Leggy Blonde: A Memoir

by Aviva Drescher

  She said, “Aviva, we just don’t understand why you’re marrying Harry. We don’t get it.”

  “We love each other,” I said, taken aback.

  How did they perceive me? Or, the better question, how did they perceive Harry? All I saw was a handsome, kind, great guy who came from a solid family. By asking their question, it seemed like they were giving me a vague warning. I had no idea what they were referring to. Harry would never yell at me (like Jonathan), shove me across the room (like Alexandre), or criticize me (like Ricky). I did wonder about our security: Harry didn’t have a job or a killer instinct. He’d told me he had a trust fund and that money would not be an issue.

  In a moment of sheer lunacy, I thought, Tiffany and Louis are just jealous.

  The following week, an old friend called me and said, “Harry is a sweet man.”

  “He’s the best.”

  “He . . . he can be a bit of an exaggerator.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He talks a good game, but he’s kind of irresponsible.”

  I hung up and thought, She’s just jealous, too.

  Jennifer joined the bandwagon, raising an objection about Harry’s partying. “Why does he go out every single night? And where does all that money come from?”

  I wavered a bit. This was Jennifer, a long-time friend. But then again, she had two broken engagements with two gazillionaires and was desperate to get married. To continue a trend, I thought, Jennifer—even Jennifer—is just jealous.

  Maybe my blond hair was growing backward and clogging my brain. “Jealousy” was a convenient word I used to write off any Harry negativity. I put up mental roadblocks, and wouldn’t let myself think over them. If I had, I would have asked, “Jealous of what exactly?” Tiffany and Louis, a successful happy couple, had nothing to be jealous about. My friends didn’t really either. Why settle on that one explanation? I had nothing else to hang their objections on. Harry was a great guy! Everyone loved him. I liked it that he wasn’t rabidly ambitious like other Manhattan men. The high-testosterone males were ruthless and obsessed with winning. They were often self-centered and controlling. Harry was relaxed, not chased by his own vain need to prove himself. Plus, he had money. I had money. And we had each other.

  A couple of months before the wedding, Harry, his sister, and I went to a function at the Waldorf Astoria to honor Billy Jean King. A woman named Aimee Mullins came on stage to say a few words. She was an impeccably dressed, beautiful blond professional athlete—and a double amputee, missing both legs below the knee. When she was on stage, I checked out her prosthetics. They looked completely lifelike. And she was wearing heels.

  I nearly dropped my glass.

  My prosthetic was pretty good. But it didn’t look like a real leg, and it wasn’t made for high heels. On Aimee Mullins, I saw something I didn’t know existed. Later on at the event, I ran across the Waldorf ballroom and straight up to her. Breathless, I asked, “Where did you get your prosthetics?”

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  I explained myself. She laughed and said, “You have to go see Bob Watts in London. He’s the only one in the world who makes legs like these.”

  My parents and I made the journey to England and spent a week in Dorset getting fitted for a custom prosthetic. (Small-world alert: The other person at Dorset Orthopedics that week was Heather Mills, the second wife of Paul McCartney, a former client of my dad’s. My father frequently told the story that when he was working with the Beatles, Linda Eastman was his assistant and a budding photographer. My father was one of the backers for the Woodstock Music and Arts festival, and made Linda the official event photographer. That was where Linda met Paul. They had a house near ours in Jamaica. I’d grown up seeing Paul and Linda and their children at Round Hill during Christmas holidays.)

  Bob Watts made me two fabulous legs, one for flats and one for heels. Both were made of silicone, with toenails. I was going to walk down the aisle at my wedding, wearing this beautiful prosthetic, in sexy stilettos. I was over the moon. I couldn’t even speak. Most little girls put on high heels for the first time at seven or eight years old. I was going to wear my first pair at twenty-eight.

  Bob was as impressed with his own work as I was. He asked if I’d consider modeling my legs for an article about him in Hello, a British magazine. They shot a big spread with me and titled the article “A Model Patient.” It was my one and only modeling moment. (Some blogger actually found this article during the airing of The Real Housewives of New York City season five, and accused me of lying because I denied being a model. Er, guilty as charged? It gave me a huge chuckle.)

  I returned from London ecstatic and ready to get married. I was in love with my new legs, in love with Harry. Mom seemed semicoherent on the trip, too. All the cosmic spheres were spinning the right way.

  Days before the wedding, Harry’s mom called me. “By the way, Harry should get a job,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. I’d assumed he would have to work.

  “He really has to get a job,” she said. “Don’t think he’s going to make a million dollars or anything in the first year.”

  “No, of course not.” I wasn’t sure how to react. Take her weird comment as a joke? A warning? A predication? Not sure what else to do, I laughed. She did, too.

  Compared to the three-hundred-person monster destination wedding I had planned with Jonathan, this one was small and elegant. We invited just family and close friends, around a hundred people. The service was at Temple Emmanuel at Sixty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue. When the music started, my father and I were in place at the end of the aisle, ready to walk. I was wearing a beautiful sleeveless dress by Vera Wang, picked out by my mom’s fashionable friend Sarah. My hair was in a low, thick Grace Kelly bun. Laura Geller, a QVC sensation, did my makeup beautifully. I took a step in my brand-new fabulous Vera Wang matching shoes and couldn’t move. My dress was caught on something. The music played on, reaching the critical moment. We were behind the count.

  “I’m stuck,” I said.

  “What?” My dad thought for a second I was backing out of another wedding.

  “My dress.”

  Harry, at the top of the aisle, must have been confused about what was taking so long.

  Dad said, “Jesus!” He grabbed the back of my dress and pulled hard. The fabric ripped off the nail it had caught on. He didn’t care if it ripped off entirely. This time, I was getting down the aisle. Which I did. I could have seen that nail as the universe’s way of trying to get me to stop and rethink the wedding. But I didn’t.

  Our reception was at Le Cirque, the famous French restaurant on Fifty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue. My friend Lizzy was dating the singer Seal at the time. He came to the wedding and sang to Harry and me in our hotel room afterward. That was a highlight of the night. A highlight of a lifetime!

  The low point: Mom could barely function. My father was acting as her caretaker. The woman who used to organize her closets with the care and precision of a museum curator now relied on my father to plan her outfit. She’d survived wartime, and now needed help to put on her shoes. She used to be strong and articulate, and could hold a conversation with anyone. At our wedding, she sat in her chair, barely interacting. My father might’ve made her dance a few times. But he was just pushing her around, like dancing with a mannequin. She was there, but not there.

  Harry’s family threw us a second party in Washington, D.C., soon after, and invited hundreds of their friends. On this occasion, I wore a simple white sleeveless crewneck long, straight dress with no frill. We were celebrated by a different crowd. It was like having two weddings. We left from there for our honeymoon—an incredible two weeks in Italy, first Rome and then Cala di Volpe in Sardinia.

  It wasn’t until we got back to New York that the shit hit the fan.

  • • •

  The first order of business in our life as a married couple was to find jobs. Harry started looking. It was important, but
not imperative. We didn’t need the income immediately. Harry was such a generous spender. He threw his credit card around at restaurants and stores. It never occurred to me, not once, to question how those bills got paid. Posthoneymoon, Harry started networking and poked around among contacts to see what positions were available in banking.

  I intended to work, too. Although I had my law degree, I’d heard terrible stories about overworked associates and scandalous billing practices. I wasn’t sure about wading into those shark-infested waters. I still had a sizeable amount of insurance money, despite my years in Paris, my post-Kenilworth apartment in Manhattan, and law school. After all that, I was impressed with myself that I had any of it left.

  That July, the Dubins were staying on Nantucket. Harry, his siblings, and I chartered a small plane to fly there. I couldn’t believe the size of this plane. It looked like a car with wings. The only way I could get through the flight was to take out my beads and string—I’d been playing around with some Swarovski crystal beads lately—and make bracelets. I didn’t look out the window. I didn’t talk to anybody. I was petrified. Keeping my hands busy helped.

  We landed on the island safely. I continued to work on my beading over the weekend. When we got back to New York, I wore my bracelets out to dinners and to parties. Women would grab my wrists and say, “Where did you get that bracelet?” They begged me to sell the jewelry right off my arm. I started buying the beads wholesale, and made jewelry full time. I couldn’t make it fast enough. Buyers were lining up. I actually loved the work and creative outlet.

  Melissa, a friend I’d been to law school with, and I started a jewelry company together called JAM Jewelry by Aviva and Melissa. From 1999 onward, we designed, manufactured, and sold jewelry. Our legal expertise came in quite handy, actually, for contracts and negotiations with retailers. Before long, we were making serious money. In this backdoor way, my employment problem was solved.

  Harry landed a job, too, at Bear Stearns. He worked for money manager Shumer Lonoff, who handled high-net-worth clients. Harry was expected to manage large portfolios of wealthy individuals. He couldn’t just glom on to existing accounts, though. He had to find and bring in his own clients.

  I said, “I’ll be your first client.” I gave the remainder of my blood money to my husband.

  “Have no fear,” he told me. “It’ll double or triple in no time.”

  He went to work in the mornings. I went to work on my jewelry. We were in constant contact during the day. I might’ve wondered why he had so much time to chat, but I was just glad to hear from him. About six months into his employment, he came home a little earlier than usual.

  “You know the money in your account?” he asked.

  “Doubled already?” I asked.

  “It’s gone.”

  “All of it?”

  He nodded. Harry looked ashamed and wrecked. He obviously felt worse than I did. He showed me my statement. It was empty. Not a penny left of my blood money.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He rambled on about the markets for a few minutes, but didn’t make a lot of sense. That was the first inkling I’d had that Harry might not have a passion for banking. Not that I knew better.

  I didn’t worry. I just thought, Harry still has that trust fund.

  “Oh, well. Money comes, money goes. We’ll be okay.” I spent the next few hours comforting him about losing the money. I just thought the next time around—the way money was flying around Manhattan in 1999, it was like you could reach out and snatch it out of thin air—he would double it. I believed (still do) that when you marry, you trust each other with your lives. Marriage was an all-encompassing unity. As soon as we married, it wasn’t “my money.” It was ours to spend, invest—or lose. Everyone had ups and downs. Harry was still learning, still new at it. So he made a dicey call, and lost the money. We’d make it back. It was just material. Our health was fine. Our relationship was solid. That was what mattered. I knew for a cold fact that money did not buy happiness. Having money was nice, but it wasn’t everything. I told all this to Harry that night. His spirits were buoyed enough to go out to dinner and run up a thousand-dollar tab.

  I was so naive.

  We dined out at Manhattan’s finest restaurants. We traveled. We bought nice things. Harry paid for it all with his American Express card. Weirdly, the bill never came to the house. I assumed the bill was paid, though. Otherwise, angry collectors would have called. If Harry had shown the slightest concern about our finances, I would have sensed it. I’d seen my father’s constant stress when his finances took a skid. But Harry was the same laughing generous party boy, the center of attention, who always said, “I’ve got it,” and whipped out that card.

  Since we both had jobs and I was pushing thirty, we started talking about the next steps, specifically, a bigger apartment and a baby. We were already cramped in my one-bedroom on East Sixty-sixth Street.

  Dad said, “Buy. Don’t rent.” The purchase of our Central Park West apartment had worked out pretty well for my parents. Harry and I set our price range in the mid–six figures—ironically, the same amount as the lost blood money. I called Linda Stein and started looking for the right place to start our family. I searched and searched, from Chelsea to the Upper East Side. It was practically a full-time job. I finally found a duplex on the main floor of the apartment building Maisonette on Park Avenue. It was beautifully appointed with stunning marble, renovated bathrooms, and window treatments to die for. I was thrilled. It fit all of our criteria. I called Harry and asked him to come see it right after work.

  He said, “My parents don’t think it’s a good idea to buy right now. They think we should rent.”

  “I’ve been looking at places for months.”

  “Mom only told me today.”

  Told him? It was a strange word choice. “I guess she knows the market.”

  His parents were shrewd in real estate. My dad got lucky with the Kenilworth sale, but real estate wasn’t his business. If the Dubins said it wasn’t a good time, then it probably wasn’t. I ceded this decision to my husband.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We came up with a new number for a rental, in the mid–four digits. I called a different broker and started looking again. I spent another month pounding the pavement, searching from Murray Hill to Morningside Heights. In the year 2000, Manhattan rentals were sky high. I was looking at places that were smaller than where we were currently living. I practically wore out a prosthesis on that apartment hunt. I finally found a sexy little duplex in a brownstone on Sixty-sixth Street between Madison and Park that came with a small backyard. Only problem: it was twice what we hoped to spend at eight thousand dollars a month. Harry loved the place, and said, “We can cover it.” We signed the lease. Harry hired a decorator and used his AmEx to buy all-new furniture.

  We settled into our duplex, doubling our breathing room. Having two floors, plus outdoor space, was palatial compared to the one-bedroom. I jogged up and down those stairs, loving every step, imagining our future there. It was missing only one thing—a baby. So we started trying.

  Harry’s mom called me every morning to chat.

  “I’m concerned about Harry’s job,” she confided soon after our move.

  “He’ll be fine,” I said. “Harry’s a great guy!”

  If our marriage and divorce were ever turned into a Broadway musical, the title would be Harry’s a Great Guy! I believed in him 100 percent. It didn’t occur to me that Harry would fumble.

  His mother wasn’t as optimistic as I was. A few weeks later, she said, “I don’t think you should have a baby right now. You should wait until you’re more settled.”

  We had a new apartment. I was doing well with JAM Jewelry. Harry was at Bear Stearns. Apparently we had enough money to go out every night. Why wait?

  “We’re pretty settled now,” I said.

  “Wait a bit. When Harry is more solid at work, he’ll feel better about having a baby.”

&nb
sp; Now I thought Harry was talking to his mom behind my back, that he’d told her that he wasn’t ready to have a baby and that I was forcing him into it. Why hadn’t he told me? All along, he’d been saying he wanted a baby as badly as I did. But maybe he was just going along to make me happy. He hated confrontation or disappointing anyone.

  I thought, Okay. I can wait a couple of years. When Harry came home from work, I never mentioned the talk with his mom. I didn’t want to put him on the spot. I quietly started using birth control again. Years later, I learned that Harry and his mom had never discussed our reproductive plans. She’d made that call on her own.

  Harry turned thirty-five. I took some of the profits from my jewelry line and bought him a Rolex Daytona watch. Inscribed on the back, it read, “For every hour that we live, love, and laugh together.” I would have spent twice as much to please him. He worked so hard, and I adored him with a pure and open heart.

  After a spontaneous night, I got pregnant. When I found out, I was afraid his mom would think I deliberately disobeyed her. When I told her the news, I swore on my good leg that it’d been a sloppy accident. She bit her lip, hard, and then congratulated us. She didn’t accuse me of going against her wishes. At that point, I didn’t care what she thought. I was pregnant, and thrilled about it.

  Physically, though, I was miserable. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep, I was queasy. I could barely leave the house. The nausea was violent and unrelenting. Doctors diagnosed me with hyperemesis gravidarum, or severe morning sickness—the same illness Princess Kate was hospitalized for during her pregnancy. The extreme nausea endangered the health of the fetus. I tried acupuncture, massage, and healers. Nothing worked. I was too ill to make my jewelry. I hated to walk away from the business I started. I loved making my crystal bracelets. Making jewelry had given me a focus for my energies and was quite profitable. But I had to give it up to care for myself, my husband, and my mother, and prepare for my future child. All mothers—even expectant mothers—have to make tough decisions and, inevitably, have to give some things up. I missed the creative outlet, but I had to prioritize my health and family. Melissa, still a good friend, took over the business. She renamed it and has kept it going to this day.