The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

Normally not one who needs to impress any of these women, she’s felt an increasing paranoia about her family, having been a leading competitor in the same field as the Banks family business. “Well I think she’s doing the best anyone can to try and handle such a horrific, horrific thing at her age.”

“Vhell, Stan was just torn up about it, but he seems to be even closer to his friends now,” Galina says.

“Oh, goodness,” Carol says. “Billy was trying to—he had mentioned it to me, but I don’t think I ever met them.”

“Meredith, you knew Genevieve quite well, didn’t you?” Linda pries. Leave it to the wife of a newsman to want to dig deeper.

Meredith raises her eyebrows, but looks down at her uneaten anchovies. “Well, you know, we led very different lifestyles and grew apart as the years went on. Bunny and Audrey had many playdates when they were younger, and our families knew each other, though were not particularly fond of one another, just given that we were competitors. But we… respected each other. And I know David was getting more politically involved and, well… who knows if that had anything to do with it,” she says, insinuating: Republican—then remembers her audience. “Anyway, our families weren’t even that different, but business could get in the way.” She sips her champagne.

Meredith looks down at her Cartier watch and up at the podium where the hostess, Nourah Al Hashem, has appeared in a gold suit. She takes the microphone out of the stand. “Ladies, I am so blessed and beyond grateful you could join me this afternoon at our annual Christmas luncheon with fifty of the most extraordinary and powerful women in Washington. I am honored to stand before you, and have the privilege to talk about one of the organizations nearest and dearest to my heart. There are over four thousand children in our beloved Washington today who are homeless and hungry, and over three thousand parents who are joined with them. We know that with the ever-shifting economy, hard times can fall on families, which is why I partner with the Lollipop Kids Foundation and this life-changing work that they do. As most of you know, at this point in the afternoon we like to do our ‘ask.’ Everyone should have received a paddle when you checked in with Laurent—and let me just say how much we love Cafe Milano and our maître d’ extraordinaire, let’s give them a round of applause.” Ladies clap in their seats, heads turned to the front. Meredith begins to unwrap the lollipop on her dessert plate, while Phyllis frantically reapplies lip gloss.

“So, ladies, let me see your paddles!” The women hold up their paddles as if raising shot glasses. “Okay, very good! Are we ready? We are going to start with a whopping ask of twenty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars, would anyone so generously like to give the Lollipop Foundation twenty thousand dollars…?”

Women’s heads and torsos and hair-sprayed updos twist and turn in their seats, waiting for someone to raise a paddle. Hearts start to pound; no one wants to feel the shame of not having a single person step up to the plate—when suddenly Betsy Wallace, as if departing from the gates of hell, lifts her paddle and says, “I will donate ten thousand dollars if my friend here, Meredith Bartholomew, meets me at ten thousand even, so you can get your twenty.”

Eyes in the audience grow wide; no one has ever propositioned someone on the spot—not here in Washington, maybe in places like Vegas or Los Angeles. Betsy would justify it, were anyone to ask, as taking Linda’s advice about not being so “flashy” with her wealth, not as the wife of a new politician who wants to get into the Washington Club. But truly? It is vengeance; Betsy has not forgotten Linda’s tidbit of gossip on that dreadful evening of their dinner when she mentioned that the Bartholomew family had quietly been losing money.

Phyllis’s jaw nearly drops. Meredith wants to lean over the table and swat Betsy across the face with her paddle, watch her go flying through the glass windows and out into the cobblestone streets of Georgetown, her chandelier earrings flying apart at the clasps. Instead, she musters up a smile whose subtext is: Isn’t this woman atrocious? “I’ll match with fifteen thousand dollars,” Meredith counters, unwilling to lose her dignity because of Betsy Wallace.

“Wow!” Nourah claps her hands and struts across the floor in her brown Manolos. “Twenty-five thousand dollars on the first ask! A record… I just love my friends, old and new! Okay, our second ask…”

“Oh dear.” Phyllis downs the rest of her champagne while Galina Stopinksi and Carol Montgomery make the next bids.

As the afternoon progresses, neither Meredith nor Betsy makes eye contact with the other, nor do they engage in conversation. It is only when all of the willing donors line up where they originally checked in to give their credit card information to Laurent that Betsy leaves her final mark as the new-to-town powerhouse of Washington. She hands Laurent her black American Express card and kisses him on both cheeks.

“Don’t forget that fabulous coat of yours,” Laurent says, gesturing to the coat-check room across from him.

“Ciao, darling,” Betsy says.

Meredith approaches Laurent. “A successful luncheon this year,” she says.

“Every year, Mrs. Bartholomew,” he replies.

Meredith hands him her black American Express card as Nourah comes to say good-bye: “Oh, we are so grateful, my dear friend. I’ll have my assistant set up tea at the Jefferson as a thank-you.” They kiss each other on both cheeks.

“Um, Mrs. Bartholomew, I am so very sorry—I have tried running the card several times through the machine but it keeps declining,” Laurent says in a low voice, glancing to either side, so as not to embarrass her.

“What’s going on, sweetheart?” Phyllis says in her ear.

Meredith turns to her and whispers through a smile, “My card was declined.”

Phyllis begins to dig through her purse to