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Affairs of
Affluence-Synopsis
Blue-blooded equestrienne
Liz Baker Fitzgerald is living a charmed life in the tiny enclave of
Brookville on the North Shore of Long Island’s Gold Coast. Her home, her
husband and the water view are beautiful, both she and her bank account are
healthy, and everyone plays golf at the same two clubs and attends the same
churches. At 40, Liz has spent her life and 15 years of marriage in
a place where there's no crime, few strangers and marked resistance to
change. Her marriage is over.
She has yet to figure
that out.
The child of an
alcoholic mother, albeit a genteel one, she was never able to help, Liz has
endured the growing emotional abuse of her cardiologist husband Maurice
because she keeps trying to repair him. She is not alone in her
carefully-hidden unhappiness. Behind closed doors, others are also
re-playing childhood trauma and parental relationships. Over the course of
a few weeks in late summer of 2001, the arrival of new neighbors from Texas
blows the lid off the town's secrets.
The novel begins with
Liz awakening to a beautiful day and reaching out to her husband. Maurice
Fitzgerald is a handsome, arrogant cardiologist who for several months has
been wrestling with a growing attraction to Tony, a masseur at Ping Rock
Club. Unable to address his emotions and hoping that he can extricate
himself from his marriage by will alone, he has been unkind to Liz for
months. After he pushes her away yet again and leaves for work, she cries
herself to sleep on the kitchen table. This is when someone knocks on her
door and she is meets her new neighbor.
Cindy Wallingford is
a beautiful blond in her early thirties who has used her looks to pull
herself out of a hardscrabble West Virginia childhood, support herself as a
stripper when there was no man to pay her bills and finally become the
trophy wife of Bull Wallingford, a self-made Texas billionaire 30 years her
senior. She is a sexual adventuress unburdened by moral scruples stuck in a
new town. And she's bored.
Cindy gets a flat
tire while exploring Long Island and meets a handsome Middle Eastern
teenager at the repair shop. They go to a diner, where they talk and she
learns he is a Kurdish refugee from northern Iraq. Taimour Hijjawi is
reluctant to speak much about his life. Their mutual attraction grows and
by the time they kiss goodbye, she knows this is more than another of her
many diversions. Later, she brings him to the house to seduce him, but he
feels uncomfortable in Bull's home and declines her advances. They go far
enough, however, for her transgression to launch an irrevocable chain of
events which will alter their lives forever. Love was never part of the
plan. And when a suspicious Bull, who has recorded the whole thing on a
hidden tape, returns home from his business trip, he watches his wife cross
the line with some Arab-looking teenager. She's gotta go, he thinks.
Liz meets Bull, who
offers her free board for her horse, hoping in exchange that she will keep
an eye on his wife and perhaps report back to him. Cindy and Liz become
closer, despite their surface dissimilarities. They both had alcoholic
mothers and find themselves equally unhappy despite their wealth. Liz tells
Cindy about her suspicion that Maurice is having an affair.
Maurice is burdened
by childhood sexual abuse by his priest, insecurity about not being a
surgeon and an unusually close relationship with his mother. To him,
marriage to Liz was the expected decision, not a love match. When he
becomes involved with a man, he blames the attraction on his wife’s
inability to understand him and reaches the irrational conclusion Liz needs
to die. His objective is clear: none of the alimony and all of the house.
He
convinces Cindy’s chauffeur and gay best friend Miguel as well as his
lover, Tony, to carry out the deed while he is away in Washington State at
a medical convention. They agree to the plan after he bribes them with the
money from her insurance settlement.
Liz goes out for a
ride on her horse and gets caught in a rainstorm. When she returns to the
barn, she is greeted by a handsome man about 35 with dimples, a large
cowboy hat and a cute Texas accent. Her mascara has run in the rain and her
hair is disheveled, but Bull’s son Gregory Wallingford believes that she is
the most gorgeous creature he has ever seen.
Gregory asks Liz to
dinner and finds out all about her and her life. For the first time, Liz
realizes that she does not have to be unhappy anymore and that she deserves
to be treated with respect and dignity. Gregory also realizes that his
journey of being alone, after being jilted by a lover of 5 years, has come
to an end. They share a love of history and he is entranced by her beauty
and her brains.
Bull hosts a huge BBQ
and turns it into a coming out party for his entrance into North Shore
society. Like a Moliere comedy, each guest has an agenda to get close to
someone, avoid them or gather intelligence. Taimour gets a bartending job
at a house party, only to find out after he arrives just whose house it is.
Cindy, Liz, Greg, and Miguel are trying to deduce if Maurice is gay,
Maurice is surprised by his lover's appearance, Cindy is freaking out about
Taimour, Bull recognizes him as the boy in the video and Greg decides Liz
is the one for him, husband or not.
The following morning
Cindy is instructed to meet Bull at the limo. They drive to the club and
Cindy is surprised when Bull pulls out the video screen and shows her the
DVD of her impropriety. When they arrive at the club and go to the
manager’s office, Taimour is there. Bull says his wife wants Taimour to be
fired since he has been stalking her. Taimour expects her to defend him and
she does not. He is furious and leaves, determined to never see her again.
Cindy goes looking
for Taimour when he won't answer her calls and ends up at his home. She is
charmed by his family's hospitality and welcomed with open and loving arms.
Taimour gradually warms up to her when she sees how well she is accepted.
By the end of the evening, his little cousin has her dressed up in Kurdish
clothes and they are teaching her to dance. She realizes that their customs
are not too far removed from her Scottish ancestry. For the first time, in
this small house in need of repair, Cindy realizes that the money and
possessions she has valued for so long mean little compared to this kind of
happy family. The fact that this world is so alien, from music to language
to food, encourages her to embrace it. There will be no turning back for
her.
Liz and Greg take a
ride out to check on Bull’s 100 Foot Hatteras docked at the Montauk Yacht Club.
They have drinks and dinner and dessert and make love. Liz is nervous but
tries to imagine what Cindy would do. She proceeds with the adultery even
though thoughts of Maurice enter her mind. She understands that their
marriage is over. For the first time in years, she feels that a long-lost,
vibrant Liz has returned.
Cindy and Taimour go
to a motel and she seduces him. Afterwards, he tells her the horrifying
story of how his entire family was murdered during Saddam's Anfal campaign
against the Kurds. He was a little boy when he was shot three times. He
shows her the scars and tells her how Nouri, the man Cindy thought was his
brother, was actually a Kurdish soldier who took him into hiding. The next
day, Cindy goes to the Kurdish Library in Brooklyn and learns that
"her" Taimour is the sole survivor of the death squad massacres
of thousands of people in 1988. She sees how extraordinary their love story
is: a boy who had lost everything and a girl who never had anything to
lose.
Maurice proceeds with
his plans to murder Liz. Miguel will go over to the house under the guise
of wanting to do repair work, drug her and stage it like a drowning. Liz
has become fond of Bull's employee Miguel since the Texans all moved in
next door. She would trust him. She has no idea that he has been spending
time with Maurice and his lover. When it goes down, Maurice will be
conveniently far away from the scene, on the other side of the country
Bull decides Cindy
needs to go. It is clear that the Taimour situation is getting more
intense. Miguel is instructed to find Cindy an apartment in Great Neck.
Cindy, while glad to have a place for her and her lover, is forced to live
on little money from Bull. The apartment is ugly and she is broke. She
begins to return to her old habits of popping pills and drinking too much.
She calls Liz and
asks her to arrange a meeting for Taimour and Nouri with Maurice’s venture
capitalist father. If Taimour can pitch his business idea and make some
money, they can eventually marry. Cindy, believing that she is helping them
to be together, goes to work at a strip club and does a private party,
revealing her true sexual nature.
Liz finds out that
she is pregnant while Greg is in California with Bull. Liz tells him and he
is overjoyed. He asks her to marry him by showing her a new, personalized
nameplate on her horse's stall which reads Liz Wallingford. She tearfully accepts. Her friends and
family already support her decision to end her marriage to Maurice.
He knows nothing
about Greg, since he has been too occupied with his own romantic drama. He
has his own plan to end their marriage, and divorce has nothing to do with
it.
Miguel comes over to
the house and has coffee with Liz. Miguel calls Maurice to tell him that
the dirty deed has been completed.
The night before the
meeting, Taimour and Nouri stay at Cindy’s. It is a joyful evening where
she finally connects with Nouri. This is her family now, she feels.
Taimour and Nouri go
to meet with Mr. Fitzgerald in NYC. Nouri goes in to the South Tower of the
World Trade Center while Taimour parks the car. Then the planes hit.
Taimour exchanges several poignant phone calls with Nouri before it all
ends. He walks back to Cindy, a refugee searching for home yet again.
The following days
are spent submitting DNA samples and looking for survivors. Bull reaches
out to Connie, Maurice's mother, who has been traumatized by the loss of
her husband. Nouri, he learns, was with him until the end. Maurice, still
in Seattle, receives a call from his mother-in-law telling him that Liz has
died of a drug overdose. Maurice returns home and drives to the reading of
the will.
He arrives at the law
office to see all the members of Liz’s family, his mother, Bull, Cindy and
Taimour gathered together around a bench. The crowd opens up to reveal Liz
sitting with Miguel. Liz gets up and reads him how it will all go down
according to her rules and that he does not have a choice in the matter. It
is either her way or jail for attempted murder. This was not a lawyer to
read her will but a divorce lawyer with all the papers drawn up and ready
to sign.
Maurice looks around
at Bull holding his mother, Miguel smirking at his uncomfortable
circumstances, a newly conservative Cindy dressed like a schoolteacher
standing next to a darkie boy who looks like a terrorist and Greg beaming
as if he had won first place at the county fair for a prized pig. He wanted
to kill them all and believed he would one day.
Everyone is
triumphant upon leaving the lawyer's office. The group - strangers to each
other just a few short weeks ago and now bonded by loves lost and found,
death and new life - head off to the restaurant Marbles to share a meal.
A toast is in order,
Liz thinks. They all saved my life, in more ways than just foiling
Maurice's plan. She looks around at the odd arrangement of individuals
sitting at the table. She places her hand gently on her belly, holds up her
up water glass and sees their faces, from her beloved Texas cowboy to the
Iraqi refugee, to the Latin gay prince, to the ex-trophy wife who now
wanted to just be a housewife, to the oil baron, to the bereaved widow and
to her own parents battling their demons but who seemed to have remembered
their love. She knew exactly what she had to say.
"To the only
thing that really matters when the world outside has gone crazy," she
said. “To those that mean so much to me. To family.”
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