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“Let me see,” CeCe says to her second husband.
“Say again?” Oliver says again without looking up.
Cecilia Millbury Olyphant is talking to Oliver Xavier Olyphant in a very loud voice about the next dinner or the next party or the next dinner party. In the dead of winter, the next something is always in the air for the Olyphants in Palm Beach because everyone in their circle abhors a blip in the social calendar. The thing CeCe has to see about is the private dinner party Juanita Busscomb is throwing at the club in honor of her daughter Delilah’s birthday. Delly Busscomb Gully is married to Angus Gully IV, one of the many Gullys at the club, though this time Juanita will not be celebrating another Gully baby or Delly’s graduation from another graduate school. Even now her daughter’s birthday is reason enough for Juanita Busscomb to throw a dinner party at the club.
“It would help if you would listen,” CeCe says.
“Come again?” Oliver says again.
CeCe would have told Juanita put us down without delay—except for the invitation she could not ignore to the President’s son’s girlfriend’s birthday party at Mar-a-Lago. Oliver and CeCe never go to Mar-a-Lago because everyone in their circle belongs to the club, the one that counts, just a hop and a skip south down the beach. The very idea of Mar-a-Lago makes them wretch when you consider their club could have bought that land years ago for a song—$1 million at most—if not for the opposition from Charlton Millbury, CeCe’s father. Since the owner of Mar-a-Lago became President of the United States, when he comes to town everyone in their circle is forced to drive to West Palm and back across the bridge for security purposes just to get into the club that is their birthright. Those nouveau at Mar-a-Lago have a way of getting in the way everywhere you turn.
In a voice so loud even Oliver can hear it, CeCe tells him they will go to the club and then the President’s son’s girlfriend’s birthday party at Mar-a-Lago because they have no choice.
“Don’t make me vomit,” Oliver says.
“You make me sick,” CeCe says though not loud enough for Oliver to hear.
Deaf as he is, Oliver is beloved in their circle because he is a massive upgrade over the meathead conductor CeCe met the year she played flute at Juilliard. Her first husband was a prodigy from a family in Idaho famous for potatoes, but now no one misses the maestro in Palm Beach: even the gossip girls at the club eventually grew bored with another Millbury marriage gone south.
“We will go to both parties,” CeCe says loud enough for Oliver to hear.
Without Cecilia Millbury’s name and money, Oliver would have been just another retired nobody eating take-out Thai in West Palm, nowhere near the inner (or even the outer) circle at the club. Mar-a-Lago would have taken Oliver if he had the money because Mar-a-Lago takes anyone with enough cash.
Oliver likes to pretend he never set eyes on a commoner, but once he was the astronomy department writ large at a small college in St. Cloud before retiring with his pension—and the one thousand shares of Apple stock his mother left him along with the condo one block from the beach. Oliver still keeps his little condo as a home office but Millbury money pays for their beautifully updated Mizner house on the ocean (and the two cooks and the three maids and the full-time gardener). CeCe ponies up for all the lease payments on all three Range Rovers and the two matching Beamers in New York—and of course the maintenance on the Park Avenue co-op.
Living the life costs real money, Millbury money, so CeCe is paying for everything. She pays the club dues every month; when they sign for brunch or lunch or dinner at the club, CeCe pays for that too. She pays for all the streaming services they don’t watch. She pays for the unlimited cellphone plans Oliver insists upon. She pays the balance on all his credit cards the minute she opens the bill. When they go home after the winter—when he goes on one of his trips to Europe—she pays for that too. When they go out to eat with friends, Oliver always signs the check like he is on the hook—but she always ends up with the bill at the end of the month.
By the night of the two birthday parties at the two clubs, Oliver X. Olyphant has achieved a free ride at the top of the social and financial pyramid with the help of old money that never gets old. Everything is better than good in his world, especially the afternoons he spends naked from the waist down with Juanita Busscomb in her sun room instead of playing bridge at the club.
The problem is not getting to the two birthday parties in the same night—the problem is Cece can barely see and Oliver can hardly hear, even with his fancy new maxed-out blue-tooth hearing aids. CeCe is now his ears and Oliver has become her eyes at a time in their marriage when they can barely stand to look at each other.
***
At the club, CeCe and Oliver are greeted with “Mr. Olyphant” and “Mrs. Olyphant” or “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Olyphant” every step of the way—at the front door and the front desk and by the waiters and even the busboys and girls who know they are never allowed to pocket a tip because people at the club are rich enough to afford not to.
Everyone at the club knows the endless tranches of Millbury family money explain why CeCe and Oliver are invariably invited to every party, including this one at the club. No one in Palm Beach bothers to write down the rules of engagement for the benefit of those stuck on the wrong side of the peephole and thus forced to join Mar-a-Lago.
Oliver’s eyesight is still 20/20—he never needed glasses, not even to read—but CeCe is blind unless she puts reading material right up to her nose and looks sideways before the words go blurry. She counts on Oliver to approve all the landscapes she buys for Millbury Gallery sotto voce; in turn, he counts on her to tell him what so-and-so just said.
Oliver knows CeCe is always bitching him because of the look on her face when her lips keep moving—like she is confiding in a missing person—but he has his own way of getting even. The paintings he picks for her gallery are putrid, and sales are drying up without CeCe knowing why. Tonight her hair sticks out like mismatched wings. The entire staff can see Mrs. Millbury’s hair is a mess, but not for the first time no one says a word about it. Oliver is always jubilant when CeCe makes a fool of herself in the smallest of ways. Revenge is his favorite dish.
Juanita Busscomb is waiting inside the club with her second husband Todd Mack, the Mack from the Family Office who looks after the Millbury money; they stand next to her daughter Delly and Delly’s husband Angus, a man as beefy as his given name. The Olyphants make a fuss over Delly and her birthday. They hug Juanita and her husband and even Angus accepts a squeeze on either side from the Olyphants.
“Juanita!” Oliver says.
CeCe hears a tone she never hears from Oliver at home.
Out of the corner of her eye, CeCe can’t quite see Juanita Busscomb still has the tiny waist and teenage figure she never lost, not even after Delly came into the world. Everyone in their circle says Juanita Busscomb is still the most beautiful woman in Palm Beach—but whenever CeCe says as much Oliver pretends not to hear.
Juanita puts CeCe’s hair into place without a word while CeCe gets a snootful of Parisian perfume whether she wants to or not. CeCe can’t really see what Juanita looks like tonight but Juanita always smells beautiful. Juanita knows that smell, because Oliver wears Juanita’s perfume like after-shave after not playing bridge all afternoon.
No one can accuse Oliver of not being groomed to a fare-thee-well: he keeps the hair within his ears; his nose hair is trimmed to extinction; not a strand of Oliver’s white fringe up top is ever left to chance. The members at the club agree CeCe married Oliver for his looks and because he was so debonair, a word she never hears beyond the confines of her second husband. People really do like Oliver for the same reasons CeCe liked him to begin with—the same reason Juanita Busscomb likes him now—because he looks the part.
CeCe is an expert when it comes to acting as if she can actually see what everyone else is talking about. Faking it is much harder when you are blind and not deaf, and CeCe looks completely blind behind her Coke-bottle sunglasses. The only thing missing is the stick blind people use so they won’t run into things—and Oliver is CeCe’s stick.
CeCe pretends to read the menu she memorized before her eyes went south. That worked until the new chef at the club changed the entrees last year. Now CeCe takes forever to look at a menu she can’t read before she orders the fish of the day.
“We can’t linger over dessert,” CeCe says to Juanita. “I hope you can forgive us. It’s the President’s son’s girlfriend’s birthday party at Mar-a-Lago and we have to dash.”
“The Olyphants should not be going to Mar-a-Lago tonight,” Delly says. “Oliver and CeCe are in the vulnerable population.”
“Delly is panicking about the virus,” Angus Gully says. “She has a flair for the dramatic.”
Oliver can see Delly is upset about something to do with Mar-a-Lago, but the gist of what she is saying whizzes by him like a comet. Even with the Cadillac hearing aids, he never takes his eyes off faces so he can mimic how people feel about the things he can’t hear. Even so most of what people are saying disappears down a black hole.
“I’ve never been to Mar-a-Lago,” Oliver says once Delly stops sniffling.
“Then you should by all means go,” Juanita says.
CeCe can always smell Juanita Busscomb in Oliver’s Range Rover. She smells Juanita everywhere—on Oliver’s jackets and sweaters and shirts and especially on his skin. Because he can’t hear and she can’t see, Oliver thinks Cece can’t smell.
***
Oliver comes down with a fever and then a dry cough exactly two weeks after the Brazilians at Mar-a-Lago test positive for the coronavirus. Then he gets really sick. By the time Oliver drives with CeCe to the hospital the pandemic is everywhere. The cars and cabs and Ubers by the emergency room are backed up for blocks.
“This is not acceptable,” CeCe says so loud even Oliver can hear it.
Oliver is ready to collapse when he sticks his Range Rover nose-first by the hydrant. CeCe marches him arm-in-arm to the front of the hospital as he coughs and wheezes like an old lady. At the main entrance they are stopped by a hospital security guard stuffed into a uniform so small his big belly tilts his billy club backwards.
“I’m Cecilia Millbury and this is my husband Oliver Olyphant. He is very sick and he needs a test for the virus.”
The guard moves two steps away from Oliver’s cough.
“My family has given more than $25 million to this hospital. We have supported you through every downturn.”
“I’m sure you family is quite generous, ma’am.”
“Sui generis,” CeCe says. “We gave you a whole wing.”
“Money’s got nothing to do with it, Ms. Millbury. We got no extra beds and no extra ventilators—we got nowhere to put your husband. The hospital’s already filled up to busting, ma’am. I am truly sorry.”
Juanita’s perfume on Oliver’s jacket is making CeCe sick enough to vomit.
“I need to speak to Todd Mack. He is the chairman of the board of the hospital.”
“I don’t know anyone by that name, ma’am.”
“What is your name, young man?”
“Tolliver. Two l’s like the Toll House cookies. Like Gulliver’s Travels.”
CeCe takes out her cellphone, turns her back, and calls Todd Mack. Oliver sits down on the pavement with his back against the hospital wall. Had he ears to hear he would have heard his wife threatening Todd Mack with the removal of all Millbury money from his management firm. But he is way too sick to care.
“How is your family, Mr. Tolliver?” Oliver says to the guard. “You got kids?”
“Two plus a wife. No one sick yet.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t hear so well even with my hearing aids. I might as well be deaf.”
“A wife and two boys. Everyone’s fine. So far. But I am truly sorry you are not doing so good.”
“I am in love with a woman who used to think I walked on water.”
“I hear you,” the guard says loud enough. “My wife still likes me, too.”
The guard pushes a button and speaks into a plastic transmitter velcroed to his shoulder—the voice back is so crackly Oliver can’t understand a word.
“Go with your wife to the side entrance, Mr. Millbury,” the guard says to Oliver. “Ask for Lacey Price. P-R-I-C-E. She’s good people. She’ll take care of you.
***
“Oliver?”
Through the glass of the Intensive Care Unit Cecilia Millbury Olyphant tells Oliver X. Olyphant she loves the way he launches into the saltwater pool like a rocket when it rains, the sound in his voice when he talks about the stars at night as if everyone lives in the same universe. CeCe whispers there are too many things she loves about him to count.
Then Cece tells Oliver Juanita Busscomb’s perfume lasts longer than DNA evidence. She tells him she accepted his affair years ago because Juanita is still so beautiful—because it’s not Oliver’s fault Millbury girls are a hair too plain for a second look, especially as they get older.
“I forgive you,” CeCe says without Oliver hearing a word of it. “I forgave you a long time ago.”
Oliver can see CeCe’s lips moving and tears dripping down her face when she takes off the Coke-bottle glasses. Before he coughs for the last time, Oliver Olyphant closes his eyes and thinks about the way Juanita Busscomb runs both hands through her hair at the moment of truth.
“I have so many reasons to love you,” CeCe says sotto voce. “Do you hear me? Why can’t you see?”
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