The newspapers reported, in addition to the death of Ormonde Van Degan, “whose roots in the city go back for generations,” that there were two broken ankles, two broken arms, and a broken leg in the melee that had occurred when the power failed at the Elias Renthals’ ball the night before, at which four hundred people, including the First Lady, had been present. The papers further reported that Adele Harcourt, the grande dame of New York, had very nearly choked to death on a dead butterfly but was resting comfortably in her room at Harcourt Pavilion of Manhattan Hospital.
“They’ve gone. They’ve flown the coop,” said Ezzie Fenwick, over the telephone later that day.
“At least that saves us writing thank-you notes, or sending flowers, not that Ruby would ever want to see another flower again,” said Matilda Clarke.
On the morning following the ball, the Elias Renthals left for Europe on their private plane, although no such plan had been in the making the day before. Later, people wondered if their flight was less for the embarrassment of the fiasco of their ball, which, knowing them, people like Ezzie Fenwick and Lil Altemus pointed out, they might have brazened out, than it was that Elias had heard the rumor at his own party of the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission of his financial dealings, and it was imperative for him to dispose of his extensive foreign holdings by transferring them to his wife’s name before a freeze was put on his fortune.
“Today? We’re going today?” Ruby had said, aghast, reported Candelaria, her maid, to Lourdes, Lil Altemus’s maid. Ruby’s eyes were still red and swollen from crying.
“Today,” answered Elias. “In three hours, in fact.”
“Elias,” said Ruby, in a pleading tone. “I want to go. You know I want to go. I can’t face anyone in this city, but I can’t possibly be ready to go in three hours.”
“Two hours and fifty-five minutes now,” said Elias.
“But my clothes! My trunks! I can never get my things together for a two-month trip in that short a time,” she said.
“Candelaria here,” he said, pointing his thumb at the maid, “can pack up your stuff and ship it to you, and, in the meantime, buy new things there.” Elias walked out of their bedroom and down the stairs. He was surprised in a minute when he heard Ruby following him.
“Is something going to happen, Elias?” asked Ruby.
“What do you mean?” asked Elias.
“Some sort of misfortune.”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I feel it.”
“Have you heard anything?”
“Look, Elias, don’t play games with me. You told me we were a team, do you remember?”
“I remember, Ruby.”
“A team means good times and bad times.”
Elias walked into the drawing room and looked out the window onto Central Park. A weeping willow tree was being lowered on a crane outside his window from the ballroom above to the street below, as his party of the night before was being dismantled.
“Do you need money, Elias?” asked Ruby, following him into the room.
“God, no,” he answered, with a laugh.
“I mean, I have all this jewelry,” she said. She opened her black lizard jewelry cases, which she had brought downstairs with her and began taking out the pieces. “You can have all of this back, Elias. We can sell it. And there’s all the money you signed over to me. It’s yours.”
“No, thanks, Ruby. I’m okay in the do-re-mi department, but I’ll never forget what you offered.”
“Tell me what’s the matter, Elias. You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“What did you do?”
“What a lot of other people have done before me, and a lot of other people will do after me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I, uh, used, uh, insider information that I bought and paid for from young fellas in the brokerage offices who knew about mergers that were in the works.”
“That’s illegal?”
“Yeah.”
“You knew it was illegal?”
“Yeah.”
She breathed in deeply. “What do you want me to do, Elias?”
“Swear to my lies, if it comes to that.”
It surprised Elias that Ruby’s eyes filled with tears. The tears did not fill her eyes slowly, but sprang forth, as if he had slapped her. He understood that his wife’s tears were not for his plight, which he knew she would see him through, but because he had asked her to lie for him. She walked away from him to one of the tall windows of their drawing room and looked out at Central Park across the street, where a bag lady began her preparations for the day on a bench on Fifth Avenue. Standing there, framed by the persimmon-colored damask curtains, with the fringe that had taken six weeks to be delivered from France, Ruby Renthal wept. When Elias walked toward her, to comfort her, for he loved her, she raised her hand to halt him, without turning, having felt his footfall on her Aubusson carpet that she bought from Justine Altemus Slatkin, that Lil Altemus gave Justine for a wedding present, that had come from the Van Degan house in Newport and had once been a wedding gift from the Belgian court to the ill-fated Empress Carlotta of Mexico.
Elias Renthal was a nonconfidential man, and, as a result, he had few confidants. One of the few was Max Luby, his crony from Cleveland. Elias had sometime back taken the stand at Max’s forgery trial as a character witness. “Nonsense. Utter nonsense!” he had said in the courtroom. “If a man’s gonna steal, he don’t steal for a lousy ten thousand dollars, which is all he wrote the check for. If he needed ten thousand bucks, there were any number of people, myself included, who would have given him the money in five minutes. What it was is, quite simply, a case of temporary aberration.” Although his logic was thought to have carried weight with the jury, Max still had to serve six months, but he was known to be grateful that such a great financier as Elias Renthal had come to his rescue in court and even invited him to his ball.
“Listen, Max,” Elias said, in a confidential tone on his private telephone, after having received Max’s consolation on the failure of the ball. He was sitting in the little room Ruby had arranged for him to smoke his cigars, the same room where Ormonde Van Degan had died the night before. “Ruby and I are taking off. There’s a little heat on me, if you understand what I’m saying.”
“Right,” replied Max, in his perfect second-in-command voice.
“There’s a few things I’d like you to do for me, and then maybe you can meet up with me in Paris in a week or so. Check out for me, in a discreet way of course, the consequences of canceling my pledges to the museum and the opera. I think I pledged ten million to each, over a seven-year period. Just in case there’s a temporary cash-flow problem, I’d hate to be shelling out that kind of moola to some nonsense like the opera and the museum. They got money coming out their kazoos, those people.”
“What about the Julio Martinez fund?” asked Max.
“Who the fuck is Julio Martinez?” asked Elias.
“The workman who was killed hoisting the weeping willow tree for the ball.”
“Christ, I forgot about him.”
“It was only yesterday, Elias.”
“Gimme a break. I got a lot on my mind. Better stick with that.”
“Right.”
“Oh, and one other thing, Max,” he said, butting out his cigar in an ashtray where a dead butterfly lay. “You better stop payment on that check I gave to Faye Converse last night for AIDS.”
Loelia Manchester wished with all her heart that Mickie Minardos had not called Ruby Renthal a twat the night before when Ruby screamed at him that he had ruined her party. She hated the word, had never used it herself, and knew that it must have caused pain to Ruby, who had worked so hard to put her background behind her. Loelia liked Ruby and had enjoyed their friendship, although she understood that Mickie had made a resumption of it impossible. Loelia had never seen Mickie cry until the night before, when they returned to the Rhinelander. He had held it in, all during the elevator ride up to the thirty-second floor, not only because of the elevator man, whom they both knew, but because the Earl and Countess of Castoria were in the same elevator, returning to their suite on the same floor. Wearing several Band-Aids and still drunk, the Earl had laughed hysterically for all thirty-two floors every time he looked at Mickie, and the Countess, who had a dead butterfly in her chignon that she was unaware of, held her ripped dress together in the front. On parting, the Earl had made a Latin American farewell by yelling, “Buenas noches, amigos,” as the Countess led him to his room. “He’s not Mexican. He’s Greek, Binkie,” she could be heard saying as they went down the hall.
Mickie cried like a child. He was an artist, he told her, not an electrician. How was he supposed to understand about amps and wattage and voltage? Hadn’t he created the most beautiful party ever given until those motherfucking, cuntlapping, cocksucking fuses blew and wiped out in an instant his months of work? He sobbed uncontrollably. Loelia wiped his brow with a linen towel she had dipped into her scented rosewater.
They both knew they had to leave town, before the newspapers started to call. Loelia suggested Greece. “Good God, not Greece,” said Mickie. “My family. Think what my family will say,” and he started to cry again, as new rushes of shame that he had not thought about yet came to him.
“But I have the most marvelous idea,” said Loelia, finally. “No one will find us.”
“Where?”
“A clinic in Germany. Bavaria, actually. On Lake Tergernsee.”
“Tell me.”
“They give shots. Live cell shots from the fetus of unborn sheep. And it’s restorative. It will be marvelous. We will be brimming with health. And feeling as young as my children, and no one will know where to trace us, and by the time we get back, everyone will have forgotten about the ball. You go to bed, my darling—I’ll handle everything.”
Early on the morning following the ball, Lil Altemus called her daughter, Justine. At first she did not notice that there was lassitude in her daughter’s voice.
“Have you heard?” Lil asked.
“Heard what?” Justine replied.
“Your grandfather’s dead.”
“Poor Grandfather,” said Justine, although there was no tonal difference in the weariness of her voice.
“That’s all you can say? ‘Poor Grandfather.’ Like ‘poor dog’ or ‘poor cat,’ ” said Lil.
“He was eighty-five, Mother.”
“Well, in that case, I’m utterly shocked.”
“You sound odd, Justine.”
“I can sound odd if I want to, without accounting for it.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were drunk.”
“You want to know something, Mother?”
“What?”
“I am drunk.”
“This is no time for jokes, Justine. You’d better get right over here. We have things to decide, about the funeral and all.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Uncle Laurance just called, and he thought it might be nice if the younger generation, like young Laurance and Hubie and Bernard, of course, were pallbearers. I think it’s a marvelous idea, don’t you?”
Justine had hoped to not have to tell her mother that Bernie had left her, at least for the time being, because she was certain her mother would say, “I told you so,” but the news of her grandfather’s death now made that impossible.
“Listen, Mother,” said Justine, about to reveal her secret, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words without crying. “Listen, I’ll be over. Have Lourdes make me some coffee. There’s something I have to tell you.”
“I expected to see you last night. The world was there, except you and Bernard,” said Lil.
Justine hesitated, again tempted to get the task over with on the telephone, but she still couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “Bernie had to work,” she said finally.
“Bernie always has to work. That doesn’t usually keep you home.”
“Headache.”
“Not pregnant, are you?”
“I thought you wanted a baby. Don’t wait too long, Justine. Look what happened to Muffie Windsor, and she was only thirty-six.”
“How was the Renthals’ party?”
“You mean you haven’t heard? My dear, I know it’s awful to laugh, with my poor father lying in a casket at Frank E. Campbell’s, but wait until you hear. You won’t believe what happened. Now, don’t call Violet Bastedo. You just get over here, and I’ll fill you in. And call Hubie. You better get him here as well.”
It was a fact of Justine Altemus Slatkin’s life that all the people she knew, and all the people her family and friends knew, lived within a thirty-block radius of each other in that part of the city known as the Upper East Side, and, just as in a small town, they were constantly running into each other in the streets and on the avenues in that small enclave.
Ezzie Fenwick happened to be in a taxicab going down Park Avenue at the moment Justine Altemus left her own apartment to walk the several blocks to her mother’s apartment on Fifth Avenue and was witness to the fact that Justine took a swig from a can of beer she was holding. Later, describing the incident to a group of ladies he was lunching with, to rehash the events of the Renthal ball, Ezzie said that Justine’s face looked like a fallen soufflé.
Justine, oblivious to everything around her, didn’t see Ezzie leaning out the cab window, nor even notice Ned Manchester until he reached out and took her arm.
“Do you want to get a cup of coffee?” asked Ned.
“All right,” answered Justine, listing a bit to the side.
Ned lifted the beer can out of Justine’s hand and dropped it into a trash basket. They went into a coffee shop near the Whitney Museum.
“I know I look terrible,” said Justine.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ned.
“God, I hate beer. Bernie likes beer. I can’t imagine why I drank it, let alone walked up Park Avenue with a can in my hand. You don’t think I’m flipping out, do you?”
“What’s the matter, Justine?” asked Ned.
When Justine looked over at Ned, she noticed that his hair was wet, as it always seemed to be wet when she saw him, and she assumed that he had probably just showered after playing squash at the Butterfield. “My dog died,” she lied, without even caring whether or not he knew that she didn’t have a dog.
“What’s the matter, Justine?” he repeated.
“Bernie,” she replied.
Ned nodded but did not reply.
“Bernie’s not even in love with anyone else, like Loelia was,” Justine continued. “Bernie just doesn’t want to be married to me.”
Ned lifted up the creamer and asked her with a gesture if she wanted cream in her coffee and poured it for her, did the same with the Sweet ’n Low, stirred it, and placed it in front of her. “It’s a terrible time, I know,” he said.
“The incredible thing was I thought we were happy,” she said.
“Drink your coffee,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”
“I never knew you were so nice, Ned,” said Justine, drinking her coffee.
“I’ve been through what you’re going through.”
“It’s awful to feel like this,” said Justine.
“All the little things in life that make a marriage work, like going to the movies on Sunday afternoons, or playing tennis together, or having dinner at home, just the two of us, we ceased to do,” said Ned, about his marriage. “And then, along came the cobbler.”
“I only cooked dinner for him once the whole time we were married, and that was when Bonita, my cook Bonita, went back to Honduras for her mother’s funeral, and even then Bernie told me the dinner was lousy, and we ended up ordering in from Food-to-Go on Lexington Avenue.”
“Have you told Lil?”
“I was on my way to see my mother when you were kind enough to take the beer out of my hand. I’d better go. She’s waiting for me.”
“Sorry about your grandfather. Matilda called me.”
“Thanks, Ned.”
On the street, Justine continued to her mother’s apartment.
“Would you like to sign a petition to save the porpoises?” a man on Madison Avenue asked Justine, offering her a clipboard and a pen.
She seemed not to have heard what he said, although she was aware that he had asked her something. “What?” she said.
“Would you like to sign a petition to save the porpoises?” he asked again.
“No, actually I wouldn’t,” she said slowly.
The walk, only a few blocks, seemed endless to her. Within her, she ached.
A television news crew was outside the building where the Renthals lived, shooting footage of the weeping willow trees being lowered from the sixteenth floor to the street. Justine watched the procedure for a moment before moving on.
“Justine, are you all right?” she heard someone ask her.
Turning, she saw that it was Brenda Primrose, with a reporter’s notebook in hand, making notes on the dismantling of the ball.
“Justine?” Brenda said again, taking hold of Justine’s arm. Justine, usually so perfectly groomed, looked to Brenda like she had slept in the clothes she was wearing. Her hair was uncombed. A button was missing from her blouse. She smelled of beer.
“I’m fine,” said Justine.
“You poor thing,” said Brenda. “Is it your grandfather? We had it on the news that he died.”
“Yeah,” said Justine. “That’s it. My grandfather.”
“Do you need help, Justine? Where are you heading for?”
“My mother’s.”
“Where’s that?”
“Two buildings down from the Renthals.”
“C’mon. I’ll take you there. Be right back, Charlie.”
They walked for half a block in silence. Brenda thought Justine was crying.
“You guys must have been pretty close, huh? You and your grandfather? He must have been some guy,” said Brenda.
At the entrance of her mother’s apartment building, Justine turned to Brenda and said for the first time the words she would be saying for the rest of her life. “Bernie left me.” Before Brenda could react, Justine turned and walked into the building.
It was common knowledge that Lil Altemus thought her daughter had married beneath her, even though it was apparent, even to her, that Bernard Slatkin had not married Justine for her money. Nor could she ever say about Bernard that he had used her daughter for social advancement, because she knew that was not true. He had participated in Justine’s social life in an agreeable and successful fashion, but her world held no particular fascination for him and his success in it was that he had remained a newscaster first and foremost.
However, when Justine informed her mother that the marriage was over, irreparably over, Lil, ever unpredictable, was enraged at the failure. Losing her son-in-law, she liked him better than she realized she had and felt sure she could reorchestrate the disastrous plans.
“Now, listen, please. What you’re doing is overdramatizing an everyday marital situation. If anyone knows about these things, your old mother does. You’ve had a tiff, that’s all. These things happen. It’s a natural progression. The honeymoon is over. The marriage begins. He’s simply flexing his muscles to show that he’s the man in the family. He’ll be back.”
“No, Mother, he won’t be back. I know him,” said Justine.
The look on Justine’s tear-stained face and the tone of Justine’s heartbroken voice made Lil look at her.
“But what in the world has happened?” asked Lil.
“It was my fault. I tried to bring him into my life, which never really interested him, and I didn’t make enough effort about all those news people.”
“Oh, please,” said Lil, dismissing her daughter’s explanation. “Is there another woman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Matilda Clarke said he’s a womanizer,” said Lil. “Your Uncle Laurance even said he was a philanderer.”
“Oh, please, Mother,” said Justine, wounded by the thought.
“Where is that place his aunt and uncle live in New Jersey? Hackensack, is it?” Lil asked.
“Weehawken,” replied Justine.
“Exactly,” said Lil, reaching for her book.
“Mother, please don’t call Mrs. Slatkin. Please.”
“Of course, I’m going to call her. Hester will understand that this simply must not be. Young people all have problems. They just have to be worked out.”
“Then let me leave. I can’t bear to hear that conversation.”
“Have you called Hubie to tell him about his grandfather?”
“No.”
“Do that now, and tell him to come right up here.”
After Justine left her mother’s room, Lil Altemus picked up her telephone book, looked up a number, and called Hester Slatkin, whom she had not seen or spoken to since the day of the wedding. A divorce after several years she not only could have tolerated but might gladly have accepted, but a divorce after a year she felt had an unseemly quality.
“We can’t allow this to happen, Hester. We simply can’t.”
“When Bernie makes up his mind about something, Lil, he never changes it,” said Hester. The coolness of Hester’s answer surprised Lil, who had assumed she would be a willing ally.
“I should have objected, you see, right from the beginning,” said Lil. “I should have said that it was all wrong, that it couldn’t work. Because, you see, it’s what I actually felt. But then I would have been the heavy. They would have said I was anti-Semitic, because that’s what it would have come down to, but that never had a damn thing to do with it. I thought they were wrong together.”
“Good-bye, Lil,” said Hester Slatkin, with a tone of finality in her voice that indicated it would be their last conversation.
“There’s no answer at Hubie’s, Mother,” said Justine.
“Keep trying.”
“There’s no answer at the gallery either, and the machine’s not on.”
“I’ll try,” said Lil. She tapped the numbers out on her telephone.
“Sí?” came the answer after several rings.
“You see?” she said to Justine. “There is someone there. This is Mrs. Altemus speaking. Is my son there?”
“No está aquí,” said the voice on the other end.
“It’s that damn maid,” said Lil to Justine. “Tell him his mother called. His mother. His madre. Do you understand? Cinco, ocho, ocho. What’s the word for six, Justine, quick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, never mind,” Lil screamed into the telephone and slammed down the receiver. “Don’t you miss maids who speak English? Do you remember when you were a little girl, all those marvelous Irish maids we always had? Kathleen and Maeve?”
“Oh, Mother, please,” said Justine. “Let’s not talk about Kathleen and Maeve, for Christ’s sake.”
“Really, Justine. There is no reason for you to take the Lord’s name in vain. None whatsoever,” Lil replied to Justine’s outburst. She looked at her daughter. “You look terrible. Do you know that? Simply terrible.”
“I’m entitled to look terrible. My husband left me. My brother has AIDS.”
“He does not have AIDS! And don’t you dare say that to a living soul!”
“I’m going to call Juanito.”
“Juanito, Juanito. Who the hell is this Juanito I’m always hearing the name of?”
“He’s the man Hubie loves, Mother.”
“I simply loathe that kind of talk, Justine. Now go and pull yourself together, and we’ll meet Uncle Laurance at Frank E. Campbell’s and go over the funeral plans.”
Lourdes, Lil’s maid, came in to tell Lil that there was a man on the telephone to speak to her called Boy Fessenden.
“Boy Fessenden?” said Lil. “There’s a name from the past. I haven’t seen Boy Fessenden since that summer when he visited us in Newport. Do you remember?” She picked up the extension. “Hello, this is Lil Altemus. Yes, of course, I remember you. How are you, Boy? What a long time it’s been. How’s your mother? Do give her my love. Now what can I do for you, Boy? I must be quick. We’ve had such a sadness in the family. My father died last night. Eighty-four. Thank you. You’re so kind, Boy. How can I help you? Hubie? No, I can’t reach Hubie on the telephone. Or in the gallery. I want him to get right up here because we have to make plans for the funeral. What?… When?… Where?”
“What is it, Mother?” asked Justine.
Lil, ashen, handed the telephone to Justine. “You’d better take this, Justine. Boy Fessenden took Hubie to the hospital last night.”
That night, after calling hours at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral home, where the mayor, the governor, the board of directors of the Van Degan Foundation, the entire membership of the Butterfield, and several hundred family and business friends came to pay their respects to Ormonde Van Degan, Lil Altemus refused her brother’s invitation to join him and Janet and Dodo for a late dinner at their apartment and returned to her own, pleading exhaustion. At nine thirty the doorbell rang and she let Bernie Slatkin in, whom, unknown to Justine, she was expecting.
“I don’t understand how you can do this to my daughter,” Lil said, after they were seated in the library, allowing no time for amenities, not even a condolence message from Bernie to her on the death of her father. Nor had she offered him a drink.
“It was my understanding always that you did not care for the marriage in the first place, Mrs. Altemus,” replied Bernie.
Bernie’s addressing her as Mrs. Altemus, instead of Lil, which she had requested him to do after the wedding, and which he had been eager to do at the time, was not lost on Lil. When she spoke, she called him Bernard, as she had always refused to call him Bernie.
“That was then. This is now, Bernard,” said Lil.
“The marriage is over,” said Bernie.
“But why?”
“Feelings change.”
“So quickly?”
“It’s over, Mrs. Altemus,” Bernie repeated, as if to bring the matter to an end. “I do not see any point in prolonging a situation that is going to fail in the long run.”
“I have to be quite frank with you, Bernard,” said Lil, as if she were paying him a compliment. “I did think in the beginning that you might be using Justine to further your career, or you were interested in her money, but I know now that that is not the case.”
“Stay married to my daughter for four more years and then divorce, and I will make it worth your while.”
Bernie, who did not usually smoke, leaned forward and took a cigarette from a box on a table by his chair, lit it, inhaled deeply, and smiled as he exhaled, shaking his head at her at the same time. He stamped out the cigarette in a Meissen dish, threw the stub in the fireplace, and rose. “I never understood people like you, Mrs. Altemus. I never will,” he said.
“And what does that mean?” asked Lil, aware that she was not going to convince him to change his mind, as she had not been able to convince him to live in Justine’s apartment in the same building she lived in, or to use Cora Mandell to decorate the new apartment he had insisted he and Justine move to when they got married.
“Stay married for four more years and then divorce, is that it? A five-year marriage is less of a flop than a one-year marriage. It all has to do with face, doesn’t it, how it looks? Your daughter is far too good for such an arrangement as that. Good-bye, Mrs. Altemus.”
“I never liked you, Bernard,” she said, wanting the last word.
“I never liked you either, Mrs. Altemus,” said Bernie, getting the last word.
“You’re a womanizer,” she hissed at him.
“That’s right. That’s what my problem is,” he answered, staring her down. Lil registered surprise that he had not denied the accusation. “And I don’t want a wife who is a tragic figure. ‘Poor Justine. Her husband cheats on her.’ ”
“Get out.”
“Remember this. I came by summons, not by choice.”
The word was out on Hubie Altemus’s illness. The previous night, at Maisie Verdurin’s, Ezzie Fenwick, who had heard that afternoon from Jamesey Crocus, who had heard from Juanito, whispered it to Maude Hoare, and Maude told Buster Dominguez, and Buster told Matilda Clarke, and Matilda told Gus Bailey, although there was no word on the matter from any of the members of the family.
The next day Gus was walking up Madison Avenue and passed Lil Altemus as she was coming out of the Wilton House Book Shop with a shopping bag in her hand. She looked as handsomely put together as always, but drawn.
“I’m sorry to hear about Hubie,” said Gus.
Lil stiffened. It distressed her to think that people knew the news and were discussing it. A tear came to her eye. “I’m on my way to the hospital now,”—she said, indicating the bag of books she was carrying.
Their eyes met.
She mouthed but did not speak the word lymphoma, as if it were a release rather than a sentence. Gus understood that she was avoiding the subject that was so painful to her.
“How are you doing, Lil?” Gus asked.
“I’m all right,” said Lil. “Really I am. I have been nipping a bit at the brandy and soda, but at least I’m no longer thinking of going out the window.”
Gus, touched, reached out to take her arm.
“I couldn’t figure out what to wear,” she said, making a joke of it. “That’s what saved me. Do you remember when poor old Mimi Chase wore a trench coat when she jumped, after they fired her from the magazine? I didn’t want to wear a trench coat. I didn’t ever have a goddamn trench coat, but I wouldn’t have worn one if I had. Oh, Gus, it’s been so awful. I don’t know if I can live without him. No one understood it, I know, what we had, but I adored him. I absolutely adored him.” She spoke of her son as if he were already dead.
In the several years they had been together, Juanito Perez had never been as kind to Hubie Altemus as he was in the months of Hubie’s dying. Lying in bed at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Hubie watched Juanito standing at the window looking out. Juanito was the only one now who could make Hubie laugh, telling his stories of the goings-on in the subterranean world that he still frequented, despite the dangers of the disease that was killing his lover. There were certain of their mutual acquaintances in the art world whom Juanito referred to with a gender switch, and it never failed to make Hubie laugh. That afternoon he was regaling Hubie with a tale concerning Jamesey Crocus, through whom he had met Hubie, and whom he always called Janie, or the furniture queen.
“So Miss Crocus kicks her train around and says, ‘Those console tables are fakes, Ruby,’ and walks out in a huff,” finished Juanito.
By this time Hubie could only talk in a whisper. “You are awful, Juanito,” he said, when he finished laughing.
As Juanito went on with his tales of the night before, Hubie watched him with affection. He wondered if Juanito’s diligence in caring for him was because of the money he knew he was going to inherit, or because he really cared in return, but he decided not to allow it to occupy his mind for the time he had left, grateful that the caring existed at all, no matter what the reason. The only thing at that moment that bothered him was that his mother was coming to pay a visit, and he did not know if he had the strength to deal with his mother and Juanito in the room at the same time.
“Mother’s on her way here,” he said finally, hoping that Juanito would gather up his possessions and be off before her arrival.
“My mother-in-law here?” Juanito asked.
“Any minute,” whispered Hubie.
“I’ve been dying to meet her.”
“You’re going to stay then?”
“Of course I’m going to stay.”
“Don’t ask me to go, Hubie.”
“I’m not. When she’s here, don’t call Boy Fessenden Girl Fessenden, if his name comes up. Okay?”
“What do you think I am, from the slums?”
“Listen, one more thing.”
“What?”
“Will you take off your earring before she arrives?”
“That’s going to butch me up, is it, not wearing my earring?” asked Juanito, irritated, as he always was when Hubie acted embarrassed about him in relation to his family.
“No, that’s not it,” said Hubie.
“Then what? I like this diamond earring.”
“That diamond was my mother’s engagement ring from my father. She gave it to me when she thought I was going to marry Violet Bastedo.”
Juanito and Hubie looked at each other, and both started to laugh. “That’s the first good laugh I’ve had in weeks,” said Juanito, unscrewing the diamond from his earlobe. He went over to Hubie and hugged him.
It was in this position that Lil Altemus saw them when she walked into the hospital room with her bagful of books. It was the first time Lil had seen Hubie since Easter night. He looked smaller to her, as if his face had shrunk. His teeth seemed bigger. His arms looked like the arms of an old man.
“Hello, my darling,” said Lil, staring at him aghast.
“Mother, this is Juanito Perez. Juanito, this is my mother,” said Hubie.
“Hellohowareyou?” said Lil, not looking at him.
“Ma’am,” said Juanito.
“What a nice room, Hubie. My word, is that the World Trade Center out the window? Prettier from this angle than when you see it from Laurance’s boat.”
Neither of the young men answered her.
“Your grandfather’s funeral was enormous, Hubie. You probably read about it in the Times. The governor. The mayor. All the Van Degans. The church was packed.
Young Laurance gave the most lovely eulogy. We all went up to Laurance and Janet’s afterward. Not the governor and the mayor. Just the family, I mean.” Even to herself, she sounded rattled.
“How’s Dodo taking it?” asked Juanito.
For the first time Lil looked at Juanito.
“Dodo?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in exaggerated surprise.
“She buys my paintings,” said Juanito.
“Oh.”
“How is she?”
“Mrs. Van Degan is coping well under the circumstances,” said Lil.
Juanito looked over at Hubie. He could see that Hubie was suffering, although Hubie managed to make a slight wink of reassurance.
“I’m gonna split, Hubie,” said Juanito. “I’m sure you and your mother have things to talk over.”
“When will you come back?” asked Hubie.
“I’ll stop by tonight. Good-bye, Mrs. Altemus.”
Lil nodded, occupied now with her shopping bag of gifts. She realized, as he was leaving, that she wanted him to stay, so that she would not have to be alone with Hubie. She wished that Justine was with her. She knew that she didn’t know what to say to her own son, whom she loved, so devastated was she by his appearance.
“Did you see Justine?” she asked when Juanito had left.
“She was here earlier.”
“How was she?”
“Drunk, I felt.”
“Drunk? Justine? Never!”
“I repeat, drunk.”
“That son of a bitch has left her.”
“I never heard you say son of a bitch before, Mother.”
“I’ve never said it before,” she replied. “It’s all so embarrassing.” Lil looked down at her bag. The word all, Hubie understood, included him as well as Justine.
“Justine feels hatred for Bernard now,” said Lil.
“I didn’t get that impression.”
“Oh, yes, hatred without limits.”
“You weren’t very polite to Juanito, Mother.”
“I’ve brought you some books, Hubie,” said Lil, putting the shopping bag from Wilton House on his bed. “Arthur thought you’d like the new book on the Princesses of Monaco.”
“Arthur couldn’t have thought that,” said Hubie.
“No, I thought it. Do you remember when your old mother thought you’d be perfect for one of those girls? Can you imagine?”
Hubie looked at his mother and smiled.
“And the new magazines are all in there too,” she said. “Now, I’m off.” She was out the door.
Hubie started to drift off to sleep.
When he woke, he looked out the window at the skyline of lower New York, watching a barge go slowly by. On the bed he saw the shopping bag from Wilton House that his mother had left earlier. Unable to sleep again, he took out the magazines and the new book on the Princesses of Monaco, about whom he had no interest. Inside, at the bottom of the bag, he saw a dark brown plastic container. He reached in and took it out. Inside there were fifty Seconal pills.
Hubie reached down and undid the drawstring of his pajamas. For a while his hand rested on his stomach. Then he allowed his fingers to slide down between his legs, resting in his pubic hair. He moved his fingers around, massaging himself lightly. When his penis was semierect, he made a fist around it and pounded himself. For the two minutes and thirty-four seconds that it took to complete the act of masturbation, Hubie Altemus forgot that he was going to die at twenty-seven.
Lil Altemus fainted when she left St. Vincent’s Hospital. If her chauffeur, Joe, who had been with her for years, had not been there to rescue her, she might have been put into the same hospital where her son was a patient, but Joe understood her panicked look and delivered her back to her apartment on Fifth Avenue, where Lourdes cared for her, and Justine was sent for.
“I cannot bear it that that man is there,” said Lil, resting in bed, about Juanito Perez.
“They’re a couple, Mother,” said Justine.
Lil shuddered.
“Under the circumstances, he has as much right to be there as we do,” Justine continued.
When Lil was with her son, before his illness, and Hubie made what she thought was an inappropriate remark, such as Justine had just made to her, she would cover her ears and exclaim, “You know I can’t bear that kind of talk!” Under the same circumstances, with Justine, Lil pretended not to have heard. It was a way she had of snubbing people who had gone too far.
“He makes Hubie laugh. He makes him forget that he’s going to die,” said Justine, who didn’t care that she was being snubbed by her mother.
Hubert Altemus, the father of Justine and Hubie, always gave the impression, even in town, of a country gentleman. His tweed jacket fit too loosely on his lanky frame, but it was too loose by the mutual choice of its wearer and its wearer’s tailor, and, to their refined tastes, altogether right. He had been summoned to town by his former wife, whom he had not seen since the day of Justine’s wedding, to discuss the unraveling lives of their two children. Hubert did not enjoy going to Lil’s apartment, where he had lived when he was married to her, nor did his present wife, Belinda, enjoy having him go there, so the lunch between the two was arranged for Clarence’s, after he had visited Hubie in the hospital. They had, after desultory greetings, sat in silence until Hubert finished the first of the three martinis he intended to drink before they ordered lunch. As always, in the presence of her former husband, Lil, who rarely felt ill at ease, felt ill at ease and said to the waiter, Michael, with the small ponytail, who was always so nice to her daughter, “Will you take this thing away, please?” waving her hand over a vase of three pink carnations.
“Don’t like flowers, Mrs. Altemus?” asked Michael, in his friendly way, obviously unaware that she had a dying son and a divorcing daughter.
“Yes, I do. I like flowers very much. I just don’t happen to like those flowers,” replied Lil.
With that Michael removed the offending vase.
“I cannot bear carnations,” said Lil to Hubert, and Hubert nodded, knowing perfectly well that the carnations were not what was bothering her, that she was simply looking for something to find fault with to overcome her discomfort.
“Who was the guy with the diamond in his ear?” Hubert asked finally, not referring to Michael, who also wore a diamond in his ear, but to the man he had just seen in his son’s room at the hospital, whose diamond earring was larger by far than Michael’s.
“Pedro. Or Geraldo. Or some name like that,” answered Lil, who often pretended not to know things she knew perfectly well, just as she now knew that her former husband was referring to their son’s lover, Juanito Perez, or their son’s catamite, as her brother Laurance, who was checking him out, referred to him.
“Who is he?”
“Justine says he is the man Hubie loves,” answered Lil, looking away from Hubert as she said it.
“Jesus,” said Hubert. He took a long drink from his martini and swallowed the olive at the same time. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that diamond in his ear was from the engagement ring I gave you when we got married.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Lil. At the same time she said the words, she realized that Hubert could be right, especially as she had given the ring to Hubie when she thought that he was going to marry Violet Bastedo, but that was not the subject that she wished to deal with now.
“When Hubie goes, Hubert, I hope you’ll agree with me that there should be nothing in the obituaries about the cause of death,” said Lil.
“Sure, Lil,” said Hubert.
“Laurance can handle all that.”
“I’m sure he can, Lil,” said Hubert.
“It’s Justine I really want to talk about, Hubert. What a crushed little creature she has become,” said Lil, sipping a glass of white wine.
“She really loved that television announcer,” said Hubert.
“I should never have allowed that marriage. Never. Nor should you have, for that matter,” said Lil.
“Spilt milk,” said Hubert, signaling the waiter for another martini.
“I don’t particularly enjoy hearing that my daughter was seen walking down Park Avenue with a can of beer in her hand,” said Lil.
“Do we know it’s true?” replied Hubert Altemus.
“Of course, it’s true. Ezzie Fenwick saw her himself.”
“Of course it would be Ezzie who saw her,” said Hubert, who had no patience for Ezzie Fenwick. “I’ll talk to Justine.”
“I want you to do more than talk to her,” said Lil. “I want you to take her up to Bedford with you. Keep her there for a week or so. Make her ride and do all those things. She needs to get away from New York. She thinks everyone’s talking about her. Everyone is talking about her.”
“I’ll talk to Belinda,” said Hubert.
“Oh, we need permission from the former Miss O’Brien, do we?” asked Lil, who could never hear the name of Hubert’s present wife without reacting adversely. She had once described Belinda O’Brien as the kind of woman who calls men at their offices.
“Ah, there’s Belinda now,” said Hubert, rising, with a look of pleasure on his face, and waving to his wife, who stood at the door of the restaurant.
“Belinda? Here?” asked Lil, gathering up her things.
“Yes, I asked her to meet me here.” Belinda, waving back, smiled and made her way toward them through the crowded restaurant.
“I don’t know how you could do this to me, Hubert,” said Lil.
“Do what?”
“Ask that woman to come here to this table with everyone in the restaurant looking at us,” said Lil.
“That woman has been my wife for twelve years,” said Hubert, “and I don’t see a single soul in this restaurant looking at us, except Chick Jacoby, who wants the table for Lord Biedermeier, who just arrived without a reservation, and, just to be perverse, I’m going to let Lord Biedermeier have a nice long wait.”
“Hello, Lil,” said Belinda, walking up to the table. Belinda Altemus, in her forties, was still pretty, although she had begun to put on what she herself called a few extra libs. Her face gave off a look of good humor, as if nothing bothered her. Her blond hair was what Lil Altemus called “touched up,” and she wore what Lil called wet-looking lipstick.
“Hellohoware?” answered Lil, not looking up at her as she rose to leave. Hubert made no effort to detain her.
“You’ll call me, Hubert, about the matter we discussed?” asked Lil.
“After I talk with Belinda,” he answered.
Lil turned and walked out of the restaurant. Belinda and Hubert looked at each other. Hubert shrugged.
“I think she’s still in love with you,” said Belinda.
“Hardly likely,” replied Hubert.
“Tell me something, Hubert. Did you ever love her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I probably thought so at the time. What it really was, I suppose, was the utter perfection of the union, smiled on by both sides.” They both laughed. “Did I tell you today how beautiful you are?” he asked.
“Tell me that when you’ve had a few less of these,” she said, tapping her very red fingernail against his empty martini glass.
Hubert smiled at her. “Want some lunch?”
“Sure,” she replied, looking around the dining room. “How come we don’t have any flowers on our table?”
Hubie clung stubbornly to a life that had brought him little happiness. Justine, back from Bedford, visited him daily.
“Beautiful,” he said about the large bunch of white peonies that Justine had brought him. “My favorite flower.”
“I remember,” said Justine.
“There was this guy in my class at Simsbury. Bobby Vermont. Do you remember him? He was Mom’s friend Teddy Vermont’s son by his third marriage. A sad, lonely guy at school. I probably would have become good friends with him if I hadn’t been kicked out.”
“I remember Bobby Vermont,” said Justine. “He threw up at my coming-out party.”
“Funny you should remember that. It’s the first thing he said to me. ‘Has your sister ever forgiven me for throwing up at her coming-out party?’ ”
Justine laughed. “What about Bobby Vermont?”
“I ran into him here at the hospital the other day.”
“What’s he here for?”
“Same thing I am.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Poor Bobby, but at least you have a friend here then.”
“Had a friend. He died yesterday.”
“Oh, dear.” Justine turned away from her brother and placed the white peonies in a vase. “Mummy sends her love.”
“Send her mine.”
“She’d come, Hubie, but she couldn’t cope after her visit. She doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that it’s too much for her.”
“The way I look, huh?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters, but that’s the way she is.”
“You’re not trying to explain my mother to me, are you?”
They both laughed.
“What are you going to do about your money, Hubie?” asked Justine.
“Leaving it all to Juanito,” said Hubie.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t think I’d hear that from you, Justine.”
“Hubie, it’s ten million dollars.”
“So?”
“Leave him five hundred thousand dollars. A million even. But don’t leave him the whole thing. You know what Uncle Laurance will do. He’ll take it to court. He’ll call it undue influence on the part of Juanito. He’ll expose everything there is to expose about Juanito: the drugs, those terrible bars he goes to. He’ll find a way to prove that Juanito is the one who gave you the AIDS.”
“It’s not undue influence, Justine. No one is forcing me to do this. It’s what I want to do. That’s why I went to Herkie Saybrook to make out my will, rather than some gay lawyer in the West Village. Our own kind, that’s Herkie Saybrook. You don’t need the money. Certainly Mother doesn’t need the money. Who else am I going to leave it to?”
“You could do something marvelous with it, Hubie. Give it to medical research, or something like that.”
“I know,” said Hubie, looking off at the river outside, thinking about what his sister was saying. “There’s something in me that makes me want to get even with Uncle Laurance and young shitface Laurance. All my life they made me feel like I was nothing.”
“Think about it, Hubie,” said Justine.
Hubie looked at Justine and held out his hand. She took it and squeezed it. “What’s with the television announcer?” he asked.
“Flown off to wherever it is they fly off to these days for a quickie divorce.”
“Did you see him before he went?”
“Yes.”
“How’d it go?”
“We did not go down Memory Lane, if that’s what you mean.”
“You taking it okay?”
“I loved him, Hubie. I really loved him.”
Hubie looked at his sister. “One of the nicest things about you, Justine, is that with a mother like ours, you didn’t get tough.”
Justine started to cry.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” continued Hubie. “The rich Altemus kids, they used to call us, like we were something special. What happened to us, Justine?”
“I’m going to miss you, Hubie,” said Justine.
Still holding her hand, Hubie drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, Justine was still there.
“You were right about the money, you know,” he said. He could speak only in a whisper. “Can you get Herkie Saybrook to come down here? I can still leave Juanito well cared for, but the bulk should go to a hospice for all these guys here who have no place to go and no one to take care of them.”
“I’ll call Herkie,” said Justine.
“Better do it quick,” said Hubie.
She nodded. “Guess what, Hubie?”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Hubie, dying, was still interested enough in life to be amazed. “By Bernie?” he whispered.
“Who else?”
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“You going to tell him?”
“No. I don’t want him back like that.”
“Does Mummy know?”
“No.”
“Not yet.”
“Are you going to keep the baby?”
“Oh, yes, and I’m going to be a wonderful mother.”
Hubie, tired now from the excitement of the conversation, could only pat his sister’s hand in admiration.
“Want to know what I’m going to name it if it’s a boy?” asked Justine. She knew Hubie was not strong enough to answer her, so she continued without an answer from him. “Hubie. Hubie Altemus Slatkin.”
Hubie nodded his head and signaled for his sister to come closer. She put her ear near to his mouth as he said, “Hubie Slatkin. It has a certain insouciant charm.” He smiled.
Later, leaving, Justine stopped at the door of the hospital room and looked back at Hubie. When he looked up at her, she said, “I’ve loved being your sister, Hubie.”
Hubie understood that it was Justine’s way of saying good-bye. He raised his hand and waved good-bye.
Justine nodded and looked away to avert a tear that was forming.
“I’m so proud of you, Hubie,” she said.
That night Hubie died. Herkie Saybrook never knew that Hubie wanted to make a new will. Only Juanito was with him at the end, holding on to his slight body. The last words Hubie heard were Juanito crying, “Don’t die, Hubie.”