Three-Martini Lunch (20 page)

30

H
ere I am!” Judy sang out as she hurried into the lobby of the Barbizon. She was dressed very smartly in a little blue rayon-crepe number with a full skirt and a wide cherry-colored belt cinched around her waist. We kissed each other hello and when she wasn't looking I rubbed a bit of red lipstick from my cheek.

“Hadn't we better wait outside by the curb?” she asked.

“Let's.”

She was excited, I knew, because she was eager to be able to say she had been to the Cedarbrook. Cliff's generous invitation had warmed her to him a bit. “If he belongs to the Cedarbrook, he can't be all bad,” she said after we'd left the White Horse. “I still don't see why he runs around with those hooligans in the Village. But perhaps we'll meet some nice people today.” By nice people, Judy meant nice men.

“How are things at work?” I asked Judy now as we stood on the sidewalk, squinting into the sunshine.

“Oh, fine, I guess,” she replied in a bored voice.

“How is . . . Miss Everett?” I asked. I was burning with curiosity for the gossip, but in attempting to bring up Miss Everett's name, I suddenly felt very shy.

“Oh, you know.” Judy shrugged. “Still a bitch, striking terror into the hearts of young girls.”

I laughed, oddly gratified to hear it.

“Actually, though,” Judy continued, cocking her head, “she complained so much, they finally let her have a reader officially assigned to help her exclusively. Bitsy-something. And would you believe, Miss Everett seems to like her! Says she's the best reader the company's ever had.”

A strange pang went through me.

“She's so odd,” I said, shaking my head, attempting to keep my voice normal. “I don't understand her. She really had it out for me, and I didn't do anything at all to her. Remember how hard I worked, staying late all those nights? Why, I wasn't even
her
secretary, technically speaking!”

“Mmm-hmm,” Judy said in a faraway, distracted voice, producing a compact from her pocketbook and powdering her nose. I could tell she was far less interested in affirming the injustice of my dismissal than she was in her reflection.

“Why do you think she did something that outrageous?” I insisted.

Judy snapped the compact shut. “Well, I've told you my theories. Look, Eden, it's best to just forget about her. Who knows why she does anything at all, the bitter old maid.”

I couldn't help but recall all the terrible things Miss Everett had done, exploiting Mr. Frederick's misconduct and ultimately Mr. Turner's bigotry to get me fired. Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and I felt a small shiver of panic.

“Judy . . .” I said. “Do you think this is the kind of country club that doesn't . . . that doesn't . . .” I tried to think of how to phrase it, but was rapidly failing. “. . . allow certain
kinds
of people to join?”

Judy blinked at me, a blank expression on her face. “Oh,” she said,
comprehending my meaning. “Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. You're ‘Eden Collins' now, aren't you? Besides, you're very clever. No one will even know.”

She'd said it to reassure me, but it had the effect of making me even more uncomfortable, like she'd missed the point entirely.

Just then a flashy sports car pulled to the curb, and in it we spotted Cliff. He honked and jumped out to open the door for us. “Hullo, ladies!” he called. I had to admit, he looked rather dashing in a jacket and tie. “Hop in.” We did, and he hustled around to the driver's seat with an athletic spring in his step.

“Where did you get the car?” Judy inquired, admiring the look of it.

“Buddy of mine from Columbia,” Cliff answered. “Guy named Rex.” He turned over his shoulder to look at Judy in the backseat. “Say, I oughta introduce you two sometime; you'd like him.” He winked, and we zoomed away from the curb.

•   •   •

T
he drive out to the Cedarbrook Club was pleasant. It had been some months since I had been out of the city, and I had forgotten how nice it could be to ride along in a car, watching houses and little wooded areas fly by. Judy kept the conversation going by asking Cliff a few more questions about the mystery owner of the car, but I contented myself by staring, trancelike, out the window. When we arrived at Cedarbrook, we were stopped by a guard at a little gatehouse, and Cliff produced a membership card. Then he steered the car along a little ribbon of road as it wound through what felt like miles and miles of golf greens.

“Ah, yes, here we are. The Old Lady's stomping grounds,” he announced, pulling up to an imposing Georgian building that, I assumed, served as the main clubhouse. “I tell ya,” he said to me, “she'll be delighted I've come, and that I've brought along such classy company.”

A young, pimply boy drove the car away, leaving us to make our way
inside. Most of the clubhouse was rather old-fashioned. Marble and heavy wood, and that purposely drab variety of library furniture seemingly preferred by wealthy people everywhere. But the dining room where Cliff's mother was hosting her luncheon was newly renovated, very modern, and quite smart, paneled in blond wood and covered in wall-to-wall pink carpeting.

Cliff was quick to get a couple of cocktails in our hands. “What's the use of being at a country club if we can't toss back a few free martinis?” he joked. Shortly thereafter, we went looking for our place cards and found our table.

“There you are!” a tall, elegant, frosty-blond woman said, floating over to us. She planted a kiss of air on Cliff's cheek. “Honestly, Clifford, I'm still in a state of shock. You've never come to one of my luncheons.”

Cliff smiled, clearly embarrassed. “I wouldn't say
never
,” he replied.

“No . . .” she said, an amused smile playing on her lips as she inspected first Judy, then me. “Well, I shan't say it ever again.” Reading the subtle cues of her son's body language, she turned to me and held out a hand. “Doris Nelson, how do you do?”

“Mother, this is Eden Collins,” Cliff introduced me. Upon hearing my first name, Eden, not a single flicker of recognition passed over her face. I was relieved. Cliff continued. “And Judy . . .” He paused, realizing he did not know Judy's last name.

“Wheaton,” Judy supplied.

“Wheaton, how lovely,” Doris purred. “And such a fresh face, wholesome as the wheat itself.”

“Why, thank you,” Judy replied. She was gazing at the diamonds in Mrs. Nelson's ears with stunned wonder.

I was surprised. Doris Nelson had struck me as a cold, unfriendly woman over the phone. But here she was, elegant and warm, and clearly full of philanthropic spirit; the luncheon doubled as a fund-raiser for an orphanage in a nearby town.

“I'm so delighted you've come,” she said now, smiling in my direction. “You managed to get my Clifford out to the club on a weekend!” She chatted with us for a few more minutes and floated away—purely due to obligation, she assured us—to mingle with the guests who'd bought tickets and were donating to the orphanage.

We sat at a large round table with five other guests. Either Cliff had contrived for the arrangement of our place cards or else he had gotten very lucky: Immediately to the left of Judy's elbow was a handsome young law student named Chester. Five minutes into the meal, Cliff and I were left to make much of our own conversation. I got to know a great deal more about him. In particular, I admired his determination to become a writer, especially given that he had Roger Nelson for a father. I knew firsthand Roger Nelson cast a long shadow and was not an easy man to impress. And I felt Cliff and I had something important in common: We both straddled the publishing world and the grittier world of the Village.

“Thank you for coming,” Cliff said after we had gotten through soup and salad and reached the dessert course. “Are you having any fun at all?”

“Oh, tons,” I said. “It's so nice here, and I've really enjoyed our conversation together.” We exchanged bashful smiles and a lingering gaze.

•   •   •

L
ater that evening, once Cliff had dropped Judy off at her women's hotel and me back at the Barbizon, I telephoned Judy so that we might gossip about our day. She and Chester had already made plans to have dinner the next night, and Judy recited the laundry list of personal details she'd gleaned about him over lunch. I shyly brought up Cliff.

“He's awfully sweet on you, Eden!” she said over the line.

“Really, you think so?”

“Mmm-hmm. And you know, you could do a whole lot worse than to wind up with a fella whose parents belong to the Cedarbrook Club.”

“Oh, but the future . . . I don't see how it could work out!” I said.

“Why not? What's the problem?”

“Well, for starters, I'm his father's secretary. I doubt Mrs. Nelson would like that much. I'm sure she would much prefer Cliff date a girl who's never worked a day in her life: a society girl like herself. And as for
Mr
. Nelson . . . well, say things got serious . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I probably couldn't work at Bonwright anymore. How could I? And Mr. Nelson would be awful mad if I quit to run off and marry his son.”

“Oh,
pshhh
!” Judy scoffed. “It'll be a fun detail in the story of how you two met—you know, something to tell the grandkids. Roger and Doris . . . they'd both get over it as soon as the first baby turns up. Besides . . . if Cliff's father is the way Cliff says he is, well, then maybe it serves him right for not paying very much attention to his son!”

“Gosh, I hope that's not what Cliff sees in me,” I said. “You don't think that's it, do you?”

“Are you kidding me?” Judy said. “The way he looks at you with little stars in his eyes? Not a chance.” There was a pause, and I could tell she was fiddling around with something—perhaps a nail file—in the background, which she put down. “Listen, Eden,” she said, her voice growing serious, “I think it's admirable that you have your aspirations about becoming an editor, but what if that never happens? Or what if it does and you find you're not fulfilled by it? Don't you want to take out some insurance on your own happiness?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I'm just saying, you've complained a lot about how Mr. Nelson doesn't seem like he ever intends to promote you. And you already know what it's like other places; I don't need to remind you about Miss Everett, and there are plenty like her out there. Maybe it's time to, you know,
cultivate
some back-up options. It couldn't hurt. If you like this Clifford character, maybe that's not the worst thing you could do.”

I was quiet, thinking about this.

“All I mean to say is that I know you're a career gal, sure, but I also think every woman should live up to her potential, and you'd make a good wife if you wanted to, Eden,” Judy said. “Honest, I mean that as a compliment. And what does Cliff want to do anyway? Be a writer, right? I don't see how being an editor is that different from being a writer's wife. Don't most writers' wives type up all their husbands' work and edit it, too?”

“I suppose so . . .”

“Anyway,” Judy said, her tone suddenly shifting. “I hope you don't mind me speaking my mind. Listen, I'd better go soon. There's another girl who wants to use the phone.”

“All right. Good night, Judy.”

I hung up, but Judy's argument stayed on my mind. I was certainly attracted to Cliff, and it seemed he was attracted to me. And he was very determined to make something of himself; perhaps it might be exciting, after all, to be a writer's wife. Judy had a point: A writer's wife
was
a first editor of sorts.

I laughed out loud when I realized I was getting ahead of myself. Cliff, after all, hadn't even asked me out on a date yet.

31

I
proposed to Eden during the summer of '58, not long after our first date. The whole marriage business was spontaneous as hell and I hadn't ever really pictured myself married, but I liked Eden and together we liked to laugh and shake our hips in spastic ecstasy to bop and of course we had a dandy time in the sack. But mostly I married her because it made me heartsick to think of her marrying someone else.

There was also some business with My Old Man—not about him cutting me off but about all that Brooklyn business I mentioned—that Eden understood. I'd never told anybody about the time when I was eleven and I followed My Old Man on the train out to Bensonhurst and what I'd seen once I got there. But I told Eden about it one day when we were lying naked together in the middle of the afternoon with sunshine pouring through the bars of my studio's little window. We both had our eyes closed when I told her the story and she intuited enough about me to stroke my arm as I talked to let me know she was awake and listening and hearing all of it but she also knew enough never to bring it up again in any of our
other conversations and I figured a man could do a lot worse than to marry a girl with this quality.

When I asked her to marry me Eden's eyes grew big and bright and excited, but of course Eden being Eden, she had a hell of a lot of questions about how things would work.
Would we tell our folks and should she keep working for My Old Man and what about her name and blah, blah, blah
, and before too long it became obvious that we weren't planning a wedding so much as an elopement. But if I'm being honest, an elopement suited me just fine and it suited Eden, too; I didn't want or need her to quit her job at ol' Bonwright, and she didn't want to, either. The things we liked about each other were tangled up in our ambitions, and our ambitions were tangled up in each other, too, but of course we hardly knew it at the time.

Eden felt awfully guilty about the fact she would have to miss some work but eventually I managed to convince her to give My Old Man some line about visiting her sick aunt back in Indiana and before too long we were making plans to go down to City Hall and Bobby was composing a little song for us on his guitar and Pal was writing a special poem for our day and calling it an
epithalamium
, which I was too embarrassed to admit I had to look up in the dictionary in order to find out was the Greek term for a wedding poem.

Seeing as how our folks weren't invited that day, it was just Bobby and Swish and Pal and a handful of other people from the café circuit, and of course Eden's friend Judy, slicked up in her red lipstick, wringing Chester's arm with excitement and jumping up and down, eager to catch the bouquet. There we were, standing around at City Hall, all of us looking a little thin and lanky in the photographs that were taken that day, as though we were all just young pups still waiting to grow into our bodies and tripping over our feet in the meantime. Swish with his madman hair and leathery face from all the hobo-ing and Bobby standing loose at the hips with that glint in his eye and his Golden Boy looks and Pal with those long, black lashes and shy smile and me and Eden and our nervous half-smiles walking
wobbly-kneed like a pair of foals as if it were our first time for everything all over again.

The whole group saw us off later when Eden and I boarded the bus at Port Authority for Niagara and threw rice and called out sweet and sincere encouragements to us. As I waved good-bye to the group of them I caught Swish's eye and for the most fleeting of seconds I saw a hint of something rueful there and I knew all too well this was about how Swish felt about Eden and how I'd been a bit of a bastard to come between them. When the bus's engine roared to life I looked back and it was gone, and a week later when Eden and I returned from our honeymoon I looked for it again in Swish's gaze but if it had ever truly been there by then he had decided to let it go and I believe in the spirit of a true friend he had decided to occupy himself with other things and never again gave it much thought.

When we got back to New York, Eden packed up her two suitcases at the Barbizon and deposited them in my little studio in the Village. I made a jokey show of carrying my bride over the threshold and this made us both laugh and together we had ourselves a second honeymoon on the mattress on the floor.