Gossip (10 page)

“I was on the twenty-ninth.”

“At first they said not to leave.”

“ . . . we went down the southwest fire stairs . . .”

“ . . . so she tried to go back up, I don't know . . .”

They ended up in the park at the tip of the island with no place to go but the water. They went to the harbor's edge and stood like puzzled horses. Police boats arrived, Harbor Police or something, little motorboats with swollen rubber bumpers along the gunwales, which was lucky because there was no place to land. No pier or dock or place to tie up. They just nosed the boats up beside the seawall and held them there with the engines running, amazing seamanship really, while dazed hysterical people climbed or dropped or fell over the seawall into the boat. It was hard on the women in their business suits. (
Pencil skirts,
I thought,
you'd have to just pull them up to your hips, and no one wears slips anymore
.) One woman took off her heels and threw them into the boat before her, but one went into the water. She must have had to walk the whole way home in her stocking feet. When a boat was full it took off across the river mouth to New Jersey. The refugees climbed out, and the boat zipped back to the New York side for more people.

Richard found himself on a pier at the edge of a New Jersey park he'd never heard of, on a sparkling September morning, looking back across the river at a tower of black smoke, and flames and a hole in the sky where the buildings had been. He understood what he was looking at much less than we did, because he hadn't heard the radio or seen a television. Rumors spread among the refugees: there were other planes, the White House had been hit. The word
terrorists,
terrorists
buzzed through the group but was not well understood. Their mental processing units were pretty much shattered. After a while two men in hazmat suits approached Richard and asked him what the stuff was all over his face and hair and clothes. He told them, and they turned a fire hose on him.

I've forgotten now exactly how they got back across the river. A cadre of them who had been together from the park onward chose without discussion to stay together. Those who had cell phones lent them, and sometimes they worked. One young man had a Walkman with a radio in it; he was in charge of reporting what the news was saying. A half dozen of the women who had escaped the North Tower had no money, keys, or ID, having left their handbags at their desks. The others bought them bagels or water or whatever they came across as they walked. By the time they reached the Upper East Side, Richard was walking with just one young lawyer named Thomas who should have been in the North Tower on the hundredth floor, but a fight with his girlfriend had delayed his leaving for work. Thomas didn't know where he would spend the night, and Richard said his ex-wife would find room for him, but Thomas said he thought he'd go find his alcohol support group and headed for a bar on Third Avenue.

R
ichard's company reopened quickly in rented offices in Jersey City. Richard tried to go back to work, but the subway terrified him. He wasn't sleeping and was afraid of everything. Sirens, smoke, even dogs. He tried driving to work, but crossing the bridge was worse than the tunnels, and he developed a panicky fear that the trucks on the highway on the Jersey side were going to topple sideways onto him and crush him. He was so tense and erratic that Nicky told me he thought his father's marriage was in trouble.

Dinah invited Richard to her apartment for lunch. They sat at the dining room table all afternoon, with Dinah's tax records for years back, her statements from Social Security and her retirement account, crunching numbers and projecting income, if she continued to work at her current rate for such and so many years. They agreed that she could afford to reduce his payment to her by two-thirds; in return he would oversee her investments, renegotiate fees with her broker, make sure her insurance and will were in order. All the things he used to do for his private clients he would now do for Dinah, for free, for life. He resigned from his job, went back to Westchester, and reopened his family office. Within five months, he had his old clients back, and at least one new one: me. To have him take over the job of fighting with the monsters who provide, or rather do everything they can to avoid providing, my health insurance was worth the fee by itself. Dinah claimed it was the best deal she ever made, but then, she's like that.

Chapter 11

N
icky started law school that January. He was twenty-six. He took student loans to cover tuition and went on living at home to save room and board money. It must have been that winter, too, that Dinah called me about our high school reunion. Hoping for big reunion gifts, the school started promoting a year in advance.

“Are you even
thinking
of going?” she demanded. It was to be our fortieth, if you can believe it. Well, why shouldn't you believe it? But
we
found it hard. Inside I felt as young as I ever had, and it was hard to reconcile my inner reality with the face that now looked out at me from my mirror topped with increasingly improbable auburn hair.

“Why?” I asked. “Are you
not
thinking of it?” As I had had no Bright College Years, Miss Pratt's had remained important to me, if only for the lifelong friends I'd made there.

“The only people from our class I really want to see are you and Nanny Townsend and Leonora, and I can see you all here, and the food will be better.” She invited us to dinner (we brought the wine) and she was right. After that we met every six weeks or so to catch up with one another.

The four of us were finishing dinner one October night at Dinah's when a key turned in the front door lock, and Nicky appeared, wearing a broad-shouldered suit from the 1940s and a becoming fedora. Behind him was a slight and arty blond boy, now sporting round tortoiseshell glasses, whom I dimly remembered from Nicky's high school crowd.

“Good evening, ladies,” Nick said. “I am Clark Kent.”

“Well, of course you are,” said Dinah. “We've all suspected that.”

“You look very dashing, Nicky,” said Leonora.

“Thank you. I've got a lot invested in this suit. Mom, you remember Toby?”

“Of course, darling, how are you.” She kissed them both. “Where did you get it?”

“Opera Guild Thrift Shop. I had to have the pants taken in about a foot. We're having our class reunion at Paula Donnelley's, but Toby didn't know it was a costume party. Can he go as you?” he asked Dinah.

“He doesn't have to wear my underwear, does he?”

Nicky took that as a yes. They started toward her bedroom.

The interruption had had the happy effect of shortening Nanny's detailed explanation of how well she had been feeling on hormone replacement therapy and how sorry she was to have to give it up, because now she wasn't sleeping and sometimes had to get up and change her drenched pajamas in the middle of the night. Not that we didn't care; we did. In fact I had a breathlessly interesting contribution to make to the topic regarding evening primrose oil. Still, having a boister of youthful high spirits sweep through the room was a welcome treat. We could hear the boys laughing in Dinah's bedroom.

The young returned, and we gasped. Toby was uncanny as the Full Dinah. He was wearing a long dark skirt and Dinah's wide black wool jacket with the huge bone buttons, perhaps the most characteristic item from her winter uniform, and her long cherry-colored scarf double-looped around his neck in the way my age group does when we haven't had any work done on our many-pleated necks. His eyes were dramatized with a graphite shadow and lines of kohl at the lashes, and he wore a bright slash of familiar crimson lipstick and one of Dinah's berets.

“Oh. My. God,” said Leonora.

“If you've wrecked my favorite lipstick I'm going to kill you, you know that,” said Dinah.

“Toby, you look divine. Who did your makeup?” I asked.

“Nicky,” said Toby, appearing pleased.

“My goodness, you
do
pay attention,” I said to my godson.

Leonora said, “I would know you were Dinah Wainwright
anywhere,
Toby. It's quite frightening.”

“The shoes aren't perfect,” said Dinah. Toby was still wearing his own high-top sneakers. “I kind of like the look, though.”

“Thanks, Ma,” said Nicky.

“Good-bye, louts. Have fun,” said Dinah.

As they went out the door I saw Nanny and Leonora exchange a look.

Dinah called the next morning to say that Toby had been a succès fou. Cries of “Oh my god, it's Nick's mother!” had been heard all over the party. Nicky didn't get nearly as much attention as Toby did until midnight, when he'd shed his suit and revealed his Superman costume.

T
here was no question that Nicky was doing well and having fun, but I think you can imagine his mother's pleasure when he asked if he could come for dinner and bring a girl.

As I heard the story, they met when Nicholas stopped in a bookstore in Carnegie Hill one evening to browse the art books and schmooze with the owner. He noticed a fine-boned blonde standing on the mahogany library stairs shelving oversize stock, and couldn't help but notice her delicate ankles and quiet but very good clothes.

“Who is
that
?” he asked.

“She's called Grace Metcalf,” said Clifford. “We're trying each other out.”

Grace was just back from three years in France to which she'd fled after her father died. She accepted Nicky's invitation to walk in the park after the shop closed, and they were still together six hours later, leaning their glossy heads together over guttering candles in a trattoria on Third Avenue as the last waiter piled chairs on the tabletops and leaned sarcastically against the cash register, feigning sleep.

It had been a wind-haunted autumn night in the city, chilly but not yet bitter, with wood smoke in the air and yellow leaves still clinging here and there among bare branches, turning over in the wind, or giving up at last and falling to where they crunched underfoot. Grace remembered Nicky from their teenage years; although they had gone to different schools they had moved in the same circles, but Nick belonged to a glamorous older crowd and hadn't notice her at the Hols and Cols and Mets and Gets where she and her not yet sleek or stylish friends had sat in clumps at dances. They walked to her old school, then to his, telling each other stories of what had happened on this block, in that shop, in the apartment right up there on the eighth floor where someone had had an amazing party one Thanksgiving. They described the Halloween costumes they'd worn as children, the buildings where they been allowed to trick-or-treat. Grace confessed that her friend had had a crush on Nicky and dragged everyone to see him in
Most Happy Fella
. Everything amazed them, everything made them laugh. The streets were luminous, enchanted places where each of them had walked alone, becoming themselves, until it was time to discover each other.

They talked about the songs they had loved, what they'd danced to, books they'd read for English class. All their memories were happy, all their luck seemed to have been good. He said he didn't want to call her Grace; it didn't suit her, he declared. By the time I was invited into the romance, a month or two later, they were calling each other “pup.”

Dinah was the first to learn they were an item, but I believe I was the second. Nicky telephoned. “Lovie, may I take you to lunch? There's someone I want you to meet.” We agreed on Sette Mezzo on Lex in the seventies. I arrived first and was at my usual table in the back when Nicky walked in with his “someone.” My Grace. It was an ugly winter day, with a sky like wet concrete, and a bitter wind, but as they shook off their heavy coats and followed the maître d' toward me, they both seemed to shine with happiness. People turned to look at them as they passed.

I was on my feet to embrace them both.

“Grace Holland Metcalf! Look at you! Nicky, you sly dog, is
this
your girl?”

They both laughed and wriggled with pleasure at their surprise.

“I don't believe it, it's too wonderful!” It was so wonderful I started to laugh.

Grace had lost weight while she was in France, making her always trim figure positively elegant, and today she was wearing her silky wheat-colored hair in a loose bun with a red lacquered chopstick through it. She seemed to be made of cashmere, small and entirely feminine, except for an elaborately carved gold and onyx sealing ring that I recognized as her father's. She smelled of citrus.

“Tell me everything! How did you find each other?” They told the story of their meeting, in alternating versions. And then about their first date.

“He took me bowling! I'd never been bowling!”

“How was she?” I asked Nicky, amused.

“Very good,” said Nicky at the same moment Grace cried, “Terrible!”

When they got to the moment about halfway through their first dinner when they realized they had me in common, they both said, “There really are only six people in the world.”

I said that was true, by which I meant that to live in a vast, mean, and dangerous world but feel that in fact it's a trustworthy lacework of lucky coincidence is to feel richly blessed.

When our food came, they turned to musing how, with so much in common, they hadn't found each other before.

“Avis and Dinah must have been at boarding school together too, weren't they, Lovie?” I explained that we had overlapped, but Avis had been two years ahead of us.

They wanted to know how I happened to know Avis as well as I did now, and I told them. “She's a remarkable woman,” I said, and Grace agreed, without elaboration. Nicky glanced at her.

When I got back to the shop, the phone was ringing. Dinah crowed, “Did you
ever
?”

“You are going to have to stop calling Avis Mrs. Gotrocks now.”

“I don't see why.”

“You must admit, Grace is a lovely human being.”

“Adorable,” said Dinah.

“How long have you known?”

“Since Sunday. I've been dying to call, but they so much wanted to tell you themselves.”

We settled down to a good long chin-wag about how serious they were, what might happen next, and what Avis was going to think.

A
s I already knew, there was a reason Grace had gone to Paris to finish college and not come back until now. Harrison's death had let a genie out of a bottle in that little family. It was Harrison who had abandoned Grace in so many ways, but it was her mother she was furious with. She was angry that Avis had let her father drink himself to death. She was angry that Avis traveled so much. She was angry that in emotionally confusing circumstances, Avis reacted with good manners rather than with some passion or wisdom of the heart Grace longed for, which would have been messier but felt real. I once suggested to her that we are charged, in this life, with loving each other, but not necessarily with interfering with each other's choices. She asked me, if she decided to hang herself, would I stand by and let her? Things seemed a good deal simpler to her at the time than they did to me. As is often the case with the young.

Y
ou know how, when you ask about your friends' children and all is well, you get a happy story? When I asked Avis about Grace in those years, all she said was, “She's fine.” I knew that it made her very sad to be so distant from Grace, but she didn't know what she had done that couldn't be forgiven, and I certainly wasn't going to be the one to tell her. I did try to tell her that it was good that Grace felt sure enough of her love to dare to be angry with her, but Avis found that pretty cold comfort.

Meanwhile, Grace was a girl in the market for a mother, and that was not the kind of thing Dinah ever missed.

“My friends always love my mother more than they do me,” Nicky said cheerfully. In addition to Nala, two of his high school girlfriends had stayed in touch with Dinah years after Nicky broke up with them. But from the beginning, with Grace and Dinah it was something more.

Dinah made time for the young, and they always knew that her pleasure in their company was unfeigned. They were welcome at her table, she didn't mind changes of plan at the last minute, she loved their jokes and the rush of ever-evolving private languages they brought into the house. She saw movies none of the rest of us saw, she knew the new bands and got the point of hip-hop when the rest of us didn't even want to. She could do the moonwalk, she knew what vogueing was, she was always in demand to demonstrate the Mashed Potato, which the young found blissfully funny. She was sexy.

It might be true to say that she didn't recognize a difference between herself and them. It might have had to do with the fact that Richard had supported her for so long, a little as if he were the daddy and she were still and forever a not quite adult, or maybe that's just me. Maybe I make too much of the difference money makes, whom you take it from, or don't. I'm sure she would say of me that I'm incomplete because I never had children of my own. Perhaps she'd be right. Being complete is not a condition given to many of us.

I had always tried to be a safe haven for Grace. I loved to read to her when she was little, and I brought her stylish presents, always something a little more grown-up than the age she was. When she was seven I noticed that no one had troubled to teach her to ride a two-wheeler and suggested to Avis that it was time. Grace didn't know that. I didn't especially want her to; I wanted to make Avis look good. If I had known that Avis was going to buy Grace a bike and have the nanny teach her to ride it, I'd have taught her myself. Just thinking about that little face makes me sad.

Dinah was under no such restraint as trying to make Avis look good. One night when Nicky was working late we went to see
The Hours
with Grace, and out for a bowl of pasta afterward. Dinah got off on the subject of being the first in her class to get her period.

“I thought I was dying,” she crowed. “I'd never heard of bleeding that didn't mean something terrible had happened. I cried all night, thinking how sad my parents would be that I had a fatal disease. That and trying to decide what to wear on my deathbed.”