by Jill Kargman
15
Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh
As Eden exhaled, New York City gasped.
The onslaught of awe and gossip was atomic in scope, even mushrooming abroad among Clyde’s international collectors. His most recent work had just fetched $7 million. And of all his masterpieces, it was always the Eden series that kept him in ka-ching.
Afire with shocked revelations of his new flame, Mary, and the power duo’s split after almost twenty years together, the world’s film cognoscenti and art elite waited in breathless wonder to see where the paint chips would fall and whether Clyde would still paint Eden. But Eden was never one to give a rat’s ass what people thought; there were no cheeks rouged from scandalous embarrassment, simply tears shed for an empty bed. Wagging tongues from the press never hurt her, since she and Clyde were bound together forever not just by their deep friendship but also by Cole, who was now eighteen.
Otto called Eden in her uptown haunt, which was now settled into.
“I wanted to check on you, see how you’re doing,” he said with concern. His worried tone pissed her off even more, as if she were a child who couldn’t hack it out of the studio she virtually grew up in.
“I’m fine. I mean, people here spend five dollars on a tomato but it’s been okay.”
“When can I see you? I want to paint you. Lyle needs me to finish this show.”
She said she would oblige, only if it felt comfortable. She wanted to be mature and the fact was, she liked posing for him and wasn’t quite ready to abandon the world she had grown so accustomed to. Uptown she was a Martian transplanted, as if she’d parked her saucer by Central Park and tried to assimilate.
Allison introduced her to two of her single friends, Sara and Callie, both divorcées who were addicted to Core Fusion at Exhale, Botox and Dr. Reed, and with boobies that could act as flotation devices to get them across the Atlantic. They lunched at Via Quadronno, Eden in a flowing gray dress and black wool Mayle coat, the other three in fur coats over gym clothes. Eden guessed Sara and Callie were a bit older than she, around forty-four, though she couldn’t be sure since their foreheads were motionless and as smooth as their post-lipo’d ass cheeks.
“I can’t stay long; I have an appointment at the gyno,” lamented Allison, looking at her watch.
“Ugh, the worst,” said Callie, adjusting her leopard-print D&G cardi over her old-school implants, the kind that slope up before they go back down.
“I know,” said Allison, rolling her eyes over the dreaded exam.
“It’s like being raped by the Tin Man,” said Callie.
“So glad I only go yearly now,” said Sara. “During the pregnancies I was always in that fucking office! Ugh, so glad my eggs have passed their sell-by date.”
“Totally! See, Eden, that’s the beauty of dating at our age,” explained Callie. “The girls who are thirtyish, they’re in this big rush to hijack some sperm and get their asses knocked up. But us? We’re already mothers, we’ve been down that road. We’re not out on a DNA safari. So the guys know it’s just for fun.”
“There is something happening with women our age and these younger guys,” Sara seconded. “It’s like the whole Upper East Side’s doing it! It’s the ultimate symbiosis, really. Both groups want FWOF, fucks without fetus. It’s so liberating! And guys know that we deliver way better than those young girls who don’t know what they’re doing. They love us!”
“All those young girls want is a ring on their finger!” Callie added.
“They want bling, we want booty,” said Sara.
“They want diamonds, we want dick,” Callie roared mischievously, her long red nails newly tacky from polish.
“Ew, you guys please stop,” Allison said, prudishly cringing over her brassy pals’ sexploits. Of course her pink cheeks only goaded them on further.
“They want carats, we want cock!” Sara teased.
“They want weddings, we want ween,” Callie continued.
Allison looked at Eden, who looked like she had just sucked on a lime.
“Maybe I want someone who’s my own age,” Eden offered nervously.
“Sorry,” Sara snorted. “Doesn’t happen.”
“Wait—didn’t Shandra McCraw wind up with some guy her own age?” Allison asked, not wanting Eden to get freaked out.
“Urban myth,” Callie corrected, shaking her head. “You either marry a rich geezer or bang a young hottie.”
“Or both!” Sara shouted, raising her glass.
“I’ll drink to that!” laughed Callie.
“You guys kill me,” chortled Allison. Her friends totally amused her, but she thanked goodness she had Andrew at home.
“We’ll totally hit Bar & Books on Lex and troll for young bankers,” said Sara. “These guys work like dogs and just want to get laid. They don’t want drama. Callie’s right, they don’t want some young bitch looking for a rock. They want an older woman who’ll rock their world! They know we’re not out to get knocked up—we’re too old!”
Eden looked at Allison. These women were funny and all, but they creeped her out. And while they claimed to have all the power, something about them still seemed desperado. “I’m not so sure I’m ready.”
But her best friend knew better. “E, you’re always ready.”
“Come on, girl, come out with us!” pleaded Sara sweetly. “We may be cougars but we don’t bite.”
“At least not outside the boudoir!” Callie howled.
“I’m not so sure this time. It’s different now. I mean I’m . . . I’m turning thirty-nine next week. January first.”
As sexy as ever to outsiders, Eden still felt worn, physically and emotionally. It was a new year, the first time in many she wouldn’t be at a huge blowout bash—drunk or dancing on tables or both. With a birthday on New Year’s Day, the world toasted her each year. But this time, as the ball in Times Square plummeted as she did into the murky well of thirty-nine, Eden was a mess. Her little tea party with Allison’s friends had only made her feel worse.
It was arctic on the day of December 31. Eden woke up too lazy to even go out and get her coffee, so she just lounged in bed, trying not to cry or to acknowledge how incredibly lonely she was. She stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the different cracks resembled, like a child on the beach lying in the sand, examining the passing clouds. But without the innocence or the hope. She slumped on her couch and flipped on TBS, always there for her when she needed a laugh or a good John Hughes movie. Bingo: Some Kind of Wonderful. She watched it attentively, as if she were seeing it for the first time, though in fact she’d had countless screenings. But somehow, this time, rather than feeling like she was Amanda Jones—the gorgeous girl from the wrong side of the tracks—as she was entering the last year of her thirties and feeling more invisible than ever, she was like Mary Stuart Masterson: there to be a friend, undesired, taken for granted.
Halfway through, Allison stopped by to check on Eden.
“LOVE this movie! Move over.”
Allison flopped next to Eden. At the end, when cute Keith makes his dramatic run down the lamplit suburban road, into his BFF Watt’s arms, Eden’s eyes welled up. They were one of Eden’s favorite movie couples of all times. She exhaled as she watched their young, apple-cheeked embrace in the romantic finale.
“You know what freaks me out about being old?” Eden asked Allison over the credits.
“What?”
“We can only hope we have that feeling again,” she said, gesturing to the screen. “When you’re young you see this, you just know you will find love one day and you just have to be patient. Now I’m not sure I’ll ever have a love like this again.”
“Oh my God, speaking of first loves, I heard Jason Price’s wife is prego with her sixth. They’re like all platinum creepy Children of the Corn.”
>
“Great,” Eden said almost wistfully.
“Come on, you would never want her life! Anyway: new year, new start. I have a good feeling,” Allison said, kissing Eden good-bye as she left to meet Andrew. “You sure you don’t want to come out with us?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks, Allison.”
At 9:00, Cole rang to wish her a happy birthday and happy new year. He had decided to stay in California and go to L.A., where his roommate was from, to celebrate.
“Thank you, honey,” she said, feeling tears burn their way to her retinas. She missed him so much it was agonizing, especially now. She had often felt lonely with Otto, but she had always had Cole. “Are you going out tonight? Any fun plans?”
“Yeah, a bunch of us are all going to this huge party in West Hollywood. It’s crazy here, Mom. We went to this house last night overlooking the whole city”—Eden heard his friends in the background calling his name—“Wait, you guys! Hold on!” Cole said.
“Sweetheart, you go and have fun with your friends. Drive safe, please.”
“Have a great night, Mom.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Mom, I love you. Next birthday will be better. I promise.”
“Thanks. I love you, too,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. Next year. F-F-F-Forty.Ugh.
As her son ran off with his friends, Eden put the phone back in its cradle. She wished she could put Cole back in his. She missed his fat feeties. His sweaty bangs she’d brush off his face as he slept soundly. He hadn’t had a traditional childhood with Little League and hockey sticks; he’d blown out birthday candles in the Court of St. James’s ambassador’s residence rather than Chuck E. Cheese. But because of their myriad journeys, they had always been together, meeting Otto or flying back home, seats A and B.
“ONE HOUR UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!” Ryan Seacrest yelled as crowds cheered.
How did all this time pass? It was like Allison’s husband had once said of those weary years of parenting: The days are long but the years are short. Cole was out on his own, the human glue that kept her fused to Otto for so long. Eden flopped back in her pillows and cried herself to sleep.
She woke up the next morning feeling as if she had been out all night, even though she didn’t even stay up long enough to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. She stared again at the cracks on the ceiling. No. She refused to allow herself to lie there any longer. She couldn’t spend another night like the one she just had. No way. She would simply have to move the hell on.
She forced herself to get out of bed and meandered zombielike to the bathroom. She splashed water on her face, then reached for her new miracle moisturizer she’d splurged on at Bloomie’s. The salesgirl had given her some spiel about it being made in a rural Japanese monastery, where the monks all had shriveled and wrinkly and disgusting raisin faces but their hands looked shockingly smooth and infantile. It had sounded better than the whale sperm and sheep’s placenta crap Allison slathered on for $600 a pot. In this new chapter, a new year, Eden would have to start taking care of herself. She closed the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet and beheld her clean, lined face in front of her. There she was: one year from forty.
As she slowly rubbed the moisturizer onto her cheeks, she tilted her head, looked at herself, and found her lips beginning to smile. Workmen still hollered, and more than one of Clyde’s friends had made a pass, confessing an enamored heart after a drunken dinner party. She would be fine. She still had it. Right?
She would not waste time. She would take Allison’s friends up on their offer to go on the prowl, even if she was ambivalent. If you want to get hit, you gotta go out in traffic! The many fish in the sea were not going to fly through her window; she had to go and hook ’em herself. And deep down in the vast ocean of her mind, Eden scuba’d to the bottom to summon the hope she still could.
16
You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.
—Bob Hope
It was nearly five thirty when Chase got the call.
“Chase, it’s your mother.”
His mother, who never wept, simply had to say his name through a wall of tears, and Chase knew. He had been finishing the piles of work on his Midtown desk, watching the clock out of the corner of his eye, hoping to get back to his grandmother’s bedside. But it was too late.
He staggered to his parents’ apartment on Fifth Avenue, awash with grief. As always when there was a crisis in The Family, cousins, advisers, and old friends gathered in lockdown mode in the penthouse. Here we all are again, Chase thought, surveying his uncle Johnson, aunts, the family lawyers, and Dewey Riley, the head of DuPree Family Office, who managed and controlled Brooke’s and her sisters’ lives.
After Chase greeted everyone with a somber, shocked tone of despair, he saw Liesel enter the room, her face downcast.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said, hugging him. “I know how much Ruthie meant to you.”
He hugged her in silence and looked down at her face. Her pristine preppy beauty remained intact despite her sadness; her shoulder-length blond hair was crisply pulled back in a short ponytail, a Hermès scarf tied around her neck. At twenty-eight, she had the aura of a fortysomething grown-up, in charge and ever pulled together. She embraced Chase and offered her polite and sincere condolences to his mother. Brooke hugged Liesel and grasped her son’s hand as they shared a silent moment acknowledging the loss of Ruthie.
“Well, I hope you all took the bus,” said Grant to some chuck-ling guests. Chase smiled, recalling how his grandmother, who always had a driver, loved taking the bus and would often still take it to remind her of her childhood on the Upper East Side, even though she could be in a quiet and far less crowded chauffeur-driven Denali, or, as she called it, “a living room on wheels.” Chase recalled her saying once that if she wanted to be in her living room she’d stay at home, but that she preferred to be in the outside world, among the people. Brooke always scoffed at this, saying that it was ridiculous for a high-profile political wife to choose public transportation, but only on occasion over the years would someone stop her on the bus. In her old age, though, she rarely ventured out without her nurse. Her few short blocks’ stroll each day made her feel part of society, like a citizen of the world instead of a holed-up hermit.
And now she was gone. Chase was beside himself, and while he also grieved for his mother and aunts, deep down he felt like no one had had the connection with Ruthie that he had. No one else had her irreverent sass, her sailor’s tongue, her desire to be real, unedited, unencumbered by rules. And no one knew him the way his beloved grandmother had. Theirs was a special bond that no one could possibly understand.
Liesel hugged him and offered bland words of comfort. “She led such a good life, sweetie, you were truly the most devoted grandson.”
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
“Ninety-two is a ripe old age,” she continued. “It’s really a blessing she didn’t suffer for longer.”
She was right; pain is always relative, and sure, losing someone who is young is much worse and more tragic. Chase knew Ruthie was old, and he had been expecting this, but that didn’t change the fact that he lost someone who was such a huge and guiding force in his life.
“Honey,” Liesel said, patting his head as he lay in bed later that night, fighting in vain to sleep. “She lived a long, fulfilling life! It’s a blessing she didn’t suffer. You know she didn’t want to suffer.” Chase blinked back any emotion, swallowing the growing lump in his throat, and he rolled over and pretended to fall into slumber.
17
A diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
—Chinese proverb
Of all people, it was Otto who tried to fix up Eden at his birthday dinner in March at Moto in Brooklyn. She thought it would be the right thing to attend and help him celebrate, as they were still friends, so she went, but she cringed as Mary giggled at Otto’s e
very word. John Cavett Morley, a famous writer who had come of age with Otto and was in the Clydes’ circle of friends, had asked if he could bring his old pal Rory Sussman, her fix-up, who was not-so-subtly seated next to her.
“So what do you do, Rory?” Eden asked in a bit of a revenge-fueled flirt.
“I’m actually a hotelier. I just opened a boutique hotel in West Hollywood. Starck designed it and Kelly Wearstler decorated it. You should come for a visit.”
“I always thought it was funny how people could be a hotelier instead of what they called ’em back home in the sticks,” Eden said.
“Oh yeah,” said Rory, turned on by her not-giving-a-shit-about-him tone. “What do you call them at home?”
“Innkeepers.”
Rory grinned. Most girls threw themselves at him, but this gal was trickier, more confident. He was worldly and grand, a sexy scenester presiding over countless special events at his Hollywood haunt, with multiple slashies (model slash actress slash massage therapist slash whore) roaming his lobby. He’d suffered a freak heart attack after two helpings of foie gras, and it changed his life. Now he lived for the moment, indulging in everything (minus the pâté) and doing two things he never would have dreamed of: He bought a yacht, which he christened the Triple Bypass, and now, he hoped, he would screw Eden Clyde.
Naturally, Rory took to Eden instantly, and their flirtation carried on through the meal as Otto looked on, teasingly winking at his ex on occasion. He wasn’t at all jealous (well, maybe a little); he just wanted her to be happy.
But alas, Rory was too slick, too pretty. Eden wasn’t feeling it. She knew when she was being used as a pawn, a collectible asset to check off his list. She wasn’t wrong. Her image was so famous around the world, it would be the holy grail of lays. The old Eden wouldn’t have minded being used as a prop, as long as it got her places. But now she didn’t care.