A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel

by Susannah Marren

  Out of nowhere the wind picks up. Although I’ve been in Palm Beach my entire life, I’ve never adjusted to the sound of the ocean that carries onto land. Or that it happens no matter which side of the island you’re on, Intracoastal or by the sea. The shoreline has gone dark and is hardly discernible in the moonlight. I shiver.

  “So what about dinner—a quick bite in town? We can take one car and drop you back.” I wait for Aubrey to decide.

  “That’s fine,” Aubrey says. “Perfect.”

  * * *

  Again the moonless night as we wind down the A1A to Buccan. James’s BMW 5 sedan purrs with Aubrey at the wheel.

  “You two are quite a pair of sisters.” Tyler, in the passenger seat, turns to me.

  “Just the two of them,” James adds.

  “I have two sisters—both back in Portland—and I’m in the middle. They’re like Aubrey and Elodie, thick as thieves,” Tyler says.

  “Did you read about that study on siblings a few years ago? In The Atlantic?” I ask.

  “I read it!” Aubrey says. “I knew you’d have seen it, too!”

  “I kept thinking that for sisters it’s a more profound connection. Here’s the question: If you’re in a sinking boat and there’s only one life vest, do you give it to your husband or your sister?”

  “Exactly the right question!” Aubrey says.

  “Evolutionary psychology provides the answer,” James offers.

  “What?” Aubrey says.

  “It does,” James insists. “Because we’re adaptive. If you think about it, your DNA is more important than a marriage. The sister will save her sister to preserve their genes.” James is doing that brainy, nerdy bit to which he occasionally succumbs.

  “Hey, could be the sister likes her sister and not her husband,” Tyler says.

  “Or you could argue that your spouse matters more, since when you got married, you left the family of origin,” I say. “There is the idea that loyalty shifts from the family that raised you to the new family or marriage, the family of procreation.”

  “Oh, Elodie, it’s fine.” Aubrey laughs. “You would save James. James would get the life vest.”

  “Eh, who gives a damn, really. I mean, maybe all three are strong swimmers—no need for the one life vest,” Tyler says.

  “Right, in a perfect world the strong swimming would save the day,” Aubrey says. “You wouldn’t have to choose.”

  CHAPTER 5

  ELODIE

  Rain clouds darken the A1A as I drive home from the Literary Society. Although it’s only six o’clock, floodlights from private homes shine over an opaque ocean. I pass El Brillo, where my parents live, and to the south the pink towers of Mar-a-Lago are the only illumination in a murky sky.

  James is waiting on the flagstone steps, as if he has time to spare. The scenario is unfamiliar and my first instinct is to panic. Until I see how happily he holds a food basket with gold and green ribbons.

  “Wow, who arranged this?” I ask when I pull up to our house—the home we have lived in for almost seven years.

  “Justine’s prepares and delivers. I thought we’d try it out. Your sister reminded me last night that you love prepared food.”

  “True,” I say. “But Christina could have cooked tonight. You didn’t have to order dinner.”

  Christina, my parents’ housekeeper, who comes to clean twice a week for us, has been especially disheartened by my miscarriage. She had promised that her second cousin, who is a trained nanny, would take care of our baby. To this end, Christina has been among those I’ve avoided these past few weeks.

  James unlocks our front door. “Only the two of us. No interference—an empty kitchen.”

  I wrap my arms around his neck and we kiss.

  “Is there some gift box after this?” I ask.

  “No, there isn’t,” James replies.

  “How unlike husbands in the area,” I say.

  “Right, no assistant from my office has gone on the Avenue to get you a link bracelet from Seaman Schepps.”

  We kiss again.

  * * *

  After he unpacks the basket, he begins arranging dinner in a purposeful way. He transfers the zucchini and yellow squash into a large bowl. I walk past him toward the double sink, where he has placed a bouquet of deep-violet pansies, marigolds, and primroses, late-autumn/early-winter colors. Suddenly the granite island in our kitchen, the honey-colored hardwood floors, the double doors that lead to the terrace and pool—our entire home—feel dear to me. Why do we need another house—why did I sign up for building a grander, finer version? Not only Katie, but my friend Nina has already completed her upgraded house. She and her husband were enmeshed during the construction—more so than on their wedding day or when their children were born, she says.

  “Not that it lasts,” Nina said when she heard about the property we bought. “It was our joint venture; then there’s an emptiness. I don’t even go to the Literary Society for lectures on the architecture, because the house is built. And get this: My girls miss the old house, where they shared a bathroom. Chaz and I tell them this is bigger, better for our family. I’m not sure they believe it.”

  Our endeavor loops us in a singular pattern, too. The house has a life of its own, and while I was undergoing in vitro, James and I had begun to speak in shorthand about change orders, vintage Belgian door handles, and crown moldings. Less about the family part, the nesting part.

  “Higher Love,” by Steve Winwood, plays on our Sphaeron Excalibur system. James raises the volume a notch and leads me in a dance. We dance around the kitchen and I remember what a fine dancer he is, how strong his arms are, how straight his back is. He knows the steps for real; I fudge well.

  “I don’t know when we last did that alone and not at a party,” I say.

  “We are now.” He puts his mouth close to my ear.

  I want to cling to this, the two of us. Without ANVO, in vitro, the board at the Literary Society, little children lurking about.

  James glides back to the counter, places radicchio and endive on two salad plates, sprinkling walnuts from a small glass jar that Justine’s has included. I remember our baby’s face in the sonogram, her mouth shaped like an O, her tiny chin.

  * * *

  “The couscous was delicious,” I say an hour later. “It’s sweet of you to have arranged it.”

  He smiles politely. The dance segment of the evening has waned. James stops eating and stands up, tugging on his shirt collar with his left hand.

  “Elodie, I’ve thought it through.”

  “Thought what through?” I hope we’re about to focus on the house, an incident at ANVO, or my plan to bring the Ukrainian-born mother and daughter poets to the Literary Society. I’m prepared to describe how this afternoon Mrs. A. insisted on “tried-and-true fiction” from the eighties and selected two Danielle Steele books, when I was recommending The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I dread any other discussion. That includes our calendar for the season, since I’m not ready to breeze into every party yet. Being back at work is both a panacea and a staggering feat.

  Snatching our dinner plates, James clears and piles them in the sink. I’d make a light remark about how few times he has cleared a table or loaded a dishwasher, except I sense the weight of his next lines. I know he is going to talk again about a baby.

  I jump up to help out—something my mother would do and my married friends might do, depending on the circumstance. Because tonight most of them, like our parents, are en route to the Norrics’ on Island Drive for their party, which we have politely nixed.

  James scrapes the food into the garbage, then faces me, leaning against the counter.

  “I have an idea, Elodie,” he says. “I realized there’s a solution. We can ask Aubrey. Let’s see if she’ll do it for us.”

  “Ask Aubrey what?”

  “It should be Aubrey’s egg,” James says calmly.

  “Aubrey’s egg?” My mouth almost glues shut. I’m speaking through a
stifling layer, a residue. I repeat, “Aubrey’s egg?”

  “Aubrey as the traditional surrogate. That’s how I see it. Her egg, my sperm through artificial insemination.” James’s voice is lucid. He keeps going. “I wish we had figured it out earlier, but this is where we are. Your sister carries the closest DNA to your own. She looks like you and has your IQ. You’re so close, you’re simpatico.”

  I walk to the window of our sliding glass door; the exterior lights illuminate the patio. I cough twice.

  “Aubrey? I mean really? Aubrey’s egg and another woman carrying the baby?”

  “No, not that. Aubrey would be the surrogate. It’s not done as much anymore, yet easier. Like I said, there’d be in vitro and that would be it. She’d be pregnant with our child. There’d be no hiring a gestational carrier, a random woman.”

  What he is recommending is unthinkable. Yet my husband has put great thought into the idea. I know to measure my response, not to blurt out, This is absurd, desperate.

  “And we’d have some kind of control over Aubrey? Isn’t she a bit unreliable, a little too hip to be asked? Aubrey does what she wants. How can we ask her?”

  Wasn’t I the one who brought my little sister to where she is today? From push-up bras to Edith Wharton, Gloria Steinem, Bobbi Brown eyeliner, mean girls at the Academy, birth control in high school, I’ve been her guide and protector. I taught her how to be, such specific lessons that she is the quintessential cool girl.

  “You know you’d see her almost every day.” James comes to the window, stands beside me. “I bet she’d be in Palm Beach more. She’d rise to the occasion, I know it. She’d quit clubbing to protect our child. It’s not work for hire; she’s your sister and she’d have a genetic stake in it.”

  “A genetic stake would matter to her less than the sacrifice. How could it not be that? Look at what the ask is,” I say.

  “You love each other, Elodie. I haven’t seen sisters more connected. She would do anything for you.”

  “Would she? How do you know? Until now there’s never been talk of a test.”

  There is an image of Aubrey walking with her friends in their miniskirts and Converse sneakers on Clematis Street when she was only thirteen. It was Christmas break. I was secretly following her, a half block behind, my eyes glued to her head. Just in case she needed me to fend off lecherous males or for some extra cash.

  I shake my head. “Beyond the idea of asking Aubrey, which seems selfish and unfair and complicated, she has a boyfriend, she cares about him. She finally has this job, this career. Besides that, what you call a connection will change what she and I have. Our essence.”

  “I don’t believe that,” James says.

  How convincing James is when he pushes for what he wants most.

  “James, it seems plain weird.”

  “Weird?”

  “Say that I thought it was a good idea, that it worked for us, James, how can I ask my sister to give up everything that’s hers for your sperm and her egg?”

  “Our baby,” James sighs. Now again, he must be thinking how I’ve failed, put us in such a position. I wait for him to dispel this, flip it out of his consciousness so I feel less awful.

  “Except…” I begin.

  “Sure, she’ll be giving up some superficial things, but look at what she would be doing.”

  “What she would be doing for us, James. I mean, Aubrey’s feet don’t touch the ground. The collective lie, the one my parents tell, is that Aubrey will be back to live a mile from us. Some bullshit about her studying for a degree in musicology in Miami, that it’s the only thing that keeps her there—seventy-five miles from Palm Beach.”

  A degree she might or might not pursue. Every time my mother talks about my sister, her voice drops a decibel and she purses her lips. Don’t we wonder if Aubrey is more capable than she lets on?

  James waits because he and I know that my mother lies about me as well. When she’s at cards or shopping at Vintage Tales, she will say, if asked, that I’m not interested in a baby. She’ll play up the house we’re building instead, what charities James and I favor. I cannot fathom my mother’s take on James’s strategy, how she would navigate the rumors, the disbelief, Palm Beach judgments and chatter. If this were to happen, my mother would be protecting both her daughters—for their shared decision.

  “We’ve talked about my mother already. We’ve been through this. Besides, two sisters, one baby—it’s irrational. On every level, from how it would happen to living in town while it happens.”

  “You know, your dad might like the concept. He can be narcissistic, someone who would respond to the genetic bond.” James is insistent.

  “Aubrey wouldn’t agree to such a crazy idea, never.”

  “Aubrey will be giving you the greatest gift anyone can give. A baby! Our baby!” More insistence.

  I imagine Aubrey at this hour with Tyler. Prancing to a tune that’s favored at the clubs in Miami. “Something About Her,” by the Kents, or Everywhere’s “Some Other Dude,” perhaps. Less classic rock, more indie pop. Lyrics that do not espouse a love that could elevate—take us above the rest. Milling about, mingling with the crowd until their band goes onstage. She’s in one of her old Hervé Léger minidresses, which cling to her body, and wearing Pour la Victoire stilettos, purchased at a secondhand shop. Perhaps they’ll head next to the Rockcellar, where it fills up steadily, arriving before the second set.

  “Elodie, it makes sense. Think about it, the idea of it.”

  I’m at the kitchen table. James comes close and kneels beside me. His eyes are near enough to mine that his love and appreciation are reflected back at me.

  “Elodie, it could work for us. Aubrey is like my little sister. She is your little sister. We love her. What could go wrong?”

  “Do you know what I’ve learned, James? Something I never needed to know. How at risk a woman is when she is trying to get pregnant. When she is pregnant.”

  “Aubrey is younger, she is in fine shape.”

  “I realize that, intellectually. What if she gets sick, what if the baby isn’t okay?”

  Instinctively, I move away from him, stretching my spine.

  “Why not at least run it by Aubrey?” he asks.

  Run it by Aubrey? Sort of like shopping for boots at a designer sale together. Do they suit me? Do they suit you? Here, you take them. No, no. You’re my sister, you should have them. We could share them. Like that?

  My husband comes close yet he doesn’t take my hand, kiss my face. I remember when I was in fifth grade and Aubrey was in preschool. We would visit our grandparents in New York and our grandfather would take us to Central Park. The sparrows would flit about and we’d break and scatter Aubrey’s animal crackers. We hoped the pigeons wouldn’t force their way in, devouring our crumbs. Aubrey begged to touch the sparrows. She wanted to take them with her, while I flinched if they came near our feet, near the trail we had made. Am I not maternal and Aubrey is?

  “You’ll at least ask her. Elodie?”

  Aubrey’s profile last night, outlined and in shadow, the sound of the Intracoastal lapping against our new, unknown neighbor’s dock. How easily she escaped with Tyler to the life they might have together. How dare we intrude? How could we?

  “You’ll consider it?” James persists.

  “James, listen…”

  “We need to do this.”

  “Sure, I’ll ask,” I lie.

  Because in the moment I doubt that I will.

  CHAPTER 6

  AUBREY

  At midnight Tyler and I are ushered past the rope line at Pascha’s. We shake hands with Marco, the bouncer, and step inside. The club is magnetic tonight—the three tiered dance floors, the scene, the music furiously loud. VIP customers are being seated and served, while those who didn’t buy the package are treated like they don’t exist. Left of us two “girls” about my age—my sister would call them “young women”—are passing a packet while looking around for someone or something. Eve
ryone who stands, crushed together, is trying to figure out who gets what at this club tonight. Some of the women use their iPhones to check their lip gloss, blush, false eyelashes. Most have long hair, but a few have bobs or punk cuts. Who isn’t tattooed—at least on her shoulder, forearm, ankle? Plenty wear tight, short dresses, short shorts, boots or stilettos. Some seem more in a hurry—like they’re at a flea market where the best stalls are emptied fast. They assess the men, perhaps in search of the ones with day jobs, money earners, who graze the clubs at night. These men seem aloof; they hold drinks or beer bottles while walking slowly around the perimeters.

  Beyond are those who come only for the show, buy tickets, relish the songs. Plenty like that fill the venue. Their bodies shift impatiently. Despite the AC, the room smells of damp skin, sweat, and perfume. Voices float upward between sets: babes, rooftop … not tonight … no jazz … white powder, pearls, Ecstacy.

  “Feels good, right? A good vibe,” Tyler says. “Sold out.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “They’re here for the partying and the music. Better than on weekends.”

  Out of nowhere, more dancing starts. Othello D, the DJ, is moving genres around, reggae, hip-hop, salsa. Soon the group will go on. Dirk O—Tyler’s favorite band among his clients, a pop rock group whose music reminds me of Maroon 5. There is this retro feel; they use synthesizers.

  Tyler puts his mouth to my ear, runs his hands across my body, and whispers, “I’d like to take you home about now.”