Then Came You Read online

  In the dorm room, I’d stood in the corner next to the stereo speakers, sneaking glances at my watch and wondering how soon I could feign a headache and get back to my room. There was a girl I recognized from my art history seminar lying on her back on one of the desks, giggling as a boy poured tequila into her navel, then bent down to slurp it out. Maybe it was supposed to be sexy, but all I could think was germs! and disease! and belly-button lint! At another desk, a half dozen of my classmates stood in front of a computer, watching porn. That was a big thing at Vassar: girls watching dirty movies with their boyfriends to show that they were progressive and evolved. I turned away as, onscreen, a naked man with a six-pack and tribal tattoos pulled his penis out of the woman he’d been hunched over and smacked it, over and over, into her cheeks.

  I must have been making a face, because when I looked up, a guy I didn’t know was staring at me.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  He pointed. “Church lady!” he hollered. His friends started laughing, and then the girl with tequila all over her belly sat up and started laughing, too. Even after the guy who’d first said it had wandered away, probably to poop into the host’s rice cooker, then post a picture on Facebook, people were still saying it and laughing. Of course, Vanessa had overheard, and she’d hustled me over to the porn computer so she could show me YouTube videos of a man dressed as a woman with a sour face and a blue tweed suit and eyeglasses on a chain acting offended about everything. The guy had undoubtedly meant it as a devastating insult. I was not insulted. Given a choice between being a church lady or one of my female classmates who’d have to wake up the next morning wondering whether her nipples were now online, I’d take the church lady every time.

  “Bettina Croft?”

  I got to my feet. A woman was standing in the doorway of an office. Through the open door I could see bright art on the walls, and a dozen framed photographs on a side table. The woman had a friendly-looking face, brown hair in a ponytail, and a white short-sleeved T-shirt on top of a pair of loose-fitting cropped linen pants the color of raspberries. She wore flipflops and a necklace of brightly colored glass beads as her only accessory. “Pleasure to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand and leading me inside. “Now. Before we get started, one quick question, and you have to tell me the truth,” she said, after I’d taken the chair across from her desk and settled my purse beside me. “Are these pajamas?” She stood, pointing at her pants. I stared.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know you’re not here to talk about my pants,” she said. “We’ll get started in a sec. It’s just, I’m so distracted! I bought them — it was this ungodly hot day, and everything was at the dry cleaner’s, so I was wearing a wool skirt, and I thought I was going to melt, so I just ran in and grabbed them off the rack. They’re really comfortable, and I liked them so much I went online to buy another pair, and they were listed under ‘loungewear’ instead of pants, and I’m worried that I’m actually out in public in my PJs.” She made a face. “If that’s true, my partner will kill me. Janie’s stylish,” she said. “She finds me very frustrating.”

  I examined the pants, with their elastic waist and baggy fit, wondering if I should have requested Segal instead of Klein. “They look like regular pants to me.” In fact, the pants looked way too casual for the office, better suited to a picnic or a trip to the beach. There was no official dress code at Kohler’s, but all the women wore skirts and dresses. You could wear pants if they were part of a suit and if you paired them with heels and the right accessories, and, even then, you couldn’t wear them very often before people would start to talk.

  But maybe Kate Klein was working undercover, at a preschool or someplace like that. She smelled sweet in a familiar, evocative way, and there was a dab of something golden-brown on the hem of her shirt.

  “Applesauce,” she said when she noticed my stare, pouring us both glasses of water from a pitcher filled with ice and sliced lemons that sat on a table against her wall, next to potted African violets. “Kids,” she said, pointing toward all those framed photographs. I saw a pair of identical twin boys and an older girl with hair the same color as Kate’s, maybe as young as ten or as old as fourteen. It was hard for me to guess. I didn’t spend much time around children.

  Kate sat down on a chenille-covered couch thick with throw pillows, with a blanket hanging over the back. “So, Ms. Croft. Tell me what I can do for you.”

  “My father,” I began. On the subway ride over I’d thought about how to most concisely express my problem. “He’s recently remarried.”

  Kate Klein produced a legal pad and a ballpoint pen. Her expression was focused; her posture suggested that, in spite of her casual clothes and her comfortable couch, she was listening hard. “And you’d like us to look into his new wife. Is there anything particular that concerns you?”

  “Well, her name, for starters. India.” I heard the scorn in my voice.

  Kate lifted her eyebrows. “Maybe her parents were Gone With the Wind fans?”

  I sipped my water and thought of my father’s bride standing at the sink at the house in Bridgehampton, washing dishes like she did it all the time, and how everything about her was fake. A few weeks ago, under the guise of looking up horoscopes on the Internet, I’d asked India the year of her birth and detected — or thought I had — a brief flutter of hesitation before she came up with a date.

  Kate leaned forward with her elbows on her folded knees. “You don’t think your father might have done his own check? From what I’ve seen of him, he strikes me as a pretty savvy guy.”

  “In business, maybe. But this. . my mom left him, which was difficult.” I felt the familiar mixture of sorrow at my mother’s departure and fury at her for leaving rise up inside me like acid indigestion, along with shame for having to say any of this out loud.

  “Do they have a prenup?” Kate’s head was bent, and she was writing on her legal pad.

  “Yes,” I said. I’d asked my father, and he’d looked at me with an uncharacteristically sharp expression. Why do you ask? he’d said.

  Just curious, I’d told him. Later, when he and India had gone out to dinner, I’d found the document in my father’s safe, behind a Rothko lithograph in his home office — the code, I knew, was Trey’s birthday, then Tommy’s, then mine. According to the document, in the event of a separation India would receive a million dollars for every year she was married to my father for the first five years, then two million a year up to ten years, then three million a year. If she had a baby, she’d leave the marriage with thirty million dollars, and child support up to thirty thousand dollars a month, plus school tuition at mutually agreed-upon institutions until the baby turned eighteen. That was what worried me most, even though I figured India was too old and too skinny to get her period, let alone get pregnant. A baby would make her rich, really rich, and I couldn’t imagine her not wanting to grab at that chance, to have a baby, hit the jackpot, break my father’s heart, and go off to find a guy her own age, whatever that age really was.

  Kate nodded, asking more questions about India — her age, date of birth, her job, and where she’d come from — before clicking her pen and looking at me. “Did you bring a picture?”

  I pulled a snapshot out of my purse. I’d expected the wedding to be a gaudy, overblown affair, three hundred guests and half a dozen bridesmaids, all featured in the Vows column in the Sunday Times, but I had to admit that India had done it nicely. They’d said their vows in front of just forty people, on a Sunday morning, in one of the St. Regis’s smaller ballrooms. Afterward there’d been a cocktail party with sushi stations and dim sum, a champagne toast, and a small, dense chocolate wedding cake with pale-pink fondant icing and praline frosting underneath. In the photograph I handed to Kate, India was smiling, wearing a knee-length white silk dress, pale golden shoes, and a single apricot rosebud tucked behind her ear. “And I’ve got these,” I said, handing Kate a folder of printouts from when India had been in the news in co
nnection with her PR work: the statements she’d given on behalf of a client who’d drunkenly backed her Prius into an SUV, then called the other driver white trash before racing through the parking lot and off into the night (“Miss Lowry would never use such language, and we fully expect her to be exonerated,” India had said); the quote she’d given while turning away a reporter at the gates of a magazine-launch party on Independence Island (“‘Invitation-only,’ said Independence’s publicist, glam stormtrooper India Bishop”).

  Kate examined each piece of paper, one finger tapping gently at her chin as she looked over the picture, the clippings, the sheet I’d typed up with the words BIOGRAPHICAL DATA centered at the top, the photocopy of India’s driver’s license that I’d made after sliding it out of her purse while she was in what had been my mother’s dressing room, where the masseuse who came twice a week kept a folding table. Kate kicked off her flipflops, turned to a fresh page in her notebook, and then leaned forward.

  “When I start these types of investigations, I always tell my clients to be careful what they wish for,” she began. “There’s a few possibilities I can see. One is, we could find out that this woman is exactly who she says she is.”

  “She’s not,” I said.

  “Or we find out that it’s all a lie — her name, her age, where she says she’s from and what she says she’s done. We could learn that she’s really a lesbian whose three previous husbands all died under mysterious circumstances and that she’d been stalking your father for years before she finally got her hooks into him.”

  I found myself nodding unconsciously. That was more like it.

  “We’ll build a dossier — pictures, documents, computer files, e-mails — but you should be prepared for the possibility that your father will shoot the messenger.” I must have looked like I didn’t understand, because she continued, “He could get mad at you, not at India.”

  “Maybe,” I said. My fingers had gone to my pleats again. I made myself fold my hands in my lap. It was hard to imagine my father getting mad at me, if I’d be the one to save him from heartbreak, not to mention public humiliation. If India left, it would be in the papers, and people would laugh, they way they’d probably been laughing when my mother had run off with the Baba. There’d been snarky blind items on the gossip websites (“WHICH zabillionaire’s better half has ditched spawn and hubby and high-tailed it to New Me-hee-co in the company of her guru, an extremely flexible yogini who’s been helping her unblock her chakras, if you know what we mean, and we think you do?”). I would do whatever I could to spare my father that laughter… and, maybe, spare myself another year like the one I’d endured after my mother had left. I’d keep him safe, and keep my family’s fortune intact.

  “Can I ask,” Kate said, running her fingers through the fringe of the blanket that hung over the back of the couch, “why you’re doing this?”

  I didn’t answer. Of course I couldn’t tell her how awful it had been after my mother took off. I’d just met her, she hadn’t signed a confidentiality agreement, and I’d never told anyone what that year had been like. But before I had a chance to say anything, the door swung open and a tiny woman balanced on black leather booties shaped to look like horse’s hooves came stomping into the office. She wore a green leather miniskirt, black lace leggings, and a bottle-green velvet blazer. Her hair was piled on top of her head, and her eyes were shadowed with sparkling silver powder.

  “Oh, Jesus,” said the hoof-footed woman, narrowing her eyes at Kate. “Did you wear your pajamas to work again?”

  “They’re not,” Kate said, swinging her legs onto the floor and sliding her flipflops onto her feet. “I asked.”

  “Whatever they are, they’re about one step up from sweatpants,” said the lady, pulling a bottle of water out of her fringed leather hobo bag. A rabbit’s foot, dyed green, was clipped to its strap. She held out her hand to me. “Janie Segal.”

  “Of the carpet Segals,” said Kate. “My partner.”

  “Could you not tell people that?” said Janie. “Not when you’re dressed as a homeless person. It doesn’t reflect well on my taste.”

  “I’m Bettina Croft,” I said, feeling a little dizzy.

  Janie lifted her arched eyebrows. “Of the Marcus Crofts?” She raised her fist. I’d seen enough TV to know to bump it lightly with my own. “Respect.”

  “Bettina is a client,” said Kate, looking flustered.

  “Cool,” said Janie, getting up. “Holler if you need me. Actually, don’t holler. I’m going to have a disco nap.”

  She trit-trotted away. The heels on her boots narrowed until the part that actually bore her weight was barely the thickness of a sewing needle. Amazing. “Janie works nights,” said Kate, sliding into the rolling chair behind her desk.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Back to business.” Kate pulled a contract out of a desk drawer, and I skimmed it, then took out my checkbook and glanced at my watch. They gave associates an hour for lunch at Kohler’s, and while I was confident that my bosses would indulge me if I was ten or fifteen minutes late, I didn’t like to take advantage. The only reason I’d gotten the job, I was sure, was because my mother had used Kohler’s to sell some of her things before moving to the ashram: they’d handled the auction of her pearls and her cocktail rings and the little Monet, a painting of a pond with lilies washed in lemony sunlight, which my dad had given her as a tenth-anniversary gift. There’d been two hundred applicants for my entry-level job, my supervisor had told me, and that was without Kohler’s even advertising anywhere, just word of mouth. I wasn’t sure if her intention was to make me work harder, but that’s what I’d done. Most mornings, I was the first one into the Crypt, a windowless chamber filled with reference books, jeweler’s loupes, and special raking lamps where the junior appraisers did the preliminary evaluations of lots of coins or jewelry collections or paintings we might take on for auction. I didn’t want anyone thinking that I was spoiled or entitled.

  “Well, let’s get down to it,” said Kate. “We’ll see what we can see. But meanwhile — and this is none of my business, but I give all my clients this speech anyhow — you should be thinking about what you’re going to do with the information.”

  I nodded, but of course I’d already made up my mind. I would find out the truth — that India wasn’t really named India; that she wasn’t really thirty-eight, that she’d probably never been to college and that maybe she’d been married before. Maybe she even had children, starter kids she’d pawned off on someone else so that she could present herself as young and fresh and untainted. I would give my father the facts, and he would, gently but firmly, send India away. Then maybe someday there’d be a knock on the door, and my mother would be there, smelling of patchouli and musk, her feet bare, her hair gray and her eyes soft and regretful. I’ve made a terrible mistake, she’d say. . and my father would open the door and let her in.

  I walked back to work, through the soft spring afternoon, and bought lunch from a cart on Forty-eighth Street. “Pretty lady,” said the vendor, scooping the hot dog out of the vat of steaming water.

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling myself blush. I’d never learned how to take a compliment, as my mother had more than once pointed out, and I wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t fat, precisely, but I was flat-chested and full-hipped, fifteen or twenty pounds more than what I thought I should weigh. I had nice skin that tanned easily, and all the pieces of my face were fine on their own — my nose, not too big; my eyes, a pretty hazel — but together, they added up to something less than beauty. My best feature was my hair, thick and glossy, somewhere between red and chestnut, that hadn’t been cut since I’d been in high school. From the back, at certain angles, I could look nice, but from the front, I had problems. My teeth were too big. Either that or my lips were too thin, or my gums were abnormally large, or something…

  “Miss?” The cart guy was brandishing my dog. “Ketchup? Mustard?”

  I shook my head and paid him, putting my chan
ge in my pocket and stepping into the air-conditioned, church-like hush of Kohler’s marble-floored, chandelier-lit lobby. I’d done what I could — told my story, paid my retainer. Now I’d have to wait and see.

  INDIA

  The last man I’d loved before Marcus was a guy named Kevin. I was living in Los Angeles when I met him. I was twenty-three and had been trying to make it as an actress for four years. I had had more or less concluded that my future might hold many things, but superstardom on screens big or small was not among them.

  I wasn’t great, but I’d been good enough to land a manager, a man named Travis Martin. He had olive skin and bristling eyebrows and eyes so brown they were almost black. I suspected that his name was something else, something more ethnic, but I never asked. Travis tried to get me actual paying roles. He also got me bigger boobs and a slightly smaller nose.

  “No offense — I think they’re adorable,” he’d said, eyeing my breasts the same way a housewife might consider the chickens at the market as she put dinner together in her head. “But if you want to work. .” He didn’t even bother saying the rest. I didn’t have the thousands of dollars surgery would require, and I told him so. He said he’d loan me the money, and he’d take a percentage of my checks when I started working, that it was an investment that would end up paying for itself. So I’d gone into the hospital and come out with breasts the size of grapefruits, two black eyes, and a bandage over my nose that nobody in my West Hollywood neighborhood looked at twice. The bruises had faded, and my breasts sat high and firm on my chest, but the work hadn’t come. I could sing well enough; I was a decent actress, but I lacked that special something, that gloss, that glow, that propelled an infinitesimal handful of girls each year from the open calls and go-sees to bit parts to big parts to walks down the red carpet during awards season (and then, typically, to liaisons with all the wrong men and a stint or two in rehab, but that wasn’t the part I cared about back then).