“I’m right here,” he assures her.
Ah, pale yellow roses and Rolaids and gin. Breakfast trays painted with horses and riders. Binkie, the one and only. He can hear her rings clacking on the plastic phone, and he chuckles, envisioning with amusement the bejeweled suntanned manicured grip his grandmother thinks she has on his balls. And she does.
Jamey and Elise are welcomed into the home of Binkie and Bats Hyde, at Fifth Avenue near Sixty-Fourth Street, by a black woman with an eye patch.
Two Westies race down the staircase, and a squid of candles hangs from an iced cake of a ceiling. The silk curtains shine, still and demure like a dress worn by a matron to a ball, pressed against the windows’ sides, and on the dappled, rainy street beyond, headlights and brake lights surge and stop mutely.
It reminds Elise of Gone with the Wind, and she can smell housework done by many hands—polish and cream and soap, the bad breath of a vacuum. This place is a domestic stadium.
Jamey and Elise are quickly separated, like kids at a police station, hauled into rooms for questioning.
But they’re not questioned.
Elise is shown the orchidarium.
“The what?” Elise asks, as she stumbles into this damp atrium.
Pointing to a hot-purple bloom with a hairy gullet, Binkie says: “This is a Venus Slipper. Found in Finland, of course.”
“Right,” Elise agrees.
“This is a Blood-red Odontoglossum. Ecuador.”
Walking through the greenhouse, Elise feels like this woman is drugging her. Binkie puts orchids and more orchids into Elise’s face, then looks into Elise’s eyes to see if she’s succumbing.
At the tour’s end, Binkie hands Elise her own orchid, writes a gilt-edged note.
“Instructions. These are temperamental creatures, darling. Ring me if you run into difficulty.”
Meanwhile, in the wood-paneled salon, Bats is making a presentation of a 1925 Patek Philippe watch, a relic from Great-Grandfather Aaron Balthazar Hyde.
“Wear it for godsakes, James.”
Bats believes it’s gauche to buy luxury possessions. They should be won in a bet, or inherited and worn daily—even if they belong in a safe-deposit box. Or acquired and neglected. He loves that the fishing camp upstate is rarely used, the LIFE magazines moldy in its tartan-couch living room. He owns a corn-yellow Beechcraft, which sits in a barn at a friend’s Florida estate, and he thinks of the plane the way a man thinks of a woman he fell in love with on a trip and lusts for because he won’t see her again.
“Watches weren’t made for sitting in drawers,” he says testily, as if Jamey had said they were made for sitting in drawers.
At dinner, Elise thinks everyone—staff and grandparents—have the faces of nurses: expressions that combine lonely eyes and very big smiles. They watch as if a dazed and bloody girl is stepping from a car wreck to live a last couple lucid moments. It’s a stoic high point in their manners to interact with her straight-faced, refraining from shock or disgust.
“And what ah your interests, Elise?”
“Um, I don’t know. Basketball?”
What did Binkie mean by saying they wanted something good for us, when she and Jamey talked on the phone? Do they see he loves me? Can they tell we’re good for each other?
She keeps smiling, because she forgets to smile when she’s nervous, and then people think she’s a cunt. Elise picks at the truffled scallops and spinach soufflé. Jamey shrugs at her; they’re both just waiting.
The maid who greeted them now bends stiffly to Elise, offering almond cake.
Elise picks up the flat shovel of a knife, slides a slice onto her plate.
“What happened to your eye?” she asks, gesturing at the patch.
A tsunami of silence crashes over the table.
The maid straightens her back, and says, in monotone: “An operation.”
And moves to the next guest.
But a black hole in the night has been rent, and finger bowls and cigarette packs and pearls risk being swallowed into the void.
They retire to the den, and dogs wing the fireplace like beastly angels.
Everyone is served sherry on a silver tray, and Elise takes one sip of the sour cough syrup and tries not to spit it out.
Mr. Graham Smythe arrives, like a spontaneous friend, even though he’s the family lawyer.
“Ah! Graham, you know my grandson James Hyde,” says Bats.
“Of course,” says Graham, beaming.
Hands are shaken.
“And this is his friend Elise Perez.”
“Elise, pleasure,” he says, offering his big white hand.
“I’ll leave you all to it!” Bats says, and does just that.
Elise and Jamey look at each other as Graham takes papers from his briefcase. Jamey is not the first Hyde to be handled—although the indiscretions usually take place on private and massive playgrounds and are easier to navigate.
Marital infidelity, drug treatment in the guise of a month-long African safari, or curing someone’s homosexuality condition, Binkie and Bats conquer all.
“Where shall we begin?” he asks them.
“I guess I don’t know,” Jamey says in a very careful and even tone.
“Ah!” he says. “I take it Bats hasn’t explained what he wants us to discuss.”
Jamey looks at Graham as if daring him to continue. “He hasn’t, no.”
Graham smiles, wrinkling the corners of his yellowing eyes. “This, I think, could be a solution for the whole family.”
A maid arrives with Graham’s drink diapered in a napkin. Graham twinkles his eyes at her too, and, after sipping from the crystal glass, earnestly explains. “It’s a little agreement that spells things out clear as day.”
“It’s a prenup,” Jamey says darkly.
“It’s much like a prenuptial agreement, yes, and this one”—he clears his throat—“covers cohabitating, as well as being with child.”
Elise looks to Jamey; she’s embarrassed by whatever is happening. “A pre-what?” she asks.
Jamey smiles for a minute, sickened, then shakes his head. “I’m not even going to stoop to argue,” he says in a bitter voice. “Game over.”
He takes her hand and gets up.
In the main foyer, Jamey yells: “We’re leaving!”
Binkie flutters in from wherever she was waiting. “James, stay,” she says soothingly.
Elise surprises herself by not being able to meet the woman’s eyes.
Jamey politely says: “Can you please tell me where our coats are.”
Bats glides into the foyer. “Let’s have another drink.”
Jamey opens rooms and closets. “We’re going out in the cold without our coats unless you tell me where to find them.”
A maid looks on—anxious, paralyzed—until Binkie nods at her and she fetches their coats.
Outside, Elise realizes she has the fucking orchid in her hand. She doesn’t want it—but it’s a living, breathing, blameless thing. It shouldn’t be left on the street.
They get in a cab.
“God, I’m sorry, Elise,” he says.
“I know.”
“They’re not going to stop, apparently. The whole family—is rabid,” Jamey says.