The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

“She’ll damn well like it! ’Cause that’s what I’ve told her she’s going to do. She’s going to do what you tell her to do, and I’ve told her so! Maudie will do what she’s told.”

  Alex wondered briefly if this was the sort of man—even for all the money in the world—she would ever want to back her in a new magazine venture, a man who treated women as though they were wind-up dolls. She pushed this thought aside. “Do you want this makeover on your wife for her—or for yourself, Rodney?” she asked him.

  He cast his eyes downward. “My Maudie’s not happy,” he said. “She’s not happy in New York. She wants to go back to Manitoba. I don’t want to lose her, Alex. I don’t think I could stand it if I lost her. I love her. I want to make my Maudie happy.” And she thought she saw tears standing in his eyes.

  “And you’re sure this is the way to do it?”

  “It’s a way to try,” he said.

  “Very well. Then when do I get to meet the lady?”

  He jumped to his feet and moved quickly to the gilt-bannistered, black-carpeted staircase that curved upward to the floor above. “Maudie!” he bellowed. “You can come down now. We’re ready for you!”

  Slowly, and with a certain amount of deliberation and precision, Maude McCulloch began her descent down the gilded staircase from where she had been waiting, perhaps not entirely out of earshot, somewhere in the upper reaches of the apartment. What Alex saw was a tall woman, slender but not thin, with fair skin and large dark eyes behind tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, and thick, curly chestnut hair that was probably not its original color. As she descended the staircase, looking neither to the right nor left, she wore a shy but determined half-smile. She had dressed to match her living room, in a gold cashmere sweater with a cowl neck, the sleeves pushed up above her elbows to reveal many chunky gold bracelets at her wrists, and a hip-hugging leather miniskirt in a zebra print. Alex’s first thought was that, though the miniskirt might have been a mistake, this was a woman not without a certain chic. If you saw her for the first time, in a crowd, you would take a second look.

  “Rodney says you’re going to do me over from scratch,” Maude McCulloch said as she crossed the room. “Well, this is scratch.” She patted her zebra skirt smartly. “Or as close to scratch as I can get unless I came down in my underwear.” She sat, crossing her long legs at the knee, and let one black patent pump dangle from her toe. There was something a little defensive in the way she presented herself, but Alex decided to ignore this.

  “I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs. McCulloch,” she said.

  “It’s Maude,” she said, and with her index finger she fished out a cigarette from a gold and crystal box on the onyx table, tapped it on the back of her wrist, and lighted it with a gold table lighter. Between pursed lips, she blew out a long, thin stream of smoke, her chin held high, her gaze fixed on some indeterminate point in space between the others in the room and the lacquered ceiling. Maude McCulloch was not a beautiful woman, but she was certainly handsome, with high cheekbones, and there was a certain resolute set to her jawline that suggested both fixity of purpose and repressed desire. As she held her cigarette to her lips, Alex could not help noticing that her fingernails had been bitten to the quick. Also, small pinched lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes indicated that her life had not been an entirely easy one. Certainly marriage to Rodney McCulloch had been no lotus land, and briefly Alex wondered whether Rodney had ever beaten his wife. Then she decided that he probably had not.

  Yet there was something about Maude McCulloch that suggested that she had long ago struck a deal with this man and the life he offered her, difficult though it was, and that, to the best of her ability, she had kept her end of the bargain, through good times and disasters. Alex’s first impression of Maude McCulloch was that she was a straight shooter. Her second impression was that she was a tough cookie—an unhappy tough cookie, but still a tough one.

  “Look,” Maude McCulloch said, slapping her skirt again, “I don’t always dress like this. I don’t even think I look good in miniskirts. I only wore this because Rodney—but never mind. In my closets upstairs, I’ve got clothes by all the top designers. He makes me buy them. I’ve got dresses by Chanel, Dior, Ungaro, Valentino, Adolfo, Lacroix—” She looked at her husband for the first time. “Rodney, why are we wasting this poor woman’s time?” she asked.

  “Hey, that’s a swell idea,” he said, hunching forward in the sofa. “Why don’t you take Alex upstairs, and go through all your closets? She’ll tell you which outfits are fashionable, and worth saving, and which can be tossed out. Easy! Ha-ha-ha.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I need to do that,” Alex murmured. “I’m sure Maude has many beautiful clothes.” She turned to his wife. “Maude, suppose you tell me what it is you want—what you think I might be able to do for you.”

  “She wants to be in Mona’s column,” he said. “She wants to meet the right people, and not have them look at her like she’s a plate of spoiled fish.” He made his spoiled-fish face again.

  “Well, that part’s easy,” Alex said. “Mona’s certainly aware of who you are. But I’ll give you a little hint. As a newspaperwoman, Mona doesn’t make a lot of money, and so the people Mona writes about supplement her income with little gifts.”

  “You mean you can buy your way into Mona’s column?” Rodney said. “Why, that’s like being a whore!”

  “You said that, Rodney, not I,” Alex said with a smile. “But Mona doesn’t accept money. She’ll accept gifts, though. A case of champagne. A pound of caviar. But Mona likes jewelry best, rubies in particular. She also likes to be taken out to lunch. All you need to do, Maude, is invite Mona to lunch at Mortimer’s. Then follow it up with a little something—nothing too lavish, just a little something from Van Cleef’s or Cartier. That’ll get you mentioned in Mona’s column at least once a week for the next six months. By then, it will be Christmas—time for another little gift. Simple.”

  “Make a note of that, Maudie,” her husband said. “Mortimer’s. Van Cleef. Cartier. Something for the whore.”

  “But Maude,” Alex said. “You still haven’t told me what you want.”

  “She wants to be in fashion, she wants to be in style. She wants—”

  “Rodney, will you please stop answering all her questions for me?” his wife said sharply. “You haven’t let me get a word in edgewise, for Christ’s sake!” He sat back, looking chagrined.

  “She’s right. Let’s hear from Maude,” Alex said.

  “I told you what Maudie wants. She wants—” But Alex shushed him with a gesture.

  “What I want,” Maude said, taking a long drag on her cigarette, “isn’t really a hell of a lot when you get right down to it. But there are a few things. I’d like to be taken a little bit seriously, for one thing. I’d like to be treated like a human being, for another. I’d like to be listened to from time to time. From time to time, I’d like a little attention to be paid. People pay attention to Rodney because he’s made all this money. Because he’s made all this money, they think he must be smart. Well, I happen to be smart, too. I may not have much formal education, but I happen to have a brain! Do you know that this so-called financial genius that I married can’t do long division? Do you know that this so-called financial genius even has trouble with addition and subtraction? Do you know that he can’t even balance his personal checkbook? I have to do that for him. There are other things I could tell you about this man I married. He says he made his first big money from inventing flavored pacifiers. He made his first big money as a butter salesman—selling fourteen-ounce pounds of butter off a truck. He doesn’t tell that to the reporters from Time magazine. I’ve gotten used to all that. I’m used to his vulgarity and his boorishness and his crudity and his insensitivity and his cruelty, and his going ‘Ha-ha-ha’ every time he says something that isn’t funny. He doesn’t mind being called the Billionaire Bumpkin, because it happens to have the word billionaire in it, but all the bumpkin business is mostly an act, any
way. Do you know his dentist has begged him to let him straighten and cap his teeth? But he won’t have it done because he thinks crooked teeth make him look sincere. Why do you think he combs his hair the way he does? Why does he insist on wearing suits that don’t fit? So people will say he’s a genius hayseed. But what am I supposed to be? His bumpkinette? What am I supposed to be noticed for? Meanwhile, I’ve raised his seven children for him. I’ve—”

  “Wait,” Alex said. “Tell me about the children. You’ve just given me an idea.”

  “Well, none of them are dopers, none of them are dropouts, none of them are in jail, if that’s what you mean. The kids are all doing fine.”

  “What if Maude McCulloch were noticed in New York for motherhood? For being a superb mother.”

  “What’s motherhood got to do with fashion?” her husband wanted to know.

  “Nothing. That’s just it. But it’s something to be noticed for, which is what Maude wants. These so-called fashionable New York women aren’t interested in being mothers. Pregnant is the last thing any of them wants to be. My friend Lenny Liebling calls them the Razor Blades.”

  “Nah, I don’t like it,” Rodney said.

  “Shut up, Rodney,” his wife said. “I like it!”

  “But what about fashion? Clothes? Style? Class?”

  “Fashion and style and class are more than just clothes,” Alex said. “But I do believe that every smart woman who wants to be taken seriously should have some sort of what I call a fashion signature. It doesn’t need to be much. This triple strand of pearls I always wear, for instance. That happens to be mine. I don’t know how it got to be, but it did.”

  “Okay, give Maudie a fashion signature, then. And make it a good one.”

  “Rodney, will you please shut up!”

  “Try something for me, Maude,” Alex said. “Pull your hair back away from your face.” Maude McCulloch pulled her hair back with both hands, and twisted it at the back of her neck. “Yes, I like your hair that way. You have lovely skin, and a lovely wide forehead. What if your fashion signature were a little Chanel-type bow at the back of your head? You could have different bows for different outfits.”

  “What? I’m talkin’ fashion, and you’re talkin’ ribbon-bows!”

  “Rodney, I’m warning you! Put a lid on it!” his wife said.

  “It’s a bit of an old-fashioned look,” Alex said. “But it’s different, and it goes with you.”

  “Old-fashioned? We want Maudie to look fashionable, not old-fashioned!”

  “Maude is a nice, old-fashioned name,” Alex said. “It’s distinctive. I don’t think I know of another Maude in New York.”

  “Okay, make a note of that hairdo style, Maudie,” her husband said. “Tell whatsisname to do that to you, and get some of those whatchamacallit-type bows.”

  His wife bared her teeth at him, and went, “Grrrrrr!”

  “But what about dresses? All those designer dresses that she’s got. When’re you going to tell us which ones she ought to wear and which ones we’re gonna throw out?”

  “I usually recommend that a woman find one designer that suits her,” Alex said. “And then stick to that designer. And the minute I saw Maude walk down that stair, I immediately thought—Pauline Trigère.”

  “Make a note of that, Maudie. Pauline Trigère.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rodney! I’ve heard of Pauline Trigère!”

  “And all that stuff from those other faggots—out with the garbage. Down the incinerator.”

  “I could take you over to Pauline’s workshop, if you’d like,” Alex said. “Let her get her eye in with you, as they say. Sketch a few things for you.”

  “Yes! I’d like that!” Maude McCulloch said.

  “Pauline’s a bit out of fashion right now, but—”

  “Out of fashion! But I thought we were going to put Maudie into fashion.”

  Alex smiled at him. “But Maude McCulloch is going to bring Pauline Trigère back into fashion, Rodney,” she said.

  Suddenly Maude McCulloch jumped to her feet and ran around the huge onyx coffee table to where Alex sat, hugged her, and kissed her noisily on both cheeks. “I love you!” she cried. Then, releasing her, she said, “I hate this apartment.”

  “What?” her husband shouted. “Do you know how much it cost me to do over this apartment? Do you know how much I shelled out to that Billy Yardley faggot?”

  “Of course I know. I balance your checkbook, don’t I? It cost too much. And what did we get for it? A place that looks like it belongs in Las Vegas. In a high-class whorehouse.”

  “What?” he cried again. “Alex, didn’t you say you thought this apartment was beautiful?”

  Alex hesitated. “I don’t think I actually said that,” she said. “I think I said something like ‘extraordinary.’”

  “Black and gold, black and gold—once he got off on black and gold, he couldn’t stop,” Maude McCulloch said. “My bathroom’s got black sinks, a black toilet, a black Jacuzzi, and a black bidet. What kind of a woman would use a black bidet?”

  “You don’t think the apartment’s beautiful, Alex?” Rodney McCulloch said.

  “Let me put it this way,” she said. “I think Maude McCulloch deserves better.”

  He let out a despairing howl. Then his chin sank to his chest and his shoulders sagged. “You’re right,” he said. “You know what I first said when I saw this room, Maudie? I said it looks like a faggot’s wet dream. It still looks like a faggot’s wet dream.”

  “I can give you the names of some excellent New York decorators, if you should decide to do it over,” Alex said. She knew it was time to go.

  Alone in the apartment with her husband, Maude McCulloch stood in front of one of the gilt-framed mirrors with her hair pulled back away from her face. “She’s right,” she said. “I do have nice skin for a woman my age. I have a good forehead, too.” She removed her glasses. “I’m going to get contacts,” she said.

  “They’ll make your eyes itch.”

  “Hmm,” she said.

  “Maudie,” he said. “Those things you said about me when she was here. I know I’m a boor, but you used the word cruelty. Have I ever been cruel to you, Maudie?”

  “Oh, I’m used to it,” she said.

  “I’ve never been unfaithful to you, Maudie.”

  “No, I don’t expect you have. So. She’s done this for you. What are you going to do for her? What’s the quid pro quo? With you, there’s always a quid pro quo.”

  “I’m going to let her develop her own new magazine.”

  “Really?” she said. She was still studying her reflection in the glass. “Why? She already has Mode.”

  “Not for long she won’t. Herb Rothman’s about to give her the ax.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “There’s a new Limey cunt wants her job. The Limey cunt’s got him completely pussy-whipped. That’s the scuttlebutt. The Limey cunt wants Alex canned, and whatever the Limey cunt wants from Herb, the Limey cunt gets, according to the scuttlebutt. As the Canucks say, sher-shay la fame. Anyway, I’m hoping Alex’ll be canned soon.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “’Cause the sooner she gets canned, the sooner she’ll belong to me. And on my terms.” Now he looked gloomily around the room. “Forty-six separate coats of lacquer,” he said.

  Not many blocks uptown from the Lombardy, the young woman with the helmet of dark hair was saying, “It was really terribly kind of you to come up here tonight, Mel. But I knew from the moment I met you that you were one of the kindest men I’d ever met. It’s funny, but I have a sort of antenna about kind people. I recognize kind people right away. I can also recognize people who are not kind—cruel people. And I think I shall never forget what you said to me that night we met.”

  “Oh? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. What was it?”

  “Mel! How could you have forgotten? You said, ‘Sometimes it helps to share your feelings with another person.’ And it’s so true. It helped m
e then, and it’s helping me right now—to share my feelings with you. It helps so much.”

  “I’m glad, Fiona.”

  “And so the thing is, if you can just do something to get her to call off her lawyers. Once you bring barristers into a situation, it just makes things worse, it seems to me. It just makes things uglier.”

  “Believe me, I know all about lawyers,” he said.

  “Of course—that hideous divorce you went through! But in this situation, with her bringing in lawyers, it drives an even deeper wedge into an already deeply divided family. I know Herbert and Alex have never got on all that famously, but if she ends up suing Herbert, what will that do to the relationship between Herbert and his only grandson? Herbert adores Joel, and he wants Joel to succeed him one day as the head of the company. But a lawsuit could absolutely poison Joel’s relationship with his grandfather. It could also poison Joel’s relationship with dear old Aunt Lily. And it’s really such a small family. To see it ripped apart by a lawsuit seems tragic to me.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said.

  “Of course you do! You’ve seen your own little family ripped apart by a lawsuit. And you can see my position—right in the middle. This trouble is all because of me! That’s why I’d like to see this settled amicably, without bloody lawyers.”

  “Of course. But Alex’s point is—”

  “Herbert is a very determined man. He’s determined to get me onto his masthead in some shape or form. He’s already made a public announcement. He feels he can’t back down at this point. If he did, it would be a terrible blow to his pride. If he did, he would suffer a terrible loss of face in the entire media community. People would say he’d been bested by his daughter-in-law. He’d be a laughingstock. So, given this situation, wouldn’t it be better for all concerned if Alex Rothman and I could just sit down together and try to work out a solution where we could coexist in the company? I’d certainly be willing to listen to any suggestions she might have. I’m really an easy person to get on with, Mel.”

  “I’m sure you are, Fiona. But I just don’t think you realize how much her magazine means to Alex. For the last twenty years, it’s been the most important thing in her life.”