A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel

by Susannah Marren

  “So that explains your Palm Beach lifestyle,” I say.

  “It does,” Veronica says. “Warm weather, beauty, outdoor sports, successful husbands. It sort of fed our marriage. What I had … why I was okay is that I had my daughters.”

  “We’re fine, Mom,” Aubrey says.

  “Are we?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Aubrey says, “we are absolutely okay.”

  “I was never smart enough, was I, Mom?”

  “Of course you were. Look at what you’ve accomplished, Elodie.”

  “I wasn’t smart enough no matter that I went to Dad’s schools and had the same accolades.”

  “You weren’t his,” Aubrey says. “I mean, in that way. But you are his, we are his.” That’s how deep it goes—Aubrey stating the obvious. The obvious that we’ve each avoided.

  “That would be okay with you, wouldn’t it, Aubrey?”

  “I’m sorry?” my sister says.

  “Yes, it would be okay; it would be enough that you aren’t his biological daughter. Because you never tried to be like him,” I say. “While I did.”

  “I am like Dad; I’m the part that’s more dreamy. That’s why he’s patient with me.”

  “That’s why?” I ask.

  “Girls, please,” Veronica chides. “Don’t do this. If Dad has treated you differently, it is because you came at a different time in his life. He had become very prominent with his work by the time Aubrey was born. He was more open to the idea of a sperm donor. He wanted two children.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We love you, Mom, we love Dad,” Aubrey says.

  I want to say, Please shut the fuck up. I don’t mention how mercurial he is, how he gives and takes—how he is a cold man.

  “No one talks about Vietnam, about the men,” Veronica says.

  The past few months, since 23andMe, our mother has made the case repeatedly that Dad was entitled to his whims—he had been harmed in the Vietnam War.

  “I tried to be part of the crowd, to be a couple whom people sought out. I thought being here, living in this house…” Mom views the gardens and bougainvillea, the infinity pool, water views in both directions. “I thought if we had the right life, it could be our reality. Why not, in this town?”

  Veronica, a young woman who loved a man. She expected him home in one piece, and he returned to the outside world as such. Her disclosure is shocking; she has carried it for decades. I’d like to be in the Aubrey phase—completely sympathetic. Except somehow I’m too close to Simon’s experience. If I’m distancing myself from this family, the one I was raised in, it is how he does it. Except that I have an alternate universe with Alice. It isn’t like sitting here, beleaguered yet serene. If anything, Veronica’s avowal, the weight of it, makes me want to learn about my bio father rather than deal with my mother’s regret. Hers is gut-wrenching, maybe contagious.

  “Stop this goddamn plan,” James has pleaded with me in the days since I met Alice, after he found her on my iPhone. Not that he and I check each other’s iPhones or that we lack a faith in each other. Still, after the Naples trip, I was doing yoga on our screened-in porch. End-of-day texts kept coming through. Had I turned my cell on silent, James would have missed the residual dinging that made him intervene. Flat on a mat, my thoughts floated, transporting me. The briefest hour, an escape, except that James, with our baby so soon to be born, checked that there was no message from Aubrey. He read Alice’s three gushy texts, a tenor we have both taken on since our hours at the Ritz. Keep thinking of you, of us. Call soonest. Next rendezvous?

  He marched to where I was. “Who is he? How can you do this?” he demanded. “Naples, is that it? Is that why you went?”

  I tried more lies, tried to defuse things. “A woman author, someone I met, a new friend. We’ve become close.”

  “I don’t believe you,” James insisted.

  As I pulled myself off the mat, I thought of what to say to my husband. That I’m not in love with another man, that it is my half sister. That we both read Galway Kinnell and Louise Gluck, shop the sales at Neiman’s, that she, too, is a runner. That our teeth, our wrists, our giraffe-like necks make it palpable. She is the sister who dared come true. The one who explains Simon’s silences.

  “Elodie!” He raised his voice. I had not heard him like that before.

  I confessed. Afterward, James kept repeating his concerns, reminding me of Veronica’s focus. “Please don’t pursue the others, the halves. You have your family, our baby.”

  * * *

  A damp wind picks up. Each of us pulls her hair into a scrunchie, which we keep on our wrists.

  “Dad has done so well. But it wasn’t only about money. It was his ego, his secret,” Veronica says.

  “He has done well,” I say.

  “A way to win,” Aubrey adds.

  “I’d trade my soul to have it like it was before you girls took the tests. Before any of this started.” Our mother seems frail.

  “It’s okay, Mom.” Aubrey puts her hands over Veronica’s. “Isn’t it, Elodie?” I breathe in salty air. I count. They breathe it in, too. Our lips pull into the very same line, our chins at that forty-degree angle.

  “Totally okay.” I put my hands over Aubrey’s.

  The three of us threaded together by our mother’s cogent secret.

  CHAPTER 33

  ELODIE

  An artful text comes in from Laurie at noon. Will you be introducing? James’s text that follows Laurie’s isn’t as cloaked. What is going on? Where are you?

  At the Literary Society the staff is setting up for Delfina Barkow, the novelist. In an hour, she’ll be talking about her mother/daughter novel and antimotherhood dreams. Having long admired her early work, I sought out Barkow and booked her before Aubrey became pregnant, before her message would seem ironic, an odd twist. I simply wanted to hear her read and discuss the implications of her themes. What seemed a controversial speaker for the Palm Beach crowd, scheduled for the off-season, is a popular event. We are sold out, with a number of young women having signed up. Guests will file in, avid about the noon lecture, followed by a Q&A. The part of me that loves the Literary Society would have stayed to listen; the part of me that has recently disentangled has chosen to drive south instead. I ignore James’s texts—three in a row, as he pushes at what can’t be touched, the piece of me that belongs to no one.

  That’s the glitch: I won’t be introducing. I’m on my way south to Sunny Isles to meet Alice at the Acqualina Resort and Spa. Her husband has a conference there and she has left her children with her mother-in-law in Naples. In order to see me—no wonder my bio family fills my head. Meaning Alice and where she’ll lead me in our mutual enchantment.

  When my GPS reports that I’m seven minutes away, a text from Aubrey bings. At Society. Came to surprise you—for D. Barkow.

  That is when I panic. I was about to text her that I’d visit her in South Beach—a perfect cover for my time with Alice. Anxiety washes over me—I am an unfaithful wife of sorts; I am a cheater. One who feels fine about the affair, justified in her travels to and from her lover. The getting caught aspect, put to the fire, is a crafty narrative. How much easier it is to be acrobatic, justified versus duplicitous. Another Aubrey text. Dad and James are here, too!

  I keep driving toward my destination, reckless, fearless, petrified. No one is supposed to be around today, no one in my family is coming for the Barkow event—that’s why it was easy enough to make the plan with Alice. Simon, preoccupied with his three residential properties in Cleveland, has finally closed and is playing golf at a club in Boca. James is in scheduled meetings with Darnay and new investors. Last night Mimi and Veronica announced they would be driving to Bal Harbor this morning.

  My phone bings one more time. Laurie. I text back: Cover for me. Do intro.

  * * *

  Alice is more distinctive this time than when we first met. She stands at the concierge desk at the Acqualina Hotel, waiting. In our constant hall of mirrors, whatever there
is about me that isn’t like Aubrey and my mother belongs to Alice and me. Can’t anyone and everyone in the lobby tell we are sisters, practically twins? When she walks toward me and we hug, the rest of it—that I’ve escaped Palm Beach, that my family is about to flip—disappears. We walk together to the lawn, where the red lounge chairs are set overlooking the Atlantic. In the sunlight, the fine lines around our mouths, those deep little lines above the lips, and our crow’s-feet show. Whatever she has, I have.

  “I hope it was no trouble making the time today,” she says. Her sunglasses, like mine, make an indentation where the pads touch her nose.

  “A bit dicey, but I made it,” I say. “Totally stolen hours. I didn’t expect it to be complicated.”

  We are seated beneath an oversize beach umbrella.

  “Then let’s start with the news,” Alice says. “In case you have to leave earlier than planned. In case your baby is—”

  “News?”

  “News about our bio father and our half sibs.”

  I want the news, although the two of us must exist in some exclusive combo. Which is illogical. According to my latest research, Alice and I have more half sibs than we can juggle.

  “Isn’t it the beginning for the sibs?” I ask.

  “Two half sisters, three half brothers so far. They live in California, Pennsylvania, and Denver. Would you meet them?”

  I nod. Alice is pleased.

  “Do they want to meet us? Not everyone wants to. Aubrey isn’t interested in her half sibs, in any of it.”

  “We’ll follow how it plays out, half sib by half sib,” Alice says.

  My trepidation. My mother’s anguish, James’s suspicions. Simon, our father. Alice and our bio father. Aubrey’s half sibs, her bio father. The index of surreptitious fathers. Aubrey’s decision to stay away from the others on her side. I haven’t her credence; I’m enthralled by the crucial facets, the unveiling.

  “So what about our father? What do you know?” I ask.

  “I have pictures.” Alice lifts up her cell phone.

  Our father. I try to imagine his face; it blurs and then becomes clear. Unknown, but mine. Hers. I’m shaky.

  The ocean rolls in toward the beach, there is an undertow. No one is in the water. Alice hands her cell to me. “He must have been good-looking, dapper. Actually, he is in recent pictures, too.”

  Two full-blown pictures of a man who looks exactly like us. The first photograph is at least thirty years old. A black-and-white. He is a young man leaning against a building. His smile is for someone specific, not for the camera. The second is more recent, taken five or ten years ago. He’s in a button-down shirt, carrying two books. His hairline is thinner, while his face is that face. I stare at the photographs; they will never be out of my head.

  I hand back her cell.

  “He’s mesmerizing,” Alice says. “I couldn’t stop staring at him.”

  “He is unbelievable. How did you find these?”

  Alice shrugs. “It took hours. After I got a lead, I figured out his name. Through his children, you know, his own family. Facebook, Instagram.”

  “Oh my God, Alice.”

  “Yes, it’s incredible. That’s why I wanted to show you, not text or do a phone call. I mean, we could have but…”

  “No, no, I’m glad we’re together.” A bizarre grayness begins. Alice and I are linked together not only by what has happened but by what is ahead.

  “Are you okay to investigate, Elodie?”

  I nod. “I hope so.”

  “Okay, two more photos. I’d say he’s in his early forties in the first and maybe around sixty in this one?” She holds up the second, spreading it out to cover the entire screen.

  I touch the screen and it pushes Simon farther away.

  “He went to Harvard. He’s a doctor. He lives in Chicago.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “I have been googling him since we met in Naples. I started to tell you when you were leaving that day.”

  She takes back her phone and makes the first picture full size. His features converge.

  “I have his name, his address, his office number. We can meet him, Elodie.”

  Meet him? Isn’t it enough that he exists?

  “Do you want to?” I ask.

  “Do you?”

  “I’m not certain. I don’t know. I wanted to meet you,” I say. “I mean, I’m so happy to know who he is, that he’s well, still he’s our phantom father, isn’t he?”

  “He does have a family with his wife, children whom he raised,” Alice says.

  “That’s his life, not us.”

  “Maybe that could include us, too, if he’d like it,” Alice says.

  My iPhone, which I’ve silenced, gives a quiet ping. I move it around in my bag to read the screen. James. I decide to wait.

  “Not really. He doesn’t know about us; he might not want us. It was sort of like giving blood for him. That’s what he did, selling sperm. For us, he’s our fantasy,” I say.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” Alice says. “Let’s mull over both sides of the situation.”

  My cell starts undulating in my bag. Calls, one after another. As much as I want it to be only Alice and me, I’ve gone missing and Aubrey is due. One more text, another call.

  “I have to see what is going on. You know, Aubrey is due and…”

  Simon’s number is across the screen. “It’s my father.” We both smile at the confusion, the father/our father, the life/our story.

  I pick up. His voice is garbled, as if he’s calling from a tunnel.

  “Elodie, Aubrey is in labor. Her water broke at the Literary Society. Tyler is on the way, your mother and Mimi, too. James and I are at South Palm.”

  My heart flaps around in my chest. Aubrey, our baby. My sister cannot deliver until I get there. The colors of the day bleed out and I’m left with what I’ve done. I’ve gone astray, sneaked out and been caught.

  “I’ll be there, Dad. I’m getting in my car.” I click off. “My sister is in labor. I have to go.”

  “This is exciting!” Alice is sincere, as a mother, as a sister. “You have to go—hurry, but don’t speed. This minute!”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  She’s staring at me. “Listen, I’ll drive you. We’ll talk in the car.”

  “I have to tell them something about where I’ve been. About my car. I can’t say it was an author again, that I came to meet a writer. I have to explain to James, who is already unhappy that we’ve met. I have to get to the hospital.”

  The sunlight over our umbrella is too intense, blinding. When I stand, it seems the hotel is sinking, pulling me with it. Water might envelop me, drag me downward.

  “My car…” I say.

  “Elodie, your sister is in labor. It’ll take a few hours, at least.” Alice puts her cool hand on my wrist. “Your car can be worked out. I’ll help get it returned to you in Palm Beach through the concierge. You shouldn’t drive back alone. Not today.”

  * * *

  When Alice drops me at the South Palm maternity entrance, she leans across, kisses me.

  “We are so lucky to have found each other. You are going to your family for your baby. Our family, the one we’re learning about, it’s there, we’ll be there.”

  I close the car door too hard, unintentionally. When I turn around, Alice is heading toward the exit.

  * * *

  Alone, my father paces in the waiting room. His golf clothes are wrinkled and he is swinging his arms like a soldier does before a salute. On the walls are hues of inescapable hospital green. He doesn’t belong in these surroundings.

  “Where’s Mom? Where’s Mimi?” I ask.

  “They are parking. They’ve just gotten back, too.”

  “James? Tyler? They’re in the delivery room, right?”

  “They are.”

  How dual it is, how we double up, cheering for our baby, for Aubrey.

  “I have to get changed, wash up,
and get in there,” I say.

  “You do.” My father takes heedful steps toward me.

  “Elodie, I’ve been wanting to speak with you. I owe you this conversation. I hope that you know how much I love you and respect you.”

  I am a statue.

  “Elodie, did you hear me? I realize it’s very late to be telling you. Saying how much you mean to me.”

  There is the stubble on his face, not like when James or Tyler do it deliberately, but like a father who isn’t clean-shaven. That has not happened before.

  “What is important, what matters is that you don’t do what I did. That kind of separating oneself from one’s children. Because of a history—an element that has nothing to do with the parent and child and what they can share.” My father is speaking as if he’s a lecturer; the topic is too painful. His voice is stilted, self-conscious.

  “So,” he continues, “if you need distance, distance yourself from how your child came into the world and embrace that she is here. Don’t push away your daughter. She is yours. Just as you are mine.”

  I nod.

  “Let’s start again, together this time with your baby girl.”

  “Okay.”

  He reaches for my hands and lifts my right hand to his heart, then lets it go.

  A nurse comes into our space. She wears navy scrubs and is carrying another set in a sealed packet. “Are you the mother?”

  “Yes, she is the mother,” Simon says.

  “Then follow me, please. I’m Rosemary, I’ll be in the delivery room with you. Your sister is in the labor room. She’s been asking for you, over and over.”

  Together Rosemary and I rush through the maternity ward to Aubrey. Sounds swell toward us, women moaning in labor, men walking heavily down the corridors, confused, waiting for their children to be born. I hear my own sandals pad against the flooring and remember the day Aubrey came to South Palm to soothe me. The day I thought I’d never have my own child.