“I can’t diet,” Cassey had told Fritzie once. “Every time I start I get crazy. I can’t concentrate. All I can think about is food. I never get anything done.”
Fritzie was carrying a plate of cookies covered in powdered sugar in from the pantry. She put it down on the coffee table in front of Cassey and retreated. She was tempted to give Cassey another lecture about her weight—it had been a while—but since the divorce her heart had gone out of it. There was Cassey, 200 pounds if she weighed an ounce, with her husband who adored her and a pack of children who worshiped her in spite of it. Fritzie was sure it must be “in spite of it,” because for Fritzie weight was something that could never be neutral, or positive. Whatever it was, here was Fritzie, on her own again at the age of fifty-odd, with a son who barely seemed to tolerate her. Here was Fritzie, with her hold on the only kind of life she had ever wanted to live beginning to slip—the magazines weren’t calling as often; she wasn’t being chosen as automatically to head the committees or serve on the governing boards. Here was Fritzie, thin as a rail and just as pure. It didn’t seem right somehow.
Cassey looked over the plate of powdered-sugar cookies, took one, and said, “So from what I can see, you don’t have any obligation in this thing at all. You are divorced from the man. That does mean you don’t have to do what he wants you to do. What I’d do if I were you is just tell him to stuff it.”
“I can’t tell him to stuff it,” Fritzie said. “He’s got control of my income. That trust he settled on me can be reversed at any time.”
“Maybe. But it won’t be. That was part of the court settlement, remember? I’d think the last thing Jon wants to do now is land in court again.”
“It’s the last thing I want to do now.”
“Just don’t let him know that. Really, Fritzie, you’re all grown up. You’ve got to learn how to operate with these things. Jon Baird has got no right to expect you to drop everything and spend a week or more on a leaky old boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the company of his much younger wife.”
And that, Fritzie thought, was certainly absolutely true. It was also certainly absolutely beside the point. She picked up the cup of tea she had left on the coffee table when she went out to get the second plate of cookies and sipped it gingerly. Sometimes her friends did very odd things to sabotage her diet, like putting sugar in her tea when she was away from the table. She’d never been able to understand what they were afraid of. Even after she got down to her ideal weight, she would still love all the people she loved now. She would still cherish them. This tea was unadulterated. She took an immense gulp to fill the hard painful hollowness of her stomach and put the cup down.
“The thing is,” she said, “it’s more than Thanksgiving or the boat or—or Sheila. It’s all this other business, too. I had a call from Margaret Denton today. Do you remember Margaret Denton?”
“Peggy Devereaux?”
“That’s right. She was all upset, because Jon’s company has decided to pay this man Donald McAdam—you met Donald McAdam here once, I don’t know if you remember—”
“Oh, I remember all right, Fritzie. For goodness’ sake. It’s not every day you sit down to dinner with a man who shows up in the paper two days later indicted for everything.”
“I suppose you’re right. Well, Jon’s company is going to pay Mr. McAdam a very large sum of money to get him to quit his job, which doesn’t make sense to me but seems to be necessary because for some reason they can’t fire him. It was supposed to be a great big secret, but somebody told somebody, and Peggy heard about it and she called me. It was a terrible phone call, Cassey, it really was. She shouted.”
“About what?”
“About how awful it was that anybody would pay Mr. McAdam—oh, I don’t understand it all. I really don’t. When we were growing up, women didn’t have to pay any attention to business and I don’t want to pay attention to it now. And it shouldn’t be my problem, should it? Jon and I are divorced.”
“Right,” Cassey said.
“But anyway,” Fritzie said, “Peggy is a friend of mine and she was so upset and everything that I decided to see what I could do. I decided I’d go over there and talk to him.”
“What?”
“Well,” Fritzie said defensively, “why not? He’s been part of our—my—circle for years, hasn’t he? He’s been to dinner in this house. He contributes to the Cancer Society and the Metropolitan League. He’s supposed to be one of us in spite of all these things he seems to have done. So I thought I could talk to him.”