1977
As David Malcolm made a hard right and pulled his navy Jaguar sedan up the driveway toward the stately old house on Bellagio Road, the two women seated in the back of the car said, “Oh yes.” in unison. The women were Babs, David’s wife of two months, and Helen, his sister-in-law of same.
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Daphy Woods, who was sitting in the front passenger seat so she would be more easily able to direct David to all the houses they were seeing that day. Daphy was a close friend’s wife and had been a residential real estate broker for ten days. It was a career she’d decided on in order to keep herself from, as she put it, “going absitively bonkers” now that all the kids were in school. “But the inside is even more divine,” she said. “With a kitchen that was in the Homes section of the Times, and when the Copeleys lived here it was in Architectural Digest.“
David helped the ladies out of the car, and for a long moment even Daphy was quiet as they all stood looking at the house. Then, with Daphy in the lead, key in hand, they made their way across the lawn to the house. This is a mistake, David thought, and when Daphy, who stepped aside to let the clients enter the house first, as she’d been taught, turned back after she’d opened the door and saw the look on his face, she laughed nervously.
“Oh, c’mon, David,” she said. “This is just for fun, you duck. I know you liked the one on Mandeville, but this one is my newest listing and I have to show it off.”
Daphne Waverly Woods was a piece of work. She’d been married to David’s dose college friend Charlie since their freshman year in college. She talked endlessly, called everyone a duck, and admitted that all she knew about real estate was how to get from one house to the next. But when it came to the math and the money, she admittedly would rush home to Charlie and have him do all the paperwork for her. David and Babs were using Daphy as a broker for the same reason that the Marsdens were listing their Trousdale estate with her, and the Perrys had listed this big old born, because she was Charlie’s lovable wife.
Babs and her sister were already in the kitchen. David could hear their voices echoing back to the entry hall of the huge empty place. He walked in to see them admiring the woodwork on the cabinets. Babs was running her hand with the short shiny-buffed fingernails over the wood. What was she feeling for? She knew nothing about wood. Less about kitchens.
“Hon-bun, look at this amazing kitchen,” Babs said.
David and Babs had been together for two years and she’d never cooked one meal. Either they went out, sent out, or he cooked.
“It’s a kitchen all right,” he said.
“Oh, Barbara, you know men don’t give a good gosh darn about kitchens,” said Babs’s sister, with a conspiratorial glance at Daphy, who giggled in agreement. Babs’s sister—who looked, sadly, like a much less attractive version of Babs but who wore the same hairdo and the same style of clothes in an unsuccessful effort to be the same type—linked arms with Babs, and with Daphne following behind them they walked out of the kitchen, through the crystal chandeliered foyer, into the roller-skating-rink-size living room. David leaned against the kitchen counter staring blankly through the French doors to the forest behind the house. He was worrying about all the work he should be doing at the office. When Babsy called this morning and pleaded with him to come to lunch at the club and then house-hunting, just for a few hours, God knows why he didn’t tell her it would have to wait until Saturday. Now he could hear his wife and his sister-in-law heading up the wide marble staircase.
“Daph,” David said, walking into the living room, where Daphne was opening the drapes to reveal a glen of stunning lilac trees, “not that there’s a chance in the world that I’m your customer, but how much is this place?”
“Two five,” she said, “but confidentially, I think you could get it for two million. The seller is anxious. What do you think?”
“I think if I had a house worth that much sitting unsold, ‘anxious’ wouldn’t begin to describe me.”
“David?” he heard Babs calling from upstairs. “You have to see the tile in the bathroom.”
David and Daphy walked up the stairs. Babs stood at the top, eyes huge with excitement. Babsy. He loved her. She was beautiful and brilliant and she would have had her law degree by now if she hadn’t dropped out of school “just to vegetate” for a while. Her perfect blond bob bounced around her neck—that adorable neck, the back of which he loved to kiss—and she walked ahead of all of them now into the master suite, which opened onto a porch that sat nestled in the luscious lilac trees.
“I am passionate for this house,” she said, looking first at David and then at her sister, who said, “I love it too. It’s perfect.” And then at Daphy, who agreed. “Oh, yes. Perfect.”
David took a deep breath. There was a frantic edge in Babs’s voice when she said to Daphy: “Tell us all the statistics. I think it’s us.”
Before Daphy could say a word, David spoke, going to Babsy’s side and puffing an arm around her. Sometimes she was such a little girl. With all her education and sophistication, she still didn’t have any sense about…
“Darling, this house is selling for two and a half million dollars,” he said, certain that fact would make her gasp and they would be in the car in a minute on their way back to take a look at the perfect house in Mandeville Canyon for which the asking price was $850,000.
“So?” she said instead, extending her lower lip in that way David had, in the past, told her he loved. “I mean, I am Mrs. Malcolm now.” David could see that even Babs’s sister was embarrassed by that one.
“And that means?” David asked.
“That I can afford it,” Babs said, with a little laugh he’d heard her use to mean I’m only joking. But she wasn’t
“It’s wrong for us, Barbara,” David said. Now he realized Aat she was very serious.
“Why?” Babs asked, face tense and looking as if she might cry. He had never ever seen her cry. Daphne and his sister-in-law left the room so quickly that they nearly collided getting to the door.
“It’s too big, it’s too much to maintain, but most of all, it gives us nothing to look forward to. Where do you go if you have a house like this at our age?”
“You sound like your father.”
“Goddamned right.”
“Don’t swear at me, David.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I want to see the wine cellar.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll be in the car.”
“I hate Mandeville Canyon,” she said. Her face looked mean now, as if she were talking about some vile enemy. “If there’s a fire, you can’t get out of the canyon at the top. I won’t live there.”
“Then we’ll keep looking.”
“Why won’t you even…”
“Babs, you’re acting like people you say you can’t stand when they act like this.”
“I’m going to see the wine cellar,” she said, and breezed by him.
This will pass, he said to himself, and walked down the marble staircase. From somewhere in the house he could hear Daphy pointing out the features in what was probably the same voice she’d used when she was a docent at the Art Museum. He walked outside and got into his car to wait. Babsy would recover. She was probably just going through the adjustment that all new brides do. Not sure how to behave or what he expected of her. She was so young and all she knew about the world was the way she had seen her parents live, and her friends’ parents.
The three women emerged from the house and got back into the car, and when he dropped them at their own cars at the parking lot at the club he got a kiss on each cheek and an invitation to dinner from Daphy, a pat on the hand from his sister-in-law that seemed almost sympathetic, and a curt goodbye from his wife.
His desk at the office was piled high with messages: the foreman of the mill in Mississippi, one of the corporate officers in New York. His father had left a message at nine and another at noon, and he had to return a call to the pilots and let them know he needed to fly to Canada on Monday and… His private line rang. Babs.
“Yes?”
“Why do you always sound angry when you answer? Honestly, David.”
She was calling to apologize. She was a good person and she knew she had behaved badly, so now she would say “I’m sorry, Davey,” and he’d say “Don’t even think about it” and hope he could get her off the phone quickly so he could get back to work.
“My sister and I both agree that we should make an offer on the house on Bellagio,” she said.
“No, Babs,” he said.
“David, don’t say no until you hear Helen’s idea. It’s brilliant.” He could picture her, his bride: She was probably sitting outside their apartment on the little tiny balcony in her bathing suit. She’d been patient to put up with living in his too-small bachelor apartment with him.
“What’s the brilliant idea?” he asked, shuffling the messages on his desk.
“We’ll make a very low offer,” she said, emphasizing each word as if she were telling him something profound. If her naiveté wasn’t such a royal pain, it would almost be cute. Babsy. She was fixated on that goddamned barn of a house.
“I agree,” he teased. “Let’s offer them a measly two million two ninety-nine. Now there’s a bargain if I’ve ever heard one.”
“No,” she said. “You heard Daphy say the seller was anxious. So we Jew them down. And maybe we could get it for under two million.”
“Babsy,” he said, as if to a child. “Let’s forget the money. All right? We’re talking about something else here.”
His secretary walked in and put a note on the desk in front of him. A union boss from the Chatsworth, Georgia mill was on the phone. The workers were on strike and David needed to talk to this guy. Now.
“I have to go,” he told her.
“Why? Finish what you were saying. Of course we’re talking about money. I mean that house is perfect for us, David. Let’s look at it again. Say that you will. I’m not saying we have to buy it, but just tell me that you’ll look at it again.”
“If I get pregnant right away, can we…”
“No.”
Barbara Ashton Malcolm slammed the phone down on David Malcolm and he laughed to himself as he changed lines, realizing that after talking to his wife, talking to the union boss of his striking workers would be a relief.
The next two days and nights were filled with a Babsy he’d never seen and couldn’t understand. She wanted to talk only about the house on Bellagio Road.
“The tile,” she would rhapsodize, “the stairway, the porch off the bedroom.”
“No,” he said, penciling some changes into the draft of the annual report: “Regarding the aggressive development of the computer forms department…” By the time his workday was over at eight-thirty, he didn’t want to go to the dub for dinner, but Babsy had promised they would meet the Woodses there.
“Buying a place in Bel-Air, Malco?” Charlie Woods asked, boxing David on the arm. David could see, from the corner of his eye, that Daphy was elbowing Babs, and he knew that both of them were listening carefully for his answer.
“Not a chance,” David said, and quickly changed the subject to Charlie’s new law offices. Babs was sullen for the entire meal, in spite of Daphy’s funny stories and giddy attempts to pull her out of it. All the way back to the apartment she was silent. In the morning, David woke with an aching neck and rolled over on his pen and the rough draft of the annual report he’d worked on until when the pouting Babs had fallen asleep wearing a sleep mask that matched the black nightie he’d loved so much on their honeymoon.
It was seven-thirty. He was unusually late for his morning start. He had to get moving or he’d miss the timing on his Bast Coast calls. Babsy must be in the kitchen starting the coffee. It was the only thing she knew how to make. Naked and bleary-eyed, he walked into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and turned on the shower. A three-by-five note card was scotch-taped to the mirror of the medicine cabinet. An apology, surely. He let the water run and walked closer to read Babs’s flowery handwriting.
I am moving in with my mother until you stop acting like such a Scrooge. I hate this cold awful side of you that doesn’t even take my feelings into consideration. I hope I haven’t made a mistake loving you and believing in you the way I have.
B.
Impossible. He had known she was like a little girl in so many ways. But all the good ways. Her dependence on him, her need for his approval, and she was so goddamned bright. Top of her class at Harvard. He’d sat glowing at her graduation, in the back of Dunster House, watching her walk to the podium time and again to accept her awards. He had glowed with pride in her, the same way her parents had. And now this? It made no sense. He turned off the water and dialed his in-laws’ number. Delia, the Ashton’s black housekeeper, answered.
“She here, Mr. David, but she say to tell you she ain’t talkin’.”
“Deeeeee-liaaaa,” he said in that way he did that always made the woman giggle.
“I’ll go see what I c’n do,” she said.
While he waited he put on a robe, went into the kitchen, where he picked up the wall phone and started some coffee. Finally Babs’s icy voice spoke into the phone.
“Yes, David?” she said.
“This is preposterous,” he said.
She didn’t say a word.
“I can’t believe you’re going to behave this way. Sacrifice our happiness over some goddamned house.”
“It seems to me that you’re the one who’s doing that. You’re so immovable you won’t even discuss it with me. All you do is say no to me as if I’m some child. Well, I’m not a child, David, I’m your wife.”
His patience was flagging. “The first part of that sentence is obviously not true, and the second part won’t be either unless you stop this and come home.”
“Don’t you threaten me.”
“Barbara,” he said. “This is getting dangerous. So I’m going to forget it ever happened and go to work now, and let’s just proceed. I’ll see you when I get home from work and we’ll forget you ever acted this way. But I can’t waste any more time on it. Goedbye.” Then he hung up the phone, burned his hand on the coffee maker, took a fast shower, and went to work.
Once, in prep school, David, fearing his fate at sixteen might turn out to be driving the utilitarian beat-up family Chevy station wagon, wrote an essay entitled “Why I Should Have a Porsche.” With the aid of friends he listed all the safety features of the car, with statistics from Car and Driver and Porsche advertising. He even cut out a picture of the car and pasted it on the front page. When he handed it to his father, Rand Malcolm put on his glasses, leafed through it, then threw the manuscript across the room and said to his son: “The goddamned thing’s too long.”
At lunch, when David told his father, with some embarrassment, about Babs’s bad behavior, the older man scowled, took another bite of his sandwich and, when he’d chewed it and swallowed, said, “You have to educate her.” Rand Malcolm knew Babsy’s parents well and liked them. He admired the girl’s intellect and her academic accomplishments. He approved the marriage, but also let David know as soon as he announced his plans that he himself had waited to many until the sensible age of thirty-eight. And what if Babsy wouldn’t change? David wanted to ask, but didn’t. Clearly the expectation was that it was his job to get his wife to stop acting like a brat.
Two weeks went by. There were endless problems at the company to occupy his mind, not to mention his worry about what seemed to be his father’s failing health since the previous week, when Mal’s doctor had called David at home.
“You must urge your father to slow down,” the doctor said. “He’s killing himself.”
So much to worry about that by the time he got home each evening and heated up the dinner that Berta, his father’s cook, had sent over, David was ready to collapse, and the silent Babs-less apartment was almost a pleasure. Sometimes he would turn on the television set and just stare mindlessly as the shows went by. Carol Burnett, Patsy Dugan. Silly jokes, splashy colors, no thinking. Just what he needed.
Babs hadn’t called once. He knew she was waiting for him to capitulate. You have to educate her, his father had said, obviously meaning Don’t acknowledge this kind of behavior. He felt as if he were the parent of a spoiled child. One night Daphy Woods called him under the guise of inviting him to her younger son’s soccer game, but the call was obviously at Babsy’s bidding.
“Don’t you miss her?” Daphy pried.
“Daph,” he said, “let’s not discuss it.”
At the end of three weeks he felt a great sadness. Despite her parents’ objections, he and Babs had lived together for a year before the wedding. He really was lonely for her and missed the good times they’d had. Their trips together. The parties they’d given for their friends. The night they’d won the dance contest at the club. It was at the beginning of the fourth week, when he got out of the elevator in his garage on his way to work, that he was served with the divorce papers. He looked at them and then made a sound that was something between a gasp and a shocked laugh.
“Boy,” he said aloud. “Some judge is going to get a real hoot out of this one.” But when he got into his Jaguar and drove out into the morning to go to work, for a minute he sat at the stop sign, not sure if he should turn left or right to get to his office.