The Hole in the Middle

Chapter 9: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011

Lil’s car is waiting outside the building. It’s a new one, a stretch Mercedes in a lovely smoky blue. Her driver, Anil, meets us and holds out his hand.

“Ah, Ms. Sophie. How nice to see you again.”

It has been years since I last saw Anil, and he looks exactly the same. He emigrated from India to North America in his twenties, with a wife and two young children in tow; I would say that he has been one of the lucky ones, but he has made his own luck. He started driving a taxi in the early days but quickly figured out that the money and the hours were better in the private service business. With his impeccable manners and chiseled good looks, he soon had the most popular car service in the city, a position that he has maintained – although the day-to-day operations are now managed by his son, an MBA, and his daughter, a graphic designer. Lil pays Anil a generous annual salary to be available to drive her whenever she is in town, which is around six months a year.

Anil seems completely unfazed by Lil’s bizarre appearance. “Where would you like to go, Lillian?” he asks. Anil has his own code when it comes to formal address. Lil has always been Lillian, and I have always been Ms. Sophie, although in my left-wing student days I practically begged him to call me Sophie and let me sit in the front seat. He would have none of it.

“The Four Seasons, please, Anil,” says Lil.

“Your bag is in the back.”

“What a treasure you are, Anil,” says Lil.

Lil turns to me and says, “So. It has been far too long. You looked tired. Are you working too hard?”

“It’s a busy time,” I reply. “I’m operating at a fairly high level of stress.”

“Stress,” she repeats. “This is a new invention. My generation was never ‘stressed’. Busy, yes. But not stressed.”

“How old are you, Lil?” I ask. I’ve probably asked her this question twenty times over the twenty years of our acquaintance and I still have no idea of the answer. I know that I’m not going to get one today, either. Lil grins.

“A lady should never tell her age,” she says, as she always does. The car pulls up in front of the hotel, and Lil hops out, takes a large bag from Anil, and gives me a wink.

“I’ll join you in a jiffy. Get a good table and order the pink Veuve.” She vanishes into the lobby.

I wave goodbye to Anil and head inside. It’s busy in the bar, but when I mention Lil’s name, the crowd parts and, amazingly, a perfect table for two with a view of the street becomes available.

“Will Ms. Parker be having her usual this afternoon?” asks the server who materializes instantly at my elbow.

“She asked for pink Veuve,” I say.

“Of course,” he murmurs, and vanishes.

And then Lil is back, and looking much more like herself with a steel grey pixie cut, a velvet ink blue pantsuit, a chunky silver cuff and just a hint of makeup. I cast my mind back and am dismayed to realize that it’s been more than three years since we’ve seen each other. It’s a testament to how wild my life has been since Scotty was born. I hadn’t anticipated that having a second child would be like driving our old life off a cliff; we’d done that once already when we had Jamie, but everyone we talked to swore that having two kids was more like having one-and-a-half. It’s breathtaking how often people lie when it comes to kids. I drag my attention back to Lil. She looks the same as always. Since she decided to let her hair go gray about ten years ago, she hasn’t really aged.

“Where’s the fox?” I ask.

Lil laughs. “My beastie? Isn’t he fantastic! I found him at a costume shop in London’s West End a few years ago. I thought it would go perfectly with my mother’s old Chanel suit, and I was right, don’t you think?”

“I think the beehive wig was a nice touch,” I say.

Lil looks thoroughly delighted. “I’m so pleased that I was able to get you onto this infernal search committee,” she says. “I know Marvin, of course, but he doesn’t get the joke. He thinks I’ve gone senile. It will be so much more fun with you there.”

“This is your doing?” I ask, knowing that this should have been obvious to me the second I realized that Lil was in the room. Things rarely happen by accident when she is around. “I hope you weren’t expecting me to thank you. I need another committee assignment like a hole in the head.”

“So severe!” Lil shakes her head, amused at my ferocity. “You’ve always been far too serious for your own good. Where is your sense of adventure?” I bristle inwardly at the criticism but am careful not to show it. I don’t take criticism well, but as Jesse has observed on countless occasions, you’ll never get me to admit it. “I did try to fill you in ahead of time. Didn’t you get my message?”

“No,” I lie.

“I’m just hopeless with those awful machines,” she says. “Oh, well. Sorry for surprising you.” She grins, looking not at all sorry. “How do you work for that Barry character, by the way? He really is an insufferable incompetent. And the fellow before him! It should have been evident to anyone with eyes in their head that there was something seriously off with him.”

The waiter, introduced as Bradley, materializes with the Veuve, and Lil applauds. “Lovely,” she beams. “My favorite.” Bradley fills her flute and she takes a long sip. She nods with pleasure. “Thank you,” she says. “And I believe we are ready to order. Would you mind bringing me a Cobb salad? Extra bacon, please.” She gestures to me. “My friend will have the same, won’t you Sophie?”

“Sure,” I say. My head feels woolly with congestion, and in any event, being with Lil always makes me feel a bit slow on the uptake. It’s so much easier to just go along. “What’s up with the ‘Mrs. Baxter’, by the way?” I ask. “I didn’t think you still used that name.” This is a delicate way of saying that Lil has been married a few times since she was Mrs. Baxter.

Lil leans back in her chair and cradles her glass in her hands. “Have you ever heard the story of Madame Clicquot?” she asks. “It’s a very old story, but a good one, I think. At least, I’ve always liked it.” She takes another sip. “In France, around two hundred years ago, there was a young girl who was very lucky. Her family was rich and moved in all the right circles, and when the time came for her to marry at the age of twenty-one, her father made sure that she married well. Her husband’s father was ambitious and had built up a very profitable business in wine, wool and banking and various other things. For the next six years, the girl did everything that was expected of her. She had babies and hosted dinner parties and learned how to manage a household. Her husband was thoughtless and absent, but so were most other men that she knew, and she had plenty of responsibilities to keep her busy. And then one day, her husband went and killed himself. The girl thought about her options. She could retreat into seclusion, or go into mourning for a polite period and then remarry. She had lots of money, which even in 1805 meant freedom of a kind. But this girl had the inkling that she might try to forge a new kind of life for herself. So she rolled up her petticoat, and went down to the wine cellar and invented a whole new way to make champagne. And over time, she built her business into the most powerful champagne house in Europe, made herself a large fortune and lived to the ripe old age of eighty-nine. She put her name on every bottle, so that people would remember her forever.” Lil reaches over to the ice bucket and taps the yellow label on the bottle.

“Veuve?” I ask.

“Tsk, tsk, Sophie, have you forgotten all of your French?” Lil scolds. “Widow Clicquot, ‘veuve’ en français.”

“Does this have anything to do with whatever you’re doing on this search committee?” I ask, hopefully.

Lil smiles at me. “Maybe just a little bit,” she says. “You can tell me once I’m done.”

My sinuses hurt, and I cover my eyes with hands, massaging my fingers gently into the sockets. “It’s your show,” I say, relaxing into the cushions.

“You know that my first husband was a Baxter,” says Lil. “Monty Baxter, to be precise.”

“Montgomery Baxter?” I say, stupidly. “You were married to Montgomery Baxter?” I am stunned that this bit of information has somehow eluded me. The Montgomery Baxter Foundation is the single largest donor to the children’s hospital. It bears its name, and continues to fund virtually every major research project that we do.

Lil laughs. “I understand your feelings. Honestly, it still mystifies me whenever I think of it, and it really was a very long time ago.” She looks a little bit wistful. “He was such a type. The most handsome man I ever knew. Absolutely incapable of holding down a job or keeping his pants on. Not that he had to, really. He had an enormous trust fund and women literally threw themselves at him.”

“He doesn’t sound like your type.” Lil’s friends tend to be artists and writers, or patrons of the arts, at least the ones I’d met over the years.

“He wasn’t.” A shadow of sadness passes over her face, and she’s quiet for a moment, lost in the past. Then she shifts and meets my eyes again. “Monty’s parents wanted him to settle down before he came into his inheritance at twenty-five, and my parents disapproved of my preferred type; I was spending all of my time with actors and writers and others that they regarded as unmarriageable. So it was strongly suggested that Monty and I spend more time together. Everyone else in our social circle was getting married, and in the moment it seemed like a good idea to accept his proposal.”

It’s hard to square this story with everything I know about Lil. Even as a very young woman, it’s hard to imagine that her spirit could be bent to marry a man not of her choosing.

“Six months after the wedding, Monty got access to his trust and after that, I rarely saw him,” she continues. “He was out all night, every night, drinking and playing cards.” She leans back in her chair and takes a long sip of champagne. “And here is where Madame Clicquot and I begin to have something in common. That summer, fourteen months after our wedding, Monty went up to his family cottage. He would stay up for weeks at a time, and it was one endless party. I couldn’t bear to be there, so I stayed in the city, and I wasn’t there when the accident happened. But I’m told that Monty dared his friends to a midnight race across the lake. So they got out the launches in the pitch black and gunned the engines. And Monty slammed right into an island and killed himself. Boom! Just like that.” She smacks her hands together loudly, and the sound makes both me and Bradley – who has appeared at last with the Cobb salads – jump.

Bradley puts our plates on the table. “Enjoy your lunch,” he says.

“Thank you,” says Lil. She takes a bite and her face brightens. “Is there a better lunch in the world? I ask you.” We eat for a moment, and then she continues. “So there I was – a widow at the age of twenty-three. It was a very strange time for me.”

“I had no idea,” I say. “I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.”

“Not for the reasons you might think,” says Lil. “I knew that I had made a terrible mistake in marrying Monty, but I had no way of getting out of the marriage. It really was a different time then, and unlike the widow Clicquot, I had no money of my own and I couldn’t get a job. But when Monty died, I inherited a small fortune. Which is why, at the end of the day, I have no regrets about Monty whatsoever. In fact, I remember him rather fondly.”

I take a moment to digest all of this. “How is it that I never knew any of this?” I ask.

“I don’t like to tell my tenants about my secret identity,” she says. “People have odd reactions to wealth. Not to mention that the Baxters are mostly nuts. Too much inbreeding.”

“The search committee?” I prompt her.

“Patience, Sophie,” says Lil. “I’m getting there as quickly as I can. Monty’s family was somewhat less than thrilled when I inherited all of his money after such a short marriage and they were showing signs of making things difficult for me, legally I mean. His sister, Penelope, had always disapproved of the marriage; we had been friends and she knew that I didn’t love Monty. She was right about that, although not about my reasons for marrying him. I never cared about his money.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“That’s a story for another day,” she says. “We need to finish this one, so you can get back to the office. How is your lunch?”

“Delicious.”

“Good,” she says. “After Monty died, I decided to create a foundation in his name dedicated to the promotion of children’s health, using half of everything I had inherited. His parents had been longstanding supporters of the local children’s hospital, so the idea had some philosophical appeal, and then I asked Monty’s father to manage the foundation’s investments.”

“Did it work?” I ask.

“Like a charm,” answers Lil. “Even half the estate was an enormous sum of money, and I was free to live exactly as I wished, while Monty’s family felt invested in the creation of his legacy. It helped them with their loss.” Lil pauses and takes a bite of her salad. “In the end, I became rather attached to his parents. Penelope and her siblings were all every bit as spoiled as Monty and their parents ended up being quite lonely in their later years. They volunteered a lot of time with the foundation, and when they died, they left their entire estate to it. It was rather a lot of money to begin with and now – well, it’s a staggering amount of money. We give out at least $10 million every year, all to the Baxter Hospital, which is why they eventually named it after us.”

“So you control the foundation that is the single largest donor to the Baxter Hospital, my employer.”

“Correct.”

“And that’s why you are on the search committee?”

“Correct.”

“OK,” I say. “I’m with you so far. But I still can’t figure out the costume.”

Lil looks slightly uncomfortable. “This is the part of the story that I am a bit embarrassed about, to be honest.” She looks down at the table. “It’s actually quite boring, being a major donor. I have to attend zillions of events and meetings, and people like your boss fawn all over me and agree with everything I say. It’s impossible to have a real conversation with anyone. And so, a couple of years ago, I started to pretend that I was losing my marbles – just a little bit at first, just to see if anyone would notice. But Barry, and the fellow before him, kept on nodding and smiling and pouring me coffee and saying ‘Yes, Mrs. Baxter; I’ve often thought that myself, Mrs. Baxter; your insight into the issues is very impressive, Mrs. Baxter,’ and in the end I couldn’t help myself. I would spend entire meetings staring into space with curlers in my hair and my mouth open, or pretending to fall asleep in the middle of sentences to see if I could shake them out of it. But it didn’t make a whit of difference.”

“Have you been enjoying yourself?” I ask.

Lil grins sheepishly, and suddenly looks years younger. “Well, yes,” she says. “Quite a bit. When you are old like me, you’ll understand that you take your pleasures as you find them.”

She looks so pleased with herself that it seems churlish to be irritated with her. “And now?” I ask.

She pauses. “And now I find that I care about the outcome of this search. But it’s awkward. Barry has handpicked this committee and told them all that I’m out of my mind. So I need a few allies. Marvin Shapiro is an old friend – he was married to my second cousin Eleanor before she ran off with her aerobics instructor in the early eighties. Such a sweet man. Although, come to think of it, he looked quite alarmed at my appearance this morning, so I’m going to have to give him a call. But to the rest of them, I’m a kooky old tycoon with a marginal grip on reality. So I had a look at the Board policies on hiring and realized that I could adjust the composition a bit. We were supposed to have a staff rep; I told them I wanted you.”

“What makes you think that I’ll agree with you on the merits?” I ask.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Lil. “Margaret Anderson is far and away the best person for the job, and you know it. I just need a few other obviously sane committee members to back me up when the time comes.”

“Has it occurred to you that you might have to lose the costume?” I ask.

Lil looks annoyed. “Yes, Sophie. It has occurred to me. It’s just a matter of finding the right time.”

“How about the next meeting?” I suggest. “You are going to distract the candidates with that hairdo. And it’s not fair to make me do all the work. Barry is my boss.”

“I’ll consider it,” she says grumpily.

“Do that,” I say. “And what other news? Do you still have students living with you?”

“Of course!” Lil laughs. “You know my philosophy: surround yourself with young people and you can feel youthful without the discomfort of being young. It’s the best of all worlds. You and your roommates were always my favorites, though.”

“Funny you should say that. Will is coming to see me this afternoon.”

“Yes, he mentioned that.” Her face gives nothing away. “Do you keep in touch?”

“Just occasionally,” I say. “Christmas cards and that sort of thing.” I keep my tone deliberately light. “You must see him more often than I do.”

“He’s the Chair of the Foundation Board now,” she says. “So we see each other at meetings a few times a year. And family weddings and funerals. But we talk on the telephone fairly frequently.”

“He seems to be doing well.”

“Yes,” she says. “And how is that adorable husband of yours?”

“He’s fine.”

Lil raises an eyebrow. “Only fine?” Her head cocks to one side and she fixes her bright eyes on my face. She looks alarmingly like a bird about to go after a worm.

I look down at my lap and am mortified to feel the prickling of tears. I clear my throat. “He’s the same as always, Lil. But he’s incredibly busy and distracted with his new business. You know how driven he is. He sees this as his big chance, and he may be right. But it is the most important thing in the world to him right now and it adds a lot of pressure.” I feel the knot in my stomach tightening.

“The children are well?” Lil has never been terribly interested in children generally, but she is unfailingly polite about asking after them.

“They’re little. Jamie is seven and Scotty is three. Scotty doesn’t sleep through the night half the time. There’s so much to worry about. It’s hard to be stretched in so many directions.”

Lil looks puzzled. “They’re healthy, aren’t they?”

I bite my lip so that I don’t say something cutting. It’s hardly shocking that Lil has no conception of the powerful currents of guilt and worry that define life with young children. Health is merely the preliminary hurdle that gets you into the main event; health buys you the luxury of being able to worry about the minutia that defines your success as a parent: Are they watching too much television? Are they eating enough vegetables? Do they get enough exercise? Are they old enough for music classes? Are they getting invited to birthday parties? When should they be toilet trained? What if one of them gets lost and doesn’t know his telephone number?

“They’re healthy,” I say.

Lil shakes her head. “I don’t understand you young women.”

“I’m thirty-nine,” I say glumly. “I don’t think that qualifies as young.”

She waves off my comment as if it is too ridiculous to merit a response. “Your generation has so much freedom, so many choices.”

“Yes,” I say, feeling heat flaring in my cheeks, “Having it all is really fabulous.”

Lil looks a bit sad, and I feel vaguely ashamed of myself. “Sophie,” she says, “You misunderstand me. I’m not minimizing how wearing it is to raise young children, hold down a busy job and be a good wife and daughter and friend and all the other millions of things that you do. But you’re a smart girl. No one is going to hand you a medal at the end of all of this because you ran faster and harder than everyone else. The point is to enjoy it. That’s the end game. I look at you and all the other young women that I know and I see you weighing yourselves down with worry. You can buy fifty kinds of organic baby food in the store, but it’s not good enough. You girls have to make your own. You let your kids sleep in your bed, so you never have adult conversations with your spouses, let alone sex.”

I try not to look mortified as Lil continues. “You breastfeed your kids until they’re practically adults. I wasn’t exactly on the front lines, but I thought the feminist movement was about trying to create new possibilities for women, to free them from the narrow confines of domestic life. And now I see a whole generation of women snapping the chains right back on.”

I feel a large tear roll down my face and splash onto my napkin before I can stop it.

“Oh, Sophie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.” She reaches over and pats my hand. “But that reminds me. My Christmas party is this Saturday and I haven’t heard from you and Jesse. You need to have some fun. Get a babysitter and have a night out. You haven’t come in at least of couple of years. It will do you good. Trust me.”

“I have fun,” I say, sounding petulant even to my own ears.

“That may be, dear,” says Lil. “I can’t say. But I’m not the one crying in my Veuve Clicquot.”