Carriage Trade

by Stephen Birmingham

  “The woman you saw was my client’s maid,” he said.

  She giggled again. “She didn’t even look like a Tarkington’s client’s maid,” she said.

  “Well, that’s who she was,” he said with a tone of finality.

  “What was it you were delivering?”

  “It was a—a gold bracelet. My client wants to wear it to a party tonight.”

  Miranda was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. She was positive he was holding something back from her.

  “I didn’t know Tarkington’s clients lived in places like that,” she said. “A crumby old brownstone with dirty windows and torn window shades, a brownstone that’s been cut up into at least six itty-bitty apartments.”

  He looked at her. “My, aren’t you the observant one,” he said at last. “Don’t you know that curiosity killed the cat?”

  “Come on, Daddy. Tell me who she really is,” she said.

  He leaned forward and rolled up the window that divided the passenger seats from the driver’s seat. “Well, if you must know,” he said quietly, “she’s someone I take care of.”

  “What do you mean, take care of?”

  “Ssh! I just realized it’s the first of the month. Her rent’s due.”

  “You mean you pay her rent?”

  He nodded. “Please, Miranda, not so loud.”

  “But why?” she whispered.

  “She’s a very poor woman. She’s penniless. If it weren’t for me, she’d be a homeless person.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You mean you pay the rent for some old woman you don’t even know?”

  He nodded again.

  “But why?”

  “I found her begging in the streets, Miranda. Several years ago. There was something about her face. She seemed so pitiful. I gave her some money, and she said, ‘God bless you,’ and my heart just went out to her. I asked her where she lived, and she said, ‘Nowhere,’ and I felt terribly sorry for her. It didn’t seem right for people like us to have so much, and for decent people like her to have so little. She has no one—no family, nothing. I decided to find an apartment for her. It’s just a little place, as you can see, but it’s clean, and in a safe neighborhood, and she’s able to take care of herself. I pay her rent and give her a little extra.”

  “Why, Daddy, what a super thing to do!” It was in the days when Miranda and her classmates were always using words like “super.”

  “At least she’s safe and off the streets.”

  Later, when they were across the bridge and on the Long Island Expressway heading east, she said to him, “Does she know who you are, Daddy?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Did you ever hear of Maimonides, Miranda?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maimonides was a great philosopher in the twelfth century. He wrote about ‘the golden ladder of charity.’ The highest rung on that golden ladder, he wrote, is when you give to someone whom you do not know, and when that person does not know who the donor is.”

  “Does Mother know you’re doing this?”

  He seemed to hesitate. Then he said, “Yes.”

  She reached out and squeezed his arm. “She must be very proud of you,” she said. “I know I am. I think this is just the nicest, kindest, most super thing you’re doing, Daddy. It really is.”

  “Well, one tries to do what one can to help the less fortunate in this world,” he said, with a little sigh. “Now, are you quite satisfied, Miranda?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  He leaned forward and rolled down the window that separated them from Billings, the driver. “Think we’ll have rain this weekend, Billings?”

  “No, sir!”

  Now, sitting alone in her office, unable to take her eyes for long from the diamond ring Tommy placed on her finger and thinking of the things he said to her, and of all the events and revelations of the past few days, she wonders: Could the little fat old lady on West End Avenue actually have been his mother, her own paternal grandmother—a grandmother whose very existence she has been denied? A grandmother! Just think of it! There, all along, had been a dear little grandmother whom she could have taken Easter baskets to, who could have joined the family for Sunday dinners and at Christmastime; she had been right there, all through her childhood, just a few city blocks away. She had always been told that her father was an orphan. She had been robbed of a whole segment of her family history.

  But did that explain the curious scene that took place later that same evening, after dinner at the farm? Not only had Miranda been seated at the grown-ups’ table but her mother had allowed her to be served wine, and after dinner they had all withdrawn to the sun room for coffee. Miranda’s mother had picked up her needlepoint, and the two men were discussing, of all things, zippers. A manufacturer’s rep had shown Tommy some new zippers from France that were so skinny and narrow they were almost invisible, and Tommy was proposing that these new French zippers be introduced in the Custom Salon.

  There was a lull in the conversation, and Miranda said, “Daddy, tell Uncle Tommy about the little fat lady on West End Avenue.”

  Her mother dropped her needlepoint. “I think not,” she said sharply.

  “Oh, but it’s a super story, Daddy,” she persisted. “Tell it.”

  “Miranda,” her mother said warningly, “I said I think not.”

  “Tell him about Maimonides and the golden—”

  “Miranda, what did I just tell you? Your Uncle Tommy would be bored to tears.”

  Miranda looked imploringly at her father, who was looking uncomfortable. “Perhaps not,” he muttered. “Perhaps not tonight.”

  “But—”

  “Actually, I’d like to hear the story,” Tommy said pleasantly.

  “No!” her mother said. “Miranda, it’s past your bedtime. Run along to bed.”

  Red-faced, humiliated, Miranda rose to her feet. “But Mother—”

  Her mother clapped her hands. “Off to bed! Say good night to our guest and then off to bed with you, young lady.”

  As she left the room, she heard her mother say brightly, “What has the store decided to do about designer jeans?”

  Alone in her bedroom but far from asleep, Miranda had been furious at her mother. She had been seated at the grown-ups’ table, she had been served wine, she had tried to keep up her end of the conversation, and then, at half-past nine, which was not her bedtime—and in front of Tommy Bonham, the man with whom she had decided she was passionately in love—she had been ordered to bed like a little child. She lay there, fully dressed, on top of her bedspread in the dark room, wanting to cry but comforting herself by plotting some sort of hideous and elaborate revenge against her mother. She would put itching powder in her sleep mask. She would put a whoopee cushion under the seat of her chair the next time she had a dinner party. She would poison the fish in the lake in her mother’s Dell Garden. She would …

  Later, she heard Tommy Bonham’s car drive away, and the light from his headlamps arced across her ceiling. Now she heard her mother and father exchanging loud words from the floor below, and she crept out of her bedroom and tiptoed to the head of the stairs to hear what they were saying. Her mother seemed to be pursuing him from room to room, and their angry voices rose and fell as they went.

  “Goddammit, Connie, it’s the first of the month! You know how she gets when I’m late!”

  “Why did you have to take Miranda along? What kind of cock-and-bull story did you tell her anyway?”

  “Goddammit, Connie!”

  “Why do you have to include my daughter in your dirty little secrets? Isn’t it bad enough that I got dragged into it? Isn’t that bad enough? ‘To protect you,’ Tommy said. How can I protect you when you won’t even protect yourself? And now you’ve dragged my daughter into it too!”

  “She’s my daughter too, goddammit!”

  “A lot you care!
I’ve tried to protect her from you. Now you’ve dragged her into it!”

  “She doesn’t know a goddamned thing!”

  “What if she finds out? What if she starts asking questions? What am I supposed to say? Answer me that one, Si? Or shall I call you Sol?”

  “Shut up, Connie!”

  “Why couldn’t you have had Billings deliver the money? Why did you have to drag Miranda along?”

  “And get Billings involved in it too?”

  “Billings is already involved! He drove you there, didn’t he?”

  “I told him I was delivering merchandise to a client.”

  “Why couldn’t you have sent a messenger from the store? Why couldn’t you have just dropped a check in the mail? I’ll never understand—”

  “Because those are her terms, goddammit! Those are her terms! The money is to be delivered in cash. By me. In person. No messengers. No banks. I’ve told you all this a thousand times before. She set the terms. She calls the shots, whether you like it or not.”

  “But there’s nothing in the terms about dragging Miranda along!”

  “I didn’t drag her along! She waited in the goddamn car!”

  “But she saw her! She knows about her! She suspects something, doesn’t she?”

  “She doesn’t suspect a goddamn thing! Now shut up, Connie.”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up! I’m sick to death of trying to protect this family from your sordid, messy little secrets!”

  “Who pays the bills for this family?”

  “And who’s seen to it that this family’s name hasn’t been dragged through the mud? I’m sick to death of covering up for you. I’m sick to death of covering up your filthy tracks, sweeping up your filthy messes!”

  “When have you ever covered up for me?”

  “When? I’m talking about June nineteenseventy. Where? I’m talking about Boston and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel!”

  “Moe Minskoff worked that one out for me, damn it! You had nothing to do with it!”

  “But I got dragged into it anyway, didn’t I? By you—and Moe—and Tommy! I’ve been covering up for you for the past nine years! Do you think that’s been fun for me? But I did it—and I did it for you! And this is the kind of thanks I get. If it hadn’t been for me and Tommy—”

  “And Moe! Don’t forget Moe!”

  “—you could have gone to jail! If it hadn’t been for me, you could still be in jail!”

  “Goddammit, Connie! Leave me alone!”

  “And why did I do it? I did it for you.…”

  Their voices faded as they moved into another room, and Miranda crept back into her bedroom.

  The next day Miranda asked her mother, “Who is the fat old lady on West End Avenue?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miranda.”

  “You sent me to bed early when I asked Daddy to tell about her.”

  “You were boring Mr. Bonham, dear.”

  “I was not! What’s more boring than talking about zippers?”

  “Please, Miranda,” her mother said, passing her hand across her forehead, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I have a terrible sick headache, and I’m going up to take my nap.”

  And that was all Miranda ever knew.

  In the northwest corner of Flying Horse Farm, Miranda’s mother had created what she called her Dell Garden. A natural hollow in the land provided the setting and suggested the name, and Consuelo had a deep artificial lake built at the center of the hollow, where it was fed by a nearby spring. In this lake swam many brightly colored carp and calicoes and koi fish, some of them quite rare and valuable. Along the shallower edges of the lake bloomed aquatic plants, lilies and water irises and water hyacinths, but the center of her lake she wanted at least twenty-five feet deep, so the fish could find plenty of room to survive, in semihibernation, under the winter ice. Also, she had been told that the deeper the lake the purer would be its reflective powers with sunlight and clouds and stars. Over the years, the fish had thrived, multiplied, and grown to considerable size.

  Connie Tarkington had designed her garden without any formal training in landscape design. She had arranged her plantings by hunch. Along the banks of the lake she had planted low stands of dogwood, crab apples, oak-leaf hydrangeas, azaleas, willows, and golden bamboo that rustled in the breeze. Along the rim of the hollow she had wanted deeper greens, and so this was planted with ilex, boxwood, and Norway spruce. In early spring, the slopes of the garden exploded with swaths of yellow daffodils and blue grape hyacinths. Later came tulips, iris, tall lupines, and delphiniums. In summer there were bright patches of hollyhocks and daylilies, and in fall the Dell Garden was still bright with with asters, chrysanthemums, and the reddening leaves of the dogwoods.

  Across the lake ran an arched wooden footbridge, in the Japanese moon-gate style. Along the bridge, spaced at intervals, were redwood benches, where the visitor could sit and look down at the reflection of clouds in the dark water and at the playful herding and leaping of the bright fish. It was on this footbridge that Richard Avedon posed Consuelo Tarkington, in a series of romantic outfits, for that famous fashion shoot in Harper’s Bazaar in the spring of 1980, the year she climbed to the top of the International Best-Dressed List.

  In the summer of that same year, Miranda and her half brother were seated on one of the benches on the garden footbridge. He was seventeen then, and a freshman at Yale, and she was thirteen, in her first year at Ethel Walker. Over the past year, her passion for Tommy Bonham had faded, and now she was in love with Blazer, though he didn’t know it. Blazer wore his hair long in those days, in a shaggy ponytail pulled back with a rubber band, a style chosen—she is certain today—only because it was designed to infuriate his father. Their final blowup had not occurred, and Blazer still came down from Connecticut to visit his father at the farm on certain weekends, and this was one of them. Miranda and Blazer were feeding the fish.

  One particularly obnoxious blue-and-yellow koi was hogging all the food pellets, and Miranda and Blazer were trying to aim their pellets so the swarms of smaller fish would get their share, but the big koi was too fast for them, and when he opened his huge mouth he could engorge dozens of pellets at a time.

  “Tell me about your mother,” Miranda asked him. “What’s she like?” She had always been curious about Alice Tarkington, whose name was taboo in Miranda’s household.

  “Like? Well, let’s see,” he said. “To begin with, she’s ten years older than your mother and a little heavier.”

  She laughed. “You mean she’s fat?”

  “No, not fat. But she’s not as skinny as your mother. Your mother is too damned skinny, if you ask me.”

  “She has to be a model size to wear the clothes she likes.”

  “Yeah, I know.” With a strong overhand, he pitched a handful of pellets far out into the water. “There!” he said. “There’s some that that overweight bastard won’t get.”

  “What else about her?”

  “Well, she’s nice-looking. At least I think she’s nice-looking. She’s not a blonde, like your mother. She’s got red hair.” He grinned. “And a temper to go with it. Hell, I guess she’d have gray hair if she let it go natural. She, you know, dyes it.”

  “And?”

  “And, let’s see. She’s very athletic, my mother. She plays lots of tennis and golf. I guess you’d call her a very outdoorsy woman. She loves the out-of-doors.”

  “My mother loves to garden.”

  “Ha! Your mother doesn’t garden, Mandy. She just stands out here with her parasol and points out places to gardeners where she wants them to plant her trees.”

  “My mother thinks the sun can be very damaging to a woman’s skin.”

  “Well, my mother doesn’t subscribe to that philosophy. She likes a year-round tan. In the summer she’s always out-of-doors. In the winter she goes to a tanning salon. At least she used to.”

  “In other words, she’s just the opposite of my mother.”
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br />   “Yeah, I guess you could more or less say that.”

  “I wonder if I’ll ever meet her? I’d like to.”

  “Well, don’t take this the wrong way, Mandy, but I don’t think you ever will. She doesn’t want to meet you. She’s very bitter.”

  She had tried not to feel hurt by this. “Bitter?” she said.

  “Yeah, she’s bitter, all right. She’s about the bitterest woman I’ve ever known. After all, the old man asked your mother to marry him even before he asked my mother for a divorce. Wouldn’t you be bitter? I’ll tell you how bitter she is. If I come out here for the weekend, she won’t even ask me how it went. She won’t ask me what I did or anything, and she won’t listen when I try to tell her. I’ve learned not even to mention Flying Horse Farm to her, or anything about Dad’s new family. When Architectural Digest published all those pictures of the farm, including this garden, she refused to look at the magazine. Needless to say, she won’t set foot inside the store. She won’t even walk on that side of Fifth Avenue when she’s in that part of town. If she happens to be walking across the street from the store, she won’t even look in the store’s direction. That’s how bitter she is.”

  “That’s sad,” Miranda said.

  “Yeah, I guess so. But it was a pretty bitter divorce.”

  “Do you remember any of it?”

  “Nah, I was too little. But that’s another thing she’s bitter about. She felt the old man abandoned her and her two-year-old kid.”

  She sighed. “What a strange family we are,” she said. They had run out of fish-food pellets.

  “Yeah. Strange. Sad. And add a couple of more S-words: shallowness, superficiality, and secrets. That’s what this family is all about, Mandy. I could add another word beginning with an S, but I couldn’t use it in front of a well-brung-up young lady.”

  “Shallowness, superficiality—?”

  “What’s Tarkington’s all about, anyway? Putting a lot of shallow, superficial dresses on the backs of a bunch of shallow, superficial women, trying to turn them into something they’re not, telling some rich old broad she looks divine in a dress that makes her look like an Eighth Avenue hooker—an expensive Eighth Avenue hooker, but an Eighth Avenue hooker just the same.”