Honey,” Dale D`Ann, the singer/punkster/new grandma, says with a bodacious laugh, ”you can learn everything at this table. From how to deal with impotency to where to get a good tax break. Got a problem? Baby, I guarantee you someone at this table has been through it.”
The table, wedged tight with slavishly stylish ladies, is at Arnie`s on North State Street. As often as not, it`s actually two round tables pushed together, the better to share news of romantic and financial killings over Caesar salad, bottomless cups of coffee and deep glasses of white wine. Their appetite for gossip is insatiable. But between the clearing of lunch plates and the setting of the happy-hour buffet, the women do more than just tattle on who`s seeing whom. They also scheme to raise well over $1 million a year for local charities.
Every Friday from 1 p.m. to whenever their men come to collect them or they leave for dinner dates, they take over the back of Arnie`s main floor.
Restaurateur Arnie Morton adores ”the girls,” which is what they call themselves. Although they`re generous tippers, the waiter doesn`t seem to care much for them at all. It`s not that they`re particularly demanding customers; it`s that there are always so many of them coming and going and scooting over a seat. These women give new meaning to the term ”leisurely lunch.”
”We don`t call one another and say, `Let`s do lunch,` ” says Sue Carey, a transplanted Brit whose sway over the table has earned her the affectionate nickname Mommy. ”We just show up. Anyone can. You never know who to expect.”
Some 75 women, ranging in age from their early 30s to the undiscussable, have a standing invitation to dine and dish. Maybe 8 never miss, and at least 15 put in an appearance at the weekly ritual, which can last past 8 o`clock. Think of the sessions as juicier versions of the traditional Sweet Sixteen luncheon. Anyone who was ever a teenage girl knows precisely what that implies. Men can`t and perhaps shouldn`t even begin to imagine how intimately women will discuss among themselves the fine line between lust and disgust.
”Wait, wait, sit down. I have to tell you about my date from hell,”
bubbles Kathy Posner, a Pia Zadora look-alike whose exuberance has been attracting a slew of men during her dieting-down phase. As she speaks, he turns out to be a cheapskate, unattractive, a Johnny Mathis fan who confuses her classy Joy perfume with Scoundrel. And she names names, as many of them do. ”I want to announce I`m not seeing David socially anymore,” Posner blurts out to a chorus of boos another afternoon. Anyway, a few weeks later, she takes it all back; she`s back with David.
”You know, I really think all this sex stuff is way overrated,” says-well, never mind. ”This three- four-times-a-week-oooh, no, no, thanks. That`s not for me. Thank goodness my husband-and I do love my husband-is understanding.”
The undersexed wife`s face, and it`s a stunning one, is familiar from the society columns. To this group, the professional gossip is a desirable friend. The women want their social lives charted in the newspapers. Over lunch, they swap press clippings. Their names, not to mention those of their lovers, husbands and exes, hold face in the society columns. Ann Gerber is welcome at lunch. Skyline Newspapers` Bill Zwecker-”a doll, a sweetie,” they say-drops by for tidbits one day and gets the best seat at the table. ”Just spell the name right,” responds one woman when reminded a tape recorder is running. She is only half-joking. ”Just put down that I`m 5 feet 2 and adorable,” says another.
Among the better-known regulars are: Sue Carey, married to Thomas Carey, owner of Hawthorne Race Course; Lynda Heister, a marble-company executive and ex-wife of clothing designer Mark Heister; Maria Bojovic, who ran the Gaslight Club in Paris and is a horticulturist at the Chicago Conservatory of Flowers; singer/fiddler Christine Corelli; Mary Gowenlock, the new bride of Thomas Gowenlock III, president of the Sarah Siddon Society; and celebrity astrologer Laurie Brady. Kathy Posner, a hot publicist, and Dorothy Whealan, a popular
”mature model,” are always there.
Illinois Lottery chief Sharon Sharp comes occasionally, and the regulars say society bodybuilder Beverly Crown and Pat Brickhouse, wife of sportscaster Jack, do, too. Cheryl Coleman, who married Channel 5 weathercaster John Coleman last year, tries to make it once a month. ”The Monday after we were married, we were on the Wally Philips` (noontime radio) show,” says Coleman, who would quote Friday`s closing market prices to the table during her stockbroker days. ”John said: `I didn`t marry a woman. I married a ladies club.` It was a cute line.”
But the Arnie`s bunch hardly represents the true doyennes of society. Compared with the Sugar Rautbord crowd that meets Fridays at Cricket`s, these ladies are absolutely hoi polloi, second-tier socialites at best. Even the women who have made a good marriage or two work at something. None came from real money, and few are upper-upper class today. One of the women has moved back to her parents in Morton Grove temporarily. No one, however, is driving a clunker. Carey`s newest toy is a $1,400 portable telephone, which relieves the maitre d` of having to run over every hour to announce a call.
And they all seem to have these dream jobs that afford them entire Friday afternoons off.
”Well, it was nice meeting all of you,” says Cynthia Juco, a young lawyer who was told to call one of the regulars when she moved to Chicago from New York. It`s her first time at the table, and Juco, soft-spoken and dressed like a sorority sister, looks a bit overwhelmed by the bawdy group.
Leaving already?” Carey asks with a friendly frown.
”Sue, it`s 3:30,” notes Posner.
”But you`ll come again soon,” Carey says, firmly. ”There`s a tremendous amount of networking in these groups and the knowledge that everybody has can be important. It works great.”
”So,” asks Chrystal Boyenne in one of the table`s most popular non sequiturs, ”are you going to that party tonight?”
Following the luncheon chatter can be maddening. The women dissect available men, attainable money and conservative politics, loudly and in no particular order. Someone in another spectacular outfit is forever sitting down in the seat someone with the most amazing jewelry collection just vacated. Sometimes, when the table expands suddenly, Carey halts the half-dozen discussions going and makes everyone play the name game through the haze of cigarette smoke hanging over the table. It`s the only way to keep the women straight.
”Toni Abruzese, and I sell rattan and patio furniture, the best in the Merchandise Mart.”
”Geraldine Clark. I sell bonds to lending institutions and do mortgages. I have a TV production company, too.”
”Inez Gill, a former fashion coordinator and an over-the-hill college student with a 4.0 average.”
At that, the whole table starts applauding. The women don`t see themselves as fitting any particular stereotype and beam approvingly when one of the new attendees proves them right. Gill is going to be a substance-abuse counselor.
From the other seats in Arnie`s expansive dining room, it`s easy to pigeonhole the women with their chic hairdos and thick fur coats. They look spoiled and, to varying degrees, many of them are. At one Friday lunch, the 17 women present are wearing 61 pieces of jewelry among them. Not counting earrings. Later in the afternoon, four more women join the table, adding seven rings, two necklaces, four bracelets and a brooch to the count. These are not understated, hard-to-notice pieces. Sue Carey has a sapphire the size of a jawbreaker on one finger, a five-carat diamond on another.
But, as anyone who spends time at the table soon learns, rich is relative.
As it turns out, Carey`s diamond is a flawed mess, a point of honor with her. She proves this by taking a thin tissue, wetting it slightly and putting it over the stone. If ugly brown spots show through, Carey says, they`d indicate flaws. The things these women know. Her diamond is three-quarters murk. Satisfied, she borrows Paula Gagliano`s far smaller, reportedly perfect diamond, for comparison purposes. ”Hey Paula,” Carey giggles, ”you`ve got a big flaw here.” And the diamond does. ”Are you serious? Let me see!”
screeches Gagliano, a travel agent and funeral director`s wife. ”I paid as much as you did for yours!”
”I buy jewelry for looks,” Carey says another Friday. ”I don`t buy it for investment. I like good, quality trash. If you`re going to buy something safe, buy real estate. It`s the only thing that`s going to make any sense or money.”
”I bought something this morning, one of the prettiest ones we ever bought, a three-story graystone with a wrought-iron fence; it`s three units,” says Kathy Brown, a United Airlines hostess and buyer, with her husband, Larry, of Lincoln Park digs. ”It was three-nineteen, and they didn`t get anyone to look at it because it backs the `L.` We negotiated like 15 times back and forth, petty, petty, petty. We settled, and I dropped off a check today for two thirty-two twenty.”
That`s $232,200, not $232.20. Again the ooohs and aaahs start up. These women do love a deal. They borrow each other`s clothes and buy their designer dresses on sale. And brag about it. They seem to enjoy markdowns at least as much as they do men.
These are men`s ladies, and they admit as much.
”This is so much fun, lunch with the girls,” says first-timer Joyce Connell, a construction contractor. ”I haven`t done this since . . . .”
”We`re not the kind of women who hang out with women,” says D`Ann, whose bleached white hair is cropped so close it stands straight up.
”I work almost exclusively with men,” adds Lynda Heister, elegant in
soft, oversized sweaters. ”My boss wonders where I go on Fridays. He has my secretary look for me. I turn the beeper off.”
But when a man, any man, takes a seat, the conversations around him stop and then focus on the virile newcomer. Political and real estate types stroll over for hugs and kisses. Even the ones who are wide-bellied and have fat pinky rings attract a small, attentive crowd. It seems so unfair, what with all the making up and moisturizing these women do. Not all of them are thin or gorgeous, but each is well-maintained and nicely dressed. Still, they don`t seem to mind the rules of middle-age flirtation.
Husbands, boyfriends and unattached men can sit at the table. One dapper gentleman is as much a regular as his lady friend. But Friday is the one day a week that men are not the main point. The idea is to relax together with the ladies, sort of like taking one giant bubble bath. It`s a time for making business and social connections and female confessions.
”I can`t wait to be a grandmother,” someone sighs one afternoon.
”What is being a grandmother supposed to feel like?” asks another.
”Like my grandmother,” says Carey, who recently became one herself.
”Size 54s and a smelly dressing gown.”
It`s past dusk, and the half-dozen women remaining at the table scream with laughter.
”Even though my husband has to watch the kids, he says, `Go, go to lunch,` ” says Kathy Brown, almost always in high spirits and a different hat, ”because I`m always in such a good mood when I get home.”
Friday has been ladies` lunch day for nearly two decades, with most of the meetings held at Arnie`s. In the beginning, almost all of the women lived on the North Side. Arnie`s was a pretty and convenient place to meet. It was relatively inexpensive, too.
Over the years, dozens of women have come and gone. But one thing has stayed constant: a connection to Sue Carey. She and Lynda Heister, who is as opinionated as Carey and the obvious intellectual at the table, go back forever. The much-younger Kathleen Pope ran into Carey five years ago in the women`s washroom at Arlington Park Race Track. They were wearing similar dresses, and she has been coming to the lunch ever since.
Every Friday Carey, who has Joan Collins` sexy British accent and Linda Evan`s voluptuous California looks, regales the table with outrageous stories. She has a hilarious one about trying to become an exotic dancer in London to escape her family`s poverty, another about joining a circus at age 19 to come to America and a riotous routine about smashing up the old Gaslight Club when one of her exes wouldn`t step outside to speak with her. She`s also a former stockbroker, ex-flea-market operator and a pilot with a bad case of vertigo. But that`s another story. Maybe she`ll tell it some day on Wally Phillips`
radio show, which she sometimes co-hosts.
Carey, who has impossibly full lips and bosom, favors coral lipstick, short form-fitting skirts and revealing jackets. When she teeters in on her high heels, the table comes alive. Carey is, in fact, an extremely nice woman, if somewhat domineering. She has this habit of treating everyone like an orphan in need of mothering, hence her nickname. Carey seems to believe that all the world`s ills can be solved with enough smothering. No individual problem is too small, no citywide cause too great for Mommy to come to the rescue. And it seems to work for her. Arnie`s nighttime coatchecker, who was tortured in her native Iran, once lived at the Careys for seven months. Abused children are Carey`s personal mission, and she is impossible to silence once the statistics and bureaucratic horror stories start. She visits the Dicken`s Shelter for Abused Children regularly and corrals friends to deliver Easter baskets with her. Everyone at the table has a favorite charity. But when Carey asks, they gladly buy tickets to one more fundraiser at Hawthorne.
”I`m stealing people`s money for a new charity that nobody was aware of. In fact, it`s gotten to the point that 99 percent of the people who support the things we are doing are taking from another charity to give to us,” Carey fairly shouts, incensed at the suggestion that they might forgo the frivolity and make donations directly to the charities. ”You`re in the market for competitiveness for the dollar, just like any other business. I can cancel all them and write a letter and say, `Let`s forgo a party, let`s forgo all of the fun and just please give me the money.` Unfortunately, I will get but maybe one-tenth of what I get when I give an event that they enjoy. Anyway, I have wholesale costs because I own the place.”
To their credit, these women have raised big bucks for Chicago charities over the years. In the weeks preceding Hawthorne`s Racing with the Moon Valentine`s Day benefit, the event is all Carey talks about. It raises $15,000 for Dicken`s, Concordia Chidren`s Home, City of Hope, Variety Club and the Better Boys Foundation, among dozens of other causes that benefit from the fundraisers the women plan on Fridays.
”Did you tell everybody about the guy who called in on your TV show in Canada?” Carey asks Christine Corelli, an equally dramatic personality and attractive presence at the table.
”Yes. Well, not everybody,” replies Corelli. ”I did this telethon for crippled children in Canada, and at the end someone called in and said, `If Christine Corelli will sing ”You`ll Never Walk Alone,” which is my favorite song, I`ll donate $20,000.` They came running over to me, and I said, `I think I can pull it off,` so I raced real fast over to the piano player on the station break and learned the lyrics. And, of course, I couldn`t use a cheat sheet, so they made up a huge cue card, which I couldn`t see anyway `cause I`m blind as a bat. But we did it. I`m working on getting the tapes. It`s gonna be great.”
”Maybe,” Carey says, wide-eyed, ”we can redo something like this here.”
”Oh,” Corelli says, ”I would love to share some of this with you.”
Not all is lovey-dovey, sweetness and light at the table. Any large group has its factions, and this one is no exception. Observe the casual kissing-of- cheeks hellos and goodbyes. Many of the women never actually touch, and it`s not just because they`re afraid of mussing their friend`s makeup.
One Friday a woman storms in to announce another woman is suing her, which she isn`t. No one can figure out what`s behind the fight, though it seems to have something to do with a ruined life. A third woman promises to phone with some extra-dirty dirt. One, asked to spell another`s name, replies, ”Oh God, I can`t stand her.” When one of the slimmer ladies appears in skintight jodhpurs, everyone coos over her figure. But as she walks away, someone sneers, ”Hey, what`s with the riding gear?”
When anyone leaves the table, she takes a calculated risk. Any catty woman with half a brain realizes she gets talked about in return.
But Fridays, they`re supposed to get along. Carey hates friction at the table. She frets that one day everyone will stop coming because of it. Early one afternoon Dale D`Ann appears to be in big trouble for cancelling a bash at the last minute. The women trash her behind her back. When she shows up, everyone but Carey shuts up.
”Dale, your name is mud, ” Carey announces before D`Ann sits down.
”What`d I do?”
”You planned a party, got everybody together, and you dumped them with very little notice.” Turning to Mary Gowenlock, a flea-market owner who had generously sent flowers to D`Ann`s home before the event, Carey says: ”Come on, Mary, tell her what you just told everyone else. Mary, you got suckered in.”
Everyone laughs good-naturedly. ”No,” Gowenlock sighs, ”it was nothing.”
”People learn who is really credible,” Carey concludes. ”They call me and say, `Should I count on this?` And I say: `Call them and ask. Tell her. Tell her. She`s sitting there.”`
Finally, someone changes the subject. D`Ann gets off easy. No one mentions it again until the following week.
Getting sucked into the dynamics of the table is unavoidable. It is true that anyone can sit down and be made to feel welcome. It is also true that not everyone would want to stay. Whether the women are aware of it or not-and they don`t seem to be-a natural process of self-selection occurs from one Friday to the next.
The women pride themselves on the diversity of the group, and if they`re talking levels of education, business careers or income-tax brackets, they have reason to be pleased. But the group is also all white and generally conservative. For all the good works they do for the underprivileged, few will concede they started out with any advantages in life or got any breaks along the way to their tony lakefront and choice suburban addresses.
Being beautiful, marrying money or having a family business to go into is not factored into their equations of the American dream. If they can lunch at Arnie`s like this, anyone can. One woman comes right out and says that too many people on welfare are there because they are lazy. No one disputes her remark. Instead, they point out that money isn`t everything. For instance, that it isn`t happiness.
”If I wanted to marry for money, I could be a billionairess twice over,” Carey says. ”Money isn`t what necessarily makes you happy. It`s doing what you want to do.”
”The satisfaction I get from my job, from having people say, `Oh, I love racing, I love the track,` has been so much fun,” says Eleanor Flavin, a cool blond beauty who`s a publicist at her family`s Maywood Park race track. ”That means more to me than the money.”
When it`s noted that poor people typically don`t share this attitude, the table goes wild. Everyone leaps in to defend their comfortable lifestyles, not that there`s anything wrong with them. Several note that they, too, came from poor homes. Carey says her mother insisted she speak the Queen`s English, which didn`t cost anything but enabled her to escape the slums. Other women offer similar stories to illustrate how well they`ve done for themselves.
”If you give too much, ” say Brown, quite active in her church and a shopper of its rummage sales for her own kids` clothes, ”you become a socialistic society.”
”I never had time in years past to socialize. I was too busy raising two children and working. Suddenly, I have time for myself,” says Joyce Connell, explaining why she`s looking forward to becoming a regular with the group.
”Plus, I really have to say that these women are unique. I would never go to lunch with the average woman on the street. These are sharp, sharp gals. Self-made. They went out and did their own thing and were successful at it.” And they are only too happy to pass that success along to the other women who lunch at Arnie`s. The weekly gathering is one long networking session. It goes on constantly. Freebies to club openings are passed out, business cards exchanged and promises to talk later made. The money, and the table, perpetuate themselves that way.
When one female executive mentions she`s thinking of starting her own business, a psychologist who`s bored with her job says, ”Really, we`ll have to lunch.” Another is doing the invitations for an upcoming fundraiser at Hawthorne. Carey urges Christal Boyenne, who sells long-distance phone systems to Fortune 500 companies, to call a friend who might be able to help. Linda Rossman, sales manager at the Westin Hotel, met Kathy Posner through ”a publicity blitz, and we just keep throwing business back and forth.” Ardith Hunt designs Carey`s jewelry, and astrologer Laurie Brady does charts ”for almost everyone here.” Paula Gagliano handles travel arrangements for many of the women, and her husband, the funeral director, will no doubt one day be making final travel plans for some of them as well.
The Women can get almost anything they need at the back table, from good conversation to great gossip, from tax advice to sex tips, from charitable donations to a borrowed cocktail dress for a very pregnant stepdaughter. All without ever leaving the restaurant.
And Arnie`s serves lunch, too. c8
