The Bette Davis Club (28 page)

Still clutching the two glasses of gin, I climb the stairs to Finn’s office on the mezzanine. The office is crammed with papers, filing cabinets, books. There’s also a Victorian-era fainting couch pushed up against one wall, which has been my bed for many months.

I sit down at Finn’s desk. I put the drinks on the desktop in front of me.

Among the papers and knickknacks covering the desk is a small silk-lined box. I pick up the box and open it. It contains a blue sapphire ring. This is the ring Finn always wore on the third finger of his left hand, the one he inherited from his grandfather. It’s the ring he was wearing years ago when I first knew him, when its presence on his finger caused me to worry briefly that he was married. I take the ring from its case and hold it up to the light of the desk lamp. The sapphire sparkles.

I slip Finn’s ring onto the third finger of my left hand and gaze at it there. Possibly, just possibly, I’m feeling sorry for myself.

I pick up one of the glasses of gin and drain it. After a while, I knock back the other one as well.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JILTED

A
s our wedding day drew closer, Finn took care of everything. He found a judge, hired a caterer, booked the ballroom at the Pierre. He was charming, considerate, gentlemanly toward me. My love for him remained innocent and boundless.

Dottie was right, my relationship with Finn was not terribly physical. But like all young people, I believed in the power of the future. I believed—hoped—that Finn would change. In time, he would desire me. I told myself he would not marry me otherwise.

In the evenings, Finn and I went out—to the theater, concerts, nightclubs. Best of all, we went dancing. Finn was an excellent dancer. I melted at the touch of his hand on my back, the warmth of his body pressed against mine. Finn taught me everything from the fox-trot to the samba. Each time I mastered some new move, he lit up. “Yes!” he would say, almost to himself. “Beautiful.”

The two of us moved together like one electrified soul. One being. Dancing with Finn was delicious. It was enchantment. It was heaven. It was the closest thing to good sex we ever had.

Two nights before our wedding, Finn and I dined at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. We were halfway through the meal when an older, well-dressed man, an antiques dealer acquaintance of Finn’s, came up to our table. His wife was with him.

The man had delicate hands. His silk tie was perfectly knotted; his fingernails were pale and polished. He was of a type of Finn’s friends I’d met before. Men who, perhaps, were not what they tried to appear.

The man presented his wife. Finn stood and shook hands with them both.

The man did not particularly interest me. His wife, however, did. She was stylish, gracious, educated. Her manner was that of a cultured, well-traveled woman who had money and possessions.

But she smiled with her mouth, not with her eyes. She clung to her expensive handbag, rather than her husband’s arm. And there was something in the way she held herself that—well, I saw.

I saw the husband. I saw the wife. I saw the marriage.

The man and woman moved on. Finn sat down. The waiter brought more wine.

The morning of my wedding, I woke with a knot in my stomach. I thought, it’s the excitement of the day. I took a cab to the Pierre.

As weddings go, ours would be small. On my side, the guest list included Dottie, a few of my modeling chums, and my half sister, Charlotte, who was making one of her rare appearances in my life. In those days, Charlotte was just beginning her career as a film producer. She had taken time off work and flown out specially, from Los Angeles, for the occasion.

On Finn’s side, the list was longer: his elderly parents (the grandparents had all passed on), some cousins, various business associates and friends, several young bohemian males.

Dottie and my modeling friend Amy came to the bridal suite to help me dress. It was Amy who, one night after work months earlier, had suggested we go to Tommy’s birthday party, the party where I met Finn.

Dottie and Amy began the process of transforming me into a bride. They fussed with my hair, did my makeup. They brought out jewelry and stockings and a garter.

By now, the guests had gathered downstairs. When my two friends finished their handiwork, I slipped into that ivory dress. But when I turned to admire myself in the mirror, I didn’t see a bride. I saw a young, pretty girl. And she was lost.

I felt dizzy. My hands were cold. I put them to the back of my neck.

“You all right, darling?” Dottie said.

I sat down on the sofa.

Dottie looked at me. “Amy,” she said, “be a dear, go get her a drink.”

Amy hurried off, leaving Dottie and me alone. “I feel compelled to point out,” Dottie said, “that the bride usually declines a quick one until
après
the wedding.”

“I feel sick,” I said.

Dottie sat down beside me. “Too sick to get married?”

I swallowed. I touched the lace of my gown. “It’s true, isn’t it?” I said. “The Bette Davis Club. I didn’t want to hear it that day you told me, but it’s true. So many women. You can see them, if you look. Oh, Dottie. This is awful. No matter how much I love Finn—and I do love him—I’m getting cold feet.”

Dottie clasped her hands together. “I prayed this would happen,” she said. “And God knows, I’m an atheist.”

Her eyes searched the room. “I’ll call for a taxi. You go, get out. Run.”

I felt guilty, confused, ashamed, and Dottie knew it. “Don’t worry about Finn,” she said.

“But what will I tell him?” I said.

“Nothing,” Dottie said. She was up and pacing, ready to do battle.

Amy returned and stood in the middle of the room, holding a perfect, glistening cocktail of gin and vermouth.

“I’ve known that man for years,” Dottie said. “I’ll talk to him.” She snatched the martini out of Amy’s hand and drank it down herself.

My head was swimming. It was as if I were bobbing in the ocean and Dottie was bending over the side of a ship, tossing me a life ring. “Margo,” she said, “save yourself. I’m telling you straight—as if you were my own sister, my own flesh and blood. Fly!”

I flew. Amy went with me. We took a cab to her place. When we got there, I changed out of my wedding dress into my street clothes. I did not want the dress. I stuffed it in a bag and asked Amy to please get rid of it.

Amy was kind to me. She made sandwiches. We drank half a bottle of wine and watched daytime television. After a few hours, I left her place and went home. I lay down for a moment and fell asleep. When I woke, it was evening. A light rain was falling.

I called Charlotte at her hotel. She was upset, flying out on the next plane. She had missed work, rescheduled meetings, all for this wedding. Did I not understand how valuable her time was? To Charlotte, my breakup with Finn was another disagreeable incident in the prickly, strained relationship we had as half sisters. There was a moment, though, just before she hung up, when her voice relaxed a little, softened. “It must be tough for you, kid,” she said. “I do get that. I’m sorry.”

After that, I did not want to sit around my flat. I grabbed my coat and went to Dottie’s.

“Finally,” Dottie said, when she opened her door to me.

We went inside her place and sat down opposite each other.

“What happened?” I said. “With Finn. What did he do when you told him I was gone?”

“The truth or the lie?” Dottie said.

“The truth,” I said.

“The lie is prettier.”

“The truth.”

“Well,” Dottie said, “it was interesting. You know Finn. He’s all about appearances, how things look. After he took in what I was saying—that you had left, the marriage was off—he was embarrassed. The judge, his parents, all those people. He actually blushed. I’m not sure what he told everyone. Possibly that you’d had some sort of psychotic breakdown. That’s what I’d have said in his position.

“But then, after a while, after that initial shock and embarrassment, you could see the relief come into his eyes. He tried to hide it, but it was there. He was like someone who’d been told there was a mix-up at the lab, that he wasn’t sick after all. He unbuttoned his jacket and had one of the boys fetch him a glass of champagne. For medicinal purposes, I’m sure. And to be fair, there were jeroboams of the stuff just lying around. Then he—”

“Stop,” I said. “I’ll take the lie.”

She paused, then changed course. “Margo, the man’s a wreck, a ruin. You were the only woman for him. I guarantee there’ll never be another.”

We were silent for a while. Dottie got up and poured us each a drink. “When you think about it,” she said, handing me a glass, “it’s all part of nature’s rich tapestry. The world would be a poorer place without it.”

“Without what?” I said. I sipped my drink.

“Homosexuality. There’d never again be a Shakespeare or a Leonardo da Vinci. Never a Henry James or an Oscar Wilde or a Walt Whitman. Never even a Stuart Bingley.”

“Who?”

“Stuart Bingley was my first boyfriend.”

I lowered my glass.

“Don’t look so ill, chérie. It was years before I knew you. But yes, I’m a charter member of The Bette Davis Club. How do you think I came up with the club in the first place? Stuart came to me one day, so serious. ‘Dorothy,’ he declared, ‘I have something I must say to you.’” She laughed. “I thought he was going to propose.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, we survived,” Dottie said. “Stuart moved to the West Coast, lives with a banker named Kevin. And now I’ve met
ooh-la-la
Gerard, so I can’t complain.” She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “But a world without gays. How dreary. Never again a Gertrude Stein or a Virginia Woolf. Never a Noel Coward or a Cole Porter. There’d be very few decent actors. And oh dear God, there’d be hardly any poetry. Because there’d be hardly any poets.”