The Class Menagerie jj-4 (4 page)

Lila Switzer's suit could have been purchased during World War II at tremendous expense and cleaned and altered over half a century — and still looked good. The same could be said for her shoes, briefcase, handbag, and perfect old-fashioned hair.
She's wearing Grace Kelly's hair!
Jane thought to herself.

"So you're Shelley's neighbor," Crispy said.

"Yes, for years now." Jane was relieved that no

one had spoken to her until she got back into familiar territory. She wasn't good at highway driving and chatting at the same time. They hadn't even talked much to each other. Avalon rode in front with Jane and hadn't said a word. She'd hauled some knitting needles and mouse brown hairy yarn out of one of her bags as soon as they got to the car and clicked the needles all the way. In the backseat, Crispy and Lila, apparently in a state of uneasy truce, sporadically compared notes on some classmates. Who'd married, divorced, had interesting operations.

"Are you married?" Crispy asked, tapping Jane on the shoulder.

"Widowed," Jane answered.

"Oh, God! I've never had any of mine die on me!" Crispy said. "How awful for you. I'm so sorry I asked."

"Don't be," Jane said pleasantly. "Your asking didn't make it happen. And it's more or less okay that it did."

"Who else is coming to this meeting?" Lila demanded, apparently feeling that talk of death was gauche. Or perhaps she was merely bored with a conversation that had nothing to do with her.

"I'm sorry. The names didn't mean much to me and I'm afraid I don't remember," Jane answered. "Somebody named Mimi, I think, and a person Shelley refers to as Tooky.' And I think there's one or two more."

"Pooky's coming?" Crispy asked. "Then get all your insecurities mustered and ready for action."

"Why's that?" Jane asked.

"Because she's so beautiful you'll feel like half a dozen ugly stepsisters."

"Some were coming by train," Jane explained. "Shelley picked them up."

"Oh, look! That little park is still there," Crispy

said from the backseat. "Look, Lila. Didn't you live

over there someplace? Which was your house? I don't

remember."

"The green one. Only it was tan then," Lila answered.

Jane turned the last corner.

"Why, this is my block!" Crispy said. "Remember? The house right…" Her voice trailed off as Jane drove through the gates of the Francisco mansion.

"Good God!" Avalon exclaimed. "This is Ted Francisco's house!"

Jane was so surprised at the vehemence of Avalon's remark that she spoke somewhat sharply. "Not anymore. It's a bed and breakfast belonging to Edgar and Gordon. You'll be bowled over by Edgar's cooking. And Gordon has redecorated the house magnificently. They even have a resident cat, Hector, who's a love." She wasn't going to allow any Dead Ted talk.

Instead of going to the driveway by the back door, Jane pulled up the circle drive and stopped at the front door. As her passengers began to get out and sort through their luggage and miscellaneous belongings, the door opened and Shelley said, "Oh, look who's here."

Two other women joined her in the doorway. Then there were shrieks of greeting and a lot of really insincere hugging and complimenting. But there was also some genuine warmth in their greetings and Jane felt herself just a little jealous of this kind of old-fashioned camaraderie between old friends. Most of these women had grown up together in the days before people routinely moved every couple of years. Some had probably been friends, or at least acquaintances, for the first half of their lives.

After the first round of greetings had died down, Shelley introduced Jane. "This is my neighbor, Jane Jeffry, who is helping Edgar and me. Jane, this is Mimi Soong."

Jane shook hands with the elegant Chinese woman. "It's very nice of you to get involved in this," Mimi said. "She must really have something on you," she added with a lovely smile.

"And this is Debbie Poole, but you might as well know her as Pooky," Shelley added. There was a note of warning in her voice that was nearly frantic.

Jane could see why. Shelley and Crispy had both mentioned how astoundingly beautiful Pooky was, but Pooky in the flesh was a mess. Her skin was leathery and so wrinkled that it looked like a bizarre medical condition. Here and there it pulled as if she'd had plastic surgery in somebody's basement as an experiment. Her hair was bleached to the point of fragility. It looked as if it would shatter if touched. She was excruciatingly thin and almost painfully well-dressed. Jane suspected most of her clothes still had their sale tags lurking nearby.

"How do you do, Pooky," Jane said heartily. Even though Jane had never seen the woman before, she found her appearance very nearly shocking. The others were frankly dumbfounded and were now standing in a rough semicircle studying Pooky with silent horror and a good deal of genuine sadness.

Poor woman,
Jane thought. "Crispy has brought enough luggage to stay a year and a half. Or maybe she's opening a dress shop," she said firmly to the group. "I'm afraid we're all going to have to pitch in and help carry it."

As she'd hoped, that broke the spell. There was a babble of embarrassed conversation as Jane opened

the back door of her station wagon and started handing out bag after matched bag. Jane and Mimi Soong ended up with the last pieces. Hector had appeared and was daintily exploring the interior of Jane's station wagon.

"You handled that very well," Mimi said.

"I felt so sorry for her. Everybody staring."

"She'd been telling Shelley and me about it when you arrived," Mimi said, hanging back so she wouldn't be overheard. "She had some kind of treatment. It was supposed to preserve her youthful looks forever. You wouldn't think any body'd be stupid enough to buy that, but she was. Brains aren't her long suit. It went horribly wrong, as you can see, and apparently she won a big lawsuit against the outfit that did it to her. But the money couldn't restore her looks. It's a pity. She really was beautiful. And like many beautiful people, she didn't develop any backup. Brains or personality or anything."

"That's terrible. Poor thing."

Mimi laughed. "You'll get over being so sad about it when you've been around her a while. She's quite irritating. Her voice alone will glue your heart back together. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be saying that. She's really a thoroughly nice woman. I can carry another bag. Give me that hatbox-shaped thing."

Jane stared into the back of the station wagon. "My God, I haven't seen a hatbox since the last time I played in my grandmother's attic."

"Attic…" Mimi said. "I think that's the operative word. By the time this is over, you're going to feel like you've spent the week in somebody else's attic. Does it look to you like that cat is getting ready to drive your car away?"

Hector was standing with his front feet on the steering wheel, peering over the dashboard. His Godiva-chocolate ears were flattened to his head as if he were ready to have a crash helmet fitted.

Jane left them to their greetings and went home— after gently putting Hector out of the car. She shoved him in the front door for good measure, to be sure she didn't run over him. She was off duty until three, when she had to return and help Edgar with dinner preparations. It wasn't that he needed her, but she saw it as an opportunity to get to watch a really good cook in action. The. kids had been complaining lately about having the same stuff over and over again for dinners. Maybe she could freshen up her repertoire.

She lined up several loads of laundry, fielded a couple of phone calls wanting her to contribute to charities, buy siding, and take out a new credit card, and then she went down to her office in the basement to work on her book. Some months earlier her mother had come to visit and had wanted to take a course in writing an autobiography. Jane, not wanting to write her own, had made up a fictional person to write about and the teacher had encouraged her to continue. Jane wasn't sure it was even a real novel, or if it would ever leave her basement, but she was enjoying the experience enormously. Most of the time.

But today she found it hard to concentrate. Her mind kept going back to Shelley's classmates. She had dreaded this because she thought it would be so dull. But they hadn't proved dull at all. Scary, rather. All those emotions, presumably tucked away for years, boiling to the surface. But that wasn't fair. Some of them had seemed truly glad to see one another. When she left, Pooky and Avalon were deep in an animated discussion on the front porch. At least those two would enjoy catching up on the missing years. And perhaps others of them would have fun, too. Jane realized she was putting too much of her own spin on this reunion.

She plowed on with writing and laundry and three o'clock finally came. She'd put a casserole in the fridge with instructions to the children as to when to put it in the oven. There were chips out on the table and a saucepan with green beans (the only vegetable they all liked) sitting on top of the casserole, where it couldn't be missed. They'd probably have sodas with their meal instead of the milk she kept forcing on them, but it wouldn't kill them.

When she returned to the bed and breakfast, the other two members of the group had apparently just arrived. There was luggage in the front hallway and greetings were going on all over again.

She was introduced to Beth Vaughn and Shelley's
precis
came back to her. "She's a judge. Our class's most successful graduate. She's expected to be a Supreme Court nominee next time they decide it's trendy to put another woman on the court," Shelley had said. Beth Vaughn certainly looked the part. She had crisply curling, no-nonsense graying hair, cut very short. Her blue suit and white blouse were neat and sensible, as were her low-heeled shoes. She might have had a good figure, but the suit de-emphasized it, giving her a square, sexless look. Her manner was pleasant, but reserved. She had very pretty eyes, which was the only thing that kept her looking feminine.

"It's very generous of you to give up your time to help Shelley and us," she said graciously. "I hope you don't find it too boring to be marooned in among strangers."

"I'm quite used to it," Jane said, inadvertently adopting Beth's formal tone. "I was a State Department brat."

"How very interesting that must have been," Beth said warmly. "I've always regretted that I didn't have more opportunities to travel. Perhaps you can tell me more later about the places you've lived."

"And who's this? I don't recognize you at all?"

Another woman had joined them and Beth Vaughn drifted away.

"I'm not one of you," Jane said to the strange woman. "I'm Shelley's friend Jane. I'm just helping Edgar. This place isn't supposed to be open for business yet and he hasn't hired help — so I'm the help," Jane said.

"God! What a dreary thing for you! I'm Kathy Herrmannson, what was Emerson back in the old days."

This one was a mess, too. But unlike poor Pooky, who got that way trying too hard to preserve her looks, Kathy apparently never gave her appearance a thought. She was overweight in a particularly sloppy, hippy way, which was made worse by her bulgy jeans and unflattering T-shirt. Jane was reminded of one of the advice maven's words: if you can put a pencil under you breast and it stays there, you shouldn't go braless. Kathy could have tucked away a wrench. The unpleasantly distorted T-shirt was emblazoned with a faded peace symbol. Her face was pasty and free of any makeup, which was unfortunate.

"I'm glad to meet you, Kathy," Jane said.

"Does the cook know I don't eat meat?" Kathy asked.

"I have no idea. I'll go ask," Jane said, glad to escape.

She went into Edgar's beautiful kitchen and found him mincing shallots. Hector was sitting on a kitchen chair, supervising. "Do you know you've got a vegetarian out there?" Jane asked.

He shrugged. "No problem. She can just eat around the meat. I'm fixing creamed chicken in puff pastry shells and peas with nutmeg. And some old-fashioned deviled eggs. She's not one of those full-fledged no-animal-products people, is she?"

"I don't think so. It looks like she exists on macaroni and chocolates."

"Oh, the fleshy one. I noticed her. She must live in a house without mirrors. Jane, get some butter for me, would you? I need it clarified."

When Edgar figured out that Jane had no idea how to clarify butter, at least not to his standards, he suggested that she join the guests. "Just keep an eye on the snack tray. If it runs low, refill it. Refresh drinks, that sort of thing."

The women had divided up into little groups, with everybody trying to listen to everybody else's conversations. Jane approached Avalon and Mimi, who were studying a sheet of paper. Avalon's red topknot had come loose and was falling around her face, like a curtain to hide behind. She was mumbling shy thanks. Mimi looked even more serene compared to Avalon. Mimi's straight black hair, for all the hugging, looked like the lacquered hair of an exquisite Chinese doll.

"May I get you ladies something to drink?" Jane asked.

Mimi shook herTvead and gently took the paper from Avalon. "Jane, look at this lovely sketch Avalon brought along."

It was an incredibly busy pencil drawing. "It's the carriage house here, isn't it?" Jane said. "How love-

ly."

"Look at the detail," Mimi instructed.

As Jane studied the picture, she started to smile. It was full of quiet little jokes. The bush beside the coach house wasn't just squiggly lines as it first appeared, it was a seething mass of tiny rabbits. Bricks had faces hidden in them. So did tree trunks. A few random rocks along the drive were actually a chorus line of raccoons. There was a peddler with his pack in a cloud and a witch hidden in the branches of a tree.

"This is delightful!" Jane, exclaimed. "You must show it to Edgar. He'll love it!"

"Do you think so?" Avalon whispered.

Pooky came over to take a look and went hysterical with enthusiasm. "Why, this is wonderful. I love it! Oh, Avalon, would you consider giving it to me? I have just the perfect place to hang it in my apartment. It would change the whole room and mean all the more because an old friend made it."