Her Hungry Heart (35 page)

Chapter 27

This was Mimi’s favourite night of the year, Christmas Eve, the night she and Jay gave their annual family party, the night when all their children and their extended family came from various parts of the world for Mimi’s Christmas Eve. As the family grew ever larger, the venue of the party had to be changed. Christmas Eve for the last few years had been held in the Stefanik house just off Fifth Avenue. With Mimi’s and Jay’s own house jammed to the rafters with children and house guests, as was the Stefanik house, Mimi and Jay had taken to sleeping there in what had been Karel’s bedroom. It was one of the finest rooms Mimi would ever know. She loved that room, as she had ever since she was a child. It still retained the same plum-and-silver antique Fortuny draperies and the massive silver-gilt bed, the magnificent drawings on the wall. Mimi had made that room her own after her father’s death. She and Jay shared this room when they stayed in the Stefanik house.

She was sitting on the end of the bed in an ivory-coloured silk kimono embroidered with cranes in pure golden threads – a gift from Rick many years ago on his return from one of his extensive travels. She was watching Jay’s reflection in the mirror. He was fussing with his already perfect black bow tie. She was actually admiring her husband, still, in his seventies, handsome and fit, looking like a man of fifty. He caught her gaze and spoke into the mirror.

‘Not bad for a man my age – I hope you’re thinking.’

For years Mimi had watched Jay with a certain admiration
for his vanity, but somehow this evening it came home to her.

‘My God, I don’t think I ever realized just how vain you are, Jay.’

He turned around and smiled at her. ‘My dear, after all these years, surely it doesn’t come as a surprise to you?’

‘God, Jay, you are really gone on your vanity!’

‘Trouble is, I think I am. I’ve never hidden my admiration for myself.’ He laughed, using the easy Steindler charm to tease her back into some sort of admiration for him. It worked to an extent. He went to her and put his hand gently on her shoulder.

‘I think you’d better get ready.’

‘I have only to slip into my dress.’

She removed her kimono, and for a few minutes stood naked. Seeing her thus, in her high-heeled satin pumps, stockings that were held on her thighs by nothing more than lace garters, Jay felt the same kind of vanity for his wife that he felt for himself. She still had the figure of a young woman. Mimi was voluptuous without clothes. She caught sight of her husband looking at her nakedness and did not miss the pleasure in his eyes. But it was the sort of pleasure one has in possessing a pretty object, pleasure that is taken for granted. She saw no passion, only hunger for her naked body, for a still excitingly sexual woman. She was actually stunned by the look Jay gave her. It was a look she had seen so many times before for so many years of their marriage without it occurring to her that there was something missing from that look. The thing that she still hungered for, passionate erotic love, he simply didn’t have for her. Mimi tried to block it out of her mind, but it was as if scales had fallen from her eyes. She was seeing Jay in a different light tonight.

She bent over her dress lying on the bed, took it carefully in her hands and stepped into it. The luscious colour, violet with rich midnight blue undertones, seemed black yet hardly black at all. It complemented her violet eyes. The silk taffeta rustled as she adjusted it on her body.

She tried to shrug off her feelings of discontent with Jay’s gaze, but still she felt cheated by it. She slipped the gown over her shoulders and adjusted the bodice, then, standing in front of the mirror, asked Jay to do up the back for her. She sensed that she was being foolish. She touched the puffed sleeves, a miracle of draping and stitching. It was a romantic Yves Saint Laurent festive gown. She had splurged on it. It had been an extravagance that was irresistible to her. It was cut low, almost to the waist in the back, while in the front the neckline plunged down to show just enough cleavage – sensuous yet not vulgar. It seemed to be all puffed sleeves and tight bodice. The skirt was cut on the bias and clung to her in all the right places to flare out into a train just long enough both to provoke and remain elegant. There was something particularly festive and exciting about the gown. She had had her hair dressed for it, wearing the blonde tresses long and swept off her face, held back by several small combs topped with a sprig of roses set in diamonds and platinum that had once been worn by her mother.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look more beautiful than you do tonight, Mimi. You still look like the young girl I married all those years ago.’

She turned around to face her husband. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, Jay. It is a long time since I thought of myself as a young girl.’

He took her hands in his and stepped back, then twirled her around with one hand. She caught his look of approval and admiration.

‘Mimi?’ He hesitated.

‘What is it, Jay?’

‘Maybe this isn’t the time.’

‘Maybe it is.’

‘Mimi, why don’t you retire, get rid of the atelier? Saks wants to buy it. You divide your time too much. Give up the art agency. Look, you’ve had all the amusement you can get from them. Surely you don’t need the money? I have enough
for the rest of our days. They have been great amusement for you, successful even. That should be enough. You’ve had a good time playing with them. Now, maybe it’s time to move on.’

‘Played with these things, Jay?’

He sensed the edge on her voice and realized he had not been diplomatic. ‘This isn’t the time or the place, Mimi. Just think about it. We’ll talk about it another time.’

‘Sell everything for what? I mean, why? I don’t understand.’

‘Or give it to some of the children to take over.’

‘They have their own lives to lead. And besides, they’re not children any more.’

‘Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Get rid of everything.’

‘And do what?’

‘Stay home and cultivate yourself.’

‘Stay home and cultivate myself? Do you find me an uncultivated woman?’

‘No, of course not. Here, turn around, I’ll finish the fastenings.’

She obliged, and he continued closing her dress. ‘But let’s face it, you could do a lot with your brain you haven’t done. You’ve always had this little bit of a commercial thing, of having to see money come across the counter every day. It’s all a bit vulgar, especially since you don’t need it. You could stay home.’

‘We’ll travel?’ she said facetiously.

‘Yes, that’s what I said before. Become more cultured, more cultivated. There.’ He had finished the fastenings. Now he turned Mimi around to face him. ‘You are absolutely magnificent. Don’t look like that, it was only an idea.’

‘I don’t think I quite understand. You do appreciate how lucrative these businesses you have suddenly started calling mere toys have been? And that their success has brought me a reputation in several fields?’

‘Oh, yes, you’ve done admirably with them. What I’m
saying is that maybe it’s time for a change.’

‘And while I’m cultivating myself, what about you?’

‘We’ll have more time for each other. Maybe go and live in the sun somewhere.’

Mimi began to laugh. ‘Jay, we would be bored to death, hate each other in a week. You are a workaholic, need masses of people and power and deals just to get through one day. You love sharing yourself out, being Mr Nice Guy in a rat-fink business where you are the last of the great gentlemen publishers. I have spent a lifetime making do with the time you can spare me. And now you are telling me that’s going to change if
I
give up my work, what interests me. What’s brought this on?’

‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it for ages. Just never got around to it. How many are we downstairs?’

‘Forty-two.’

‘Forty-two for dinner. Forty-two of our family, my children, your children, our children. We’ve made a marvellous family out of them all. And it’s been fun most of the time, although a lot of hard work – mostly for you. How you’ve done it I don’t know, but it’s given me a great life, just as you promised it would. But it’s all gone now, except for Christmases. We don’t have any children any more, they’ve all grown up. The businesses are the same, all grown up. You don’t need those little projects to distract you from me.’

‘You mean, you’ve never seen the value in my work or my part in what we’ve done together?’

‘Well, of course I have. I’m just saying they don’t matter that much.’

‘They’ve been my life, and you tell me they don’t matter that much?’

‘Let’s talk about this another time.’

‘Jay, I’m not going down those stairs with you until you tell me what this is all about.’

‘I promise it’s not about anything. Now you’ve made your
point, and I don’t see any reason for you to go on with it.’

‘No, you’re quite right, so we won’t go on with it. We’ll drop it here and now.’

‘Mimi, we’re talking at cross purposes here. I think we’ll forget this conversation until after Christmas. Merry Christmas, my darling. The fruits of all our labours and all our joy in loving each other are downstairs waiting. I love you, Mimi, and the life we’ve had together. I think you look young and beautiful, and every one of those people downstairs admires you and is grateful to you for the family you created for us.’

He slipped his arm through hers and kissed her on the tip of her nose. Together they left the bedroom to walk down the stairs. Mimi forgot about Jay’s suggestions; they vanished from her mind when, from the top of the stairs, she looked down and saw her whole family below, the men in black tie, the women in long dresses, the children in party dresses. They were the fruits of her labour, that was true, a magnificent family, the children and adults who had given her the family life she had yearned for as a child, insisted upon as an adult. She felt their closeness, the warmth and energy of their love rising towards her. Turning to Jay to say something, she realized that only he didn’t have that energy for her. He had energy all right, but he was always directing it elsewhere: to these people below, the man in the street, his colleagues, any fresh young face that drifted into the Jay Steindler orbit. But for her it just wasn’t there. How had she not noticed that? She had spent very nearly her entire adult life married to Jay, believing she enjoyed a near-perfect marriage with this man, and with a sexual life that had been satisfying if not adventurous. So how had she not noticed that he loved her in the image he had created to suffice for himself, and that had been all? Passion, the lust he had for life – those things he had always kept to himself, except for the fraction he distributed like largesse. He had cleverly made Mimi think, as he had
most people, that he gave those things away with a generous heart.

He slipped his hand through her arm and beamed down at her. ‘Merry Christmas, old girl,’ he intoned, and they walked together down the stairs. There butlers were charging glasses from magnums of Bollinger. It was in the hall that they drank their champagne around the twelve-foot Christmas tree glowing with coloured lights and silver tinsel. Presents, beautifully wrapped in coloured papers with extravagant silk ribbons in large, luscious bows, were piled high. The house smelled of roast goose and apple rings fried in butter and cinnamon, red cabbage and Christmas stuffing of crab and shrimp, and chestnuts roasted with sage, onion and cream.

Barbara was there with her new husband, looking ravishing in a short bolero jacket of crimson velvet over a see-through black chiffon blouse and a skirt of black silk taffeta, a wide sash of purple satin tied in a massive soft bow at the waist, tails hanging very nearly to the floor. Several of the women in the hall, adoring fans of her handsome, temperamental husband (who had eyes only for her), surrounded him.

Barbara had married a very short time after Karel’s death. Her world-famous conductor husband was no longer a young man, but still the same dashing, charismatic musical genius that women had always pursued. He had disillusioned many romantic hopefuls with his marriage to Barbara, who, he had announced at the time, he had loved and whose acceptance of him he had awaited for more than a decade. Barbara travelled extensively with him, having taken a sabbatical from her work that appeared to be becoming permanent. They were always at Mimi’s Christmas Eve parties, having become members of the Steindler extended family.

Rick was there too. Still so very young and handsome-looking while we all grow older, thought Mimi as their eyes met and he blew her a kiss. At forty-five he looked like a young man of thirty, his hair bleached by the sun. He had returned from Malaysia for Christmas to be with the twins,
and Mimi and the rest of the Steindler family which he felt to be his family as well.

‘Mummy, you look gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.’ Angelica kissed her, and then all the children followed suit.

They were a handsome group of people, vital and exciting. This was Mimi’s proudest moment. She had given them all everything she herself had missed as a child. Now they made up for her years of deprivation and separateness during childhood, those formative years she had struggled through at the hands of kind strangers.

The Steindler Christmas Eve party was something of a New York occasion. First Mimi had the family for drinks in the grand front hall, and then a full sit-down Christmas Eve dinner. It was customary for the entire party and household to attend Midnight Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. On their return they opened the house to any friends who wanted to come. The pattern of Christmas Eve never changed.

Everyone milled around the great hall, drank champagne and chatted to each other, gossiping and laughing. Mimi loved that hall with its giant tree, the staircase balustrade wound around with garlands of fresh green pine that filled the hall with a woodland scent. There were decorations of red ribbon, great silk bows of it, and fat white candles that added their own aroma of hot wax. There were always Christmas carols sung in the great hall as they drank their champagne. Jay and Mimi effected a grand entrance down the stairs.