The Wicked City

  “Moving out? But you just moved in! And I thought you liked it. Why on earth?”

  Because I may have lost my job. Because the building next door is probably haunted. Because I’m falling stupidly in love with the man upstairs, and I can’t seem to stop.

  “I just realized it’s not right, after all,” Ella said. “Not the right place for me.”

  BY THE TIME THEY PULLED into the parking lot at the Meadows, the rain had leveled off to a steady drizzle. There was an ambulance out front, lights pulsing in resignation. There was almost always an ambulance out front at Maidstone Meadows; you pulled up hoping it wasn’t intended for the person you were visiting.

  Mumma and Aunt Viv both wore neat, fitted trench coats, belted at the waist, reaching just above the knee. Identical Thoroughbred legs shod in graceful, expensive pumps: alligator for Aunt Viv, patent leather for Mumma. Aunt Viv extracted an enormous golf umbrella from the rear of the station wagon and put it up, so they walked in a strange, awkward huddle to the front door, which was automatic because of the wheelchairs. Inside, the smell of vegetable soup and lemon oil rolled over them. The receptionist looked up and smiled. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Dommerich! Mrs. Salisbury! She’s already in the private dining room, waiting for you.”

  Ella was used to going unnoticed in the company of her mother and aunt. She unzipped her Barbour coat and shook out her hair, which—despite the umbrella—had managed to collect an assortment of raindrops and was already starting to crimp. Mumma bantered a bit with the receptionist while Aunt Viv stowed the umbrella in the stand and hung up her trench coat on the rack. The Meadows was that kind of place: you bantered with the receptionist, you made yourself at home. Why not? Nobody here was making do on Social Security and Medicare; you bought your own apartment and filled it with your priceless artifacts, your décor of dull, studied, elegant shabbiness. The exterior of gray cedar shingle and crisp white trim looked exactly like all the clubs and mansions in the Hamptons, such that people often mistook the Meadows for an especially roomy private residence.

  Actually, Ella liked the place. If she had to admit it, she wanted to end up here one day. Everyone at the Meadows had been born in the early part of the century, had gone to war at least once, had survived depression and nukes and the death of the world as they knew it. They’d started out practically on horseback and watched men land on the moon. Now they sat, as Aunt Julie did, in reproduction Sheraton chairs while waiters served things like tomato aspic or deviled eggs or watercress soup or shrimp cocktail, followed by sirloin tips in mushroom sauce or lobster salad or calf’s liver with onions. Complaining—as Aunt Julie did, in her quivering ninety-six-year-old voice—about the weakness of the cocktails.

  “They came for Bitsy today,” she said, nodding at the window. “Poor thing. Went just like that, right after breakfast. I expect I’m next. Remember what I told you about my navy Chanel suit, Vivian. And the pearls.”

  “Julie, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” said Aunt Viv. “You look much better in the green.”

  “Also,” said Mumma, “those pearls are mine.”

  “I’m not passing into eternal rest wearing imitation pearls, Pepper darling.”

  “You’ll never know the difference.”

  “I will know,” Aunt Julie said, banging the table with her skeleton fist, “and I’ll haunt you both, the rest of your miserable days.”

  “Aren’t you doing that already? Besides, darling, where you’re going, the poor things will only burn to a crisp. Real or fake.”

  “Ouch,” Aunt Julie said, sipping her gin.

  Ella sat and listened, as she always did, listened and observed, lifting her voice only to ask for salt or more wine. Say yes or no, chuckle on cue. Aunt Julie had her figure to maintain, so the main course was a scoop of tuna salad, heavy on the celery, served on a lettuce leaf with tomato and avocado. (Or, as Aunt Julie called it, avocado pear.) Ella and Mumma and Aunt Viv shared a bottle of white Burgundy, while Aunt Julie stuck to gin. Afterward, there was strawberry shortcake and flaccid coffee. Aunt Julie scraped up the whipped cream with her fork and said, in her old-lady vibrato, “Poor Bitsy. Her husband died eight or nine years ago. I slept with him once.” She frowned and dropped another lump of sugar in her coffee. Her hand trembled. “No, twice. There was that time on the Rotterdam.”

  “I don’t know how you keep track,” said Mumma. “You slept with everybody.”

  “That may be true. But we were discreet in our day. Everything was so amicable.” She looked at Ella, for the first time since the powdery kisses had been exchanged an hour ago. “Wasn’t it, darling?”

  “I don’t know,” Ella said. “Maybe it feels that way in hindsight. I don’t know if poor Bitsy would agree.”

  “Hmph,” said Aunt Julie. “Look at you. You’ve gained two cup sizes. You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “God, no,” Ella said. “It’s just this jacket.”

  Aunt Julie looked at Ella’s mother and then Aunt Viv. “Off you go, the two of you. I’ve got a few things to say to my niece.”

  “Grand-niece,” said Aunt Viv.

  “Great-grand-niece,” said Mumma.

  “Honestly,” said Ella, “I really don’t think—”

  Aunt Julie waved her hands. “Go on. Scat! And tell them to bring me a brandy Alexander, while you’re twiddling your thumbs in my parlor. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”

  Ella crossed her knife and fork on the plate and sat back in her chair. “Make it two,” she said.

  “DIVORCE.” AUNT JULIE MADE A sound of disgust. “Is it really necessary to do something so vulgar?”

  “For God’s sake, you divorced three times.”

  “Yes, but we could afford it. Now everybody’s divorcing. It’s become dreadfully middle-class, Ella.” She patted her legs, which were covered in blue wool bouclé to the knee, and sheer nude panty hose below. The legs, as she was fond of saying, were the last things to go, and Aunt Julie always made the most of what she had. She dressed her lips in the same magenta she’d started wearing in 1960, and every three weeks a dutiful hairdresser visited her apartment to touch up the gold in her hair. She disdained maquillage—at my age, it only makes you look worse—except for a clump of mascara on each of her remaining ten eyelashes and a dusting of Max Factor loose powder all over. “Damn it all,” she said, “here I am, looking for my cigarettes.”

  “But you don’t smoke.”

  “Not since 1972. But I still miss them. Especially at a moment like this.”

  “What kind of moment is that?”

  “Passing along the benefit of my vast wisdom to some young thing who probably thinks she knows better.” Aunt Julie hacked out a rheumy cough and inspected the bottom of her coffee cup. “Your mumma says you caught him with his pants down.”

  “That pretty much sums it up.” Ella paused. “Actually, they were shorts.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised. I knew right away he’d be slipping it elsewhere, if he wasn’t already.”

  “What? How?”

  “Darling,” Aunt Julie said witheringly, “I know the type, believe me. It was somebody’s wedding, when I first met him. Your cousin Margot? I think that was it. At the beach house. He was dancing with one of the bridesmaids, and I could see it, plain as day. Oh, my, yes. There are men who flirt a bit, just because they like women so much, but they don’t mean any harm. And there are men who flirt with purpose, because they want to get laid.”

  “Aunt Julie!”

  “Oh, don’t be shocked. I know the difference, all right, and your Peter—”

  “Patrick.”

  “Whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if he slept with that girl, that bridesmaid—awful lilac dress—I wouldn’t be surprised if he slept with her sometime during the evening. So many dark corners on a beach at night.”

  Ella, who remembered that wedding well—the first time she’d brought Patrick to a family event—also remembered going looking for him at midnight, when the ba
nd picked up again after a break and started playing some Jim Morrison song that she and Patrick liked. How he emerged suddenly from the shadows near the pool, looking handsomely disheveled and bright of eye. They’d danced to the song. They’d gone back to the hotel and had hot, drunken wedding sex. Terrible hangover at brunch the next day. That was the end of June, a few months after they’d met.

  Ella pushed her plate of half-eaten shortcake out of sight to the left.

  “Anyway,” Aunt Julie said, “you probably knew that already, if only at a subconscious level. The subconscious is terribly perceptive.”

  “That’s not true! I was shocked when—when it happened. When I caught him last month.”

  “Baloney. You were in denial, that’s all. But that’s not my point. What was my point? Damn it. I had something awfully brilliant to tell you.”

  “Take your time.”

  “Don’t get smart with me. You’ll be old too, before you know it. Forgetting every damn thing. Some terribly wise point to make, and your thoughts all scatter at the critical moment. What were we talking about? Oh, that’s right. Fidelity. It’s overrated! What the hell difference does it make if he pokes his pecker where he shouldn’t?”

  “It makes a big difference to me.”

  “That’s because you’re young. You think everything’s about sex. God knows I did. But I also know a lot about husbands. I’ve had three of them, for God’s sake, and not one of them to grow old with, and why? Because I cut the bastards off whenever they disappointed me. Now I can’t for the life of me remember what they did to disappoint. I’m sure it was awful, at the time.”

  “Had sex with a hooker in the stairwell of your own apartment building?”

  “Oh, is that what happened? Your mumma wouldn’t give me any details.”

  “More or less,” Ella said.

  “Ha. Well, I’ve known many happy marriages that survived worse than that. You must know these women don’t mean anything to him. God knows I never meant anything to poor Fred.”

  “Who’s Fred?”

  “Bitsy’s husband, darling. It was just for fun. It was—I don’t know—a little adventure to start the blood going. Some of us need that, you know. The thrill of novelty. It’s got nothing to do with the sanctity of marriage.”

  “Aunt Julie, this is all a little—”

  “I realize we old folks aren’t supposed to talk about sex,” she said, “but believe me, we had it. Lots of it. How do you think this country got so damned crowded?”

  “Immigration? Immaculate conception?”

  “Don’t sass. But it’s a funny thing, you marrying a type like that. You’re supposed to marry a man like your father, aren’t you? And that father of yours was never disloyal a day of his life. I don’t think he ever looked at another woman, after your mumma. She was it for him.”

  “Yes. She was. She is.”

  “I adore your father. When’s he coming to visit me again? He doesn’t visit me nearly enough. And God knows there’s few enough handsome men around this joint to begin with. Except Ricardo, here, bringing our brandy at last. Ricardo, I need your opinion, as a man under the age of forty, I believe. My niece here just caught her husband with another woman. A chronic condition of his, a bit like psoriasis. Should she take him back or boot him out?”

  Ella put her head in her hands.

  Ricardo set down Aunt Julie’s brandy Alexander with a flourish, and then Ella’s. He straightened his waistcoat and started taking away the dessert plates. “A pretty girl like that?” he said. “I think she must find a man who treats her right, Miss Hadley. That’s what I think.”

  ELLA WAITED UNTIL THE DOOR closed behind Ricardo before she tossed down her napkin, stood, and stared down at Aunt Julie’s watery blue eyes. “Aaaand that’s a wrap. You seriously had to say that?”

  “Of course I did. I’m old and don’t give a damn. Anyway, I find Ricardo’s advice invaluable. He keeps me in touch with the times. Would you sit down, please? I’ve got something else I want to discuss with you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know, you’re being terribly impolite, looming over me with that terrifying expression. Your husband was unfaithful. Like millions of other husbands. Wives, for that matter. It’s not the end of the world, by any means. But if you can’t live with it, divorce him quick. Get the sorry business over with and start fresh.”

  “You know, you’re the second person in two days to give me that advice.”

  “So take it.”

  Ella crossed her arms. “I started proceedings yesterday, as a matter of fact. Mumma gave me the name of a lawyer.”

  “Well, then. If Mumma approves, I guess that’s all there is to it. She’s the one with grandkids at stake, after all. And you’ve got a good job, haven’t you? Something to do with Wall Street, isn’t it? So you can afford a little moral superiority, since you seem to want it so badly.”

  “Actually,” Ella said, blurting really, “I’ve probably just gotten fired.”

  Aunt Julie lifted her brandy. Her eyes had gone a little soft, like she was looking into another dimension. “That’s nice, dear,” she said.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said I’m going to be fired.”

  Now the eyes sharpened. “Going to be fired? They let you know in advance?”

  “Sort of.”

  “But why? Why you’re being fired, I mean. Not why they’re letting you know.”

  “It’s kind of complicated. It’s called a conflict of interest. Except it isn’t, I mean I haven’t actually done anything wrong, but someone called my boss—”

  “Made enemies, have you? Good girl. If you’re not making enemies, you’re not getting anywhere.”

  “Enemies?”

  “Someone who wants you out of there, darling. Probably because you’re on to something good. But don’t worry. A girl like you, you’ll find another job like whistling. Or another husband, whichever comes first.”

  “Honestly, Aunt Julie? Not helpful.”

  “Why not? So you failed at something. You—what’s that word? You screwed up. The world keeps spinning. Try something new. Try someone new.”

  “You don’t understand. You don’t know what it means, losing your job in a town like this. It’s worse than divorce. Splitting up is like—well, there’s two of you. You can blame the other person. If you lose your job, it’s just you. Everything’s on you. It’s who you are.” Ella’s voice made this sobbing sound on the last word. She turned her head and stared at the painting on the wall, a reproduction Degas, pair of ballet dancers in wide blue tutus like the opening of flowers.

  “Fine, then. Wallow in misery. My God, you young people, you take everything so damned seriously. Life’s a gas, Ella. Just stop and breathe it in, once in a while. Believe me, it’s gone before you know it.”

  “Again, not helpful.”

  Aunt Julie waved at her. “Oh, enough of this. You’re boring me. Sit down, will you? I had something else to talk to you about. Something important to discuss.” (There was a gimlet emphasis on the important.)

  “What?” Ella asked. Still standing. Eyeing the ballet dancer on the left, whose legs alone were visible and seemed to be caught in the middle of a fall.

  “I don’t know. Something. Something. Damn it. Oh, that’s right. About this apartment you’re renting.”

  The change of subject was so abrupt, Ella actually turned from the picture and sat down. Reached automatically for the brandy, which was topped with more whipped cream and constituted a dessert in itself. “It’s just for now,” she said. “Until I can find something more permanent. Once the divorce is settled, probably.”

  Saying the word divorce was easier than she’d thought. Maybe it was because the breakup seemed like the least of her troubles now. Or maybe it was because of the lawyer, whom she’d called right after returning from coffee with Patrick, before she could lose her nerve. Who was so factual and unsympathetic. Whose lack of sympathy actually made her feel better: she was just anothe
r wronged wife, just one among millions. The same old story. Better luck next time. Don’t get mad, get—

  “Your mumma said it’s on Christopher Street. Number eleven.”

  Ella blinked herself back to the present. “Yes. Number eleven. I’m on the fourth floor. It’s all right. Kind of small.”

  “I know it well. Well, the building. Not the apartment itself.”

  “Really? How?”

  “I used to go dancing there, back in the twenties. When the basement next door was a speakeasy.”

  Ella choked. Coughed. Grabbed her napkin. “I’m sorry. Did you say speakeasy?”

  “Yes. Oh, it was terrific. Absolutely the best jazz. Used to go there every week. At least, until it went under.”

  “Went under?”

  “Yes,” Aunt Julie said. She set down her glass and dabbed her lips, which had lost most of their magenta to the tuna salad and had faded to the color of Pepto-Bismol, leaking gently into the wrinkles around her mouth. “Something terrible happened there, and the place shut down and never opened again. I believe I heard that both buildings were bought up later for cheap, and the bar was bricked in. All very hushed up and mysterious, and naturally I’ve forgotten the details. But I always did wonder what became of Ginger.”

  “Ginger?”

  Aunt Julie’s pocketbook lay next to her brandy glass. She lifted it and unhooked the clasp. “A friend of mine who lived at number eleven,” she said, rummaging inside the pocketbook until she produced a postcard bearing a photograph of a naked woman lying on a Victorian chaise longue, face turned up and away toward an abstract portrait of another nude. The picture was black and white except for the woman’s hair, which had been tinted a brilliant auburn. “I dug this up when your mumma told me. God knows why I kept it. A real dish, wasn’t she? I’ve never seen another pair of knockers to equal those.”

  ACT V

  We Lift Up Our Eyes to the Lord

  (hallelujah, hallelujah)

  RIVER JUNCTION, MARYLAND

  1924