The Social Climber of Davenport Heights Read online

  “Oh, you meant him,” Lexi chimed in. “For a second I thought you meant his wife.”

  That snide remark evoked more snickers.

  “Seriously,” I said, “who may have a chance for membership?”

  “Dr. and Mrs. Rubenstein look good this year,” Teddy said. “She’s been so visible at the art museum and they’ve given him a chair at the medical school.”

  Tookie tutted and shook her head. “They are very Jewish,” she said.

  “You’re Jewish,” Teddy pointed out.

  Tookie gave a huff of incredulity and rolled her eyes. “We’re only bar-mitzvah-and-sitting-shivah Jewish,” she stated. “The Rubensteins actually go to temple.”

  “Well, that’s all right with me,” Lexi said. “Less crowding at the juice bar on Saturday morning.”

  We all giggled naughtily.

  “Daisy and Thorn Whittingham are back on the board,” Tookie said.

  I was surprised. “I thought that after the last time they were blackballed they had huffed off and said they’d never try again.”

  “Never say never when it comes to the country club,” Lexi philosophized.

  “I suppose you’re putting the Brandts’ name in again,” Teddy said.

  I nodded. “Millie and Frank are adorable people,” I told them. “And I’m not saying that just because I’m an associate in their real estate brokerage. They are just a darling couple.”

  “They are,” Tookie agreed. “Everyone loves them. I thought they’d get in two years ago. I can’t believe they were rejected again last year.”

  I shook my head sadly.

  “I wonder who it is that keeps voting against them?” Lexi asked, looking around the room as if hoping to spot the offending person.

  “I haven’t any idea,” I said.

  Of course, I knew exactly who kept voting against them. I did. As long as I was the person trying to get them into the country club, I was in a great position in the company. The last thing I wanted was for them to not need me anymore.

  The evening dragged on in this manner. The four of us chatted together, gossiping about friends and assassinating the reputations of enemies. It was still early when I made my exit.

  “The Beemer convertible?” the young, good-looking parking attendant said to me as I stepped out on the porch.

  I nodded, not bothering to correct him. True aficionados know that the nickname Beemer actually refers to the BMW motorcycle. Bimmer is the correct nickname for the automobile. But Beemer just sounded so much better, I used it myself. Ignoring what you know is not the same thing as ignorance.

  “You headed home already, Jane? The party’s just getting started.”

  I turned to see Gil Mullins in the shadows of the patio. The middle-aged ne’er-do-well son of a recently deceased trucking company boss, Gil was always flirting with me, and when he was sloshed he tended to get obnoxious.

  “That husband of yours ought to be worried, a sexy fox like you out among the wolves on her own.”

  Sexy fox? The man was still living in the seventies.

  I gave him a dismissive half smile and focused my attention in the direction from which my car would arrive.

  To my displeasure, Gil didn’t pick up on my hint, but instead slithered up beside me and wound a sweaty arm around my waist. Gil was not an unattractive man. He had the tall, lean frame of an athlete. But the years, getting close to sixty, I’d guess, were beginning to collect around his belt, and his once-handsome face now had the perpetually florid hue of a daily drinker.

  “Jane, baby,” he said, his gin-and-tonic breath much too close to my face, “I’ve been hot for you for a while now.”

  “I’m not interested,” I stated flatly, peeling his hand off my body.

  “Ah, come on, honey,” he tried again. “We’re all interested. Life is short, we’ve got to grab for the gusto while we can.”

  I rolled my eyes and stepped away from him. My car, a red BMW 328i convertible, was coming up the driveway. I felt safe and confident enough to fling insults.

  “It seems pretty pathetic, Gil,” I said, “that your pickup lines are so stale you have to resort to beer commercials.”

  The Beemer stopped and I walked around the back of it to the driver’s side. The parking attendant got out and handed me the keys.

  “Bitch!” Gil cursed at me.

  The parking attendant was immediately alert.

  “Is he bothering you?”

  “Not enough to make it worth your while,” I told him.

  “Whoring slut!” Gil shouted out. “Frigid lesbo!”

  The young man’s eyes widened.

  I smiled reassuringly at him. “Is it possible to be all those things at the same time?” I asked, and gave the kid a teasing wink.

  He opened the car door for me and I handed him his tip. I seated myself behind the steering wheel and reached for the handle just as the parking attendant closed the door. In the resulting collision I broke a fingernail.

  I cursed under my breath, but he didn’t hear it. Gil was screaming for his own car.

  The young man leaned over my door to speak to me privately.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll stall him long enough so he can’t follow you.”

  I thanked the guy. It was nice of him to try to protect me, but the truth was that Gil knew exactly where I lived. If he was intent upon continuing this confrontation, he could easily do so.

  “Better put up the top, ma’am,” he said. “It’s started sprinkling.”

  I nodded. As I headed down the drive and out of the gates, I pressed the button for the roof. It rose slowly, leisurely, like a protective cover keeping out the night sky and drops of rain. I slid the latch at the stop sign. There was just enough drizzle to be a nuisance. I switched the wipers on to intermittent.

  Going straight home didn’t seem like a good idea. I wasn’t afraid of Gil Mullins showing up, I just didn’t want the hassle of dealing with him if he did. And I wasn’t ready to face the empty house yet. David would undoubtedly spend the night at Mikki’s apartment and come sneaking in at breakfast. We’d both pretend that he’d been in his bedroom all night.

  I drove down Highland Boulevard and got on the freeway. I wasn’t headed anywhere specific, just driving in the night air. Driving and thinking.

  Lexi was right, I probably shouldn’t put up with David’s infidelity. But I couldn’t imagine what I could do about it. Of course I could ask him for a divorce. He’d probably love that. Our marriage had been over for years. Brynn was the only common interest we had. If we divorced I’d lose everything. Financially, I’d probably do all right. I didn’t even need his cash, and I’m sure the court would see that I got plenty of it anyway. But it was David’s lineage that was old money. His family had the rank and the prominence. Without him as my husband, I’d lose everything that I’d worked most of my life to gain. I’d be persona non grata at the club, a nobody in the community, a cautionary tale for younger women at the Junior League, and a regular scrapper and toiler at my job. No way was I going to go back to that. I wondered idly if a good lawyer could get me custody of our social position.

  I took the outer loop, away from the lights and traffic of the city. Suburban housing developments glittered like constellations of earthbound stars in the darkness at the sides of the roads.

  If I did divorce David, what would Brynn say? Or I guess, more importantly, what would Dr. Reiser say? How much permanent damage could a broken home do? Practically every girl she knew had been through at least one family breakup. They all seemed to manage. But Brynn was somehow so fragile, so easily wounded. Had I made her that way? She’d had the best of everything. I’d seen that she had everything that I had ever wanted.

  I’d seen that I had everything I’d ever wanted. But I wasn’t any happier than she was.

  I didn’t blame all the ills of my marriage on David. The infidelity, yes. But that was just a small example of a lot of things that were wrong. We hadn’t shared
our lives, really shared our lives, for a very long time. Maybe we never had. It might have been different if Brynn had been a boy. David had wanted a boy. If we’d had a son maybe he would have taken more responsibility for raising him. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so overwhelmed with it. Things could have worked out differently if our baby had been male.

  David loved Brynn, there was no doubt of that. But he’d started pleading for another child when she was just a toddler. By then I knew that I was in over my head. I flatly refused. David didn’t acquiesce gracefully. He hounded me about it for years. I’m not sure he ever really got over the idea. We just quit talking about it. I’m sad for Brynn that she didn’t have siblings, but I was never sorry that I didn’t have more children. I would have made two children twice as screwed up as one. And as for my career, no way. I’d have been too busy shuttling kids back and forth to therapy appointments.

  I glanced down at my broken fingernail. I didn’t have a manicure scheduled until Tuesday. My purse was sitting on the seat beside me and I began rifling through it, looking for an emery board.

  I looked up again. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I knew that something was wrong. I didn’t know what. There was an alertness in me that was primordial, the kind of caution that saved my ancestors from saber-toothed tigers stalking from downwind. It zizzed adrenaline into my brain. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what. I didn’t quite see it. Then I realized what I was looking at.

  An eighteen-wheeler coming from the opposite direction, maybe a quarter-mile of empty freeway away from me, was haphazardly listing across three lanes of the interstate. It was a huge tanker truck. Not going particularly fast, but moving steadily and irrevocably toward the passing lane.

  I watched it, detached. The driver must be asleep, I thought. It was a good thing there was no traffic, I thought. Somebody could get killed.

  When the truck jumped the median, my reflexes went off like an alarm clock. It was coming across the road at me, the tanker load it hauled slithering to the left in front of me like a tail on a giant T. rex.

  I swerved into the far right lane. It kept coming. I leaned down hard on my horn.

  “Wake up! Damnit!” I screamed.

  If I sped up and went off on the shoulder I might be able to get around it. But if the tanker did hit me, my going faster wouldn’t help. I didn’t have time to think it through. I stomped the gas pedal all the way to the floorboard and fled toward the very edge of the pavement.

  It was going to be close.

  It was going to be too close.

  I saw the clear freedom of three empty lanes ahead for just an instant. Then the back of the tanker jackknifed in front of me. I turned sharply and heard the scream of metal as the passenger side of the Beemer skidded along the guardrail. Friction sparks lit up the darkness. I hit the brakes.

  The impact was surprisingly sudden, sharp, loud. For a half an instant I was held taut by the seat belt. Then the air bags deployed and I was completely immersed in a world of beige.

  Propelled back into my seat, I gasped for breath. I don’t know if I had been holding it or had it knocked out of me.

  It was quiet. Amazingly quiet. The only sound was oxygen rushing into my lungs and the pounding of my pulse through my veins.

  The air bags began their slow deflate and the faint whistle brought with it the first sense of reality.

  “I’m all right,” I whispered gently, not completely sure that it was true.

  I quickly checked myself over. No blood, no protruding bones, no car parts sticking through my internal organs.

  “I’m all right,” I said again, this time more hopeful.

  My wrists were sore, but I didn’t see any injuries. I ran a trembling hand along my neck and the back of my head. I was shaking, but I was not hurt. I sat there for a couple of moments, just getting my shattered composure back together.

  The interior of my car was a strange and unfamiliar place. The deflating air bags hung like a shroud over the dashboard, hiding from view the instrument panel, the clock, the CD player. Against the windshield I could see one bent and truncated wiper quivering spasmodically as if having some sort of electrical seizure. The Beemer didn’t seem to have suffered much damage. The front end was squeezed up tight and the hood was partially buckled, but considering the size of the tanker beside me, I felt fortunate not to have been squashed like a bug.

  In the narrow beam from my right headlight I saw that I had almost made it. The tanker had rolled to its side I was wedged between its rear bumper and the guardrail. No harm, no foul, I thought.

  My hands were a little shaky as I began looking for my cell phone. The contents of my open purse had scattered on impact. The only thing that was still on the seat beside me was a tube of lipstick and a scattering of business cards.

  The rain was sloshing down heavily on the trunk of the car. I looked at the spasming wiper blade once more. Strange. It didn’t seem to be raining at all on the windshield.

  It was at that moment that I became aware of the odor. The common, everyday, unmistakable odor. Gasoline. The eighteen-wheel tanker truck, tilted upon its side, was pouring gasoline like a river down the back of my car.

  “Jesus!” I screamed.

  I tried my door. Of course it wouldn’t budge. There was a truck bumper wedged up against it.

  I started to the passenger door, momentarily snarled up by my seat belt. I found the red button, released myself and hurriedly crawled over the console and gearshift to the other side of the car.

  The door was locked.

  I hit the unlock button.

  Nothing happened.

  I manually unlocked it.

  The handle released, but the door opened only a couple of inches.

  I pushed harder on it.

  There was no give. The car was right up against the guardrail.

  I began banging the door on the metal. The opening did not widen.

  I would have to climb out the window.

  I pressed the down button for the automatic window.

  No response.

  A glance at the windshield wiper revealed that it had stopped its tremulous dance. Beyond it I saw smoke rising from beneath the hood of my car.

  Where there is smoke there is fire.

  The gasoline rain continued to pour down upon the trunk. The smell of fumes was becoming intense.

  “Turn off the ignition!” I ordered myself.

  I could hardly recognize my own voice.

  Frantically I searched beneath the heavy beige remnants of the air bags for the key that dangled from the steering column.

  When I found it, I turned off the ignition. I even pulled out the key.

  The smoke continued to billow from the engine.

  I unhooked the manual latch on the soft-top. It was jammed. I pushed the automatic button, then twice, again, a half-dozen times. The car key was still in my hand. I tried to use it like a screwdriver to disengage the mechanism.

  It didn’t work. I opened the glove compartment and rifled through it for a tool, a hammer, a crowbar, a penknife, anything.

  There was nothing but a plastic ice scraper, my insurance and registration and the owners manual.

  I grabbed the ice scraper and banged it impotently against the window glass for half a minute.

  I began scraping it across the soft-top to no effect. I tried to find a weak spot, a worn seam, a loose edge. There was none. I gripped the plastic scraper like an ice pick and tried to stab a hole through the canvas. It wasn’t sharp enough.

  Smoke rising from the hood had now completely obscured my view from the windshield. It had begun to seep inside the car.

  It was as if I were the only person in all the world. I was too scared to be panicked. Too horrified to be afraid. I was alone in my car, helpless.

  “You’re never alone,” I reminded myself, and began rummaging through the spilled contents of my purse on the floorboards looking for my cell phone.

  Fire had to be the worst
kind of death, I thought. Choking, hot, painful. It was not a good way to die. And I didn’t want to die.

  Why was the phone black? You could never see anything black in the dark. I’ll never have another black phone, I declared to myself.

  It began to look as if I might never need one.

  I gave up trying to phone for help and lay down on the passenger’s seat, my shoulders braced against the console. I began trying to kick a hole in the window with my high heels. In all the wrecks I could remember seeing, the windows were always broken. Why weren’t my windows broken? Why couldn’t I break them? I pounded and pounded on them with every bit of strength I had.

  The smoke thickened, making me cough. I could hear the gasoline rain pouring unabated. The smell was so strong it burned.

  “Please don’t let me die,” I pleaded, hoping someone, somewhere would hear. “Please get me out of here.”

  I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. I thought of Brynn, my sweet, my precious baby Brynn. I saw her in memory as a little toddler, giggling as she chased the bubbles I blew for her on the patio. I saw her all dressed up for her debutante ball, looking so serene and mature. And I saw her looking at me, silently accusing from behind her reading glasses. How would she get over this? Would the guilt from the loss of her mother blight her life forever?

  I hurt for her. And I hurt for me. I would never get to hold her again. I would never get to tell her how much I loved her. How glad I was that she was my daughter. How sorry I was that we hadn’t had more time.

  “Please God, get me out of here,” I prayed. “I don’t want to die. Please get me out of here.”

  I muttered my miserable prayer through tears.

  “Get me out of here. Let me live,” I pleaded. “I’ll be a better person. I’ll change my life. If you get me out of here, I’ll…I’ll do good. I promise. Give me another chance and I’ll do good. Please get me out of here. I’ll do good. I’ll do good all my life.”

  Silence was the resulting answer. Silence amid the deluge of gasoline pouring down upon the back of the car and the billowing smoke that now seared my lungs.

  “Please,” I said more quietly. “Please.”