Sex and Vanity(52)

“Everyone … quiet! I’m going to make a toast.” Consuelo turned to Lucie with a smile and began. “Now, when I first set eyes on Lucie a week after she was born, she was in her crib, and I must confess, with her peachy-white cheeks and delicate black eyelashes, I thought she looked like the most adorable, exquisite little china doll! So ever since, she has been my little china doll. She would never ever cry, she was so quiet and well mannered, and I would dress her up in the finest silk costumes from the Orient, sent to me by my dear friend Han Suyin, and I would take her to lunch at La Grenouille, where everyone would fuss over her, or to tea at Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s. Funnily enough, Madame Chiang always argued with me and told me that my little china doll didn’t look Chinese enough! ‘Look at those freckles,’ she would say. ‘That’s no Chinese baby!’ ‘Well, she’s half Churchill,’ I would reply, ‘but thank God she didn’t inherit the Churchill nose!’ Oh, how we had so many laughs back then, and how I wish those days would last forever. But babies do grow up, and Lucie became a scholar, graduating magna cum laude in economics from Brown, which was only to be expected since she clearly gets all her brains from her mother’s side. And now she’s so quickly made a name for herself in the art world as one of New York’s top contemporary advisers. She continues to surprise us all, and I know her father would be so proud if he could see her today. Now, Lucie has met her match in Cecil, who I’m told was proclaimed one of the most eligible bachelors in the country and hails from such an impressive family, one that has become so synonymous with diversity and the philanthropic spirit of this country. Why, every museum I go to these days, I see Mrs. Pike’s name carved into the wall! Cecil, I’ve only just met you, but I can tell you possess the refinement of a Rothschild, and I trust you will know exactly how to treat my precious, precious china doll. To Lucie and Cecil—I wish you both a lifetime of joy and happiness.”

Everyone in the room raised their glasses as Freddie cheered, “Here! Here!” Reneé beamed proudly at her son, thinking, My boy did good. Those fuckers at Saint James School in Houston wouldn’t accept him, but look at him now—marrying into the elite of the elite, the kind of people who have never even heard of Saint James!

Lucie blinked back a few tears, though no one in the room—with perhaps the exception of her mother—would have ever suspected the real reason. After making a few rounds of the drawing room, Cecil and Lucie managed to duck out to the building’s roof garden for a little fresh air.

Cecil gave Lucie a dead-eyed stare. “Fucking hell. I have half a mind to get out my cell phone and call for a helicopter evac right now.”

Lucie burst out laughing. “I did warn you …”

“Baby, I don’t think you prepared me adequately. I thought Charlotte was bad enough, but I’ve never in my life met such dreadful people. So stultifyingly boring, so shabbily costumed, they might as well be wax figures. How could you possibly be related to them? I just don’t see it! You are the swan in a field of squawking geese, the rare lotus growing in a swamp …”

“Oh, you’re too sweet. I’m the weird-looking one in my family, you know. Cacky’s considered the beautiful one. She was a Ford model back in her Wellesley years.”

“Cacky? She sure looks like a Ford, and I’m talking about a Bronco! Thank God for your mother or you’d have the same unfortunate, inbred features!”

“You’re too funny. You sound like my Tang grandparents, my mom’s folks. Whenever they saw me, they would always praise my ‘features.’ To them, Freddie and I were the most beautiful creatures in the world, and they were always so proud to show me off to their friends that it made me a little embarrassed. But to some of the people downstairs, it was the polar opposite. It was always, ‘Hmm, what can we do to fix Lucie?’”

Cecil shook his head in disgust. “Well, in my opinion you’re the only person downstairs who doesn’t need fixing! That Annafred, there’s no excuse for her name—did she escape from an order of lesbian Mennonites? Fess up, Annafred and Teddy are really brother and sister, aren’t they? They can’t possibly be married to each other.”

Lucie was doubled over in laughter. “I always thought Teddy and Annafred look exactly alike, but you’re the first person to ever say it! She’s actually Annafred the Ninth. Her family goes all the way back to the landing at Plymouth Rock.”

“Oh dear God, Pilgrims! You’re related to Pilgrims! No wonder you needed me to rescue you from this pathetic lot.”

“You have no idea. Freddie can do no wrong in their eyes, but I’ve always felt like I’m on probation—I’m only part of the family if I don’t embarrass them.”

“Ha! I think you’ve got it mixed up—you should be embarrassed of them!”

Lucie grinned, delighting in Cecil’s dissection of her kin. It was as if she had found a kindred spirit at last, like they were the two outsiders at the back of the classroom making snide remarks about the popular kids.

“And that friend of your grandmother’s—Ambassador Harry Stuyvesant Fish—what century is he from? Did anyone inform him that we won the War of Independence?”

“Oh, Harry’s the worst. When I was at Brown, he could never stop making disparaging remarks about it. He called it ‘a repository for ne’er-do-wells and the dregs of deposed European royalty.’”