The White Rose (35 page)

“Oh,” Caroline says sadly, “I know, Marian. But I had a sort of bunker mentality at the time. Even David's death—I couldn't think about it then, even though it had just happened. I couldn't think about it, really, for years. I was in Cancer World, with Oliver. You know?”

Marian, who does, actually, know, shakes her head anyway.

“Cancer World. Hospital World. The only people you talk to are people who are in it with you. You hate everyone else,” she says. “You especially hate everyone whose child doesn't have cancer. It's an extraordinary thing, because it cuts across all the boundaries. You suddenly have everything in common with the Dominican housecleaner whose kid has a brain tumor and nothing in common with people you grew up with. You know,” she says, considering, “I probably should have called you.”

“I wish you had,” Marian says, still fighting. All of these months with Oliver, and he never…he never told her. Well, to be fair, she never told him, either. What a thing to have had in common.

“But he recovered,” says Caroline. “He missed starting second grade with his age group, but they skipped him up later, so that was fine. He never talks about it now.”

“Oh no?”

She shakes her head. “But it's in there. I mean, if you could open up Oliver's head and look inside, you'd see Cancer. Right there next to Dad and Roses.” She pauses and considers her empty glass. “You should get to know him. He's a wonderful person. I think I'd feel that way even if I weren't his mother. Well,” she says and laughs, “maybe not.”

Marian swallows and says nothing. Oliver is indeed a wonderful person, a nuanced person, sharp and kind, like his mother, also—like his mother—generous and loyal and loving.

“When I'm living here, you'll get to know him better,” Caroline says.

“Okay,” Marian manages.

“I'm looking on the Upper East Side tomorrow. But I'd go to the West Side. I'd go to Murray Hill. Or even the Village. So long as I'm here.”

Their waiter comes. He doesn't ask. He just takes the plates away.

“I didn't realize you loved the city so much,” says Marian.

“I didn't either. But you know, I think it's really more about me than it is about Manhattan. When I started thinking about the rest of my life, it occurred to me that I wanted to be old in the place I'd been young. Maybe it's something everyone feels. I feel it.”

“I feel it, too,” Marian says. “Now that you point it out.”

“Good. We were young together. Let's be old together.”

“Good!” Marian says. “But do we have to start right now? Or can we wait a few years?”

“We can wait. It isn't going anywhere.”

They defiantly order dessert. Caroline asks what Marian is working on, and Marian describes the Lady Charlotte pillow book, now nearly completed, “which is basically just an excuse to send me on another tour,” she says wryly. “But after that we're doing her novels,” says Marion. “And that really will be worthwhile. One of them's quite good. Well, if you remember that the novel was a brand-new art form when she wrote it.”

“It must be a great feeling to have brought her back like that,” Caroline says.

“Oh, she brought herself back. She reached out of her grave and tapped me on the shoulder. At the Beinecke, no less! She has a habit of getting her way, in death as in life,” Marian says. “Hey, I wonder if she was one of
those
women. You think?”

“Nah. All those letters to her girlfriend back in America? And don't forget, she raised two little girls. I think she was an equal-opportunity appreciator. With an emphasis on opportunity!”

Marian nods happily. In the years since her book's publication, it has pleased her most to know that women of her own generation have related to Charlotte Wilcox. Perhaps they have had the most to learn from her, she thinks. The waiter brings their cheesecake and coffee. A minute later, he is back.

“Hello, ladies!”

Marian looks up. It is not their waiter at all. Under the circumstances, she wishes it were.

“Oh, hello, Valerie.”

Valerie Annis looks pointedly at Caroline.

“This is my friend, Caroline…,” Marian begins to say.

Here, though, is a crucial point. Rosenthal is hardly an uncommon name, but
Caroline Rosenthal
will surely bring Valerie up to speed. Only days earlier, after all, Henry Rosenthal had declared undying love for his famous client on Page Six of the
Post. Caroline Stern
, she is about to say, but the name that emerges from her throat, in the end, is
Lehmann
. She has taken her friend all the way back to childhood.

“Hello, Caroline,” Valerie says, brightly enough. She is wearing the same taupe pantsuit currently hanging in the window at Armani. “I'll join you. But I just have a minute.”

And she does, loudly dragging a chair from the next table. Caroline registers a flicker of alarm. The use of her maiden name has warned her.

“Valerie writes the party column for the
New York Ascendant
, Caroline.”

“Oh. Yes, I know it,” says Caroline with a practiced smile. “That must be a fun job.”

“Absolutely untrue!” Valerie cries. “People don't understand!”

“I didn't see you in the restaurant,” Marian says.

“Oh, I was in the first dining room.” She says
first
as if she meant
better
. “I watched you come in. I had lunch with Farley Burkowitz. Now there's a guy who shouldn't drink at lunch.”

Across the table, Caroline sits very still.

“I don't think I've met him,” Marian says, treading on dangerous ground and thinking frantically of a way to change the subject.

“No? They call him the Prenup Pasha! I was trying to find out about the deal he made for your cousin and Sophie Klein, but all he wants to talk about is his partner and that woman.”

Marian nods glumly.

“I had that story first! Did you know? They came up to me at the Met benefit last week, and I put it right in my column. But what can you do? We're a weekly, the
Post
comes out every day. It's one of those bitter pills a journalist has to swallow.”

Journalist!
thinks Marian.

“What do you do, Caroline?” Valerie says sweetly.

“Oh, I'm just visiting,” Caroline says pointedly. “From Connecticut.”

“Well. That's nice.” She turns back to Marian. “I've just done a big piece on your cousin, you know. I was up to the house.”

“Oh, really? I haven't seen the issue yet. I've never been to the house. Is it nice?”

Valerie looks scandalized. “Are you kidding? He's putting an absolute fortune into it.”

A fortune of Mort Klein's money, thinks Marian.

“Well, I expect I'll see it this weekend sometime. Perhaps he'll have guests over.”

“Rehearsal dinner,” Valerie says.

Marian frowns. “Really? I don't think so. It's at some inn.”

Valerie smiles the smile of a woman who has more recent information. “You didn't hear? It's been moved. Barton decided the house was ready. Well,” she says soothingly, “I'm sure you'll get the information eventually.”

“I'm sure.” Marian nods wearily. She prefers the topic of Barton and his unfathomable bride to that of Henry Rosenthal's love life, but thinking about her cousin still depresses her. She is not looking forward to the wedding. “What does your profile say?”

“The usual swill,” Valerie says. She takes up Marian's unused fork and jabs a bite out of her cheesecake. “Longtime bachelor finally meets the right woman. And the house, of course. Richard loves those decrepit old houses. I said to him, I said, ‘Richard, if you want me to go all the way up to goddamn Millbrook to look at some falling-down house, you'd better get me a driver.' How am I supposed to hobble through a building site and get back in time to cover the Met benefit?” She pauses, then looks, with exaggerated politeness, at Caroline. “The Metropolitan Opera. They had their annual benefit last week.”

“
Really
,” says Caroline.

“And the whole time, he's going on and on about the plumbing and the floorboards. My God, as if any sane person gives a fuck about what the original inhabitants did with their shit. And when he's not talking about that, it's all about the great and powerful Warburgs.” She pauses, mid-chew, to look coolly at Marian, seemingly pondering whether or not this last comment requires an apology, then evidently deciding it does not. Marian is determined not to react, not to prolong. As a diversionary tactic, she stares at the corner of Valerie's mouth, where a tiny nugget of cheesecake has lodged itself in a bright pink crease of lipstick.

“Well,” Marian says. “I suppose I'll see you at the wedding, Valerie.”

“You won't,” Valerie says. Savagely, she spears another bite of cheesecake. “I'm not going.”

“You're…but why not? You seemed to be looking forward to it.”

“Because your cousin seems to have forgotten that he invited me. I phoned to see how he liked the article, and when I happened to mention that my invitation hadn't arrived, he got very flustered. Out of his hands, he told me. Of course, he had made the request, but the bride…” Valerie shakes her head briskly. “I've had to cancel my reservation at the Black Horse,” she says bitterly. Then she looks frankly at Marian. “It's generally a bad idea to renege on invitations, don't you think?”

“It's not good manners,” Marian agrees, with care.

“To tell you the truth, I wish I'd known he was going to behave this way
before
I turned in my piece. I might have given it a different…” Valerie purses her thin lips. Then smiles. “Tone.”

“Well, I'm sure you won't be missing much,” Marian says, selfishly delighted to have escaped the added punishment of a weekend with Valerie Annis. “Big weddings aren't usually any fun, especially when you don't really know the couple well. I'm sure you'll find something much more interesting to write about.”

“Oh,” Valerie says, laughing unexpectedly, “I'm going to write about it.”

Marian glances, frowning, at Caroline. She is frowning, too.

“But, didn't you say you're not going?”

“I don't need to go. I'm doing a big piece for Friday about the new social climbing. Your cousin's wedding makes it timely, doesn't it? I don't need to be there, under the tent, eating off the solid gold dishes, to point that out, do I?”

“Social climbing?” Caroline says.

“Sure. As far as I'm concerned, Mort Klein and your cousin have done a deal right out of Edith Wharton. What?” she says, sardonically, taking in Marian's horrified expression. “Some guy with an old name and a falling-down house just happens to get engaged to a borscht belt heiress? It's a coincidence, right?”

Marian, speechless, only stares.

“This is an old-fashioned story,” Valerie says. “That's all. I mean, here we are at the end of the twentieth century, you know? Nothing changes.”

“Valerie,” Marian says, managing at last to find her voice, “don't write that. I understand that you're angry. You have a right to be angry. But please.”

Valerie's eyes widen. “Don't be silly!” she says, with exaggerated reassurance. “This has nothing to do with
me
. It's not
personal
, Marian. It's a
story
, and I'm a
journalist
.”

“I'm sure there are very genuine feelings between Barton and his fiancée,” Marian says desperately. “Look, he may be conceited and rude and all those things you said, but he isn't worth it. He's harmless.”

“Marian,” Valerie says, with palpable dislike, “you're such a good egg.”

Marian hears Caroline's long exhalation: fury and amazement. Her friend's silence, thinks Marian, is a triumph of grown-up restraint.

Valerie rises to her feet and puts on her camel's hair coat. “Well, I have to get back to my office,” she announces. “I have a phone interview with a cultural anthropologist from NYU at two-thirty. Unless,” she says evenly, “
you'd
like to give me a quote, Marian? How do you feel, as a Warburg, watching someone like Mort Klein marry into your family? Hmm?” She waits hopefully. “Well, never mind. I have plenty of material, I think. And people always come out of the woodwork when you're working on something big like this.” She turns to Caroline. “Um…” Valerie frowns, trying to remember Caroline's name. “It was nice to meet you. Have a safe trip back to New Jersey.”

“Connecticut,” says Caroline.

Both of them wait until Valerie is safely gone from the room.

“She is some piece of work,” Caroline says, in wonder. “Thanks for not blowing my cover.”

“Oh, that's all you need, to have Valerie Annis write about how you're drowning your sorrows in sidecars and cheesecake.”

“
She
ate the cheesecake,” Caroline observes.

“True.” Marian tries to catch their waiter's attention, for the check. “And poor Barton. Not that it wasn't asinine, uninviting her to the wedding like that. He should have known Valerie wouldn't take that lying down.”

“He said it was the bride's idea,” Caroline reminds her.

“Even so. Though I can see her point. I mean, who'd want a gossip columnist at her wedding?”

“You know,” Caroline says, thoughtfully, “I always thought Barton was gay. He was in Freddie's confirmation class, remember? At Temple Emanu-El?”

Marian nods. “I forgot that,” says Marian. Caroline's younger brother and Barton are, she now recalls, the same age.

“I was surprised when I heard he was getting married,” says Caroline.

“That makes two of us.”

“I mean, I'm not exactly fond of Barton, but I'd be so sorry for him if I thought this was actually some kind of arrangement. You know, for the money.”