Superior Women (41 page)

Immersed in these thoughts, and in the further not-quite-new question: what does she do all day, and, almost more urgent, where does all her money go? Cameron does not at first entirely grasp what Peg is saying, but then he does: first his name, and then an impossible sentence: “Cameron, I want a divorce.”

He sighs, very deeply. She must be sick.

But then she says it again, adding something even crazier. She says, “Cameron, I want a divorce. I’m moving back to Georgia. With Vera.”

Lavinia, on the other hand is not invited to Nixon’s inauguration, although by that time she is the lover (mistress may be the dated but more accurate word) of Harvey Rodman; and he is even more powerful, more important in the new administration (closer to Nixon) and also even richer than Potter said he was. (And of course Lavinia does not want to go to the inauguration.)

But it has all worked out perfectly with Harvey, from Lavinia’s point of view; perfect, from her first tiny note, in which she simply said that she had been pleased to hear that he was doing well, to his instant call, and then more calls, and then, finally, their meeting, her allowing him to see her again—in New York, for lunch, at a very discreet restaurant. Many more lunches, in New York and Washington, not to mention all the flowers/presents/impassioned pleas. To all of which Lavinia finally and most gracefully yielded.

Harvey adores her, he always has. He finds her absolutely, totally
enchanting. When they are together he feels that he owns the world, he says, stroking her still (to him) perfect skin, on her thin taut thigh.

And when they are apart they are always closely in touch, no matter how fantastically busy Harvey is, all over the world (he is in international monetary funds). There is always a connection between them, if not an actual phone call or a letter, a long cassette of love.

Or a present. Not even Lavinia’s banker knows how much
stuff
she has stored in her vault (she has had to admit to herself, Harvey’s taste in that direction is the tiniest bit on the vulgar side; she was forced to tell him that she really doesn’t care for anything large).

Or flowers. A new myth, created of necessity between Lavinia and Potter, is that she is extraordinarily, irredeemably extravagant when it comes to buying flowers, especially the most delicate, the farthest out-of-season.

Another myth, and one much closer to the truth, is that Lavinia is extremely clever, investment-wise. Of course Harvey cannot actually give her money (he would like to, though, and the idea gives Lavinia a certain perverse thrill), but giving her stock seems acceptable to them both (and almost as thrilling to Lavinia as dirty cash would be). He then advises her when to sell, where next to put her profits. How not to pay taxes. And Lavinia has developed a considerable skill at these transactions on her own. And so, her financial acumen is not really fictional at all; she is wonderful with money, it is just too bad that she has not been really rich before, has not had enough to play with.

Lavinia of course does not in the least want to meet Richard Nixon, or any of those people. But she thinks about him, she thinks about all of them; she feels, through Harvey, the impact of their terrific power. He does not talk about politics with her, but he does let a few things drop, always showing her how close in he is. “It’s exciting how few people we’ve managed to get it down to, just a very few, in total control. There’s not much spreading around these days, baby doll, in terms of real power,” and he laughs, excitingly.

•     •     •

At Lavinia’s instigation, she and Potter travel a great deal, during those early years of the seventies. Amy is safely (they hope) at Radcliffe now, and Potter is sufficiently advanced in the firm to be able to take time off, more or less at will. “Heaven knows we can afford it,” says Lavinia, with a light, modest laugh, in the course of persuading Potter that a couple of weeks in Rome, in October, will make her perfectly happy.

Which is of course where Harvey is to be, at some international monetary conference. Harvey stays at the Hilton, where the conference is; Lavinia is at the Hassler, with her husband. It is very easy for her to murmur, one afternoon, that she really doesn’t care about seeing the Vatican: “All those crowds, all those
Catholics.
” (She has always been able to make Potter laugh; amusement is one of her valuable qualities, for him.) She would really like an afternoon of shopping, on her own. And how perfectly natural for her to come back to the Hassler, a little late, a little pale and tired, with an incredibly beautiful antique gold filigree necklace, with yellow sapphires—and to decline very prettily to say how much it cost. “I won’t buy another thing for months, I promise. Although actually it was a terrific bargain, in a way.”

Although Lavinia has never quite admitted this to herself, one of the best aspects of this love affair with Harvey is that since almost all of their time together is spent in bed, she can easily forget about his crippled legs. He and she do not go out together (or almost never, only in the very remotest places), and so she never has to walk beside him.

In bed she is not taller than he is. She is simply more beautiful; it is her body that is made love to, not his. She does very little for Harvey, along those lines.

Inevitably, having had only two lovers in her life (so far! but you never can tell), comparisons occur to Lavinia’s lively mind, although these days she has a little trouble bringing Henry back in any clear way. But out of intellectual curiosity, really, she makes
the effort, and she is able to remember pretty well how it was with him, with Henry. What strikes her most, and with an angry force, is that it was she who was most “in love” with Henry. It was she who kissed, as much if not more than he kissed her; she kissed him everywhere, even putting his, uh, thing in her mouth, although she really didn’t want to. She would never do that with Harvey.

And if that memory were not enough to make her hate, despise Henry Stuyvesant, there is his continuing affair with Megan Greene, who is basically disgusting. She always has been. Megan, a dumpy, dowdy girl from California, who even thinned-down and in expensive clothes (well, fairly expensive) never looks quite right. And heaven knows where Megan kisses Henry (Lavinia has a little private giggle, at that salacious thought).

Whereas, it is Harvey who adores
her,
who kisses her, strokes her whole body with his hands, and then his tongue. He makes her come three or four times in an afternoon—which makes him so pleased with himself, with so much success, with
her.

Afterwards Harvey bathes her. She lies there in perfumed foam, in the bathrooms of their various hotels, all over the world. She lies back, in Amsterdam (the Amstel) or Paris (the Crillon), in the scented steam, and Harvey very gently, delicately washes her, everywhere.

It is almost the part of their time together that Harvey likes best, Lavinia feels.

In fact everything with Harvey is perfect, is marvelous—her whole life is perfect, until a strange afternoon in Juneau, Alaska, of all crazy places. In June 1972. June 17, in fact.

First Lavinia went alone to San Francisco, on the pretext, to Potter, of seeing Cathy, her old classmate, now so sick. And actually she did go to see Cathy, in the hospital, which was not exactly a cheering visit.

To begin with, the enormous white hospital was Catholic, of course, nuns all over the place, priests hurrying along the corridors, and everywhere those awful crucifixes.

Directed at last to Cathy’s room, Lavinia first thought that she must have been sent to the wrong place; just like those nuns—they can tell a Protestant. The person in the bed there, her head all wrapped in white, had no look of Cathy at all. But then in Cathy’s voice that person spoke; she said, “Lavinia.” Just a statement; no particular surprise and less welcome in her voice.

“Oh, Cathy. Yes. I’ve, uh, come to see you.”

The room had more flowers in it than Lavinia had ever seen, a shocking amount of flowers, really; the place looked like a vulgar florist shop, and also they dwarfed the spray of yellow roses for which Lavinia had just paid a lot of money. Still, she had bought them, and so, unnecessarily, she added, “I brought you some roses,” holding them out.

Cathy’s laugh was new and sharp, a small bark. “Coals to Newcastle, indeed. Or maybe whores to Paris? Curiously enough, my mother’s married to a retired florist, and he tends to keep me rather oversupplied. But thanks, Lavinia.”

Only her voice was familiar; that white swollen face, the puffy hands could have belonged to anyone. And that awful bleached white cotton gown, with the same material wrapped around her head (dear God, could Cathy be bald now?).

Staring straight at Lavinia (reading her mind?), Cathy announced, “In fact I’m as bald as a ball. This chemotherapy is really great stuff.” Her voice had tiny cracks in it, like a slightly scratched record.

“Oh, Cathy, that’s terrible.”

“They say it may grow back, but I rather think not. These good Sisters can be the most terrible liars.” And then she said, “One of the problems with cancer is that it can be so fucking slow.”

Did Cathy used to talk that way? Shocked, Lavinia was almost sure that she did not; only Megan would sometimes use those words, that she probably got from that terrible Adam Marr, or Janet Cohen. Could this person, just possibly, not be Cathy after all?

Reading Lavinia’s mind (
again
), Cathy said, I’ll bet you’d hardly have known me, right?”

Lavinia murmured something—helplessly, incoherently.

“Well, you might as well sit down, mightn’t you? And tell me what brings you to adorable San Francisco.”

“Oh. I, uh, came to see you, really.” Lavinia could feel herself flushing, as she said this.

“Oh, come on now, Lavinia. Don’t be silly. You’re not a nun, you don’t get to lie to me.” The barking laugh again.

There was no possible answer to that non-joke. Lavinia busied herself with sitting down, putting her bag on the floor beside her. She was still holding the superfluous roses, which fortunately looked very well against her dress: a striped silk, black and yellow, in which she had been shivering, in the San Francisco summer fog that she had heard about but been unable to believe in. She had been unable to imagine a climate other than the one that she was in as she packed, New York’s summer heat. It was rather like trying to imagine yourself another person (at which Lavinia had never been successful): how would it be to be Cathy, dying of cancer?

“Those roses are
perfect
with your dress,” unnervingly commented Cathy; in an ironic way she had underlined perfect, as they all used to do—Lavinia sharply, painfully remembered, that funny language of the four of them, the four friends who possibly never really liked each other. The language that she, Lavinia, had always insisted derived from the Duchess de Guermantes, from Proust.

“Perhaps you should take those roses along to wherever you’re going next,” Cathy then suggested.

“Oh, don’t be so silly.” Lavinia had not wanted to sound so sharp, but she had just come to a sudden and clear decision, which was that, even dying, Cathy did not have to be so cross, so
rude.
Nevertheless, Lavinia then asked very gently, “How’s your son getting along—Philip?”

“Stephen.” Cathy frowned, and looked away, and then she was quiet for a while.

Lavinia floundered: should she not, after all, have asked about the boy? Of course she had never, not for a minute believed that fishy story of Megan’s, Cathy’s brief marriage to someone instantly dead—but maybe that was true? maybe he too had had
cancer? Is anyone absolutely sure that it is not contagious, or somehow passed on?

Cathy cleared her throat. “Actually Stephen’s fine,” she said. “Remarkably. He lives with my mother and Bill, her husband. It’s as though—” (a long pause) “as though he had been meant to be there, all along. With them.” Her new, quick alarming laugh. “If anyone believed in that kind of master plan.”

In the pause that followed, Lavinia recognized—and very likely so did Cathy—that that was it. They had covered everything they had to say to each other, possibly. However, how could she possibly leave after only ten minutes?

“Did you hear about Peglet’s divorce?” Lavinia next brightly attempted. “So crazy, and she’s moved to some old house in the country. In Georgia, of all places.”

“Is that crazy, necessarily?”

“Well, uh, in the circumstances. You may not know this, Cathy, but Peglet is an extremely rich girl.
Extremely
rich.”

“Oh. Well, you’re right, I didn’t exactly know that.” A pause. “But do you mean that extremely rich people don’t get to live in old houses in Georgia? I would have thought that to be a virtue of richness, you could live anywhere.”

Lavinia laughed in a feeble way, and only added, “Well, at least she’s had the sense to take a friend along. Some social worker she met in Georgia that summer is going there too.” A pause, before she went on, “And of course now Megan’s the head, or joint head, of that really successful agency.”

“Oh yes, since her boss died of cancer,” was Cathy’s quick response.

“Well yes, I guess she did. Barbara Blumenthal.”

Cathy laughed. “Well, there sure seems to be a lot of it around.” Abruptly, then, she lay back and closed her eyes. “Nap time, I guess. You’ll forgive me?”

“Oh, Cathy, of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stay. Uh, I’ll call you before I go.” Unable to go over and kiss Cathy goodbye (that was probably all right with Cathy, she looked already asleep), Lavinia got up and tiptoed out of the room. She had to get away
from all those garish flowers, in their awful plastic containers. Away from Cathy.

Once out in the corridor, though, Lavinia noticed that she was still carrying the roses she had brought. Too ridiculous; still, no point in their being entirely wasted. They would help her hotel room a little, her supposedly view suite, in the Mark.

She pushed through the hospital’s swinging doors, passing more nuns, more priests (how ugly they all were, no wonder they’re celibate) and went out into the foggy cold that she had been told about, but not believed.