She was sleeping poorly, blaming her awakening at absurdly early hours on the sunlight that streamed into the bedroom despite the closed drapes. Inwardly she understood her insomnia and restlessness. She couldn’t erase from her mind the knowledge that David—lonely and yearning for a family—might be marrying. At times she was consumed by fresh rage that Phil had used her to smuggle two paintings out of Europe, exposing her to a possible prison sentence. And she was ever conscious of his infidelities. Bella had willed herself to accept Julius’s women. She suspected many wives closed their eyes. She felt betrayed, cheapened by Phil’s affairs. Gail and Brenda and their husbands were in full-time residence the last two weeks of August. Kathy loathed their constant, self-centered chatter. Milton and Eli were concerned only about the activities on Wall Street and their golf scores. Gail and Brenda—as always—were involved in clothes and the latest acquisition of furniture. The four of them were ever resentful of the not-so-latent anti-Semitism that was part of the Southampton social structure.
