Sex and Vanity

“Usually in Europe. For a few summers my parents rented a villa in the South of—”

Harry cut him off. “You’re not one of the Pikes who married into the Livingstons?”

“No,” Cecil said, reddening a little.

“Ah. Well then.” Harry turned away abruptly and reached out to a passing lady, grabbing her by the shoulder. “Helen! I haven’t seen you since Michael Korda’s talk at the Century! Where’s Frank tonight?”

Recovering himself, Cecil realized that Consuelo was still standing there, eyeing him like a hawk. Before he could say anything, she turned to the assembled crowd, picked up a flute of champagne, and began knocking the glass with her Elie Top intaglio ring.

“Everyone…quiet! I’m going to make a toast.” Consuelo turned to Lucie with a smile and began. “Now, when I first set eyes on Lucie a week after she was born, she was in her crib, and I must confess, with her peachy-white cheeks and delicate black eyelashes, I thought she looked like the most adorable, exquisite little china doll! So ever since, she has been my little china doll. She would never, ever cry, she was so quiet and well mannered, and I would dress her up in the finest silk costumes from the Orient, sent to me by my dear friend Han Suyin, and I would take her to lunch at La Grenouille, where everyone would fuss over her, or to tea at Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s. Funnily enough, Madame Chiang always argued with me and told me that my little china doll didn’t look Chinese enough! ‘Look at those freckles,’ she would say. ‘That’s no Chinese baby!’ ‘Well, she’s half Churchill,’ I would reply, ‘but thank God she didn’t inherit the Churchill nose!’ Oh, how we had so many laughs back then, and how I wish those days would last forever. But babies do grow up, and Lucie became a scholar, graduating magna cum laude in biology from Brown, which was only to be expected since she clearly gets all her brains from her mother’s side. And now she’s so quickly made a name for herself in the art world as one of New York’s top contemporary advisers. She continues to surprise us all, and I know her father would be so proud if he could see her today. Now Lucie has met her match in Cecil, who I’m told was proclaimed one of the most eligible bachelors in the country and hails from such an impressive family, one that has become so synonymous with diversity and the philanthropic spirit of this country. Why, every museum I go to these days, I see Mrs. Pike’s name carved into the wall! Cecil, I’ve only just met you, but I can tell you possess the refinement of a Rothschild, and I trust you will know exactly how to treat my precious, precious china doll. To Lucie and Cecil—I wish you both a lifetime of joy and happiness.”

Everyone in the room raised their glasses as Freddie cheered, “Here! Here!” Renée beamed proudly at her son, thinking, My boy did good. Those fuckers at Saint James School in Houston wouldn’t accept him, but look at him now—marrying into the elite of the elite, the kind of people who have never even heard of Saint James!

Lucie blinked back a few tears, though no one in the room—with perhaps the exception of her mother—would have ever suspected the real reason. After making a few rounds of the drawing room, Cecil and Lucie managed to duck out to the building’s roof garden for a little fresh air.

Cecil gave Lucie a dead-eyed stare. “Fucking hell. I have half a mind to get out my cell phone and call for a helicopter evac right now.”

Lucie burst out laughing. “I did warn you…”

“Baby, I don’t think you prepared me adequately. I thought Charlotte was bad enough, but I’ve never in my life met such dreadful people. So stultifyingly boring, so shabbily costumed, they might as well be wax figures. How could you possibly be related to them? I just don’t see it! You are the swan in a field of squawking geese, the rare lotus growing in a swamp…”

“Oh, you’re too sweet. I’m the weird-looking one in my family, you know. Cacky’s considered the beautiful one. She was a Ford model back in her Wellesley years.”

“Cacky? She sure looks like a Ford, and I’m talking about a Bronco! Thank God for your mother or you’d have the same unfortunate, inbred features!”

“You’re too funny. You sound like my Tang grandparents, my mom’s folks. Whenever they saw me, they would always praise my ‘features.’ To them, Freddie and I were the most beautiful creatures in the world, and they were always so proud to show me off to their friends that it made me a little embarrassed. But to some of the people downstairs, it was the polar opposite. It was always, ‘Hmm, what can we do to fix Lucie?’?”

Cecil shook his head in disgust. “Well, in my opinion you’re the only person downstairs who doesn’t need fixing! That Annafred, there’s no excuse for her name—did she escape from an order of lesbian Mennonites? Fess up, Annafred and Teddy are really brother and sister, aren’t they? They can’t possibly be married to each other.”

Lucie was doubled over in laughter. “I always thought Teddy and Annafred look exactly alike, but you’re the first person to ever say it! She’s actually Annafred the Ninth. Her family goes all the way back to the landing at Plymouth Rock.”

“Oh dear God, Pilgrims! You’re related to Pilgrims! No wonder you needed me to rescue you from this pathetic lot.”

“You have no idea. Freddie can do no wrong in their eyes, but I’ve always felt like I’m on probation—I’m only part of the family if I don’t embarrass them.”

“Ha! I think you’ve got it mixed up—you should be embarrassed of them!”

Lucie grinned, delighting in Cecil’s dissection of her kin. It was as if she had found a kindred spirit at last, like they were the two outsiders at the back of the classroom making snide remarks about the popular kids.

“And that friend of your grandmother’s—Ambassador Harry Stuyvesant Fish—what century is he from? Did anyone inform him that we won the War of Independence?”

“Oh, Harry’s the worst. When I was at Brown, he could never stop making disparaging remarks about it. He called it ‘a repository for ne’er-do-wells and the dregs of deposed European royalty.’?”

“I don’t understand how this man is going to be an ambassador. He wouldn’t know what diplomacy was if it hit him on his fat head. At first he snubbed me when he realized I wasn’t descended from some posh Pikes he knew, but then when he was introduced to my mother and realized I was that Pike, you should have seen how quickly he did a one-eighty and began to grovel in her presence! He reminded me of a truffle hog, especially with that red face and that distended belly. That is one man who should never go near a pair of suspenders, and yet there he was in his Brooks Brothers braces. He looked like…What was the name of the guy who used to do those ghastly Quaker Oats commercials when we were little kids? Wilfred Ross?”

“Wilford Brimley!” Lucie cackled. Cecil could really be so funny sometimes, especially when he was feeling affronted.

“Harry was going on and on in that pretentious accent about how he was due to begin his posting in Oslo and still didn’t have tenants for his estate in East Hampton because he couldn’t find ‘the right sort of people.’ It seems the ones who are rich enough to afford the place don’t meet his standards—no private equity, oil, or tech money; no one from New Jersey, Southern California, or southern anywhere; and ‘no Latins because they like to dance.’ He said this in front of my mother, mind you. He said they would ruin the eighteenth-century mahogany floors of his Cissinghurst, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Who is he kidding? I’ve seen the place, and it looks like a Victorian bordello on mushrooms. All those turrets and Tiffany glass windows? It’s

an abomination! He should put it on Craigslist and rent it out by the hour. More importantly, how dare he name it Cissinghurst? It’s an insult to Vita and Harold.”

“It was his mother’s house—Cissie van Degan Fish. She was apparently the mother from hell. Hmm…perhaps Harry would take the Ortiz sisters. They just emailed me asking if I knew of a good house to rent in the Hamptons,” Lucie wondered.

“Who are the Ortiz sisters? Are they anything like the Borromeo sisters, the Miller sisters, the Bograd sisters, or the Yeoh sisters? Should I know them?”

“You might enjoy them. I got to know them at Isabel De Vecchi’s wedding.”

“Ah yes, they were part of that strange crew you met in Capri, before destiny caused our paths to cross in Rome.”