Jennifer Haigh (32 page)

We're closer than sisters
, they liked to say, and in Paulette's case it was certainly true. Her actual sister had moved to New Mexico ten years ago—to take advantage of the spectacular light, she said; to mix her own paints with desert sand. Martine lived in a house with two other woman artists, and Paulette had never been invited to visit. They spoke twice a year, on their birthdays, and every Christmas Martine sent her a painting. Paulette knew from their brother that Martine had once again succeeded, that her paintings hung in a gallery in New York and sold for thousands of dollars. That
Martine
hadn't told her this wounded her deeply. Paulette loved nothing more than celebrating accomplishments (those of her family, of course, since she had never accomplished anything herself ). In her mind, this was what accomplishments were
for.

Tricia James was of the same mind. This shared belief mortared their friendship. For three days Paulette had allowed Tricia to praise Billy, Gwen, and Scott. She responded with kind words about Hadley, Patrick, and Eleanor. This was the way she and Tricia had always operated. To prattle on about their own children would have been gauche.

At Wellesley their classmates had been struck by their resemblance.

Though one was blond, the other dark, they had similar features and identical petite figures. Frank had once remarked, to Paulette's horror, that she and Tricia would feel exactly the same in the dark.

She had never repeated this to Tricia.

They both enjoyed telling the story of how they'd met: how they'd glimpsed each other in the dining room wearing identical sealskin skirts, butter yellow cashmere sweaters, kitten-heel pumps, and Hermès scarves. Showing up in identical dresses would have been embarrassing, but putting together the same entire
outfit
down to shoes and scarves, was simply delightful. Paulette Drew and Tricia Boone, strangers to each other, had both burst out laughing. They were nineteen, and filled with identical feelings: hilarity, recognition, joy.

For a time it seemed they would put together whole identical lives. Both left school to marry. Like Frank, Walter James was handsome, charming, virile; and for a brief, delicious time Paulette and Tricia had both been courted. In Frank's old jalopy—Frank and Paulette in the front seat, Wall and Tricia in back—both girls had been kissed. They had fallen completely and hopelessly and simultaneously in love.

Both had three children, though Tricia's had come at closer intervals. Pregnancy had not agreed with her, and her attitude had been soldierly; she was determined to get it over with. And here was where their paths diverged, because Tricia, with her live-in nanny, could
afford
to get it over with. Tricia had married a man with earning potential, a man interested in making money.

Recently, while having her hair colored, Paulette had flipped through a magazine and read a fascinating statistic, that the tallest men in the workforce earned the highest salaries. Lulled by the hum of the dryer, she'd thought of the unusually tall Walter James. While Frank spent endless years in school, Wall had worked as an investment banker at Goodman Schering; back when Paulette and Frank were still living in dilapidated graduate-student housing, Wall had built Tricia a house in Bryn Mawr.

On a tight budget, with a workaholic husband, Paulette had raised her children singlehandedly; she'd hinted to her parents that help would be welcome, but her father was only formerly wealthy, while Tricia's remained so to this day. Paulette had watched from a distance as Tricia lived the life of a prosperous young wife and mother—the life Paulette had expected to lead, almost certainly
would
have led, if Frank hadn't appeared one night at a Wellesley mixer and hijacked her wagon for good.

Now, their children grown, the two friends saw each regularly.

Each spring Tricia came to Concord for a weekend. In the fall Paulette spent a weekend in Bryn Mawr. These visits began with a hug and a kiss, a quick assessment and readjustment. In Paulette's mind Tricia was still a young woman, but those first moments reminded her otherwise.

More than any other person in the world, Tricia reminded Paulette of her own aging.
You look wonderful
, they told each other, and in a way it was true. They were both slender, beautifully dressed, carefully coiffed. They cared for their bodies like museum treasures, precious artifacts saved behind glass. But they were nearer sixty than fifty, and no amount of maintenance could change that.

It was the oldest friends who mattered most. With each passing year, Paulette realized this more deeply. She thought of her brother Roy, retired to Arizona, to golf with other men who were also—she loathed the expression—
senior citizens.
Roy had arrived in Phoenix with an entire life behind him, a career, a marriage; to his new friends he'd always been old. Not so with Paulette and Tricia. Strangers might mistake Paulette for an old woman, but Tricia knew that the years had changed her very little, that she was much the same person she'd been at twenty: her stubborn hopefulness, her bottomless capacity for disappointment, qualities that came braided together like a hank of hair. This was Paulette's basic nature—
my foolishness
, she called it—and she hadn't outgrown it as her mother had predicted she would. Like everything else, maturity had disappointed Paulette. She believed there ought to be some benefit to the grotesque business of aging, some thin compensation for all it took away. She waited for wisdom, but wisdom did not come. On the downslope of her life she wanted the same things she'd always wanted, with undiminished intensity; and suffered just as profoundly when those things did not appear.

Because Tricia understood this, Paulette still needed her, still cherished their time together despite the inevitable comparisons between Tricia's life and her own. Tricia's children were healthy, her marriage intact. Though whether Wall, who'd once grabbed Paulette's rear end as they danced at a friend's wedding, had been 100 percent faithful, Paulette had her doubts. (Did Tricia trust him? Was this the reason she was still married after all these years, while Paulette was alone?)

In between the museum and the Ibsen play, the lunches and the shopping, a conversation was taking place, a conversation centering, always, on husbands and children. Given recent events—three days of anxious brooding, fear, and stifled rage—Paulette would have preferred to avoid these subjects entirely; but with Tricia that wasn't possible. Their friendship was too old, its customs too entrenched.

A packet of photographs lay on the table between them.
Show and tell
, Tricia had announced as she took it from her pocketbook.

They had sorted through the photos together, Paulette making appropriate noises of amusement, appreciation and delight. Tricia's daughters were lovely, blond like their mother; they hadn't been attractive children, but in adulthood had come into their own. In one photo Tricia stood arm in arm with Hadley and Eleanor; it was immediately apparent where the girls had gotten their good looks, and where Tricia's had gone. Paulette wondered how Tricia could stand it. Would she, in Tricia's position, have envied her beautiful daughters? Was some weak part of her grateful to be spared the sort of humiliating Christmas photos Tricia submitted to, the pain of fading as her daughters blossomed? Was she glad that Gwen had not grown up?

I am not a generous person
, she thought, More photos. Tricia's daughters each had two children. Patrick and his wife, both attorneys, had none. Tricia found this vexing, though she'd been a good girl and held her tongue. "I can't imagine what they're waiting for," she'd confided to Paulette."Claire is thirty-four, the same age as Patrick. The same age as Gwen."

Paulette studied the photo. Patrick looked paunchy and bloated; he had lost his beautiful curly hair.
Poor Patrick
, Paulette thought. She'd always had warm feelings toward the boy. She would never forget his kindness in taking Gwen to the dance.

Because Tricia expected it, she went to the parlor and took her lone Christmas photo from a drawer in the highboy; she still hadn't gotten around to buying a frame. In it, the family stood around the Douglas fir, Paulette at the center, her handsome sons on either side.

In the foreground stood Ian, Sabrina, and Gwen.

Billy, Scott, and Sabrina photographed beautifully; to the others, the camera was less kind. Gwen looked rumpled and stocky in her hideous sweatshirt; in the glare of the flashbulb her face was very pale, with no lips or eyebrows.
(Lipstick!
Paulette thought.) Ian's shirt was decorated with stains. And Paulette simply looked old.

"Oh, how precious," Tricia said dutifully. "I assume Scott's wife took it?"

"She's the best photographer in the family," said Paulette.

"Apparently so. She's never in the picture." Tricia held the photo at arm's length, squinting; like Paulette she was too vain to wear her glasses. "Scotty's little girl is going to be a beauty." She didn't say, but surely noticed, that Sabrina was now as tall as her aunt Gwen.

"She's a lovely girl," Paulette agreed.

"So fair. Like her mother?"

"Yes," said Paulette."Penny is fair skinned."

"I can't believe how handsome Billy is. Honestly, what's the matter with girls today? I can't believe no one's reeled him in yet."Tricia studied the photo. Finally she reached for her pocketbook and took out her glasses.

"Oh, my heavens," she exclaimed."It
is
Scott!"

"Well, of course," said Paulette, puzzled."Who else would it be?"

"Oh, this is remarkable. I wasn't going to say anything, because it seemed so silly. I was sure I was mistaken." Tricia removed her glasses.

"As I was driving here, I had the strangest experience. Somewhere in Connecticut, I saw Scotty on a billboard."

Paulette frowned.

"It was advertising some type of school, I believe. At first I thought, Tricia, you've lost it completely. You're seeing things. But, darling, I was right! It was your Scott."

Paulette shook her head as if to clear it. Too much caffeine, too many photos, the intense effort not to think what she'd been thinking all weekend. And what was this nonsense about a billboard? She felt pressure behind her eyes, a migraine building. To her horror she was near tears.

"What's the matter, darling? Have I upset you?" Tricia reached across the table for Paulette's hand."What is it? What's wrong?"

Paulette grasped Tricia's hand, more tightly than she intended.

"Tricia, I have to tell someone, and you're my oldest friend. Something terrible has happened to Gwen."

The phone had rung on Friday morning, while Paulette was paying the housecleaner—a new girl who also did the Marshes' next door.

Guadelupe was a pretty brown-skinned girl who spoke five words of English, so the transaction was slow going. Yet her price was reasonable, and she did an impeccable job.

Paulette rushed for the telephone. She was of the generation that couldn't simply let it ring, as her children exhorted her to do. Billy had long pestered her to buy an answering machine, but Paulette found the idea unappealing. She couldn't bear the sound of her recorded voice.

"Billy, what's the matter?" she asked immediately. Her son was a creature of habit; they spoke in the evening at six o'clock precisely. He had never, in her memory, called on a weekday morning.

"Relax," said Billy, who did not, himself, sound very relaxed.

"Everything is fine."

"I'm in a bit of a hurry," she explained. "Tricia is coming this weekend, and the cupboard is bare."

"Okay then. We can talk another time." He sounded relieved to be rid of her, as though she'd kept him on the phone for hours. As though
she
had called
him.

"Billy, you sound edgy. What's going on?"

"I spoke with Gwen last night. She sends her love."

"That's nice, dear." Paulette glanced at her watch."How was her vacation?"

"Well, that's just the thing, Mother. She was supposed to come home a week ago. But she's still down there."

"Is she all right?" Paulette felt her heart rush. Already her mind was racing: she could leave immediately for the airport. She might be able to catch Tricia before she left Philadelphia. If not, she could leave a note at the Marshes'. Tricia would have to understand.

"She's fine," said Billy. "In fact, she sounded happy. Apparently she met somebody on the island." He paused, as if aware of the import of what he was about to say."Mother, Gwen has a boyfriend."

The details, what few he knew, made no sense at all. They had met on a boat of some sort. They went scuba diving together. The young man's name was Rico.

Absurdly, Paulette thought of Guadelupe the housecleaner, the recent ordeal of writing the girl a check.

"Heavens," she said inanely."I suppose she does speak Spanish."

Rico wasn't Spanish, Billy explained; he had some sort of French surname. He lived on the island, apparently. On St. Raphael.

Later, driving back from the market, she pondered what Billy had said. She tried to picture this Rico, with no success. She knew nothing, not the first thing, about the sort of people who lived on St. Raphael.