A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel Read online

  “Meaning what?” I look at James, who takes my hands in his and kisses my forehead.

  “Then we’ll see,” she says. “That’s what I can convey at this moment.”

  The clatter of her heels begins as she heads toward the hallway. I resist apologizing once more. Have I ruined everything? I should not have put off having a family in my early thirties. Or is it more specific—was I drinking too much caffeine, should I not have gone on Katie’s boat only a week ago? I watch James pace the way he does before he closes a deal, when he is concentrating ceaselessly, waiting for the outcome.

  Someone is behind him. A nurse? My mother? I can’t be certain until I hear James.

  “Hi, Mom,” James says, his voice low and deflated. Has Mimi, James’s poised yet not always to be trusted mother, been waiting in the cafeteria, outside in the visitors’ lounge? I would feel better had she fit in another round of cards at Longreens and skipped her visit with me.

  “You poor girl.” Mimi comes close to the bed. “How are you?”

  I know she means well, as my mother would say. I turn away.

  “Elodie, dear, James is distraught.”

  “Mom?” James says. “Listen, maybe you could give us a minute. Dr. Noel just left.”

  “Darling,” Mimi says, “James, you look spent. Depleted, really.”

  At least Mimi has a son to inappropriately fawn over. My lost baby flashes before my eyes. Her deep-pink-and-fuchsia crib sheets are from Carousel Designs—she smells the way other babies smell, only better, more familiar, because she is mine. Next I envision myself strapping her into a stroller for a mother-daughter walk along Worth Avenue. In this trance, I’m such a happy mother that when Mimi appears, I’m magnanimous, handing my nameless baby over. I’m about to announce a name—What name would that be? Why haven’t we narrowed it down?—when I feel another ripple through my abdomen. My reverie halts.

  “I wanted to offer moral support, to check on you.” Mimi gives me a small, square smile.

  A wave of cramps, more blood. I am afraid; I don’t want to be transfused.

  “Well, thank you,” I say.

  My mother-in-law seems to be considering the latitude. Her instinct to safeguard James is always there. James, a good son, attempts to handle us both. My mother, who besides being wise and cautious likes Mimi, bought me a book when James and I were first married on the mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, son/husband triangle. I read that mothers-in-law should never criticize their daughters-in-law, that they should avoid driving a wedge into what is already a complex situation. According to that book, it’s James’s turn to say something.

  “James is worried about me.” I sound snippy, I can’t help it.

  Mimi rummages through her handbag and opens a tortoise compact mirror, as if she’s meeting friends at the Brazilian Court for lunch and is the first to arrive, with a few moments to primp.

  James straightens up. “We are worried about you. Everyone is.”

  Mimi shuts the compact, sighs. She is dressed in the clothes she wore this morning, a floral-print dress and medium heels—both now seem wilted.

  “Right, Mom?” James says. “Mother?”

  She isn’t listening; she arches her neck. “Will you excuse me a moment? I think I see the Carrolls, my neighbors. You know their daughter has had a few problems.”

  Mimi dares to step toward the door frame and pokes her head out.

  “Sure, that’s fine.” James follows her, escorting his mother to her escape. He is polished. I mouth Thank you without speaking a word.

  A few minutes after she has gone, I decide I only want to speak with my own family. Probably this is similar to the need someone has after she’s given birth—to be with her family over her in-laws.

  “Have you heard from my parents?”

  “They’re here, Elodie. See?” James points to the hallway, where it is true that my parents have materialized.

  First my father, in his tennis whites, glances into the room; presumably he’s displeased. He probably got the text in the middle of a set at Longreens. My mother is behind him. Like Mimi, she is dressed as she was this morning, when she was proud of me, lapping up the praise for my programming, lavished by a board member, Kira Stengler. Even in my present state, I concede how both my mother and father assiduously sidestep problems. Their motto is “Avoid anything unpleasant”; their caveat is “unless it is for the family.” They’re visiting because I’m their daughter. Together they are one operative, “the Veronica and Simon Show,” as my sister and I call them. Under any circumstance, including my miscarriage. Within seconds my mother is at my bedside stroking my hand while my father walks around the room.

  “Dearest, what an ordeal.” Veronica, as I call her, angles her head in my direction. “When that ambulance arrived, we were so frightened. Laurie is a fine assistant, so levelheaded. Your librarians—why, two of them came to the podium and urged us all to stay. Julianne Leigh kept going.”

  “Veronica,” my father says. “There isn’t any reason to describe—”

  “No, there is. Elodie should know the lecture went on. Afterward a few women, members you know well, asked if you had passed out. If you were well.”

  I don’t know what to say. I’m mortified.

  “It was a very successful event, in any case,” Veronica says.

  Simon is at the window. “There are a few black skimmers outside. You can see them clearly and the windowpanes need cleaning. They’re beyond the main building,” he says. “Can you see, Elodie?”

  “No,” I tell him.

  “Simon?” My mother angles her head again.

  “A room with a view, isn’t it?” Simon says.

  Her nude patent Manolos don’t click with the same tempo as Dr. Noel’s or Mimi’s, but near enough, as she hastens toward my father. “What an awful situation it is for Elodie and James.” She lifts my father’s wrist, code for Not here, not now.

  “I’m sorry,” my mother says. “And so is Dad.”

  “James knows what to do,” my father says.

  In the corner, James is on his iPhone. He is so facile, he reminds me of the teenage girls at the Academy who come into the library—ostensibly for literary purposes, but mainly to text or sext with the boys.

  “James?” Veronica says.

  “I’m trying to find Dr. Noel. She said to reach out directly. I want to find out when Elodie can be discharged.”

  “I thought you might need to get back to the office. If you do, Simon and I, we can be with Elodie.” Veronica is speaking about me like I’m not there.

  “I’d like James to stay.” Another gush of blood. I’m imagining I should be transfused. “James?”

  “Of course I’ll stay.”

  A young nurse wearing navy scrubs comes into the room, dragging a cart. “Hello.” She looks at everyone and no one. “I’m checking your vital signs. Could everyone step outside, only for a few minutes.”

  She lifts a digital thermometer from the cart. That’s when my father takes my mother by the elbow. My mother stares back at me woefully. If she could stay without him, I’d feel better; the room would feel less leaden.

  “We’ll be down the hall, sweetie. I’ll find a mystery, a thriller, to distract you,” she says. “I should have stopped at Classic Books and picked up something.”

  “We’re going. Now.” My father leads her away. It isn’t that I’ve not witnessed his brusque delivery—I’m used to it—but that I wish he wouldn’t.

  * * *

  More footsteps, female, not snappy, not stiletto. They stop outside the doorway.

  “It’s me.” Aubrey, my younger sister, appears in the very same patch that our parents have escaped. The molecules of air have crossed and the room is reconfigured in a brighter hue. I pull myself up a few inches to greet her.

  She has driven straight up from Miami. Although she is eight years younger, we could be twins. Our low hairlines, our overbites, which admirers find becoming, our narrow faces, how we squint the
same way. Mostly we are pale, with streaky blond over brown hair. From where I am half-propped up on a hospital bed, she looks awfully tall, beyond her five feet seven, then I notice her platform suede sandals. She moves quickly to my bedside, smelling of organic body lotion and lavender, frowning. “Why the IV?”

  “In case she needs any medication,” James says.

  “Well, I’m with you, Elodie. When this episode is over, we’ll go on the Avenue—Ta-boo for lunch, Vintage Tales, Eau Spa. The stuff you like, and it will be relaxing. I’ll stay with you and James—till you are back to yoga, back to work.”

  Aubrey bends a bit, drapes her arms around me as best she can. I let her. I let her be closer than anyone, including James.

  I face the wall while my sister goes on about it—the Lake Trail, Balanchine at the Miami City Ballet, a mani-pedi, Swedish massages, the new Alice and Olivia, salty caramel gelato.

  Then her sentences evaporate and the walls turn from hospital green to sepia.

  CHAPTER 3

  ELODIE

  “You deserve credit for choosing a place that’s near the Avenue and we won’t be seen by anyone we know,” I say to James.

  We’re at the pool area at the Colony Hotel at noon. We’ve been ushered to a table with an umbrella and my husband of eleven years and I sit facing each other. My second time out since my miscarriage, and the world feels precarious, precious.

  “Being here is a little like playing hooky. I bet we’re the only ones who have to get back to their desks,” James says.

  “We seem older; we’re the only ones not in the sun.” I point to women in string bikinis on the lounge chairs and a few toned men languidly reading texts on their iPhones. They seem to be trying to get rays, to be tanned if not sunburned. Suddenly I feel like we might not be as fetching and quintessential a Palm Beach “young couple” anymore. My friends are out and about right now. Some at work, a few at Longreens or Mar-a-Lago, playing tennis, golf, or cards. There are the “girl lunches” at the Breakers beach club or purse shopping, an occasional parent-teacher conference at the Academy.

  “We came to talk, Elodie.”

  At least we are invisible—no friends or family, no members of the Literary Society are circling. Besides, the southeast breeze will blow our words away from us, toward the Intracoastal.

  A young woman about Aubrey’s age, blond, with a pretty face, hands us two menus, which flap in the wind. Are James and I about to decide on more change orders, discuss delays in deliveries for our new house? A list lights up in my head: custom floors—La Roche di Rex from Italy—closets with windows, an ill-conceived, then restructured terrace off the master bedroom. All this after we’ve settled the architecture debacle over Mediterranean or Bermuda style. The past year, James and I have been looped together, a team for the house. James usually wins—because he cares so much, because I speak more softly. He holds up his forefinger and middle finger. “We’ll have two iced teas.”

  As our server disappears, I’m tempted to switch my order to a latte. Instead, I watch her go, wondering if she has children, what their names are. Does her husband work nearby? Do they live on the other side of the Intracoastal? Perhaps in West Palm or Lantana, or right in Lake Worth.

  “Is living across the bridge more family-oriented?” I ask.

  “More family-oriented?” James says. “I don’t know. Less tony, that’s for sure. There are plenty of families on the island—right in Palm Beach.”

  If our server has children, they would be very young and very blond.

  “Listen, Elodie,” James says. “Dr. Noel has said—”

  “What? When did you speak with Dr. Noel?”

  “When you were at South Palm. She was with you first and you heard what she said and then she and I had a brief—”

  “Without me? Don’t we speak to Dr. Noel together?”

  James raises his arms; his muscles show more than most husbands’ do. He’s in a kelly green polo shirt and khakis, meaning he might only stop at ANVO for an hour this afternoon, that he has golf plans with clients.

  “There were two minutes, she and I were by the door to your room. I wanted to feel her out,” James says. “Calmly.”

  Although I should have been included, I don’t say this smacks of betrayal. Instead, I admit to myself that I’ve been touchy. I give him credit for searching for answers. I wait.

  “What she suggested is that we hire a gestational carrier, using a donor egg, a surrogate.”

  “That’s what she said?” I look at his face.

  He nods.

  “James, stop, please. I don’t know what you’re thinking,” I say.

  “I’m offering the options.”

  “Options? Options?”

  “Hear me out, please.” My husband drums his hand on the arm of his chair.

  I move my body about, repositioning myself. My uterus is cramping in the aftermath of the miscarriage.

  “It would be my sperm and someone else’s egg … artificial insemination. Then that woman would give birth to our baby.”

  “Why not my egg?”

  “You can get pregnant—but fertility declines with age. Your eggs are older, they’re less viable.”

  Less viable. Less potent. In another life I wore La Costa el Algodón mini-slips to bed to entice my husband; his very touch sent shivers through me. I ached for him and for our lovemaking long past the expiration date for romance in a marriage.

  For the last two years, our sex life has been a means to an end and we’ve willingly traded in our shared need in the night for baby making. Between pregnancies that failed, an ovulation thermometer surfaced on my bed stand. That became our measure of seduction and tenderness. The cycles, the injections, subcutaneous and intramuscular. Before that, I used to make him laugh.

  “So we’re one of those hapless couples without a baby, despite every measure we took. Only luckier because at least we haven’t plowed through our savings before we give up,” I say.

  “The pregnancies that ended, they’re a loss for me, too.” James’s voice is low. “I don’t want to give up, Elodie. You know I don’t.”

  “I’ve researched how some couples adopt a baby in Russia or mainland China. One or two infertile couples miraculously became pregnant once they got back to the United States. We’ve talked about adoption and traveling to a country where the babies and little children are in need of a home.” I put this idea out partly as a magic potion and partly because adoption would be fine with me. “And we would share that experience, if we adopted.”

  “Not my first choice.” James’s tone is firm. While the circumstances have changed, his attitude about adopting has not.

  “Somehow it could still happen for us. We could have our baby,” I say. If only it were for sure.

  Another round of in vitro isn’t happening, I know by the way he shakes his head, and I realize that I’ve taken hormones for nothing. I swallow hard. How could this be my life? I’ve watched mothers stroll along the Avenue with their small children, fulfilled, content. Some secretly doling out M&M’s, others handing out Polly-O string cheese. Mothers with their children, traveling together from playgroup to painting classes at the Four Arts, on to gymnastics at Gymboree. Over Christmas vacation they add a few days at the Breakers holiday camp, visits to the aquarium and children’s zoo. The best is when mothers come into the Literary Society with their small children for the Children’s Hour on the fourth floor. We showcase children’s book authors, Nancy Tillman, Nick Bruel, and P. G. Bell, while never forgetting Goodnight Moon or Chicken Soup with Rice. We order new titles as well as classics—the key is that they’re imaginative, adventurous, and bold. Books I would select for my own child.

  Two days ago I read The Tiger Who Came to Tea to the three- to five-year-olds. There is a sister and brother who come each week. The mother sets one child on each knee as they listen. The little girl fusses with her pigtails and wears funky-print leggings and the little boy claps when I turn the pages. That is when I most want
to hold my own child close as the world unfolds.

  “I want a baby, too, James. With you. I don’t want a stranger’s eggs. Someone we don’t know carrying our baby, being the donor.”

  “I agree it brings up another level of potential problems,” James sighs. “It’s too…”

  “Unnatural?” I say. “I’m uneasy with the idea. Having your sperm shot into her body while I’d be on the sidelines.”

  “Something like that. I know how you must feel.” James leans in, beseeches me. “I’ve really thought about it, scrupulously.”

  I want to remind him that I have never failed at anything in my life. James knows, doesn’t he? I was a straight-A student who earned academic scholarships for both undergraduate and graduate school. I was summa at Princeton; I have a master’s degree in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have finished every novel I’ve ever started reading, including The Brothers Karamazov. I’ve never cheated on a boyfriend, including in high school; I’ve never stood anyone up. I’m a dutiful daughter and genuinely adore my sister. I worked hard to become director of events—scheduling exhibitions, book discussions, and author talks. I’m upping diversity, explaining to the board why it matters to include grade schools, to offer outreach for children and adults alike. I fought the board for our Writers and Critics schedule, then chased down the talent. Wasn’t I taught by my parents that perseverance pays off? Yet not with this, not with carrying a baby to term.

  Our server, still young, still potentially nosy, appears with our drinks. I measure the sugar into a spoon, only half full. Then I stir gently. I might skid off the seat; I might disappear.

  “Okay, I think I get it,” I say. “We have a life. We have our love, our work. Maybe it isn’t only about having a baby. We care about each other.”

  I half believe it—if only I can dispel the baby. My husband leans closer, kisses me lightly on the lips. I can taste the tannic acid from his iced tea. There is something about James today that unsettles me. Like the person I married has gone missing, replaced by this nervous version, a woebegone man.