All That Glitters

by Danielle Steel

  He put an arm around Tamar when she came to stand next to him. She looked shyly at Coco in her chic black dress. Coco was as thin as she had been before the baby. Sam introduced them since they had never met before.

  “Hello, Tamar, how are you feeling?” she asked, referring to the pregnancy. She felt guilty, knowing how ardently she had tried to dissuade Sam from marrying Tamar, and she didn’t feel any differently seeing her now. She didn’t seem like the right match for him, with her strict Orthodox traditions he didn’t believe in, and the ugly wig, which didn’t look natural. She wondered if Sam’s daughters would have to wear them too, if they had any. And the boys yarmulkes. She was sure they would. According to Sam, Tamar kept a strict home. Like only the most religious Orthodox women, Tamar shaved her head and only took her wig off at night when she went to bed and then covered her head with a scarf. Only Sam was allowed to see her without the wig, for modesty. She wondered if Sam wore a yarmulke all the time now to please his wife, and hadn’t told Coco.

  “I feel better now,” Tamar answered Coco in a small voice. “I was pretty sick in the beginning, though.” She was five months pregnant, and was wearing a shapeless black dress that was too long for her. Everything about her seemed so colorless and dull. There was nothing exciting about her, but that was what Sam said he wanted. Stability, someone solid.

  On his own, Sam was so much more sophisticated and worldly, and modern, but not with Tamar at his side. All Coco could see now as she looked at him was that he was trapped, stifled by traditions he didn’t like, surrounded by people who wanted to hold him back, and married to a woman who wanted to surround him with children he wasn’t ready for. She wanted to grab Sam by the hand and run out the door with him to freedom. He had given it up to marry Tamar because she was a “nice person.” That didn’t seem like enough. His sacrifice seemed larger than life to Coco, personified by his drab wife.

  Coco stayed for two hours, talking quietly to Sam, and then said goodbye to Mrs. Stein. Tamar was sitting next to her. She looked like her daughter as they sat there. There was a small amount of sweet kosher wine being served, and everyone at the table had a glass. She and Sam had gotten drunk on a bottle of Manischewitz once, at fifteen. He stole it after Shabbat, and walked to her house carrying it in his jacket. It tasted like grape juice to Coco, and she drank too much of it and Sam had to sneak her into the apartment without her parents seeing them.

  Sam rode down in the elevator with her to get her a cab, and they stood on the sidewalk talking for a few minutes. The memorial at the synagogue was the next morning.

  “Does she wear a wig all the time?” Coco asked him, curious, and he nodded.

  “Except in bed with me. It’s considered modest. No one is supposed to see her hair except me. She’s very religious so she shaves her head, and she wears a scarf in bed. I’m used to it now.” One could get used to anything, Coco thought, but traditions that made young women look old and dreary seemed so unnecessary. There certainly was no glamour in Sam’s life, and very little beauty. They knew now that they were having a boy, which in some ways was a relief. Everyone was happy for them.

  “Maybe our kids will get married someday.” Coco smiled at him as they stood on the sidewalk in the chill November air. He wasn’t wearing a topcoat over his suit.

  “It’s going to be strange not seeing my father every day at the office,” Sam said with sadness in his voice. “Who will I fight with at work?” There were tears in his eyes, and they spilled onto his cheeks as she took him into her arms and held him.

  “You’ll get used to it. I promise. I felt that way about Mom and Dad at first, and then one day they just feel like they’re part of you, and they’re inside you and not outside.” He nodded, hoping she was right. “What will the service be like tomorrow?”

  “Long. The women and men don’t sit together. They sit separately in shul. Men and women didn’t dance together at our wedding. I wanted to, and our families wouldn’t allow it. There was supposed to be a divider, but Tamar’s family insisted on separate rooms for the men and women for dancing.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of all this?” she asked him. “Of everyone making the rules for you?” Her mother’s words were still echoing in her head too.

  “All the time, but this is how it has to be. It’s what is expected of me and what I signed on for. It’s familiar to me, Coco. It doesn’t shock me the way it does you.” But it still shocked her, and his family seemed much more strict and religious now than when they’d gone to grade school together, or maybe she just hadn’t noticed. Sam had said that his father occasionally ate non-kosher things too, but never told Sam’s mother. And now he was gone, and the poor woman was going to be alone. At least Sam had Tamar and they would have a family, and a baby to compensate for the loss.

  “Has Ian surfaced again?” he asked her. He was impressed that she was dating him, although he was another flash guy who was never going to be there for her and said so.

  “He came back a few weeks ago. He was in London the whole time and never called me,” she said wistfully. “He was writing.”

  “He’s never going to be what you want, Coco. Be careful that he doesn’t take up space and keep you from meeting anyone real who might be there full-time. Relationships like that are dangerous. They feed you enough to keep you satisfied and closed off to other people, when they’re not really there in the way you want them to be. They take up real estate without being candidates for a life together.”

  “That describes it perfectly. But I don’t want anyone else right now anyway.”

  “You never will if you create a world specially designed for him, tailor-made.”

  “He’s brilliant, Sam.”

  “I know he is, but he’s not eligible for real life. He doesn’t want that.” She nodded. Ian said it himself, but his mind was so intoxicating and addictive to be around. She was hooked, and she didn’t care how little of him she got. It was always enough, and so much better and more interesting than what she’d have gotten from anyone else.

  He hailed a cab for her then, to cross the park to her parents’ apartment. She and Sam used to try to signal each other with mirrors catching the sunlight, but it had never worked, they were too far apart on opposite sides of the park. She had always been afraid that they’d burn Central Park down if the mirrors had worked.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, as she got into the cab and looked back at him with a smile. “Thank you for coming from London.”

  “I’d come from the moon if you needed me,” she reminded him. She wondered on the way home what their life would have been like if they had wound up together. Silly and fun, and crazy and smart. But it never could have happened. His mother would have killed her. No Christian girl was going to get her son. The idea of romance had never occurred to either one of them. They loved being best friends.

  * * *

  —

  The memorial service was at Congregation Ohab Zedek on the Upper West Side the next day. It was as long as Sam had said it would be. The cantor sang beautifully, and the congregants knew all the prayers. She stood quietly remembering his father, and her parents, and hoped they were in a better place where hearts didn’t get broken and people who loved each other didn’t lose each other, and no one got disappointed. She hoped that Bethanie and Sam’s son would make it a better world one day that was a little closer to Heaven than what they had now.

  * * *

  —

  Coco spent four days in New York, and didn’t visit his apartment again. She didn’t want to wear out her welcome with his mother, or crowd Tamar, who looked nervous when Coco was around.

  She and Sam met for a walk along Central Park West the night before she left. There was no reason for her to stay, and it made her too sad being at the apartment. It seemed so empty now, with both of her parents gone. London was a clean slate for her. It was easier.
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  “Do you think you’ll ever go back to school?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know that I need to. I’m enjoying the business with Leslie and it’s doing well. I can’t see myself in journalism anymore.”

  “I can’t see myself in accounting anymore either. But it’s my show now.”

  “Maybe you can make the changes you wanted to, and he wouldn’t let you.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping. Tamar said she’d help me, but she’ll be busy with the baby. My mom said she’d babysit. Sabra is having a baby too, but my mom wants nothing to do with them. She’s a stubborn woman. Rebecca is thinking about becoming a nun. That even shocked me. She’s more religious than my mother. I think my whole family is a little crazy,” he said, grinning. “I don’t think my mother would survive having a daughter who’s a nun.”

  “There were some very interesting Jewish activists who became nuns in World War II, like Saint Edith Stein. I was always fascinated by her. She saved a lot of people and died in Auschwitz. I thought she was much more worthy than the traditional saints. I read a book about her.”

  “At least you didn’t become a nun.” He smiled at her.

  “Maybe I should when Bethanie grows up. I can’t see myself in a traditional couple anymore. The ones you tell me I should be with bore me, and the intriguing, unusual guys, the flash, as you put it, burn you every time.”

  “Just make sure that Ian Kingston doesn’t burn you. I worry about that. He’s damaged and dangerous.”

  “Maybe that’s what makes him so interesting. Maybe I’m like that now too, after my parents, and Nigel, and having Bethanie on my own. I’m not exactly traditional anymore either.”

  “You’re reliable. I know I can always count on you. You’re just traditional enough for the right man. A little eccentricity adds some spice to life.” She couldn’t see how Tamar added spice to his. She was as spicy as rice pudding. But it was what he had chosen, and it was too late to challenge it now. She was a bright girl, she just had no personality and no style and he did. In biblical terms, Coco thought he was hiding his light under a bushel. And Tamar was the bushel. But it was no longer up to Coco to question it, with a baby on the way. He thanked her again for coming all the way from London.

  “Maybe I’ll come back and visit when you have the baby. I can’t wait to see him,” she said, and they hugged when she left him, and she waved from the cab as they drove away.

  She was awake for most of that night in her parents’ apartment, thinking about them, and looking at old pictures that were still in frames around the apartment. She put several of them in her suitcase to take with her. She didn’t know why, but when she left for London the next morning, with her baby, she had the feeling that she wouldn’t be back again, or not for a long time. She had finally accepted that her parents weren’t coming back again. They were gone. In a strange way it made her feel free.

  Chapter 15

  When Coco got back to London, Ian was eager to see her. He came over that night, and they made love for hours after Bethanie fell asleep. She was a good sleeper, and slept through most of the night. Coco loved being with her, and in spite of his claims of not liking children, Ian had fun with her too. He spoke to her as though she was a very small adult who did not speak the language but understood every word he was saying to her.

  He explained to her all about green tea and chandeliers, French wall sconces, and Chinese art, French cuisine versus pasta, and the value of the metric system. Sometimes she just stared at him, and gave a big belly laugh as though he was ridiculous, or highly amusing. Coco fully expected her to answer him one day with her own monologue.

  Ian spent Coco’s twenty-fifth birthday with her, and cooked her a magnificent dinner at his place and served Chateau Margaux with the meal, and Chateau d’Yquem with dessert. They’d left Bethanie with the nanny and gone away for a few romantic weekends, particularly one in Venice, where they went from one church to the next until their heads were reeling. He seemed to know all of them and every detail of their history. She learned more from him than she had in her art history classes at Columbia.

  They spent Christmas together since neither of them had anyone else to be with, and in January he disappeared again for two months to do some writing. She concentrated on Bethanie. The business kept her busy too. She knew that Ian would turn up before long, which he did, like the swallows returning in spring. He came and went, but the aura he left behind was so rich that she had no hunger for anyone else when she wasn’t with him. That was what Sam had warned her about. She was so well sated by Ian that she had no need for anyone else in his absence and no one could compare to him. He was unique and brilliant and a fabulous lover, and even three months wasn’t too long to wait for him. She didn’t pine for him. She hibernated, gathering strength and knowledge to share with him when he returned to fill her soul and her mind again.

  Sam and Tamar’s son was born in March, two weeks late, and poor Tamar labored for two days. She had complications after the birth, and Sam took care of both of them, and fell in love with the baby boy they named Nathan. His middle name was Isaac, for Sam’s father, according to Jewish tradition, using the name of a deceased family member.

  Coco went to Saint Petersburg in Russia with Ian in the spring when he surfaced again, and he had started giving her his manuscripts to read when he returned with the first draft. It was extraordinary sharing the process with him. He valued her opinion, and she was judicious and sparing with the comments she made. He was a masterful writer and it was an honor to read his new work.

  Without their noticing it, the time passed, and the years grew like a string of beads. Ian went to New York on business to see his publisher, and she went with him to see Sam, and eventually their second baby, Hannah. And then Ruth was born ten months later. Tamar was still helping him with the business but was too busy most of the time, and she got pregnant with their fourth baby just as quickly, another boy. Sam had changed his father’s business considerably and it wasn’t just an accounting firm now. He was a tax advisor to some hard-hitting clients, frequently referred by estate attorneys who respected him. His mother objected strenuously to any changes he made, and Tamar wasn’t sure of them either, but Sam had started to enjoy what he was doing when it became his business and he could mold it the way he wanted. It was his consolation prize for losing his father.

  * * *

  —

  There was never any question of Coco and Ian becoming an official couple, but they always stayed together when he wasn’t on one of his sabbaticals. He stayed at her house now, with his dog. Bruce lived in the kitchen or in the room Ian used as an office. Ian had had to give his sublet back to the Roman chef when he came to reclaim it. Ian had his own office in her house now, and he came and went as he chose without comment from her.

  They had been together for four years. Coco was twenty-eight, and Ian forty-five, and he stood in as a benevolent uncle to Bethanie. They still had long conversations over breakfast every day before she went to school. She called him Mr. Ian, as he had told her to, which was a joke between them, since he didn’t want to be her stand-in father, although in many ways he was, whether he admitted it or not. And Leslie and Coco had a chic office in Knightsbridge now, and ran a very successful business.

  Ian and Coco were just back from a weekend in Prague, and Coco found Bethanie listless when she got home. She was running a fever. She thought it was the flu, gave her some medicine to bring the fever down, but she was worse the next day. She called the pediatrician, and it persisted for a week. The doctor suggested Coco bring her in, and maybe run a few tests. It could be strep, mononucleosis, or a number of other things, or just a nasty virus. Coco drove her to the doctor on the fifth day. They did a blood draw. Coco took her for some ice cream and a balloon afterward, and Bethanie didn’t want to get out of the car.

  Ian reassured Coco that night, bu
t she didn’t like the way Bethanie looked. She worried about things like meningitis, but her pediatrician had reassured her that she’d be much sicker if she had that, or even dead by then, which sent chills down Coco’s spine.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Ian said when they went to bed that night, and in the morning there was no change. It was unnerving waiting for the test results. The doctor called when Coco was about to leave for work on Monday. She had a meeting and the nanny was there to be with Bethanie, who had stayed home from school again.

  The doctor sounded concerned when Coco answered the phone. “I don’t have good news,” she said. “Something turned up in the bloodwork that I didn’t expect.”

  “Meningitis?” Coco sounded panicked. Ian wasn’t back from the gym yet. He had errands to do that morning.

  “No. She has too many white blood cells and too few red blood cells. She could be showing the early signs of leukemia.” She said the words and Coco felt them like a knife piercing her heart. Bethanie had had a checkup recently with no sign of it. “I’d like to get her in to see an oncologist today if possible. We should get on this quickly.” Coco felt like she was going to faint and had to sit down.

  “Oh my God. How could that happen?”

  “It does. It’s the second case I’ve seen recently. I’ll call you back after I speak to the oncologist and find out when he can see you.”