Gossip

  “Hello, Mother,” she said. “This afternoon, in the park . . . In the gondola . . . Yes, very romantic . . . No, there was water in the bottom and he’s wearing his good pants . . . yes . . . No. We have no idea, spring sounds lovely, or possibly winter. Or fall.”

  “Or summer,” said Nicky.

  “We haven’t had a chance to discuss it . . . I don’t think we were thinking of a church wedding, were we?” She looked at Nicky, who just laughed. Avis was talking, and Grace looked at Dinah and rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know the nicest dates get taken, but . . . all right . . . All right . . . Yes . . . Good idea, find out when the moon is full in June. And May . . . Yes, I’ll go tell Belinda tomorrow. We’ll both go. Yes. Yes. Thank you so much, I am too. ’Bye.” She pushed the off button and looked at me, making an exasperated growl between clenched teeth.

  After the children left, Dinah and I sat by the fire and talked it all over. “I’d love to give them an engagement party,” she said. “But if you count just my family, and Richard’s and the Metcalfs, this apartment is already too small. I could do it at the Town Club, but I’m not in yet.” She looked into the fire. “I wonder what’s happening with that.”

  The next day, Sunday, was cold and raw. Gil had a standing tennis match on Sunday afternoons when we were in town, and he came to me afterward for Sunday night supper by the fire. My cooking was simple but a relief to him, since the chef de cuisine Althea had brought from France had left abruptly, claiming that it was impossible to find proper ingredients and that no one in New York speaks French. Althea was in theory interviewing replacements but in the meantime was content for them to dine in restaurants every night that they were not otherwise engaged. Gil said sadly that he’d reached a point where he opened a menu and could not find a single thing he could bear to order. I gave him creamed chipped beef on toast and homemade applesauce. He ate with relish.

  “Dinah wants to give an engagement party, but . . .” The Town Club business.

  Gil said, “Why don’t we give the party? You’re Nicky’s godmother.”

  “We? You mean together?” The idea thrilled me.

  “At your club. But I’ll help if you’ll let me. I’d like to. I’d like to for Belinda’s sake.” He smiled. “And for my own reasons.”

  “And would you come to the party?”

  “Of course, if you invite me. Belinda is one of my oldest friends.”

  It was something I never dreamed I’d be able to do. Give a party to celebrate the engagement of a beloved child. Two beloved children. With Gil. It was rather wicked of him, and he enjoyed it immensely.

  The party was a triumph. The social press covered it in glittering fashion; there were six pictures in New York Social Diary on the Web the next day and elaborate coverage in that month’s issue of Avenue. We even got a mention on “Page Six,” since one of Nicky’s high school friends was now a famous rapper and had a supermodel girlfriend, and one of Grace’s had her own cable TV talk show. There was attention in the fashion press for the clothes (excellent for the shop, as I had dressed the bride-to-be, her mother, and, of course, myself ) and the Social Register Observer eventually carried a large engagement picture of Grace and Nick, with details of the party, of their pedigrees, and, embarrassingly, of mine. Though my grandmother would have been pleased. (My mother pretended to be scornful, but I notice she’s still listed in the stud book herself.) Dinah for once seemed to love doing the establishment thing in the establishment way. Her whole family attended, as did Richard with his wife and daughters, and of course RJ with his wife and sons. Bill Cunningham, the New York Times photographer, came as a guest, not a member of the press, but got a marvelous picture of Belinda in an Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress, dripping with diamonds and carrying a cane painted to look like leopard skin. He worked it into a collage of people sporting animal prints on the street the following Sunday.

  Nicky’s and Grace’s friends were beautiful, lively, and noisy. The radiant fabric of the evening snagged only a couple of times. The first was Althea’s arrival. I saw her pause in the doorway, framed. She was wearing Saint Laurent, predictably, one of the best pieces from his last collection. Her honey-colored hair was huge and sculpted so that she looked like a lion, and I don’t mean lioness. She scanned the room with her head raised, scenting the air for wildebeests. Her eyes skimmed over me without a pause, as if I were flora, not fauna. Finally she strode into the room on course for Belinda. They greeted each other with double cheek kisses and every appearance of delight.

  The other surprise was the appearance of Serena Tate. I knew Leo Tate had died some years ago, and that she lived in Washington most of the time these days, where she was the constant and much-photographed hostess and companion of one of the giants of the Senate. Who had invited her? She greeted Belinda, who knew everybody, then made her way to Dinah, managing to reach her just as the Society Diary fellow asked them to smile for the camera. Then I understood: Gil. He’d invited her to support Dinah in a battle Dinah didn’t even know was being waged. There was no way of knowing if Simon had malignly linked her name with Serena’s, but if he had, the picture might be worth a thousand words. Though a thousand hardly seemed like enough.

  I’m afraid Avis did everything Grace feared she would when it came to the wedding. Given that sooner was much better than later for Belinda, the full moon in June was abandoned and we moved right along to planning the perfect winter extravaganza. A high service at St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue in early February, followed by dinner and dancing at the Plaza. Winter white was her plan; she was thinking lilies, white roses, and white freesia. I can’t tell you how Grace hated it.

  “I’m assuming Belinda is paying,” said Dinah.

  “No, Avis is doing it.”

  “She must be doing better than I thought, peddling pictures,” said Dinah, as if the news weren’t especially welcome.

  “Why don’t you tell her it’s not what you want?” I asked Grace.

  “Because she’s wanted it all my life.”

  “But she’s a reasonable person. It’s your wedding.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Grace.”

  However, unlike Grace, Nicky was quite enjoying himself. He agreed with Avis that it should be an evening wedding, formal, and that he and his groomsmen would wear white tie.

  “He’ll look like Fred Astaire,” said Grace.

  “He’ll look like an Adonis, and he knows it and so do you.”

  Dinah was strangely cool about the whole thing, except to laugh subversively with Grace whenever Avis came up with a new item of wretched excess. There were to be potted trees trucked in and tied all over with white silk blossoms. Peter Duchin’s band would play, with Peter himself at the piano. The dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine would perform the ceremony.

  Grace said, “Of course, I’m disappointed that she couldn’t get the pope.”

  Dinah viewed me, I think, as Avis’s henchman in all things to do with the wedding, though it wasn’t true. As it was, I was a little miffed not to be doing the bridal dress, which Avis was having made in Paris. She’d asked if I minded, and I’d said that of course I did not, but what else could I say? And I had hoped she would use a talented young friend of mine for the flowers, but she felt that in midwinter, a newcomer might have trouble finding the right plant materials. My friend would not have, and she’s a brilliant designer. But.

  Dinah was having trouble with her knee, the first of her joints to begin to fail under the extra weight she’d carried for too long. “It would have been nice to be able to dance at my own son’s wedding,” she said bitterly, as if her discomfort were Avis’s fault. It was she who had put off having the knee replaced, though she knew it was inevitable. “You know what they call it? Amputation! That’s what it is, they amputate your goddam leg and then hook it up again with a bionic knee in the middle.” Everyone said that the pain was excruciating and you should wait as long as you can, but the timing couldn’t have been worse for her. Her
choice now was to have the surgery at once and be in rehab during all the planning leading up to the Great Event, as she called it, or to wait until afterward and be in agony on the day.

  What happened next, I learned only long after the fact.

  In December, Grace’s half-sisters gave her a bridal shower. It was in Hilary’s apartment in the Apthorp, on the West Side, and the theme was kitchen and bath. Belinda sent a set of monogrammed towels from Porthault that cost so much the hostess said Grace would have to have them dry-cleaned. I gave her a blender wand for pureeing soups right in the pot. I got the impression that pureed soups were not at the top of Grace’s list of foods she looked forward to serving, but several people exclaimed loyally that they couldn’t live without their blender wands. As the presents were opened the living room seemed knee-high in ribbons and bright tissues and Grace was soon surrounded by measuring cups and spoons, Silpat cookie sheets, muffin pans, mango pitters, knives, and cookware, Jo Malone bath oils, and two fluffy bathrobes, one of them monogrammed. Her maid of honor had given a frothy nightgown and some lacy thong underwear, which made Grace blush. Nicky sat, handsome and enjoying himself, while people draped ribbons over him and Grace’s friends, I suspected, envied Grace her catch. All the while, Avis sat in the chair beside Grace’s seat of honor on the sofa and diligently recorded the gifts and the giver’s names in a white leather book. Now and then she would say, “Wait, who was that from? Could you give me the card?” and Grace would hunt through the wrappings for the gift tag. I would have loved to have a mother who would care and help with those kinds of social niceties, but Grace was another generation, and for Avis, there was no getting it right with her daughter.

  When Grace came to a box wrapped in a pink shade one could only call lubricious, with a logo even I recognized as belonging to a sex toy store in SoHo, there was a roar of nervous delight and laughter. A former colleague of Nicky’s from the magazine, a dapper bachelor named Ned, went straight to Avis, saying, “Now, Mrs. Metcalf, you wouldn’t understand this one, so I’ll take over while you avert your eyes.” Avis handed him her book and pencil and covered her eyes with her hands, looking like the See-No-Evil monkey, but with considerably more nose. “You’ll have to give me the play-by-play,” she said to Ned. He complied.

  “She’s got the box on her knees, and she’s engaging the ribbon. The ribbon is fighting back, wait, I think she’s got it. Yes! The ribbon is off. The titty-pink paper is off, it was wrapped without tape of any kind, a virtuoso performance . . . the lid is open, she’s got her hand in the tissue paper, and now, Yes! It’s out! It’s pink, it’s . . . I couldn’t possibly tell you what that is, Mrs. Metcalf, I recommend you count to ten and think of England.” There were roars of laughter, and Nicky took a great ribbing and blushed deeply. Grace returned the object to the box while Ned said, “She’s got it back in the nest, she’s closing the top . . . there! Quite safe now, you may open your eyes. Grace, did it come with batteries?”

  Avis, who was now laughing, seized the white book to see what he had written. “What’s this?” she asked him.

  “It’s my phone number. When Grace writes her thank-you notes she can call me up and I’ll tell her what it is and who gave it to her.” Avis loved it, and she and Ned teased each other for the rest of the party. It became quite a friendship.

  However, the most startling aspect of the afternoon was that Dinah never appeared. I knew she’d been making Grace a book of her favorite recipes as a present. Nicky left the room once to telephone, and Grace’s look of concern followed him. When he came back he mouthed to her “no answer.” Grace frowned but reached for another box. Her job was to be gracious and happy.

  When the last guests had said their good-byes, I helped Avis load half the presents into a cab and followed her in another with the rest of the loot. Off we drove with them to Fifth Avenue where the boxes would wait until Nicky and Grace set up housekeeping together. Nicky and Grace hurried to Dinah’s.

  What they found was that the elevator in Dinah’s building was stalled somewhere between floors, and this being Sunday, the super was unreachable, at home in New Jersey with his beeper off. Nick and Grace ran up the eight flights, greatly alarmed to find Dinah’s present to Grace with the wrapping torn lying on the landing halfway between six and seven. They found Dinah at home, in tears of pain and humiliation. She had tried to walk down the stairs but her knee had given out. She fell. (Not very far, she insisted, but she banged her mouth on the railing and loosened a tooth.) She yelled for help, but nobody heard her. “This building is a morgue on weekends; everyone goes to their yuppie country houses except me and Mrs. Missirlian on the second floor, and she’s deaf.”

  Finally, laboriously, she had dragged herself back up a flight and a half, on hands and knee, with her skirt hiked up to her waist because otherwise she kept kneeling on it. She tried to make it sound comic, but failed. The children were appalled. What if they hadn’t been expecting her? What if she’d hit her head or broken something? She might have lain there till morning.

  “Why didn’t you call me? Or 911?”

  “I didn’t have my phone. It wasn’t charged, and what did I need it for?” said Dinah.

  Black humor aside, she was very upset, and so was Nick. “Mom. Look. From now on you never, ever, leave the house without a phone. Charged. Promise me.”

  “ ‘Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.’ Next you’ll want me to wear one of those buttons on a rope around my neck.”

  “Yes! I will! Promise, or I’ll tell RJ.”

  “Not that! Not the dread RJ!” Poor RJ, he was a tiny bit humorless and prone to lecture.

  “Mom, I’m serious. Grace, tell her.”

  “Mom, we’re serious!”

  Dinah promised. They brought her tea, a bag of ice for the knee and her knee brace, and Nicky laid the fire and lit it for her.

  Grace asked as she drank her tea, “Tell the truth, Dinah. Can you walk?”

  “I’d like my cane,” she admitted, and Nicky went to find the one she’d gotten after surgery on her torn meniscus. (When you’re young you never even hear such words; then suddenly you reach an age when you can’t have a conversation without them. Gil says getting old is like going to medical school one course at a time.)

  They told her about the party. Grace did her entirely too apt imitation of Avis primly writing down the names of the givers and the details of the gifts while all about her people were drinking wine and tying ribbons around each other. But Dinah didn’t really cheer up. After a while she began to cry again, and both children were dumbstruck. Dinah was never blue. Often cross or loud or out of patience but never this purely sad.

  “What is it? What is it?” Grace asked.

  “Mom, please,” said Nicky. At last she came out with it.

  “I’m dreading this wedding. Just dreading it. I know Avis has dreamed of this since you were born, Grace, but I’ve looked forward to Nicky’s wedding day too. Of course RJ would want the whole suburban country club thing, and he had it and it was fine, but I thought planning this with Nick was going to be fun. That we’d do it on top of a mountain with a punk klezmer accordion band. Or that we’d do it right here, you’d write your own vows and be married by Reverend Billy, and we’d all wear blue jeans and then have a feast. Instead, it’s like planning a wedding with Lizzie Windsor.” (This was how Dinah referred to the British monarch.) “I won’t be able to dance at your wedding, I’ll be lucky if I can walk down the aisle without crutches. And the only evening dress we could find that I can afford makes me look like a giant eggplant.”

  This hurt when I heard it, I can tell you. I went to no small trouble over that dress; it had to be made from scratch, and she never knew that I had only charged her for materials. She had chosen the fabric herself, and the color was very becoming.

  Nicky and Grace were upset. Was there no way out of this? How could they go through with Avis’s wedding knowing Dinah was so unhappy?

  “I know,” said Grace. “We’
ll elope.”

  “You can’t,” said Dinah. “It would kill Belinda, and I like her. And my parents would be sad as well.” It would also have disappointed Nicky, but she luckily didn’t have to say that.

  “All right,” said Grace. “We’ll get married twice. We’ll get married here, in secret, with a punk klezmer band and Reverend Billy, and only our best friends standing up with us. Then we’ll go through Avis’s wingding, and no one will know it’s just a performance. And if you don’t get through it or don’t want to stay, or even don’t want to come, you won’t miss anything real!”

  At this point, you’re thinking what I’m thinking. Dinah has to say no. She has to say it isn’t fair and it isn’t right; it’s mean-spirited. To let Avis go to all that trouble, and incredible expense, and not know the whole thing is a charade? It’s too bad.

  But Dinah apparently said yes. Well not apparently, she did. She said yes. I don’t know, maybe that’s why now we’re all dressing for a funeral.

  I’ll tell you what it was like, not that I was there, since apparently I couldn’t be trusted not to tell Avis. They were married in Dinah’s apartment right after Thanksgiving. Sebastian, Grace’s little poodle, was the bride’s attendant; he wore a red velvet ruff for the occasion. Nicky’s friend Toby got himself ordained by some site on the Internet so he could perform the service. Dinah’s sisters were there, and RJ and Laura, and about twenty young people, many of whom I had considered my friends. Dinah read a poem; Grace and Nicky recited vows they had written themselves, then they faced each other in front of the fireplace, holding hands, and sang to each other. Grace sang “A Wonderful Guy”; Nicky sang “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” They were pronounced husband and wife by the power vested in Toby by the State of New York, and then everyone had champagne and blinis with caviar. I have no idea what anybody wore, except the dog—gym clothes, probably. Avis still doesn’t know it happened, and I hope she never finds out.