The White Rose

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “I didn’t either. But you know, I think it’s really more about me than it is about Manhattan. When I started thinking about the rest of my life, it occurred to me that I wanted to be old in the place I’d been young. Maybe it’s something everyone feels. I feel it.”

  “I feel it, too,” Marian says. “Now that you point it out.”

  “Good. We were young together. Let’s be old together.”

  “Good!” Marian says. “But do we have to start right now? Or can we wait a few years?”

  “We can wait. It isn’t going anywhere.”

  They defiantly order dessert. Caroline asks what Marian is working on, and Marian describes the Lady Charlotte pillow book, now nearly completed, “which is basically just an excuse to send me on another tour,” she says wryly. “But after that we’re doing her novels,” says Marion. “And that really will be worthwhile. One of them’s quite good. Well, if you remember that the novel was a brand-new art form when she wrote it.”

  “It must be a great feeling to have brought her back like that,” Caroline says.

  “Oh, she brought herself back. She reached out of her grave and tapped me on the shoulder. At the Beinecke, no less! She has a habit of getting her way, in death as in life,” Marian says. “Hey, I wonder if she was one of those women. You think?”

  “Nah. All those letters to her girlfriend back in America? And don’t forget, she raised two little girls. I think she was an equal-opportunity appreciator. With an emphasis on opportunity!”

  Marian nods happily. In the years since her book’s publication, it has pleased her most to know that women of her own generation have related to Charlotte Wilcox. Perhaps they have had the most to learn from her, she thinks. The waiter brings their cheesecake and coffee. A minute later, he is back.

  “Hello, ladies!”

  Marian looks up. It is not their waiter at all. Under the circumstances, she wishes it were.

  “Oh, hello, Valerie.”

  Valerie Annis looks pointedly at Caroline.

  “This is my friend, Caroline…,” Marian begins to say.

  Here, though, is a crucial point. Rosenthal is hardly an uncommon name, but Caroline Rosenthal will surely bring Valerie up to speed. Only days earlier, after all, Henry Rosenthal had declared undying love for his famous client on Page Six of the Post. Caroline Stern, she is about to say, but the name that emerges from her throat, in the end, is Lehmann. She has taken her friend all the way back to childhood.

  “Hello, Caroline,” Valerie says, brightly enough. She is wearing the same taupe pantsuit currently hanging in the window at Armani. “I’ll join you. But I just have a minute.”

  And she does, loudly dragging a chair from the next table. Caroline registers a flicker of alarm. The use of her maiden name has warned her.

  “Valerie writes the party column for the New York Ascendant, Caroline.”

  “Oh. Yes, I know it,” says Caroline with a practiced smile. “That must be a fun job.”

  “Absolutely untrue!” Valerie cries. “People don’t understand!”

  “I didn’t see you in the restaurant,” Marian says.

  “Oh, I was in the first dining room.” She says first as if she meant better. “I watched you come in. I had lunch with Farley Burkowitz. Now there’s a guy who shouldn’t drink at lunch.”

  Across the table, Caroline sits very still.

  “I don’t think I’ve met him,” Marian says, treading on dangerous ground and thinking frantically of a way to change the subject.

  “No? They call him the Prenup Pasha! I was trying to find out about the deal he made for your cousin and Sophie Klein, but all he wants to talk about is his partner and that woman.”

  Marian nods glumly.

  “I had that story first! Did you know? They came up to me at the Met benefit last week, and I put it right in my column. But what can you do? We’re a weekly, the Post comes out every day. It’s one of those bitter pills a journalist has to swallow.”

  Journalist! thinks Marian.

  “What do you do, Caroline?” Valerie says sweetly.

  “Oh, I’m just visiting,” Caroline says pointedly. “From Connecticut.”

  “Well. That’s nice.” She turns back to Marian. “I’ve just done a big piece on your cousin, you know. I was up to the house.”

  “Oh, really? I haven’t seen the issue yet. I’ve never been to the house. Is it nice?”

  Valerie looks scandalized. “Are you kidding? He’s putting an absolute fortune into it.”

  A fortune of Mort Klein’s money, thinks Marian.

  “Well, I expect I’ll see it this weekend sometime. Perhaps he’ll have guests over.”

  “Rehearsal dinner,” Valerie says.

  Marian frowns. “Really? I don’t think so. It’s at some inn.”

  Valerie smiles the smile of a woman who has more recent information. “You didn’t hear? It’s been moved. Barton decided the house was ready. Well,” she says soothingly, “I’m sure you’ll get the information eventually.”

  “I’m sure.” Marian nods wearily. She prefers the topic of Barton and his unfathomable bride to that of Henry Rosenthal’s love life, but thinking about her cousin still depresses her. She is not looking forward to the wedding. “What does your profile say?”

  “The usual swill,” Valerie says. She takes up Marian’s unused fork and jabs a bite out of her cheesecake. “Longtime bachelor finally meets the right woman. And the house, of course. Richard loves those decrepit old houses. I said to him, I said, ‘Richard, if you want me to go all the way up to goddamn Millbrook to look at some falling-down house, you’d better get me a driver.’ How am I supposed to hobble through a building site and get back in time to cover the Met benefit?” She pauses, then looks, with exaggerated politeness, at Caroline. “The Metropolitan Opera. They had their annual benefit last week.”

  “Really,” says Caroline.

  “And the whole time, he’s going on and on about the plumbing and the floorboards. My God, as if any sane person gives a fuck about what the original inhabitants did with their shit. And when he’s not talking about that, it’s all about the great and powerful Warburgs.” She pauses, mid-chew, to look coolly at Marian, seemingly pondering whether or not this last comment requires an apology, then evidently deciding it does not. Marian is determined not to react, not to prolong. As a diversionary tactic, she stares at the corner of Valerie’s mouth, where a tiny nugget of cheesecake has lodged itself in a bright pink crease of lipstick.

  “Well,” Marian says. “I suppose I’ll see you at the wedding, Valerie.”

  “You won’t,” Valerie says. Savagely, she spears another bite of cheesecake. “I’m not going.”

  “You’re…but why not? You seemed to be looking forward to it.”

  “Because your cousin seems to have forgotten that he invited me. I phoned to see how he liked the article, and when I happened to mention that my invitation hadn’t arrived, he got very flustered. Out of his hands, he told me. Of course, he had made the request, but the bride…” Valerie shakes her head briskly. “I’ve had to cancel my reservation at the Black Horse,” she says bitterly. Then she looks frankly at Marian. “It’s generally a bad idea to renege on invitations, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not good manners,” Marian agrees, with care.

  “To tell you the truth, I wish I’d known he was going to behave this way before I turned in my piece. I might have given it a different…” Valerie purses her thin lips. Then smiles. “Tone.”

  “Well, I’m sure you won’t be missing much,” Marian says, selfishly delighted to have escaped the added punishment of a weekend with Valerie Annis. “Big weddings aren’t usually any fun, especially when you don’t really know the couple well. I’m sure you’ll find something much more interesting to write about.”

  “Oh,” Valerie says, laughing unexpectedly, “I’m going to write about it.”

  Marian glances, frowning, at Caroline. She is frowning, too.

&
nbsp; “But, didn’t you say you’re not going?”

  “I don’t need to go. I’m doing a big piece for Friday about the new social climbing. Your cousin’s wedding makes it timely, doesn’t it? I don’t need to be there, under the tent, eating off the solid gold dishes, to point that out, do I?”

  “Social climbing?” Caroline says.

  “Sure. As far as I’m concerned, Mort Klein and your cousin have done a deal right out of Edith Wharton. What?” she says, sardonically, taking in Marian’s horrified expression. “Some guy with an old name and a falling-down house just happens to get engaged to a borscht belt heiress? It’s a coincidence, right?”

  Marian, speechless, only stares.

  “This is an old-fashioned story,” Valerie says. “That’s all. I mean, here we are at the end of the twentieth century, you know? Nothing changes.”

  “Valerie,” Marian says, managing at last to find her voice, “don’t write that. I understand that you’re angry. You have a right to be angry. But please.”

  Valerie’s eyes widen. “Don’t be silly!” she says, with exaggerated reassurance. “This has nothing to do with me. It’s not personal, Marian. It’s a story, and I’m a journalist.”

  “I’m sure there are very genuine feelings between Barton and his fiancée,” Marian says desperately. “Look, he may be conceited and rude and all those things you said, but he isn’t worth it. He’s harmless.”

  “Marian,” Valerie says, with palpable dislike, “you’re such a good egg.”

  Marian hears Caroline’s long exhalation: fury and amazement. Her friend’s silence, thinks Marian, is a triumph of grown-up restraint.

  Valerie rises to her feet and puts on her camel’s hair coat. “Well, I have to get back to my office,” she announces. “I have a phone interview with a cultural anthropologist from NYU at two-thirty. Unless,” she says evenly, “you’d like to give me a quote, Marian? How do you feel, as a Warburg, watching someone like Mort Klein marry into your family? Hmm?” She waits hopefully. “Well, never mind. I have plenty of material, I think. And people always come out of the woodwork when you’re working on something big like this.” She turns to Caroline. “Um…” Valerie frowns, trying to remember Caroline’s name. “It was nice to meet you. Have a safe trip back to New Jersey.”

  “Connecticut,” says Caroline.

  Both of them wait until Valerie is safely gone from the room.

  “She is some piece of work,” Caroline says, in wonder. “Thanks for not blowing my cover.”

  “Oh, that’s all you need, to have Valerie Annis write about how you’re drowning your sorrows in sidecars and cheesecake.”

  “She ate the cheesecake,” Caroline observes.

  “True.” Marian tries to catch their waiter’s attention, for the check. “And poor Barton. Not that it wasn’t asinine, uninviting her to the wedding like that. He should have known Valerie wouldn’t take that lying down.”

  “He said it was the bride’s idea,” Caroline reminds her.

  “Even so. Though I can see her point. I mean, who’d want a gossip columnist at her wedding?”

  “You know,” Caroline says, thoughtfully, “I always thought Barton was gay. He was in Freddie’s confirmation class, remember? At Temple Emanu-El?”

  Marian nods. “I forgot that,” says Marian. Caroline’s younger brother and Barton are, she now recalls, the same age.

  “I was surprised when I heard he was getting married,” says Caroline.

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I mean, I’m not exactly fond of Barton, but I’d be so sorry for him if I thought this was actually some kind of arrangement. You know, for the money.”

  “Well, you’re a better person than I am, Caroline, because I’m not sorry for him at all. I disapprove of Valerie’s tactics, but I probably share her theory about this wedding. I think that’s exactly what it is. The family name may not mean much to me, but it certainly does to Barton, and according to him, it certainly does to the prospective father-in-law. I do feel bad for the girl, though. I mean, unless she really loves him, and that’s pretty hard to imagine.”

  “But what’s in it for her if she doesn’t really love him?” Caroline says. “She must care for him.”

  Marian sighs. “What do you think I should do?” she asks. “Should I warn them about Valerie?”

  Caroline considers this, then shakes her head. “You can’t stop it. Why add any more stress to the next few days? I’m sure they’re under enough pressure, getting everything ready. And anyway, the Kleins are probably used to having horrible things written about them. You don’t make as much money as Mort Klein’s made without attracting the envy of strangers.”

  Marian nods. “I think you’re right. About Klein, too. You need a tough skin to be that successful.”

  “As I’m sure you’ve discovered, yourself,” says Caroline kindly. “I admire you, Marian. You wear your own tough skin very well, I think. Very gracefully.”

  Marian looks up. Ever ungifted at accepting compliments, she finds herself awkwardly touched, and grateful. “Thank you,” she says, meaning it.

  “I remember thinking that last spring,” Caroline tells her. “You remember that day we ran into each other in front of Oliver’s shop?”

  Marian nods. She does remember that day.

  “I thought something had changed about you. Or not a change, exactly, but that you’d sort of grown into yourself.”

  “Grown into myself,” Marian laughs, deflecting.

  “I mean, you know how every woman is supposed to have a magic age when she’s never more lovely? Lillian Hellman said that, didn’t she?”

  “A woman not known for truth telling,” Marian comments, but still smiles.

  “No, but she was right about that. Every woman does have her magic age, and when I saw you that day I thought it must be yours. Maybe your book was part of it. Maybe the success it had, and your pride about what you’d accomplished. That’s all right. What I’m talking about, it’s not the same thing as vanity. I remember thinking…” She stops. “This is going to sound bad.”

  “Tell me,” Marian says.

  “I remember thinking, I’m glad she wasn’t an especially pretty girl, and I’m glad she wasn’t a cute college coed, because if she had been, she wouldn’t have this, now.” Caroline looks up at her. “I was so happy to see you, Marian.”

  The check lands between them on its china plate. Both women reach for it.

  “Let me,” Marian says. “I’m a rich author.”

  “Let me. I’m a rich divorcée.”

  They both laugh.

  “You know,” Caroline says, “I think she has to love him. I mean Barton. Who are we to say? You can never tell why people get together. Or stay together. Can you? Or even split up, I guess. It’s all a mystery…” She throws up her hands and smiles. “Great wisdom, right? From the fountain of age.”

  Marian, her throat suddenly tight, can only nod.

  “Only first, do no harm. That’s my philosophy,” says Caroline.

  She gives a girlish grin, and suddenly Marian can see Caroline in all her magic ages, all at once: the child Caroline in her ballet leotard, and in her velvet dress, and then the young woman Caroline in her smart violet Pucci shift, and then the settled, matron Caroline that afternoon in Greenwich, with eleven-year-old Oliver out in the backyard. She sees Caroline at forty-eight, with her fabulous cheekbones and graying hair, and then she sees Caroline of the future, thinner still and frailer, but also lovely, still lovely, walking on Fifth Avenue with her old friend, which for the briefest moment makes Marian want to cry with happiness. But she doesn’t. Instead, she reaches for Caroline’s hand across the table and squeezes it. “Welcome home,” she says.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Transformations

  Just after one P.M. on Monday, Oliver sits by the phone, knowing it is about to ring, but then when it does ring the sound of it shocks him anyway. The normal shop noises downstairs of opening doors a
nd footfalls on the old floorboards, of paper being ripped from the roll and the refrigerator door opening with a suck—they are nearly surreal in contrast with that ringing phone. Oliver forces himself to breathe, reaches for the phone, and says, with genuine breathlessness, “Hello?”

  “Olivia!” says Barton, with obvious pleasure. “I’m delighted you called. I must tell you, I’d about given up.”

  “I’m sorry!” Oliver says. “I’m sorry for that. I was…confused.”

  “My dear,” says Barton. “That is the last thing I wanted. I thought we had a real rapport. I wanted to see you again. Simple as can be. Now tell me, did you love your flowers? They were far from inexpensive, I can tell you.”

  Or would have been, thinks Oliver, if you’d ever get around to paying for them.

  “They were beautiful, Mr. Ochstein.”

  “Barton! I insist upon that.”

  “Barton. I would have…thanked you before now, but Dr. Kahn is your cousin. I don’t think she would like…”

  Oliver waits optimistically for Barton to jump in, but he does not.

  “I don’t think she would like the idea of our seeing each other, Barton.”

  “Oh now,” he says dismissively, “she needn’t know. We hardly move in common circles,” he says with a chuckle.

  “Oh. Is that so? I thought…don’t you have many friends in common?”

  “Not really. I doubt my friends would appeal to Marian,” says Barton meaningfully. “She’s a fairly staid person, you know.”

  She is not! Oliver thinks, instinctively leaping to Marian’s defense. But just what is Barton talking about here? Rent boys on Gansevoort Street? Dungeons in Tribeca?

  “I think you would like my friends,” Barton continues. “They tend to have open minds. They would appreciate a young person like yourself. They would appreciate all your qualities.”

  “I would like to meet them,” Oliver says carefully. “But first, I would like to see you, alone. I mean, if you still want to. I’d like to meet soon!”

  It had better be soon. The wedding, after all, is just days away.

  “Well, I’m a bit tied up for the next couple of weeks,” says Barton. “How about after the holidays? I would love to come see you in town. I’d make a special trip.”