CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE LAST WEEKEND IN MAY THERE WAS A LAVISH ROCOCO AFFAIR held in New York City to honor the Falcon for his various measured philanthropies, an event that generated not a little discussion around the table at home.
“Next they’ll be pinning a medal on Pol Pot for his humanitarian work,” Pop said.
Obsessed with opera, the Falcon was practically a parody in his violet Napoleon-tie cravat—he always seemed to be financing some new skylit performance of Tosca in exotic international locales. When he developed diabetes in his sixties, a mild case controlled through diet and exercise, he got all fired up about finding a cure, donating millions of dollars to research.
“Self-interest is a perverse foundation for charity. For all his wealth and power, your grandfather lacks humility and perspective. Always seek the panoptic view, boys,” said Pop, who was committed to the notion that check writing begins at home.
The Falcon issued an embargo on Pop and Uncle Tom—they were forbidden to attend the party.
“I’ve no problem with the banning of Tom, but what will I say when people ask me where my husband is?” Ma asked him.
“Believe me, no one will inquire,” the Falcon said.
The big night arrived, and I was in my room getting ready—we were flying out of Boston in the Falcon’s jet. Ever the control freak, he had suits made for Bingo and me just for the occasion. The fabric of my dark blue jacket was so soft, I felt as if I were plunging my arms up to my shoulders in rainwater.
“You’re a cheap date,” Bingo said from the doorway, spotting from a distance my willingness to be sartorially seduced.
He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his face burned red from an afternoon in the sun. “Why aren’t you dressed?” I asked him.
“I’m not going.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going?” I stopped buttoning my shirt midway through and looked at him.
“Pop and Uncle Tom aren’t invited. If they’re not going, then neither am I.”
“Come on, in our crazy family, what the hell difference does it make?”
He shrugged and leaned into the door frame. “It makes a difference to me. Anyway, I’m going to San Francisco for the weekend with Peter Holton and his family. We’re leaving tonight.”
“The Falcon’s going to be pissed if you’re a no-show.” I pulled on my pants.
“That’s all right. He’s always mad about something.” He was tossing a tennis ball in the air and catching it.
“I suppose you think I’m wrong for going.”
“I didn’t say that.” He caught the ball and held it for a second before sending it soaring. It made a loud mechanical thump on the tin ceiling overhead.
“You don’t need to say anything. It’s implied.” Slipping on my shoes and bending over to inspect their shine, I deliberately avoided looking at him.
“Oh, it’s ‘implied,’ is it?” He was making fun of me. “How’s it implied?”
“Well, you’re sticking by Pop and Uncle Tom. I’m betraying them, choosing the Falcon over them—anyway, that’s how it will seem if I go and you don’t. Thanks for making me the bad guy.” I stood up, turned around, and confronted him.
“That’s your problem.” He let the ball go, and it bounced across the bedroom floor and under the chair.
“Look, Bingo, even Ma is going . . . what’s the big deal? Pop and Uncle Tom don’t give a damn. Stay or go . . . all of them will have something crazy to say about whichever option either one of us chooses. It’s only a party . . . can’t anything in this family just be simple? I want to go. Why do I need to feel guilty about it?”
“Who’s making you feel guilty? I’m doing what I want and you’re doing what you want. Like you say, it’s only a party. I don’t feel guilty about my choice. Why do you feel guilty about yours?”
“I don’t.” I put one arm into the sleeve of my jacket. “Shit.” I reached for a lint brush sitting on the dresser top, a skein of dog hair making faint layers on the suit’s dark fabric.
“Well then, forget about it. You do what you want and I’ll do what I want.”
“Great. I intend to.”
“Yeah, well, have fun,” he said as he stepped backward into the hall, “you treacherous, disloyal, star-f*cking sack of shit.”
Even Ma was persuaded to attend the tribute to her old man, despite the banning of Pop. She claimed it was so she could buttonhole some of the world’s most influential people—you know, wave her index finger in their faces, shriek abuse, and make them change their minds about the importance of boycotting lettuce.
But from the way she fussed over her hair—by the time she and her team of gardeners were finished, she looked like an enormous hydrangea—it was clear to me her real purpose was to meet Robert Redford, which isn’t to say that her entrance was any less reminiscent of a Bolshevik charging the palace on foaming horseback.
“My kingdom for an ice pick,” the Falcon muttered as I stood next to him, watching in dismay as she chased down a prominent CEO, running him through with her verbal pitchfork. Before the night was over, just about everyone in the place had sprung leaks, blood and champagne spurting from all those glamorous human fountains.
Several senators, the usual Hollywood actors and industry players, media personalities, big Democratic Party donors, and a smattering of international philanthropists were among the guests, old money and new money chatting warmly, patting one another on the back, and kibitzing—you could lace up your ice skates and slide across the burnished ease of it all. Then Ma plowed in among them, making war and sport, hip checking and high sticking and smashing everyone into the boards.
Ma turned especially vicious whenever she found herself in the company of men who liked to proclaim their uncompromising belief in excellence, a propensity for which she reserved special loathing and contempt.
“Spare us from two things,” she said, her zealotry so out of place that she might as well have been a plumber wandering around looking for a drain to rescue. “Spare us the community-minded and their zealous pursuit of excellence.”
“I’d like to add a third item to that list, if I may,” the Falcon said, recognizing an implicit insult when he heard one. “Lord, spare us your perplexing and relentless juvenilia.”
Champagne—Ma was drinking a lot of it that night—inevitably made her susceptible to one of two courses of action, fomenting revolution or launching a direct frontal assault on her old man. On this occasion, she decided to go for broke and attempted to do both.
“Hey, Perry . . .” She leaned forward and poked the Falcon in the chest with her index finger as the group around him cleared a space roughly the size of Manhattan.
I closed my eyes and braced for the worst. Whenever Ma referred to her father as “Perry,” it was a signal to release the flying monkeys.
“I’m not a member of your fan club. I’m not looking for a donation or an endorsement. I’m not some mandarin on the make. Don’t confuse me with one of your groundlings. Save the Pliny the Elder crap for someone who actually needs your self-serving approval.”
“You’ve all met my daughter, I presume? The jewel in my crown.” The Falcon glanced around at the shining assembled, who stood dumbfounded, too shocked to respond.
Embarrassment washed over me, so gangrenous that I felt as if skin tissue were dying systematically, starting at my feet and burning upward, devouring every last living part of me. Sometimes I think my real life’s purpose is to refute the cliché notion that you can’t actually die of embarrassment.
“Do you know ‘Long Ago and Far Away’?” I asked one of the musicians who was passing by, touching him on the forearm, reaching out in desperation, anything to shift the attention away from Ma and the Falcon. It was one of Pop’s favorite songs and the only thing that came to mind, and as the first familiar notes sounded, I nodded in the direction of the orchestra, offering up quiet thanks, and then, like everyone else, I stopped to listen, impelled by an urgent hollering that was coming from the direction of the room’s entranceway.
Pop, impeccably dressed and manifestly drunk, had apparently decided to crash the party and was threatening to take apart anyone who tried to interfere.
“What’s he saying?” one of the guests asked while I watched, aghast and disbelieving, as Pop, shouting and red-faced, spewing spit and rage, trumpeting and heaving like a rogue elephant, wrestled with security. He was bent over at the waist, his stomach straining against three sets of arms, hotel employees trying vainly to drag him back outside.
“Peregrine Lowell . . . something . . . I can’t understand him. . . .” The woman next to me shook her head in bewilderment.
“Sounds like ‘Peregrine Lowell . . . please.’ Please what, I wonder?” her friend asked.
“Beats me.”
Peregrine Lowell, he was saying Peregrine Lowell, that part was terrifyingly clear.
“What the hell?” a combined murmur went up, accompanied by barely suppressed laughter as the message finally emerged with mortifying clarity.
“Peregrine Lowell pees!” Pop was screaming to the heavens, claiming his bizarre revenge. “He is not a god! He’s a man with a complete set of human frailties. Peregrine Lowell pees!”
Trevor Boothe, grandson of Senator Avery Boothe—we went to Andover together—came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. I made a half turn and was taken aback by his horrified expression. In Boothe’s world, my parents were enacting a chain-saw massacre. I touched my hand to my cheek, thinking I was developing a nervous tic. Trevor was so white that he shamed the linens.
“Oh, my God. Sorry, Collie, how embarrassing for you,” he muttered, shaking his head, his hair not moving—funny, the small things you notice while you’re being cremated.
“Embarrassing? You think this is embarrassing? You don’t get it, Trevor. Embarrassment is my business. It’s my only business,” I said, inexplicably merry, convinced I was having a nervous breakdown. I was giggling the same way I did when I was seven years old and Uncle Tom licked his fingers and used spit to clean off my dirty face in front of the whole congregation before Mass one Sunday.
I felt Trevor’s hand press fleetingly against the hollow of my back, as if he were extending comfort to a stray dog with fleas. Then, as he was slipping away, trying to put subtle distance between us, I instinctively looked over at the Falcon, who appeared momentarily transported to another realm, some wonderful place where Fantastic Charlie Flanagan had just been pronounced dead after choking on his own rum-soaked vomit.
Cognizant suddenly of the spotlight, and as Ma rushed to Pop’s side, the two of them disappearing noisily into the corridor outside the ballroom, Ma’s scream of “Murderer!” threatening to shatter the crystal, the Falcon took immediate remedial action and, apparently fully recovered, started to laugh and then went on chatting as if nothing were wrong, and the room heaved a huge sigh of relief as the band played on, the singer launching into a hypercheerful version of “Fly Me to the Moon.”
My eyes burned, and I felt a familiar ache deep in my throat. Ma was certifiable, but Pop . . . well, Pop spent his whole life snapping towels.
Bingo would have loved every moment of the performance Ma and Pop put on. I was wrong about the Falcon being mad about Bingo not attending the party in his honor—the truth was, he didn’t even notice that Bingo was missing. But I did. Without Bing, it felt as if I’d shown up without my teeth. I spent the entire night grinding my gums, half listening, imaginary conch to my ear, the evening’s low, reverberating party talk mimicking the insistent roll of the tide back home.