The Little Clan

by Iris Martin Cohen

  Doubtful but deferring to Stephanie’s experience, she complied. “It’s true, I probably spend more time with books than with people.” Her self-deprecating laugh was not contagious. Alarmed that he seemed about to yawn in her face, she tried again. “Are you a big reader?”

  “I read big ideas.” He paused to check one of two phones on the table in front of him. The subject of books momentarily put to rest made him happier, and he expressed his satisfaction by squeezing Stephanie’s shoulder. “Isn’t she fucking amazing?” he asked Ava.

  “She’s a delightful person,” Ava said defensively.

  “He’s just trying to flatter me. Did you know Steve has been collaborating with Hermès? His media company is getting artists to design scarves for them which they are then going to install in certain luxury hotel rooms, as part of a special...” She started to trail off, unsure. “Anyway, he really understands the importance of literature and art to building a premier, first-class experience.”

  “A hobby, you could say.” He smiled into his vodka soda.

  “Please, supporting the arts is just the sort of hobby that makes for a better world. It’s not as if you’re playing golf, or something.”

  This struck Ava as a daring gambit, as he seemed very much like someone who might play golf, and she waited anxiously.

  But Steve laughed. “I love this woman.” And he and Stephanie exchanged a look of mutual appreciation. As the conversation rolled forward, Ava admired what she started to realize was a concerted strategy—by the subtle disparagement of certain people and activities, Stephanie was carving a complimentary portrait of Steve Buckley, cultured, discerning, different, and he eagerly received this vision of himself, that mysterious way that Stephanie had of making someone feel special. By the time the food arrived, she had spun a web that held them all aligned, a milieu she implied that was at once young, cool, entrepreneurial and, most important, rich.

  “We will want some society people, of course, but it’s important that things not get too ‘Park Avenue’ stuffy,” Stephanie was saying. “Anyway, that’s Ava’s department. She’s the Southern deb.”

  For the first time, Ava seemed to register in Steve’s eyes, and he turned to her with a new visible interest. “Old money, huh?”

  This so summed up the driving frustration of her mother’s life that Ava almost laughed as she chased a slimy wad of tuna tartare around her plate with a fancy potato chip. She wasn’t. Her grandfather had made his money with a chain of grocery stores which he later left to his son, and realizing he would never be more than his neighbors’ Jewish shopkeeper, he bought up acres of recently drained swamp and built the suburb where Ava grew up, whose wide treeless streets and big brick houses aped the mansions uptown that wouldn’t grant him entrance. This was why Ava, his only granddaughter, had been sent to the city’s most expensive Catholic school; he was bankrolling another attempt to break his family into the exclusive social world of the goyim. It hadn’t worked.

  Instead, she had been presented in the ballroom of the Petite Lac Country Club, just off the strip malls of Route 90, forty minutes outside of New Orleans and a universe away. There, squeezed into a bridal gown and forced to curtsey deep into shag carpet while a Casio keyboard mournfully chirped Tales from the Vienna Woods. It was just as good as the other balls, her mother insisted, hanging her debutante portrait over the dining room sideboard and Ava had to look into her own eyes, sparkling with blue shadow and blank as a taxidermy deer, every time they sat down to eat.

  Stephanie’s smile hardened, starting to show little wolf teeth, so Ava took a large gulp of the champagne that had appeared on the table. It was too early in the day and tasted like sour pineapples. “Something like that” was the best response she could manage.

  Stephanie smoothed her hair with the back of her hand. “Really, Steve, who doesn’t want to hang out with a pair of sexy librarians, and also be a founding member of what is going to be next year’s hottest club?” Embarrassed, Ava tried to put down her glass and knocked it onto a plate of untouched flatbread. Stephanie calmly handed her a napkin. “But let’s talk specifics. We’re looking for supporters at the five-, ten-and fifteen-thousand-dollar beneficiary levels.”

  Startled by Stephanie’s daring, Ava almost started to cough, but managed to suppress it, carefully mopping up her spilled champagne.

  Steve looked bored again and checked his phones. Without looking up, he asked where Stephanie had been going out lately. All the old places were so dead.

  “Exactly my point. Clubs are dead—but a home for cross-cultural collaborations, where successful men like yourself can really relax and know you’ll be surrounded by people who are your intellectual peers, that’s the real goal. Who hasn’t been inspired by literature? We all know that smart is the new sexy.” Stephanie continued to describe their project, pitching and persuading, cajoling and teasing, while Ava watched, just astounded by the audacity of the whole thing.

  When it was over, they declined his offer of a ride home—his driver had been idling outside the whole time—and walked together into the congested bustle of Madison Avenue.

  Traffic bellowed, and a bus shot a plume of exhaust at them. Ava felt like they had been inside for hours, and this busy sidewalk was too noisy, too bright, but Stephanie was triumphant. “That was fantastic. He totally loved us. Guys like that just need a little cultivating. I have a good feeling about this.”

  A lamppost seemed a good spot to stop and rest while the world spun. “I can’t believe you thought anyone would give us thousands of dollars. I thought you were going to ask him for a hundred or something.”

  “You can’t start small, it just makes everyone suspicious.” Looking into her mirrored sunglasses, Stephanie reapplied lipstick. “Trust me. Anyway, he said he would give us some books.”

  “It’s him I don’t trust. He looks like he could just chew you up and spit you out. You’ll waste all your charm and beauty and hustle, and he’ll move on and you’ll end up alone in a garret, proud and thirty and dead. Didn’t you read The House of Mirth? That’s how these stories end.”

  “Oh my god, that’s perfect. I love it.” The cap of the lipstick clacked into place, a flash of sliver in the afternoon sun.

  “What do you mean?”

  “As a name. Beyoncé just started a fashion line called House of Deréon. But also like the House of Windsor, but also kind of sounds like Shakespeare. I love it.”

  “You’re definitely not getting the point. That title is a quote from the Bible about fools.”

  Stephanie ignored her. “Mirth is such a classy word. And it shows that our club will be smart and fun and not stuffy.”

  Ava shook her head. “No. You need to just read the book, please. Edith Wharton.”

  “Of course I will. I thought you didn’t read books by women.”

  “It was assigned in high school,” Ava lied. “It’s pretty good. I just usually like serious books.”

  “You’re a woman who wants to write a serious book.”

  “Mine is going to be different. Not some book about pretty, rich young women going to parties and trying to get married. It’s going to be about art and literature and stuff.”

  Stephanie had rather pointedly stopped listening to her. “So how excited are you to get an entire library?”

  Ava couldn’t help but smile. While not committing any cash, Steve Buckley had recently purchased a large estate that had come with a library, and they were welcome to take all the books off his hands. “I wonder what’s in it?”

  They walked slowly downtown, passing a water bottle between them and arguing about what their fantasy library would contain. Stephanie wanted first editions of all Thomas Pynchon’s novels, Ava, all of Balzac’s human comedy. Eventually they agreed that provided they didn’t have to read each other’s choices, they would have a spectacular collection.

  * * *

&
nbsp; This lunch seemed to launch them in some way; the invisible currents that flowed through the city seemed to pick them up, carrying them along like a ship under sail. For Ava, this crazy idea was slowly shedding the timbre of the delusional. The more they talked about it, the more it took shape, emerging from idle fantasy into something external, something real—something that now had a name. For someone so accustomed to living in her own head, this transformation had something magical about it, and she credited Stephanie for this unexpected, thrilling act of alchemy.

  Now that someone actually pledged to donate something to their improbable scheme, a course had been started, and they couldn’t turn back. This inexorability energized Stephanie, launching her through a cavalcade of cocktail parties and business dinners. Ava was surprised that she could have found quite so many rich friends, but as it was described to her, each acquaintance brought out four more possibilities, and Stephanie hunted each of them down, relentless in her acquisitions, until she had a new soul mate every week: the recent divorcée who wanted a friend to shop with, the tech millionaire who wanted to go to the cool new clubs, the attenuated playboy looking to relive his youth. All this activity hadn’t actually provided any resources yet, but it suddenly seemed that dozens of people knew of their club and its imminent opening.

  And while Ava sat through some of these meetings feeling like the conversations were happening in a language she wasn’t familiar with, there had been bright moments: the nightclub impresario who loved Victor Hugo, the fashion photographer who had heard of Wilkie Collins. There had even been one wonderful lunch with the head of a major publishing company. It was unclear how he had been swept up in Stephanie’s otherwise rather downtown net, but Ava had spent a glorious hour impressing this leonine gentleman, who inclined his large snowy head toward her and spoke to them indulgently of young people, and the life of the mind, and Gertrude Stein. After, noticing the cloud of self-regard Ava was floating in, Stephanie brought her down rather abruptly. “He just wants to fuck you,” she said irritably, extending her arm for a cab they couldn’t afford.

  5

  Despite their lack of funds, the germinating impression of participating in a real business was beginning to flower. Stephanie did not read The House of Mirth as promised, but threw around the name so constantly, it was starting to lose its original association and become theirs by right of repetition. “What are people going to think we’re saying about ourselves?” Ava asked.

  “No one but you has read it. Stop worrying” was Stephanie’s blithe response. Ava disagreed; they were starting a literary club, after all, but it was a beautiful phrase to have occasion to say so often. The eloquent formality of the King James construction managed to feel both familiar and yet elevating, and, maybe there was a hint of rebellion, a kind of brazenness in so naming themselves that Ava was starting to enjoy.

  Stephanie had been right about Delaware being the cheapest state in which to incorporate themselves: a hundred dollars and a mail-in form later, they received a manila envelope of very official documentation proclaiming The House of Mirth Literary Society to be a limited liability corporation with two officers, Stephanie Anne Sloane and Ava Rose Gallanter. Ava liked being an officer. There were some questions about what to do next regarding the IRS, but Ava had found a book at the Lazarus Club, The Mercantile Profession: Its Modes, Customs and Manners, and fully intended on reading it. It didn’t feel pressing since they didn’t have any money, and anyway, April 15 was a long way away. The board meeting, however, with its sense of great consequence, was almost upon them.

  * * *

  Ava took the opportunity the following Tuesday to ask Mrs. Van Doren, whom she knew was on the board, for advice.

  “Just be your usual charming self, my dear,” she said, stacking her mahjong tiles with a lazy clatter. “I think it would be grand for this place to have some more nice young people like you around. It’s getting to be like a nursing home around here.”

  “Speak for yourself, Flora,” Mrs. Bellamy said sharply, organizing her own tiles with a brisk efficiency. In the thirties she had eloped with the scion of a grand New York family, but before his parents could disinherit him, they had been killed in a train accident, as Mrs. Bellamy had once explained to Ava with still evident satisfaction. She remained strikingly beautiful, and it mystified Ava that she would spend her last years at the Lazarus Club. But then, at times Mrs. Bellamy seemed equally confused about Ava. “You won’t be banging around too much, will you? This city is chaotic enough. This is my sanctuary.” She put down a tile and took another from the table.

  “Oh no,” Ava said. “Nothing like that. It’s going to be nerdy girls like myself, and other quiet people who want to talk about books and writing. Three of bamboo?” she said putting it on the table.

  The other women shook their heads. “I would just tell them you plan on fixing the place up a little,” said Mrs. Van Doren. “We’ve been having no end of trouble with the city. First they landmark you, then they harass you nonstop for every little thing. It’s fairly outrageous.”

  “But surely the members are wealthy enough to take care of things like that?” Ava asked.

  Mrs. Bellamy and Mrs. Van Doren exchanged a glance. “Let’s just say Aloysius isn’t the best bookkeeper.”

  Mrs. Bellamy picked up another tile. “I would keep all of this to yourself, dear. Chow,” she added with satisfaction, laying down three tiles.

  Mrs. Lowry, the fourth member of their game, turned up her hearing aid and suddenly yelled, “Mahjong.” The others, as was their custom, ignored her and continued playing.

  * * *

  A few days later, Ava was sitting on the floor of her apartment making the final corrections to their proposal for the board with a gum eraser when her doorbell rang. She stood up, taking an Oreo from the open pack on the floor, and surveyed her work. Trying to come up with persuasive ways to make their case, she and Stephanie decided the first step would be to show the terrible dereliction of the space they wanted and the great changes they would make. As Stephanie was still being squired around town by various men of means, Ava volunteered. She knew, because Stephanie had shown her, that she wanted one of those computer-generated architectural renderings, little people wandering around enjoying the beautifully renovated space. Instead, Ava took some Polaroids and then created an imaginative projection of what it could possibly look like with ink and watercolor. She had taken a couple of drawing classes in high school, and while the perspective was a little off, the final product struck her as convincing. She mounted both the before and after pictures on poster board, in beautiful vintage frames. The feeling of accomplishment was very validating.

  She split the Oreo and checked the peephole. Stephanie, dressed for their meeting, huge pearls around her neck and her hair teased into an immobile puff, leaned hard on the bell. Ava steadied herself just one minute before she unlatched the door. Dropping her purse on Ava’s kitchen counter and knocking over a cup of cold coffee, Stephanie looked at the cookie in her hand. “What are you doing? Do you know how bad for you these are? We need to look our best.” The open package sailed into a nearby garbage can.

  “That was my breakfast.” Ava mopped up the spilled coffee with a paper towel.

  “How can we expect anyone to take us seriously if we can’t show a little discipline? Truly successful women never break their diets. Even Oprah’s clearly pretending to like carbs just to seem relatable.” Stephanie gave a wistful sigh. “She’s in an entirely different league.”

  “I don’t think that can be true.”

  “Trust me. If you want people to think you have money, which is imperative because rich people will only give you stuff if they think you don’t need it, then you’ve got to be skinny. It’s like hair. I wish you’d let me straighten yours.”

  That she had wild, abundantly, gloriously curly hair was one of the overriding shames of Stephanie’s life. Ava had only
seen it in its natural state once, when Stephanie slipped in the shallow end of a pool, where she had been cautiously preening in a designer bathing suit, emerging afterward with wet, wavy locks in a sputtering fury.

  “No.” Ava had idolized too many Victorian ladies in curling papers to ever consider a flat iron.

  “So unprofessional,” Stephanie sighed. “Where’s the presentation?” She looked around the room. “I need to psyche myself up. I feel like I’m out of practice. These old ladies can’t be any worse than the Junior Miss Nebraska Teen Regional, right?”

  “I still can’t really believe you were a pageant queen.”

  “Why? You were a debutante. It’s like the exact same thing except you don’t win any money. I used to puke every time before I went on. Maybe we should try that. It helps calm your nerves.”

  Not used to seeing this side of Stephanie, Ava felt a kind of panicky response to this revelation of her friend’s vulnerability “Wait, why are we even doing this?” She began to back away as the feeling gathered force, a rapid blossoming of sticky heat. “I can’t do this. I can’t go in there and convince them to let us take over their club and make a mess of things. They’re never going to agree. This whole idea is crazy.” She bumped up against her chaise lounge and sat down heavily. “I can’t possibly do it, Stephanie. You know that I can’t.”

  Stephanie, who had been anxiously rummaging around her purse, found a packet of Tums and looked up at Ava quickly. “Oh no you don’t, Ava. You don’t get to wimp out on me now. There is no fucking way. You don’t get to get all faint and fluttery and run for your quill pens and start braiding your hair or whatever it is you do when you’re about to pussy out.”

  The Oreos were surging around in Ava’s stomach, and she was getting worried expelling them might not be a choice. “I like my quill pens. I like my job. I don’t want it to change. I like it here. You’re the one who left, not me,” she yelled, surprising herself.