The Rothman Scandal (10 page)

“Really, Mrs. Potter, I wouldn't know.”

She opened and closed her compact, opened it and closed it again. “I've got a lousy marriage. I guess everybody knows that. And d'you know why? Partly I blame her for that. Yes I do! Potter has no respect for me. If I was a big-time fashion magazine editor, like I could have been, and not pounding out a column on a deadline three times a week, Potter would show me some respect, but he doesn't. But do I care what Potter thinks of me?”

“I'm sure you do, Mrs. Potter,” Gregory said.

“Hell, no! I don't care. Potter can go to hell. Potter sells insurance. I've interviewed Nancy Reagan, Pat Nixon, Fawn Hall, all the big ones. So. D'ya think she'll marry whatsisname? I say no. My sources say that Merv Whatsisname doesn't want a career woman—type wife. They say he wants a little housewifey-type wife who'll sit in a little rose-covered cottage in Scarsdale or someplace and darn his socks and cook him chicken soup. Whadda you think?”

“Really, I just wouldn't know.”

“And I don't have to tell you who my sources are. Ever hear of something called the First Amendment? But I guess everybody knows she's sleeping with him. D'you think that's gonna be the extent of it, or what?”

Gregory Kittredge put down his knife and fork. “Really, Mrs. Potter,” he said, very carefully, “I do not wish to discuss Mrs. Rothman's private life with you.”

“Well, fuck you, sweetie,” Mona Potter said. “See what I have to say about you in Monday's column.” She turned immediately to Lenny on her right. “How long have you and Charlie Boxer been lovers, sweetie?” she said. “Don't you two ever worry about AIDS? Or do you figure you're both too old for that?”

Lenny Liebling smiled his brightest, most beatific smile, the smile he reserved for only the most tinglingly rapturous moments. “Darling Mona,” he said. “Tell me. Where did you learn to make such utterly charming dinner-table conversation?”

5

Now the pink-coated waiters were clearing the dessert course—Alex's famous chocolate mousse served in individual terra-cotta flowerpots, with a fresh pink geranium sprouting from the center of each, looking as though it was growing there, a confection the caterer prepared only for Alex—and the orchestra had just finished a set. Alex stepped over to the bandleader. “As soon as the waiters have finished clearing,” she said, “play about eight bars of ‘Happy Days.' That will be Coleman's cue to signal the fireworks barge in the river. Then you can go to the mike, and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll all please stand and face in the direction of Riker's Island, we have a short show for you,' or something like that. Then give us a quick fanfare, and the fireworks should start—okay, darlin'?”

The bandleader nodded. “Got it, Mrs. Rothman,” he said.

Alex returned to her table, where Lenny, who had escaped from Mona Potter, had joined her. “Cross your fingers,” she whispered. “I hope this all works.”

But now Herbert Rothman stepped to the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Ladies and gentlemen—good friends—dear friends—If I may just say a few words—” And slowly the crowd grew silent. The lighting engineer from NBC turned his floods on Herb Rothman, and the cameraman hoisted his Port-O-Cam to his shoulder and trained it on Herb to capture whatever the president of Rothman Publications, and the publisher of
Mode
, would have to say.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, as the camera rolled and the flashbulbs popped, “we all know why we're gathered here tonight—to celebrate the remarkable circulation breakthrough of
Mode
, a breakthrough none of us at Rothman thought possible, and to toast the editorial triumph of
Mode
's editor, Alexandra Rothman, my favorite daughter-in-law.…” The camera panned briefly to Alex's face, and her smile was automatic as she mouthed the words, “Thank you, Herb.” There was a polite round of applause.

“He only has
one
daughter-in-law,” someone whispered.

Herb Rothman raised his wineglass. “Here's to Alex,” he said. “As I told you earlier, Alex, this is your finest hour.”

Responses of “Hear, hear” echoed across the terrace.

“Now I can't let this historic moment pass without comment,” he continued. “As we enter a new decade, the decade of the nineties, we will be entering a period of profound change, which will be felt in the world of fashion as well as on other fronts. We must be prepared for these changes. At Rothman Publications, we are already preparing for these changes. Here at
Mode
, we are addressing the future, not the past.…”

Several members of the fashion press were already reaching for their pencils and note pads. “Dammit, he's turning my party into a press conference,” Alex whispered.

“I'm not a social historian,” he went on, “but let us examine these changes. In the nineteen seventies, when Alexandra Rothman first came to us—and how long ago that seems!—there was a settling down and a seriousness that, in the beginning of it, the magazine really caught. This coincided with the rise of women in the work force. This is one of the themes we've been involved with, and that was important to our readers. However, in many ways, the ideological, political side of that has softened. Coming cultural changes will be profound. They will include increasing informality, and a blurring of the rigid guidelines of what is high art and kitsch, all of which will be manifested in fashion. There have been clear lines of what was high fashion and casual fashion.…”

“Do you have any idea what he's talking about?” someone whispered from a corner of the terrace.

Alex Rothman turned to whisper to the deposed bandleader. “Sorry, but I didn't know there were going to be speeches. As soon as he finishes, go right into ‘Happy Days.'”

He nodded.

In his bedroom at 720 Park Avenue, many blocks away, the old man lay flat on his back on his hospital bed, breathing evenly. In one corner of the room, the night duty nurse, Evelyn Roemer, sat in front of her television set, with the picture tube aglow but with the sound turned off. Though she glanced occasionally at the screen, she was also reading a romance novel in which the heroine, who had been brutally raped, now found herself madly in love with her assailant, and Mrs. Roemer had just come to the conclusion that it might not be all that bad to be raped. In fact, it might be kind of exciting.

Suddenly her patient pushed himself up on his elbows and shouted, “Goddammit, turn up the sound!”

“Sure, hon,” she said, and turned up the volume. “It's about some party they're having on the East Side. It's pretty boring.”

From the screen, the voice said, “… clear lines of what was high fashion and casual fashion. I think those lines are less apparent now. I think the change in the nineteen nineties, when we look back, will be as decisive as …”

“That's my son!” the old man said. “That's Herbie! Get the missus!”

“Now, hon, you know Mrs. Rothman has went to bed. Let's just us settle back and get ourselves a good night's sleep.”

“… the shift from the sixties to the seventies. There's been a …”

“Get the missus! Like I tell you! Now!” He was sitting straight up in bed now.

“Now, hon, let's have our blood-pressure pill.”

“Get the missus! Like I tell you,
meshugge
woman! Is my order!
Get the missus!
”

“All
right
, Mr. Rothman, all
right,
” she said, rising and slamming down her book, then padding on her crepe soles to the door.

“… recognition of that in magazine publishing. I think.…”

“I think,” Herbert Rothman continued into the camera's lens from Alex's terrace, “at the midpoint of the seventies there was a very decisive change in the way we all lived, and in people's attitudes toward fashion, culture, and health. It was a change from the headlines of the sixties, and the whole eroticism from Britain …”

“From Britain?
Eroticism?
” Lenny whispered in Alex's ear.

“Excuse me, I meant exoticism,” Herb corrected himself, and there was light, nervous laughter from his audience. “In many ways, the British are fashion's bellwethers. In many ways, the British entered the nineteen nineties years before we did.…”

“Neatest trick of the week,” Lenny whispered.

“In many ways, the British entered the nineties back in the seventies and eighties, and the best way to perceive this is to study the facts. And the facts are that we are now in the nineties, and we are in the nineties and here to stay, at least for the next decade, and we are prepared for the soon-to-be-realized eventualities that will be reflected in fashion in the nineties, and even beyond, for the foreseeable future, as the experts foresee it, and even beyond that, and, believe me, I have consulted all the experts, and I have even become something of an expert on it myself.”

“Beyond the beyond,” Lenny murmured dreamily.

“But to return to the present, which is where we are right now, and to the future of
Mode
, which is where we are headed, and to throw off the shackles of the past, which was where we were before we got to where we are today, we know we are here to celebrate and extol and praise the fine work of a great fashion editor, which is what Alexandra Rothman has been, who has shown us all how far she can go, how greatly a great publication can grow—grow in power, prestige, and influence, not to mention circulation. And the very process of that growth, and all those long, long years of toil, have taken an enormous toll on Alexandra Rothman. She may not admit it, but we all know the toll those years have taken on her because, as the enormity of Alexandra's responsibilities, tasks, and duties at the magazine have grown, they have grown too enormous to be enormities that one mere woman can handle alone.”

There was a small collective gasp from his audience at these last remarks and, briefly, Lenny Liebling closed his eyes and, with the little finger of his right hand, he reached out and circled the little finger of Alex's left, which she quickly withdrew, sitting forward in her chair and staring at Herb intently.

“And so,” Herb said, turning again to Alex, “Alexandra Rothman, you will not go unrewarded for all those years of toil. Tonight, I am announcing your reward for those years of toil. Your reward, which I know will please you, will be a good right hand. I have today created a new spot on
Mode
's masthead—that of co-editor-in-chief, to provide you with the good right hand you so desperately need. The young woman I have chosen to fill this spot comes to us with splendid credentials—from brilliant editorial work for one of Britain's leading fashion magazines to, more recently, the proprietress of one of London's most fashionable custom design studios, in the heart of the West End's fashionable Sloane Street, where she has overseen the fashion needs of all of Britain's most fashionable women, up to and including Diana, the Princess of Wales, who, I am told, rarely makes a fashion decision without consulting this special lady, who will join our staff on July the first. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the new co-editor-in-chief of
Mode
, Miss Fiona Fenton.” And the tiny woman in the oversize sunglasses and the oval of glossy black hair stepped forward and, with just the slightest trace of a curtsy, smiled nervously for the cameras. Herb Rothman remained at the microphone, apparently expecting applause, but there was none. Instead, the terrace immediately became abuzz with excited, astonished conversation, while Alex sat rigidly in her chair. In the confusion, Lenny spotted Fiona's Chanel bag sitting unattended at her table. He stepped quickly toward it.

In the semidarkened bedroom at 720 Park Avenue, where Ho Rothman's wife, Aunt Lily, had joined him in her nightie, her face creamed, wearing her chin strap, her ash-blonde hair in rollers—the two stared at the television screen.

Aunt Lily was the first to speak. “I warned you the damned fool might try to pull something like this,” she said.

Nurse Roemer puttered in the background. “Time for our blood-pressure pill,” she said.

“Shut up,” Aunt Lily said. “Just you shut up.”

Yes, there might have been some people on Alexandra's terrace that night who had actively hated her, who had longed for her downfall, uttered prayers that she would fail, and who knew in their heart of hearts that any one of them could have done her job as well as, or even better than, she had, but what they had just heard and witnessed from Herbert Rothman was too much for any of them. One of their own had just been publicly humiliated, and in the most awful of ways. In front of two hundred and fifty people, she had been told that she could no longer manage her job by herself. A great wave of sympathy—sympathy, the last thing Alex wanted—poured out for her now, as voices rose in shock and consternation.

“Poor Alex—what a way to be told that you're finished.”

“Did you hear him? ‘A mere woman'?”

“Typical Herbert Rothman. His father may have been a son-of-a-bitch, but he'd never do something like this!”

“Who is this new woman? Has anyone ever heard of her?”

“Mona Potter's been screwed again.”

“Poor Gregory—I wonder what will become of him?” Gregory Kittredge's too-handsome face was a mask.

“Poor Alex—did she have so much as an inkling?”

“Shocking … awful … in the worst possible taste …”

“In my book, Herb Rothman is a bastard.”

“It's ageism, is all it is. If I were Alex, I'd sue.”

Alex could hear some of these whispered comments and, though her eyes might be blue-green in some lights, and hazel in others, when she became angry they became black as coals. She sat rigidly in her chair with her fists tightly clenched, her knuckles white, her face frozen in a dreadful parody of a smile that she was sure convinced no one. Beside her, Lenny whispered, “It's worse than I thought. The whole camel is
in
the tent. But don't let it show, Smart Alex. Keep your famous cool, Smart Alex. Remember who you are.…”