The First Wives Club (6 page)

Perhaps you think that a child’s death and a husband’s betrayal aren’t enough reasons to take my own life, but I simply can’t bear another day. We only have one life, and I did mine all wrong. Weak and stupid to the end, I simply can’t take the pain any longer.

I CHOSE HIM, ANNIE. I WAS SELFISH AND STUPID AND MUST PA Y FOR MY MISTAKE. I killed my baby for him, I ruined my father for him, I gave myself for him, and now there is nothing left. It is too awful to go on this way. Godforgive me.

I’m sorry.

The letter ended there. Cynthia had not even signed it. ‘Oh, my God.”

Annie had spoken out loud.

She laid her head forward onto her chest. Her hands were cold, and they trembled, shaking the letter she held. She walked to the window and looked out at the gray velvet clouds against the darkening sky.

She was dizzy again, nauseous, and for a moment she was afraid she might vomit.

Gil was a monster. Here were all his dirty little secrets. He had killed Cynthia. A day at a time, Annie now knew, Gil had killed Cynthia.

In all their years of friendship, Cynthia had never breathed a word of this.

And Annie had never imagined it.

Then she thought of Gil’s call. He had tricked her and used her, too, just as he had Cynthia. She had already helped him make the funeral today look okay.

She had fallen for it, too. He had made her a fool, when all she wanted was to do one last kindness for Cynthia.

Annie felt she couldn’t bear the weight of Gil’s brutality alone. She had to show someone this letter. No more secrets, damn it, she thought. She felt nausea wash over her again, followed by a chill.

How alone Cynthia had been.

Annie’s chest tightened. It was unbearable.

We are a generation of masochists, she thought. Brenda, Cynthia, me, Elise.

What a pathetic bunch of losers we are. Anger suddenly surged through her, momentarily overwhelming the sadness. I’m sick of it, she said to herself.

Sick of being a lady and a mother and a good girl. Stupid, passive.

It’s got to stop.

I could wring Gil’s neck with my bare hands, she thought, gritting her teeth.

He robbed Cynthia of everything, her child, her money, her family, her dignity. He beat her, and all he left her with was shame. And the shame killed her. Gil killed her.

Brenda, too. Morty tricked her, shamed her, and she fell for it. She built his business, then he threw her out, cheating her of her rightful share in the bargain. Brenda’s behind on her maintenance payments at her co-op and is dunned in the elevator by her neighbors. What humiliation! He’s late with his alimony payments month after month, so she winds up begging for what is rightfully hers.

Even Elise, who looks so cool, so powerful, so immune. She’s been brought low by an empty suit like Bill Atchison. He shouldn’t get away with humiliating Elise, flaunting his affairs. There isn’t a person in Greenwich who doesn’t know that Bill chases every secretary and maid he comes across. Elise is a beautiful, talented woman, but Bill hardly ever seems to notice or to care.

But she, like Brenda, just accepts whatever crumbs are thrown her way.

And not just them, Annie, she told herself. Be honest for a change.

Aaron left you and his daughter. He abandoned you, left you alone to care for Sylvie, as if his responsibility ended when he moved out. All right, maybe he wasn’t as bad as the others, he wasn’t a monster, or a lech, he didn’t beat you, but he’s treated you badly. Admit it. He said he loved you, but he left when things got hard.

Annie had to talk to someone, to have someone else hear the horror of what she had just read, what she had thought. Whom could she call?

She thought of Brenda, a good friend, big-hearted, but sometimes a little insensitive. Well, Brenda would have to do.

When there was no answer at Brenda’s apartment, she next tried Elise, whom Annie knew to be exquisitely sensitive, but not warm, not in the way Brenda could be.

Again, there was no answer. Hanging up the phone, Annie felt her anger give way to sadness. Only one person in her life, she thought, had all the characteristics she would like to find in a friend, her son Chris.

But with a]l Chris’s warmth and gentleness, this would be too much to ask him to share.

It’s too much for anyone to bear alone, Annie thought. Cynthia proved that.

Brenda Isn’t Upset.

After the funeral Brenda left Annie and Elise and walked uptown along Madison.

Of course she could have gotten a cab, but she preferred to walk.

Actually, she wanted to eat. It was barely noon, but she was starving.

She rooted around in her handbag and dug out half a Heath bar. In two bites it was gone and she was still starving. Thank God Greenberg’s cookies were just up ahead. She hoped they were open.

They weren’t. Well, she’d find something. She had nothing to do today, and she’d been up since seven, so she’d take a long lunch.

Screw it, she was in no mood for jokes or diets today. It wasn’t that she cared about Cyntha Griffin, because she didn’t. The woman was a cold bitch, and she deserved whatever she got. She remembered when her Tony had been the only child in their class not invited to Carla Griffin’s birthday party. Nothing hurt you in your life like the hurt that was done to your child. That had been the year they had moved to Greenwich, which was also the year before they moved out. In fact, in that whole time, no one was kind except Annie, but then Annie was always so good.

She and Aaron, fighting it out for the Martyr of the Month medal.

Who needed that Greenwich high WASP shit anyway? Brenda reflected.

It wasn’t like she was a golfer or anything, and they certainly hadn’t moved there for Tony or Angela, though that’s what her husband had said. He said it was for them, but it was for Morty, like everything had been.

“For you, babe,” he would say, and give her the mink or the jewelry or the new dress (always a size too small, as if that would make her lose weight). First the business was for her, then the house in Greenwich was for her, then the Park Avenue duplex, the paintings, the boat. As if she gave a shit, which she didn’t.

But it had taken a long time to catch on. Much too long. For years he had snowed her with all that bullshit. Bullshit that didn’t quit.

Morty could bullshit almost anyone, at least for a while. And now he was Morty Cushman, Morty the Madman, his face on billboards and TV commercials all the time. The most successful, fastest growing retail operation in the world. Two hundred stores selling name-brand appliances at discount all across the country.

And now he had the Park Avenue duplex, the boat, the paintings, the whole shit thing. Of course, he was always screaming that he was cash poor and overextended. But it was Morty who kept doing the extending.

Old “boom and bust” Morty. Was he rich, was he poor? Would his check clear or would it bounce? Who knew? She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been late with her co-op maintenance check. She couldn’t meet the eyes of the neighbors she met on the elevator. And the bounced checks at Tony’s school. And at Gristede’s. She was sick of it. When they divorced, Morty whined about the children and cash flow and mortgages, and she settled when he bought her the crummy place on Fifth and Ninety-sixth, paid the kids’ school bills, and gave her some alimony. Strunz. Like an idiot she bought it. Even bimbos like Roxanne Pulitzer make a buck on their divorces, one way or another, and she, Brenda Morrelli Cushman, wound up with bubkes. Nice work, Morty, you cheap fuck.

So she bought a bag of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies at the overpriced Korean on Eightyfourth, then turned east on Eighty-sixth Street.

She’d have lunch at Summerhouse, if they were open yet. Ladies who lunch and all that crap, but good curried chicken with grapes and creme brulee to die for. Then she’d see.

Maybe she’d pick up something for Angela, her daughter. If her cards weren’t declined.

When she got to the restaurant, she was thrilled by signs of life.

They were just opening, and when she asked for a table, the skinny bitch at the desk lifted her eyebrows. “Are you only one?” she asked.

“Yes, but I’m eating for two,” Brenda snapped. Out of spite the bitch seated her in the back at a table beside the waiters’ station when the place was completely empty. Of course, because she was a middle aged woman alone. A fat middleaged woman alone. But Brenda all at once was too tired to make a big stink. Sometimes she just lost all her spirit.

Like over the divorce. She should have hung in there. Christ, it wasn’t that she loved Morty. She couldn’t even remember when she had.

But she should have hung in there and made a better deal. That fuck lawyer Leo Gilman had been too much for her, playing the family friend and all. And she was represented by little Barry Marlowe because Morty paid for it all. They were in collusion.

They had to be. More bullshit. What was the difference between a laboratory rat and a lawyer? You could get attached to a laboratory rat.

It wasn’t that she cared about money. She didn’t really, she never had. She was Vinny Morrelli’s daughter and she grew up with everything she needed. But because she was Vinny Morrelli’s daughter, she didn’t like it that she’d been made a fool of, and she especially hated that Morty still had power over her.

If he was slow with his alimony or support, she and Tony and Angela sweated it. And Morty was so goddamn cheap, or at least he had been to her and the kids.

It was hard now to think of Morty with that socialite bitch. Shelby Symington.

A little blond Southern shiksa. Jesus. And now she was opening an art gallery.

She was written up in the magazines. A Southern Mary Boone. Dragging Morty up from the depths of social anonymity. Brenda couldn’t pick up a copy of the Post or the News without seeing their pictures on the gossip pages. She shook her head. Christ, what was he paying his publicist? A hell of a lot more than he was sending her every month.

Bet those checks didn’t bounce.

Yes, she admitted, Morty should be punished. But by who? My father is dead. My brother is a failed stand-up comic out in L.A. What could I do? Sue Morty? Big deal. Maybe I should see my cousin Nunzio.

Christ, she hadn’t seen him in years. Was he still in the shoe business? Cement ones, that is. The thought of Morty planted inside one of the Bruckner Expressway support columns made her smile. Her father had once told her the Expressway construction was never finished because there was always more “planting” to be done. Maybe we could have a Morty Cushman Memorial Off-Ramp. She smiled to herself again.

The thing about Morty was that he only liked to spend money on things that showed, fancy boats and jazzy cars and suits from Bijan, where they were so snotty you needed an appointment to get into the store.

But his underwear he got from some close-out place like Job Lot. That was how she knew when he started cheating on her, he bought silk boxers from Sulka. When they’d moved into the duplex, he’d called in that faygeleh Duarto to do the living room, library, dining room, and guest room, but their bedrooms were left alone. “After all,” he said, “nobody sees them but us.” Not that she gave a shit. She couldn’t stand all those goddamn cabbage roses and fakola English crap. After all, who were they kidding? Certainly not Duarto, who knew they had taste in their ass.

He had looked around at their old place and looked as if he needed CPR.

He gulped and asked, “And what do chou do, Mrs. Cushman?” in his charming accent.

“About what?” she asked. Actually, he was a great guy, if you ignored his society-faggot routine. When the two of them were alone, they’d dish a little, and eventually they’d become great friends. He was relieved to learn that Brenda wasn’t interested in taking credit for the job (“Dey always try to, chou know. Dey say dey deed eet with some help, as eef dey could select a goddamn trim color by demselves.

Puhleeze!”) nor did she expect him to provide her with social introductions. (”Somehow I don’t see chou and Anne Bass ever getteen really close.”) He had made her laugh, and she had made him laugh, and he’d gouged wads out of Morty, as he did with all his clients.

He was actually just a poor Cuban kid who made good originally by sleeping with his boss, but he had put out the story that he was Spanish, from Barcelona, and a cousin of Gaudi, and Brenda promised she’d never tell. “Dey don’t know that ees where we get de word gaudy from,” he said, laughing in his charming accent. Of course, Duarto was very, very big time now. His style-what Brenda called wretched excess—was the hot look. He draped thousands of yards of flowing fabric over everything, creating a sort of updated Arabian nights feeling, and the chic shelter magazines were calling him the Sultan of Silk.

But she and he had become really close only in the last six months.

Duarto’s lover, Richard, had gotten sick. Duarto had broken down, cried in her arms like one of her kids when he told her. So, every day, Brenda made the pilgrimage to Lenox Hill Hospital, sometimes bringing something she had cooked but more usually takeout, and sat for a while with Richard. They’d play gin, or she’d read him the gossip columns from the papers, or feed him. She watched him waste away, until he couldn’t speak, or even follow her with his eyes, and she watched Duarto’s agony and helplessness.

She wished he were here now to cheer her up. The funeral had been terrible. It isn’t like I give a shit about Cynthia one way or the other, she told herself fiercely. Our husbands did business together once upon a time. We had them on the boat. She invited us to Greenwich because Gil made her do it. She thought I was vulgar and I thought she was boring and repressed. And we were both right.

Brenda focused on the menu. The waiter approached with a basket that Brenda knew held the tiny hot biscuits and strawberry butter the place was famous for. She opened the napkin folded in the basket. Two lonely biscuits, each the size of a shot glass, rolled about in the otherwise empty basket. “Hey, where is the rest of the litter?” she asked him. “Bring out the whole family of these puppies. And I’ll have the curried-chicken salad, a side order of the carrot and raisin slaw, plus creme brale’e for dessert.”