Southern Charm (11 page)

I
n the meantime, my mother took up residence at the Plaza Hotel. As I slaved away at RVPR, trying to balance the demands of being Ruth's assistant with the excitement of being wooed by Tripp du Pont, Mother was spending more time in my apartment than I was, orchestrating a most ambitious interior design project. One evening, I arrived home at midnight to find her in the kitchen on her hands and knees, inspecting the newly grouted tile.

“It's in the details, Minty,” she said, looking up at me. All I could do was stare down at her, speechless. “Details, details, details.”

It turned out this maxim could be applied to many areas of my life, especially my job. Ever since my disastrous performance at the
Hermès party, I was determined to prove myself to Ruth. I arrived at work an hour earlier than the other assistants (sometime between seven thirty and eight
A.M
. each morning). I smiled even when smiling was the last thing I felt like doing, which was usually the case. If I had to cry, I went into the handicap bathroom stall and did it very, very softly. I always carried Clé de Peau concealer and Visine so that when I emerged from the bathroom, I actually looked fresher and more alert than I did going in.

One morning, Ruth asked me to pick up some ballpoint pens for an event. I forgot which type was her favorite and had to ask before I ran out to buy some.

When I popped my head in her office to check, she turned very red, stopped breathing for a moment, and then buried her head in her hands. All I could do was stand there helpless, wondering if I should grab her a brown paper bag.

“Jesus Christ, Minty,” she bellowed. “Do you think I have time for this crap? Fucking ballpoint pens? Get a fucking clue!”

Back at my desk, I wasn't sure whether to just make an educated guess or wait for Ruth to miraculously have a charitable moment and remind me on her own. I racked my brain for a memory of Ruth holding a pen and came up with nothing. So I made my way to the bathroom, where I spent approximately four minutes in the handicap stall trying not to cry.

When I returned to my desk, Spencer was there.

“Ruthless just left for lunch,” he said, referencing a nickname Ruth had rightly earned in the industry. He used the nickname liberally, while the rest of us were too scared to use it even in the privacy of our own homes. “The coast is clear.”

Spencer was a rare find in the fashion world, not because he was charming, clever, and good-looking, but because he was all of those things in addition to being straight (as he once swore in front of the entire office with his right hand on a copy of the Bible).

He had a boyish, prep-school look: dirty blond, sunburned hair and a ruddy complexion. He spent his junior year at Dartmouth
abroad in Paris, during which he discovered Flaubert and the merits of the clove cigarette. When he returned to Hanover for his senior year, he decided he would become “a writer.” He would move to New York after graduation and pursue a career at
Vanity Fair
.

Even if Spencer were years away from the
Vanity Fair
contributors' page as an RVPR intern, he was determined to schmooze his way up the ladder until his dream became a reality. Which couldn't help but make me think about my own goals. It seemed so far beyond my reach, but I dreamed of having my own fashion label one day. Hopefully the connections I was making at RVPR would bring me closer to that goal. Although sometimes I couldn't help but wonder, was I reaching too high?

“Minty.” Spencer rolled his eyes as I sat down with a defeated look on my face. “You've got to stop taking things so personally.”

“Forgive me if I'm wrong,” I said, “but it's hard not to take it personally when someone tells you to get a—excuse my French—
fucking
clue.”

“I grew up in New Jersey, where people in SUVs the size of a third-world country run you off the road if you're not going over eighty miles an hour.” He paused and looked me straight in the eye. “It's not personal.”

W
hen Ruth returned from lunch, she was holding a small gift bag. I knew the blue shade of the bag well: Smythson. She walked into her office and summoned me via speakerphone. She always waited until she got back into her office to address me, as if she was following some sort of boss/assistant protocol.

Typically, I would have run to her office, but this time around, I couldn't help but walk slowly, like a prisoner walking the gangplank.

When I got to her office, there was something eerie about how calm she was. All I could think was, How am I going to explain being fired to my mother?

Before I could sit down, she rested her hand on the Smythson bag, which was in front of her on her desk, and slid it toward me. “Now,
I'm only going to say this once,” she said, staring at me intently. “And if there is even a reason for me to want to say it a second time, well, let's just say I won't even have the chance to say it because you won't
be
here anymore.”

“Okay,” I gulped.

“Write. Everything. Down.”

I picked up the bag and looked inside. There was a pink notebook. I found it curious, seeing as pink was not exactly Ruth's favorite color and, in spite of the fact that it was mine, I had never once worn pink in the office.

“Thank you, Ruth,” I said. “I love it. I absolutely love it. I promise to write everything down.”

“It had your name written all over it,” she said, shooing me away.

When I got back to my desk, Spencer eyed my present suspiciously.

“Oh boy, she got you a Smythson?” Spencer grumbled. “That means you're in deep.”

“In deep?”

“Well . . .” Spencer paused for a moment. “It's both good and bad. It means Ruth has a soft spot for you. It also means she's investing in you. Which—how shall we put this?—never ends well.”

“Oh,” I said.

O
ne morning, about a week before Christmas, I arrived in the office extra early in order to get a head start on my growing to-do list.

I was praying to get out of the office at a reasonable hour. Tripp had invited me to a dinner at the home of one of his childhood friends, Baron Guggenheim, that evening. We had only been dating for about two months and I was a bit nervous about spending an evening with a group of native New Yorkers who had known one another their entire lives. I wanted some time to get ready.

The one saving grace was that Emily would be in attendance. It turned out that she and Tripp had several friends in common. While
she seemed genuinely happy that I would be there, I could also make out a bit of hesitancy in her voice.

“I'm just warning you,” she said. “It's a tough crowd.”

Fine, but there was no way in hell I was going to play the role of helpless girlfriend swallowed up by a sea of piranhas. I wanted Tripp to see that I could not only hold my own with his friends but also win them over in spite of my lack of a preppy Northeast pedigree and Upper East Side connections. Emily might serve as a buffer, but as I learned at the luncheon back in September, she was no babysitter. Knowing Emily and her own unique version of tough love, she would probably give me several minutes of her time at the beginning of the party and then leave me to fend for myself, for better or for worse.

All I knew is that I wanted to feel prepared. I wanted to look my best, and there was no way that was going to happen if I was stuck at the office late and had to rush over to the party in my pencil skirt and pumps. I had never once asked Ruth for permission to leave the office in the three months I'd been working there. I figured if I promised to get all of my work done and asked her very nicely first thing, she would understand.

When I arrived at work that morning, it was no more than two seconds before my phone rang.

“I need you in my office,” Ruth said.

“Okay.” I hung up and grabbed my notebook.

When I walked into Ruth's office, I could tell something was amiss.

“Have you seen this?”

Ruth was holding a copy of the
New York Post
. The headline on the front page said something about a scandal with the NYPD. I wasn't sure. She held it up so fast, I could barely see the picture.

I tried to remember if I was supposed to read the
Post
first thing every day. I wondered if I had something written in my notebook about it and reflexively started leafing through the pages.

“Well.” Ruth put the paper down and riffled through a few pages.
“You might want to.” She folded the paper over and handed me “Page Six,” New York's most notorious, ruthless, and widely read gossip column.

PLAYBOY DU PONT DUMPS TANTALIZING TABITHA FOR SASSY SOUTHERN DEB.

My mouth dropped open. “Oh . . . my . . . God.”

Ruth stared at me. “Mmm-hmm.”

The first paragraph read: “Move over, Tabitha the Tea Heiress, Minty Davenport is the new Belle of the Ball and she's not as sweet and innocent as she seems. Friends of Ms. Lipton say the socialite was ‘shocked' and ‘blindsided' by her breakup with Tripp du Pont, one of New York's most eligible bachelors. Sources cite Minty as the ‘one and only' cause.”

“Oh my God, Ruth,” I said. “What is this?” I held the paper up to my face. “Why on earth would they . . . ? What?!” I skimmed the rest of the article, which could be summed up in one word: LIES! They made some reference to my “down-home” Charleston roots and mentioned that my mother “claimed” to be an “FFV,” a descendant of one of the “First Families of Virginia.” (This was true, actually.) Then they went on to describe my father as a “rug salesman.”

“My father is not a rug salesman!” I yelped.

My paternal grandfather had once owned a well-known carpet company, but my father was a successful businessman in his own right! I didn't even know how they
got
that information, let alone managed to screw it up! Not to mention, they were making me out to be some sort of seductress, like I'd stolen Tripp away from Tabitha! I was mortified.

Either way, Ruth didn't seem to care.

“I'm not sure I signed up for this, Minty,” she said.

I gulped. Neither had I!

“It's one thing for RVPR
clients
to show up on ‘Page Six,'” she said. “It's another thing for RVPR
employees
.”

“R-Ruth,” I stammered, trying to wrap my head around what was happening, “you have to believe I had nothing to do with this.”

“So you're telling me you didn't use one of my connections to get your name in bold print?”

“Oh God, absolutely not,” I said, shaking my head. “I wouldn't even know the first thing about something like that.”

A lump began to form in my throat. On one hand, I was dealing with the shock of public humiliation. Had Tripp read it yet? Was he freaking out? On the other hand, I was dealing with a boss who had me on probationary terms at best. And to top it off, she thought I'd set the whole thing up on purpose.

Ruth sighed. It seemed like she might, miraculously, believe me.

“All right, then,” she said, staring at me. “I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. But I definitely have a phone call to make.”

“Are you going to call—”

“Absolutely, I'm calling Farah,” she said, referring to Farah Hammer, the notorious editor of “Page Six.” “She fucks with one of my clients, she's going to hear about it. She fucks with one of my
employees,
well, that's a whole other level of retribution.”

I grimaced.

“In the meantime, Davenport,” she continued, “I want you to focus. As far as I'm concerned this is over and done with. Is that clear?”

I nodded. “Yes, of course.”