Gilded Age (9 page)

She ate little at lunch and was looking forward to taking a sleeping pill and napping in her room for the rest of the afternoon, but as they were leaving the dining room Julia took her elbow and steered her into the sitting room.

“Look, can you do me a favor? A decorative mural painter is coming up any minute now from Cleveland with the man who runs up my curtains and the upholsterer, and it drives Gus insane to see them. He hates it when I have people come from Cleveland on business.”

Ellie thought once again how different her life was from her friend’s. Julia had a business so she would have something to do, not that she’d ever have to support herself doing it. Ellie wondered, as
she had as a bridesmaid at the wedding, what the Trenor marriage was made of. How did Julia turn a blind eye to Gus’s constant sporting and the fact that he had no real job aside from looking after his money? Did Gus love Julia, or did he love that she performed her role well? Was theirs a singular meeting of souls, a tacit business arrangement, a comfortable similarity of perspective bound by shared social background, true love? Ellie knew it was futile to conjecture about life behind closed doors in anyone’s marriage.

Julia went on. “And so I was wondering if you would get Gus out of the house. Ask him to teach you rock climbing or something.”

Ellie hesitated. She felt she couldn’t refuse her friend’s request after she’d disappointed her with P. G. It was her duty as a guest to help her hostess, and Julia’s eyes were narrowing the longer Ellie hesitated.

“Sure,” Ellie said with a forced bright smile. “Rock climbing—right.”

So after lunch she found herself with Gus Trenor hiking the back side of a rock face where Gus’s climbing instructor had installed a rappelling rope.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked Gus’s back as she followed him through the woods.

“I’ve done it hundreds of times. It’s a blast. You’ll see.”

Ellie continued walking behind him up the steep trail. His broad back was sweaty, and his waist was hooked up with water bottles, ropes, and gear. Gus had seemed flattered when Ellie asked him to teach her a little climbing. She knew it was the type of thing Julia had done when they were dating, when she was trying to win him. Now, Julia felt no need for the façade. Gus admired a sense of adventure in a woman, and Ellie thought his wife ignored this at her peril. An insect buzzed her neck, and she slapped at it. Gus continued bush-whacking in front of her.

“You know who’s a great rock climber?” Gus asked over his shoulder, but then answered without waiting for a reply. “Randall Leforte.”

Ellie groaned a little.

“I wish you’d convince Julia to be nice to him,” Gus said. “I’ve tried to get her to invite him up, and she refuses.”

“I met him at the orchestra on opening night. I heard someone tried bringing him around and took him to some parties, and he was ridiculous.”

“Oh, just because he’s super-shiny and gets nervous and doesn’t know what to say… He’s smart as hell. His fees are astronomical. He’s going to be richer than all of us someday. If we were friends though … If he felt a little indebted …”

They trudged along in silence till they reached the top of the mountain, where a rappelling rope had been set up. The view of the mountains was alive with the changing fall trees. Ellie sat down.

“Well come on, I’ll show you how it’s done,” Gus said, fidgeting with his gear impatiently.

Ellie sighed but didn’t move. “Do you mind if we just sit here for a minute? It’s such a gorgeous day, and I’ve been a little down lately.”

Gus Trenor was not used to being taken into the confidence of his wife’s attractive friends. He sat down next to her on the warm granite ledge. “Why?”

Ellie waved a hand in front of her face. “It’s nothing really. I don’t want to bother you.”

“What? You’re bored with Cleveland shopping and parties compared to New York?”

Ellie winced. “You think I’m an airhead too.”

“Sorry, not at all.” The truth was, had he been consulted, Trenor would have declared Miss Eleanor Hart a most decorative woman who should marry, and marry well, as soon as possible. But sitting next to this sublime woman on this summit, on this clear day, she seemed more real and deep than he had previously imagined.

“You know Julia’s mad at me,” Ellie said, staring in front of her.

“She’s not.”

“Well I’ve annoyed her, and I’ve annoyed myself. She’s mad about the whole P. G. Gryce thing.”

“What Gryce thing?”

“She thinks I ought to have married him.”

“Gryce?!” Trenor was now a picture of outrage, though he would
have agreed with his wife just a few hours ago. “I can’t see you with someone like him. So uptight and … and plain. Gryce? I mean, what was she thinking? I could have told Julia that you and Gryce weren’t a match. But then she doesn’t consult me about stuff like that,” he said sulkily.

“She made a decent point. I don’t have a lot to fall back on.”

Trenor stiffened; any talk of money made him anxious. People constantly hit him up for loans, charitable donations, seed money for start-ups going nowhere. “What about your mother, your settlement?”

“Mother has enough trouble keeping herself afloat, and I’m afraid I signed a fairly severe prenup.”

“Lawyers can deal with that kind of thing.”

“My lawyers say it’s ironclad.”

“Here’s an example of a time when a Randall Leforte would come in handy,” Gus said, trying for levity, poking her side just under her ribs.

“Great,” Ellie said flatly. Even this small touch from him felt hugely intrusive.

“But you did get something … I mean, some money.”

Ellie nodded.

“Are you having someone invest it for you?”

“I have to live.”

“You live at your mother’s for free and then there’s clothes and such, but you must have some left over.”

“Some.”

“Who’s investing it?” he asked again, looking at the view, not her.

“Some firm in New York that my lawyers recommended.”

Trenor seemed to mull this over.

“Don’t worry,” Ellie said. “They’re very conservative. I won’t lose anything. But I’d like to buy a little place for myself. Maybe in Cleveland. And all the money’s tied up right now. The market’s a mess. It’s a terrible time to liquidate anything.”

Eventually Gus said, “I could invest some of it for you.”

“But the money’s all tied up,” Ellie said again.

“I can get them to hand over the management of some of it to me. You’re so young.” How Ellie loved to hear that, even in this context. “You don’t need to be super-conservative. You can afford to take some risks that’ll pay off bigger for you in the long run.”

Yes, Ellie thought, risk-taking right now was exactly what she needed. She was still young, still able to gamble, as she had the other night. Gus seemed to do well with his own money. He and Julia were comfortable, to use Viola’s word. Why not entrust a portion to Gus? He might actually make her some money.

“What kind of fees would you charge?”

“Friendship fees,” he said, smiling.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable unless you charged me the same thing you charge—” And here she hesitated just a fraction of a minute. “Everyone else,” she finished.

“If that’s how you feel about it, then fine.” He stuck out his hand. “Strictly business.”

As Ellie shook his hand she felt a lightening of her load. Here was a friend who might take care of her. And she would be helping him as well—giving him a chance to prove himself with someone else’s money.

She got up and said, “I think I’m ready now.”

Gus showed her how to hook into the harness and explained in detail how to rappel down. As he attached the harness, Gus’s hands seemed to linger on her waist and once she was sure he unnecessarily brushed her bare stomach under her shirt when fastening a rope. He hooked her up with many safety cables and a helmet. Though she’d never done it before, she felt an odd confidence that she could handle this, that with Gus guiding her, she’d be safe.

The Stepney-Mingott Wedding

N
ow, you might be wondering why Ellie even came back to Cleveland. It took me a while to convince Jim he wanted to move back here with me. And Ellie, I mean, she was used to New York, so why not try Boston or Chicago? Hell, even Los Angeles if she was feeling like really starting over. The thing is, there is something about being raised in Cleveland that draws you back.

Everyone I know in Cleveland went away to college, found a spouse, maybe lived in a larger city for a while, but eventually they moved home. They chose to come back. When you do, it’s because you’ve lived anonymously long enough. You want to come back to the place where people know you and your mother and your grandmother, and probably even your great-grandmother. Where people are still house-proud and throw dinner parties. Where the gray lake shocks in the winter with its cover of ice, and shocks again in the summer with its tropical blue. Where you can get your child into one of the swanky preschools without college-level stress. Where you can find the best of anything you need—a doctor, certainly; hairdresser; psychotherapist; acupuncturist; artisanal baker. It’s just that Cleveland
has one or two of each, not a full page in the phone book like New York has. But really, how many do you need?

It’s an ideal place for nesting.

You return because a hundred years ago Cleveland’s iron and steel barons built the neoclassical art museum, and John Severance built his wedding tribute of a concert hall. The Terminal Tower, formerly the tallest building outside New York, still looks proud. You return because the brownfields are slowly being turned into urban gardens, and Tremont hasn’t lost its bohemian blue-collar vibe despite being overrun with luxury SUVs on the weekends as suburbanites jockey to eat at the trendy restaurants. You love the Ritz’s sushi happy hour. I mean, I wouldn’t eat the walleye. That’s just me; let’s not get crazy. You love the huge white windmill that churns next to Browns Stadium right on the edge of Lake Erie, not far from the closed steel mills. It’s Cleveland’s beacon to those who want to move forward, to change, and why wouldn’t Ellie, in her present state, want to come back and absorb a little of that energy?

I
n the weeks that followed my trip to Ellicottville I didn’t see Ellie as I was distracted by prenatal testing, which pronounced the baby fine, a little boy. Jim was ecstatic. With this news, I started decorating the nursery and stocking the pantries and cleaning out closets and performing all the other nesting clichés of the pregnant woman.

But Ellie lingered in the back of my mind. I fretted over her, whether she was still sober, whether she’d started her job. I kept telling myself to call her, but somehow with the baby and the preparations, I couldn’t psych myself up to do it. Funny that with a friend that old I’d need to gin myself up to call her. But the truth was that after seeing her at the Trenors’ I wanted to store up a little energy, don a small bit of karmic armor, before I talked to her. Sounds awful, I know; she’s my oldest friend after all.

In any event, I didn’t see her again until the Stepney-Mingott wedding.

Vivian Mingott was the rather plain daughter of a family that had
been the original partners of John D. Rockefeller when he started out in Cleveland. The hangover from that type of wealth had lasted to the current generation. Jack Stepney was a distant cousin of Ellie’s. He worked downtown in a bank and hadn’t a dime to his name. Vivian would take his name, but no one in Cleveland would ever refer to her as anything other than Vivian Mingott. Such was the power of her family name compared to his.

The wedding was a country affair, meaning that the ceremony was held in a tiny white country church east of the city, next to the Chagrin River. An invitation to the actual ceremony was extended only to close family and important friends—and was considered quite a get. Invitations to the reception, held at the bride’s family’s home in Hunting Valley, were not limited by space, and most everyone I knew was invited. I thought I might see Ellie there.

Waiters strolled through the living room and dining room with silver trays of champagne. French doors opened to a slate terrace tented for dancing. Heaters kept the whole thing cozy in the late autumn chill. Fourteen Meissen urns from Vivian’s family held masses of fall flowers intertwined with bright autumn foliage by Cleveland’s florist of choice.

After the bland dinner of salmon and the appropriate toasts and well wishes, couples headed out on the dance floor. There’d be no first dance, no father-daughter dance, no spotlights—just the huge orchestra, sixteen deep with a substantial string section, playing all night for the bride.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Percy Gryce in his dark gray suit looking less like a caricature of a mountain man and more like an engraving of a monocle-wearing gentleman that hangs in some barber shops. The Trenors were there, of course, Julia chatting to a clutch of fashionable ladies, Gus barking orders at the bartenders. Of course the Dorsets were there, and the Mathers, young and old. The Lincolns and the Morleys and those glamorously bohemian, yet genuinely old-school, Moore-Frontinis were huddled in groups chatting and laughing. Both U.S. senators, one from each party, were there.
The Chesterbrowns, or should I say Mr. Chesterbrown, as his wife had recently left him for another woman, was there. In a corner the surviving heads of the great Cleveland triumvirate passed judgment on all: the Hays of the steel money, who had given it all away; the Rushworths of the coal money, who had pissed it all away; and the Dagonets of the shipping money, who had managed to hang on to it all. The whole Van Alstyne clan seemed spread over all the rooms. To my utter surprise I saw Randall Leforte looking as shiny as a just-waxed car and clinging to the bar as if to a life raft.

“The groom’s taking Leforte under his wing,” Jim said sotto voce in my ear. “Trying to get me to play squash with him.”

When he saw Jim, Leforte made a straight line for him and dragged him off on the pretext of introducing him to one of the senators. Vivian’s father kissed my cheek and asked about my parents, who were traveling in Europe and had missed the wedding. I was chatting with the proud father of the bride, practically bursting out of his tuxedo, when Cinco Van Alstyne interrupted us.