Mother and Child Re
MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION
MERCEDES
“I did have a mother,” said the baby bird. “I know I did. I will have to find her.”
—ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, P. D. EASTMAN
December 1980
Mercedes had been carefully curating an image befitting her new title, accumulating a wardrobe of understated elegance, dressing in Chanel and Dior with pops of Halston and Armani. She made herself over as a different kind of Lady Stapleton: sophisticated, but with a style and panache telegraphing a new age.
Her future looked bright when, quite by surprise, her past and her present collided.
It was December 1980, six months before she and Stapleton could come out of hiding and officially announce their engagement. Mercedes was in London, packing up odds and ends from the Mayfair flat. Soon enough she’d meet up with Stapleton in California after his skiing holiday with his boys in Gstaad. That’s where he and Elaine intended to break the news of the divorce.
But first Mercedes and Stapleton were scheduled to attend—separately, of course—a retrospective of Antony Armstrong-Jones’s photography at London’s Savoy Hotel. Mercedes would be accompanied by Graham Leeder, a business associate of Stapleton’s, and a closeted homosexual who was having an affair with a married member of Parliament.
As the evening wore on, Mercedes, tiring of Leeder’s endless complaints about his lover, slipped into the ladies’ room to gloss, powder, and take a breather. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, grateful that this would be the last such event she would attend under such subterfuge. Her dark brown hair was cut short, in a bowl like Dorothy Hamill’s. It suited her, she thought. Daniel Galvin, who had cut Twiggy’s hair a decade earlier, had suggested it. “It’s pert and young, like you,” he’d told her, saying that not many women could pull it off. But she had the body and the face for it. Mercedes’s figure was taut and athletic, and though she was twenty-six she easily looked five years younger, she thought, admiring her white, beaded Halston gown with a slit up the side that was a bit more daring than the event called for.
But she didn’t care. This is a stuffy crowd , she thought, surveying the other women who stood nearby, checking for cracks in the veneer of their lives. Mercedes, anxious to make her own friends a continent away, closed the clasp on her matching beaded clutch and turned to leave when suddenly a group of beautifully appointed women walked in, dressed in Givenchy and Dior, their taffeta gowns whooshing by as they enjoyed the altitude their lives afforded.
She felt the presence before she saw it in the mirror’s reflection, an apparition in Carolina Herrera staring back at her. It had been thirteen years and five months since she’d last seen Lucille, and now there she was, poised, coiffed, powdered, perfect—yet something was different.
It’s the hair, she realized: it was flat-ironed and a shade darker than she remembered. At forty, Lucille was still breathtakingly beautiful, but around the edges Mercedes could see the wear. Her polished skin was beginning to show cracks, and her makeup, like her waist, was a bit thicker. But not so you’d notice.
Lucille had carefully constructed and then curated a reputation befitting a woman of influence and had at the ready a jigsaw puzzle of lies, should she need them, as to her early years. But she didn’t need them because her reputation was sterling, beyond reproach. At least until she saw Mercedes two feet in front of her, threatening by her mere existence to unravel that reputation.
Familiar strangers in beaded gowns, Mercedes, eyes full, was inexplicably overcome with emotion. She wanted to ask how the baby was—Gloria, that was her name. She’d seen a photograph in Newsweek, but that was years ago.
She has to be close to twelve now, Mercedes thought, and suddenly wanted to know all about her. Were they at all alike?
Mercedes searched Lucille’s face for an opening, a gesture, a kindness; some indication that said, All is forgiven. It’s all she needed, it’s what she wanted. Then she’d run to her, she thought, she’d apologize for the pain she’d caused, all the stupid and senseless words. She’d wrap her arms around Lucille and feel safe again.
Emboldened, Mercedes took a step forward. “Lucille,” she whispered, open arms, open heart, and Lucille recoiled with not only hatred, but with repulsion.
Lucille looked around to make sure no one noticed, then whispered, “What are you doing here, Millicent?”
“It’s Mercedes now,” she said stoically, gathering herself up to her full five foot four inches (with heels). “I’m a guest of the Earl of Sussex. He’s my patron,” she added, smiling. “You know about patrons, don’t you, Lucille?”
Lucille’s cheeks reddened slightly, then she collected herself, turning to leave.
But Mercedes, not ready to let her go, reached for her arm.
“Don’t touch me,” Lucille said, spitting out the words with a venom masking something else.
She’s afraid, Mercedes thought. Realizing that Lucille didn’t want a scene, she stood her ground, threatening to create one. “What is it, Lucille? You don’t want people to know that you’re related to someone who, what, dates a married man? Perhaps you should take solace in the fact that Lord Stapleton was born into his title, whereas Sir Rodney bought into his.”
The fine lines around Lucille’s mouth cut through her porcelain skin, much like Mercedes’s words cut through the lie she had so carefully crafted.
“Keep your voice down,” Lucille hissed, her eyes darting around the room, conscious now that others were close.
“Well,” Mercedes continued, raising her voice just enough so the restroom attendant and all the stalls could hear, “I learned from the best.” She took her beaded clutch, and when passing Lucille, lips to ear, whispered, “Mother dear…”