The Real Liddy James

by Anne-Marie Casey

  She walked over and sat on his lap and petted the dog too.

  “Do you have any kids?” she asked.

  “No. Not yet. But I have a dog. You ever seen my dog? I got joint custody of her last year, but then my ex moved to LA and dognapped it.” He paused meaningfully. “Bitch.”

  Liddy guessed that Lloyd was not referring to the well-groomed pug in black booties she had once seen trotting behind him. She wanted to laugh but was glad she didn’t.

  “She was my emotional-support dog. I haven’t been able to fly transatlantic since then. My manager wants to get me another one, but I’m not ready.”

  “You should have hired me. I’d have got you full custody.”

  She leaned over and kissed him, and they put their hands all over each other, until they fell off the sofa with a crash and woke Cal, who cried out. Liddy extracted herself and hurried into the bedroom, where she lay down beside her son for a couple of minutes until he fell asleep again. She looked up to see Lloyd in the doorway, watching. He smiled as she walked toward him.

  “You can’t stay,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, “that’s okay.”

  Lloyd put his arm around her shoulders, and they went over to the window. Through the triple glazing the city was silent, the skyline black against the dark blue sky, the buildings patterned with golden squares of light, windows that looked like cutouts.

  “Your view is better than mine,” he said, congratulatory.

  Liddy gazed into the distance.

  Then she moved closer to him.

  “Just so you know. I couldn’t fully commit to someone who already had children,” he said.

  “I’m not looking for full commitment,” said Liddy. “I told you. I’m always busy.”

  He grinned. From another woman, this statement could have been game playing, defensiveness, or a straightforward lie, but from Liddy it had the ring of absolute truth. He felt disorientated. It made him like her more.

  “Good. I’m always busy too. Is that water damage from the leak?”

  Liddy nodded. One wooden window frame was cracking, the paint blistering and the surrounding wall stained with damp.

  “It’s a mess. The sooner we get that fixed the better.”

  “I know,” said Liddy. “I just can’t face the bill at the moment.”

  He stroked her hair. “And your roots need doing. My friend Pedro’s opened a new salon on Beach Street. I’ll hook you up. You should think about a lighter shade. Less aging.”

  Her right foot started tapping insistently on the floor. She pressed her thigh against his to stop it.

  Peter went night walking for two hours in an attempt to work off his confusion. When he finally returned, Rose was still huddled on the couch feeling sorry for everything (and for herself). It had been one thing to shout her paranoid orders into the mirror in the bathroom, but quite another to let it rip at Liddy in front of Peter and the two boys. Worst of all, Liddy had reacted with such exemplary consideration and calm that Rose found herself in the difficult position of having to explain her behavior, without telling Peter the real reasons for it.

  “I don’t know what happened to me,” she said, holding out her arms toward him. “I’m embarrassed for myself. Poor Liddy.”

  “Oh, believe me, there’ve been several times I could have murdered her. What happened? What did she do?”

  Rose looked away. She wanted to talk about the “Couple Cohabitation Agreement” and giving up work, but Liddy had been right, she was nervous. She feared she would seem distrustful and feeble, and thus unworthy of Peter, whose moral certitude she venerated. So she told Peter of being awoken every morning by terror, and described more palatable fears: of giving birth, of parenting, of menopause with a toddler. Liddy had said the wrong thing at the wrong time, Rose said, and the Liddy-ishness had driven her crazy.

  Peter understood. He chuckled. He sat on the couch beside her and held her hand.

  “Yes,” he said, “that really is the only word to describe her. She has always seemed to me to be utterly sui generis, unique in her own characteristics.”

  Rose relaxed. They appeared to have moved remarkably quickly from the subject of her bad behavior to Liddy’s.

  “And Liddy does appear to live in her own self-created reality. We all do it, of course, we all justify our particular choices to a greater or lesser extent; it’s just for her it seems to be a matter of survival. That’s why it was shocking when Cal asked her who his father was. It was a moment of pure truth. She will have to deal with the consequences of her actions, and she may not like the outcome.”

  “Why is she like this?” said Rose, anxious to continue the conversation, as she had never heard Peter be so loquacious on the subject before.

  He paused for a moment to analyze the question further. When he finally spoke, his reply was considered, but unexpected, and exactly how he would speak in a student seminar.

  “We were in Paris once, years ago, before we had Matty. Liddy studied Impressionist art as an undergraduate, so we wrote out a list of pictures that we wanted to see and we went around to galleries, day and night. On about the third evening, we went to the Musée d’Orsay to look at the Monets—in particular his portrait of his young wife, Camille, on her deathbed. It’s an incredible image. Do you know it? She’s lying there imprisoned in brushstrokes that look like a cave of ice.”

  Rose shook her head. Peter continued.

  “I remember saying to Liddy, how could Monet do that? How could he paint the death of his wife, the mother of his two young sons, whom he loved? Liddy didn’t seem to understand what I meant, she just looked at me and said, ‘Because he’s an artist, that’s what he does.’ Back at the hotel, I read the catalog and there was a quote from Monet about why he had made this picture, something about his reflexes compelling him to do it in spite of himself. That’s why Liddy understood him, because that’s what she does. When she’s decided on a course of action, her reflexes compel her in spite of herself.”

  Rose looked at him. “I’m sorry I ruined the evening, my love.”

  “Hush. I quite enjoyed seeing a new side of you—it’s cute.”

  “Cute? I’d have thought more fiery, Latin, sexy?”

  She ran her fingers up his thigh. He rolled his eyes.

  “You’ll be lucky, particularly at this time of night.”

  “Oh, Peter,” said Rose, laughing, taking his hand and resting it on her belly. “Won’t it be lovely when the baby is born and everything can go back to normal?”

  “Yes,” agreed Peter. “Let’s just get through the next few months without any more drama.”

  After a long afternoon in the office perfecting a complicated motion, then a speedy and acrobatic change in the bathroom, Liddy, handsome in gun-metal silk and a tousled updo, sat beside Curtis Oates, handsome in immaculate black tie and spray tan, in the back of his car as they cruised past the imperially proportioned apartment blocks of Park Avenue. A discreet card in white and gold lay on the seat between them, an invitation to the BARTLETT FOUNDATION ANNUAL BENEFIT DINNER, JUNE 15.

  Normally Liddy looked forward to such events. Although in the abstract she was repelled by the idea of a life of unabashed hedonism supported by unearned riches, she enjoyed the private viewings of Lisbeth’s unparalleled art collection, and was seduced by Lisbeth’s irrepressible life force and her stories: the big bands flown in from Havana in the fifties, the elephants with jeweled headdresses coming up in the elevator, the elopement with a hunter she met shooting big cats in Kenya.

  But this evening Liddy stared out the window, her phone clamped to her ear, preoccupied. Not only had Josh, the manny, gone missing in action with her children yet again (he had an infuriating habit of taking the boys on impromptu adventures after school), but she was also rehearsing how to tell Chloe Stackallan that she had received no counterproposal from
Sebastian about the divorce settlement.

  Liddy dialed her apartment for the tenth time, but there was still no answer. She dialed Matty’s phone, but again, no answer. She tried not to worry. She blew breaths onto her window and made drawings with her forefinger in the condensation, as Curtis happily sipped a pomegranate juice and talked about himself.

  “This is what ‘Manhattan’ means to me,” he was saying, surveying the wide avenue. “I shoulda been born in a different time. This is where I belong.”

  Liddy looked up from her drawing, a Keith Haring–style heart with two halves and a jagged edge. She knew exactly what he meant. The two of them shared the same relentless, pioneering spirit that would have served them well skinning buffalo on a hostile prairie but had driven them almost mad in the suburbs. If Curtis had come of age in the early years of the twentieth century, he would have escaped his childhood poverty in a more mythical way than a school scholarship. He’d have discovered a gold mine, or built a railroad, or brokered real estate as the city rose on limestone and marble legs into the sky. With a judicious marriage to the daughter of an Astor, he would have made a substantial life in a triplex fortress of wealth and privilege, such as the one they were heading toward.

  Of course, if Liddy had been born poor in the early days of the twentieth century, despite her relentless, pioneering spirit, she would have been lucky to enter such an apartment building by the servants’ entrance.

  “And here we are, Liddy, you and me. We made it here.”

  Curtis started to sing “New York, New York” softly, as he sometimes did, and Liddy always found this endearing, as she too loved a musical medley on the marvels of Manhattan. (Her particular favorite was “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” from Hello, Dolly!). But today she did not join in and Curtis trailed off.

  “What is it?” he said.

  The car changed lanes, pulling sharply to a halt outside a canopied doorway, where a liveried doorman was waiting in the frescoed lobby.

  At that moment, a text from Josh saying all g! beeped through on her phone. Liddy wiped her window, obliterating the broken heart.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Like many men of his age, Curtis looked best in formal wear, the bow tie and buttons corseting and concealing the withering of muscle and gobbling of neck. From a distance, as the city turned black and white and romantic at dusk, they were a magnificent sight together. But close up, illuminated by the street lamps, Curtis was rigid and yellowing like a mummified corpse, and Liddy knew this was why, in all the time they had worked together, she had never experienced so much as an ion of sexual chemistry. When alone, they treated each other like distantly related members of the same family, a rakish uncle and his bookish niece, perhaps, meeting at a christening. This was not surprising, Liddy often thought, as she spent more time with him than any member of her own family.

  A butler shepherded them into the entry hall, where the first guests were already mingling, most of whom she either knew or recognized and each of whom had paid several thousand dollars for the privilege. Mirrorlike silver trays glided around them, heaped with exotic canapés and signature cocktails, and both Curtis and Liddy had to restrain themselves from grabbing two drinks and caviar toasts, as neither had ever quite got over the impulse to take food if it was free.

  Curtis headed straight into the gathering, but Liddy paused for a moment. Marisa Seldon was standing in front of a large statue of a Roman general. Liddy went over and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Is that real?” Marisa whispered, looking at the marble head before them.

  “Everything in here is real,” said Liddy.

  “Not everything,” said Marisa, surveying the faces of the crowd, many of which were as smooth and immovable as the Roman general’s. She nudged Liddy.

  “Look!” she said, pointing toward the doorway. “Dr. Chip Hunter! You know, from that show Cardiac Arrest!”

  “You mean the actor Lloyd Fosco?” Liddy said, enjoying the moment thoroughly. “He’s my date.”

  “You’re seeing an actor?” said Marisa, trying and failing to conceal her astonishment.

  Liddy looked at her. “Lloyd does a lot of humanitarian work.”

  On the couple of occasions they had been in a public place, Lloyd, who seemed not to know how to dress incognito, would be accosted by complete strangers who wanted to talk to him or touch him. Tonight was no exception. As he made his progress toward her, Liddy watched the party divide into people who stared dumbstruck at him and people who pretended not to.

  Marisa fell into the former category.

  “You’re early, Lloyd,” said Liddy. “Curtis and I have got to talk to Lisbeth.”

  “I couldn’t wait to see you,” Lloyd replied. “You look amazing in that silk!”

  “You look amazing too.”

  “This old thing! I just threw it together,” he said theatrically, winking at Marisa, who was so overcome she turned and disappeared, off to find her husband by the El Greco. Although Lloyd had obviously been joking, Liddy steered him away from the crowd toward a red velvet banquette in a corner.

  “I’ve got something to say,” he continued, throwing himself down and pulling her beside him. “It’s about you and me and your current situation.”

  “Really?” said Liddy curiously.

  “Yeah.” He smiled and touched her cheekbone with his forefinger. “The way I see it, Liddy, your life’s too hard. When d’you get to have fun?”

  “Don’t we have fun?” said Liddy, with what she hoped was a twinkle in her eye.

  “Sure, I guess, in the forty minutes after midnight when your kids are asleep and you can sneak downstairs before disappearing back to use your micro-dermabrasion kit.”

  “I did that one time,” said Liddy, a little offended.

  “Whatever. You need to simplify your life, that’s all. So . . . my plan might sound big to you, but if you think about it, it’s obvious.”

  Liddy was momentarily spellbound. It had to do with the soft lighting, his broad shoulders, and the perfect delivery of his lines.

  “Liddy!”

  From across the room, Curtis’s call echoed into her reverie like a voice-over.

  “Go on,” she said to Lloyd. “I’m intrigued.”

  He took her hand and stroked her palm.

  “I wanna buy your apartment,” he said.

  “Sorry? . . .”

  She pulled away, folding her arms and crossing her legs, something not easy to do with a glass of champagne in one hand.

  “I’m gonna be very straightforward, after all we’re in the co-op together, right? I saw the figures from when you bought. You’ve got a two-million-dollar-mortgage and no savings. Man, I don’t know how you convinced the others to let you buy—you’re a very persuasive woman, Liddy—but I just saw the estimate for the repair work on the roof, two hundred grand at least. Each. If something went wrong at work, we both know you’d be fucked financially. I want to take that stress off you.”

  Liddy stood up, shocked but refusing to acknowledge it.

  “You won’t get permission to extend upward, you know,” she said. “The lease forbids any internal renovations without board approval. And we stopped Hermione in the penthouse from building a sauna and plunge pool, so forget a home cinema.”

  “I don’t want to do any of that. My ma died last year and I want to bring my pa and my brother Wayne to the city.”

  Liddy looked at him.

  “Is that why you wanted to go out with me?”

  “’Course,” he replied, bemused by having to explain himself. “That’s why I asked you for drinks. But then . . .”

  He paused and rose to his feet. He leaned over her lasciviously. “Events took over . . .”

  FLASH!

  The event photographer appeared at this point to capture the magic of the moment.

 
“What are you doing, Liddy? Lisbeth’s waiting. Come on!”

  Liddy turned. She had never been so relieved to see Curtis. “I’m ready,” she said, and they hurried off together.

  “Who’s that?” asked Curtis, glancing back at Lloyd. Liddy glanced back too and caught Lloyd’s eye.

  Lloyd looked furious, and she knew he must have heard.

  They followed the butler through a spacious gallery lined with Chinese scroll paintings and into an oak-paneled library. The library had been shipped over in crates—wood, books, even the gold-leaf roses on the ceiling—from an eighteenth-century manor house in Cornwall, England.

  “Curtis, my sweet,” said Lisbeth Dawe Bartlett from the red-leather armchair into which she had been placed by the two male nurses on duty day and night. She raised an arm so thin it was like a claw-handled poker. Curtis, who had been flirting with her for forty years, approached her with awe, lifted her hand—its skeletal fingers hung with a selection of heavy gold rings—and raised it to his lips.

  “Did Robert die?” asked Curtis, noticing the magnificent stuffed cockatoo in a glass display case on the wall.

  “Yes. All my friends are falling off their perches,” she replied, giggling so hard that Liddy feared she might break in two. “I miss him madly, but they’re going to take him to Slane to live in the ballroom with Magda.” (Liddy translated this as meaning that the deceased cockatoo would be shipped to Lisbeth’s estate in Montauk, where he would sit beside the glass case containing Magda, the serval cat. In days of yore, Lisbeth had once been featured in LIFE magazine promenading down Madison Avenue with Magda, both in matching diamond-studded collars.)

  “I’m going to follow them soon.”

  Curtis made an exasperated face and shot a conspiratorial comedy look at Liddy. “Lisbeth’s been saying that for twenty-five years.”