Her One Obsession (11 page)

‘Didn’t the women look chic? And that dress Adair was wearing – wow!’ said Daisy.

‘Was Pieta right? Do you have something on your mind,
Mom? God, these eggs are great. Are there any of those tiny sausages?’

Dendre went to the oven and took the sausages to the table to the sound of her chattering daughters reliving the night before. She placed the covered dish on the table. Daisy jumped from her chair and went to kiss her mother on the cheek.

‘Mom, you never forget anything! You’re the best in the world.’

Amber repeated, ‘Is Pieta right, Mom, is there something you want to tell us?’

Dendre began to laugh. ‘Yes, I do,
and
ask you something as well.’

‘Well, what are you waiting for, Mom? We’re all ears,’ said Amber.

Dendre laughed. ‘I was waiting for the three of you to stop stuffing your faces.’

‘Mom, we
are
capable of listening and eating at the same time. But wait one minute, I’ll just get the damson jam …’

When Amber returned to the table, Dendre asked, ‘How about Easter on Hydra? Your father and I are leaving some time during this coming week. We intend to stay there until the end of June and go straight on to Fire Island.’

There were mumbles through mouthfuls of food.

‘Great.’

‘Can I bring Sam Wong and Jessie along?’ asked Amber,

‘I’d like to bring Isobel,’ said Pieta.

The other two cried out, ‘No!’

‘Your father will be annoyed if you bring Isobel. She clings to him and gets so starry-eyed, and her aspirations to be a painter irritate him because she has no talent. I think not, Pieta.’

She pouted and complained, ‘I never, ever get what I want!’

Dendre and her other two daughters burst out laughing because Pieta, being the youngest, got everything she wanted more often than not. Daisy, who was sitting next to her, leaned over and began tickling and teasing her. ‘Oh, poor baby. Little hard-done-by Pieta. Orphan Annie.’

She convulsed with laughter, screaming, ‘Stop! Oh, please stop, please!’

‘Admit that Isobel is a crashing bore and I will,’ said Daisy.

‘She is, she is, I give up!’

Daisy stopped and Pieta wiped the tears of laughter from her cheeks. After finally catching her breath she said, ‘She really is but I have a crush on her brother.’

A resounding, ‘Get a crush on someone else!’ came from the three others at the table. Everyone including Pieta laughed.

The girls were used to moving from house to house, it was a way of life for them and always an adventure. When they had been younger there had been tutors to make up for time missed at school. They were a family who liked to live together, enjoyed each other’s company better than anyone else’s. There was no place more exciting than where their mother and father were. Dendre was the centre of the world for them, always there nurturing her brood, her husband, their friends.

‘Well, up goes the phone bill,’ said Amber. The girls called at least three times a week to talk to their parents when they were not all together.

That was the easy part, thought Dendre.

She poured herself another cup of coffee and while doing so asked, ‘How would you like to go shopping with me today? No, let’s say tomorrow.’

Eating came to a halt. The girls fell silent. If there was anything they dreaded it was a day spent shopping with their mother. She looked at every price tag, resented buying anything at the regular price, and always complained, ‘We could have done better in Lohman’s.’ The girls, after a miserable day, generally managed to buy what they wanted
at regular price
but the effort invariably left them in a foul mood: not even talking to their mother. Dendre remembered the years of penury she and Gideon had suffered. Her saving grace with the girls was that she never reminded them of the bad old days she and Gideon had been through to get where they were now, able to spoil their children with frivolous shopping sprees, no prices asked.

The three of them looked at one another in surprise because they knew how much Dendre usually detested those shopping days that should have been fun. Amber and Daisy were old enough to shop on their own now and did, but they were close to their mother and respected her opinion in spite of how difficult she made shopping. Dendre did have a style of her own which the girls thought of as
inverted snobbery: no famous labels, never chic, always looking interesting rather than beautiful.

The girls felt that she was right in some ways. Dendre’s aversion to famous labels and huge prices, her fear of being labelled as stylish and wealthy, kept her daughters on track. They, as the offspring of a world-famous and much celebrated artist, wanted to create a style of their own that straddled the chic of Adair and the look their mother had created: that of a poor artist’s wife with long bias-cut skirts down to the ankle, worn black turtle neck jumpers, and trappings of a successful artist’s wife too – Ancient Mayan gold necklaces that were more art form than jewellery, a fabulous full-length chinchilla coat.

‘Your lack of enthusiasm is ringing in my ears. Will answers come easier if I tell you I am throwing out all my clothes and starting afresh? The spree is for me not for any of you, and money’s no object,’ Dendre told her girls.

None of them spoke until Daisy, in slow motion, slid down in her chair and fell to floor in a make-believe faint. The three still sitting at the table and Daisy on the floor burst into peals of laughter.

‘I need your help, girls. I’ll never get anywhere on my own and your father said you three looked the best of anyone at the gala, the most glamorous and enchanting. I have never looked glamorous or enchanting. I think I would like to.’

‘Mom, what’s this in aid of? Why now? Are you making this change for Dad?’ asked Amber.

‘No, I’m doing it for me.’

Pieta ran to her mother and plunked herself down on Dendre’s lap. She kissed her and said, ‘You’re better looking than Barbra Streisand, and look what she made out of herself!’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, dear, thank you.’

Daisy said, ‘Of course we’ll go with you. What fun it will be!’

‘We’ll definitely go with you, Mom. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Does Dad know about the new look?’ asked Amber.

‘No. It’s not that it’s a secret, just let’s say I don’t see the need to make a big thing out of going shopping.’

‘Do you want to go today? We can make it, can’t we, Pieta, Daisy? It’s going to be such fun,’ enthused Amber.

Before the girls could answer, Dendre said, ‘Not today. I thought I would go to Elizabeth Arden for my hair and the right way to make up, then get the clothes to match my makeover.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ said Amber.

The others offered to go too but Dendre declined their help.

The girls said they would stay away from Elizabeth Arden’s Salon on Fifth Avenue if she would treat them to tea and cakes at the Russian Tea Room afterwards. Dendre agreed on one condition: that the girls should not discuss this outing with their father or Adair.

‘I want to introduce the new me into our life as unobtrusively as possible.’

The girls agreed. But Dendre could see by the looks on their face that they understood something was amiss to have brought about such a radical change in their mother. They respected Dendre enough to have the good grace not to pry any further. For them, it was enough to be included in her escapade.

The girls returned to their food and Dendre called Yukio and Kitty to the table. Yukio was to man the phones and work on their travel plans. Kitty was given instructions on how to cook the evening’s dinner as Dendre explained that she expected to be out all day. The cleaner-cum-cook looked astounded. For the first time in all the years Kitty had been with the Palenbergs, Dendre had entrusted the entire meal to her.

Chapter 11

Dendre was on her way to Elizabeth Arden when she pulled out her mobile telephone and called the salon to say she would be half an hour late. Although she had a vague plan in her mind of how to get rid of Adair and win back her husband, she was very much dependent on instinct as to when and how to move forward. It was therefore as much of a surprise to her as it was to Adair when Gideon’s mistress opened the door of her penthouse flat to see Dendre standing in the hall.

Her initial idea had been to get herself made over first and then confront Adair but in the taxi going to the salon she thought that seemed somehow pathetic. She rationalised that getting all dressed up like some dowager duchess might make Adair think she was trying to compete with the younger woman’s chic and good looks, which was not the case. Dendre was no fool. She knew that with all the money in the world spent on hairdressers, beauty therapists, cosmeticians, and clothes, she would still lose. Hence the change of plan. She wanted Adair to see that any changes in Dendre’s life were for her own sake and not made to compete with Adair or anyone else.

‘Good morning,’ she said with a smile, noticing how beautiful Adair looked, hair tousled from sleep, without make-up, wearing silver crepe-de-chîne pyjamas.

‘Dendre, what’s wrong?’ she asked, face full of fear.

‘What a surprise! I would have guessed you wore sexy black satin night dresses rather than jim-jams,’ said Dendre, a note of bitchiness in her voice.

‘Only when I sleep with your husband,’ was the snappy retort.

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ she asked.

‘Of course, come in. For heaven’s sake, Dendre, is Gideon all right?’

Dendre entered the apartment and said, ‘Yes, of course he’s all right!’ a note of irritation in her voice.

There was a huge sigh of relief from Adair who placed the palm of her hand over her heart, the fear fading away from her face. ‘Oh, Dendre, you so frightened me. Come into the kitchen, I was just having a cup of coffee. Would you like one?’

There had always been between Adair and Dendre a civilised acceptance of each other’s position. Both of them in the past had worked hard not to offend the other. Each had been put in a precarious position: one wrong move on either woman’s part and Gideon would be rid of them in a shot.

Adair had been a part of Dendre’s life for the last two years: a constant visitor, a threesome with her husband when the children were not with them. They travelled together, were quasi-friends, not by choice but by Gideon’s will that they should be. Both women had learned their place and not to offend the other. Each had found a way to live peaceably within their love triangle, mostly by ignoring each other.

In the kitchen, Adair took over. While pouring a cup of coffee for Dendre she said, ‘What’s going on? It’s not like you to turn up at my door. Does Gideon know you’re here? Why didn’t he come with you?’

‘I want you to promise me you’ll not say a word to him about this visit?’

‘I would be lying if I gave that promise to you,’ answered Adair.

‘Too bad. It will be as dangerous for you as it will for me if you don’t. But it really doesn’t matter all that much. I’ve made up my mind to get rid of you, once and for all. I’m reclaiming my husband, no matter what the cost nor the time it takes to do it. I will make this short but not sweet, Adair – I want you to leave Gideon. Dump him in the same way you dump every man you’re finished with: mercilessly.’

‘You’re dreaming, Dendre! Or maybe you’re having a midlife crisis. It could be no more than the menopause. Gideon will never leave me.’

‘Oh, I know that. I saw it last night. That’s why
you
have to leave
him
.’

‘How stupidly naive of you, Dendre. What did you think –
that all you had to do was come here and ask for Gideon and I would hand him back to you? He and I are more in love with each other than ever we have been. There isn’t a day goes by when we don’t talk to each other several times or make love in one way or another: a gift, a profession of love and adoration, an exchange of two minds coming together with thrilling, inspiring ideas. And then there is the sexual attraction between us. I really am sorry you lost your husband, Dendre. I know how I would feel if Gideon walked out on me.

‘You married a man in ten million, maybe a billion, then got lost in the kitchen trying to keep him with a pot and a pan. You became a housekeeper, a drudge, a keeper, a sexual slave. Oh, yes, I know all about that. You had it all and forgot to step from the house into the limelight as an equal in your own right with one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. You’re Brooklyn from your shoes up and Gideon has had it with being tied down by your obsession with seeing him a family man who paints.’

Dendre turned to walk from the kitchen. Adair went after her and stopped her, grabbing her arm. ‘Some of what I said was cruel but all of it is true. You’ve blinded yourself to it. Leave things as they are or you’ll lose Gideon, I know that for a fact. I wanted your husband and I got him. Along with him came a wife and three terrific daughters, and that suits me just fine. I am not one of those women who seeks to break up a family. I have no desire to marry Gideon. Yes, it’s true I would like to live with him all the time, and if he leaves you I will. But as a free woman in love, not a wife.’

‘So you think! I’m not so much of a fool as not to know how convenient it is for both you and Gideon that he doesn’t leave me. It was pointed out to me recently that he has always had a love-hate relationship with me. That’s because I give him everything he wants and always have. He craved a woman whose only object in life was to love him, nourish him, deal with the mundane things that fill our lives and drain away the creative impulse. And he craved an ideal lover.

‘He hates the fact that I am bourgeois, deadly middle class, because that’s what he has fought against all his life. But when I bring him down to my level, he’s comfortable, safe, loved. It doesn’t matter to me whether he slips into his family mode for
five minutes or five days. He needs a home base and time to gather his strength. I made that home for him, it gives him a balance in his life, and he loves me for that.

‘He taught me everything he could in order to keep what we have together. Gideon saw my potential and grabbed it. He made of me a truly passionate erotic woman and he loves me for that. I’m still able to stir him sexually, and he both loves and hates me for that. So do me the courtesy of not telling me who I am and why my husband has affairs with other women. Why he is in love with you and would leave me if either one of us disturbs the status quo of this love triangle.’

‘If you know all that then why are you trying to rid yourself of me? It makes no sense.’

‘Because he loves me more than he and you think he does. Because I have made up my mind that I have been humiliated for the last time by you and Gideon. Because you and he flaunted yourselves as the great artist and his young, more beautiful, clever, sexy mistress as opposed to his dull, socially inadequate wife. Oh, don’t look at me that way. Did you really think me as blind, dumb and weak as I pretended to be? Didn’t you ever ask yourself how I was able to keep a marriage together with Gideon for so many years? No, not all that dumb, Adair.’

‘The mouse that roars. Yes, I did think you dumb, a timid mouse of a woman. You’re quite an actress, Dendre. You fooled not only me but the world of art as well.’

‘More fool you and the art world then! Look, Adair, I didn’t come here to say as much as I have, merely to demand that you dump my husband or take the consequences. If you don’t go, I will leave him. He’ll be free to marry you then and you can be sure he will, no matter how much you tell me you don’t want him as your husband. You see, Gideon both loves and hates being married, but I can assure you he loves it more than he hates it.

‘As his wife, you will lose your identity as I did. His power will draw you away from yourself and you’ll get lost in being his muse, lover, confidante, critic, housekeeper, mother of his children. You don’t cook – you’ll learn to cook. Bad on accounts – you’ll learn to keep them. Entertain – well, I suppose you will do that better than I ever did but you won’t be good at running three houses and three studios. His months of seclusion and need for space?
You’ll have to tread a narrow line between when to move and not to move for as you know he tolerates no interference when he’s working. Slowly your marriage will fall apart and you will lose him because, unlike me, you will put yourself first and compete with him for who will wear the crown.

‘No, I think you would do well to leave Gideon as I ask you to or you will pay heavily for taking him away from me, Adair.’

Dendre, who ordinarily would have been depressed and insecure after a confrontation with Adair, hardly knew herself. She was more determined than ever to be rid of her rival, amazed at her own strength and determination and with no doubt that she would go to any extreme to win back her husband.

She turned on her heel and walked towards the door. Adair followed her. ‘We will never give each other up, Dendre. You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.’

She didn’t even bother to reply, opening the door and ringing for the lift. When it arrived Dendre stepped out, and the two women glared at each other as the lift doors were closing.

Dendre looked at her wristwatch. The entire confrontation had taken fifteen minutes. ‘Not bad. That gives me fifteen minutes to spare,’ she said aloud.

Standing on the pavement in front of the glossy red door of the Fifth Avenue Elizabeth Arden beauty salon, the mass of people on the move up and down the avenue and streaming round her gave Dendre not a moment of hesitation but rather a super-charge of adrenalin. It was so exhilarating: all these people going somewhere, doing something, serious shoppers looking for a bit of gloss to finish themselves off so they might display themselves as something they were not but wanted to be. What was so amusing to Dendre was that with a snap of her fingers she, Dendre Moscowitz Palenberg, had become one of them. She was helpless to stop herself from laughing.

Not one person looked at her, stopped to enquire as to what was so funny. New Yorkers were used to street crazies, accepted them as part of the landscape. They were too busy minding their own business to be concerned with someone else’s, even for a laugh. The uniformed doorman stepped in front of Dendre, gave her a snobbish look of surprise that such a woman as she was
entertaining the thought of a session at Arden’s. Nevertheless he opened the door for her and Dendre stepped into another world. Her first thoughts were, This is whipped cream, pink and silver frosting, velvet ribbon, ostrich feathers, Attar of Roses, violets and lilies of the valley.

She was dazzled as Elizabeth Arden’s dictum ‘beauty salon heaven makes you a delicious female’ wrapped itself around her. Not a thing had been done to her, she hadn’t even shed her fur-collared leather coat or slipped off her flat-heeled shoes, and yet the magic had begun. She felt pretty.

Through a maze of pale aquamarine, white, diaphanous peach and silver night gowns and negligées on display, a tall slender woman of Dendre’s age approached her. She was impressive with her black hair, pale skin and ruby red lips, dressed from tip to toe in one of the smart little black suits that chic New York women were famous for wearing ever since Mainbocher had dressed Wallis Simpson.

‘Mrs Palenberg, how nice to see you again. Ah, you don’t remember me? We met briefly at an opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art several years ago,’ said the manageress of the salon.

Dendre nearly jumped when the woman snapped her fingers and broke the uncanny silence of the ground floor. The receptionist nodded her head and used the telephone. As if by magic the lift appeared and the doors slid open. Margo Perriwhistle slipped her hand under Dendre’s elbow and walked with her to the lift.

‘I understand this is your first time here at Arden’s and you have asked for advice and treatment?’ asked Margo.

‘Yes.’

‘Have you anything particular in mind?’

‘No, I want to hear what your people have to say. I’ve come here with an open mind, looking for serious change.’

The lift doors opened and the two women stepped from it. Dendre was once more aware of the silence, the soft lights so flattering to any woman, the thick carpets underfoot. A flurry of stunningly pretty assistants with lovely figures dressed in pale pink uniforms that made them look more like nurses than beauty therapists appeared to sweep Dendre and Margo wordlessly through the salon and into a private room that was Dendre’s for
the day. The pink and peach colours, soft lights, thick carpet and no windows, made Dendre feel slightly nauseous. For one brief moment she very nearly bolted from its luxurious confines.

Margo looked closely at Dendre as did every one of the therapists that arrived. The more they took her over, the more lost she felt. The make-up artist arrived with Eduardo the hairdresser. He clasped her hair in his hand and ran his fingers through the long black curly tresses. He placed his hands on her shoulders and, looking into the mirror, smiled at her. There was warmth in his touch and kindness in his eyes, and suddenly Dendre realised she was safe in his hands.

‘Excuse me,’ he told her, ‘but your hair is some mess. Too, too long. Too dry. We have to get rid of the strands of grey, so that means colour. Too thick, and you’ve got split ends though those will be gone with the cut. Your eyebrows too, too heavy …’

‘I’ve never tweezed my eyebrows …’ She was prevented from continuing.

‘What, never! Well, it’s time you did. You’ve got an interesting face but you don’t do anything with it,’ said Garry the make-up expert.

Looking at herself surrounded by a number of beauty therapists and the daunting Margo, all but rubbing their hands with glee at such a challenge as she, Dendre swung round on the swivel chair to face them.

‘I have a few things to say to you all. I need your help, desparately, but I do not want to walk out of this salon looking like mutton dressed as lamb. Nor do I want to look like I’ve been dipped in gloss, or spend several hours a day, every day, being groomed. I want to look stunningly attractive but with a style that is all mine, not Elizabeth Arden’s. That would not reflect who and what I am. OK, I think that’s all I have to say. I’m in your hands now.’