The Rothman Scandal (39 page)

They were turning into Mel's sandy driveway now, and the dark silhouette of Mel's house loomed ahead of them. The glass walls caught the twin reflections of Scarlett O'Hara's headlights.

“I thought we weren't going to discuss this business this weekend,” she said.

“I know.”

“You brought it up.”

“I know,” he said wearily.

He parked the car in the drive, and opened the door. Cronkite leaped out and headed for the nearest clump of beach grass, where he began relieving himself.

Mel and Alex started together up the oystershell path toward the dark house.

First, as always, there was a brief inspection tour of the glass house, to be sure that everything was as it had been left the week before. “Now, Cronkite,” Mel said in a stern voice. “Tonight's lesson is—no sticky nose-marks on our glass walls. Last week, at nose level, these windows were one solid smear from wall to wall—from
your nose
, Cronkite!”

Obediently, as though Cronkite had caught the drift of at least part of the admonition, the big dog padded toward the window and pressed his wet, black nose against the glass.

“Bad Cronkite! Oh, what the hell.” Mel immediately began tossing off his clothes, throwing his green cap on one of the huge white sofas, unbuttoning his shirt, kicking off his shoes and socks, slipping out of his trousers and jockey shorts. Naked, he headed for the glass doors leading to the beach. It was always the second thing he did after arriving in Sagaponack—his swim in the ocean.

She followed him out onto the deck and perched on the whitewashed railing, and watched as he bounded naked down the steps, two at a time, to where the white sand began, and watched as he ran down the slope of the wide beach to begin his swim—in that perfect Australian crawl that he had taught himself, the way he had taught himself to play tennis and golf, to ride and to speak—in the general direction of Portugal, with Cronkite lumbering behind him. There was a moon, and the sand glowed palely, and the man and his dog were slightly darker moving figures against this glow. She watched as he strode into the creaming surf, and saw his buttocks flinch as the first cold wave hit his midsection. He dove into the second wave, and Cronkite leaped into the surf after him. She rose and turned back into the house, closing the sliding glass door behind her.

He had accused her of being mean-spirited.

Against one expanse of white wall—the only interior wall in the house, really—leaned a large abstract oil painting, unframed. The painting had been sitting there, unhung, for the past two weeks.

They had named that stretch of wall the Wailing Wall, because they had been unable to agree on how to treat it. Alex felt strongly that this wall demanded, cried out for, an important piece of contemporary art. Mel disagreed. He said he liked that wall left dramatically bare. But he was wrong. She had spotted this particular painting—by a young Cambodian who now lived in France, and who signed himself simply Sam—in a Madison Avenue gallery, and had it shipped out to Sagaponack for Mel's approval. Everything about the painting was perfect—the size, the colors, everything—for that wall. But Mel's approval had not been forthcoming.

“Fifteen thousand seems like a lot to spend for some streaks of oil on a canvas,” he said.

“But you're rich, darling,” she said soothingly, though she knew that, in his heart of hearts, he would probably always think of himself as poor. “Think of it as an investment,” she said. “This Mr. Sam is very young. He's just beginning to be discovered by important collectors. His work isn't going to do anything but increase in value. If you buy him now, you'll be in the vanguard.”

“I don't want to be in the vanguard.”

“But look how those golden browns would pick up the colors of the dunes. And there's the blue of the sky and ocean. And look—those slashes of bright green with the palette knife echo the color of the beach grass. It's a landscape, really, and it's perfect for this room.”

“Hmm,” he said, frowning. “I don't see any landscape in it.”

“You have to sit and look at it for a while. You have to get your eye in, as we say in the fashion business. You have to let a painting like this grow on you. Let's put a nail in the wall, and hang it up. You'll see how it'll bring this whole room to life.”

“What?”
he cried. “Drive a nail into my beautiful white plaster? Are you nuts? If I end up not buying the thing, I'll end up with a nail hole in my wall, for God's sake.”

“A tiny little nail hole could be easily spackled over.”

“I don't want my wall
spackled!
”

Or repainted, she had thought. Wasn't it amazing, she sometimes thought, how this man, who would spend God-knew-what amounts of money to have his fish-tank house shoveled periodically out of the shifting sand, and to have his walls constantly washed—from the salt-spray outside, and from Cronkite's nose-marks inside—would nonetheless dig in his heels at the thought of patching a tiny, almost invisible, nail hole in one wall?

“I'm not sure I want
any
thing on that wall,” he said at last.

And so there they were, stalemated again on the subject of the Wailing Wall.

She curled herself in one of his deep white chairs, and gazed upward at the pale ceiling of the dimly moonlit room. The ceiling was full of shifting shadows reflected from the glass walls. His model for the house, he often explained, was what the Japanese called a compound house, where many different areas for different uses combined and flowed together. The Sam still leaned against the long white wall, unhung, its colors bleached by the light of the moon. Mel's house had a kind of buoyant beauty on a night like this—a great glass ship floating in a moonlit sea.

But the room demanded this painting! Even in the colorless moonlight, its colors haunted the room. With this, and only this, painting on that, and only that, wall, the room would be complete, perfect. He had to be made to see how the colors of the Sam echoed and reflected the shifting tints and shadows of the natural world outside. The shadows were never the same, always changing. She tucked her legs beneath her tailor-fashion and stared fixedly at the Sam, thinking.

I am a clever woman, she thought. I have even been called a genius. It took brains, and it took taste, to last as long as I have lasted as the editor-in-chief of
Mode
. It took brains and guts and determination to bring the book's paid circulation up to the magical five-million mark without special-discount offers, without coupons, contests, or other expensive gimmicks—circulation, after all, could be bought. It took foxiness, inventiveness, and spirit to do what I have done. Then certainly I am clever enough to persuade Mel Jorgenson that he must buy this painting, to convince him that I am right—I, an acknowledged expert on color and design—and that he is wrong. Why is he wrong? The room is just too damned white! It cries for a splash of color. It is
screaming
for the Sam! Why, to do what this painting will do for this room, for the entire house, fifteen thousand dollars was
cheap!

“I'll win this one,” she said aloud.

When he came back from his swim, he would shower off the sand and saltiness in the outdoor shower, but his mouth would still taste salty when they made love. And after that …

He had called her mean-spirited.

And why must he buy this painting, this and no other? Because, as even he would be the first to admit, an appreciation of important art was not his strong suit, and why should it be? A Brooklyn tailor's son. She wanted her man to own this painting because she wanted his house to be perfect, she wanted everything about him to be perfect, as perfect as his Australian crawl, as perfect as his tennis serve, as perfect as his Italian seat on horseback, and she wanted all his friends to admire him for his perfect taste. She wanted him to be
praised
, for heaven's sake! Was that selfish? Was that mean-spirited? Surely, she thought, there was a clever way to win this particular battle. Surely, if she was clever enough, she would find a way. After they made love, and he was in that lovely, acquiescent mood …

But why do I want to win? she asked herself. Because everything I have ever got in life I have fought for, and I have always fought to win. It was as simple as that.

But why do I want to change him? Why do I want to change his life, his house, and the way his friends think of him? Simple enough. Because I love him, and the change will be for the better.

Or, she asked herself again, is it something else? Is it because I am an editor, and feel I can edit this man's life? An editor always changes. That is what an editor is for: changes. Change the layout, change the lead, change the headline, change the copy block, do something different with the cover for a change. Vivify it, give it an extra twist, crank the story up a notch or two. Change the girl's earrings, change her hair, give her a little more fox and flair. That rhymes, she thought; I have written a couplet. But a person was not a product, like a magazine. Probably a person could never be changed, never be vivified, twisted up a couple of notches, redone like a layout. And Mel was a person, a man who had told her he loved her, and whom she had told she loved.

The sound of the distant surf was a signal, and it seemed to match the sudden beating of her heart, and all at once there was the answer. Love had nothing to do with winning, did it? Love was the opposite. Love was loss. Love was surrender, love was sacrifice. Love was losing yourself in one other person. “You need to be needed,” that first, painful love of hers had told her all those years ago, that lover who, when she thought of him, had left a thin splinter of ice in her heart. “No one needs you,” he had said. But had he really needed her? In retrospect, not at all, and from that lack of need had grown the cold splinter of ice. Had Steven needed her? She had thought so at the time but, if he had, would he have done what he did? Then how did you get someone to need you? That answer was simple, too. To be needed, you needed to offer up, unbidden, some precious extra of yourself. Love was loss. Why had it taken her half a lifetime to discover this one small, pure fact?

In the excitement of this sudden discovery, this small epiphany, Alex sprang to her feet and began pacing the big glass room. Love is loss! If I am really going to win this one, I am going to have to lose myself, let go of myself, untwist myself, in love. She took a last, hard look at the painting leaning against the wall, and instantly decided: First thing Monday morning, I will telephone the David Findlay Gallery on Madison Avenue and tell them to take that painting back. How could I have been so stupid—stupid and selfish? I will give him back his wall, give him back his house.

But she knew that offering was not anywhere near enough. There must be more, much more. This was only a beginning. And—amazing how her mind worked this late at night—the pieces of their respective lives seemed to fall magically, symmetrically, into place.

Consider Mel. Mel was all about generosity, all about giving away pieces of himself. He gave of himself daily in all directions. He was generous to her, always giving her little gifts, like the Hermès silk scarf that she had bitchily tossed out the window of his car. He was generous to his parents, the retired tailor and his wife, and had bought them a lovely house in Westchester. He was generous to his two daughters, even though he rarely got to see them. He was wonderful to his dog. He was generous to his public, to his fans, all those people he would never know, answering every letter personally, even the crazy ones and the ones that wrote him asking for money. His generosity and his spirit shone from the television screen, which surely was why he was so popular. He had been generous to the two women stranded on the expressway with their flat tire. He had wanted Alex to have generous thoughts—was that so much to ask?—about Fiona. Even that dreadful woman in the tollbooth—what was her name?—he had treated generously, even leaving her ten dollars richer for her dreadfulness, enough for her dinner, as she had put it.

And Alex herself? She had spent the last few days full of anger, full of jealousy and resentment, thinking only of herself and her career. She had been angry at Herb, and had been busily plotting ways to bring him to his knees—ways to win! She had been jealous of Joel for growing up without asking her express permission. She had been rude to Marsha—that was it—Apfelbaum, rude and angry and imperious and, yes, bitchy. She had had jealous thoughts about Mel, jealous, unworthy, mean-spirited thoughts. She had bitchily suggested that Mel's interest in Fiona Fenton was more than friendly. She had found herself resenting Mel's fame, simply because his celebrity was more visible than hers, and because it inconvenienced her now and then, because his fans intruded on
her
space and made
her
feel invisible, because they were not
her
fans as well. She had even resented poor old Ho Rothman for becoming senile, too old for her to manipulate any longer. Worst of all, she saw herself turning into one of those hard-boiled, despotic boss-lady executive types whom Joan Crawford used to play in movies, who threw tantrums when they didn't get their way, and hurled erasers at their secretaries when their morning coffee wasn't hot enough. She was becoming a cliché, the selfish, manipulative bitch-goddess.

Anger, resentment, jealousy—toward anyone who appeared to stand in her way, who threatened to usurp any of her hard-won power, who threatened her with any sort of loss. Where was love in any of this?
Love was loss!

She thought: I really am a genius! A genius, to have made this great discovery which seemed, at the moment, greater than anything discovered by Copernicus, Galileo, Columbus, Newton, Einstein. There was a small, brown mole just below Mel's navel, and suddenly she loved this mole with more enormity and passion than anything she had ever loved in her life, and the flush she felt in her face was sexual, and it flooded through her body like that very first orgasm, the one one never completely forgets.