The Rothman Scandal (79 page)

But it has not risen to the extent that Maude McCulloch's has. Maude's rise has been meteoric. Let Mona Potter tell the story:

THE FASHION SCENE

by

Mona

Well, kiddies, now that autumn's here, you jes knew there'd be a buncha fashionable parties, dincha? Well, the most fashionable of 'em all was tossed last night by Magnificent Maude McCulloch in her smashingly redecorated East Side duplex, done all in white, with splashes of color provided ONLY by the Mirós, Picassos, Manets, Monets, and Gauguins on her walls, plus the Van Gogh her handsome hubby outbid the Japs for.

Magnificent Maude herself, who's never been skinnier, is singlehandedly putting my favorite sweetie, Pauline Trigère, back on the fashion map where she belongs. The wife of zillionaire Rodney McCulloch, her dark hair pulled back in a jeweled Chanel bow, looked scrumptious in Trigère's hot pink evening pajamas as she greeted her guests who were everybody who was anybody. Anybody who wasn't somebody just wasn't there, kiddies. How does Magnificent Maude do it? Coming soon: My first exclusive interview with M.M., who's promised to tell Mother all her secrets.…

Et cetera, et cetera. I was at that party, of course. And I couldn't help noticing that Mona Potter was wearing a new pair of ruby chandelier earrings. They dangled beneath her birdcage of copper curls. From Mona's report it would be possible to guess that Maude McCulloch had transformed herself into just another East Side Razor Blade, right down to the death-rattle laugh. But I am pleased to say that, though she is fashionably thin, Maude has not gone quite that far. For one thing, she included her children at her party—as guests, and not just to pass hors d'oeuvres. A typical Razor Blade ships her children to the country when she entertains. There seem to be dozens of McCulloch children, though I actually counted only seven. They were quite astonishingly well behaved, as children go.

Mona also failed to mention that Maude. McCulloch has inherited Coleman, Alex's former majordomo. Coleman had trouble adjusting to Alex's new husband, I understand. He told me that he considers Mel “not good enough for her.” Ah, well. In Coleman's view, no one would be good enough for Alex.

Alex and Rodney McCulloch are still friendly—friendly rivals, you might say—for he still talks of wanting to develop a competitive publication to
Mode
. The trouble is that he has thus far been unable to find the right editor to steer the project for him.

As for Charlie and me, our new house in East Hampton is very pretty—a bit larger than we really needed, but very pretty. We really didn't need two tennis courts, for instance, one grass and one
en tout cas
, but I suppose they're nice to have. Our drop-in Sunday brunches are already becoming something of a social feature in this part of the South Shore. Drop in, next time you're in the area. Very casual. Drop in, that is, if you're comfortable with the sort of people we like to be around. Some people might find our guests a bit too high powered. Last week, for instance, Claudette Colbert
just suddenly appeared
. Guess what she was wearing. Hot pants. And a fisherman's vest. She looked divine.

As head of Rothman's publishing division, I find I can pretty much run things from the house out here, and don't need to be in the office in Manhattan all that much. In fact, where
Mode
is concerned, I pretty much leave business decisions up to Alex, and so, in effect, she is both editor and publisher of the magazine, a very nice arrangement for both of us. Though we keep the apartment at the Gainsborough as a
pied à terre
, our lives are pretty much out here nowadays. Even the canary seems happier out here. At the Gainsborough, Bridget hardly ever sang. Out here, she sings all day long!

We've moved the shrine to Adam out from the Gainsborough to East Hampton. I suspect this is why Mel and Alex haven't been over from Sagaponack for a visit, though they're only a hop and a skip away. She just doesn't want to see those stained-glass windows again.

I don't suppose Alex will ever get over Skipper. Her love for him was too bruising for her. I've thought a lot about the three men in Alex's life: Skipper, Steven, and Mel. There are many different kinds of love, of course, certainly more than Mr. Heinz's 57 Varieties, and perhaps more than there are stars in the sky. But when Skipper happened to her—and that is the right word, he
happened
to her, fell upon her like a hunter upon his prey—she was so young, and he was such a sexual animal. He even smelled of sex. When he was in a room with you, the smell in the air was so thick with sex that you could have cut it with a butter knife, sliced it off in great thick slabs and left them lying about the floor. In fact, that was probably the only thing poor Skipper … Adam … really ever had.

That afternoon of our little letter-burning party, I brought out one of our nude photographs of Adam, in a state of violent erection, which was really something to behold. I showed it to her. She looked at the picture briefly, then turned away with a shudder of revulsion. It could have been the revulsion of remembered lust.

Perhaps, at seventeen, she thought that was what all men were like. Alas, they are not. Perhaps, at seventeen, she thought that was what love was. Alas, it isn't.

Then came Steven. For all his sweetness and his gentleness and kindness—or perhaps because of these qualities—I am sure he was a passive lover, quite the opposite of Skipper. I know Steven loved her very much, and I'm sure she loved him, but it was just a different kind of love. She asked herself: Is this, then, what love is like?

Both men hurt her in different ways. Both men loved her in different ways. Both men abandoned her in different ways. Both men fulfilled her in different ways. Both men offered her a great deal. But both men robbed her of a great deal.

In Mel, I think, she has found the best of both at last, minus the worst of both. It would be trite and banal to say that Mel has made Alex happy at last. Alex is too smart and sophisticated a woman to think that anyone is happier, or unhappier, than anyone else. Or, to put it more accurately, no one is happier, or unhappier, than he or she decides to be. But, in some ways, marriage to Mel seems to have made Alex an even better editor—more willing to experiment, more willing to gamble, more willing to explore the untested and the risky. The untested and the risky certainly applies to her task of building a new relationship with Joel, too, and Mel is definitely a help to her there. The past is a great deal of heavy luggage for a person to carry about in life, and if there is one sure thing that Mel has done for Alex it has been to help her let go of the past. Is there any better kind of love than a love that makes one forget past loves? I think not.

I pray that this is true for her, because she deserves the very best of love.

You see, I love her too, in my own way.

And I think, in her own way, that she loves me. It's just another, different kind of love.

Sometimes I think that if love could be sold and bottled, its various formulas would fill an entire supermarket aisle.

Yesterday was my birthday—which one, I won't say, because at this point I really don't know, but it was one of them, one or another of them. I think age is the most boring statistic. Why are Americans so obsessed with age? Why does the
New York Times
insist on peppering its pages with the ages of the people in its news stories, when their ages have absolutely no relevance to the events being reported? It is a question I might pass along to Joel, in light of his proposed future journalistic career. If I were running things, I would like to see age done away with.

In any event, a huge UPS van backed into our drive, driven by, of all strange coincidences, that dreadful Otto Forsthoefel, whom I naturally pretended not to recognize. Her gift, she had said, was to be a combination birthday and housewarming present, and when we unpacked the large crates it turned out that they contained a lovely pair of matched Boulle commodes. They are perhaps not quite as fine as those Aunt Lily Rothman has, and they do not bear the hallmark of the Palais de Versailles. But they are signed, and they are in better condition than Aunt Lily's pieces, and they are very fine indeed. They look quite handsome where we have placed them, flanking the doorway to the room we call the Orangerie.

How did she know of my passion for Boulle cabinetry? I've no idea unless, as I suspect, she and Aunt Lily had put their heads together. The card was very simple. On it, she had drawn a slash through the word “old,” and so the message looked like this:

FOR DEAR OLD YOUNG LENNY

XXXX

Alex and Mel

At first, we didn't open the drawers of either of the two cabinets. Then I opened the top drawer of one of them, marveling at how magnificently it was fitted and doweled, and Scotch-taped to the rosewood bottom of the drawer was the plain gold wedding band Skipper had given her. With the ring was another note that said, “I think you should have this now.” I confess there were tears in my eyes.

And—oh, yes. Fiona. I rather imagine you are wondering what became of her. But I'm afraid the fact is that I have more or less lost track of her. After she was evicted from the Westbury for failure to pay her rent, I heard she went to Los Angeles, where in that fragile world of Hollywood society, and still posing as Lady Fiona Hesketh-Fenton, she did all right—for a while, at least—under the sponsorship of some producer whose last picture was made in 1971. Then I heard she was in Duluth. Why Duluth? I've no idea. I've never had the misfortune of visiting Duluth, and I suppose Duluthians (Duluthites?) feel fortunate in never having had me to entertain. The only thing I've ever heard about Duluth is that the Holiday Inn there closes up completely during the winter months because freezing spray, blowing off Lake Superior, encases the entire motel complex in a thick carapace of ice.

I've never known what kind of nasty scheme she was trying to cook up with Joel, which involved me somehow. It was no doubt something that she hoped would embarrass or frighten me, or put me in a blackmailable position. Needless to say, I've never asked Joel about this. I wouldn't want him to know that his mother and I had poked around in his private journals.

I've nothing personal against Fiona, actually. She was just a girl who'd botched up her life in London, and tried to reinvent herself in New York. Most people would like to reinvent themselves from time to time, it seems to me. Haven't you ever thought of chucking your old self aside, and starting fresh, someplace else, as someone else, with a whole new persona? Of course you have.

All of us were people who tried to reinvent themselves, though some of us were more successful than others. After that blessed day when I was ordered never again to set my footprints in Sharkey County, Mississippi, I was able to reinvent myself as who I am today. Alexandra Rothman Jorgenson, a little girl from the tall corn belt of Western Missouri, came east and reinvented herself as an Oracle, the High Priestess of American Fashion. Alex's mother, a Midwest country housewife, longed to reinvent herself as a Broadway playwright. Mel Jorgenson, the Brooklyn tailor's son, rolled marbles in his mouth until he lost his accent, and reinvented himself as one of the most popular newsmen on the airwaves. Poor Adam Amado tried to reinvent himself again and again, and I even thought once that I could help him pull the rabbit out of the hat at last, because it's all done with mirrors, magic, sleight of hand. Herbert Rothman wanted to reinvent himself, but his father wouldn't let him, and much the same could be said for Steven. Ho Rothman reinvented himself seventy-eight years ago in a defunct printing plant in Newark. Maude McCulloch reinvented herself just the other day.

Fiona almost succeeded. As far as I'm concerned, she made only one mistake. She shouldn't have tried to mess with me. She shouldn't have tried to mess with Dear Old Lenny.

East Hampton, New York

1990

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1991 by Stephen Birmingham

Cover design by Amanda Shaffer

ISBN: 978-1-5040-4048-8

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