Sex and Vanity - Kevin Kwan Page 0,58
and said, “Yves, isn’t it? That looks like it must have cost a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Two, actually. Yes, I may be an old lady with outdated clothes, but I decided to try to smarten up for Lucie’s new family, so she won’t be ashamed of us now that she’s marrying money,” Consuelo quipped, giving her granddaughter a sideways glance.
Freddie came into the room sucking on a lollipop and smiled at his sister. “Chupa Chup?” he said, offering the one from his mouth.
“No thank you, but could you go find me a shovel?”
“What for?”
“I need to dig a hole and bury myself in it right now.” Lucie sighed. She glanced at her watch again. Where the hell was Cecil, and why was he late to his own engagement party?
Seventeen floors down on Fifth Avenue, Reneé Pike (Saint Cecilia / Port Neches Middle School / Central Senior High / UT / Harvard Business School) peered at the handsome burgundy awning outside the building and said to her driver, “Circle the block one more time.”
Reneé gave her son a tight smile. “I don’t want to arrive until at least six forty-five.”
Cecil glanced at the new watch that he had commissioned Rexhep Rexhepi to create just for tonight and noted that it was 6:32 p.m. He hadn’t seen his mother this nervous in a very long time, not since right before she gave her TED Talk, and observed quietly as she fidgeted with the clasp on her JAR pink-sapphire-and-diamond bracelet, before finally taking it off and putting it in her Moynat clutch.
“Well, I think you finally struck the right note with the Oscar,” Cecil said.
“Yes, thank you for making me change,” Reneé said. “These high WASPs just love Oscar, don’t they? I’m paying tribute to Lucie’s kin by wearing a dress that’s twenty years old.”
“Wasn’t that when you were first named to the International Best Dressed List? Twenty years ago?”
“It sure was. You have such a faculty for dates, son.”
“I remember because WWD published a photo of you wearing this houndstooth pantsuit when they announced you on the list. I still have the page somewhere.”
“Well, I think it’s a timeless look, very restrained. It won’t offend anyone, and they can’t accuse me of trying to put on airs.”
“They will be the ones putting on airs, Mother. You know how these Old Guard types are. Their fortunes have dwindled down to practically nothing, so the only thing they have to cling on to is their snobbery.”
Reneé nodded. “Annette did warn me: ‘Consuelo Barclay will be judging you from scalp to toenails the moment she sets eyes on you, and she doesn’t miss a thing.’”
“I don’t know about the grandmother, but frankly, I don’t think anyone will notice what you’re wearing. My God, wait till you meet them. You can practically smell the mothballs. I met most of them at this godforsaken affair they called a clambake in Bar Harbour last summer. Lucie’s mother—you already know the situation there. The rest of the lot take great pride in looking like they haven’t bought new clothes since Eisenhower was in office.”
“They need to make extreme efforts not to look entitled,” Reneé said with a throaty laugh.
Cecil chuckled. “Lucie has a cousin who, I believe, shops only at that horrid place in midtown that closed down last year? Lord & Swift?”
“Lord & Taylor, you mean. I bought my prom dress at Lord & Taylor.” Reneé shook her head, as if she didn’t quite believe her own words. “I made my mother drive me two hours all the way to the Galleria in Houston. It was a peach-colored dress with big bouffant roses at the shoulder, and it reminded me of an Ungaro I had seen in Vogue. It cost my mom two months’ salary, but it was worth every penny—I was voted prom queen. No one in Beaumont had ever seen a dress like that!”
“You had such a flair even back then,” Cecil said.
“That was the night Ronnie Gallen asked me out, and if it wasn’t for Ronnie, I never would have met your father.”
Cecil turned away from his mother and looked out the window onto Park Avenue. It made him slightly uncomfortable whenever his mother talked of her past. In his mind, he liked to imagine that she was born on an elegant plantation in Louisiana, the descendant of a family with roots stretching back to the Valois kings of France. In truth, his mother may have been born Reneé Mouton in Lake Charles, Louisiana, but she