The First Wives Club (7 page)

”Wouldn’t you like to hear the specials?”

“Thanks but no thanks.” He looked at her, annoyed that he had missed his chance to perform. Just one more out-of-work actor in a bad mood.

Well, she wasn’t in a bad mood. She wouldn’t let herself be. The funeral was okay with her. Everything was okay with her. She’d eat lunch and then she’d walk up past Sweets for the Sweet, pick up a few eclairs, and then be home in time for Angela, who was coming to dinner.

They’d have a salad tonight and she’d watch her6elf tomorrow. She knew she shouldn’t do this. She knew she’d be sorry later. But right now Brenda was hungry. In fact, Brenda was starving. But Brenda was not upset.

As Brenda stepped out of the elevator to her apartment, juggling the bakery box and fumbling for the keys in her bag, she almost tripped over her neighbor’s copy of the imes, inadvertently left in front of Brenda’s door. She looked down at it as she swung in her door, then kicked the paper into her apartment and closed the door behind her.

Fuck her, she said to herself. She never liked that bitch anyhow, the co-op’s president, a nosy-body.

She did it just for spite, she knew, because Brenda rarely looked at the Times. It was too ponderous, and too big to handle easily.

Despite her weight, Brenda was a small woman, with small hands. The Times always wrinkled and tore when she attempted to go through it.

Secretly, she preferred the Post. A guilty pleasure.

She went into the kitchen and deposited the box of eclairs in the remgerator, after taking a furtive lick of chocolate from one. She walked back into the living room, kicked off her shoes, and dropped ungracefully onto the downy sofa. Picking up the newspaper, she began to flip through the pages, not really reading.

And then she saw it, an ad announcing the underwriting of Morty the Madman stock. Morty the Madman was going public.

Brenda couldn’t believe it! Her hands were shaking, rippling the big pages of the New York imes spread out before her. She had almost missed it, but there it was. A whole page. How much did that cost?

Brenda wondered. just like Morty, if it showed, spend big bucks. But maybe this wasn’t even paid for by Morty. Brenda, who was shrewd, and gifted with cartloads of common sense, knew that she hadn’t a clue about how big business worked. But neither did Morty. Christ, the little pisher was in the big time now. She began to study the page more carefully.

The offering was enormous, handled by Federated Funds Douglas Witter.

That was Gil Griffin’s firm, she knew. So now that he’s divorced and bought me off for a few shekels and this crummy apartment, Morty goes public. I signed over my stock to him for nothing. After he cried poverty and complained about loans and mortgages eating him up alive.

And I got bubkes for alimony and child support. Nice. And strangers are getting rich off this right now, while I’m sitting on my big fat ass, waiting for the puny maintenance check to come in, hoping it won’t bounce.

Brenda moved quickly. She put on her shoes and, not bothering to lock the door, ran out to the newsstand at the corner and came back with the Wall Street Journal. Now, sitting on the edge of the sofa, she began to look through it carefully, page by page. There on page nine she found a four-column story.

It appeared that Morty’s offering was regarded as an event as important as the Second Coming. That a household name, a retailer, could expand so rapidly by offering the consumer what he wanted at a price he could afford was apparently considered a miracle of modern business. What am I missing here? Brenda thought. His giant leverage allowed him to buy low and sell only slightly higher, and his genius lay in passing on such a large share of his savings to customers, gaining him both huge volume and an enormously loyal customer base.

His inspired Morty the Madman commercials, albeit masterminded by ParadiselLoest Advertising, made him and his stores an American icon.

Genius?

Inspired? Was that really Morty the Journal was writing about? What bullshit!

The man could handel, she’d give him that, but most of the time Morty didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. What was wrong with this picture? She looked at the byline. Asa Ewell, whoever the fuck that was. His mother actually named him that?

Yeah, I should tell old Asa baby about how Morty managed such low prices before he had all that leverage. Morty had sold TVs, stereos, and VCRs hot off her daddy’s trucks for years. She’d been his bookkeeper, so she ought to know.

Passing on such a large share of his savings my sweet ass. He laundered the money for the mob. What would Asa Ewell say to that?

She shook her head. What a moron.

She looked back over the piece. Expansion brought with it state-of the-art inventory control and high-tech market analysis, using the most advanced point-of-sale MIS technology yet installed in this company.

Were they talking about Morty’s operation, the debacle with the computerized cash registers? They couldn’t know the real story.

She shrugged.

Why be surprised? she asked herself. She always suspected that this big business crap was a gigantic jerk-off.

But now she was the jerk. Maybe Morty was only a bullshitter, but he bullshitted the Wall Street Journal and Federated Funds Douglas Witter.

And he bullshitted me. Morty must have known his company was going public at the time of the divorce settlement, Brenda now realized. No wonder he was in such a rush to get it finalized. And she had thought he was just accommodating her.

The balls.

You make a very pretty picture she thought. She looked down and saw her big stomach and, for the first time, the ink that grayed her hands.

Tears sprang to her eyes. I’m a mess. I’m forty-one, fat, and stupid.

And my hands are filthy.

Brenda stood as tears ran down her cheeks. He made a fool of me, she thought.

Christ, what a moron I am. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried.

After a while she stopped, and she wiped her face with her hands, unaware that she smeared ink around her eyes as she did so. Okay, so now what? She thought of calling the New York Times and that stupid Asa Ewell at the Journal, but she knew better. What she’d like to do was call one of her father’s old friends and have Morty’s knees broken.

She found the thought of Morty in a hospital bed with his legs in traction very satisfying. But no. That wouldn’t help her pay her apartment maintenance. She could just forget about it and try to get a job as a bookkeeper again. Yeah, she told herself, and make four twenty-five an hour. Christ, everything now was computerized anyway.

She probably couldn’t get arrested. And anyway, then Morty would get off scot-free. Shit.

It was unbearable. Brenda, on her father’s side, came from a long line of Sicilians who had made vendetta a way of life. But her mother had been middle-class Jewish. Ashamed of the gangster side of the family.

And Brenda’s family had so much to hide, even now after the death of her capo father, that she could never go through the courts.

She lifted the phone and dialed her brother Neil in L.A. but got a busy signal. She tried Annie, but there was no answer. So she tried Duarto, but his service picked up. Giving up, Brenda walked into the kitchen, took out the box of eclairs, and ate each and every one.

Greenwich Time The next morning, Elise had that awful, needlelike pain at her left temple, right behind her eye. She wasn’t certain how she’d gotten through the night.

Actually, she wasn’t sure of much—how long it had taken her to fall asleep, how long she’d slept, or even what time it was now. Something had gone wrong, her sense of time perhaps. Sometimes when she woke up, she could remember her dreams, but not where she had been the night before. Sometimes she awoke and thought her dreams had really happened. Or occasionally, she woke up with the horrifying feeling of not knowing where she was. Those times she would lie very still, terrified, not daring to move or make a sound, hardly daring to breathe, until the windows defined themselves and the room became familiar. In the city it wasn’t so bad, but here it was tricky. Here it was Greenwich time, with a capriciousness that frightened her.

Yes, today she knew where she was. She just wasn’t sure how she’d gotten there. Or where she’d been. Last thing, last thing, last thing. Yes, the funeral. Oh, of course. Cynthia Griffin. Oh, God.

The stabbing needle felt sharper than ever, making her eyes water. A tear dripped slowly, slowly down her cheek toward her ear. She longed to wipe it away, but knew the price she’d pay if she so much as trembled.

The needle was merciless. She breathed carefully, shallowly, afraid to alter her precarious position. Soon enough Chessie would sail in and help her begin her day.

Then it came back all at once. Bemelman’s. Elise jerked her shoulders, sending a searing pain through her eye and up to her forehead. She groaned with pain, and with the shame of the memory.

Oh, God.

It hadn’t been the first time one of those little filmies had recognized and complimented her. And she was always gracious.

Gracious but not familiar, just as her mother had directed her. She smiled, thanked them, but never stooped to autographing or picture-taking. Not until yesterday. She groaned again. Oh, God, oh, God. It was coming back more clearly.

Tall, thin, wearing that costume of jeans and tweed jacket that young men seemed to prefer, rather like the black pullovers that Gerard and their friends had favored back in the early sixties. What had they talked about? Her films, the good ones. Yes, he had understood about them. About Truffaut, and Godard. She had looked at his hands. Big, with long fingers. Young hands, and strong. She had had another Courvoisier, or maybe two, and then he had begun to stand up. ‘Thank you,” he had said. “I won’t take up any more of your time.

I’ve always admired you, but now I adore you.” It was the line from Walking in the Dark, when Pierre was about to leave her. “Je t’adore,” he finished.

And she had fallen apart. Publicly. Noisily. Oh, God. in front of Maurice. In front of the help. She remembered her mother’s frosty look, her slightly elevated brow, “Pas avant les domestiques.”

Oh, she’d been pathetic, her behavior shameful. ‘Please, don’t leave me. Don’t let them see me like this.” What then? Through the hall, to the lobby bench.

Then upstairs. Then … oh, my God. She’d been ill. Oh. He’d helped her. And then?

And the rest of what had happened in Room 705 broke over her like a wave.

Images returned to her, and feelings. His hand curved around her breast, his soft cheek against hers, his face looking down as he entered her. A man she didn’t know, a boy almost, less than half her age.

How could she have done this? It must have been the Courvoisier. On an empty stomach. She remembered the young man offering to take her home. The thought of going to the New York apartment and maybe encountering Bill in her state had appalled and humiliated her. No, she had said, she was going to Greenwich.

Then the agonizing ride through the early-evening traffic, home to Chessie.

It was unbearable. What if Bill … but that was unthinkable. The pain was now intolerable. Her eye was watering uncontrollably.

Involuntary tears. If only she could have a drink. Horrified at the thought, a drink at nine A.M she prayed that Chessie would soon come.

What could she do? Talk to Uncle Bob? But he’d be so disappointed in her. How could she tell him she was a drunk? Check into a clinic?

She closed her eyes at the thought. Twenty-eight days, to listen to them whine over their problems, to lie to herself, pretend she was like them, that she’d be better now, that she would go for therapy and never drink again. But it wouldn’t work. She wasn’t like anyone. She was smarter, more beautiful, better educated. When she was born, she’d been the wealthiest baby in America. Now she was a drunk. And a whore.

Once again, despite herself, she remembered the feel of the young man’s cheek against hers. Tears, real ones this time, sprang up in her eyes.

It had felt so very good, but now she felt so very bad. And oh, God, hadn’t he had a camera? What exactly had happened to the camera? She couldn’t even remember what had happened after the sex, or when they had parted or how she got home.

With a horrible feeling in her stomach, Elise realized she didn’t even know his name.

Mother had once told her to find a man who would not be competitive with her, who would bask in her glory. Bill had seemed to be such a man. She recognized it the moment she had met him at the cocktail party. She heard his name and realized that he must be one of the Atchisons who went so far back they were probably part Indian. Old family, old money, although not very much of it anymore. He had noticed her looking at him from across the room. When he started toward her, she had dropped her eyes, pretending to be deeply engrossed in conversation with a very small woman with very large jewels.

Bill had waited for the woman to leave before he made his move. “You can do me a very big favor. You could take me away from all this,” he said with a boyish grin.

“Oh, could I now?” she asked. “And where would I take you away to?”

It was his answer that did it. “To the model-sailboat lake in Central Park.

I’ve had a boat in the storehouse there ever since I was a kid. I’d much prefer watching it sail across the lake in the moonlight with you by my side to standing in this very overdone room with very overdone people.”

She hadn’t said anything, just laughed, real, spontaneous laughter. He understood this as an answer, took her hand, and led her through the crowd, away from the party. It wasn’t until they were in the elevator that either one of them spoke, when they both said together, “My name’s … ,” and then started laughing at the timing.

“Bill Atchison,” he had said, “and I know your name.”

There had been so many times like that. Spontaneous, fun, and childlike. He was so normal, so natural. It had filled her with joy.

She felt alive. She’d found herself enchanted by ordinary things, tennis dates with friends, dinners at sweet little restaurants, walks in the Village, in Central Park, through Chinatown.