The First Wives Club (14 page)

Elise quickly shrugged off the suit she was wearing while trying to decide on what to change into. Maybe a Blass, or an Armani. They had been right for a long time. Perhaps too long. She reconsidered. I don’t want to look like Nancy Reagan visiting the Big Apple, she thought, smiling. A jazz pianist she knew in her Paris days had once told her New York was called the Big Apple because it held all the temptations of the flesh. She thought of Room 705 again and sighed.

No. She’d wear something European. Maybe that lavender leather Claude Montana with the big shoulders and the peplum, it was outrageous, but it suited her long frame, and the color was good with her hair. And it definitely was not Greenwich matron. She’d only worn it once and left it here somewhere. Besides, it had cost the earth, so she’d better wear it again.

Elise had grown up believing in having the best and making it last.

She still had her first Chanel suits from the fifties, Halston hats from the sixties.

Mackies from the seventies, and Lacroixs from the eighties. Her homes were decorated by McMillan and looked undecorated—and the furniture and fabrics were a bit frayed. They were never redone. She had grown up in an enormous town house in New York, a mansion in Palm Beach, and the even larger “cottage” in East Hampton, and in all there were holes worn in the carpets, and silk lampshades that were shredded. But the carpets were Aubusson and the shades Italian silk. Generations of wealth and social standing had eliminated the need to prove anything to anyone.

Now, stripped down to her lingerie and stockinged feet, she walked across the threadbare carpet to her dressing room and began to search for the Montana. It wasn’t there, but it could be in several places.

Though the dressing room was as large as the bedrooms in a normal apartment, Elise’s clothes overflowed into guest-room closets, hall armoires, and even into Bill’s much smaller dressing room. Now she looked in her spare places, but couldn’t find the distinctive lavender outfit.

She crossed her bedroom again and opened the door to Bill’s bathing and dressing area. She stopped short on the threshold, her eyes widening.

The room was empty. There wasn’t a single bottle or jar on the counter, not a shirt on the shelves, no shoes in the specially constructed shoe racks made for Bill’s size-ten feet. Elise ran to a drawer and opened it. No underwear, no socks, no sweaters. Her breathing seemed to stop, then it started up again in uncomfortable gasps. He was gone. She had known it all the time. He was going to leave her. Oh, God. He had left her already.

She sat down hard, almost collapsing, on the side of the tub. What had he said on the phone? Think, think. She tried hard to remember. He had offered to take her to lunch and insisted he would meet her at the restaurant. He hadn’t wanted her to know, that was it. But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t.

But it couldn’t be anything else. Bill had a full wardrobe in all three of their houses and in their London flat. He rarely had to pack more than an overnight bag. Now, everything was gone. He had left her, and she hadn’t even realized it.

Without hope, she stood and opened the door to his suit closet.

Perhaps, somehow … The door pulled open smoothly, revealing the dark interior, barren but for the lavender leather Claude Montana dress, which swung back and forth gently, gently in the emptiness.

“Drive down Fifth Avenue,” Elise told her driver through the open partition.

But where to? she thought. What am I going to do? Where can I go?

“To Martha,” she added, saying the first thing that popped into her head.

Elise let her head fall back on the creamy leather headrest as her limousine inched its way through midday traffic. She was still too shaken to feel the effects of the double vodka she had downed before she left the apartment.

Closing her eyes, the emptiness overwhelmed her. She placed the fingertips of her right hand on her throat, the rapid pulse reassuring her that she really was alive. The gentleness of her own touch on her skin caused her to release a long, low, almost primal moan. Feeling the tears at the corners of her eyes about to bubble out, she quickly pressed the button at her fingertips, closing the opaque partition between her and the driver. Pas devantles domestiQues.

Slowly, as if a mantra, she said the word in a soft whisper, empty.

She didn’t know if she was referring to the closets or to herself. But the emptiness felt old, very old. And she felt old. Now her worst fear had been realized. She was alone. No matter what she had done to ensure that she would never have to feel that aloneness, no matter how much she had compromised her life to avoid it, she was now alone. All her money, her connections, her looks, her talent—none of it could hold off this onslaught. She reached into her handbag and took out a handkerchief. What am I going to do? she thought again as her tears slowed.

What am I going to do?

She pictured Bill’s dressing room, mentally going through each closet, each drawer, one more time, to be sure she had not been wrong. No.

They were all empty. Everything, gone. There was no misinterpreting that. She shook her head suddenly, almost violently, to shake off the awful image of all those opened closet doors, the open drawers, empty of every trace of the man she had been married to for almost twenty years. She clasped her hands together and squeezed, as if the effort would wring the tension from her body.

As her tears ended, and her silent sobs quieted, she realized that she hadn’t even asked herself the classic inevitable question and was immediately heartened by that fact. She hadn’t asked herself the question that comes to all abandoned women first—what did I do wrong?

Elise blew her nose and savored that fact for a moment, accepting it as a small gift. I am not responsible, she thought. And without a scintilla of doubt, she realized that she had done everything she could to preserve their marriage. It was Bill who had continued to have affairs, to betray her time and again, while he enjoyed all the benefits of her wealth and social position.

Elise sat erect, holding her head up. She dabbed at her eyes once more, then snapped open the console mirror to survey the damage.

Mechanically, she reapplied her makeup, then her lipstick, rolling her lips to even out the coat. Bill didn’t know that Elise had gone to the apartment, believing that she was coming straight down from Greenwich to keep their lunch date. Was he going to tell me over lunch, in a public restaurant? she thought. That was it, of course. He’d asked her to lunch to tell her he had left her. And he had relied on Elise’s breeding and her natural repugnance for public scenes to allow him to say what he had to say and walk away without having to deal with her feelings.

Her head rolled listlessly to the side, and she caught sight of the Guggenheim Museum. The tinted-gray glass of the car window leant an eerie, otherworldly aura to the building, causing Elise to squeeze her eyes shut once again. When she opened them again, she saw the grandeur of the Metropolitan Museum looming on her right, its size oerpowering her. Not until she spied the manageable stateliness of the Frick was she able to think again. She remembered the lovely May afternoon she had spent there with Annie, slowly moving from room to room.

Afterward, they sat on the stone bench in the garden amongst the exuberant pink azaleas. What was it that Annie had said that day? Men have it so easy.

She realized then that she couldn’t face the midday crowd around Martha. Nor the swarm of tourists in Rockefeller Center. “Mosely, I’ve changed my mind. Go up Madison Avenue.” Maybe I could go to that lovely out-of-print bookstore in the brownstone on Ninety-third Street, she thought. I could sit by myself in the stacks, figure out what to do next.

Annie was right, of course. Men just pack a bag and walk away. How was it that men didn’t see the abandonment of a woman as the act of cowardice it really was? Elise, like most women of her generation, she supposed, had grown up believing that real men were both brave and responsible, despite evidence to the contrary. Bill, she now had to admit, was neither. Nor were any of those empty suits that passed as appropriate partners for the women she knew and admired. Like Annie’s Aaron.

Elise picked up the car’s phone and punched in Annie’s number, praying she would be there, relieved that it was answered on the second ring.

“Annie, it’s Elise.” She cleared her throat. ‘I need you.”

“Elise, what’s the matter?”

“Annie, I … Bill’s left me.” Elise heard her voice grow tiny.

But Annie’s voice was even, soothing in Elise’s ear. “Where are you, Elise? Do you want me to come to you?”

“Thanks, Annie,” Elise managed with a laugh she knew sounded ghastly.

‘Actually, I’m in my car about ten minutes away. Could I come to you?

Could you meet me downstairs, out front?”

“I’ll be waiting,” Annie said, and hung up.

Good, thought Elise. Now she had someplace to go. She would pick up Annie. She took the first deep breath she had taken in an hour.

“Mosely, take me to Gracie Square.”

While the attendant held the door, Annie climbed into the car, taking the seat facing Elise instead of beside her.

“Where should we go?” Annie asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve just been driving around.”

“Mosely,” Annie said, pushing a button and speaking into the intercom.

“We’re going to Sutton Place.” To Elise, she added, “We can get out and walk in that little park. It’s always empty.”

As the car turned downtown on York Avenue, Elise popped open the door to the bar and reached for the bottle of Stolid. “Care for something, Annie?” Elise dropped two cubes into a cut-crystal glass and poured a large double. She stirred it briskly with her index finger, then swallowed hard.

“I’ll just have a club soda. I’ll get it myself.” After Annie poured the carbonated drink, she looked at Elise and said, “Now tell me, what happened?”

Elise turned to look out the car window, holding her own drink in one hand, and the gnarled handkerchief in the other, then turned back to Annie. “Bill’s left me. He’s packed his bags and he’s gone.”

Annie paused for a minute. “Well, it’s about time. So what are you crying about?”

“What? Don’t you understand? Annie, I’m all alone. We’re not married anymore,” Elise said. “I’m all alone,” she repeated, saying each word slowly.

“You’ve been married in name only for a long time, Elise. And it’s killing you. You’ve also been alone for a long time, so what’s different? What are you afraid of?”’ Elise paused, trying to absorb Annie’s calm reasoning. She gulped from her drink again. Too much drinking, too much fear, too much loneliness. ‘Annie,” she stammered, searching for the words. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to end up like Cynthia.”

Annie picked up her handbag from beside her on the floor, snapped it open, and took out an envelope. Handing it to Elise, she said, ‘Read this.”

Elise placed her drink in the indentation on the armrest and took the note from Annie. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s Cynthia’s suicide note. I’ve wanted to show it to you, and now I think is the perfect time.”

Elise dropped the envelope back into Annie’s lap as if the note had suddenly caught fire. “Annie, don’t be macabre.”

Annie returned the envelope to Elise. “Read it,” she said, “if you don’t want to end up like Cynthia.”

Elise tapped the envelope, reluctantly opened it. Cynthia’s message crawled out of the grave and turned her skin to gooseflesh.

Annie waited until Elise had finished, folded, and silently returned it. “So, Elise, no regrets. You got out just in time. I want you to go home and write in lipstick on your bathroom mirror. He was not good enough for me.”

” Elise felt a tentative smile at the corners of her mouth. “He wasn’t, you know. And Aaron isn’t good enough for you.”

“So it would appear. He’s only good enough for my therapist.” Dryly, Annie briefed Elise about the scene at the Carlyle.

”Oh, Annie.”

Annie smiled back. “So what are your plans for the rest of the day?”

Elise shrugged. ‘I’m to visit Mother later this afternoon. And I was supposed to meet Bill for lunch, but …”

Annie sat up straight. “He doesn’t know yet that you found out he’s left?”

“No, I came down from Greenwich to have lunch with him and only stopped by the apartment on a whim. He was probably going to tell me at lunch … in a public place, of course, so I wouldn’t make a scene.”’ “Make a scene, Elise,” Annie urged.

“Annie, I couldn’t even sit at the same table with him now. I’m too

.

. .” She faltered, searching for the word.

“Too what?”

“Too angry. I’m afraid if I set eyes on him, I’d wipe the floor with him.”

“Do it, Elise, but not in a restaurant where he can get away. Go to his office. Corner him.”

“Like a rat?” Elise asked. “Right. Like the rat he is,” she answered herself.

Elise snickered at the thought of humiliating Bill at his office.

“Annie, he’d drop dead on the spot if I confronted him there. I’d love to, but I couldn’t.”

“I’ll go with you and wait in the car,” Annie offered.

Sitting back in the deep upholstery of the limousine, Elise paused, considered, and then gave her driver Bill’s office address. She turned to Annie. “I’m nervous,” Elise admitted.

”I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll be here. And afterwards, you’ll be glad.”’ Elise looked at her friend and tried to shrug gracefully.

“What the hell,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

.

You prick, she thought, and laughed a throaty laugh. Surprise, Bill.

You’re in for a big surprise. I’m not rolling over on this, she thought. Oh, no. No matter what Mother would have said, I am not going to slither away quietly like a beaten animal. Annie did, and Aaron rubbed her nose in his betrayal like a cruel master rubs the nose of his dog in its excrement. Annie’s right.

I won’t let him slither away.

And Brenda, for all her glib, earthy language, and blustery talk, let Morty walk away from her, leaving her practically broke and completely alone, while he ended up sitting on millions of dollars. He, like Bill, had used his wife’s weakness to his own benefit. Except, surprise, Bill. I’m not as predictable as you assumed.