The Rothman Scandal (60 page)

He stared at her fixedly for a moment longer. “Your ideas are very clever, you know,” he said at last. “You're a very clever lady. I was expecting to meet a pretty, empty-headed fashion model, but that's not you at all.”

“Those special stores would promote
Mode
, and
Mode
would promote those special stores.”

Then he tossed his dinner napkin in the air. It landed on the table. “But I can hear what my father and my grandfather would say,” he said. “How much will it cost to try something like that? How much will it cost? The magazine can't afford it. No, your ideas are clever and original, but nobody's going to change a thing because there's nobody who really cares enough to make a change. Do you know the real reason why Pop wanted to buy
Mode?
Because Mom was complaining that she was the wife of a man who published
schlock
. She thought if he published a magazine like
Mode
, it would make her seem more
fashionable
, for God's sake. And Pop, for reasons of his own, would like to get Mom off his back right now. My parents are—well, that's another story.
Mode
is just window-dressing for them. That's all it is. Just something to improve their image, and make Pop's write-up in Who's Who look better.”

“But shouldn't it be profitable window-dressing?”

“Sure. But my grandfather, who controls the money, doesn't believe in the magazine. Innovations like you're talking about involve risk capital, and my grandfather isn't willing to take the risks. First he wants black ink. ‘Show me some black ink, Stevie, give me some black ink,'” he said, imitating Ho Rothman's Russian accent. “Until I give him that,
Mode
will just plod along the way it's always done. February is our Look-Ten-Years-Younger issue. March is our Diet issue. April is our French issue, May is Italian, and June is American designers. It's that way year after year. So be it. World without end. Amen. While I go up and down the street, trolling for advertisers, offering them deals—”

“But look,” she said, leaning forward eagerly, “if you could first of all make the magazine exciting to readers, that would make it exciting to manufacturers, who are your national advertisers. The manufacturers would make it exciting to the retailers they sell to, and the retailers would help make it even more exciting to their customers, who are your readers.” She made a circle with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands. “It's like a circle, isn't it? It would snowball. But you have to start with readers, don't you? I think your grandfather is approaching the whole thing from the wrong direction.”

He sighed. “Try telling that to Gramps,” he said.

“But if you were able to turn
Mode
into a huge success, wouldn't they stop punishing you—for whatever it is?”

He looked at her. “Would you help me?” he asked quickly.

“Help you? How could I help you?” And suddenly as he looked at her, the air between them seemed to grow taut with tension, thick and fibrous and heavy with unspoken thoughts and unanswered questions, and she thought: The tip of the iceberg; I have only glimpsed the tip of the iceberg with this man; there is much more, very complicated, deep below. She felt all at once shy with him, as though she had caught him in a weak and shameful act. She lowered her eyes, and said, “But I shouldn't be telling you how to run your business.”

“Why not? Nobody else ever has.” Then he said, “I don't know how to tell you this, Alexandra. But I like you very much. In my job, the people who work for me do what I say, but I know that none of them have any respect for me. I know they really hate me because I'm the boss's grandson, and wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for him. But you're different. I think you care about me. I'm going back to New York tomorrow, but do you think I could write or telephone you from time to time—just to talk?”

“Of course,” she said.

She had given him her address and telephone number. And before she knew it, he was telephoning her nearly every day. There was something about this sad and complicated young man who claimed to hate his job, and yet felt chained to it and imprisoned by it, that made her pity him, and want to help him. Somehow, she felt he needed mothering. She already had a vision of his cold, hard, brittle, and unloving parents—a vision that would turn out to be remarkably accurate.

He telephoned her from New York the very next night, and soon he was phoning her every night. The thing she remembered most about those calls was that, for the most part, he talked and she listened to him. But there was nothing self-centered about this. Instead, she got the impression that no one had ever listened to Steven Rothman, and that, for all his family's wealth, he had never really had anyone to talk to. He told her about his family's estate, called “Rothmere,” up on the Hudson River, where his parents, grandparents, and uncle and aunt all lived together—“One big happy family, except it isn't,” he said.

“Why isn't it?” she asked him.

“You'll see,” he said. “I'll bring you up here someday. Happy families are all alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Anna Karenina,”
she said. “Of course in the translation I read, it was ‘
Every
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way'—small difference.”

She could almost hear the surprise in the momentary silence from his end of the line, that a Missouri girl knew Tolstoy, and she wondered briefly whether he was perhaps one of those men who disliked smart women. She added, “My mother had sort of an obsession about Russian pre-Revolutionary history. We even had a dog named Anna Karenina, believe it or not.”

He laughed, and the next day, by Special Delivery, came a copy of a new biography of Count Leo Tolstoy, inscribed, “
Every
Missouri girl is different in her own way.”

So he did listen to the things she said, and he did like smart women.

He called to tell her about the opening night of a new musical he had attended. It was called
Cabaret
, and was based on Christopher Isherwood's stories of Berlin between the wars. He had loved it, but didn't think the
New York Times
had done it justice in its review.

She mentioned that she did not see the
New York Times
in Kansas City, and the next morning a subscription to the
Times
was on her doorstep. Shortly thereafter, he sent her the original cast album of the show. Then he called to ask her what she thought of it.

“I loved it,” she said.

He loved music, both classical and popular. Sometimes he would play Beatles songs for her, on the telephone, on his guitar. He had once wanted to be a musician, but his family had put a stop to that idea.

He began sending her flowers. The first was a nosegay of violets. When she thanked him, he asked, “Did they match?”

“Match what?”

“Your eyes. I told them I wanted bluish-green flowers.”

She laughed. “I have funny-colored eyes.”

“Blue-green in some lights, hazel in others.”

“You noticed that?”

“Oh yes …”

“Now what would have made you notice that?”

“I consider you my best friend,” he said.

“But we've only met once.”

“That doesn't matter. I've never really had a best friend, you know.” There was a note of elegant, sweet sadness in his voice. And of course she was flattered that this lovely, polished young man from such a powerful background should have been attracted to her. She found herself looking forward eagerly to his nightly calls.

He came back to Kansas City in November to shoot the Bill Blass story, along with the art director, the photographer, the photographer's assistants, the lighting crew, the hair and makeup stylists, the designer himself, and the great wardrobe bags filled with clothes, shoes, and accessories—the entire, expensive crew for the weeklong shoot. She noticed that he began asking her opinions about the poses.

“Would you feel more comfortable holding your hand this way—or that way?” he would ask her.

She suspected that this annoyed the photographer, and she was certain that it annoyed Sigourney Frye, the art director.

“Who's art director on this shoot, anyway—me or her?” she heard Sigourney Frye ask him crossly.

“I just want Alex to look and feel comfortable in her poses,” he said.

“And
I'd
just like Alice to pose according to the layout,” Sigourney Frye snapped back. Sigourney Frye repeatedly called her “Alice,” and Alex decided that she could never really like anyone whose name was Sigourney Frye. And, when she learned later that Sigourney Frye's name had originally been Rose Freiberg, she decided that she liked her even less.

“I don't want to seem to be undermining Sigourney's authority,” she said to him later.

“Don't worry. I'm still editor-in-chief,” he said. “This job is an important step in your career. I want to be sure you look your best.”

After one particularly long photo session, which had involved Alex, in sequined coveralls, standing on a stepladder with a can of red paint in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, painting a ceiling—and, like so many too-archly clever picture ideas, this one ended up not being used—Alex had collapsed on the sofa in the trailer that they used as a dressing room. “Poor girl, you must be exhausted,” he said to her. “Here, let me give you a back-rub.” He knelt on the floor beside her, and began gently kneading and massaging the sore muscles of her shoulders, neck, upper arms, and lower back. “I'm famous for my back-rubs,” he said.

“Mm, that feels good,” she murmured. “How did you get to be famous for your back-rubs?”

“My mother has bad nerves,” he said. “Whenever she has one of her attacks of nerves, she has me give her a back-rub.”

Dreamily, under the smooth caressing touch of his expert fingers, she began to wonder whether his hands might begin to move to the front of her body, and what might happen then. She waited. But it did not happen.

They had dinner together every night in the dining room of the Alameda Plaza, where he was staying. On the last night of the shooting session, to celebrate, he ordered champagne. He touched his glass to hers. “To us,” he said. She noticed that he was gazing at her intently, and had not touched his food. “You are so beautiful,” he said, and she realized that Skipper had never told her she was beautiful. But then, Skipper had never told her that he loved her, either. Then Steven Rothman did that, too, almost whispered it: “I love you, Alex.”

Then he reached into his jacket pocket, and produced a small blue box. In it was a Kashmiri sapphire ring with a girdle of diamonds. “To match your eyes,” he said. That was when he asked her to marry him. He had fallen in love with her, he said, over the telephone.

“But do you love him, Lexy?” Lucille Withers asked her when Alex showed her the ring.

“It's called a Kashmiri sapphire,” she said. “Sapphires are among the heaviest of all precious stones. Emeralds are among the lightest. Did you know that, Lulu? Steven told me that. He knows all sorts of strange and wonderful little things.”

“You're not answering my question, Lexy,” she said. “I asked you if you loved him. Or are you just in love with his money?”

“He's terribly sweet,” Alex said. “He's one of the kindest, gentlest, most considerate men I've ever met. I like him very, very much.”

“You're still not answering me.”

Alex frowned. She knew what Lulu meant. She meant, did she love Steven
enough?
Well, how much was enough, anyway? Maybe it was not the same as with Skipper, but did it have to be? Perhaps that part would come later? Certainly that part would come later, after they were married, as it usually did in any marriage.

“So tell me. Is it him—or is it the Rothman money? They say his grandfather is worth two hundred million bucks.” (Remember that this was in 1967, when two hundred million still seemed like a lot of money.)

“I've thought about that,” she said carefully. “The trouble is, the Rothman money is a part of what Steven is. How can I separate the money from what Steven is? His money is just one aspect of the man I've grown terribly fond of. I've decided that the man I want to marry just happens to be rich, and there's not much I can do about that, is there? I mean, I think I'd still feel the same way about him if he happened to be poor. How can I separate my feelings from the facts that happen to go along with him?”

Lucille Withers shook her head. “I don't like this, Lexy,” she said. “I don't like this one little bit. Of course I wouldn't give bullets who you married, if I didn't care a lot about you.…”

“She's totally unsuitable, totally unacceptable,” Herbert Rothman said to his wife, Pegeen, as they sat in the living room of the apartment at River House that afternoon. “No, she won't do at all—some little adventuress fashion model from a little town in Missouri that nobody's ever heard of. She obviously thinks he's got a lot of money, even though he doesn't—yet. I've done a little checking on her, which Steven, in his haste to marry the first girl who'll say yes to him, clearly hasn't bothered to do. Her father is a small-time accountant who was passed over for a promotion in favor of a younger man in the firm. The family is not popular in the little town of Paradise, Missouri. Her parents are considered left-wing shirttail intellectuals—radicals, even Communists—by their neighbors. Her father drinks. Her mother is in and out of mental hospitals. The girl herself is considered fast. When she was in her teens, she was often seen hitchhiking out on the interstates around Kansas City, being picked up by God knows who. Imagine! A hitchhiker. She has no breeding, no education—nothing more than a diploma from a public high school. There are also rumors that the girl is illegitimate.”