Rich Boy

by Sharon Pomerantz

  “You make a very good case,” he said. It was not that he didn’t want to go—he did. She was right; this could be a chance to distinguish himself, assuming he made a decent impression. But there was a big risk. He had no choice but to be honest with her. To do otherwise, in his situation, was to court disaster. He took her hand. “We haven’t actually been seeing each other for that long, you know? And meeting a woman’s family, well, it’s a statement of serious intent, at least I think it is.”

  He could see the flicker of recognition, as if a light went out in her eyes, if just for a moment. And then she regained her composure so instantaneously that had he not been studying her face carefully, he’d have missed it completely. “I’ve brought plenty of men to Tuxedo, Robert. And I haven’t married a single one of them. No one will regard you as more than one in a long line unless I say that they should.” She pushed a stray hair behind her ear and regarded the dessert menu with great interest.

  “Crea, look at me,” he said. “This is the best summer I’ve had in a very long time. I adore you. But maybe I’m just more cautious by nature.”

  “Men fall in love with me,” she said, looking him in the eye and smiling. “They always have, since I was seventeen. And you will, too.” Her voice lifted suddenly, as if she’d already put the whole conversation behind her. “That settles it, then; I can tell Jack that you’re coming?” She squeezed Robert’s knee under the table, not knowing how ticklish he was there, so that he gave out a high-pitched, helpless yelp, a sound somewhere between laughter and pain, prompting a passing waiter to stop and ask if he was feeling all right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tuxedo Park

  Tuxedo Park, forty miles northwest of Manhattan, was developed in 1886 by tobacco baron Pierre Lorillard as a private lakefront resort where he and his friends could spend their time reveling in the outdoors before the start of the Newport season. When Lorillard’s grandson Griswold decided to copy the Prince of Wales, wearing a short dinner jacket and black tie to a ball, he simultaneously gave the tuxedo its American debut and gave his grandfather the name he’d use for his new community. The etiquette authority Emily Post grew up in Tuxedo Park. Her grandfather built some of the original cottages.

  All of this history Robert read in a book he found in the New York Public Library—if he was going to spend a weekend with Crea’s father in a place called Tuxedo, then he would at least be prepared. On microfiche, he read old articles about the various debutantes who continued to bow at the town’s famous Autumn Ball. Looking at articles from the 1960s, he searched anxiously for Crea’s name, but was relieved to find no mention of her.

  Tuxedo Park was a gated community. Within the Park’s confines was a private lake, eleven hundred acres of parkland, and the country’s second-oldest golf course, but the difference between being inside the Park and out was not money—many of the surrounding residents were heads of major corporations—but birth and background. Crea tried to assure Robert, on the ride from Manhattan, that Tuxedo Park residents were misunderstood. She insisted that they had a sense of humor about themselves.

  Robert had rented a convertible, refusing to be picked up by Jack’s driver and wanting the freedom to come and go as he liked. They were there in an hour, though as they drove through the village, he wondered if his anticipation of Tuxedo would utterly overshadow the reality. The homes he saw, built into surrounding slopes overlooking a distant river, might have had remarkable views, but they were nothing thrilling—boxy suburban ranches and shingled faux Colonials. But then they passed through the guarded entrance to the Park—Crea smiled at the guard, who waved jovially—and the houses instantly transformed.

  On West Lake Road, the lawns were as big as public gardens, with curving driveways the length of country roads. The structures themselves were mostly Tudor and Gothic revival style with turrets and domed rotundas like castles out of a children’s story, where some poor princess was imprisoned for having selected the wrong man to love. If these are the carved-up mansions of the original families, he wondered, my God, what did the originals look like? Many of the homes were carefully camouflaged by shrubbery and tall trees, difficult to see in their entirety, but the Alexander house came quickly and luridly into view—a two-story wooden structure with windows all around, so many windows that the house itself appeared almost to be made of glass. True, Crea had said that her father hated the Park Avenue apartment, but Robert wondered how it was possible that the same man lived in both residences.

  In the open entrance hall, a large gush of water spewed endlessly from a block of marble. So much midafternoon light came through so much glass that he was glad he’d kept on his sunglasses. “I suppose your family never had to worry about throwing stones,” Robert said.

  “Uh-uh,” Crea replied, “and you’re the first person ever to make that joke.”

  On the pale green wall behind the fountain was a lithograph, on an enormous canvas, that had been divided in four: all four images were of Crea in her late teens, with a smudge of pink across her lips, comically orange hair, and emerald green eyes. Crea had told him that the only way to understand art or photography was to look at it as carefully as possible, that there was no mystery; you simply had to invest in that care. He looked clockwise, trying to figure out which Crea he had come to know: in one she was half-smiling at the viewer, as if she had a secret; in another, she looked off to her left, seeming distracted; in a third, she pushed her hair behind her ear and looked down, and in the fourth, she bit her lip seductively.

  “I hate how he has that out in front,” she said. “So embarrassing.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Not quite eighteen,” she said.

  “This house,” he whispered. “Not exactly what I expected.”

  “Le Corbusier wanted to rip out the center of Paris and replace it with a dozen towers in a park,” Crea said. “Daddy loves Le Corbusier.”

  “So he wanted to rip out the center of Tuxedo Park and replace it with a medical building?”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. It was hard enough for him to buy here. He wanted to make a statement.”

  Somehow Robert had assumed her family to be original, but before he could say another word, a woman in a plaid housedress rushed at them, arms outstretched. He wasn’t sure where she came from—three hallways met where they stood—and she embraced Crea extravagantly. “You’ve brought him, good,” she said, and smiled at Robert. She had short gray hair and deep blue eyes that stood out all the more from a sallow face full of expression lines.

  “Robert, this is the most important person in the house, Eleanor Dawes. And if she doesn’t like you, you’re in trouble. She practically raised me.”

  “Then I owe her a thank-you,” Robert said, and held out his hand.

  “Well done, Crea,” Eleanor said, and kissed him instead. “They’re out back. Everyone’s in a jolly mood. A lot more gin than tonic today.”

  Eleanor Dawes would not be a problem. Such women were always on his side. She’d put him, she said, in a bedroom next to Crea’s. How discreet, Robert would think later when he saw the adjoining door, how liberated and yet proper. Crea told him to leave his bags in the hall and he obeyed, walking behind her into a long, rectangular kitchen. On the far right, two black women in polyester uniforms sat around a table, alternately smoking and peeling potatoes. They smiled and waved at Crea, who took Robert’s hand firmly as the two passed through the sliding glass doors onto a large patio. Now Robert understood why Jack might have wanted to live in a glass house—he looked out on a panoramic view of green hills that sloped toward a lake.

  “Beautiful,” Robert said, half to himself.

  “Here we are,” Crea announced, then kissed her father on the cheek. “Daddy, this is Robert Vishniak.”

  Jack Alexander, tall, heavily built, with pale skin and red hair now diluted by gray, was a man who took up more room than Robert remembered from his occasional sightings at the firm. Taller than Robert, a
nd much wider, he wore a tan golf shirt and green-and-white-plaid golf pants that might have made Robert laugh had Alexander’s grip not been so tight. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Do you go by Robert or Rob?”

  Robert, intensely focused on his host, was about to speak, when someone cut him off.

  “He goes by Robert, and Robert only. Whatever you do, don’t call him Bobby.”

  Coming toward him, smirking as if involved in a private joke that only Robert could understand, was Tracey. His smile seemed to say that the past was forgiven, even irrelevant. “Vishniak,” Tracey said, clasping Robert on the shoulder as the two shook hands enthusiastically. “You’re a damned sight for sore eyes.”

  They sat around the table, Robert between them, and ate tuna and pimiento sandwiches on warm white bread, and cucumber slices and potato chips—there was something of a summer camp for adults about Tuxedo. To their left, Crea’s father lay on a lounge chair that barely contained him, flipping through a golfing catalog and injecting a comment into the conversation when it suited him, or looking over just long enough to notice if anyone needed a refill on their drinks. When he did, Crea thanked him, calling him “dear.” He’d never heard a daughter call her father dear, but then expressions came out of her mouth that no other person could get away with, except perhaps the man who now sat on Robert’s other side.

  All through lunch they went back in time, connecting the dots to the moment when Robert had truly first met Crea, a high school senior in a green dress whom Tracey had been dragging around the Village in the summer after their first year of college. Now it made sense why her name, so unusual, had sounded familiar to him. He could recall everything, though much of it he kept to himself—he had come very close to losing his life that night, only to emerge from the subway and be mortified all over again. Hard to believe now—looking out at the view, drink in hand, sophisticated girlfriend beaming at him as if he were all that existed for her—that the evening had somehow played a role in getting him here.

  “Amazing—that boy was you! You were Tracey’s roommate! I remember it all now,” Crea said. “I thought you were good-looking, at least what I could see of you in that light, but kind of rude. It was hot and I was worried about sweating in that taffeta dress. When Tracey introduced us I couldn’t get you to look at me.”

  “She’s not used to men ignoring her. Are you, darling?” Jack interrupted.

  “But Cre, when were we ever in the Village together?” Tracey asked. “When did I ever run into Robert in the city? I think you two must be making this up.”

  “Mark Pascal was supposed to take me, but he canceled, probably for a family event. You know how tight-knit they get at Christmas time. Anyway, he palmed me off on you.”

  “You have some memory,” Tracey said.

  “Yours is a bit fuzzier,” Crea replied, reaching over and patting him on the hand. “I just can’t get over this! I don’t know why we didn’t make the connection sooner.”

  “So you know Mark Pascal, too?” Robert asked.

  “Look to your right, over there, that’s the Pascals’ house,” she replied, pointing off in the distance; any house that would be close would still be very far away.

  She was practically giddy. Relieved, perhaps. Had she worried, too, that he might not fit in? “We haven’t talked much about college,” he said. “I’m too caught up with law school.”

  Crea’s father got up and announced that he was leaving them, off to his golf game. “Do you golf, Mr. Vishniak?”

  “No, but I’m learning.”

  “Play tennis?” he asked.

  “Yes, but not well.” He’d never had a lesson, had just picked it up, badly, in college, assuming that his childhood love of handball would transfer to a game with a racquet. It didn’t.

  “Vishniak’s worst quality is his honesty,” Tracey interjected.

  “I’m sure you’ll find plenty to amuse yourself with,” Jack said distractedly, and walked quickly toward the house. For a big man, Robert observed, he walked with a light step.

  Tracey looked much the same as he had in college—his hair was a little shorter and bleached even blonder by the sun, and his ruddy face already showed some of the lines that would mark him as an outdoorsman and a heavy drinker, but the basic man was the same as he remembered. Even his clothes were back to what they had been freshman year—shorts and cotton tennis sweater, small round sunglasses, sneakers so white that they sparkled in the sun.

  On the other hand, Mark Pascal, when he arrived about twenty minutes later, having been hastened by an excited call from Crea, was almost unrecognizable. He had lost all his hair, was thin and haggard-looking, and seemed, if anything, to have shrunk. He was in jeans and riding boots—he’d ridden his horse over and walked up from the stables, and he was sweating considerably, so much so that before shaking Robert’s hand, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. “Vishniak, I knew you’d pop up again one of these days,” he said. “You always liked to be in the thick of things.”

  “No, that was you,” Robert replied. “How’s the newspaper business?”

  “I’m not in the newspaper business,” Pascal said, kicking at a stone with his boot. “I’m working for my father now.”

  “Real estate, wasn’t it?”

  “Residential development. Amazing what you remember,” Pascal mumbled.

  “Robert and Crea seem to have much better memories than we do,” Tracey pointed out.

  Robert remembered it so well, how Pascal had announced to him, the first time they ever met, that he would never work for his father, that it was all a trap that only he and Tracey were aware of. Why, at age twenty-nine, did Pascal look so old and disappointed? So silent and uncomfortable? And Tracey, once so reticent in public, talked and commented much more than Robert remembered. Or perhaps Tracey knew things that Robert couldn’t see and was anxious to smooth the way for his friend, as he always had.

  “If we’re going to ride,” Mark said, “you’d better all get changed.”

  Robert had been on a horse exactly once, if he counted the old nags you could rent by the hour to plod through Fairmount Park. It was ninety degrees outside, and this was hay-fever season. He could not take the risk. “I thought riding was for the mornings,” he said, “before the high heat of the day.”

  “Oh, Crea’s oblivious to heat,” Mark said.

  “I figured we’d go out on the boat,” Crea said, turning to Robert. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She wore a short green cotton shift and flat sandals, and her hair was up. Robert thought she looked especially flushed and pretty. She had two selves, really. She could be remarkably sensitive, like so many women, to the needs of the group, aware of the tiniest calibrations in the surrounding mood—yet at other times she was oblivious to the desires of others, anxious to get her way. Today she was gracious, the first self and not the second.

  “I’ve got my heart set on riding,” Pascal replied. “We can all take the boat out later.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Tracey said. “You two go riding, and I’ll take Robert to the pool. We can take a dip and then go out on our boat, if you like. Robert should see the club, and they, of course, should see him. Then you can join us there later and cool off. What do you think?”

  “Anything you arrange is fine with me,” Robert said. “I’m already wearing my trunks.”

  “You are?” Crea asked. “All this time?”

  What had he been thinking? It was a reflex, a holdover from childhood that he hadn’t thought much about until this moment. The rooming houses with their terrible accommodations, the family anxious to get right to the beach, or the smelly changing rooms of the public pools. When going anyplace to swim, you wore your suit under your shorts for convenience and expediency. But in Tuxedo, expediency was not the order of the day. These people lived here.

  “If you’re that anxious to swim, then by all means,” Crea said. She gave Robert a passionate, but quick, kiss on the lips and wal
ked off to change into her riding clothes.

  “Good, then,” Pascal said, mopping his head again with the cloth. “Who says you can’t please everyone?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Welcome to the club

  Getting into the Tuxedo Club for the day required being with a member, and even then he had to sign a form. But once he passed the checkpoint, he could not help but admire the place. The main clubhouse was a one-story U-shaped building of wood and stone, with a low slate roof and intricate window designs running along both sides. On one side of the building, Tuxedo Lake stretched out underneath a series of wooded hills. Many of the members’ boats were docked here. Around the outdoor pool, with its enormous veranda, waiters dressed in white jackets and dark pants served drinks and snacks. That day the whole place was decorated in red, white, and blue streamers, as if they were still recovering from the Bicentennial or were, more likely, terminally patriotic.

  The air smelled of coconut suntan oil and French fries mixed with a faint aroma of seawater. Tracey informed him that you couldn’t actually swim in the lake, or at least it wasn’t recommended. The children there that day took advantage of the pool, playing by themselves in the shallow end, left to their water toys and private disputes. A handful of tall, glossy, gorgeously tanned teenagers stood by the diving board, flirting and posing, while their elders smoked and got slowly and reliably tipsy under large umbrellas, or left to go sailing. Most of the adult crowd looked more like grandparents.

  Tracey had said that the club was aging. Adult children didn’t want to come up here and be with their parents, wanted to go to hipper places.

  “What about you and Mark?” Robert asked. “And Crea loves coming here.”

  “We have happy memories of childhood here. We were all a pack, at least until we went off to school, and then we were together in summers. But we don’t have children, so we’re out of the social whirl for our age-group. Anyway, I like it up here. The house would sit empty if it weren’t for me. Despite all the rebellion and posing of my college years, I’ve become as conventional as the next guy.”