Carpool Confidential (26 page)

“Actually”—Arlene Rundgren unscrewed the thermos of low-sodium miso she drank in lieu of coffee—“I have it on good authority that it's someone at Calhoun!”

“And I heard yesterday that it's almost definitely a Dalton mom who does the 11:30 yoga at Equinox at Columbus Circle. Supposedly everyone in the class knows for sure that it's her,” Tierney Leblanc said.

“Has this woman admitted it?” Sue asked coolly.

“I don't know,” Tierney admitted. “I don't belong to Equinox.”

“Who does?” Sue looked around the table.

“I do,” Libby said. “I just joined. Why?”

“Because I think we need to get someone uptown and into that class and find out if it's the truth. Because I don't believe it. I think it's someone here. I mean, are they saying they have a ‘snack cookie' crisis at Dalton?”

Tierney looked defeated. “I don't know that either.”

“It'd be kind of a shame for this to become a witch hunt,” Libby said.

Sue was firm. “We need to make it clear
if
it's a Meetinghouse parent that this kind of selfish behavior at the expense of the school's reputation is
not
all right.”

“How?” I asked. “Like Randy said, the freedom of expression thing. We can't tell someone not to.” I was sort of checking. We couldn't, could we? “Can we?”

“No, but we can make clear our feelings about people who are prepared to disregard the school's reputation in the quest for their own glorification,” Ken said.

Glorification? Somehow I hadn't seen detailing what it felt like to have every pubic hair you own ripped out of your body that way. “Sort of a running out of town on a rail philosophy?”

“Of course not.” He gave me a level look. “More of a good of the group versus the good of the individual thing. I think,” he continued, “that Sue mentioned earlier, she's planning to go to an orgy as part of her exploration of the new, single life.”

Libby raised her eyebrow at Sue. “You are?”

“I meant the blogging woman, Delphine,” Ken said.

“Ken,” Randy said so gently that I knew she was moving in for the kill. “Did your glasses fog up when you mentioned the orgy?”

“Of course not.” He took them off and polished them on a napkin.

I wasn't sure how long the ex-Mrs. Ebersole had been out of the picture—long before Robert had started at Meetinghouse— but I was guessing Ken hadn't gotten any since. Which, come to think of it, was looking depressingly similar to my own long-range forecast.

“If they did, I think we can all be sure it was from disgust.” Sue looked approvingly at Ken. “Obviously once we ferret the person out, it will be up to the school whether to keep them on as a family. I hope I'm not being crass if I say that I've put a lot into this school and I would expect to have some influence in a situation like this.”

“I think it's Samantha Trask,” Ailsa said. “Have you noticed how short her skirts have gotten?”

“Does anyone know anything about the state of her marriage?” Sue asked. Head shakes all around. “I've been thinking it could be Breanna Cargill. When was the last time anyone saw Ira?”

I sat miserably, waiting for someone to say,
Hey, Rick's been on that business trip for an awfully long time
, but no one did.

“Cassie, you're a writer,” Sue said brightly. “Is it you?”

My ears buzzed as panic set in.
What would it mean exactly if they knew?

“Would you mind showing us your bikini line?”

I stared at her. Everything seemed to be blocked out except me and her, we were in a tunnel together. “I—”

She laughed. “I was kidding. You look like you thought I meant it! Please, keep your jeans on—I know you're too smart to substitute snack cookies for fish sticks, because it's so obvious. You'd definitely have come up with something more devious.”

Or maybe not. The plain fact was that the persona they were looking for was so far from the me they knew, no one was going to connect us unless they were hit over the head with evidence.

“What I was going to say”—she was still chuckling—“my God, your face! was maybe we should get you to analyze the writing style, see if it's familiar at all. What do you think?”

I swallowed. The buzzing was diminishing. “I think that's out of my league.”

“Oh come on Cassie”—Sue was still grinning—“are you saying you'd be outsmarted by someone who'd write about her pubic hair on the www?”

I just wanted to get out of there and hug my anonymity. I was going to have to be on my toes, because Sue, once she started sniffing at something, was definitely not going to let go of it easily. For now, though, there was nothing I could do other than head home, change, and go endure lunch with Letitia.

I tore down Remsen Street like an Olympic sprinter. Since this left me sweaty (on top of freezing), I arrived at my front door with the understanding that a shower had transitioned from desirable option to social necessity. I'd given up fantasies of eye-liner and blow dries. At this point just achieving clean was going to make me late for lunch.

So I was thrilled to realize that I had run out without my keys and was locked out. In a doorman building, this should have been a nuisance, not a disaster. Unfortunately, the doorman was nowhere to be seen and the buzzer to my apartment went unanswered. Where was Harmonye? Hopefully walking the dog. I gave the super's apartment one last unoptimistic buzz, then tried a couple of neighbors, but no one answered. It was like a neutron bomb had gone off in the building.

I knew when to accept defeat. So, sweaty and clammy, with lank, unwashed hair, still in my threadbare jeans, frayed shirt, running shoes, and black down jacket (praying that Harmonye would walk the dog), I turned and trudged up to Montague Street to take the N train to have lunch in possibly the most elegantly over the top Ladies Who Lunch restaurant in the whole city.

 

I didn't feel too self-conscious on the train. The guy sitting next to me hadn't washed since the Lincoln administration, so I didn't think I was offending him. When I came up out of the subway at Fifth and Fifty-ninth, my phone was flashing that I'd gotten a voice message and a text while I'd been out of range, underground.

The text was from Charlotte: have got sex club 4 u. all tied up. zack will contact u. u cant go alone. need a date. xx.

Am I the only one who saw the irony? I needed a date to go to the place that was going to show me how unsuited to dating I was (like I needed to go there to know that).

The voice mail was from Rick. “Cassie. Paulette asked me to give you a call and let you know that she considers the repeated phone calls from you threatening and she's going to file harassment charges against you if this continues. Please, Cass, for your own good, stop calling her. Think of the children and how much they need you.” He hung up.

I was outside of Esta now. Two friendly messages on her voice mail were harassment? Hmmm. Next week's meeting with Humphrey could not come soon enough.

The maitre d' gave me an odd look through the window. I thought about Paulette. How dull I'd found the countless hours I'd hung on my end of the phone over the years listening to stories about her life, her controlling husband, her daughters. How I'd always suspected she had a less than nodding acquaintance with that commodity called truth. How no one with an ass that fat could possibly be the size two she frequently proclaimed herself to be.

And as I stood there, I thought about the fact that she was an officious, annoying woman who used me to listen to her endless, dull stories. Rick used to make fun of her, but I'd known he was secretly flattered by the attention and importance she vested him with. I'd always figured, if she'd wanted to stroke his ego and he wanted it stroked, who cared? But now he was threatening me to get me to leave her alone? This was just bizarre.

I slid my phone into my bag and walked into the restaurant. “Hi.” I smiled at the maitre d'. “I'm here to meet Letitia Martin.”

To his credit, he didn't put on surgical gloves before taking my coat.

I was edgy from the entire morning and felt like a disgusting, greasy, smelly frump. “I didn't think they allowed dogs in restaurants,” I said to Letitia. “Hi, Bouvy.”

“He appears to have been to the groomer more recently than you.” She smiled.

“Will Bouvier be having his usual, Mrs. Martin?” the maitre d' said.

“Yes, thank you, Frederic.”—Letitia eyed me as I slid onto the banquette across from her—“You shouldn't have bothered dressing up, Cassie.”

I looked down in vain for a menu. “I like to do what I can,” I said modestly.

A waiter materialized. “Would you care for a menu today, Mrs. Martin?”

“No, thank you, Leonard,” Letitia said. “I'll have the Tuesday salad.”

“As it's Thursday,” he said, “may I respectfully suggest the Thursday salad?”

Another waiter put Bouvier's plate in front of him. Letitia tied a napkin around his neck. “No,” she said. “I dislike the Thursday salad. I'll take the Tuesday.”

This lunch already had a definite down the rabbit hole quality to it.

“Very well, Mrs. Martin.” Leonard turned to me. “Do you care for a menu?”

“I'll have the Tuesday salad, too.” Might as well make someone's life easier.

An even more severe man appeared, and he and Letita air-kissed Continental style. “Hello, Mario. Is the ninety-two Krug the Clos du Mesnil?” She put Bouvier's plate down on the banquette beside her. It was, of course. She ordered a bottle.

“I had the strangest thing happen this morning.” I pulled out my phone and played the message. “Have you ever heard of any-thing like that?”

Mario appeared, reverently cradling a bottle, and commenced icing and opening and tasting and pouring and yes, Mrs. Martining. I didn't drink at lunch, but well, where had that policy gotten me? I took a sip.

Letitia stroked Bouvier. “Have you harassed her?”

“If leaving two pleasant messages, one asking if I could get reimbursed for work expenses Rick never turned in, constitutes harassment, I guess so.”

“It sounds like he has a vested interest in keeping you two apart. You don't think—?” She let it hang, delicately, unsaid.

“Paulette? Even if Rick did…that kind of thing, it would be a seriously unlikely pairing.”

“What receipts were you asking about?”

“I found a bunch in the study for plane tickets and hotels and restaurants that he must not have turned in. He always used to let them collect for a while and then turn in three or four months' at a time, but I could really use the money. The strange thing is that he said he'd already turned them in, but they were still in the apartment.”

Letitia nodded. “They don't presumably give them back.”

“Right. And since it's all billable to clients, they don't reimburse without receipts.”

“Call the CFO.” Letitia sat back.

I stared at her. “I have no idea who that even is.”

“Call the switchboard and ask for the CFO's office. That's the way it's been in every company I've ever dealt with.” Which was, um, zero? She gave me a half-amused look, like she knew what I was thinking. I really needed to get less transparent. “And there have been a lot. You do know that I run and administer a charitable foundation, Cassie?”

“No,” I admitted. “I didn't. You never said anything.”

She smiled. “You never asked.”

“Touché.” How many people had I not given a chance in my lifetime? Did everyone turn out to be surprising if you let yourself know them? Would my mother? Betsy Strauss?

“Call,” Letitia said.

I did and was put through to a nice enough guy named Patrick, who said it wasn't standard procedure to reimburse spouses but to send the receipts to him and he'd see what he could do.

“When are you seeing Humphrey?” Letitia asked when I'd hung up.

“Next week. Thanks for that, Letitia.” The memory of his voice made me smile. “Does he look like Columbo?”

“Cassie, do I look like a woman who would recommend a man who looked like Columbo?”

I had to admit she didn't.

“How are you fixed for money?”

The question took me so by surprise, I spluttered my champagne. “At this moment, OK, but going forward, something's going to have to give.”

She nodded. “I'm beginning to be concerned about the trust fund.”

“I'm beginning to be concerned about everything—What trust fund?”

Mario swooped down and topped our glasses up.

“Rick's.”

I choked.

“You didn't know.”

I shook my head, waving her to go on as the champagne burned up my nose.

“He gets it when he turns forty. I set it up that way because I believed he'd be mature enough to handle it then. Apparently I was mistaken.”

I was sure the champagne wasn't responsible for my dizziness. “I'm not sure I'm understanding this.”

She looked fidgety. “To be blunt? I'm worried he's done this now so he can divorce you before he gets it so it won't be community property.”

“I'm not a divorce expert, but wouldn't it come under the heading of future earnings or expectations or something?” I was still trying to process that for as long as I'd known him—even back when things had been good—hell, I'd thought perfect— Rick had withheld this information. Every day the hits just seemed to keep on coming.

“Only if you know about it. And if he was counting on you staying nice and agreeable, he might have assumed you wouldn't find out. I have to say, I know he and I aren't close, but it's painful to even have to think this about my own son.”

I nodded. I could imagine.

“So, anyway, I was thinking, I'd like to give you an equal amount as a gift.”

“Letitia.” I put my glass down. “I can't let you give me money.”

She looked genuinely puzzled. “Why not?”

I didn't have any good answer except just
because
, so I said, “Because.”

“Because what? I have so much else to do with it? I'm sixty-five years old, I have more money than I can spend. Look, Cassie”—she glanced at Bouvier, sitting next to her—“I'm sure it's partly genetic that Rick turned out the way he did, but the rest, well, one has to assume it's my fault. I believed the way to help Rick live a good life, an authentic life, was to take inherited money out of the equation until he was old enough to handle it. To expose him to it as little as possible until his character was formed. I'm sitting here today telling you I was wrong.”

I was deeply grateful that I had, in the last ten minutes, officially become someone who drank at lunch. “You can't make amends to Rick by giving it to me.”

She smiled, “Maybe not, but I can make amends to you for giving you Rick.”

“How can you say that?” It gave me a sick-to-my-stomach feeling to think of someone's own mother not caring about them.

She looked surprised. “Because it's true. I love him dearly”— she kept talking as my mouth opened—“in my own way.” Leonard put down two microscopic ciabattas, like two inches by two inches each, on our bread plates. “Do you love who he turned out to be, Cassie?”

I swallowed my ciabatta pretty much whole. “Who he really was or who I thought he was? In retrospect, I can see a million ways in which he wasn't the man I fell in love with and a million little ways he changed over the years. But before he left, no, I didn't see it. I kept him. So I guess the answer is, I don't know.”

“What's standing between you and saying yes to something that could make your life a great deal easier?”

Could I accept money from her? It wasn't passing by unnoticed that she was offering me something my own parents hadn't. I looked at her, really looked, beyond the clothes, the plastic surgery, the jewelry. And what I saw was an aging, lonely woman with too much money and not enough of anything else. And then I looked, really looked at me (although thankfully not literally), sitting across from her, Cassie Lorimer-Traske Martin, scrambling, as usual, to do her best to make sure that no one ever felt sorry for her again. My self-respect was on the line. But then, conversely, so maybe was home for my boys. Where did pride begin and end here? “I don't know, Letitia. Can I think about this?”

“Of course.”

My phone rang. “Excuse me.” I didn't take my eyes off Letitia as I bent down, reached into my bag, and answered it.