Walk on Water (32 page)

Her gown was floor-length, the deep burgundy silk draping her thin frame snugly but not tightly, a side slit revealing her slim right leg, and of course the impressive height of her matching silver sling-back pumps. As small as she was, Mommy would have had trouble pulling off such a chic look. Cosmetic surgery, liposuction, these things were routine if you had money.

“Your home is very nice, Mrs. Sterling,” I extended an olive branch. “The Christmas lights are beautiful.”

She looked at me again, the chilly smile still intact.

“Thank-you, dear,” she replied. “We’re pleased you could join us tonight.”

“Thank—” I started.

“Otherwise Luke wouldn’t have come,” she continued coolly. “He made that very clear. I hope for his sake you enjoy yourself tonight.”

I didn’t know the best way to respond to that, so I didn’t. Members of the catering staff, also uniformed, in black slacks, white shirts, and red bow ties, were finishing preparations of the buffet tables abundant with hot and cold hors d’oeuvres. Thankfully the doorbell rang and Anita bustled from an unseen place to answer it.

“That will be the musicians,” said Betty Sterling looking at her watch. “If you’ll excuse me. Your father is obviously still preoccupied upstairs, I’ll have to make sure they set-up correctly.”

She left us, leaving a cloud of her perfume behind.

“Live music too,” I now commented. “The Sterlings always do things in a big way.”

“Rachel,” Luke began. “About what she—”

“I know she doesn’t want me here,” I cut him off, smiling at him affectionately. “You do.”

“Yes,” he said, threading his fingers through mine and drawing me to him.

“I am not going to kiss you, Lucas Sterling,” I replied pulling back. “It’ll mess up my lipstick, and it’s show time.”

“All right, be that way,” he pretended to pout. “But just remember: two hours,” he repeated his earlier decree. “Then I get a private performance.”

“Shall we synchronize our watches?” I teased him playfully.

“No need to. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

.

TWENTY-NINE

I
n one corner of the grand living room the Sterlings kept their beautiful Steinway piano. Back when we were in college Luke had shared with me how his mother had forced him to take years of piano lessons. “I have all of the technique,” he had said, “And none of the talent.” Tonight the piano player was hired talent, as were the other musicians: two violin players, a violist, and a cellist. It wasn’t long after the musicians began to play that the guests started to arrive en masse. Soon there was a loud but refined din comprised of classical music and conversations, and the recurrent chiming of the doorbell.

It was hardly a
cauldron of curmudgeons
in which I found myself, but more like a bevy of
the beautiful people
of Dallas society. Yes, there were some
gray-hairs
, and some
blue-hairs
, some
dyed-hairs
and some
no-hairs
, and a fair share of
hairs-with-extensions,
but position, privilege, and power were all on display and elegantly. It wasn’t all
old
either. Luke wasn’t the only—or the youngest—member of their
next generation
in attendance, although maybe he was the only one who had brought, as his date, an alien life-form.

At first I stuck very close to him. It seemed safer that way. This was Luke’s world after all, and he knew practically by instinct how to be in it. I was content just to smile a lot and respond politely to any direct question or comment that came my way. Inevitably, however, as these things will go, Luke and I were parted, and I wound up trying to latch on to one of the catering staff, a young woman who was replenishing the champagne flutes on one of the linen-draped buffet tables.

“You guys are doing a wonderful job,” I said attempting to make small talk with her.

“Thank-you,” she said courteously. “Would you care for some champagne?”

I was carrying a glass of white wine.

“No thanks,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said noting my beverage. “I can get you some more white wine.”

“No-no, that’s okay.”

It wasn’t more wine I was seeking, but she was looking at me as if that was all she had to offer, indicating quite clearly that I didn’t
fit in
with her either.

“Excuse me ma’am,” the young woman ultimately said, reminding me in three respectful little words, punctuated by her action of walking away, that she had no communion with me.

Luke was on the other side of the room by fully engaged in a conversation with a group of people, one of whom was a woman in a chicer black dress than mine. It was made of velvet and it stopped mid-thigh, revealing the kind of long legs that were worthy of bikinis. Her high heels no doubt helped. I watched as she kept putting her hand on Luke’s shoulder, at times leaning into him a little when she laughed. If I rejoined him now it might make me seem threatened, and while I was, I was not about to show it. Besides in college it had constantly been this way, some pretty woman—or women—consuming Luke’s attention throughout the party until it came time to leave, and he would take me home. I could handle it. Moreover tonight, this time, he was
my novio.

Near the fireplace Mr. Sterling was making some kind of point and jabbing his finger emphatically in the air. He was the only other person I knew here (besides Mrs. Sterling and now Anita), but I didn’t really want to go to him either. So for the time being I was just on my own, increasingly more aware of my deficits in comparison. I sipped my white wine. Perhaps I could get a refill for something to do.

Moving to the table where the wine was being served, I was surprised to find the clerk with the thick gray beard from Siegel’s Wine Shoppe staffing it.

“Hello!” I said as if I had found a long-lost friend. “I know you don’t remember me.”

He grinned warmly.

“Sure I do,” he said. “You’re the young lady who couldn’t decide whether to buy a bottle of red or a bottle of white.”

“That must describe almost every customer you see,” I laughed.

He laughed too as he took my glass, putting it away under the table.

“It was a Saturday afternoon, early,” he went on. “I told you to trust your judgment and have what you like. You told me I made it sound simple.”

“Okay, so you do remember,” I smiled, a little amazed at his recall.

“Do you?” he asked.

A tiny current rushed through me as if I had touched a hot wire.

“It is simple,” the wine clerk/wine server repeated his counsel, his eyes twinkling as he poured me a glass of red wine. “But not easy, like I told you.” He handed me the full glass. “You have a nice evening.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

Someone else touched me on the arm prompting me to turn away for a moment. An older woman with cascades of silver hair and lightly rouged cheeks was smiling at me.

“It’s Rachel, right?” the woman asked.

“Yes ma’am,” I said, surprised that she knew my name. “Have we met?”

“If we did it’s too long ago for me to remember,” she chuckled. “I’m Doris. Doris Burnside. Luke said I should talk to you.”

“Oh—okay.”

He had sent someone to my rescue. How chivalrous, and how sad.
Little Orphan Annie.
Maybe I was a charity case.

“Don’t look so alarmed,” Doris smiled again. “I’m not looking for professional help, well not like that anyway. Luke told me you’re a family guidance counselor. I’m planning to go back to school, to get my Master’s Degree in counseling. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m happy to—”

“Great!” she interrupted me. “Let’s find a place where we can hear each other. I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to pay money for a footstool to park my butt on right now.”

Hooking her arm with mine, Doris proceeded to lead me away from the wine table. When I looked back to say goodbye to my bearded friend, he was gone.

Doris clearly knew her away around the Sterling house because she took us straight down a hallway away from the crowd to the study, a darkly paneled room that smelled faintly of cigar smoke, and where the early American furniture had survived the latest style upgrade. Managing not to spill her glass of wine, Doris dropped down on the big over-stuffed sofa and patted the dark brown cushion next to her.

“Now isn’t this better?” she said as I sat down. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Betty like a sister, but God, she can get entirely too wrapped up in the latest Architectural Digest sometimes. At least Tom is standing his ground about one room in this house, poor thing.”

Doris kicked off her gold pumps and flexed her silk-hose covered feet before scrunching her toes into the oriental rug in front of the sofa.

“Forgive me,” she apologized. “But this feels good. I keep telling Betty that all this standing around making chit-chat over drinks is for the young. There comes a time in life when parties need to be sit-down affairs.” She took a drink of wine. “You’ll see,” she added smiling pleasantly.

I smiled back already starting to like Doris.

“So you’re going back to school?” I asked.

“Yes I am,” she declared proudly.

“That’s terrific.”

“Oh I don’t know how terrific it is,” she demurred. “But it is something I want to do. Something I’ve been wanting to do. When my Edgar passed away four years ago, it left me with nothing but time on my hands. He was sick a long time before he died and mostly I took care of him myself. Anyway, since he’s been gone I’ve been spending my time sitting on this or that board. You know, for various charities, schools, etcetera. But it just isn’t enough for me. I want to do something hands-on. I suppose it’s all that time taking care of Edgar. It was hard work but I tell you honestly I never felt better about myself. Not even when I was raising my children. I really felt needed, and I want to feel that way again. I thought about going to nursing school, but what are the odds of some hospital hiring a sixty-plus-
plus
nurse? So I’ve decided to be a counselor. I want to work with troubled teen-agers. It’s a shame what some them have to go through. I was thinking about the criminal justice system. But you know, get in early with them before it’s too late.”

If Doris was truly was
sixty-plus-plus
then she might have a difficulty getting hired anywhere, I was thinking, but she looked vibrant and enthusiastic, and she was probably sufficiently set financially to be able to work for little or nothing. I shared with her what I knew about good Master’s programs in the area, and gave her my thoughts about where I believed the field was going.

“One on one counseling will always have its place,” I explained. “But the focus also has to be on the environment, the family, the community, society. Like if you look at child prostitution for example, I don’t mean the little ones, everybody agrees that they are innocent victims, but I’m talking about the adolescents, the ones who are almost adults. It’s not for a good time like some people think, or even for drugs, some of it—maybe most of it—is just for survival, for food, shelter. All the kids on the streets are not run-aways, some of them have been thrown—”

“I know!” exclaimed Doris grabbing my arm excitedly. “I see it all the time. I hear people say, why don’t they just go home. Well, they have no home to go to. It’s heartbreaking! We have to do something about it, Rachel.”

“We do,” I agreed.

“Oh, Rachel,” Doris sighed sitting back against the sofa. “I’m really glad we got to talk. I was just about to get out of here, but Luke said I needed to meet you.” She looked at me. “You should hear the way he talks about your work. You must be a veritable saint. He said you were passionate, but naturally I thought maybe he was just being
passionate
himself,” she winked at me. “About you.”

My cheeks were burning once again.

“He’s very kind,” I said.

“Kind?” repeated Doris skeptically. “Is that what young people call it these days?”

“Well I’m not very young either,” I reminded her.

“Well no,” she agreed. “Neither of you are spring chickens.” She grinned. “But it’s still your summertime. And look at me, I’m going back to college to start a whole new career, or rather to have one in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, being a wife and mother is wonderful, and now I’m a grandmother too, but I’m ready to be a
me
. I might have at least fifteen decent years left for that. Now you and Luke, you’ve got at least three times that much.”

I looked down and took a drink from my glass. Having just made it to
novia,
I couldn’t dare let myself think about anything beyond that.

“What’s the matter, Rachel?” queried Doris. “You’re not planning on long-term?”

I returned my eyes to hers, and there was deep wrinkle in her brow. I didn’t know this woman at all. Maybe she was a Betty Sterling plant, someone sent to gain my confidence so that I would spill my guts providing information to be used against me. Wasn’t that the plot of every cop show on TV? Yet I wanted to tell her the truth, to finally say yes, I was planning on
long-term,
or rather I was dreaming about it, hoping for it. Basically I was prepared to spend the rest of my life resigned to just being on Luke’s
team
, his friend, and God help me—even his
fuck-buddy.
So getting
novia
-status was the best Christmas gift he could have given me.