The First Wives Club (12 page)

Chou should have a car and driver, cara.”

Brenda looked out the window. They had arrived. Duarto paid the driver over Brenda’s protests and they walked into 125 Broadway. The directory was long, and it took Brenda a while to find the listing.

The office was on the fourteenth floor, which really meant the thirteenth. Great. Off to a great fucking start.

“She’s really good?” Brenda asked Duarto as they stood in the elevator, waiting what seemed to Brenda an endless time for the doors to close. There was a sour smell, and a faint whiff of sardines. The elevator cab had once been paneled in mahogany. Now what was left of the wood was covered with gouges. Initials and vulgarities covered every dark inch.

“Duarto, she is really, really good?”

“Of course, cara. Che ees fabulous.”

”Who else has she handled?” Brenda felt that a man, a really aggressive man, was probably what she needed, but she did trust Duarto.

On financial issues he was realistic, even hard-boiled.

“No one chou know, but believe me, I have seen her do some real numbers. Che has been up against Raoul Felder and Melvin Belli and made them both look like cheet. Che’s a mad dog.”

They stepped out of the elevator at fourteen and found themselves in a narrow hall lined with dozens of doors. ‘I don’t remember the room number,” Brenda moaned. Another ride in the elevator would undo her completely.

“Fourteen twelve,” Duarto told her, but the hall branched and split several times, and only a few of the old, brown-painted metal doors had names or numbers. The hall smelled dusty and stale, and the doors were dented, as if they had been kicked or hammered on. Brenda felt worse and worse. She thought of her Jewish mother’s single bit of useful advice, “Only get the best.

Otherwise you’ll regret it.” Too bad she never taught me where it was found or how to recognize it, Brenda thought, clutching the slippery plastic shopping bag. One thing she did know, this was not the place where the best would ever be found.

“Ta-dali!” trumpeted Duarto. They had come to another of the ubiquitous brown metal doors, this one with a pebbled-glass window with Law Office of Diana La Gravenesse painted in black and gold. Duarto opened the door, and Brenda walked into a drab, beige, unwin dowed waiting room with a few old leather armchairs, a coffee table with some ragged magazines, and a window in a wall behind which sat a redheaded male receptionist.

“Seet down. I weel take care of eet.” Brenda watched from a chair as Duarto spoke to the receptionist. They went on for some time. Duarto returned to her, his lips tight.

”I love dees self-important leetle nellies. T’inks who de fuck he ees.”’ He raised his brows. “Diana will come soon, cara.”

And she did. The brown-painted door opened to reveal an amazing sight.

She was tall, well over six foot, with broad shoulders and long arms and legs. Her hair was short, an indeterminate color between blond and brown, parted in the middle and slicked back in almost a parody of the Wall Street-banker look. Her pumps, stockings, suit, and silk shirt were all a gray-brown-taupe color, as were her eyes, and her glasses were rimless with gold ear-wires. Big, classy, austere, tough. She looked formidable.

“Duarto! I didn’t know you were coming today.” Her voice was deep but not unfeminine. She smiled, and her broad lips revealed the most perfect natural teeth that Brenda had ever seen. And if they weren’t her own, Brenda wanted the dentist’s name. Angela needed some caps.

“You’re Brenda Cushman?” The statement had an interrogative lift at the end of the sentence, but the big woman didn’t wait for an answer.

She held out her hand, a big, flat one with long fingers, and took Brenda’s small, chubby one for a moment. And for the first time all day, the anxiety stopped. Just for a minute, as Diana La Gravenesse took her hand, Brenda felt fine.

”Let’s go into my office,” Diana suggested, and they did.

Nervous, perspiring, Brenda told the lawyer about her case. When she began, she was almost stammering, but she gradually began to relax.

Maybe it was stupid, but she trusted this woman. So much so that she even explained about her father and his connections to “the Family.”

“I don’t want to be asked about that stuff. I’m afraid, and my husband knows it.”

Diana was soothing. “I can understand. But he’s used your fear. And he’s certainly hidden marital assets. We have enough to reopen the case.” She paused. “Tell me, Mrs. Cushman, did you ever help your husband in his business’?”

”Help?”’ Brenda asked. “I used to run the place. Why? Does it matter?”’ “A great deal. Tell me about it.”’ What a creep Morty had been, Brenda thought. Morty had lost his job—the third one that year—two weeks before the wedding, but she had buried the significance of that event in her excitement at her new life.

Her father and mother had given them the down payment for their first house, a little semi-attached in the Bronx.

Each of her aunts had bought a room of furniture for them, so they moved into a completely furnished house, compliments of her family.

Morty walked into the marriage with only his salesman’s personality and the promise of a good life.

She’d left the darkness of her family behind. No more crooks, no more phone calls from Peewee and Lefty, no more visits from men in limousines in the middle of the night.

But things weren’t good. Morty couldn’t hold a job, he was always mouthing off to his bosses. He couldn’t hold on to money, either-when he had it, which was rarely. So Brenda swallowed her pride and hid her disappointment, she went to her father to ask for his help in getting Morty another job. That was when she knew she would have to be the one to steer their futures. And it scared her. She was raised by her Italian father and Jewish mother to marry comfortably, stay at home, and depend on her man. But now she knew that that formula wasn’t going to work, not if she was ever going to have anything without her family’s help.

Brenda’s father knew the score as well. He saw that unless he gave Brenda a hand, she was doomed to life with a loser.

So he had set Morty up in an appliance store on Fordham Road in the Bronx, and Brenda adapted immediately to her role as bookkeeper, since Morty couldn’t be trusted to handle the money. The business prospered, she remembered, not because her husband was such a hotshot businessman—as he tried to convince people—but because Brenda’s father was providing the stock through the back door. With his connections, appliances that had “fallen off the back of a truck” were delivered each day and, because the overhead was so low, sold the next.

There was no one she could explain this to, except her much younger brother, Neil. But he was a stand-up comic, a nut bag who was living on the West Coast and had nothing to do with the family.

Brenda sat in Diana’s soft leather chair, remembering those early years, finally talking about them. She had hated being involved with the dirt again, but she had to admit it proved to be the perfect setup, with the business growing so fast that they had been forced to go legit and enlarge. Again, it was Brenda’s father who got those wheels rolling, and Brenda who kept them greased.

That prick, she thought, as she remembered how each night Morty came striding into the office, being his usual officious self. On-the job training was how she picked up her knowledge of bookkeeping, along with the principles of business, and she was trying to teach him all she was learning as quickly as possible, so that eventually she could stay home.

Her mom was watching Angela, her baby, grow up.

But Morty was not a man who stooped to learn from a woman. “Take care of it!” he would growl. He was only interested in being the front man, playing proprietor. She paid the bills, dealt with deliveries, did the firing.

Morty, of course, did the hiring. He was strictly fun stuff. And when they outgrew the store, he wanted another, and then another. Be a bigger man. Brenda was stuck negotiating the leases, getting credit extended. At last, after Tony was born, it was too much, and they hired Sy, who took over the back office.

Brenda gratefully retreated to the house in Greenwich, only to find it was all wrong for her. The neighbors were snobs. Her parents were far away. The kids were unhappy. She was unhappy. She sighed. Nothing turned out the way you planned.

Now, she looked up at Diana La Gravenesse’s interested, attentive face.

“Let me explain how it was,” she began.

The Unpleasantness at the Carlyle The weekend stretched before Annie, empty and endless. Aaron still hadn’t called. She felt frightened by the thought. Why hadn’t she accepted Elise’s East Hampton invitation?

Well, because she couldn’t bear the effort of being social. But she couldn’t bear the loneliness either. Summer weekends in the city were awful. But she had no choice. She was a prisoner—imprisoned, waiting for Aaron’s call.

She managed to get through Saturday by reading a bit, watering the plants, eating a little yogurt, then, exhausted by the fruitless waiting, she fell into bed at eight-thirty. She slept until almost one, then woke, dreaming she was in Aaron’s arms. When she realized it was only a dream, she knew she wouldn’t sleep again that night. She wished, desperate for a moment, that she had some pills. Tomorrow she’d call Brenda and borrow a few Seconals. She disapproved of them, but she couldn’t face another sleepless night.

She got up, drank a glass of water, and walked down the hall to Sylvie’s room.

Perhaps there was something she had overlooked, something she could pack and send to her daughter. She turned on the light and opened the closet. Sylvie’s old coat, her outgrown sneakers, and some odds and ends were all that were there. Annie closed the door. Television.

Annie rarely watched television, almost never the one in the living room. Now, she turned it on.

A made-for-television movie, an evangelist, a rerun of Mannix. She was on the cable channels now. A woman, nude, appeared on the screen.

“Want to suck these tits?” she asked, holding up her breasts. ‘Want to do it to me doggy style?

Want to give me your hard cock? Call Elite Escort Service. We’re young, we’re hot, and we want you. Lonely? Call Elite.” Annie snapped the set off, repulsed. Channel J. Public Access. It should be stopped. Who was so desperate that they called those numbers? Who was that lonely? For a moment, despite her disgust, she felt compassion for whoever they might be.

She walked out to the kitchen. It was 1,18 in the morning. How would she get through the night?

.

Sunday. Yes, Sunday was the loneliest day of the week. Standing at the kitchen sink, Annie forced herself to take two high-potency vitamin pills, one at a time, following each with a sip of orange juice. She fought the urge to retch, waited a moment for the feeling to pass, then looked at the kitchen clock.

Two-fifteen in the afternoon. Then she double-checked against her wristwatch.

For a moment Annie was surprised at how late it had become. She was disoriented. Her insomnia had affected her thinking, she knew. But then it wasn’t really thinking. It was only yearning for Aaron, for her old life.

Her sleeplessness and loneiness were closing in on her. Perhaps, she thought, I should call Dr. Rosen for a prescription. No, she would not be dependent.

She’d handle this.

I made mistakes, Aaron. I should have been more attentive to you. I shouldn’t have blamed you for not accepting Sylvie as she is. You needed more attention.

I’m sorry I grew away from you. I’m sorry I didn’t have orgasms. I’m so very, very sorry. But Aaron, why did you make love to me in Boston?

Why did you say you loved me? And why, oh, why, haven’t you called me?

He was the only man for her, the only one. She knew that now. Without Aaron, she’d spend her life wandering through purgatories like this one, alone.

Alone, she couldn’t take New York in June. Alone, she couldn’t escape to their cottage on Long Island. She couldn’t bear to be alone, unloved. Since the separation she’d fooled herself. Only temporary.

Not permanent. So she’d hoped. And then graduation, and her night with Aaron, had confirmed her hope.

But she’d been foolish.

What will I do without him? she thought for the hundredth time.

Get out and get some fresh air, she told herself. But the heat on the street stunned her, adding to her confusion, her disorientation. As she walked west on Eightyfourth Street, she passed a storefront and looked at her reflection in the window. Someone I used to know, she thought. Annie stopped and studied the image in the glass, forest-green polo shirt, beige chino skirt, loafers.

She hadn’t realized as she was dressing in these castoffs that this was the way she used to dress at Smith.

As she continued her walk, she remembered her college days, and before that Miss Porter’s School, and Sacred Heart. Cynthia. She thought of Cynthia. But that was too much. Suddenly aware of her surroundings, she looked across Park Avenue at the massive church on the southwest corner of Eightyfourth Street.

St. Ignatius Loyola. The nuns at Sacred Heart in Philadelphia used to take the girls to a Jesuit church for Sunday vespers at four. Annie used to love that service. She’d go into the church. She’d light a candle for Cynthia, for Sylvie, and for herself. She looked at her watch. Ten to four.

Annie crossed the avenue and entered the large Romanesque church. She didn’t know if vespers was still sung, what with all the change in the Church since the sixties. She hadn’t been to church for years, aside from the inevitable weddings and funerals, and these mostly in Episcopal churches. She didn’t approve of the Church or the Pope, but she was drawn to this church today.

Annie stood in the rear, looking down the main aisle toward the huge mosaics behind the altar, moved by their beauty and the sense of timelessness they gave her. She slipped into a pew near the rear. The church was almost empty, except for a sprinkling of old Irish ladies umbling their rosaries. How little has changed. She sat back in the pew and let her mind wander between memories and prayers. Bless Cynthia. Poor Cynthia. Help my daughter, Sylvie.