Riverside Park (10 page)

She waited for Alexandra to ask about Jackson but she didn't. She waited for Alexandra to ask her if this meant Cassy was in love with her, but she didn't. Alexandra simply stood up and offered Cassy her hand. Cassy waited for her to state some kind of condition, but she didn't do that, either, only led Cassy into her bedroom and, by the lights of the city, took her clothes off.

They made love for most of the night and when Cassy sat in a ten-o'clock management meeting the next morning she could still feel the imprint of Alexandra's mouth on her own. She managed to get through the day and felt both weak and elated when she saw Alexandra and Will come into the cafeteria in the late afternoon to join her for a cup of coffee. While they talked budget concerns the glint in Alexandra's eye and the slight puffiness of her mouth filled Cassy with a desire so intense it frightened her. She later sat in a finance meeting with Langley and the company controller and took inventory of the sensations in her body, knowing she had better go home and pull herself together. She did leave early and went home to lie down and think about what she had done. Six and a half hours later she was back at The Roehampton, twisted in the sheets, feeling herself rising again and again, crying out because she no longer cared about anything but this.

At five o'clock in the morning she had opened her eyes to find Alexandra watching her. She smiled that glorious smile and Cassy's heart ached. She got scared and told Alexandra that she was. And then she started to cry while Alexandra held her. She told Alexandra everything about Jackson, what had happened and what state their marriage was in. They agreed they needed to slow things down a bit until they could get their heads fully around what was happening. They agreed not to see each other until the following week, but Cassy canceled her plans and went out with Alexandra to her farm in New Jersey to spend the weekend, and caught up on a six-year absence. By late Sunday night the exhilaration and adrenaline finally wore off, the lovemaking lost its magic and the creeping sense of doom finally caught up with them.

Was Cassy going to divorce Jackson? Cassy needed time to think. Their marriage entailed a great many things that necessitated great care.

Was Cassy going to tell Jackson about them? Never. She was afraid of what he might do. To Alexandra.

Did Cassy love her? Yes, absolutely she did.

Did Cassy want to be with her? She didn't see how that could happen. For the time being this was all she could offer Alexandra.

So she was supposed to be Cassy's mistress? No (smile). Cassy would be hers.

Dazed, exhausted and progressively more nervous with each working day at the network, the tryst lasted another two weeks before Alexandra said it was intolerable that Cassy stay in that marriage. Cassy said she wasn't prepared to change things yet. Alexandra said then that was it, until Cassy at least separated from Jackson she couldn't—and wouldn't—go on like this. By that time Cassy had felt so many familial and professional pres
sures to keep the marriage going—at the very least she would have to figure out how to replace herself at DBS—and she told Alexandra she completely understood how she felt and did not blame her in the least.

So it ended as abruptly as it had started. However heartbroken Cassy felt, a couple of months later, when they briefly succumbed again over a long weekend, she felt a great deal better, thinking at least perhaps they could hold this pattern until Cassy felt she could make the break. They sated themselves three more times before Alexandra met the actress Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres. By that point it had become obvious that Cassy's affair with Alexandra had dramatically and inadver-tantly improved Cassy's relationship with her husband.

“Jackson was regaling the newsroom this morning with tales of nonstop romance with his wife on the high seas,” Alexandra had informed her.

The tales were true. After sailing in a race in the Caribbean, Cassy and Jackson had taken off by themselves for a couple of days, cruising in the islands, and, well, things just sort of happened.

“So what do you think, Cassy?” Langley Peterson said.

Cassy looked at him, drawing a blank.

“About
The Sports Gam.
”

She snapped back to the present. “
The Sports Gam?
Oh, the gambling show. I'd like to sleep on it, if I may.”

“So you're not against it,” the division head of sports said.

“I won't discount it until I've had some time to think it over,” she told them.

 

When it really dawned on Cassy that Alexandra was serious, that if Cassy didn't leave Jackson she was going to pursue a full-time relationship with the beautiful Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres, Cassy had felt dangerously near becoming unglued.

“What do you expect me to do? Spend the rest of my life waiting for Jackson Darenbrook's leftovers? I won't do it, Cassy. It's not fair, and it's not right. Either you leave him or you let me go.”

That night, in Alexandra's bed, Cassy thought maybe she could leave the marriage, but in the morning they both knew she wouldn't do it. So it was over. Really over.

“What has gotten into you?” Jack wanted to know when Cassy initiated sex not long after. “No, no, I don't want to know,” he said, kissing her. “Just come here.”

While Alexandra focused her time and attention on the actress, Cassy threw herself into developing new divisions of DBS and rededicating herself as a Darenbrook matriarch. Jackson was elated. Cassy's son, Henry, knew something was wrong, though. He kept asking her why she was driving herself so hard. Surely there were people she could delegate more to?

When Alexandra's relationship with Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres hit the tabloids Cassy was forced to sit in the meetings at Darenbrook Communications regarding the fallout with sponsors. Some had pulled their advertising from the nightly news and Cassy was instructed to have a heart-to-heart with Alexandra about what the hell she was doing. “Tell her I don't remember her being a dyke as part of the package when we agreed to build a news network for her,” Jackson said angrily.

Langley, interestingly, was the calmest about it. It was his view the Hamilton-Ayres affair could serve as a lightning rod to define for sure who Alexandra's core audience was. There had long been criticism of the industry's primary ratings service because, the Big Three claimed, it was impossible that the
DBS News America Tonight
had a majority of viewers under the age of forty when their viewers were overwhelmingly
over
forty.

Langley was proven correct; the issue did clarify their audience, because with each new story about the celebrated “gal pals” there was a rise in the ratings of
DBS News America Tonight with Alexandra Waring
, a surge of viewers over forty, but then when that surge receded, DBS was left with the lucrative young demographics the ratings service had always claimed it owned. In the end, the relationship between the women actually attracted more sponsors to
DBS News America Tonight
, sponsors which wanted to reach that younger audience.

Though somewhat placated by this, Jackson still saw the relationship as a betrayal of his trust and demanded that Cassy and Langley set ground rules for Alexandra concerning her love life. That meeting, to settle the ground rules, would go down in the record books as one of the most bizarre.

“Of course there's nothing wrong with what you're doing,” Cassy said, trying to ignore Alexandra's I-dare-you look. “The question is how everyone connected with DBS should handle it. We need to come to an agreement, some guidelines, so the sponsors know what to expect.”

“I'm afraid Georgiana won't adhere to anyone's guidelines but her own.”

Since Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres was one of the top ten box-office draws in the world, was wealthy beyond caring and the daughter of a tenth generation Scottish earl, there was little anyone could do to greatly impact her life at this point. Except, if they hurt Alexandra.

“Frankly,” Langley said, “we're asking for your help with Ms. Hamilton-Ayres. Surely she would not want to see your career compromised.”

“Understand, Alexandra, DBS is not in any way asking you to compromise your relationship,” Cassy said, not quite able to
meet Alexandra's eye. “We only wish you to observe a guideline that works in the best interests of DBS News as a whole.”

“I can hardly wait to hear what this guideline is,” the anchorwoman said.

“I believe you've been engaged to be married twice,” Langley said.

Alexandra nodded. “Yes.”

“That's good because it shows that you tried,” he explained.

There was such a look of fury in Alexandra's eyes that Langley had been unnerved. “Well, I—” He faltered, at a loss, and looked at Cassy.

“We don't want you to say outright, Alexandra, that you're gay. Or that Georgiana is.”

“And what do you suppose people think the nature of our relationship is?”

Cassy couldn't look at her and dropped her eyes down to her legal pad to doodle. “We don't care what anyone thinks,” she said evenly. “We only care that you don't identify yourself with a specific lifestyle, just as we care that you don't identify yourself with a specific political party or movement.”

“I see,” Alexandra said. “So what am I supposed to say?”

Cassy glanced up briefly. “If someone asks you if you're gay, you are to say, ‘No.' That's it.”

“And if someone asks me if I'm straight?”

“Then you say,”Langley said, “‘Obviously not completely.'”

“‘
Obviously not completely?
'” Alexandra threw her head back to laugh.

It was awful, but they had worked it out. Alexandra eventually admitted that what DBS was asking them to do was not very different from what Congressman Waring's chief of staff or Georgiana's agent had asked them to do.

“So we're straight on this?” Langley said.

“‘Obviously not completely,'” Alexandra told him.

So DBS contrived its own “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy and it worked out—somewhat awkwardly—but it did work out. Cassy rewarded the sponsors who had remained steadfast throughout the controversy with bonus ad-runs in their new programming.

“Do you want to catch a bite to eat?” Langley said. “Cassy?” He leaned forward. “Are you okay?”

“Just a little tired,” she said, pulling her papers together. “Sure. I'd love to have lunch with you. If Jack's around why don't we see if he wants to join us.”

THE PROFESSORS MILLER
had no sooner left after Thanksgiving when they announced they wanted to come back to Woodbury for another weekend before Christmas. Since it was increasingly difficult to ever get her parents to leave Syracuse anymore Amanda was surprised. And worried. When she picked them up at the airport in Westchester she wondered if perhaps her mother was afraid her father might not be able to make the trip again. He was a lot older than she was.

When Amanda's mother, the former Miss Tinker Fowles of Baltimore, Maryland, called from school to tell her parents she was in love with one of her professors, she had unwittingly begun a scandal. The Fowleses (who had a tendency toward a lockjaw manner of speaking) fanned the flames of the aforementioned scandal by storming the chancellor's residence in the middle of the night with a battery of attorneys. The Fowleses were at once shocked and dismayed when their daughter arrived and issued her willful ultimatum: they could
either accept Reuben Miller as their son-in-law or they could say goodbye to her now.

In the end the best the Fowleses could do was have Reuben sign a legal document that stated any children resulting from the marriage would be baptized and brought up Episcopalian. (“And since when is the child of a gentile mother ever a Jew?” Reuben had asked his beloved while signing.)

Amanda's parents had now been married for over fifty years.

When Amanda closeted her mother to find out the motivation behind this visit, her mother denied that anything was wrong. They just wanted to see a little more of her and the children and they so loved the house. Unfortunately Howard said if Amanda wanted him to do any of the Christmas shopping, which she did, there was no way he could come out for the weekend; she was on her own. Her parents were not difficult; the only problem lay in her father's preference for high cerebral exchange over activity, and her children's preference for activity over high cerebral exchange.

Amanda nonetheless tried once more to interest her parents in the children's indoor soccer games (which was no more successful than the last time, except this time they were really,
really
cold instead of just cold), and tried to interest her two eldest children in the advantages of learning Sanskrit so as to unlock ancient secrets. The only true success over the weekend was when Amanda's mother accompanied her to watch Emily and Teddy's riding lesson in the indoor ring at Daffodil Hill. The former Tinker Fowles had never lost the equestrian sensibility that had run through the Fowles ancestry for generations and she had only stopped riding herself five years before because of a torn roto-cuff that had since been repaired.

For their lesson with Jessica, Emily rode one of Daffodil Hill's small horses while Teddy rode their pony, Sweets.
Amanda, as she always did, saddled Maja and rode her around a bit before the children's lesson began and walked her around the ring during it. “All right, Amanda,” her mother suddenly declared, waving at Amanda to dismount. She unsnapped the chin strap on Amanda's riding hat. “Let us see how
La Mère
may fair upon thy mare.”

The children were agog when they saw their nana lead Maja over to the mounting block, ascend and swing her leg over the saddle. After Amanda adjusted the stirrups her mother took Maja in a posting trot. She was seventy years old but even time couldn't disguise the excellence of her seat and hands. When Amanda's mother pressed Maja into an easy cantor the children were beside themselves, and when Nana gracefully turned into the ring and soared over a jump, Amanda and the children started jumping up and down, clapping and cheering. “Just enough to start a family legend, dear,” Amanda's mother said as she dismounted. The children would never look at Nana the same way again.

Howard had been brought up what Mr. Stewart used to call “a half-ass Methodist,” which meant he was baptized, went to Sunday school for a while and then never went to church except for weddings and funerals. Before they were married Amanda and Howard attended a few churches around Manhattan because they agreed it would be a good thing as a couple to be grounded in some sort of spiritual community. They started with Episcopal and Methodist churches and then ran the gamut until they settled on joining a Congregational church. All three children had been baptized there and, if they were in town on the weekend, the children went to Sunday school there, too, but otherwise attended a Congregational church in Connecticut.

The children were at that age where matters of religion
were growing complicated (“What is an infidel, Mommy?”) and for whatever reason Teddy suddenly expressed a fervent desire to attend Temple with his grandfather on Saturday. “By all means let him go,” Howard said. “If anyone can convince Teddy there's a Power higher than himself I'm all for it.”

Amanda's father reported that Teddy had behaved well and in general he was very pleased with his grandson's companionship. But then the next day Teddy fascinated his Sunday school class by announcing that his grandfather was a Jew like Jesus and explained that Jews didn't have crosses in their “Templar” because they knew Jesus before they killed Him so they didn't have to have one. (“You might want to spend a little time going over this with him,” his Sunday school teacher advised Amanda.)

“What is this boy learning?” her father demanded of Amanda.

“To pledge his faith and obedience to a loving God,” Amanda answered, hoping against hope her father would not turn around in time to see the children zinging his yarmulke around like a Frisbee in the living room.

“No cultural context, none,” her father clucked. “Religion out of a cereal box, that's what you're spoon-feeding these children.”

On Monday morning, while Amanda helped her pack, her mother suddenly took her hand, said, “My dearest darling child,” and coaxed Amanda to sit down next to her on the bed. She held Amanda's hand in both of hers and squeezed. “I sense that things are not all they should be. Between you and Howard.”

Amanda quickly reiterated the reasons why Howard couldn't come out this weekend and told her mother she shouldn't worry but her mother stopped her. “Howard is a hundred times the man Christopher was, but that does not make me want to see him hurt you.”

“Mother—”

“I beg you to stop living apart like this.”

“We don't like it, either, but—”

“Listen to me, Amanda, because I'm only going to say this once.”

Amanda waited for her to say she thought Howard was having an affair.

“I know you. I'm your mother.” She searched Amanda's eyes. “Amanda, I know what's going to happen out here if this goes on much longer.”

“What are you talking about?” Amanda said, her voice rising.

“This young man—”

“What
young man?”

“Miklov.”

“Miklov?” Amanda said, bewildered.

“The children look at him the way they should be looking up to their father.”

“He's their coach, Mother, of course they look up to him. They idolize him because he's a soccer star.”

“They sense he's in love with you, that's what your mother's trying to say,” Amanda's father said. She turned to see he was standing in the doorway. “We do not believe you're indifferent to him, either. Not love. But in the other way.”

“God in heaven,” Amanda cried, jumping up, “how can you say such a thing? You're saying that I—” She looked at her mother. “That it's
me,
that—”

“Howard won't forgive you,” her father told her.

“No, he won't,” her mother quietly agreed.

Amanda felt as though she had been thrust into a lunatic asylum. She tried to compose herself before speaking. “I really don't understand what you mean. I have never done anything to compromise my marriage.”

Her father slowly made his way in to sit down next to her mother. He looked very old. The years of physical inactivity had caught up with him. Her mother held his arm as he stiffly sat down, as if she were afraid he might keel over. When he was seated they held hands. Her mother looked more like his nurse than his wife. “Why did you take him home by yourself?” her father said. “At Thanksgiving? Why did you not take one of us or one of the children with you?”

“Because it never occurred to me that my parents would think so ill of me. Now we need to get started to the airport, so if you'd like to continue this ridiculous conversation we can do so in the car.” She walked over to close their suitcase, snapped the fastener and took the bag with her out of the room. She was floored. Mortified. And amazed at what had just transpired.

Then on the stairs she heard her father say, “It is always better to say something than to pretend not to see.”