Social Crimes

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  I guffawed. “Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “No doubt,” June said primly picking up her cup. “Betty and I debated whether or not to tell you. But then I thought if it were Charlie, I’d want to know. My advice to you is to get her out of there A.S.A.P.”

  I shook my head in mild amusement. It was no fun being the target of slander, I grant you, but I knew it was all summer doldrums bullshit so I could afford to have a little fun with her.

  “Actually, we’re having a ménage à trois, June. That’s what’s really going on.”

  June sighed in exasperation. “You think this is funny, Jo. It’s not. You better watch out.”

  I turned serious. “Look, June, for one thing, they don’t have the chance. Trust me. They’re never alone together. Caspar’s always with Lucius. I’m usually with Monique. This is a silly malicious rumor concocted by a lot of bored gossips who are obviously depressed that Dick Bromire hasn’t been indicted yet so they can have something really juicy to talk about.”

  June sipped her tea with a self-righteous air. “Fine. Have it your way, Jo. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “And June, the truth is that Monique is much more my friend. She and Lucius barely speak to one another.”

  This time June put down her cup so hard it rattled. “Jo! That’s it! Don’t you know that one of the best ways to tell when two people are having an affair is when they stop speaking to each other in public?”

  I was exasperated. “June, they are not having an affair. You wanna get down to brass tacks? Listen to me: Lucius isn’t capable. Get it? And even if he were, he wouldn’t risk it. He could die.”

  “Very well,” she said. “Sorry I mentioned it.”

  “Me, too, believe me.”

  Not one to ever let a subject drop, she added under her breath—just loud enough so I’d hear it: “ ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.’ ”

  Her persistence made me furious. “Remember back a couple of months ago when everyone thought Monique and I were having an affair?” I reminded her. “People were calling us lesbitrinas or some such charming epithet, I believe?”

  June shrugged off the suggestion. “Well, that was utterly ridiculous. And I told everyone so.”

  “Right. Fine. So is this!”

  June raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, looking at me with a pious obstinacy that further fueled my wrath.

  “Monique is a wonderful person and a very, very good friend to me,” I went on sternly. “She’s been extremely supportive of me all summer. You think it’s easy living with an invalid? Lucius is sick and scared and he’s in a foul mood most of the time, threatening me with God knows what. Where the hell have you and Betty been?”

  “Now that’s not fair!” she snapped. “We’ve both called you a million times. You put us off! You’re always with her.”

  I pointed an accusatory finger at June. “And that’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You’re jealous of my friendship with Monique. Well, I’ve got news for you. So is Lucius! You have no idea how he’s been acting. The whole bunch of you are just jealous!”

  June dismissed the accusation with a little wave of her hand.

  “Rubbish,” she said. “That woman is really bad news and she’s definitely not your friend, Jo.”

  I stared hard at her. “What about you, June? You think telling me my husband’s having an affair with another woman is a friendly act?”

  “I’m very sorry I did it,” she said. “I thought it was for your own good.”

  I rose from my chair, walked to the door, and turned back just as I was about to leave. “Remember the proverbial road to hell, June?” I let my words hang in the air for a moment. Then I stalked out.

  I got into my car and slammed the door hard. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. My face was flushed with anger. To my mind, June was a prying busybody, stirring up trouble for no reason.

  There are two opposing schools of thought on whether you should tell a friend if you suspect her husband is having an affair. One is, you should; the other is, you shouldn’t. I firmly believe in the latter simply because people are more married than you think. There are those who simply may not wish to know if they are being cheated on. Or there are those who actually do know they are being cheated on but don’t wish to be publicly confronted with the fact. And, last but not least, there are those, like myself, who neither think nor know they are being cheated on, and who view the teller of such tales as mischievous, misinformed gossip.

  It was close to five when I pulled into my driveway. All the regular cars were there, except Caspar’s because it was his day off. I trotted up the front porch steps into the house. The front hall was silent save the heavy ticking of the grandfather clock on the landing. The dampness of the day cast a gray pall over the interior. There was a chill in the air.

  I thumbed through the pile of mail that was stacked, as usual, on a silver tray on the round hall table. Mrs. Mathilde entered from the pantry carrying a large glass vase filled with colorful flowers. The old Jamaican housekeeper gave me a welcoming smile.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Slater.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Mathilde. Have you seen Countess de Passy?”

  “No, ma’am.” Her tone turned icy whenever I mentioned Monique. She set the vase down on the hall table and stepped back to admire the arrangement.

  “Is Mr. Slater around?”

  “I haven’t seen him, ma’am.”

  I refused her offer to make me a cup of tea. I walked back outside over to the guest cottage in search of Monique. The little house was deserted. A lead-colored sky threatened rain. An eerie stillness gripped the atmosphere. Where is everyone, I wondered?

  I snaked back around to the pool.

  There was an odd sound, not quite the cry of a bird . . .

  It came again—a little stab of a scream, lost in the air.

  Where was it coming from?

  I listened closely, heard nothing more, and walked on until a succession of small sounds caught my attention. I tracked them to their source: the pool house, my little columned Palladian folly with a large patio and changing rooms on either side in back, one for men, one for women. Hand-painted porcelain plaques hung on the separate entrances, reading Rois and Reines, respectively.

  I cupped my ear to the door of the Rois changing room where I heard rhythmic low grunts, like the beating of a tom-tom or an animal trapped inside. I opened the door cautiously, recalling the rabid raccoon that had been trapped inside there a few summers ago. It was very dim inside. My eyes took a couple of seconds to adjust to the light. Then I recognized Lucius standing naked with nothing but a towel around his waist.

  “Jo!” he cried in a strangled whisper.

  “Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t realize—”

  I stopped short, realizing he was not alone. Someone else was in that tiny room. Behind him stood Monique, who was just closing her white terrycloth robe.

  “What’s going on?” I heard myself say. “Monique?” She looked away.

  At that point, Lucius reached out to me and touched my hand. But at the moment of contact he sort of lurched back and grabbed his chest with both hands, his features suddenly twisting in pain like a corkscrew. He crumpled to the floor coughing and gasping for air. His towel fell away.

  “Can’t breath . . . Can’t breathe . . .” he cried, heaving and writhing on the cold blue tiles.

  I swooped down and cradled him in my arms. He clutched at my clothing, clawing my blouse, pulling me in close and wheezing something between gasps that I couldn’t understand but which sounded like, “Give me . . .” Fear and apology flickered in his eyes, which quickly grew teary from all the wheezing, bulging grotesquely out from their sockets. His face turned livid as he gasped more desperately for air.

  I looked up and screamed at Monique. “Get help! Call an ambulance!”

  I can still see her standing above me in her white robe, arms crossed, looking down
at the two of us, emotionless, as if we were specimens in a jar. I suddenly realized she had no intention of helping me, so I leapt up from the floor, bolted out the door, and fled around the corner to the main pool house to call 911.

  “My husband’s having a heart attack! We need an ambulance!” I screamed into the phone.

  I gave the operator the details. My whole body was shaking by the time I put down the phone. Assured that help was on the way, I ran back into the dressing room where I was greeted by an eerie quiet. Lucius lay sprawled out on the blue tile floor like a great white shark, eyes wide and glassy, mouth open, expression gone. I stopped abruptly when I saw him, then looked at Monique.

  “Is he—?”

  She shrugged.

  I stared down at my husband for a long time, unwilling or unable to comprehend that he was dead.

  I lay down beside him on the floor and rested my head against his. My tears mingled with his cold perspiration.

  “Oh, Lucius, Lucius . . .” I sobbed softly. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me . . .”

  When I looked up, Monique was gone.

  Chapter 7

  Lucius was taken to the Southampton hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. I was shattered by his death and couldn’t accept the fact that the man I had loved and shared my life with for twenty years was suddenly gone. I felt his spirit all around me, my mind constantly drifting back over the time we’d spent together. During those blurry, wearying days, I mourned Lucius deeply, unable or unwilling to admit what I had seen. Mrs. Mathilde stopped crying long enough to inform me that Caspar had helped Monique clear all of her things out of the guest house just after the ambulance arrived. The Countess had left in a taxi. No one knew where she went.

  In piecing together the fragments of that puzzling picture in the pool house I denied the obvious, despite my conversation with June. It was impossible for me to believe that I had been deceived by the two people I loved most in the world—especially Lucius. Trying to come to terms with the emptiness of my life without my husband was a terrible enough thing without imagining he had betrayed me. I kept telling myself there had to be a rational explanation as to why the two of them were in that little changing room together half naked.

  The flurry of activity inevitably following any death took my mind off that unpleasant subject for a time. As word spread, a host of friends and amis mondains dropped by the house to condole with me. Ethan rang from Patmos to say he was cutting short his vacation and flying home to comfort me. Betty, June, and the Bromires took turns staying in the house, fielding the endless calls from all over the world. I found it vaguely surreal that all the same people who had come to celebrate my birthday two months before were now calling me to find out when Lucius’s funeral was.

  Over the next few days, with the help of June, Betty, Trish, and Trebor Bellini, who drove out from the city to do the flowers, I threw myself into the planning of Lucius’s funeral. I expressly didn’t want to make it a social event, but in New York, death takes on a life of its own. People were anxious to be involved, to show how close they were to me and to Lucius by participating in the service, or at least by getting a good seat in the church. I had to make sure no one was left out and that no one’s feelings got hurt.

  Lucius was not a spiritual man, in any sense of the word. A motley religious background—Jewish mother, Catholic father—had left him an avowed atheist. He had often told me he wanted to be buried with no fanfare whatsoever in one of the five plots he had purchased twenty years before in the Southampton Cemetery. But funerals are for the living, not for the dead. For my own peace of mind, and for the sake of his friends, I wanted to put my husband to rest with a dignified ceremony.

  Little Lucius and his wife, Rebecca, traveled up from Florida. I had told Little Lucius on the phone that his father had died of a heart attack, period. I didn’t go into details.

  The couple arrived in a dusty rental car with two trail bikes strapped to the back and a surfboard tied on top. When they got out of the car, Little Lucius stepped forward to hug me. He’d never done that before, having always viewed me as an interloper, another obstacle between himself and the father who had never loved him. The change in his attitude made me teary. I sensed he was making an effort toward me because his father’s death had lifted a heavy burden from his shoulders. At last he was his own man. Rebecca, too, was very friendly. I put them in the guest house vacated by Monique.

  I hadn’t seen Little Lucius since March when he came up to see his father in the hospital. He looked exactly the same as he always did: medium height with small shoulders and wide hips, almost like a woman’s, brown hair like a brush, a wiry beard, and a generally rumpled appearance. I was not surprised to see him dressed in a colorful Hawaiian shirt and baggy pants. That was his uniform.

  Sartorially challenged as he was, he was a commendable soul. The thirty-nine-year-old man had inherited his late mother’s looks as well as her devotion to duty and civic-mindedness. He was a marine biologist who spent his free time teaching Miami schoolchildren about the importance of sea life to the environment.

  Rebecca was tall and slim and angular, reminiscent of a Modigliani painting. Becky, as everyone called her, was also a worthy person. She worked as a guidance counselor, helping bright children from underprivileged families obtain college scholarships.

  The three of us had dinner together the night before the funeral. Little Lucius spoke more that night than he had in the twenty years I’d known him. At the end of the meal, I broke down in tears and told him how much I missed his father. He replied: “I’ve missed him all my life.”

  On the morning of September 9, the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church in Southampton was filled almost to capacity. Two huge bouquets of white flowers flanked the altar. Once again, people had flown in from all over the world to pay their last respects to one of the uncrowned kings of New York. The aggregate net worth of the individuals there could have paid off the national debt.

  Ethan arrived from Patmos, looking tan and fit. Rebecca showed up dressed in sandals, a turquoise shift covered with teensy dolls made of multicolored threads, and dangly silver earrings. Betty whispered to me: “What’s with that outfit? She looks like a high school teacher on sabbatical in Cuernavaca.” A little later on, Betty observed that Little Lucius, portly, pear-shaped, and as colorfully dressed as his wife, reminded her of “a piñata.”

  The service was short by any standards—only two eulogies, one given by Gil Waterman, the other by Charlie Kahn. They both spoke briefly and suprisingly eloquently about the man who had been their good friend. Janina Jones, the great soprano, who just happened to be spending the weekend with some friends in Southampton, sang Verdi’s “Pace, pace, Dio Mio,” and Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” which was Lucius’s and my favorite song. Little Lucius was conspicuously dry-eyed throughout the proceedings.

  I vaguely wondered why Monique hadn’t shown up. As the choir sang, “In Paradiso” from Fauré’s Requiem, my mind wandered. I kept thinking back to the pool house. What else could they have been doing, I wondered? Was there another explanation? He was practically naked. She had on a bathrobe. If she’s innocent, why isn’t she here?

  As I sat there surrounded by my friends and amis mondains, a new sensation cut through my mind like a shark’s fin appearing out of the depths of the ocean—a twinge of deep anger.

  Lucius was buried under a shade tree in one of the plots he had purchased in the Southampton Cemetery. As on the day he died, the sky was gray and overcast; a good storm was needed to clear the air. Afterward, the graveside mourners, who consisted of me, Little Lucius, Rebecca, the Watermans, the Kahns, the Bromires, and Ethan, went back to the house, where we were joined by all those who had been at the church. Lucius would have approved, I’m sure. He always liked a good party. I had Alain prepare a big buffet and all manner of tea sandwiches, particularly the tomato ones Lucius loved. But everyone was more interested in the booze. People drank champagne and tal
ked and laughed and generally forgot that it was a somber occasion.

  Monique’s absence was lost on no one. I believe it was Betty who first broached the subject in her inimitably tactful way: “So where in hell’s the dear Cuntess in your hour of need?” she said, wolfing down three tea sandwiches at once.

  “She left,” I said.

  With an eye to protecting my own dignity as well as Lucius’s, I didn’t want people to know the real circumstances under which he had died. My story was simply that he had had a heart attack in the swimming pool changing room and that the ambulance arrived too late to revive him. Period.

  Nobody believed me, of course, least of all Betty and June, who suspected something much more ghastly had happened by the reserved way I was acting toward them. In a situation like that, one longs to confide in one’s friends, but I knew if I didn’t keep my mouth shut tight it would be all over Southampton that Lucius had died in flagrante and there would be so many embellishments to the story that I would soon hear I had actually walked in on them going at it on the floor.

  Sure enough, less than a week later, June and Betty and I were having lunch at my house when June, genetically incapable of keeping gossip to herself, blurted out: “Jo, how come you didn’t tell us you walked in on them going at it on the floor?”

  “And just where did you hear that?” I said, nearly choking on my salad.

  “It’s all around town,” Betty said, as she poured herself a third glass of white wine. “The old horn toad.”

  I knew they were guessing but I was too exhausted to keep up a front. Having gradually accustomed myself to the sordid truth, I no longer cared about protecting Lucius’s dignity, or my own, for that matter. For the rest of lunch, I told June and Betty in hushed tones exactly what had happened, careful to stop talking whenever the servants came in to clear our places, though I suspected they knew everything.

  “Look, I can’t be absolutely sure of what was going on. I certainly didn’t walk in on them going at it on the floor,” I said. “But the more I think about it, the more I believe you girls were right. I mean, June, you told me that very afternoon they were having an affair under my nose and I simply couldn’t conceive of it. Then, of course, I came back home and discovered them in the pool house. But the funny thing is, even then, I still didn’t believe it, you know?”