The High Season(12)
“No problem! Dashiell dropped his suitcase! My foot is okay!”
“Mommy! Arden borrowed your earrings without asking!”
“Shut up, Verity, you troll!”
“Oh, God,” Carole said. “Come upstairs and talk, will you? I need to keep an eye on the mayhem.”
Ruthie followed Carole as Carole followed the noise. A flash of pink careened toward them down the hallway. Verity wore a tutu over striped leggings, a sequined top, and a pretty necklace of silver beads wound around and around her neck that Ruthie instantly coveted. “Fancy!” she screamed at Ruthie.
“Sweetie, you’re supposed to be in your going-away outfit,” Carole said through her teeth.
Arden poked her head out of another bedroom. “She dumped her dress-up box all over her floor.”
“Meanie!”
“Go clean it up right now, Verity Hazel,” Carole warned. “Arden, are those my earrings? And say hello to Ruthie, you two.”
“Hello, Ruthie,” the two girls mumbled.
“I go to this incredible vintage store downtown for the dress-up clothes, I think it’s where all the drag queens shop,” Carole told Ruthie as she shooed Verity down the hall. “I can’t stand the Disney crap, can you? I keep thinking of all those Chinese girls in factories keeping their eyes open with clothespins. So I buy vintage. Anything pink, I buy. Satin. Sequins. The girls at the shop save things for me. I send everything out to my fabulous cleaners, and dump it all in the dress-up box. And when I go to Brimfield with my designer or the Brooklyn Flea—have you been, it’s divine!—I just buy tons of costume jewelry from the dealers, whole vats of it, or lots or whatever. Anyway I don’t hear from Verity for hours. I’m going to write a book of mothering tips. How to keep your kids busy so you can drink. Kidding!”
“She’s adorable,” Ruthie said. “I think I want that necklace.”
“Right? Once I found the most incredible beaded evening purse in there. I wore it on my head for the Man Ray party at MoMA. Such a headache but worth it.” They came to the end of the hall and went up a few steps into another hallway. Carole opened the double doors and they walked into the master suite.
The room was all rose and gold, a toile bedspread with a golden cashmere throw tossed on the linen-upholstered armchair, rose-colored curtains that filtered the light, an acre of carpet. Three suitcases sat waiting in a corner.
Carole opened a door and sighed. Ruthie glimpsed T-shirts on an ottoman and a gold scarf trailing out of a plastic box. Closet rods and double-hangs and shelves and transparent boxes labeled LOUBOUTIN MULES CASUAL KITTEN HEEL SILVER and MANOLO PUMPS DRESSY 6 INCH BLACK. Linen shifts and silk blouses, jeans on hangers, what seemed to be six pairs of white pants. Trousers.
Carole had already packed for a summer away, Ruthie thought, agog. This was just the stuff she left behind.
Carole folded the scarf and touched a drawer, which glided toward them in silent majesty. Silk scarves were arranged by color.
“I sense an Arden attack,” Carole said, replacing the scarf and the shirt. “She’s only twelve, but she raids my closet and Lewis’s. How do you deal with it?”
“Jem isn’t my size,” Ruthie said.
“Lucky you. You can hang on to your jeans.”
Which meant that a twelve-year-old was Carole’s size. Maybe she just shifted the need a cookie trigger to need a pair of Louboutin mules casual kitten heel silver.
“I know this is a bad time, but can we talk about Mindy?” Ruthie asked. “She called me three times today. What is this fixation on Adeline Clay? I can’t control if the woman comes to Spork.”
Ruthie had been lucky with her board from the moment she’d stepped into the job. Every director knew that a good board was a crucial part of the job, and you spent time shaping, nudging, and coddling them along. For nine years her board had written checks, applauded victories, formed committees, and stayed out of her hair. They were passionate about the Belfry but left the operation of it to Ruthie. Most of them were weekend people and lived in Manhattan. There were a few great professional women, but they didn’t run it; they were too busy with jobs and families. That was left to the older members, the women who were primarily defined by their husbands, as in, You know Jill, she’s married to Jack, who used to be a big guy at [insert bank/law firm/hedge fund here]. The board as a whole did what great boards were supposed to do: raise money, follow Robert’s Rules of Order, and show up at parties.
Then old guard Helen Gregorian (widow of Armand, former big guy at Deutsche Bank) had declined the presidency, saying she’d prefer to be secretary. No one wanted the job of president except Mindy Flicker, who lobbied Helen and Carole to propose her. Helen decided that the board needed an infusion of “the young,” which meant, in Helen’s eyes, the forty-somethings. Ruthie had liked Mindy but not known her well, so she took Mindy on the recommendation of Helen and Carole, both of whom had taken Mindy on her own self-valuation. She was the right person for the job, Mindy assured them. She had the “energy,” she said, forever putting Helen’s nose out of joint for implying she was old. Could she start early?
The board was thrilled. Mindy came from serious money and had broken family tradition by choosing the North Fork over the Hamptons. She had a second home two towns away in Southold that she called “The Farm,” three girls in varying stages of sulky young womanhood, and a clammy condescension that masqueraded as congeniality. Her attention to “action plans” was often mistaken for intelligence by the stupid. It hadn’t taken long before Ruthie came to realize that Mindy operated around a fistula of privilege that choked off real human connection. Her first act as president was to suggest Ruthie fire her curator Tobie because she “never smiled” and had corrected her spelling of Jackson Pollock. Ruthie had laughed, then realized Mindy was serious. It had been downhill from there.