“Hey, mama, what’s goin’ on?”
Minnie did a double take. Good God! Perhaps the light was playing tricks on her, but there appeared to be a large semi-naked Negro sprawled out on her antique Italian chaise longue. Other than his state of undress, the young man was remarkable for a huge springy halo of black hair that bobbed up and down as he spoke, and for the long, fat, and disintegrating marijuana cigarette that he was holding perilously close to her Chinese silk cushions. But worse even than that, this dreadful, uncouth apparition seemed to be trying to enter into conversation with her.
“Beautiful place you got here, know what I’m sayin’?” he continued, littering ash across the furniture and carpet as he attempted an appreciative sweeping gesture with his huge black arm.
“Thank you,” said Minnie icily. “We like it. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me who you are, young man, and what you’re doing in my drawing room?”
“He’s with me.”
A very well-spoken young Englishman had appeared in the doorway and strode confidently over to Minnie, taking her hand and kissing it before she had a moment to protest. “Edward Lyle, at your service.”
He couldn’t have been much over twenty-one, thought Minnie, but he dressed with an impeccable, gentlemanly English grace that made him seem older. He also had the self-assurance, bordering on arrogance, that so many public-school-educated young people from his country seemed to possess. Minnie hated this in Caroline, but found herself quite prepared to be charmed by it in the case of this handsome young fellow.
“This is Skinny.” He gestured to his friend. “Stand up, man, show Mrs. McMahon some respect.” Skinny looked at him incredulously but obligingly lifted his massive frame up off the chaise longue. Edward continued. “We’re both old friends of Caroline’s. She said it wouldn’t be a problem for us to hang out at the pool today, which was damn decent of her.”
Minnie’s interested smile evaporated. Any friend of Caroline’s was an enemy of hers.
“Please don’t worry, Mrs. McMahon,” Edward tried to reassure her. “We’re very self-sufficient, aren’t we, Skin? We won’t get under your feet.”
At that moment two strikingly beautiful girls in matching minuscule red Dior bikinis came skipping into the room, their bare feet still wet from the swimming pool. One of them headed straight to Duke’s wet bar, where she proceeded to empty the entire fridge of olives and potato chips, cramming the food in her mouth as though she hadn’t eaten for weeks.
“Munchies,” she mumbled at Minnie through a mouthful of chips, before collapsing into a wet heap of giggles all over a pink suede armchair. Meanwhile, her friend had flung herself at Skinny, who collapsed back onto the chaise longue so hard that it gave an ominously audible crack.
“Oh, no,” said Minnie, flapping her arms frantically in a vain attempt to persuade him to move. “Get up! You’re going to break it!”
But before a disorientated Skinny had a chance to move, there was more sickening splintering. Minnie could only look on in horror as one of the legs gave way completely. Surveying the wreckage, she wanted to scream, but a lifetime of self-control prevented her from doing so. Instead, she addressed herself as calmly as she could to Edward, who seemed to be the only member of the group in something like full command of his senses.
“Well, Mr. Lyle, I think it might be better if you and your friends went outside to play, don’t you? I’m sure Mr. McMahon would appreciate it if at least some of his furniture were still intact by the time he got home.”
“Yes, yes, of course, I’m . . . we’re all terribly sorry, aren’t we?”
Skinny looked slightly shamefaced, but both girls had given in to the uncontrollable laughter of the irreparably stoned. None of them looked terribly sorry to Minnie.
“Just go, please,” she said.
Mercifully, they did.
Once the group had shuffled back out to the pool, she sank down wearily to her knees and examined the mahogany shards that were all that was left of the leg. Honestly, this really was the last straw. She would tackle Duke about it tonight, once and for all. Having that dreadful girl here was surely bad enough, without allowing her appalling, insolent, platform-shoe-wearing, drug-taking, long-haired hippie friends to treat the estate like a hotel.
Caroline’s first year at Hancock Park had been a living nightmare for Minnie. It was not her husband’s infidelity that bothered her so much as Caroline’s attempted assumption of the role of lady of the house. Only last week, Minnie had caught her haranguing Conchita in a
most
unladylike manner over some trifling offense or other. (She was sure that Duke must be wrong about Caroline’s aristocratic lineage. Minnie had come across hobos in Connecticut with better language.) Day after day, Caroline filled the house with her brash, braying English friends, who thought nothing of eating Minnie out of house and home, or lounging all around the house in their frightful bell-bottoms, smoking marijuana. And they didn’t restrict their shocking behavior to the public rooms either. Heavens alone knew what went on up in the south-wing bedrooms, between her beautifully laundered linen sheets!
So far, whenever Minnie had complained to Duke about these riff-raff, he had been noncommittal. He had held back from openly supporting his girlfriend over his wife, but neither would he reprimand Caroline, or do anything to ease the almost unbearable tension caused by her increasingly insensitive and tactless behavior. Minnie suspected, accurately, that he derived a powerful sense of pleasure from watching the friction between the two of them.
Nevertheless, she thought as she grimly swept up the splinters of wood, she would tackle him again about it this evening. It was her fifty-fifth birthday tomorrow and a celebration dinner had been planned for tonight, a long-standing McMahon tradition. Perhaps, on her birthday, he would be in a slightly more receptive mood.
Duke returned home earlier than usual and was relieved to find the house free of hangers-on. He had taken to spending increasing amounts of time away from home recently, either at the country club in Bel Air or at mysterious “meetings.” He found Caroline’s parasitic social set every bit as grating as his wife did, and intensely disliked returning to a houseful of strangers—although he was damned if he was going to give Minnie the satisfaction of admitting as much to her. Despite his lack of solidarity with her over Caroline’s friends, his absences nevertheless encouraged Minnie, who hoped he might be beginning a new affair. The sooner he tired of Caroline, the better for all of them.
Strolling into his study, he poured himself three fingers of bourbon and sank into his leather armchair, eyes closed, savoring this rare moment of peace. It was soon to be shattered, however, by the unwelcome arrival of an apoplectic Pete.
“I suppose it’s too much to expect that you actually remembered Mother’s birthday?” Pete himself was laden with ostentatiously wrapped packages, a walking tower of bright metallic paper and bows.
Duke found few things in life more objectionable than his son’s belligerent, whining voice, so full of hatred and yet its owner so utterly lacking the courage to act upon it. He opened one eye momentarily, then closed it again before speaking. “Well, good evening to you, too, Peter.”
“You forgot again, didn’t you?”
“I did not forget.” Duke looked his son in the eye. “I never forget your mother’s birthday. I sometimes choose not to celebrate it, which is a different thing.”
A vein in Pete’s jaw had begun to twitch, as though his body were barely able to contain the bile and rage within. He only just managed to control himself sufficiently to set down his presents gently on the desk, rather than hurling them all violently at the old man’s face.
“This year, however, I
have
brought a little something for my dear wife.”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Duke produced a ring box. Pete caught the distinctive Cambridge-blue flash of Tiffany and watched his father open it to reveal a subtle, delicately crafted band of diamonds and white gold. It was elegant, conservative—exactly to his mother’s taste.
“It’s an eternity ring. To symbolize the permanence of our joyous union.” Duke snorted mirthlessly. “For better or worse, kiddo, in sickness and in health. Whaddaya think? Will Mrs. McMahon approve?”
What the hell was he playing at? Pete couldn’t quite figure out if it was an act of gross insensitivity or more calculated spite. It didn’t occur to him that beneath his father’s cynicism and bitterness, he might still harbor any feelings of love toward his mother. As far as Pete was concerned, Duke was a monster. Even on Minnie’s birthday, he couldn’t resist trying to hurt her.
Later that evening, the birthday supper had begun unusually calmly, with everyone making an effort to suspend hostilities. Duke was oddly quiet and had even asked Minnie quite politely about her birthday plans, much to the astonishment of his children. None of them could remember the last time they had spent so civilized an evening together, and hope that Caroline might finally be on her way out was running high.
Minnie decided to wait until the main course (her favorite, rare roast beef with Yorkshire pudding) before broaching the subject of the chaise longue with Duke. After the best part of four decades together, she knew him well enough to realize that he was far more likely to be responsive to her complaints after a couple of glasses of wine.
“By the way, Duke,” she said, almost casually, once the second bottle of Merlot was well under way, “did you see that we had a small, erm, accident today?”
“Oh yeah?” He looked supremely uninterested. “What happened?”
“The chaise longue. You know the Italian one, in”—she checked herself—“in the den? Well I’m afraid it was broken. The leg’s come right off. Seamus had a look at it for me, but he says it’s quite beyond repair.”
“What the fuck do you mean it was broken?” This was better than Minnie had expected. He looked extremely irate. “Who the fuck broke it? I don’t believe this. Who broke it?” Duke looked around the table accusingly.
“Some wine, Caroline?” said Pete, who knew what had happened and was beginning to enjoy himself.
“Not for me, thank you,” she replied. Pete noticed with annoyance that she didn’t seem remotely rattled. In fact she seemed, if not quite subdued, then strangely content. It bothered him.
“Is anybody gonna answer me?” Duke’s cheeks were reddening, a combination of the wine and his mounting frustration. “Laurie, was it you? Did you sit your fat ass down on my Italian couch?” He pronounced it “eye-talian,” which had always made Minnie cringe and Caroline laugh.
“Daddy, don’t be so horrid,” said Laurie, blushing to the roots of her hair. “I can’t help it if I have a problem with my weight.”
“Sure you can,” said Duke, staring at her plate piled high with Yorkshire pudding and gravy. “Quit eating.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” she said petulantly, pushing her food to the side of her plate and pouting. “It was some great big black guy, some friend of Caroline’s. He’s been hanging around the house all week, hasn’t he, Mother?”
Minnie knew better than to say anything. She arranged her face into a familiar expression of patient forbearance and let Duke’s rage take its inevitable course.
He looked at Caroline, and when he spoke, his voice was ominously quiet. “Skinny was here today?”
Caroline met his eyes defiantly. She wasn’t Minnie, and she wasn’t about to let the bastard bully her. “Yes, Duke, he was. I didn’t know he was coming, though. Edward brought him.”
Duke’s hand had tightened around his fork. He cleared his throat. “I see. Caroline, I thought I had made my views patently clear on this point. But perhaps not. So why don’t I just restate for the record. Number one,” he held up one finger, “I don’t want any fucking Negroes in this house.”
“Darling!” Caroline found Duke’s racism both objectionable and ridiculous, although she knew Minnie, and probably the children, too, shared his prejudices. “Skinny’s a Harvard graduate.”
He raised his hand to stop her. “Excuse me, I haven’t finished. Number two: I will not have my home used as a goddamn monkey house for every fucking waif and stray you pick up. Got it?”
At this point Minnie would have backed down completely, but Caroline squared her shoulders at him bravely. “This is my home too, Duke.”
She was angry, but there were also tears in her eyes. Minnie was taken aback. She had never seen Caroline looking so emotional.
“Yes, honey, it is, it is your home,” said Duke, who had also been surprised by her reaction. He had learned to expect fireworks from Caroline. It was part of the sexual dynamic between them, that she would stand up to him in public, constantly challenging his will, only to be fucked into groveling, ecstatic submission later in bed. But this evening she looked genuinely upset. “It is your home. But you did not pay for that couch.”
“Chaise longue,” corrected Minnie.
Duke shot her a withering glance.
“I don’t appreciate it when your friends come around here and break valuable shit like that, you know? And I don’t like that big black bastard hanging around you all the time.”
Caroline looked up at him and smiled, that same serene smile that Pete had noticed earlier. There was definitely something funny going on between them. Duke took her hand, a gesture that was somehow both possessive and conciliatory. “I don’t like it,” he repeated, softly.
“Okay,” said Caroline, suddenly meek again. “I’ll stop seeing him. Promise.” She turned around to Minnie. “And I’m sorry about your couch.”
“Chaise longue!” shouted Laurie and Pete in unison.
“Whatever,” said Caroline.
Minnie retired to the drawing room after dinner with the rest of the family, feeling utterly deflated. Listlessly, she picked up one of Pete and Claire’s brightly wrapped presents and sighed as she pulled at its blue silk ribbons. What had just happened in there?
For the past two weeks she had became more and more convinced that Duke was cheating on Caroline. First of all there were his unexplained absences and their increasingly frequent rows about her English friends. And then, last week, he had actually come creeping into Minnie’s own bed, for the first time since Caroline had moved in.