“Oh, you didn’t hear?” the other Hermès-scarfed lady whispered loudly. “They split recently. Guess he’s not wasting any time.”
Ralph Lauren and Matt Lauer both entered separately with their wives, and still all eyes were on Eden and Chase. Chase reached over and took her hand, sensing her awareness of the crowd of onlookers. His warm touch softened her discomfort about being plunged into the Upper East Side social center. She was certainly used to people noticing her, but in the downtown restaurants, where often Clyde’s drawings hung on the walls, where those who knew her sent over desserts and wine. Here all she was getting was ice. She felt like she was in another galaxy. A judgey one. The Chanel suits and MAC lipsticks may as well have been black robes and gavels.
A young couple walked in holding a cherubic baby girl.
“Oh, how delicious,” Eden cooed. She was so happy to see such an innocent face in what she suspected (rightly so) was a room full of vipers. “What’s her name?”
“Piper,” the beaming mom replied. “She’s six months.”
“What a cool name,” Eden said, looking at Chase. “You can’t not be happy with a name like Piper. I love it!”
“Mr. Lydon, your table, sir. Follow me.” Eden waved good-bye to baby Piper, who smiled for her, and as Eden started to walk away hand in hand with Chase, little Piper lunged forward. Eden stopped to hold her tiny hands.
“I just love babies,” Eden said wistfully. Otto had never let her have a second child, and in that moment, as Piper linked her cute fat fingers with hers, she secretly regretted giving up her campaign.
“She likes you!” the young mother said, smiling. She turned toward her husband, who also needed a drool bib. “Gee, just like Daddy!” she joked in a whisper after Eden and Chase walked off.
As the two gabbed the hours away, Eden grew more and more comfortable with the fact that people were blatantly watching their table.
Let ’em stare
, she knew Allison would say to her,
live your life
. And so she did, happily. Chase watched as Eden relished a mile-high pile of spaghetti, a dish he loved but that Liesel would never touch for fear of carbobesity come morning. And as the new couple held hands across the table, the cacophony of the restaurant faded away behind their doting glances, and the crowd, unsubtle in their conspicuous gazes, didn’t deter them, rosy with wine and
amore
, from feeling they were all alone.
“RRREAR! Move over,
Ashton
and
Demi
! New York has its own pair of May-December stunners in eligible finance heir
Chase Lydon
and famed model/muse
Eden Clyde
. Just weeks after Lydon’s own breakup, both lookers turned heads at Elio’s last night when crowds beheld the pair canoodling at a corner table. Clyde, 39, and Lydon, 28, did not stop holding hands through the whole meal, sources say. No word on whether his socialite mom,
Brooke DuPree Lydon
, approves of his much older gal pal, or whether Eden’s ex,
Otto Clyde
, knows of his favorite subject’s new boy toy, but both got tongues wagging uptown and down after their cozy caresses. And from the look on their flirty faces, the crowd surmised, the new duo would be devouring more than penne pasta that night.
39
When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past.
—Jean Anouilh
T
he city went shithouse. Eden didn’t ever read the gossip columns. But they were Allison’s bible, taken before her daily bread (a croissant), with café au lait, skim milk.
“Holy shit!” Allison said as she scanned the tabloid over the phone. Eden heard rustling tabloid papers and heavy breathing. “Okay, here it is—”
“Ugh, I don’t even want to hear it, Alli, really,” said Eden, still bleary-eyed, as Chase had only just left her bed for work. “Really, I barely slept a wink last night, and it’ll only stress me out and make me feel gross.”
“Fine,” Allison said. “But you better call Otto. Lyle Spence reads the news before he even drinks his three espressos. Call him.”
“News? For real? This isn’t
news,
Alli. There is a whole world out there. This is ridiculous!” Eden protested, amazed anyone would care.
“Maybe it’s a slow news day. Regardless, people want some spice in their lives. Everyone reads this!”
“Oh, please.”
“Seriously, Eden, you have to call Otto before he hears through everyone else. Fasten your seat belt. I bet you he freaks.”
“He won’t freak. Why would he care? He’s seeing someone. We’re through, and he knew this was bound to happen.”
“Just call him,” instructed Allison, suspecting Otto might not be so thrilled to see the woman he “created” out and about with a younger man. “Bye.”
Eden hung up the phone and looked at it. Lyle, Otto’s gallerist, knew anyone and everyone and breathed in the tabloids like air, exhaling newsy gossip to all his friends. Okay, damage control. She reached for the receiver. But before she could lift it from its cradle, it rang. Great, here he was. She braced herself.
“Otto?” Eden answered, heart pounding.
“Mom, it’s Cole.”
Shit. The blood ran from Eden’s cheeks. “Hi, Cole—”
“Tell me it’s not true.”
Eden started shaking silently, trying to find the words she was looking for.
“A girl in my dorm, a friend of mine just saw online you’re dating some young guy?” he asked, incredulous. “It’s bullshit, right?”
Eden didn’t know what to say. And in that five-second pause, Cole knew it wasn’t.
“Mom! Seriously? You’re joking,” he said, clearly disturbed. “Are you nuts?”
“Cole, it’s not what it seems—”
“This guy is like MY AGE!”
“He’s not your age. He’s older.”
“He’s closer to my age than yours.”
Eden quickly calculated in her head. Shit.
“I thought these kinds of people were everything you and Dad detest.”
“Cole, listen to me.” Eden thought she would drown in her desperation to get him to understand her side. But she paused. She couldn’t set the record straight without spilling all the stories of his father’s countless infidelities, some with girls way younger than Chase was. But she didn’t want to throw stones at her son’s father, so she tried to proceed calmly.
“Your father has moved on. I have a right—”
“Mom, I love you but you’re gonna be a laughingstock.”
She sat silent on the phone, calmly trying not to cry.
“Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
Eden could still sense his anger and discomfort with the situation.
“May I speak now, please?”
“Fine.”
Eden felt tears well up in her eyes as her torments mounted. She was so angry at the double standard. Geezers had banged young girls since toga time and now she was a social leper, a pariah for simply being with a guy eleven years younger. Eden took a deep breath and tried to be strong.
“Cole, did I ever as a mother judge you? Did I ever try to control you? Did I ride you to do your homework, brush your teeth, cut your hair, clean your room? No. I gave you more freedom than any other mother. I knew you were a mature, independent person, with a great mind and perfect grades, so I let you be. I didn’t ask where you were going, or give you fucking curfews or smell your breath or any of that shit. I trusted you. Now you have to trust me.”
Her words were greeted with silence.
She was right. Cole knew it. All his friends had naggy moms who rode them on everything, from who to date to what to wear, and Cole never had anything like that. His mom was different. She was young and his friend, and he loved her for it, but he felt threatened and protective now that this bombshell was in the press.
“I’m sorry,” Cole said, and Eden exhaled in relief. She knew she hadn’t raised a judgmental son, but she privately acknowledged that it must be difficult for him to have such unorthodox parents, especially since their split.
“I’m so sorry you had to find out that way, sweetheart, and I’m sorry this is uncomfortable for you. But, Cole, love, you are out west, finding yourself. And frankly, I’m doing the very same thing here on my own. I don’t even know what this is, where it’s going, if it will last. But for now . . . it’s good for me.”
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m just upset to have people thinking you’re like some—”
“Cougar? Some hag preying on a younger man? Well, I’ve got news for you, it happens all the time in reverse. I’m not hurting anyone. Why does anyone even care?”
“Because . . . they do.”
“So what, I’m supposed to live my life by what complete strangers think?”
It did seem silly once she said it so matter-of-factly. Cole didn’t really care what people thought. He just loved his mother and wanted the best for her.
“You deserve to be happy, Mom.” And then he added, in a quieter, softer voice, “I know it hasn’t been easy. Dad is Dad. And that must have been hard for you. . . .”
He knew. He knew his father had been a cheater. Eden blinked a tear down her cheek.
“You remember, Cole, when you were little and we’d go out to dinner just you and me, while Daddy was traveling, you remember what I’d say to you?”
“You said . . . we were growing up together.”
“That’s right. I said that. But it wasn’t true,” Eden said, wiping another tear. “You passed me by a long time ago. You had such a good head on your shoulders and you sprinted right ahead. And now I have to try to figure this all out on my own. I don’t know if this will last with Chase. But relationships are like experiments, really, or one of your math problems that now I have to work out. I mean, I’m trying to follow my instincts and see where the paths take me. I promise you, I’m a strong, centered person. I’m not just screwing around for the sake of it,” Eden confessed to her son, who listened guiltily, hearing her out.
“I know, Mom. I trust you. You did a great job, and I’m sorry for freaking out. I just want you to be happy.”
After they said their good-byes, Eden exhaled, wondering what that phantom desire was welling within her. She had checked off all those unattainable elements on her mental F List—family, fortune, fame—and now, while she didn’t know what she wanted next, she would have to do something anathema to her lifelong ambitious nature: Stop looking to the future, and take each day one at a time.
40
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
—Robert Frost
M
eanwhile, on Fifth Avenue, Brooke DuPree Lydon raged with an ire that made velociraptors look like fluffy kittens.
“What is the meaning of this?” a steaming Brooke hissed into the phone in an attempted controlled whisper that echoed louder than a yelp.
“Mother, I’m working, I don’t have—”
“WHAT, you don’t have
time
? For your mother? After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me? By
humiliating
us? By parading around with some trollop not a month after you broke up with Liesel? This is BEYOND embarrassing. Are you trying to make me miserable? Because allow me to inform you: You’ve succeeded.”
Chase paused to take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry. But it’s not about you or anyone else,” he replied blithely. “And, Mother, she is not a trollop,” he corrected, wincing at his mother’s harsh, antiquated insult. “She’s an amazing woman.”
“Oh really?
Amaaaazing
, really? Mm-hmm. I get it. So this
person
is the reason you ended things with Liesel. You were sneaking around with this
amazing woman
and now you’re flaunting this relationship to scorn me. What, because she’s somehow attractive to you? Because she’s ‘cool’ in some way?” She vamped, complete with finger quotes in her gilded study.
“Mother. I have a lot of work to do.”
“Terrific! That’s just grand. Here are some numbers you can crunch! Here’s a bottom line for you: her birth date and your birth date.
“Mother, PLEASE.”
“Perhaps I’m not being clear enough: She is too OLD for you.”
“I don’t care,” Chase responded with a shrug.
“Ohhh,
you
don’t care, okay. How nice for you! That’s just fine, just dandy. Never mind that we are a family and that your embarrassing actions reflect upon all of us.”
Chase’s annoyance was morphing into sheer anger.
“If that were really the case, why would you have excused Price’s DUI?” he demanded. “Or Pierce’s little dalliance with that count’s underage daughter?”
“Please.”
“So you’re saying it’s better Pierce chased that sixteen-year-old girl? Better that he broke the law than for me to be with someone older?”
“You have been the one who . . . doesn’t do these things, Chase. You’ve been—”
“The good son. The one with the halo, right?” he shouted. “Well, I’m making it clear that I am a grown-up and while I love you, I need to make choices for myself right now.”
“That’s just great, then. Just sit back and relax and enjoy watching your life go up in smoke,” she huffed. “But when you realize the perfect life we handed you on a silver platter has been engulfed by flames, don’t come running to me to put them out.”
Click.
Across town, the news was met with the same venom, if with a diametrically opposite tone. The bitter pill had simply been deep-f ried and dipped in powdered sugar.
“I think it’s great, marvelous,
truly
!” feigned Otto with a beaming smile. While he may have been a genius painter, Daniel Day-Lewis he was not.
“Great. Because I’m happy with him. It’s . . . been really good for me, I think.”
“Wonderful news!” cooed Otto. “I just hope the age difference doesn’t . . . you know, affect things.”
“Well, it didn’t seem to between us,” retorted Eden. “You and I have a much bigger gap in years.”