by Bridie Clark
“Are you okay, Miss Lucy?” asked Howard the doorman, looking concerned as she made her way shakily through the lobby.
“Not really,” she answered, but she shook her head when he asked if he could help.
Once outside, she took a sharp breath. The first notes of spring were in the air already, although the crocuses in the median of Park Avenue had yet to emerge and she still needed a coat. She struggled to clear her head. The sky did her a favor with its shocking blueness; one of the neighbors had planted scarlet geraniums in her window boxes. Wyatt doesn’t own this, she thought suddenly. Wyatt doesn’t own the taxicabs, swimming upstream like vibrant yellow fish, or the smell of roasting chestnuts. He doesn’t own the bustling streets, the outdoor cafés, the symphony of car horns and dogs barking and distant sirens and people laughing in foreign accents. When she’d first gotten off the bus from Dayville, Lucy had claimed all this as her own. And it was still hers, if she wanted it.
A young girl walked by with her mother and a beagle, pulling gently on the dog’s leash, and Lucy envisioned an older, more sophisticated spin on her bright poppy-colored coat. She was surrounded by inspiration: the light slanting down through the buildings, the uneven sidewalk, the boy on a scooter whizzing past her. New York hadn’t spit her out. She’d prove to Wyatt that she didn’t need him to reach her dreams. She wouldn’t sit idly by while Townhouse and Wyatt spun their own versions of the truth. As Lucy walked briskly back to Eloise’s apartment, she could taste hopefulness in the air, and her mind started to weave a plan.
33
Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty-five days, not seven years, and certainly not fifty years. Even so, twenty-five days is an unusually long time for a baked product to stay fresh. The secret to Twinkies’ longevity is their lack of dairy ingredients: because dairy products are not part of the formula, Twinkies spoil much more slowly than other bakery items. . . . According to Hostess, it takes forty-five seconds to explode a Twinkie in a microwave.
—Snopes.com
Dottie Hayes, over her cobb salad at the Colony Club, clucked in sympathy for the young lady sitting across the table. Lucy Ellis might not have sprung from the pages of the Social Register, but Dottie had long since decided that this girl, who could endure her son so graciously, was one of nature’s aristocrats. Dottie was furious with Wyatt for not telling Lucy about his book—for not canceling it—months ago. Instead, the girl had been ambushed by it. Dottie was deeply relieved when Lucy called and asked for her help, and she’d invited her to lunch straightaway. “I’d be honored to lend my support, Lucy. Your work deserves a stage. Besides, after what that knucklehead son of mine did—”
Lucy smiled, holding up her hand to stop Dottie. She looked crisp in a navy blue sheath, fresh-eyed and lovely. “Thank you. That’s incredibly generous of you. We can’t imagine a more beautiful setting than your library.”
Dottie fiddled with her napkin, troubled. Lucy, to her credit, had yet to say a negative word against her son. Did that mean she might be persuaded to give him a second chance? Not that he deserved one, but her maternal loyalty required her to ask. “I’ve never seen Wyatt so tormented,” she said softly, testing the waters. “He regrets hurting you very much. You know that he’s canceled that awful book?”
Lucy sighed, but didn’t say anything. She took a quick sip of her Pellegrino. “Maybe it’d be better that we not discuss Wyatt.”
“I understand that, of course.” But then Dottie, against her natural temperament and Lucy’s wishes, forced herself to say more. “It’s just that—you’ve had such a wonderful effect on him. In these last few weeks, when he had you in his life, he would call to see how I was doing. He seemed calmer, even nicer. Ironic, isn’t it? That he’s the changed person from all this.”
“I’m grateful to Wyatt for all he’s done, but I don’t want to see him, Dottie. If that puts you in an awkward position, please just tell me.”
“No, no.” Lucy had spoken with such finality that Dottie didn’t dare push the subject further. “He’s the one who’s created any awkwardness, not you, my dear.” As much as she wished otherwise, perhaps Wyatt didn’t deserve the girl seated across the table from her. She was hardworking, modest, loyal, curious—just what he had been searching for, and what Dottie had prayed for her son to find—but he’d betrayed her.
Dottie glanced around the members-only haven that felt like her second kitchen. Most of the women in the dining room knew Lucy Ellis, either personally or via the social columns in which Wyatt had made her an unlikely fixture. In days they would know her true provenance. They would read the slander spread by that shabby, overexposed vixen Cornelia Rockman. Dottie knew she had to do her part to make sure that the right people understood Lucy’s innate elegance.
Besides, her plan sounded like fun. “Why don’t you and Eloise stop by tomorrow, and we’ll discuss the details,” Dottie said. She had always wanted a daughter. She wasn’t about to make the same mistake her son had.
“Oh, I’ll just wait here,” Wyatt said nonchalantly, moving toward the small couch in Eloise’s lobby. Lucy was still living with Eloise, as far as he knew, and he was prepared to wait all day for her to come downstairs and hear his heartfelt apology.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you won’t.” The doorman, a gray-haired gentleman in his fifties, looked stern. “The young lady does not wish to see you. She made that abundantly clear.”
Damn it.
Maybe he could appeal to the man’s sense of romance. “I just need to make things right. I made a huge mistake, but I care about Lucy a great deal.”
“Well, Lucy is an exceptional young woman. Always goes out of her way to brighten my day.”
“You see why I miss her so much!” Maybe it was working. He couldn’t tell. “I can’t sleep, or eat—I just keep thinking about how she must feel.” It was a strange relief to admit this to another person. The doorman nodded; it seemed he felt Wyatt’s pain.
“You still can’t sit here,” he said.
“C’mon, man!” Wyatt, scowling with frustration, headed for the door. The tightness in his stomach was worse than ever. He’d have to find some other way to reach Lucy, to show her how sorry he was.
“And you might want to slow down on the flowers,” added the doorman. “The ladies have very important business to attend to, and they don’t need to be interrupted by deliveries every ten minutes. And pass that on to your friend Mr. Peters. I don’t know what he’s trying to prove with all those roses. He should’ve proposed to Miss Carlton years ago.”
Wyatt, dropping his head, left the building.
“So Wyatt’s been calling me nonstop,” Mallory said, resting both elbows on the zinc-top desk of her midtown office. She directed this to Lucy, who had just lowered herself into a visitor chair next to Eloise.
“Has he?” Lucy held Mallory’s gaze, not allowing the mention of his name or efforts to affect her. “Well, then, you know why we’re here. Cornelia told us about your article.”
Mallory frowned; bit her lip. “I like you. I even like the idea that you put one over on the toffs that buy my magazine. But I’ll tell you what I keep telling Wyatt. This is business. I’ve got to think about my newsstand numbers. Our advertisers are mostly luxury-goods retailers, and they’re getting massacred, which means we’re getting massacred. A story like this, like it or not, will drive sales.”
It was the response that Lucy had anticipated. “We’re not asking you to kill the article. We’re just asking that you hold it for the next issue.”
“You want time to flee the country? Sorry, but I don’t want to get scooped on this. I can’t afford it.”
“You won’t get scooped,” Eloise said. “You’ll get a bigger story.” She slid the invitation across the desk, a reprint of a page from Lucy’s sketchbook with the event details handwritten in the margins. Cheap, easy—they didn’t have money or time to spare—and yet perfectly chic. They’d picked them up from the printer on the way to Mallory’s office.
“Interesting,” said Mallory, frowning a little. “You’ve been planning this for a while?”
They chose to ignore the question. “Lucy is poised to become a darling of the fashion industry,” said Eloise. “As you know, Margaux Irving showed tremendous support by bidding on her gown—”
“Correction.” Mallory cleared her throat. “She bid on Lucia Haverford Ellis’s gown. Who knows if she’ll be equally impressed by some small-town nobody. No offense.”
“Just give us one week,” Lucy said, trying to push past Mallory’s brutal candor. “Then you can go ahead and write about how I conned everyone into thinking I was to the manor born. But that will just be backstory. The real story here isn’t about society scandal. It’s about reaching the summit—achieving a dream—the good, old-fashioned New York way: by any means necessary.”
Mallory considered this for a millisecond. “The society scandal angle will sell more copies than your prairie-girl-makes-good angle.”
“Ours will elevate Townhouse in a way that brings in more readers over time. Remember, you’ll be the first to cover the story—the whole story. It’s an ASME award, Mallory. You’ll be duly credited by all the other press publications that will jump on this once it breaks. You’ll be the authority, the talking head, for all the news outlets, boosting Townhouse’s visibility and your own.”
“I’d agree to style the next three issues, free of charge,” added Eloise, for good measure.
“You’d do that?”
“Sure. A little mutual back-scratching.” Eloise smiled sweetly.
Mallory sat back in her chair, fingering the invitation, weighing the risks. “Screw me over on this, ladies, and I will make Cornelia Rockman look like a Sister of Perpetual Mercy. One week.”
Wyatt squinted up at the sky, which was just growing light, and nervously took a seat on a green wooden bench. He hoped Lucy would be showing up soon, out for her typical early morning run. He felt more than a little creepy, staking her out like this, but she still refused to talk to him.
There she was! His breath tightened in his throat as he saw her running toward him, up the steps to the Central Park reservoir. She moved easily, like a veteran athlete, hair pulled off her face into a clean ponytail. Derrick would be proud. Just seeing her brought a wave of emotion—it was crazy how much Wyatt had missed her in just a few short days. He glanced at the sky. Perfect, he thought. Couldn’t have timed it any better.
“Lucy!” he called out. She was in her own world, and didn’t look up right away. “Lucy!”
Seeing him, her eyes widened and she stopped in her tracks. He pointed vigorously up to the sky, where a plane had traced out I’M SORRY in enormous fluffy white letters. “Please, please forgive me!”
She looked up. She read the message. Then she turned, without so much as a word of response, and sprinted back toward the Met.
Hearing the familiar buzz, Lucy stopped walking down Bleecker Street and glanced down at her BlackBerry. “I just got a text from Max. He’s doing a Home Depot run and wants to know how many stages we’ll need,” she said to Eloise.
“Six. Small ones, just big enough for each model. Assuming they all agree.”
Lucy wrote back quickly with both thumbs. “Thank God he’s so good with his hands.” She looked up to see Eloise blush. “I mean, handy. Dottie says we can build the pieces right at her house, by the way.”
“Lucy”—Eloise reached out and touched her arm—“thanks for letting me do this with you. I—it’s just a godsend, to have this right now.”
“Are you kidding? There’s no way I could pull it off without you. You’re the best thing Wyatt Hayes ever added to my life.” Lucy felt just as grateful to be busy—to be the mistress of her own fate, once and for all. She didn’t have time to make sense of her conflicted emotions about Wyatt, which was good, because she had no idea where to begin. “We make a fabulous team.” Arms linked, they headed inside to August, a quiet West Village boîte where they’d asked the other girls to meet them for lunch.
“So?” Libet asked as soon as they came into view. “What’s up? Your e-mail said it was top-secret and urgent.”
Lucy looked out at the clutch of young women, arrayed in their luncheon finery, some in clothing they’d commissioned from Lucy since the Townhouse shoot (no wonder, she thought, that Doreen was able to quit her Nola job to focus solely on producing my dresses). All the girls around the table knew her as Lucia Haverford Ellis, the Chicago heiress to a timber fortune who’d gone to the same sorts of schools they’d attended, who’d jumped onto the same committees and showed up at the same openings. The woman they knew wasn’t Lucy; the woman they knew was Wyatt’s creation. Rooted as they were in their Upper East Side-Hamptons-Palm Beach world, could they even imagine being the daughter of a manicurist from Dayville, Minnesota? Or for that matter, being the friend of that girl?
“Ladies,” Lucy said, taking off her spring jacket and sitting at the head of the table. She took a deep breath and looked at Eloise, who nodded in encouragement. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Wyatt hit the speakerphone button and dialed Lucy’s home number. He’d lost hope that she might answer his call herself. Instead he braced himself for her inevitable voice mail greeting, holding his manuscript over the shredder with both hands.
“I’ve erased all the book files from my computer,” he called out after the beep. “And this is the sound of the last hard copy getting shredded!” He began feeding page after page into the machine’s waiting teeth, hoping the gesture might summon her to the phone, but nobody picked up.
Libet twirled around Eloise’s living room. “This is too gorgeous. You said I get to keep it, right?”
Lucy nodded, her pursed lips holding a row of pins. “C’mere,” she managed to get out, and Libet stood still to be fitted. Lucy expertly pulled in the fabric around the socialite’s bony bottom. Shoot. Libet was so greyhound-thin that getting the hips to fit caused a puckering at the waist. If she had more time, Lucy could redo the whole dress. But she had a mere four days left and two more looks to fine-tune. Doreen had been working at a turbocharged pace, too, and Lucy couldn’t ask any more of her.
“It’s cool you’re doing this, Luce,” Libet said. “I mean, you’re an artist. Just like me, you know?” Lucy thought of Libet’s rotting fruit and smiled politely. “I’ve got your back two hundred percent. I had a friend in high school who was poor, and she was, like, so great.”
“Remember, you can’t tell anyone about any of this,” Lucy said, still struggling with the pins. She took a step back and looked at her model. “Libet, I’m going to ask you a favor. Please don’t take it the wrong way.”
“Anything, sweetie.”
“Could you possibly . . . eat a few cheeseburgers this week? Some Häagen-Dazs? The thing is, the dress will fit perfectly if you gain five pounds. Otherwise, it’ll cost me hours of work, and I don’t have an extra minute between now and Saturday.”
At first Libet looked horrified. Then, accepting the sacrifice she’d been asked to make, she nodded gravely. “I’ll do it,” she declared with great feeling. “For you, Lucy, I will gain five pounds.”
“Wow, that’s great. Thanks so much.”
“You said I get to keep the dress, right?” Libet tilted her head, straining to hear. “Do you hear music outside?”
“Oh, that. There’s a boys’ choir singing outside the window.”
“What?” Libet rushed over to look. “There’s two dozen kids on your sidewalk!”
“Wyatt and I heard them perform last month at a benefit for a settlement house, and I told him how much I loved it—”
“So he sent them over to serenade you? Omigod! That is so sweet!”
Lucy just shook her head. “Over-the-top gestures don’t make what he did any better. Besides, I don’t have time for a concert, personal or otherwise, right now. I’m not even sleeping this week.”
“You’re tough, lady,” Libet said with admiration. “I’d tot
ally melt. I hear Wyatt’s a wreck. Mimi said Jack said he’s been moping around the Racquet Club.”
“Poor guy,” Lucy said, shoving in her final pin. But as much as she hated to admit it, it was getting harder each day to bar Wyatt from her thoughts. She deleted his messages without listening, afraid of the effect his voice might have on her. She had to stay strong—she couldn’t let him distract her from what really mattered, and she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to trust him again.
As Libet slipped back into her street clothes, Lucy rummaged through the kitchen cabinets to find her a gift: a huge tub of Nutella. Four days, two looks to go.
“Please,” Wyatt begged, following Rita as she hurried down 33rd Street toward the subway stop. “I just need to talk to her for one minute. Could you convince her to give me a minute?”