“Well, it’s too late to back out now,” Georgette says airily. “I’ve already ordered the invitations from Cartier.”
“And you’ve set a date?”
“It’s the only date that Peter can do it! Duchin, that is. He doesn’t have another date available that month, and so we had to grab it. I talked to him yesterday, and he’s all signed up. He wants twenty-five thousand for the evening, and that’s a very special price for me, of course. Fifty percent on signature, and the balance on the evening of the performance. You can send me your check for your half whenever you get around to it.”
“Georgette, I never agreed—”
“And Carol’s husband’s company is supplying all the liquor for the party,” she says to Bill Luckman. “So you can see what an absolutely marvelous evening it’s going to be. The best champagne, the best—”
“But, Georgette, I just said that possibly—”
“Are you trying to back out on that? Carol, you promised—”
“Perhaps he might be able to supply it at cost, but—”
Georgette Van Degan’s eyes flash wide open. “At cost? You said it would be free!”
“I said I needed to discuss it with Noah,” Carol says. “And I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.”
“Why? Why do you need to discuss it with him? Do you need to discuss every little minor thing with your husband? I certainly don’t. In fact, I haven’t really discussed it with Truck, either.” She turns to Beryl. “Do you have to discuss every little minor thing with your husband, dear?” she asks her.
Looking flustered, Beryl says, “Well, perhaps not every—”
“Husbands should be kept out of things. Until all final plans are made.”
“To me this isn’t such a little minor thing, Georgette,” Carol says. “You’re talking about a very major party!”
“Well, this is a fine kettle of fish,” Georgette says, tapping the toe of her Delman pump crossly on the parquet floor. “Trying to back out at this late stage of the game. After dates have been set, invitations have been ordered, and contracts have been signed. I’m at a loss for words, Carol. Well, you just can’t back out now.”
“I’m not backing out of anything,” Carol says evenly. “Because I was never really in anything, you see.” She rises. “Can I freshen your drink, Bill?”
He smiles and hands her his glass. Then, lighting a cigarette and letting out a thin stream of smoke with a soft hiss, he says, “By the way, where is Melody?”
“She’s taken a job with a theater company,” Carol says from the bar. “A new play that’s trying out in New Haven.”
“Really?” he says. “Well. How very odd.”
“What’s odd about it?” Anne asks him.
“Well,” he says, “for one thing, there is no new play trying out in New Haven.”
“Perhaps she said it was in rehearsal there,” Carol says. “Anyway, that’s where she is.”
“That’s even odder,” he says. “Plays frequently try out in New Haven. But the Shubert Theatre is never used for rehearsals.” He looks at Anne questioningly, but she merely lowers her eyes and studies the backs of her hands.
“Odd,” Bill Luckman says again.
“Well, I must be running along,” Georgette Van Degan says, gathering up the twin chains of her Chanel bag. “Just remember it’s too late to try to wriggle out of this, sweetie,” she says to Carol. “At least if you think you have a chance of getting my porcelains for your museum. Meanwhile, Roxy’s promised to run another item about us in tomorrow’s column.”
“Just think, Billy,” Beryl Stokes says, gazing at him adoringly. “You were my star pupil. And look at you now.…”
Bill Luckman glances at Georgette and rolls his eyes.
From Roxy Rhinelander’s column:
Flash! Update! Seems that years and years ago, when yours truly wasn’t even a twinkle in her daddy’s eye (well, almost that long ago), the late Mr. and Mrs. Truxton Van Degan III made a big point out of moving out of their big spread at 1000 Park Avenue at the very moment when Mr. and Mrs. Jules Liebling were moving into the building. Seems that the Mayflower-descended Van Degans didn’t think the Billionaire Booze Baron and his wife (the former Hannah Sachs) were quite up to snuff for that posh address. Too nouveau, maybe? Well, they did call Jules Liebling an exbootlegger, dontcha see, and he did have his picture snapped making nice to Al Capone. Anyway, the hatchet’s been buried between the two Feuding Families at last with the coming-out bash Georgette Van Degan (Mrs. Truxton IV) and Carol Liebling (Mrs. Noah) are planning for their delectable deb daughters on June 17. Moral: Time heals all wounds, by the time the next generation rolls around, at least.
“What in the world is going on?” Pookie Satterthwaite is saying to Patsy Collingwood on the telephone. “How is Georgette managing to get so much ink over this nonsense? Do you think she’s paying Roxy off?”
“Well, I ran into Roxy the other night, and it looked like she was wearing a new mink coat,” Patsy says.
“Those old skins? Blackglama gave her that at least ten years ago for doing a ‘What Becomes a Legend Most’ ad.”
“Weren’t we nice enough to Roxy at Christmastime?”
“Well, I certainly was. I don’t know about you, sweetie.”
“I happen to have been especially nice to her at Christmas.”
“Look at it this way, Patsy. Every bit of ink that’s going to Carol Liebling is ink that could be going to you and me.”
“Exactly. You, Georgette, and me—we’re supposed to be the Big Three, aren’t we? This town isn’t big enough to make it a Big Four.”
“But I think I’ve figured out what Roxy’s doing, Patsy.”
“What?”
“Every now and then she likes to throw in a new name. It makes her column more interesting, supposedly.”
“Does that mean she’s turning us into old names?”
“Not necessarily, sweetie.”
“And Carol Liebling, of all people. She’s nobody.”
“Not as of this morning, sweetie. That’s a good ten inches of column space she’s got.”
“Infuriating. I’ve got half a mind to tell Roxy exactly what I think.”
“That’s definitely not the way to do it, lovey. Don’t antagonize Roxy. Roxy can be mean as pig shit. On the other hand, I think it would be smart if we were both a whole lot nicer to Carol Liebling.”
“And drop Georgette?”
“Hmm.” Pookie pauses. “Well, I’ve often said that if you gave Georgette enough rope, she’d hang herself,” she says. “Let’s lunch.”
In the town house on Sutton Square, Ruth Liebling di Pascanelli is reading aloud to him. “‘And when Clarissa saw Jonas standing in the doorway, her heart stopped.’” She puts down the manuscript. “That’s as far as I’ve gotten,” she says.
“I don’t know much about writing books,” Ector says. “But I really like what you’ve written. I mean I think it’s really good.”
“Thank you, Ector.”
“That Jonas character. I bet he’s going to cause that Clarissa a lot of trouble—right?”
“Right.”
“I figured. And, you know, it’s a funny thing.”
“What’s a funny thing?”
“I don’t know just how to say this,” he says. “But in my business, I’ve taken out a lot of rich women. Rich men, too. And a lot of them’s been older than me, like you. But you’re different. I mean, most of them, all’s they want is sex. But you don’t. You don’t want me for that at all. I mean, like you’re a countess, you’re rich, you’re a movie star, you’re an author, and yet all you seem to want is to have me around. And, I mean, like I always try to show the client a little affection. That’s easy enough for me to do. I can fake that stuff easy. But with you it’s like I don’t have to fake that stuff. I mean, I—I mean the longer I stay here with you, the more I really like you. I like being with you.”
“I’m glad you like being with me, Ector.”
“You don’t mind that I’m a hustler?”
“There are a lot worse things to be.”
“I didn’t always used to be, you know.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.”
“It was a guy I met who got me into this. When I first came here from Abilene, looking for a job. Guy said I’d be good at it. Said there was money in it. Said I looked like I had talent. He took me on. And one thing just sort of led to another.”
“I can understand that.”
“But maybe now I’d like to sort of settle down. So what if—I guess what I’m trying to say is that I really like you a lot.” He sits forward in his chair and gazes at her intently. “What if—what if you and me was to get married?” he says. “I’m serious. I like you a lot. I really do. I mean, I’ve met a lot of women. But I’ve never met a real lady, like you, before. Maybe I’m not saying it right. But I’ve never felt this way about anybody else before. I really never have.”
“This letter was hand-delivered, madam,” Albert, Hannah Liebling’s majordomo, says to her, handing her the envelope.
“Thank you, Albert.”
She carries the letter to her writing desk, fishes in a drawer for her reading glasses, opens the letter, and reads:
My dear Hannie,
I don’t know whether or not my name will mean anything to you at this point.
I’d heard you married a man named Liebling. But I didn’t know who he was until I happened to see the enclosed item in this morning’s paper, which mentioned your maiden name and also included your address.
I have …
There is something about the handwriting that is familiar, from years and years ago. She turns the letter over, to the signature, and her hand flies quickly to the strand of pearls at her throat.
She sits down hard in front of the little desk.
PART TWO
Grandmont, 1945
13
Deals
Oh, if you could have seen Grandmont! It was not the big turreted stone house itself that was so spectacular. It was the setting Jules Liebling chose for it—high on a hill overlooking a wide bend in the Hudson, with grassy terraces, separated by parterres, cascading down toward the river’s edge. It was at its best by moonlight, with the light from the moon and stars reflected and refracted from the water’s surface. The river is tidal at this point, and so its flow is forever shifting, first running north, and then, with a perceptible rippling, reversing its direction and flowing south—tidal and saline, so the smell of the river is a constant reminder of its connection to the sea, that the moon-driven Atlantic is ceaselessly directing the river this way and that, that the moon and the ocean are in charge of things here. An Atlantic storm is on the way if the seabirds fly inland and settle on the river.
To the north, from the west-facing verandas and terraces of Grandmont, the lights from the Tappan Zee Bridge glowed in a snaky curve, a double strand of diamonds. Just to the south, on the river’s opposite shore, were the lights of the village of Sneden’s Landing, tucked into the first drop in the Palisades. Before Hannah Liebling went to bed at night, she liked to lie in her chaise longue and look out at these lights, and the lights from the river traffic, from her bedroom windows. Around eleven o’clock the night excursion boat to Albany came twinkling into view, with the sounds of laughter and swing music pouring from its decks. And, periodically, there would be distant rattles and whistles from the trains of the New York Central’s Albany Division as they made their way up and down the valley. Hannah found all these night sounds and sights restful and reassuring.
He had not built Grandmont for her, however. He had made that quite clear from the beginning. He had built it for his son Cyril, after Cyril was born in 1934. Jules had ordered a huge playground built at Grandmont for his little son, with industrial-size slides and swings and seesaws and sandboxes, and a great deal else. For Cyril’s third birthday Jules bought him a baby elephant, complete with a miniature howdah in which the child could ride. The elephant, whose name was Baba, was trained to kneel on command and accept a small passenger in the howdah, but Hannah was too fearful of the boy’s falling to let him ride in it. The next year came a frisky zebra for a pet, and presently Grandmont contained a small, private zoo, where a bush baby became Cyril’s favorite animal.
In 1939 their daughter, Ruth, was born, but Jules made it clear that the playground equipment and the animals were for Cyril’s enjoyment only. But then, as we know, by 1945 Cyril had become a severe disappointment to his father. Soon the playground equipment was being allowed to go to rust and disrepair, and the menagerie was being disposed of—either sold or given away. “I want us to make another son,” Jules said to Hannah.
And so they went through the ritual of trying. This wasn’t a particularly easy period for Hannah, since she had been told she could bear no more children. “The uterus has become tipped,” her doctor explained to her. “It will be a miracle if you are ever able to conceive again.”
Still, she prayed for a miracle. And, lo and behold, the miracle happened, though not in the way she had wanted it to happen, and it happened in the moonlit garden at Grandmont.
The bush baby was the first to go. “Oh, please,” Hannah begged him. “He loves that little creature so!”
“He must be punished,” Jules said. “What better punishment than to take away a favorite pet?”
“But he’s still just a little boy,” she said. “Don’t all little boys experiment with themselves that way? Didn’t you, when you were that age, experiment with other boys your age—with sex—like that? I’m sure you did.”
“Never!”
“That headmaster—that Mr. Litchfield—he overreacted to it, I think. St. Anselm’s is such an old-fashioned school.”
“He disgraced us. The whole school knows about it now. They’ve made that little nigger kid a hero. They’ve labeled my son a pervert. From the report that Litchfield sent out, there isn’t another boarding school in New England that will take my son now. He’ll have to go to public school, the way I did.”
“But not the bush baby, Jules. Not his precious little Potto.”
“His precious little Potto is already on his way to the Bronx Zoo.”
“They’ve taken away Potto!” Cyril screamed, rushing into his aunt Bathy’s room. “They’ve taken away Potto, and they won’t tell me where he’s gone!” Bathy Sachs took him, sobbing, into her arms.
“Now, that’s not the way,” she said, trying to comfort him. “You want to show your papa what a little man you are, don’t you? This isn’t the way to do that, is it? Dry your tears, keep a stiff upper lip, and show your papa what a brave little man you are. That’s what he wants to see.”
“I hate them!” he sobbed. “I hate them both!”
“There, there,” she said. “Potto’s in a nice new home, with lots of nice new little friends. Don’t let your papa see you crying like this. Now just go downstairs and act grownup, and show your papa what a big, brave little man you are. Do that for me, Cyril.”
“I want to kill him!”
“No, you don’t. Your papa is angry at you now. But your papa is a good, kind man at heart, Cyril. He really is.”
Oh, he was handsome enough, Hannah supposes, particularly when he was younger, as he was then. Women found him attractive. The Duchess of Windsor, when she came to visit Grandmont after the war, pronounced him “charming,” and he could be charming. From the portrait in the dining room at 1000 Park, which was painted later, he looks a little stern when she gazes up at it from the table. A little stern and sad, and the down-drooping mustache doesn’t help; nor does the Napoleonic pose with his right hand inserted in his vest. He looks, more than anything, disappointed. That is the expression in his eyes. If Jules Liebling had a tragic flaw, it was that he was too prone to disappointment. Perhaps it was because he was so used to everything going his way. He couldn’t understand why everything could not always go his way. But no one’s life goes exactly the way one w
ants it to. Life takes no one’s orders. And so her husband died of disappointment.
“You really do remember me from Horace Mann,” she says to him for perhaps the dozenth time. “I just can’t believe it, Billy.”
“Of course I do.” He is sprawled, naked, across her bed, smoking a cigarette.
“I only subbed, maybe, ten or twelve days, at the most, during the two years when you were there. And yet you remember little old me.”
“Little old you were a pretty memorable teacher. Plus being the most beautiful teacher in the whole damn school.”
“Really?” She giggles. “Well, that wouldn’t have been hard to be—when I think of some of the others.”
“You still are.” His lips curl into a smile. “Beautiful, that is.” He runs a fingertip along the curve of her spine.
“Of course, I didn’t have the money then that I have now,” she says. “That was before I married Frank.” She reaches over the side of the bed and picks up the pink Adolfo that was dropped in a heap on the floor, and arranges it, more tidily, across the seat of the slipper chair beside the bed. “What was it we were reading in that last English class I taught? Do you remember? Was it—?”
“Silas Marner?”
“Yes! Yes, I actually think it was. I’m positive it was Silas Marner. What a memory you have, Billy.”
“You could even make a dud like Silas Marner interesting.”
She giggles again. “And you were my star pupil. I could tell you were going to have a brilliant future even then. But I shouldn’t have let you seduce me, Billy. I think I had a little bit too much to drink at Carol’s party tonight.”
“Aw, c’mon, teacher,” he says. “We went out to the elevator together. You mentioned that you lived right downstairs, and had some old Horace Mann yearbooks I might like to look at. The old come-up-and-see-my-etchings routine. You wanted it as bad as I did. So don’t give me the I-shouldn’t-have-let-you-seduce-me bit, Beryl baby.”
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