The After Party (14 page)

I knocked on the side door, like I'd done most of my life. I planned to slip in and see if Mary was available, and if she was, I'd—well, I didn't quite know what I'd do. I wanted to see her. I wanted to hear her say that Sid Stark was no one to worry about. I tapped lightly on the ancient screen door.

Stewart opened the door and stood there, jacketless, his sleeves rolled up, a cloth napkin tucked into his shirt.

He followed my eyes and plucked the napkin from his shirt in an unhurried gesture.

“Hello, Mrs. Buchanan. How may I help you?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, flustered. “I see I've disturbed your lunch. I was hoping to catch Mrs. Fortier.”

I noticed Stewart's hands, held out, waiting.

I looked at them, then at Stewart's face, which was, as always, inscrutable.

“The cake? A treat for the Fortiers? Please, allow me.” And before I could stop him he'd taken it from me. “I'm afraid Mrs. Fortier is out, with Mr. Fortier. I'll tell her you called.”

“Thank you,” I said, because there was nothing else to say. Stewart nodded, and beyond his shoulder I glimpsed the little table where he had been sitting, lunch things laid out.

He shifted his weight, almost imperceptibly, but it was too late. I had seen, despite his best efforts.

“Thank you,” I said again, backing away, Stewart letting the screen door close inch by inexorable inch. “Sorry to interrupt.”

I sat in my car and tried to keep the panic at bay. I'd just seen a face I hadn't seen in years. Dorie. She was back. And she had appeared at the same time as Sid. It meant something. It must.

1957

S
id Stark—the name circled my brain like a shark. Along with Dorie's face. And Joan's. Always Joan's. I told myself, just as I'd done when I'd first noticed Dorie gone all those years ago, that servants came and went all the time. Dorie's absence, and now her reappearance, might mean nothing. Yet I knew things were being kept from me. I was sure Stewart had not wanted me to see that Dorie had returned, and I was certain not only that Mary did know Sid Stark, but that I'd heard fear in her voice at the mention of his name.

There was no proof that these events were connected, but everything was beginning to feel like a deception.

I called Ciela on Wednesday.

“I'm sorry about the other night,” I said, right away, about our moment in the Petroleum Club bathroom. “I was a little tipsy.”

“Is that what we're calling it these days?” she asked, but then she quickly relented. “It's fine. We all get a little ‘tipsy' sometimes, I suppose.”

She seemed surprised I wanted to bring Tommy over.

“To play with Tina?”

“Umm, yes,” I said, “unless you have another child I don't know about?”

She laughed. I was making her uneasy. Tina and Tommy had never played together before because I had never allowed it. He needed to be around other children, I knew that, and he was, in a Mother's Day Out on Tuesdays, across town, with children whose mothers I had no chance of running into otherwise. Tuesdays were my dress-down days, where I wore pants from last season and little jewelry.

“Tina will love that. She loves little boys, have I told you that? Prefers them a million times to little girls. Just like her mama!” She laughed, casually this time. Ciela could be biting but she could also be gracious, graceful: she made you feel comfortable in her presence. She had none of Darlene's dumb aggressiveness, none of Joan's carelessness. I felt a surge of affection for her, on the phone.

“I didn't know that, but I hope Tommy fits the bill.” It wasn't just a thing I was saying, either. It didn't matter where I put Tommy, across town or not: he didn't like other children. He didn't dislike them, either—that would have meant he had preferences. He simply ignored them, played by himself, gave wary, sidelong glances to any child who approached him.

•   •   •

T
ina was tiny and cherubic, with enough words to ask her mother why Tommy was so silent.

“Not everyone talks as much as you, doll,” she said, and though she was trying to be kind, the words felt like a slap.

“He's shy,” I said, giving Tommy, who stood glued to my knee, his hand in his mouth, a little push. “He's chattier at home.” An absolute lie, the kind that hurt no one.

Ciela and I sat in Tina's playroom, with the fan going full blast. It was decorated as a room in a castle. A pink castle, inhabited by pastel princesses, which were painted on the walls in various poses: granting a wish to a child who looked very similar to Tina; floating over a field of flowers that contained a child who looked very similar to Tina; hovering beside a child who looked very similar to Tina.

“Christ,” I said, when we'd ascended the stairs and Ciela had flipped the light on and I had absorbed the room. “It's a little creepy, don't you think?”

I instantly regretted saying it, but Ciela took my comment in stride, laughing lightly enough that I would not feel uncomfortable, but not so heartily that I might think she agreed with me.

“We went a little overboard, but that's what children are for, don't you think? To go overboard on?”

I looked at Tommy, who stood not a foot from me. It was equal parts thrilling and upsetting, the extent to which Tommy needed to be near me. I tried not to take too much pleasure in this need, but it was hard sometimes, to deny my son such a simple thing.

Instead of drawing him into my lap, I took his hand and led him to a plastic kitchen where Tina played. I had no illusions he would play with Tina, but I had brought his blocks with me, and if all went well Tommy would stack these blocks obsessively while Tina played with her miniature kitchen, and it would appear, to the unpracticed eye, that little boy and little girl were playing together happily.

We talked about Darlene's younger sister, Edie, who was flying to Miami for a nose job. “Poor thing,” Ciela said, “she needs it.” We talked about one of Ciela's neighbors, Beauton, a woman I knew socially who had recently caught her husband with the housekeeper. “Old story,” Ciela said, winking. We talked about the new house going up on the west side of River Oaks, which was going to be over six thousand square feet. “A monstrosity,” I said, “though I wouldn't mind living in it.”

We did not speak of Joan. She was off-limits, more so now because Ciela had criticized her last week. We all had our lines in the sand—Ciela would not entertain rumors about her father, for instance—and Joan was mine.

“How's Ray?” Ciela asked. “Jay Potter says he's on his way to running the place.” She smiled, so I would know she wasn't jealous. Our husbands both worked for Shell, but in different departments.

“Yes,” I said vaguely, “I think he enjoys it.” I was surprised that Ciela seemed to know so much. I liked that Ray worked hard but I appreciated none of the details. I knew he worked on leases for Shell; I knew Thursdays were very hectic because his company
closed deals on Thursdays and Ray came home very late, if at all. Joan came over those nights, or I took Tommy to her house.

Ciela nodded, and I wished I had a glass of wine in my hand, or a cocktail, though it was too early for either. A Bloody Mary or a mimosa, if we had been at a restaurant, but we weren't. It was nearly time for us to go. Tommy hadn't offended Tina by his lack of interest; the two were playing quietly, Tina speaking soothingly to a doll she was frying in a plastic pan, Tommy stacking his blocks.

I wanted to leave before Ciela said something about Tommy, or, worse, Tina did. “Little boy is strange, Mommy!” another little boy had said during Mother's Day Out pickup last week, pointing at Tommy; the mother had hushed her son, and looked at me sorrowfully, which was worse than anything she could have said.

I tried to bring his name up casually. I tried very hard to act like it was nothing big.

“Do you know,” I said, “a Sid Stark?”

Ciela could make her face a mask and reveal nothing when she was so inclined.

“Ah,” she said finally, and pressed a finger to her lips. “Ah. Joan.”

I was transparent, one of those see-through fish at the restaurant downtown that Tommy loved. “They have no bones,” I liked to say to Tommy, “and very small brains.”

I was grateful to Ciela for not saying what we were both thinking: that my purpose in coming here, for showing interest in a friend in whom I had not previously shown much interest, was
suddenly very obvious. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been to Ciela's house alone other than for a party or a cocktail hour with the girls.

“I hate to disappoint you,” she said, “but I don't know a thing about Sid Stark. Other than he and Joan are dating. Though I like his name. Has a nice ring to it.”

“Oh.” I smoothed my wet palms—I was nervous—on my skirt.

“We don't all,” she went on, “live and die by Joan's dating life.”

Her tone was cheerful, but the insult stung.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to be a bitch. You sound worried. Are you worried about Joan? I mean, of course you are—you're always worried about Joan. Last Friday at the Petroleum Club, for instance.” She gave me a pointed look.

It was true. I was always worried about Joan. But that Ciela didn't have any information about Sid did not relieve me, as maybe it should have. It made me more nervous.

“I don't know,” I said. “He seems nice to Joan.”

Ciela laughed. “I don't know this man from Adam, but of course he's nice to Joan. Why wouldn't he be? She has something he wants.”

“What does Joan have that he wants?” I asked. Tommy approached me cautiously, a block in his hand. I pulled him close, glad to have him near.

“What do you think, Cece?” There was a rare note of contempt in her voice.

“You don't know what you're talking about,” I said. I could feel my cheeks flush. Nobody
used
Joan—Ciela needed to drop the idea.

Ciela turned to check on Tina; a flash of tanned skin, an unmovable helmet of blond hair. I could glimpse her peanut-sized diamond earrings through her hair. You could identify how well we had done, how well our husbands had done, by the size of our diamonds and how many there were. Were they peanuts or walnuts strung together on a bracelet? A necklace? How far down did it dip between our breasts?

I felt my own ears. I had worn sunburst garnets, practically costume jewelry. Sometimes it was exhausting, remembering all the ways we measured each other. The ruler was long and precise.

Ciela turned back to me.

“Joan has something all of us want, doesn't she? Isn't that the trick of Joan Fortier? She makes you think you want to be her. And being with her is the next best thing,” she added.

“There is no trick to Joan,” I said. “She's just Joan.”

“Do you really think Joan is as innocent as all that?”

“I do!” I said. “I—”

Ciela held up her hand, her small gold watch sliding down her arm. “I didn't mean to upset you. I only meant to say that it's not hard to see why any man would want to date a woman like Joan. For a little while. She would be fun, wouldn't she? And she wouldn't ask anything of you.” She raised her eyebrows. “To be so free, like Joan! Free as a bird. I can barely remember a time before Tina. I can't imagine dating. I can't imagine a life that's not this.” And she gestured to the room, to the horrible princess mural, to little Tina, who was putting Tommy's blocks into the oven; to Tommy, who was sitting in my lap, the edge of his hand in his mouth.

“Can you?” she asked.

•   •   •

I
could, was the thing. I could imagine a life that was not my own. I didn't want to
be
Joan, but to say, then or now, that Joan's life didn't seem charmed—didn't seem nearly perfect, in certain ways—would be a lie.

I drove home from Ciela's and stopped at the Avalon drugstore for sundaes, where we sat at the counter. “Because you were so good,” I told Tommy. No ice cream for me, of course; summer was here, season of wasp-waisted sundresses and barely-there bikinis. I watched Tommy bring his spoon to his mouth, his coordination sloppy. I would never stop worrying about him. And if we had another child, as Ray wanted, as I supposed I wanted, too, I would never stop worrying about
that
child, either, and it was such a strange thing, to understand you would worry about a child who did not yet exist. A phantom child.

Ray could always leave. Men did it all the time. I had no reason to think he would, and in fact his constancy was one of my keenest sources of pride. I had, unlike my mother, chosen a man who seemed intent on sticking around. There were pleasures in marriage, certainly, and I enjoyed them, but on certain days marriage felt like a long, unending slog. And sometimes the slog was pleasurable, when Ray and I were on the same page, when our life was unfurling in the way we thought it should; but sometimes it was sad and depressing and you never knew which it would be. We were so young. Would our marriage be a happy one? It was a question I asked myself all the time then. Only time would tell. Marriage, then, seemed like a waiting game: How happy would
we be? At what point in our lives would other people be able to say of us, “The Buchanans are very happily married”? Or: “It's a troubled marriage.” There was nothing in between; people didn't say, “Well, they love each other in an average sort of way; their marriage hasn't been disappointing but neither has it been the source of comfort and joy they had hoped.”

Tommy's glass dish rattled against the table. My child was a disaster. I hadn't watched him closely enough and his cheeks, his hands, the front of his shirt were covered in chocolate syrup. He would mess up the car now.

“Tommy,” I said. He looked up, attentively, his spoon balanced in his small hand.

Right now Joan was asleep, or by her pool, or in bed with Sid Stark. I would have traded places with her in an instant.

•   •   •

I
went to Joan's the very next day. Did you think I was capable of waiting, of letting Joan come to me? I was not. I at least knew that about myself, what I was and was not capable of in life. I was capable of secrecy. I was capable of great loyalty. I was capable of a kind of faithfulness that did not occur to most people. But I wasn't patient. I wasn't able to put things out of my mind for any period of time. The people I loved were always threaded through my thoughts, went with me everywhere: home after Avalon to put Tommy down for a nap; to Jamail's to pick up a few things on the grocery list Maria had forgotten; to the dry cleaner's for Ray's suits; home again to relieve Maria.

I waited until after lunch. The drive from my house to hers
was short—three minutes, four minutes tops—and the world as I passed it in my car was still, not a person—a child playing in a sprinkler, a gardener trimming hedges—in sight. It was too hot. I drove with my window down, but the breeze wasn't much of a breeze. More of a dry, brittle blast of wind. I could have turned on the air conditioner—it was our first car that had it—but the icy temperature it produced felt unnatural, like I was on a tundra somewhere.

When I got out of the car I was already soaked with sweat.

I walked around the side of the house, admiring the beds of hydrangeas and crepe myrtles that Joan cared nothing about; I hoped to find Joan and avoid Sari entirely.

The wrought-iron fence that surrounded Joan's pool and backyard was solid, meant to keep out the reporters who used to lurk around the house. There had been an incident, an unflattering photograph, and the next day this fence was installed.