biologically
possible that she would outlive him.

So far she had been extraordinarily lucky in keeping the
real truth of her economic success hidden from Eliot. It could be said that
ever since she married Eliot, she had learned to walk through life defensively.
If she sensed danger ahead, she always took evasive action.

This was her recourse at Pumpkins. At first, she had been
stunned to see Ken Kramer. The parts of her body seemed to have rearranged
themselves. Her heart had jumped to her throat. Her knees had barely carried
her to the table.

She might not have made it through the evening if he had
acknowledged her. Throughout the meal, she had tried to will him out of her
presence. She hoped no one had noticed her agitation. She had been very careful
about using her hands, which had shaken briefly when she had tried to lift a
water glass. It was warning enough to keep her hands hidden. Then she had had
to control the tremor in her voice. The best way to do that was to keep her
talk to a minimum.

Hiding behind this hastily constructed façade was difficult
enough, until Eliot began to sketch in her ersatz past. She had kept her eyes
from Ken's face, despite the tremendous temptation to see his reaction. When he
embarked on that challenge to her authenticity, that attempt to get a rubbing
of her fictional father, Le Roc, at the Washington Vietnam War Memorial, she
had very nearly given the game away. Then he had graciously surrendered. Or had
he actually forgotten her? Perhaps, along with the radical change in her life,
her entire persona had changed, become unrecognizable?

Or he might have, as she had done for years, blocked out
the memory of her. For her, apparently, it had been an imperfect process.
Recall had hit her suddenly with the full force of an ice shower. She felt
panicked, vulnerable. Her body's reaction confused and embarrassed her, but she
could not bring herself to leave the table, fearful that she would faint if she
stood up.

Thankfully, neither Eliot nor that woman, Ken's wife, had
noticed. They were so busy impressing each other. As with everything in her
marriage, Carol had forced herself to tolerate Eliot's gourmet grandstanding
and wine snobbery. She had learned to participate occasionally in the pompous dialogue
with waiters, wine stewards, and food mavens. But seeing it done in tandem with
this woman seemed ludicrous. She had been instantly offended by Maggie's perky
manner, her huge breasts, her long, soft blonde hair, her saccharine
enthusiasms, her shared interests in Eliot's gourmet tastes. How was she to
know that her married name was Kramer?

Had she sensed that something like this might occur?
Ironically, she had attributed her silent reluctance to attend this dinner to
snobbery. Maggie was, after all, not a social acquaintance of Eliot's, but a
hired hand, though well paid for her services. Eliot had praised her skill as a
computer programmer. They had spent hours closeted together in his office. The
job she was doing, according to Eliot, would take months, perhaps a year. What
more was required of an employer? It was a poor excuse to put her through this
hell, this confrontation with Ken Kramer.