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It certainly wasn’t Lori, because although she had, through her administrative support, probably worked as hard as I had to prepare us for this meeting, she never got to enjoy the perks like Claudia and I did. It could have been Lana Jacobs, though we generally didn’t bring in PR at this point—not until we had the prospective model on board. Mark Sulzberg from Legal? Way too soon for that. It wasn’t like Irina was ready to sign a contract with us yet, especially since we weren’t the only players in the fashion industry vying for Irina’s hand.
It could have been Phillip Landau, the up-and-coming photographer who had first captured Irina for Vogue. The two had become almost inseparable since that career-boosting fashion spread, and their constant camaraderie might have sparked rumors of romance, if not for the fact that Phillip was gay.
Still curious, I popped my head into Claudia’s office. “So who’s going to lunch next week?” I inquired.
Claudia looked up from the issue of W she’d been poring over, whether because she was trend-spotting or simply gathering ammunition for her next shopping spree I wasn’t sure.
“Lunch?” Claudia said, gazing up at me in what looked like a drug-induced fog. She was shopping, I decided. Nothing else could put a glaze like the one I saw in Claudia’s eyes right now like the pursuit of the latest handbag or cut of trouser.
“With Irina?”
Her gaze sharpened up immediately, as if the very utterance of Irina’s name put all her senses on full alert. “Well, Irina and Mimi, of course. Me and Dianne,” she said, ticking off each name on the tips of her manicured fingers. “Michael—”
“Michael Dubrow?” I asked, startled. “Why is he coming?”
Claudia eyed me speculatively. I must have been showing a little more emotion than the situation warranted.
Hoping to dispel any suspicion I may have caused, I said, “It just seems peculiar that the vice president of our Overseas Division is attending a lunch to woo our latest model, don’t you think?” Even as I said the words with the veneer of cool indifference that had become my trademark, new anxiety washed over me. I hadn’t seen Michael at close range for quite some time. Shortly after our affair, he had taken over management of the Overseas Division, which kept him out of the country a lot. When he was in the States, he usually worked out of the Long Island office, and even if he did come to New York, he was easy enough to avoid, seeing as the doors to the family town house in Sutton Place weren’t exactly open to all. The few times I did find myself in meetings with him in our Park Avenue offices, there were enough other people in the room for me to maintain a cool, corporate indifference to him from across the room. But the intimacy of sitting across a table in a restaurant from Michael suddenly seemed like too much to bear. It surprised me to what extent he could unravel me after all this time. Maybe I was getting soft in my old age.
“I believe he’s coming to escort Courtney,” she said, feasting her gaze once more on the magazine before her.
“Courtney?”
“Courtney Manchester. The new director of R & D?” she said, looking at me again. “I guess he feels responsible for her. Or something,” she continued. “After all, he did, in a sense, acquire her, right along with the Sparkle line. Knowing him, he probably wants to claim the company’s new baby as his own so he can reap all the glory once Roxy D takes off.” She snorted. “But I suppose with the amount of money this company is dropping on this product, something glorious is bound to happen.”
As Claudia moved on to her typical rant about how Michael—or even Dianne, for that matter—didn’t know a thing about successfully marketing a product beyond throwing a bunch of money at it, I nodded absently, my mind whirling with the implications of what she had just told me. For a brief moment, I wasn’t even sure what bothered me more: the fact that I suspected Michael was openly wooing his next conquest or the fact that, clearly, I was not a main player in Roxanne Dubrow’s next big campaign. I hadn’t even been invited to this fucking lunch.
Before the steam visibly shot out of my ears, I interrupted Claudia’s tirade with a hurried excuse about a call I needed to make to a sales rep, then headed straight for my office, closing the door behind me.
And while I sat there contemplating the fact that my future at Roxanne Dubrow was not as rosy as I had once thought, I found myself clicking on the e-mail archive where I had filed the semiannual corporate newsletters we received.
Glancing through the file, I quickly located the newsletter announcing Roxanne Dubrow’s acquisition of Sparkle and opened it up, my eyes seeking out the article—and more specifically, the photo of Courtney Manchester I had barely glanced at when it first arrived. But I took it all in now.
Like Courtney Manchester’s winning smile. Her russet hair and sparkling green eyes.
Michael always was a sucker for a pretty face. And this one was downright irresistible to him, I was sure.
If he wasn’t sleeping with her yet, it was only a matter of time.
To think I had once let this man inside me without a condom.
But not even my anger could squash the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Why did this bother me so much? I had dumped better men than Michael since, at least in terms of how available Drew or Ethan had made themselves to me.
Because you loved him, a little voice whispered, as I remembered how many nights I had lain awake during our affair, wishing he weren’t so powerful, so ambitious, so hard to nail down for more than just some fleeting yet utterly intimate encounters.
Is that what love was? Longing followed by pain and loss?
If that was true, I didn’t want any part of it.
4
“A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.”
—Zsa Zsa Gabor
If I could have flung myself wholeheartedly into the new campaign, I would have. Anything to avoid thinking about what a disappointment the men in my life were.
But since Claudia had carefully excluded me from any meaningful role in the Roxy D campaign, I no longer felt compelled to work late reviewing advertising firms and drafting proposals. If Claudia wanted this baby all to herself, then she could deal with it all by herself.
I had better things to do. It wasn’t like Roxanne Dubrow was going to survive next year on the strength of Roxy D alone. There was still, according to our market research, a whole segment of women in the 35-to-50-year-old range who had yet to discover the wonders of Youth Elixir, our flagship moisturizer. I decided to concern myself once more with the demographic that needed me most, at least from a skincare perspective. Besides, the Youth Elixir campaign needed all my creative energy if I hoped to keep it afloat now that the budget for it had been cut nearly in half.
I had carefully explained to Shelley the challenge of promoting the Youth Elixir on a drastically reduced budget that week during our session. I could see she was looking for an opening to talk about something with a bit more emotional depth than whether or not I could single-handedly raise Youth Elixir to new sales heights, but I didn’t give her the chance. What was the point of wallowing in whatever problems she imagined remained beneath the surface?
Still, I was aware of some lingering malaise over Michael, one I could not erase as effectively as I had Ethan.
No less than three times that week, I caught myself fantasizing about some big scene in which, with one or two killing statements, I revealed to Courtney as well as to Michael’s doting sister, Dianne, that Michael Dubrow was a womanizing jerk. Which was why I decided to disappear for the few hours that I lived in danger of running into Michael and his entourage.
So, at eleven-thirty on the appointed day—a full forty-five minutes before the Dubrow clan was due to arrive via car service from Long Island—I went to Bloomingdale’s.
In case you think I was shirking my duties out of emotional distress, trust me, I did have some competitive shopping to do. Some of the major manufacturers had come out with new gift packages, and I needed to see what Roxanne Dubrow’s competitors were up to, didn’t I?
The fact that I dawdled in the designer section on Two once I was done in cosmetics had nothing to do with anything. After all, September was now fully upon us, and I could already feel the cooler weather creeping in. I needed to stock up on this season’s trousers and sweaters if I hoped to make it through the coming winter.
By the time I left Bloomingdale’s a full two hours later, I was armed with enough shopping bags to make my time away from the office look suspiciously like a personal shopping spree. So I opted for a quick cab ride across town to my apartment, where I relieved myself of all non-work-related expenditures, and took a few moments to dust powder over my face and freshen up my lipstick. Because if I was unfortunate enough to run into Michael, I needed to look gorgeous enough to fill him with a pang of regret that he would never, ever, have me in the horizontal—or otherwise—again.
Take that, I said, standing before the full-length mirror in my bedroom and studying the way my light sweater hugged my curves, the way my narrow skirt accentuated my legs. My well-cut jacket that balanced the vamp element the skirt lent the whole outfit, setting me firmly in the tastefully-corporate-yet-supremely-feminine camp. A dab of lipstick (just a refresher, mind you—I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard) and I left the apartment, more than ready to face whatever Michael Dubrow had to dish out.
Of course, one glance at my watch as the cab rolled toward Park Avenue indicated that I had been gone almost three hours and was likely in no danger of running into any of the Dubrows. The way I calculated it, lunch had ended by two o’clock and Dianne et al. were on the L.I.E. no later than two-fifteen.
Which was why my eyes practically popped out of my head when my cab pulled up and I spotted the Dubrows’ shiny dark luxury sedan parked in front of the building. The driver sat inside reading a newspaper, as if he didn’t anticipate leaving anytime soon.
I paid my cab fare and stepped out onto the sidewalk, knowing full well there was no way I could avoid the Dubrow clan any longer.
The first thing I noticed when I entered the office was that it was eerily empty—and surprisingly quiet. Lori’s desk was vacant, and if not for the furious tapping of keys that I heard coming from Claudia’s office, I would have thought the building had been evacuated.
I stopped in her doorway. “What’s going on?”
She glanced up. “Where have you been?”
“Bloomingdale’s,” I replied, holding up the single bag I had brought back to the office with me, which contained an assortment of offerings from our main competitors. “The winter gift packages are in stores,” I replied by way of explanation.
“Dianne has got everyone gathered in the conference room,” Claudia said. “We’re about to have a champagne toast.”
“Don’t tell me you got Mimi Blaustein to sign over her star property during lunch?”
“No, no,” Claudia said, shaking her head. “Please. You should have seen the way everyone was fawning over that Irina at lunch. Disgusting. As if anyone was really interested in what a girl barely out of her training bra had to say, which wasn’t much.” She rolled her eyes. “No, Irina and Mimi are long gone. Something about a plane Irina had to catch to Paris.” I saw a hint of bleariness in her well-made-up eyes and realized that Claudia was likely exhausted from having to curb her irritation with the girl-barely-out-of-training-bra for the sake of the company’s agenda. “I just wanted to get this e-mail out before the end of day and I was hoping to buy you some extra time….”
“Time for what?” I blinked.
“Oh, God knows. Dianne has some sort of announcement she wants to make.”
Everyone was already assembled, from PR and Sales to the marketing teams for all three of the brands. I spotted Michael right away, chatting merrily with Doug Rutherford, the Director of Sales, who kept an office at the other end of our U-shaped space for when he was in town. In that one fleeting glance I allowed myself, I saw that Michael was just as handsome as ever, with his dark brown hair and thickly lashed blue eyes. Although he had just passed the forty-two mark, he somehow seemed younger-looking than ever. Michael epitomized the phrase “boyishly handsome,” with his (seemingly) guileless features and somewhat petulant mouth and jutting chin. It suited his position as the late-in-life baby, born a full twelve years after Dianne—much to the delight of Roxanne Dubrow and her late husband, Ambrose. And Michael was every bit as spoiled and selfish as that position in life allowed, I had realized just after he had carelessly made love to me as if it didn’t matter. As if I didn’t matter.
Not allowing myself to dwell on that face—or the surprising tremor of feeling that radiated through me, even after all this time—I made my eyes flit about the room until they fell on Dianne, who stood at the helm, her shiny brown hair framing her perfectly made-up face and flawless skin—well, as flawless as a woman of fifty-four could look. She was, as always, dressed to perfection in a fitted ivory suit (the season’s new black, as of last week’s issue of W), and looking like the petite but exquisite queen of the Dubrow clan that she had become when her mother had gone into retirement over a decade ago. The sight of her filled me with a strange sort of relief, as it occurred to me that I had not seen Dianne in probably months. Though she had always ruled the roost from the Long Island office, previously she had made her presence in the New York office felt through frequent visits. I wondered now what had kept her away.
“Makes you want to puke, doesn’t she?” Claudia said, startling me as she came to stand at my side.
“Puke?” I asked, confused.
“Courtney Manchester. The redhead talking to Dianne….”
I shifted my gaze, taking in the woman who stood by Dianne’s side, smiling up at her with perfectly made-up porcelain features. I hadn’t even recognized her. Probably because she looked even more beautiful than she did in that little photo I had dug up.
I decided to play neutral. What choice did I have? “Well, she’s a beautiful woman,” I replied, as if this explained everything, right down to the tremble my body could barely contain.
Claudia snorted. “Please. Wait until you see her teeth. She’s a Brit, remember?”
I tried to focus on this one seeming flaw as I made my way across the room to greet Dianne. I couldn’t very well avoid the CEO of Roxanne Dubrow just because my heart felt like someone had just placed a large boulder on it. Besides, Dianne had already spotted me across the room and had gently waved me over, her face wreathed in the kind of gracious warmth that was a perk of her deluxe lifestyle.
“Grace Noonan!” Dianne said, holding out one well-manicured hand to me and pulling me into a cheek-grazing embrace. Dianne treated her employees as if they were family, only somehow I never truly felt like a member, no matter how many corporate hugs and Christmas gifts I’d collected over time. “We missed you at lunch today. Claudia said you had another appointment…?”
Before I could turn to send my boss a querying glance, Dianne introduced me to the lovely Courtney, who smiled pleasantly up at me. She was a tiny little thing—probably no more than five-four.
Suddenly there I was, smiling just as cordially back and extending a hand. Was this the woman who would convince Michael Dubrow that a relationship with one of his employees wouldn’t destroy the Dubrow empire? I wondered, gazing on her pretty features, yes, there was the matter of a turned front tooth, but it really was quite charming, and listening to the pleasantries she uttered in that beautiful British accent. I took some small measure of comfort in the idea that maybe Michael’s interest had more to do with the profit he saw in the merger between Sparkle and Roxanne Dubrow. Perhaps it was this small ray of hope that gave me strength when Michael himself finally made his way over to us.
Balls, I thought, as he gazed frankly at me, a confident smile on that well-shaped mouth. If nothing else, Michael Dubrow had a set of balls on him, I thought. I felt anew the desire to cut him down to size in front of Dianne, who gazed at him fondly as he stepped into our circle, and Courtney, who looked like she was about to fawn all over him, judging from the way her features softened when he stopped next to her.
“Grace, good to see you,” he said, nodding at me before turning to Courtney. “I assume you’ve met Courtney,” he continued, not taking his gaze from her, as if she were some precious jewel that had caught his eye.
And apparently, she was. Because no sooner had Michael locked gazes with the lovely Courtney than Dianne suddenly remembered that she had gathered us all here for a reason. “It’s time,” she said, with a clap of her hands that commanded the attention of everyone in the room and sent Lori, who, I noticed, had been circulating with a champagne-laden tray, to our circle. Once we had grabbed the remaining five glasses and Lori had tucked the tray beneath the conference table, Dianne stood center stage.
“I’m sure you are all wondering why I have gathered you here today,” she said, flashing us that gracious smile. “As it turns out, I have a wonderful announcement to make. Two, in fact,” she continued, her proud glance flitting over to Michael and Courtney.
“As you all know, last year we acquired the wonderful Sparkle line headed up by Courtney Manchester out of the U.K. And it is our fervent hope that by placing this line under the Roxanne Dubrow umbrella, the future of our great line will be secure. That’s why I am proud to announce that Courtney Manchester, who will oversee the transformation of this new product under Roxanne Dubrow, has been promoted to the position of Vice President of Product Development.”
The room erupted in a smattering of applause, small enough for me to hear Claudia mutter, “As if we didn’t see that coming.”
Then, as if the other thing that was coming was just as obvious, Dianne continued, “And I am also happy to announce another merger, this one a bit more personal.” Raising her glass she said, “To Michael and Courtney, who have just, this past weekend, announced their engagement.”
5
“We are all tied to our destiny and there is no way to liberate ourselves.”
—Rita Hayworth
I stopped at Zabar’s on the way home, feeling a burning need to chop, sauté and simmer. It wasn’t often that I cooked, and on some level, I knew its value for me was more therapeutic than culinary. I had decided on stir fry, mostly because I understood that after the emotionally harrowing events of the afternoon, I would have to chop a gardenful of vegetables to soothe what ailed me. And chop I would, having picked up three peppers, a monstrous eggplant, a head of broccoli, a slew of mushrooms and more garlic than one should consume on Friday night if one hopes to find oneself in the company of others. But I had already decided I didn’t want to socialize. Claudia had pressed me for a post-work cocktail on my way out of the office, but I didn’t feel like standing at some bar, listening to my more-bitter-by-the-hour boss rail against the injustice of Courtney’s sudden rise to the right hand of the Dubrow family, especially when the place she had taken in Michael’s heart still stung. And how it stung. Even more so when I saw the way Dianne embraced the happy couple, welcoming Courtney to the family in a way that filled me with a strange longing. I knew now why I never felt a part of the Dubrow “family.” Because I wasn’t. And never would be.
That thought sent me straight to the liquor store after Zabar, to pick up a bottle of wine. I had felt a determination to make this evening alone just as pleasurable and relaxing as it might have been had I spent it with someone else. I even splurged on a French Bordeaux.
So it was with a bag of produce and a bottle of wine that I sailed through my front lobby. I even winked at Malakai, my ever-friendly and ever-accommodating doorman, who graciously held open the door, eyeing my purchases as I glided through. “Is my tall friend coming by?” he asked cheerfully, referring to Ethan. Malakai always referred to the men in my life by some physical characteristic. My last boyfriend, Drew, had been his “blond friend.” Even Michael, despite the fact that his visits were few and far between, had earned the moniker of Malakai’s “blue-eyed friend.”
This was the problem with doormen. You couldn’t hide your love life—or lack thereof—from them. Though we only had one and he only worked five to midnight, Malakai’s shift covered that crucial period of the evening when everything did—or didn’t—happen in a woman’s life.
“No, no one’s coming by,” I said, with a bracing smile as I transferred my bags to one arm and headed for the line of mailboxes at the other end of the lobby, trying to escape Malakai’s inevitable teasing comment about how he would never let me spend an evening alone if he were twenty years younger.
I knew he meant well, in the way that aging uncle of yours meant well when he sang you the Miss America song when you were six. But I just wasn’t in the mood.
Once at the mailboxes, I slid my key in, then grabbed out the handful of catalogs, bills and credit card offers that were my daily due, when a letter caught my eye, the return address as familiar to me by now as my own.
K. Morova. Brooklyn, NY.
I knew that handwriting, though I did not know the writer herself. Had traced my finger often enough over the signature that had come back on the return receipt for the letter I had sent Kristina Morova, all those months ago.
My mother, at least in biological fact.
The woman whom I had believed, up until this moment, had no interest in meeting me.
I ignored the pulse of pure fear that constricted my throat and quickly slid the letter between the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog, as if to protect myself from its contents, then headed for the bank of elevators that flanked the lobby.
“Finally getting that nice cool weather,” came a voice, startling me out of whatever scattered thoughts I was having. I looked up to see Mrs. Brandemeyer, who lived a floor below me and had been a tenant of 122 W. 86th Street since the sixties. Her long-term residency, combined with her elderly status, seemed to give her certain inalienable rights. Like laundry room usage (you always forfeited the remaining dryer to Mrs. Brandemeyer, who was “too old to be riding up and down, up and down”) or the proprietary air she took when it came to Malakai. She had treated me rather suspiciously when I had first moved in six years earlier. “I don’t like loud music,” she proclaimed just moments after she had learned I was not only single but living in the apartment above hers. Once she discovered that I wasn’t going to be having raucous parties every weekend, she immediately bestowed upon me neighborly chatter about such subjects as the weather, the number of menus she received underneath her door on any given day or the condition of the carpeting in the hallways.
I was never one for small talk, and this evening it seemed especially burdensome, when I had something large looming between the pages of the shopping catalog I held. So I just nodded and smiled while she speculated about the sudden drop in temperatures.
“It’s going to be a cold, cold winter,” she said with satisfaction as she stepped off, leaving me to ride that last story alone.
I felt a momentary surprise when I stepped into my apartment and discovered it was exactly the same as I had left it that morning, except for the fading evening light that was now slanting through the gauzy ivory curtains. Outside the city glittered, and I took solace in the fact that regardless of whatever Kristina Morova had decided to write in her letter to me, New York City would still be just outside my window, waiting for me like an old friend.
Maybe it was that letter and its unknown contents that sent me into the next flurry of activity: putting the produce in the kitchen, hanging up my coat, straightening the stack of magazines that I had yet to review, wiping down the kitchen counters. Then curiosity must have won over the fear throbbing through me, and I found myself slipping out of my shoes, curling up on the couch and taking that letter in hand with the sense of fatalism that had been subtly stalking me ever since I had sent my own letter seven months ago.
I carefully broke the seal on the envelope, pulled out a single sheet of ivory stationery decorated with flowers at the top. My first thought was that it reminded me of the stationery my grandmother used. The second was that there was only one page of loopy scrawl. I briefly wondered at that, then settled in to read.
Dear Grace Noonan,
I thank you much for your letter some months back and I write to tell you how sorry I am that I did not make my reply sooner but so much has happened. I have news of my sister, Kristina Morova, to share, but I am so sorry to tell you it is not good. My sister died this past December, of breast cancer. I am sorry to bring you such sad news but I know my sister would want you to know.
I also write to tell you that you have a sister, Sasha, just sixteen years old. She is with me now, in Brooklyn.
I am not sure if you still want to meet with us, but I want to honor my sister’s wish and I want to invite you to come to our home. I give you my number in Brooklyn and hope to hear from you about this matter.
Sincerely,
Katerina Morova
I read the letter three times before the contents sank in. Before the cruel truth beneath that shaky cursive and stilted grammar broke through.
She was gone. Kristina Morova was gone.
I felt a momentary relief that at least there was a reason for all the silence of the past months. Followed by a disappointment so keen, tears rushed to my eyes.
