The First Wives Club (4 page)

Then he smiled grimly. “It matters very little. She’s dead, you know.” He walked away.

Annie stood silently in the hall between her two friends, breathing heavily.

Then she began to tremble.

When Brenda and Elise left, Annie was still trembling. All the other funeral guests had gone, and Annie found she was the only one going to the graveside.

She said good-bye to Elise and watched Brenda walk up Madison Avenue in the light rain that was beginning to fall. She told Hudson to get directions in case they were separated from the hearse. As he returned with an umbrella and helped her into the limo, Stuart Swann, Cynthia’s brother, approached. Annie hadn’t seen him in years, but she recognized him immediately. He’s still nice looking, she thought, but dissipated. She noted his red-rimmed eyes and flaccid skin.

“Hello, Stuart.” She extended her hand politely, although she didn’t feel like it. Why hadn’t he made it to the service on time? She wanted to demand an explanation, but his distraught look stopped her.

After all, what could be done now?

”I should have known that you would come, Annie. Loyal to the end.”

His eyes filled with tears, and he patted her shoulder. Much as he might a well-behaved dog, she thought, which was what she felt like right now.

“I’m so very sorry.”’ “Me, too. I just found out. I was in Japan. I can hardly believe it.” He stopped, and tears began to spill out of his eyes. ‘Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

Annie didn’t know if he meant he was sorry he was crying or sorry about Cynthia, or both. There was nothing to say, so she took his hand and squeezed it. He pressed back, desperately.

”Annie, can I go with you?”

“Yes, of course, Stuart.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

Together they rode through the rain along the dripping Hutchison River Parkway, past the New York-bound traffic. Stuart cried for most of the trip, then was silent. By the time they reached City of Angels the rain had turned into a downpour.

Cynthia was gone. Annie looked at the small bonsai boxtree she had been holding all morning. She placed it gently on the lowering casket and cried for her friend. I won’t let him get away with this, Cynthia.

I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try, Cyn.

She stood at the graveside and watched as the shoveled mud slid onto Cynthia’s coffin.

Elise.

Elise walked through the drizzle as she headed downtown to Madison Avenue. It was only a quarter to eleven. She nodded at Cynthia’s brother as he emerged from a taxi outside the funeral home. A bit late wasn’t he? she thought. The whole affair was a travesty. Cynthia Griffin’s life had been summed up and disposed of in less than half an hour. And while Elise hadn’t been close to Cynthia for years, she had known her and her family well at one time. The Swanns were a part of the old guard, the Greenwich crowd, a privileged world to which Elise, also, belonged. She had always believed that Cynthia had married beneath her, and the way Gil Griffin had behaved today proved it. Poor Cynthia.

Elise had told her driver to meet her at one at the Carlyle—who could have predicted a twenty-minute funeral?—and after the service she had no stomach to do anything other than head in the direction of the hotel where her car would eventually be waiting. At one time she could have distracted herself with shopping, but that had become boring. Besides, she couldn’t bear looking at herself in the mirror anymore. There was never any good news there. She actually avoided her reflection in the windows of the stores. That and her pain prevented her from noticing she was being followed.

Larry Cochran tried to keep a discreet distance away. He knew his quarry was elusive and self-protective, there were few candid pictures of her, which was what would make these valuable. He walked on the opposite side of the street from her, using a zoom lens, he had already shot a whole roll of film. When they came to Seventy-ninth Street, he caught a real break when she crossed over to him, and he realized he might be able to squeeze off full-face shots.

Maybe, if it clouded over more, she might take off her dark glasses.

That would be a real coup.

Looking through his lens, he saw her do just that. And there it was —her face in clear close-up! It was such a perfect face, but contorted now by so much pain that it literally took his breath away.

He touched the shutter and found his hand was shaking. What an astonishing face! A face of desolation, a soul in the desert.

He squeezed off two shots before she passed him and turned. She seemed not to notice. He was right behind her now, and he watched the smooth mechanism of her hips and legs as she moved. She was tall, maybe five ten and a half, but she didn’t stoop. She glided with a strong pelvic lead, like a model, her hips seemed to arrive before the rest of her.

Larry felt a stirring in his own pelvic region. Well, she was still beautiful and had been the stuff of intelligent men’s lustful dreams for two decades. Still, he was surprised and embarrassed by his own reaction. He wasn’t the kind of animal who walked around with a hardon and pursued strange women. Jesus, this was a legend he was walking behind, and she’d obviously just suffered a great loss. Who was Cynthia Griffin to her anyway, and why did she have to bear this alone?

He felt moved to pity, and ashamed of his spying. Still, he followed her.

On Seventy-sixth she turned left. Of course, he should have guessed.

The Carlyle Hotel, a favorite watering hole and trysting place of the very, very wealthy. Reportedly John Kennedy had had assignations here when he was president, and only last year Sid and Mercedes Bass had holed up in a suite on the tenth floor when their affair was at its peak and they were still very married to other people. He’d made a few bucks on a shot of them he caught.

She was turning in at the hotel entrance. Well, he had enough shots.

The pictures would be beautiful. Perhaps he should just take off. Yet her face haunted him. He started to think crazy, like maybe he’d follow her inside.

There was so little in life that was beautiful, truly beautiful. It was no surprise that he was drawn to what was. Maybe he’d talk to her.

But Jesus, he was a professional, and a broke one at that. What was he thinking of ? He wasn’t even sure he had enough cash on him to buy her a drink. This was no time to get weird, risk having some burly security guard expose his film or dump his ass on the sidewalk. Still, he followed Elise in through the gilded revolving doors. Luckily he had put on a blazer and tie this morning, but he wasn’t sure it would pass muster. Probably they wouldn’t eject him if he kept a low profile. He saw Elise slip up the low, elegantly carpeted stairs and decided to follow. He didn’t think she had spotted him yet. This was ridiculous, but he couldn’t walk away.

Elise entered Bemelman’s Bar and took a seat on a banquette in the corner. It was dimly lit, which was the way she wanted it. Then no one could watch her fall apart. Because she was falling apart, no doubt about it.

It was too early for a drink, of course, but she’d have one anyway.

Today she needed it, anything to calm her. She desperately didn’t want to go all the way back to Greenwich or East Hampton, but she also wanted to avoid the New York apartment and a possible encounter with Bill.

So perhaps she would stay right here, in Bemelman’s Bar. She’d always liked this place, and so many good things had happened to her here.

She’d been brought here after her coming out party, and it was here she met with Howard, her agent, and heard the news that she was being signed by MGM. She’d been here on Oscar night, 1961, when she was the dark-horse winner. She’d met Gerard here for the first time. Only good things had happened in this place.

And there hadn’t been good things in her life for some time. Of course, things were different for her than they were for other people.

Being one of the three wealthiest women in America didn’t help one fit in. She knew that, had accepted it long ago. But surely some things had to be the same. So what were they, and how could she tell? Was this sense of dislocation normal for everyone, or was it just her?

Growing up so very different had been difficult, although her mother’s direction had helped Elise learn to deflect much of the envy and resentment of others. Of course, there was a price, she could never be completely natural, never completely herself with outsiders. Even her mother couldn’t save her from the loneliness. Because it wasn’t just the money that set her apart—as she grew up, her beauty and intelligence became more evident, and for many, the powerful combination of looks, money, and brains was too much. Elise was also thoughtful, pleasant, generous, as a result, she was popular and well liked. But lonely. Always lonely.

Lonely in spite of the fact that everyone seemed to know who she was, her life having been made public through the press coverage of her father’s death, her huge inheritance, and her New York City debut.

Still, she continued to be thoughtful, pleasant, and to make a conscious effort to play down her wealth. In college, she took buses instead of limos, always paid in cash, and joined her classmates at the cheap restaurants they prized. Still, she was not a normal coed and she made no real friends.

She cut short her stay in college to try Hollywood, a place that at first seemed to be ideal for her. Here, finally, it didn’t make a difference that she was one of the richest women in the world. She settled into a life as normal as she ever had.

Except, of course, for the men. They were all over her. Attractive, young, talented, clever, monied. They were wonderful, and she fell in love again and again. Frightened by her own hunger for affection, and for sex, she made a foolish, disastrous first marriage to a young Adonis. And when it crumbled, Uncle Bob and the studio bailed her out quickly.

Then the studio system itself began to crumble. By the time she saw that the American market was more youth oriented, she knew her popularity was waning.

She was too formal, oldfashioned. Her calls were not returned. Her agent dumped her. For once, her money couldn’t protect her or buy her acceptance. It was at the Cannes Film Festival that she met French film director Francois Truffaut, who encouraged her to work in the European movie industry. She found it a surprisingly difficult decision to make, but once it was made, she adjusted to her new world beautifully. Truffaut saw to it that Elise met the most brilliant, avant-garde thinkers of the day. Gentle and brotherly, his nurturing affected her deeply. Finally finding a man who wanted nothing from her, only wanted for her to be the best she could be, she bloomed as an actress under his tutelage. Her only trouble came when an affair with one of her costars, and one of France’s top sex symbols, got out of hand.

She’d escaped that trouble by turning to Bill Atchison. And now Bill was the trouble. She sighed. They had been married now for almost twenty years, but it was all too obvious he had tired of her long ago.

For years she had turned a blind eye to Bill’s ever more frequent infidelities, even when they were too obvious to ignore—the calls from women ‘clients,” the late ‘working” nights-because she wanted this marriage. Their home was in East Hampton, and he spent weeknights in the city. Lately, however, he hadn’t come out even on the weekends.

Then yesterday she couldn’t reach him with the news of Cynthia’s death, so she had no idea where he was sleeping. So far her humiliations had been private, but they were threatening to explode publicly. Now she was afraid Bill was going to leave her.

The truth was, she loved Bill, and their life together. She’d tried so hard for years, but it had all been a waste. Now she saw that she shouldn’t have given up the career, shouldn’t have buried herself in his life.

He took her for granted, he ignored her. He hadn’t touched her for how long now? Since Acapulco? She tried to count backward. Eleven months. And how long had it been before that?

Perhaps it was just a new phase in the marriage, she reasoned.

Perhaps. But she was more frightened than she had ever been. And she had been drinking even more than usual to keep that fear down. It churned in her stomach, it made her hands shake.

Maurice, Bemelman’s day bartender, someone she had known for a dozen years, approached the table. She ordered a Courvoisier, hoping it wouldn’t make her sick. She’d only have one, she promised herself, as she always did. Only one.

But when Maurice brought the brandy, she drank it straight off and ordered another. As she always did.

She hoped that, if Bill left, she would not be as publicly humiliated as Cynthia had been by Gil. God, does Bill have to leave me? Don’t let me end up like Cynthia. She took a deep breath, trying to get a grip on herself. He wouldn’t dare. But for the first time, he had actually threatened to.

Important men can get away with it now. It’s acceptable. For God’s sake, even Ron Reagan got a second wife and he got to be president.

Finally warmed by the liquor, Elise smiled. I must remember, she told herself, that I’m merely a demographic statistic in a changing culture.

Welcome to the nineties, Elise, a decade in which you bid your sexuality good-bye and become irrevocably old.

God, she thought, what is less appealing than a fifty-year-old divorced woman?

A sixty-year-old one.

She waved to Maurice, who was at the table of the only other patron in the bar. He turned and approached her. ‘Madame, excuse me, but the gentleman insists he knows you and asked me to bring you a drink. Is it all right?”

She looked across the room. Without her glasses on, she hadn’t a clue.

Was it someone she knew? She picked up her glasses and, without unfolding them, peered through the lenses. He was a young man, and he didn’t look familiar.

Was he the son of some Greenwich friend? He wasn’t smiling, but only looking levelly past the empty tables to her seat at the banquette.

What the hell.

After all, this was Bemelman’s Bar. Only good things had happened here, and she felt that she could barely tolerate being alone another moment.

‘Certainly, Maurice,” she said, and looking across the room, she did her best to smile.