A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel

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A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel Page 22

by Susannah Marren


  “I’m not sure that I…” I begin.

  “Something easier on James, Elodie,” Mimi says. “Appearances matter.”

  My mother and Mimi are almost melting into each other, like composites of faces shown in magazines. One can morph from a round face to a heart-shaped face. A person with a narrow chin and arched eyebrows might end up with flat cheeks, a wide chin, and sparse eyebrows. My mother and my mother-in-law together, complicit.

  “Absolutely not, not happening,” I say. “I won’t and Aubrey won’t. We’ve had enough exposure, enough is known, Mom.”

  Simon says nothing. He and Veronica exchange an old married, gotcha look. James turns to Mimi.

  “There you have it, Mom. We can’t dispute how she feels.”

  “Aubrey’s take on it, too,” I say. “I know how it is.”

  My mother shrugs, as if she has done her best. That’s when I realize what it’s about. She is wisely creating a sturdy new identity. Our baby will give her purpose; the involved-grandmother role is next. And needs some publicity, marketing.

  Waitstaff scurry around; diners’ voices float toward us and upward toward the coffered ceiling. The clinking of glasses and tapping of their cutlery against their dishes seems screechy. No one at our table speaks for a moment.

  I excuse myself and walk to the ladies’ room. At Justine’s it is elegant, the monogrammed hand towels, the frosted lighting, the fresh roses. Mouthwash, makeup mirrors. I look at myself and see Alice. Alice as she is in the pictures she’s sent. At an amusement park with her children. At dinner with her husband. Her chin and jawline, her eyeteeth and mine.

  “Elodie? Elodie?” James knocks on the door; he’s never done that.

  I open it three inches. “Aren’t you going to Naples tomorrow?”

  He pauses. “Is that worrying you? I’m flying with Darnay in his new plane. The flight is remarkably short.”

  I come out to where he stands. “James, I’d like to go.”

  “Go? Why? What’s in Naples?”

  “Is there room for me?”

  “I’ll text Darnay. What about your work? What is it you want to do?”

  “An author. A woman in her fifties who is coming out with the most amazing memoir. She lives there and we’ve been in touch. I know I can make an arrangement on short notice. An opportunity, off-season, to meet her.” I lie easily; I will do just about anything for this to happen.

  I’m credible enough that James is already on his cell, asking Darnay, his client and close friend. He clicks off.

  “You’re in. Who knows, maybe you need a day out of town.”

  I quickly, semisecretly text my other half sister, Alice. I can come tomorrow!

  “I’m happy to go.” I finally smile at my husband.

  James asks nothing. He puts his arms around me.

  A streak of lightning comes across the South Florida sky.

  CHAPTER 29

  ELODIE

  Egrets and grackles, birds that favor the grounds of the Literary Society, fly over the wings of the Falcon 7X, the sleekest private jet. On the tarmac, the ground crew are signaling one another, their jumpsuits flapping against their bodies in the morning breeze. I settle into my plush, creamy leather window seat.

  Although I’ve been on private aircraft with James in the past, mostly I’ve been on such jets with my father. When I was in high school, Simon flew with investors and partners to Denver, Dallas, and Cleveland. If there were meetings in New York, he sometimes scheduled them on a Friday so the family could go along. When I looked at colleges, he arranged for us to fly privately, hitching rides on a friend’s jet. The smooth circus act of the Veronica and Simon Show flourished in those days—marriage, success, looks, daughters. On paper, we were winning, stellar.

  “This author—it can’t be accomplished with a conference call?”

  My husband who never asks why and where I go, suddenly inquisitive last night. Or worse, disbelieving.

  “Yes, it could,” I had said. “Somehow I’d rather do it in person. It’s for my Florida series next winter; I’d like her to be part of it.”

  * * *

  Darnay comes onto his jet and claps James on the back. Friends from the “B” school days; Darnay’s hedge fund is one of James’s biggest investors in ANVO.

  “Elodie, I don’t remember the last time I saw you.” Darnay kisses me on both sides of my face. With his honed Palm Beach affect, he is tan in that healthy, friendly mode.

  “Darnay! Thank you for the lift, a last-minute ride,” I say.

  “Of course. You aren’t meeting someone clandestine, are you?” He laughs at his own joke.

  “An author, she’s seeing an author.” James’s voice sounds like he’s practicing scales and has no talent.

  “Your Falcon X, Darnay! I love it. What a gazelle of a jet. Poetry in air,” I say.

  “I waited God knows how long for it. This is our first year. Cece has only been on it once.”

  “I see Cece at the Literary Society and we keep talking about rescheduling a dinner,” I say.

  “You know Cece with that calendar—the girls, after school, weekends, holidays. At six and four years old, the girls are overextended!” He laughs at this. We, too, laugh, stop. Does James recall that I canceled the last dinner plan with them the week of my miscarriage?

  The three of us remain by my seat. The area seems very air conditioned; the freshest air ever on a jet wriggles around us.

  “Does your husband tell you how I admire your father?” Darnay says. “When I was a college kid in Palm Beach, long before James and I met, everyone talked about Simon Cutler. After his golf games at the Harbor Club, he’d be on the club phone, you know, the one they’d drag out with extension cords. Your father would be giving orders like no one I’d ever seen. Very collected—what a guy.”

  A rush of guilt and sorrow encases me. I can’t really be speaking about what an unforgettably cool guy Simon is at the moment. Not with Alice waiting once we land. But on James’s second pinch to my elbow, I muster up an acknowledgment.

  “That’s my father,” I say. “You’re too kind, Darnay.”

  Darnay looks around. “Okay, we are about to take off. May I borrow your husband for the flight? To prepare for our meeting.”

  “Of course.” I am relieved.

  “Is your phone on airplane mode?” James asks as he follows Darnay.

  I nod, covering the screen with my hand, protecting my texts. I slip it into my bag, which is only half under my seat. No one seems to quite follow rules when flying on a private plane. I haven’t felt like this since my high school boyfriend, Stuart, first kissed me. Or more recently, it must be how my friends Beezy and Linnie felt when they began their affairs. The tug to meet Alice is spellbinding. I might go through the sealed door and tumble from the sky to her. What if it isn’t the same for her? What if she is meeting me as she’d meet a friend, an acquaintance? What if she is only willing to chat the way women do at BrickTop’s or Pizza al Fresco, light, easy conversations? Why do I conjure up days to spend with Alice? A sense I get from our phone calls, our traded pictures, our earlobes, which are scarily the same, that we both love Galway Kinnell and Patricia Highsmith.

  I ought to text Aubrey and see if the baby is kickboxing in utero this morning. Instead, I peer out the window as we cut above the clouds. Being in the air, alone in my wide seat, is exhilarating. We are high enough from Earth, I am an astronaut in a spaceship of my own making, on my own puzzling voyage.

  If Veronica knew my plan, my duplicity, she would beseech me not to take this step. Do not harm your father, she would implore me. Protect him, please. There would be much back-and-forth about what I owe the parents who raised me.

  If Simon were the one to ask me not to go to Alice, he would be more cryptic. He would say that Veronica needed to be shielded, and he would compare Aubrey’s lack of investigation with mine. He would probe for the logic while hoping that I skip it altogether.

  Both my parents would say, Co
me back. Don’t go to her. Don’t start this. Yet it cannot be held up, it has to begin.

  * * *

  While the Uber driver heads to the Ritz-Carlton, Naples, I take my iPhone out and tap the camera, then hit the icon to study my face from my clavicle upward. Could my neck possibly be crepey, my eyes that puffy? I have to look good, because Alice will, because she is the touchstone, our meeting is the game changer.

  The hotel works for our plan. Being public makes the idea of us easier: If we run into someone—anyone on either side—it’s a neutral place, where people congregate for myriad reasons. I rush into the main lobby and search for a ladies’ room. “Dark Horse,” by Katy Perry, is playing throughout the hotel, a song Aubrey would appreciate. Not yet eleven, I have a few minutes to primp and fuss. Because this connection is of another order, a seduction beyond what I know, I squint in the mirror and scrutinize. I’ve not fussed with hair, lipstick, the angles of my face like this since the day I married James. As a product of the Veronica and Simon Show, I assumed I’d be safe from that day onward. Wasn’t James a bona fide catch? Hadn’t I followed the script?

  * * *

  At Gumbo Limbo, the Ritz’s outdoor restaurant, I choose a table on the porch, half covered by the overhead, facing the Gulf of Mexico. No sun, magnificent views. I get my bearings. My head circles my body, my body circles my head as I search for Alice. Women are coming in, some in T-shirts and cropped pants, others in colorful shifts, mothers and daughters, older women in groups. I turn my ringer on silent and, with my front teeth, bite off a chip of Benadryl Allergy—maybe four milligrams’ worth—and hope it won’t make me sleepy. I’m itchy; it could be our get-together or the first whiff of salsa or ceviche floating from the kitchen, pollen blowing about. In my vintage DVF khaki wrap dress and wedge sandals, the effect is neutral. Stashed in my bag is a cashmere cotton-blend cardigan that Veronica bought me before my first miscarriage, before I began at the Literary Society. Isn’t that how my life is, divided into a before-and-after syllabus?

  * * *

  Alice is silhouetted as she walks into Gumbo Limbo. We wave, then she walks to the table, shoulders back, like Veronica has taught me. The same height, gait, weight, amount of space between our upper lips and our noses. We have the kind of eyebrows that need pencil, but only a little; the kind of forehead that goes with hair swept off, hair swept sideways. Our voices are that same pitch. She has long, light blondish brown hair. What isn’t physical—our worldview, our moral core—is implicit. The two of us are more than a shocking discovery; we are the same, the same, the same.

  I stand up and we do a bungled hug. We are seated and take each other in.

  “At last!” I say.

  “I am so glad that you came.” Alice smiles.

  More searching each other’s faces. We have that see-through skin; small veins show on our temples. Each of us has a cowlick in the middle of her hairline; we have long fingers and slim wrists. Her eyes, like mine, are wide apart and hazel—a shade starlets wanted before tinted lenses came to be. We have these skinny necks, the kind the villain strangles in horror films. It’s scary; it’s a homecoming.

  We take off and put on our sunglasses, like we’re mimes in the same act.

  “I couldn’t wait,” I say.

  We smile more; it’s awkward. Beyond falling for a man, leaving a man, missing a man, and finding him again.

  “I brought a list.” Alice opens her bag and takes out her iPhone and a small tablet and pen.

  “No way. I did, too.” I take out my Smythson pink leather notebook.

  I feel the hourglass starting, our time together already ransomed. Alice tips her head back and laughs.

  “Right, the checklist, what we haven’t communicated through email.” I look at my notes.

  “You already know I have two older brothers. I’ve always wanted a sister,” she says.

  “I know you’re eight months older, that you’re married.”

  “You know my girls are six, twins, Luca and Mia, and my son, Henry, is three.”

  “I have no children.”

  She nods. “I do know.”

  I ought to tell her about Aubrey, yet I wait. Alice looks at her list. “Mostly we’ve talked about our taste in books, art, film, and plays—dramas, not musicals.”

  I smile. “Everything from Shakespeare to Elizabeth Barrett Browning to the Brontës. Oh, and Hamilton and Carousel.”

  “La Bayadere, too. That seems the easiest part.” Alice clicks her pen. “You wanted to know how I got to Naples. I came back kicking and screaming. I married an accountant whose father was an accountant here. We grew up together. Naples wasn’t exciting, but it was the logical step. We moved back from Northern California seven years ago. I began teaching kindergarten, then after these rough spots with infertility, I took a leave and had my twins.”

  “Clomid?” I ask. What hasn’t been disclosed and isn’t searchable.

  “Yes, although I never say. I kept miscarrying.”

  “I know the feeling. I’ve had miscarriages, plenty of that and on Clomid.”

  Alice frowns, concerned. Texts start coming in.

  The first is from James: All good? I quickly text back: Yes. When a text comes in from Aubrey with a selfie—Last round of baggy clothes—I force myself to text back: Yes, great. When a text bings not a minute later from my mother—Breakers at noon tomorrow?—I send nothing back. I have become unfaithful to everyone, but mostly to my sister. Sitting with Alice is an addiction, isn’t it? What are those phrases people use before someone is lost to them—at a precipice, a moth to a flame?

  Images of Aubrey clutter my head. Aubrey crawling into my bed at night for years on end, until I left for college, confiding first about the mean girls and then about the bad boys. Aubrey winning the science prize for the state of Florida and not caring a fig, while I slogged away at Princeton for every A I earned. Aubrey, who is and was ethereal, objectified since she was in third grade. Aubrey, who seems content to be carrying a baby. A shocking revelation at that.

  I take a deep breath.

  “My sister Aubrey is carrying our baby, a girl. Her egg, James’s sperm. She’s due in September.”

  “Why, that’s phenomenal, Elodie,” Alice says. “You’ll have a little girl! She must be a terrific sister.”

  “I wonder if I should have done it. I mean, at first I was relieved and happy. My husband, James, is excited, my mother, mother-in-law. Ever since I found out about the DNA, about us, I’ve concentrated less on the baby, to be honest. It’s intricate.”

  “Aren’t you happy? My children are the best part of my life. It makes me realize how desperate our parents were. I can relate to that. I did the same for my girls, you did it for your daughter,” Alice says. Something my mother or Mimi might have said, and I would have been offended.

  “During the pregnancy, I’ve worried if my sister ever had a drink, smoked a cigarette.” I can’t believe I’m telling her this.

  “Someone who would agree to carry a baby for you wouldn’t put herself in harm’s way, would she?”

  I know she is right, that Aubrey is wary, that having children is meaningful. I won’t admit how being childless too long, eyeing my friends with their babies, has made me ambivalent, a closet skeptic.

  “At first it surprised me that she would do this for me. Quite a gift.”

  Alice smiles like I used to smile—ages ago. “And soon you’ll have your baby.”

  The server with a name tag, Todd, comes to take our order while I sip a latte. Alice holds up her forefinger and he backs away.

  “About your father, who raised you.” I look at my notes. “Is that on your list?”

  “Yes, yes. My social father,” Alice says.

  “Your ‘social father,’ was he good with your brothers?” I ask.

  “Totally, the boys were his. After they were born, my dad caught the mumps and became infertile. My mother wanted more kids, she wanted a girl. When my father died two years ago—too young—my mother
was relieved to tell me that I didn’t have his DNA. What about your father?”

  I shake my head. “Both my parents were indignant, angry at us for learning about the sperm donor.”

  “Really?” She is surprised.

  “For me, the disclosure was a good thing,” I say. “There was this family, yet no matter what I did, how I tried to match my father, it didn’t feel like a fit. Did you have that?” I say.

  “I did and I didn’t. I mean, it was a divided family. The boys belonged to my dad, while I was more for my mother. I thought it was because he was sexist—I sort of accepted it. Now I know it was because I really wasn’t his.”

  “But growing up?”

  Alice looks at her list. “Right, I was going to ask you that, too.” She sighs. “My father was kind to me, loving. We were close. I never put it together until…”

  I nod. “I know, until you found out.”

  “It was imperceptible and mostly it was my mother who drew the distinctions. I was their child. I didn’t doubt it,” Alice says.

  “In our family it was another story. My father has done very well and he was always busy with work. Our mother worked, too, but she had time and she fussed over my sister and me. I wanted to please them. Where I went to school, my marriage.”

  “I always trusted my father,” Alice says. “I revered him.”

  “Do you feel like you’ve betrayed him with the DNA kits, with meeting me?” I ask.

  “No, no.” Alice’s tone is light, confident. “Had he not died, maybe they would have kept the secret—like your parents tried to do.”

  The two of us look out over the Gulf of Mexico. The waves are mild compared to the Atlantic. “Vanderbilt Beach, isn’t it?” I ask.

  “Yes, with gumbo-limbo trees, flora and fauna you can see in the water.”

  “Do you bring your children here?” I ask.

  “I do. We came as kids to the beach, Samuel, my husband, and I,” she says. More quasi-waves hit the shore. She opens her bag and takes out a Revlon lipstick. I open my bag and take out the same one. “Rum Raisin,” I say.

 

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