The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith

hard.
    Annie had to talk to someone, to have someone else hear the horror of what she had just read, what she had thought. Whom could she call?
    She thought of Brenda, a good friend, big-hearted, but sometimes a little insensitive. Well, Brenda would have to do.
    When there was no answer at Brenda’s apartment, she next tried Elise, whom Annie knew to be exquisitely sensitive, but not warm, not in the way Brenda could be.
    Again, there was no answer. Hanging up the phone, Annie felt her anger give way to sadness. Only one person in her life, she thought, had all the characteristics she would like to find in a friend, her son Chris.
    But with a]l Chris’s warmth and gentleness, this would be too much to ask him to share.
    It’s too much for anyone to bear alone, Annie thought. Cynthia proved that.
    Brenda Isn’t Upset.
    After the funeral Brenda left Annie and Elise and walked uptown along Madison.
    Of course she could have gotten a cab, but she preferred to walk.
    Actually, she wanted to eat. It was barely noon, but she was starving.
    She rooted around in her handbag and dug out half a Heath bar. In two bites it was gone and she was still starving. Thank God Greenberg’s cookies were just up ahead. She hoped they were open.
    They weren’t. Well, she’d find something. She had nothing to do today, and she’d been up since seven, so she’d take a long lunch.
    Screw it, she was in no mood for jokes or diets today. It wasn’t that she cared about Cyntha Griffin, because she didn’t. The woman was a cold bitch, and she deserved whatever she got. She remembered when her Tony had been the only child in their class not invited to Carla Griffin’s birthday party. Nothing hurt you in your life like the hurt that was done to your child. That had been the year they had moved to Greenwich, which was also the year before they moved out. In fact, in that whole time, no one was kind except Annie, but then Annie was always so good.
    She and Aaron, fighting it out for the Martyr of the Month medal.
    Who needed that Greenwich high WASP shit anyway? Brenda reflected.
    It wasn’t like she was a golfer or anything, and they certainly hadn’t moved there for Tony or Angela, though that’s what her husband had said. He said it was for them, but it was for Morty, like everything had been.
    “For you, babe,” he would say, and give her the mink or the jewelry or the new dress (always a size too small, as if that would make her lose weight). First the business was for her, then the house in Greenwich was for her, then the Park Avenue duplex, the paintings, the boat. As if she gave a shit, which she didn’t.
    But it had taken a long time to catch on. Much too long. For years he had snowed her with all that bullshit. Bullshit that didn’t quit.
    Morty could bullshit almost anyone, at least for a while. And now he was Morty Cushman, Morty the Madman, his face on billboards and TV commercials all the time. The most successful, fastest growing retail operation in the world. Two hundred stores selling name-brand appliances at discount all across the country.
    And now he had the Park Avenue duplex, the boat, the paintings, the whole shit thing. Of course, he was always screaming that he was cash poor and overextended. But it was Morty who kept doing the extending.
    Old “boom and bust” Morty. Was he rich, was he poor? Would his check clear or would it bounce? Who knew? She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been late with her co-op maintenance check. She couldn’t meet the eyes of the neighbors she met on the elevator. And the bounced checks at Tony’s school. And at Gristede’s. She was sick of it. When they divorced, Morty whined about the children and cash flow and mortgages, and she settled when he bought her the crummy place on Fifth and Ninety-sixth, paid the kids’ school bills, and gave her some alimony. Strunz. Like an idiot she bought it. Even bimbos like Roxanne Pulitzer make a buck on their divorces, one way or