The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Benjamin Melanie

Author:Benjamin, Melanie [Benjamin, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-26T08:00:00+00:00

Oh, how Babe could relate to that! She had a diploma, but it was merely decorative; Gogsie had decreed that all her girls attend Westover, a finishing school, rather than a college. And while Babe had graduated at the top of her class, still—it was just a finishing school. Her years as a fashion editor had given her a taste of accomplishment at something other than being her own fabulous self, but they’d been fleeting. Marriage had been her destiny, as it had been Bonnie’s, as it was for most women. At least Babe had succeeded at that, in the only way her mother defined success: marriage to wealthy, desirable men. But Bonnie had done that, as well; Herb Clutter, as portrayed by Truman, had been the alpha male of Holcomb, Kansas, a leader in the community.

But Bonnie couldn’t keep up, couldn’t cope, and while Babe understood this more than anyone but Truman ever suspected, she didn’t give in, she didn’t allow anyone to see her life as anything but a triumph. That was how Babe would be remembered, at least; unlike poor Bonnie, who was now immortalized, vanquished by the life determined for her. How did her surviving daughters feel about this? Did Bonnie Clutter herself somehow know that Truman had stripped her naked, bare? Exposed her for who she really was?

But Bonnie Clutter was dead. No, of course she didn’t know.

Babe shuddered, stamped out her cigarette, lit another. She was alone at Kiluna; Bill was in Los Angeles for business. The children were at school, but even if they’d been home, she wouldn’t really know it. They were housed in a separate little wing of their own. And so, isolated, Babe indulged in dark thoughts; it was as sinful, as clandestine, as if she’d eaten an entire cake by herself, and just as satisfying. And disgusting.

Would her children mourn her, were she to die suddenly, horrifically? Babe was no fool; she knew they would not, and it was her own fault. She was close to her oldest son, Tony, now that he was an adult, but she hadn’t been when he was a child. She didn’t like children very much, she had to admit; her arms simply didn’t ache to hold her babies; she wasn’t tolerant of the odors and stains of childhood. And as the children grew, each with their special problems—Amanda terribly shy; Bill Junior hyper, afraid of his father; poor Kate so permanently stressed she’d lost her hair as a child, something Babe could never fully accept despite the fact that she and Bill had had every specialist in to examine her, and the finest, most natural wigs made—Babe found herself letting each one of them down, incapable of fixing them, molding them, as her mother had molded her. So she withdrew from her own children, and hoped others could do it for her. She employed the very best nurses and nannies and governesses and tutors, interviewing them herself, treating the help like family, making

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