Gossip

  “I got there early. I had a ring in my pocket. A ring! In my pocket! We were going to tell you at dinner!”

  “That—you were getting married? You planned that together?”

  “No! Not together, I mean that was my plan. I’d propose, we’d tell you at dinner, we’d have chiles rellenos and millions of margaritas . . .”

  “And?” This really wasn’t my business. And yet one wants to know.

  “You know,” he announced aggressively, as if I were denying it, “Dinah isn’t getting any younger. Or thinner. She thinks she can do a lot better than me, she thinks there’s always something better around the corner. But I think she was bloody lucky to meet me. It’s not every man who wants to take on a fat woman with children.”

  I said something soothing. It was beginning to be hard to tell if he wanted to marry Dinah or kill her.

  “What did she say?” he demanded. “I just want to know what words she used.”

  I thought about it, then said, “She seemed sad, and she said she hoped you’d be back.”

  “Back! That’s a laugh. Why would I come back?”

  “Because you had fun together. Because you care for each other.”

  He stood up suddenly, as if he was going to blow up if he didn’t get moving. He put his hands on his hips, looked around the room without seeing it, and sat down again.

  “How about because I love her? How about that?”

  He now seemed to be arguing for the other side.

  I said, “I know you did. I know you do. She’s very lovable.”

  “She is! She’s bright, she’s funny, she’s always interesting. Always. We make a great team! She understands my work, I understand hers . . .” He seemed to realize that he was making Dinah’s points, not his own. “We had a great thing. Really great. I thought this is it, this is the rest of my life. But what was I to her? Some sort of hors d’oeuvre? Some sort of dessert? I wanted to be the main course!”

  The volume was rising again. I said I understood, and I did. Better than he could possibly know. But he roared on.

  “Just tell me, how does she explain turning down a . . . a . . . Me! Turning me down, because she’s too pigheaded and angry to let that poor schmuck Richard Wainwright off the hook.”

  I said, “What?” There we go again. I had heard him all right, but where did that come from?

  Finally he’d gotten a reaction he’d been trying for.

  “She didn’t tell you that, did she? She didn’t tell you the reason. What did she tell you?”

  “She mentioned your wanting children . . .”

  “Children? Me? I don’t care if I have children.”

  I was bewildered.

  “She said there was nothing wrong with going on the way we were. But there was for me. I didn’t want to be twenty years down the road, with nothing of my own, introducing her as ‘the woman I sleep with.’ But she’s more interested in fucking over Richard Wainwright than in being with me. She says that’s the deal breaker. Getting married.”

  I have to say, I was shocked. She really did care for Fred. They did have a great time together. She wasn’t getting any younger. And neither was I.

  Ten months later, he sought me out at work to introduce me to his fiancée, a small, smiling olive-skinned girl named Elena with curly dark hair and big yellowish cat’s eyes. We had coffee together, and she flattered me by finding the behind-the-scenes workings of the store exciting and glamorous. Together we double-teamed Fred into buying her a beautiful Thai silk suit to be married in. He sat in a spindly chair in the dressing room watching her try things on, and looked like a thoroughly happy man.

  Things at work had grown gradually more uncomfortable in these years. Marylin undercut me with clients more than once, but when I went to the manager, he had no patience. You could practically see the word catfight forming in the thought bubble above his head. Dismissing me, he said, “I’m sure you girls can work it out.”

  I came in early from lunch one day soon after and found one of my best customers in a dressing room with Marylin.

  I said, “Mrs. Rawson, I’m so sorry—did we have an appointment?”

  She looked embarrassed, and her eyes met Marylin’s in the mirror. Who said snippily, “She just happened to pop in, Loviah, and you weren’t here, so of course I offered to help.”

  I thanked her and withdrew. I went to check my book immediately to be sure I hadn’t forgotten a date with her. Then I went to check Marylin’s book, and saw C. C. Rawson in ink for the hour I usually take lunch.

  I was furious. I did something I never do: called my friend at his office. He wasn’t in and I didn’t leave a message, but I was pretty sure his assistant knew my voice, and I was embarrassed I’d done it. One of my appeals for my friend was that I was “always a lady,” and a lady does not make her beloved a subject for gossip among his staff. I called Dinah and said I was mad enough to spit hot nails and she said, “Come right over.”

  She took me to her gym and we swam laps. It was marvelously therapeutic. Then we sat in the steam room like oriental pashas. I kept my towel daintily wrapped around my waist, but Dinah had hers around her beautiful strong dark hair, magnificently at ease with her gleaming naked body in spite of its increasing heft. Where does a person get that kind of confidence?

  The steam room was empty except for us, and I fumed about Marylin, her oppressive perfume, her underhandedness, and her smutty jokes, which her ladies seemed to love. “I hope she tells Mrs. Rawson the one about why dogs lick themselves,” I said darkly, and Dinah hooted and said, “Why don’t we ask her for a sleepover and get her bra wet and put it in the freezer?” One way or another she got me laughing. Then we got giddy and couldn’t stop, especially when we discovered what the steam had done to the hair spray in my helmet hair. I might as well have slept in chewing gum.

  It was Dinah’s idea that I should go out on my own. “You have friends who will back you,” she said. “Frankly, I have friends who will back you.”

  “You do? Why would they?”

  “Because you’re very good at what you do, you stupid nit. And because not everyone wants to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue. Some people want more privacy. And they don’t want to wear all the same labels their friends wear. At a department store you’ll always be only as good as the buyer. Why not be your own buyer?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Think of the look on Marylin’s face when you tell her,” she said. Oh, she is so good at knowing people’s weaknesses.

  “What do I know about running a business?”

  “And you’re too dumb to learn?”

  I remember feeling that Dinah was going to tell me to jump off a cliff and I was going to do it. She likes action. She likes it when things happen and she gets to watch. And I like to please her.

  I jumped.

  Chapter 9

  Even I knew how badly Grace Metcalf wanted a dog. Or a cat, but her mother was allergic to cats. Her father loved animals but was certainly going to be no help in taking care of one, and Avis didn’t see how a nine-year-old . . . ten-year-old . . . eleven-year-old could take care of raising and training a puppy and walking it at all hours by herself, even if Grace was unusually responsible for her age.

  Since she’d become a full partner with Gordon Hall, Avis traveled a great deal. “I’m so sorry, darling. I hate to be away from you,” she would say, kissing Grace good-bye as she headed for the airport to fly to Dublin, or Amsterdam, or Basel. It wasn’t ideal, but it was challenging work, which she welcomed, and she needed the money, since Harrison had lost the last of his investment clients.

  Victor Greenwood was collecting Old Masters with a vengeance by the mid-1980s and talking about founding his own museum, when he wasn’t flirting with the Metropolitan in New York, or the Carnegie in Pittsburgh, where he had grown up, or the Art Institute of Chicago, where he had gone to school and made his first units, as he referred to a hundred million dollars. All of these institutions dangled seats on their boards
and hoped he would give them his increasingly impressive collections.

  The art world was bemused by the obviously congenial relationship that had grown between the famously abrasive collector and diffident and proper Avis Metcalf. Clearly there was something about her that appealed to Greenwood, and he, who had gotten very rich by trusting no one but himself, apparently trusted her. Whether they understood it or not, once that world knew that Victor Greenwood saw something special in Avis, others began to take an interest in what she was interested in, and certain sellers wanted connections to the people who were buying through her.

  “I’ll be back on Tuesday . . . on Friday . . . for the weekend . . . for your birthday, we’ll do something wonderful. What would you like most? Think about it, I’ll call you when I get there and we’ll make a plan.” Grace and her friends spent a lot of time slouching around Bloomingdale’s after school, trying on makeup and pretending they were in the market for Judith Leiber handbags. Or she’d take the subway to see Belinda, who would take her to dinner at Serafina or sometimes to the theater even on a school night. On her twelfth birthday, Belinda, airily ignoring Avis’s strictures, gave Grace a tiny poodle puppy. Grace named him Jelly.

  The whole family fell in love with Jelly. He was noisy but smart and very clownish. Grace paper-trained him in the kitchen, following instructions from a dog-training program she watched on television. When Jelly chewed apart one of her dancing school shoes—she found him in her bedroom lying half on top of it, gnawing on the instep strap and looking up at her with large innocent eyes—she went around the house spraying Bitter Apple on everything he liked sinking his little needle teeth into. Jelly chewed up the legs of two of her mother’s antique dining room chairs so that they looked as if they had been attacked by borer worms. Avis just laughed and sent them out to be refinished. And when Jelly lost control of himself after he ate something disgusting on the street and it disagreed with him, Avis patiently followed him around the apartment with a roll of paper towels and a gallon of Nature’s Miracle. Because of allergies Avis had never had a pet of her own, and she’d never imagined she would love a dog as much as she did this one. She even let Jelly sleep on Grace’s bed; he started the night curled on a towel near her feet but by morning was always up on the pillow beside her head, doing his best to worm his way under the covers.

  Avis was in London negotiating with the heirs of a grand collection of Bronzino drawings when Jelly was killed.

  He had just been groomed. He’d been washed and fluffed and perfumed, and it was said afterward that that may have been the problem: he didn’t smell like a dog. In any case, Grace was walking him home from the groomer’s at twilight on his pretty red leather leash when a man approached listening to his Walkman and paying no mind to his Akita strolling untethered behind him. With no warning, the Akita jumped Jelly, and in one garish melee of canine screaming clamped its jaws around the puppy’s throat and shook him until his neck broke. It took only seconds, but for Grace it lasted hours; it felt as if it would never stop, and went on feeling like that as it replayed inside her head for hours, then days.

  While Grace screamed, a woman ran across the street to them, yelling at the owner of the Akita, “Grab his tail, pull him off!” She gave the bigger dog a kick in the ribs and when it loosened its grip on Jelly as it wheeled to bite her, she was able to wrench the tiny body from the Akita’s mouth. She held Jelly, limp as a warm bloody plush toy, and looked at the fragile horrified child who stood sobbing before her, still holding the other end of Jelly’s leash. She whirled on the Akita man and yelled at him.

  “You should face charges, letting that dog off its leash!”

  “She’s never done anything like this before!”

  “I’m calling animal control. This dog should be put down!”

  “She’s a sweet gentle dog! She’s never done anything like this!”

  They went on in a furious tangle that resembled the fight that had just finished. Anger was easier for both of them than facing Grace’s grief. Grace dropped the leash she still held and took Jelly’s body from the yelling woman, sobbing, “I’m sorry, Jelly, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  After the woman had extracted the name and address of the Akita man, she walked Grace home.

  “You don’t have to,” Grace muttered between ragged tear-filled breaths.

  “Yes, I do. You’re more upset than you know, and I want to talk to your mother.”

  “She’s away.”

  The woman got into the elevator with Grace and her mangled little burden. The woman wore a good gray suit, Belgian loafers, and black tights that had been torn in the fight. Her hair was crisp and short and perfectly cut, an unnatural shade of chestnut. “Is your father home?” she asked Grace.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine.”

  They entered the apartment together, and Grace led the way to the den where her father slumped in his usual chair. Mozart was on the stereo, and Harrison seemed to be asleep. There was a large glass of clear liquid and melting ice on the table beside him. Grace’s crying had left her voice choked and hoarse.

  “Daddy,” she said loudly, and Harrison shook his head and opened his eyes.

  He surveyed the scene before him. Grace. Holding something black and messy, there were smears on her coat. A lady he’d never seen before.

  “This is my father, Harrison Wainwright,” Grace said to the lady.

  “I’m Casey Leisure, Mr. Wainwright,” said the lady briskly. Harrison was struggling to his feet. He managed to get upright and stay that way, then fairly steadily crossed the room to shake hands, saying, “Harrison Wainwright, good to know you.”

  “Your daughter has just had a horrible experience. Her dog was killed in the street. She needs someone to talk to, she should probably have some Valium and go to bed. And someone needs to deal with. . . .” She took Jelly’s body from Grace, who began sobbing again. For a moment it seemed the lady was going to start weeping herself. Grace needed a handkerchief and covered her face with her bloody hands, and now Mrs. Leisure had blood on her coat and hands as well.

  Finally Harrison said, “What do you think we ought to do?”

  Mrs. Leisure said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Is there anyone else in the house?” There wasn’t. “Is there someone we can call?”

  “Belinda,” said Grace.

  Mrs. Leisure stayed until Belinda arrived, dressed for a dinner party. Belinda thanked Mrs. Leisure, called the vet, canceled her plans, and waited until someone came and took Jelly away. Then she took Grace home with her for supper and the night.

  Chapter 10

  My first three years with the shop were harder than I could have imagined. People did back me, but taking money from them worked changes in our friendships. I don’t have a natural head for business, and I made a drastic mistake in my first choice of bookkeeper. I seemed to live on airplanes, as I sought out fresh talent in Paris and Milan, then Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Stockholm. Why should the Ladies Who Lunch come to me for designers whose clothes they could buy at Bergdorf Goodman, or whose shows they could go to themselves? I didn’t know the answer. At first. More serious was, Why should they come to me, only to find I was not in the shop but in Oslo?

  That’s another story. I learned, and my backers stuck by me, with only one painful exception. And Dinah remained a steadfast booster, though sometimes I wondered if she wouldn’t have taken just as much pleasure if I had failed as she took in seeing me succeed.

  The first year I was totally in the black and beginning to repay my seed money was 1991, the year Nicholas started high school. His brother, RJ, had gone to Andover, where he played lacrosse and squash. Nicky, however, wanted to stay in the city, and that was fine with Dinah. He had no interest in sports, although he wasn’t bad at tennis. If RJ was his father’s son, Nicky was Dinah’s. Passionate, dramatic, hot-tempered, talented, funny, they were each other’s best audience. Like Dinah, he was ambitious. He played Joe in the school’s production of Most Happy F
ella, and we went to every performance; he was like a young Joel McCrea. He still had those beautiful long eyelashes and deep-set smoky blue eyes. His dancing was deft—Dinah turned to me at one point on opening night with tears in her eyes. “I thought I knew everything about him,” she said. “When did he learn to do that?” His singing was even better, a shining supple tenor. The second night, Dinah brought a casting director and two producers she knew to the performance. They were warm in their appreciation, and the casting director said afterward that Nicky could talk with her about how to get an agent. I think Dinah was surprised that she didn’t instantly offer to cast him in the next Woody Allen movie.

  RJ went on to Yale, his grandfather’s alma mater. Nicky could have followed him there; he had the grades, but he wanted someplace more focused on the arts. He chose Bennington, a small liberal arts school in Vermont, which delighted Dinah because it famously had the highest tuition in the country.

  Richard, along with his parents, his wife, Charlotte, and their three daughters, came to Nicky’s high school graduation, and Dinah was perfectly charming to them, inviting everyone back to her apartment for a celebratory lunch along with her own parents and me. The food was Moroccan, as Dinah had recently been sent by Architectural Digest to write up a house in Marrakech. None of us had even seen a tagine before. I noticed that Dinah left her diaphragm case in the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom, the one most often used by guests in the dining room, just to be sure that no one on Richard’s team thought she was a lonely spinster.

  His first three years at Bennington, Nicky’s girlfriend was a six-foot-tall Somali dancer named Nala. Dinah loved her. She taught Dinah Somali home cooking; they went on field trips together to the ethnic markets of the outer boroughs, and on one of these, she described to Dinah being “circumcised” when she was six. She taught Nicky African drumming and left him her drums when she graduated and went home. They’re still at the apartment, in Nicky’s childhood bedroom. Nala is married now and works for a bank in Amsterdam. She often stays with Dinah when she comes to New York.