Goodnight Nobody (21 page)

Janie pulled me into a corner and whispered in my ear, "Don't freak out, but we may have a small situation."

"What? Is it the toilet?" She shook her head gravely. "Are the kids okay?"

"The kids are fine," she said, taking me by the hand and dragging me into the kitchen, where the caterers were pulling plastic wrap off trays of miniature eclairs and petit fours and slices of candied fruit. The tip of her pink tongue flicked out and wetted her lips, and she fiddled with her earrings.

"Okay," she said. "I know you told me not to use the Ecstasy, but Philip asked for my number, then he wanted me to show him around the rest of your house, so I just figured--"

"You gave Philip Ecstasy."

Janie started wringing her hands. "I crumbled up one of the pills and dropped it in his glass, which was right on the mantel, and the next thing I knew--"

"You gave Philip Ecstasy." I thought that repeating it would make it seem more real, and give me some notion of what to do about it. So far, no luck.

Janie's shoulders were shaking, and it took me a minute to realize that she was laughing, not crying. "Janie, what?"

"Your...your mother..." she gasped.

I felt a chill wash over me. "Oh. Oh, no. No, no, no, no."

"She grabbed the glass before I could stop her, and I said, 'I think that's Philip's,' and she gave me this look like I was trying to steal it and said something in Italian, which you know I don't speak..." She raised her hands and mimed surrender.

"Oh, God." I swallowed hard and took off back down the hallway. Through my panic, I noticed things in flashes--a silver platter full of crumpled napkins and half-empty wineglasses, a black streak on the wall where Sophie had rammed her Tiny Tykes scooter, Sukie Sutherland and Marybeth Coe huddled outside the powder room, looking amused as they whispered.

Back in the living room, Denny Holdt was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, studying the knot of Ben's guests--politicians and consultants--that had formed in front of the TV. The Gwinnells were on the couch in front of the fireplace with my father and Sophie. Lexi, with both hands wrapped around the goblet of her wineglass, looked desperate to be in motion again. And in the center of the room...

"What
is
this fabric?" Reina asked, red lips pursed as if for a kiss, one crimson nail tracing her plunging neckline. She had Philip's jacket pinched between the fingers of her other hand and, as I watched in horror, she pressed her palm against his chest and stroked as if she were petting a large and docile dog.

"Er, I think it's just wool," Philip said. "Maybe a wool blend..."

"Marvelous," Reina said dreamily.

Okay, Kate. Be calm.
"Mom, can you come help me in the kitchen for a minute?"

"Per che?"
she asked, quite reasonably.

"We have to get her out of here," Janie whispered in my ear.

"Let's go upstairs and get the kids in bed." I grabbed my mother's elbow and tried to get her moving. Nothing doing. It was like trying to relocate a five-foot-nine-inch chunk of granite. As if in slow motion, I watched Reina's free hand float through the air and come to rest on Philip's cheek.

"You're a
handsome
man," she announced.

"That's very kind of you to say," said Philip, edging backwards. No dice: Reina still had his lapel pinned between her fingers, so when he backed up, she came forward, giving him a moony grin.

"Mother..." I said.

"Mrs. Klein," Janie attempted.

"You remind me of a tenor I once knew in Barcelona."

My father got to his feet, frowning. "Reina?"

"He was a beautiful young man. Sang like an
angel.
After the performances he'd walk me back to the hotel..." She skimmed her fingers over the creamy skin of her bosom.
Oh, Lord,
I thought, as my father's face went pale.

"Mom," I hissed. She ignored me, staring up at Philip.

"Would you like to hear me sing?" she asked, batting her eyelashes.

"I...um..."

That was all the encouragement Reina needed to launch into one of her favorite arias. She breathed deeply, causing her bosom to swell dangerously against her neckline, then parted her painted lips.
"Sempre libera degg'io/Folleggiare di gioia in gioia..."

"Oh, Lord," I breathed, and cringed against the wall. Delphine's bottom had been thoroughly upstaged. Every single party guest was staring at my mother. Reina's voice was lovely as ever, crystalline perfection, and so loud that I feared for my chandeliers.

"Vo'che scorra il viver mio/Pei sentieri del piacer...."

I caught my father's attention and made frantic upward gestures with my hands. He nodded, lifted the twins into his arms, and headed for the stairs. Meanwhile, Reina continued to sing and clutch Philip's jacket. As I watched in horror, her hand wandered down his lapel and came to rest on his chest. I marched across the living room and grabbed her other hand, cutting her off mid-syllable, and eased her out of the living room to a smattering of applause and Sophie's request for an encore of "O Mio Babbino Caro."

"Here," I said, filling a glass at the kitchen sink. "Drink this."

Reina stared at me in confusion.

"Go," I whispered to Janie. "Go get something."

"What?" she asked, wiping tears from her eyes. "Techno music and a
Cat in the Hat
hat?"

"Ka-ate?" Reina trilled. "Why did you bring me in here?"

"Drink your water, Mother," I said again and then, as casually as I could, "Hey, are you taking any prescription medication?"

She blinked. "Why?"

"Oh, just curious!" I said.

"Reina?" I turned and saw Ben and my father entering the kitchen. Roger looked worried. Ben just looked furious. "Is everything all right?" Ben asked.

In an ideal world, there would be some easy way to tell your husband and your father that your best friend has accidentally given your mother an illegal designer drug. In real life, I couldn't even figure out how to start, so I decided to go with an all-purpose "Reina wasn't feeling well."

"I'm fine!" my mother protested. "I was just talking to that handsome man. Philllip," she slurred. My father's eyes met mine above Reina's head.
Is she drunk?
he mouthed.

Reina tossed her water glass into my sink, where I heard it shatter. She didn't seem to notice but rewrapped her fringed gold velvet scarf around her bare shoulders, and adjusted her black satin corset-style top. "I'm not thirsty!" she said.

"Reina...," said Ben.

"I'm all
tingly
!" she announced. I handed her over to my confused-looking father and pulled Ben into the pantry.

"Listen," I whispered, "don't panic, but there's a small chance that Reina might have taken some Ecstasy."

"Ecstasy?" my husband thundered. "Where would she get Ecstasy?"

"It's kind of a long story, but..." I could feel Ben's glare like acid on my skin, and I felt sick with shame, knowing that, along with everything else, I'd made a botch of another party. Illegal drugs were even worse than sugary punch and pin the tail on the donkey.

Meanwhile, Reina pulled the pantry door open, her lipsticked mouth drawn into an O of dismay. "I took
Ecstasy
?" she squealed.

"You should call it E," Janie said. "It makes you sound hipper."

Ben's lips were pressed into a tight slit of disapproval. "We should probably take her to the hospital." He grabbed my mother's arm, nodded at my father, and marched the pair of them down the hall.

The rest of the guests gathered to watch them pass, poking their heads out of the living room with glasses in their hands and stricken looks on their faces.

"Is everything all right?" Carol Gwinnell asked.

"Fine," Ben said shortly, shoving his arms into his overcoat and checking his pocket for his keys. "Kate, I'll call when I can. Enjoy the rest of the night, everyone," he called, and then the room was quiet again as the tires of Ben's car squealed down the luminaria-lit driveway and onto the street.

In case you were wondering, having your husband and your parents leave in the middle of a holiday bash to drive to the nearest emergency room tends to put a damper on the festivities, and curtail any investigative activity you might have planned. People hurriedly set down their glasses and began retrieving their coats and hats and scarves, shaking hands and kissing cheeks and rushing out of my house to the safety of their cars, where, presumably, they'd fire up their cell phones and begin the postmortem.

I slumped on the sofa, kicked off my shoes, and wished I were dead as the caterers gathered half-empty wineglasses and crumpled napkins from the tables. When I looked up, Janie had pulled Sukie Sutherland and Marybeth Coe over to my couch. "Girl talk!" she said. "Stop sulking, Kate." Then she turned to Sukie and Marybeth. "I need you guys to tell Kate what you told me," she said.

The two of them exchanged a guilty glance. Marybeth rocked back and forth in her heels. Sukie fiddled with a button on her coat.

"It's just gossip," she finally said. "I'm not sure I feel right--"

"I promise that we'll take whatever you say in the utmost confidence," Janie said solemnly, which only made Marybeth and Sukie even more fidgety.

"I don't want this printed," Sukie said, looking at Janie, who nodded.

Sukie sighed. "That man," she finally said. "The one your husband works for."

It took me a minute to figure out who she was talking about. "Ted Fitch?"

Sukie nodded. "I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn't place him for a while."

I leaned forward, hanging on every word.

"I saw him in the city," Sukie said. "With Kitty Cavanaugh. They were at Aquavit together, having lunch..." Sukie rubbed her hands along her coat, looking unhappy. "And Kitty was crying."

Twenty-Eight

Ben was gone before I woke up on Monday morning. A note stuck to the coffeepot said that my father had called, my mother was fine, that they were both resting comfortably at home, and that I shouldn't expect him for dinner.

"Really, it wasn't a total loss," Janie said, pouring the kids their cereal and me my second cup of coffee, then raising her eyebrows and waving the bottle of Bailey's over my mug. I groaned and shook my head, knowing that not even infinite rivers of alcohol would ease the shame of Saturday night. And how was I going to face the other mommies at the Red Wheel Barrow drop-off? I groaned again, wondering if I just left my kids on the corner they'd be able to find their way to school by themselves.

The good news was that Janie had solved the mystery of Phil and the sitter. The other mothers had filled in the blanks. Phil and Lisa had indeed been having a thing, but it had ended the year before after Lisa had gotten herself saved at some sort of campus rally and turned her life over to Jesus, who, presumably, frowned upon both extramarital liaisons and murder.

"Now," Janie asked, "what are we going to do about Ted Fitch?"

"I have a plan." I was starting to tell her about it when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find the delivery guy glaring at me.

"Package," he grunted, with an expression suggesting I'd personally ruined his morning. He shoved the electronic clipboard at me and tugged at the hair growing out of the mole on his nose while I signed. I took the box inside, thinking that it was typical of Upchurch not even to have the obligatory hot deliveryman for the housewives' delectation, and ripped it open. Inside were the yearbooks Evan had promised. I flipped through the pages while Janie noted the name in the return address window.

"Oh, dear," she said. "Him again."

"I've been meaning to ask you. Did you really try to have Evan deported?"

Janie fussed with her hair and rearranged the collar of her men's striped pajamas. "I made a few calls."

"And you bought the whole building just so you could kick him out?"

She set a bowl of cut-up berries on the table. "Real estate always holds its value."

"Good to know." I poured myself a bowl of bran flakes and started flipping more carefully through one of the yearbooks.

On page 139 I found a teenage Kitty with her arm looped around another girl's shoulders. Both of them were grinning around bright orange mouthguards, and they had field hockey sticks over their shoulders. "Kitty Verree and Dorie Stevenson celebrate another victory," the caption read.

Janie peered over my shoulder. "Who's that?"

I swallowed a mouthful of bran paste, thinking that Dorie looked an awful lot like a big blond in a pink suit at Kitty's memorial service. "I should probably go see Reina today."

"Oh, please. A little Ecstasy never killed anyone." Janie paused, considering. "Crystal meth, maybe. But Ecstasy..."

"What's crystal meth?" Sam inquired.

"Come on," Janie said to the kids. "Let's go upstairs and get dressed for school. Aunt Janie has to work today. Can you guys say
Pulitzer
?"

I cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, poured myself more coffee, and fired up the computer. I was lucky. The Hanfield alumni website revealed that Dorie Stevenson '91 was working as a financial analyst for Dow Jones in Princeton. She was a high-powered analyst too, judging from the number of people I had to speak with before Dorie herself got on the line.

"Kitty and I hadn't really been in touch in years," said Dorie, who had the kind of high, breathy, boop-boop-be-doop voice you wouldn't necessarily associate with finances or analysis. "I was so shocked to hear what had happened to her."

"Would you have time to talk with me?"

She paused, and I could hear her wondering why. "This probably sounds weird," I said. "I'm just one of the other mothers in the neighborhood. But the police haven't arrested anyone, and I guess I'm trying to find out about her just so I feel like I'm doing something, you know?"

"I guess," Dorie answered. "But I'm not sure I'll be too much help."

"I'd still love to talk to you." We made a date for eleven o'clock the next morning. There was no nursery school, and I was pretty sure I could shanghai Janie into taking the kids to their skating lesson in the morning and get a sitter for the afternoon. I hung up the phone, sponged off the table, and headed up the stairs to figure out what I could wear that would get a Dow Jones analyst to take me seriously.

"First thing about Kitty is that she was gorgeous," Dorie Stevenson said on Tuesday. "Second thing--she had no idea how pretty she was." She licked her bee-stung lips, shook her platinum blond curls, and took an enthusiastic bite of the chocolate croissant she'd plucked from the silver platter the secretary had brought us. Her eyes rolled ecstatically. "That," she pronounced, "is the shit."

I nodded and wrote down
gorgeous.
I'd left home at six in the morning, telling Ben I had a check-up with Dr. Morrison. "Fine," he'd said, without lifting his eyes from the op-ed page. "Happy Pap smear!" Janie caroled as I scurried out the door.

I nodded and smiled, thinking that for once I'd gotten the clothes right. My blue suit and brown crocodile loafers made me look as if I could have worked there, and the styling product guaranteed to eliminate the frizzies had actually worked.

Dorie Stevenson worked in an office that had been done in shades of peach and cream. Her desk, our chairs, and the platter with the pastries all looked like genuine antiques. She was from Memphis, she'd told me, and I could detect a hint of a southern accent still softening her breathy speech.

I helped myself to an almond horn, poured cream into my coffee, and said, "You should have seen her in Upchurch. She was the perfect mother with the perfect home, and she always looked..."

Dorie smiled, then swallowed another mouthful of croissant. "Let me guess. Perfect?"

I nodded. "Was she that way in college?"

She patted her lips. "Not at first." She nibbled at her croissant and toyed with the cameo pin at her collar. "Like I told you, she was my roommate. We were best friends for a while, but after sophomore year...well, we were kind of moving in different circles, I guess you'd say. I saw her, but..." She shrugged again, and washed down her mouthful of pastry and chocolate with a sip of cappuccino. "Starving," she told me. "I lasted"--she glanced down at the gold watch adorning one plump, pale wrist--"eighteen hours on the South Beach diet this time."

"Ah."

"Nineteen is my personal best. Russian peasant stock." She shook her head and took a bite. "If there's a nuclear war, I'll live forever. All the skinny little model types? Forget it."

I nodded and took a bite of my almond horn. Sixty years ago, Dorie Stevenson would have had the kind of body men would drool over--lush hips, an equally luxurious bosom, rounded arms and thighs. In our enlightened age, she probably lived her every waking moment in despair or on a diet. On a diet, or breaking one, I thought, as Dorie hummed and sighed ecstatically over the last bite of croissant, then used one moistened fingertip to lift each buttery morsel from her plate.

"God, that was good," she breathed. Her eyelids fluttered. She licked her lips and straightened up in the curved, dainty chair. "Okay. So. Kitty."

"She was beautiful," I prompted.

"She was beautiful, and extremely prepared," Dorie said. "Both of us started school a week early. Hanfield had a special program for...God, what did they call us?" She closed her eyes. "Ah! Economic diversity initiative admits." Her eyes flew open, and she smiled. "That meant we were poor, but God forbid anyone say that. So they brought us in early--all the poor kids on scholarships, plus all the minority students, even the ones who'd gone to Exeter and had parents who were professors at Yale--and made us all go camping."

"Camping?"

"That was how they were going to--oh, hang on, this one I remember--'facilitate our transition into the university environment.' And probably make sure we knew how to use silverware and whatever." She gave a rippling laugh, but I imagined I could hear the hurt underneath it.

"So you and Kitty were roommates?"

"Tentmates, for starters," Dorie said. "They took us to what was basically some professor's backyard--not exactly the wild blue yonder--but Kitty came with topographical maps of the region and her own flint box. She told me she'd spent the summer reading up on survival guides so she'd know what mushrooms were poisonous and how to find north from the moss on the trees." She shook her head. "She had food in her backpack too. I never forgot that. Like she thought they weren't going to feed us. She had those ramen noodles, and cans of bean soup..." Her big blue eyes filled with tears. "So she'd be ready. Ready for anything."

Ready for anything,
I wrote, as Dorie looked at the ceiling, eyelids fluttering, one hand fanning underneath them.

"Hanfield was not a good place for Kitty," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She sighed, shook her curls, and delicately plucked a raspberry Danish from the tray. "Have you ever been there?"

"I went to Columbia," I said.

"Then you've probably got some idea," she said. "There were girls who came to campus with their own cars. And their own horses. Girls who had everything--designer clothes, two-hundred-dollar haircuts, diamond earrings, pearl necklaces, perfect lives just waiting for them as soon as they graduated." She wrinkled her nose. "Or at least they'd have trust funds waiting."

I nodded, remembering high school and all the pretty girls at Pimm, the confidence they had exuded knowing that any obstacle life might toss at them could be overcome with the right connections and a large amount of cash. "And Kitty didn't have any of that?" I thought back to the dented Honda I'd seen in the town hall parking lot.

"She was beautiful, like I said," Dorie said slowly. "But she had"--she waved her other hand above her head--"big hair, you know? Those big poufy spiral perms? Big hair, lots of makeup, a little too flashy for Hanfield. She figured it out about a week after we got there--cut her hair in a bob, quit wearing all that gold--but you know." She shrugged her plump shoulders. "First impressions and all o' that."

I nodded, trying to imagine the perfect, polished, fresh-scrubbed Kitty I'd known with a bad perm and too much blue eye shadow. I found that I couldn't.

"Was she jealous of the other girls?"

"Not jealous," Dorie said slowly. "Not exactly that. I'd say she was very aware of what they had that she didn't. But how could you not be? You'd hear girls talking about flying to New York for the weekend so they could go shopping, or going to Switzerland over spring break. I think it was hard not to be aware of the world you were living in. It's just that..." She paused and brushed crumbs off her chest. "Not everyone thought to do something about it."

I leaned forward, ignoring the remnants of my own pastry in my lap. "What did Kitty do?"

Dorie ducked her head. "This part I'm not so comfortable talking about." She leaned forward, looking at me earnestly. "She was a good girl, you know? She had a good heart. And everyone does stupid things in college." She attempted a little chuckle. "That's what college is there for, right?"

"Please," I said, lifting my hand to my heart. "Whatever you tell me won't leave this room."

She sighed again and shook her head. "Older men," she said quietly.

My fingers felt icy as I wrote the words down.

"You have to understand how pretty she was, how bright. She was sweet and smart, and she was..." Dorie ran her finger around her plate again as if she'd uncover the right word on its rim. "If you got sick, she'd be the one to take care of you. She could make chicken soup on a hot plate, and she could sew. If something got ripped, she'd sew it back up. She was..." She fanned at her eyes again, sniffling. "She could have had any guy on campus after she'd figured out the hair thing, any guy her own age, and instead she'd be going with"--Dorie's lips pursed in an unconscious gesture of distaste--"guys in their fifties."

Oh my,
I thought, scribbling madly. "Did she ever date a visiting professor?" I asked. "A man named Joel Asch?"

Dorie sat bolt upright in her chair. "You know about that?"

I nodded. Dorie twisted her napkin. "It was ridiculous," she said. "He'd send roses to our dorm room, write poetry--really terrible poetry. Kitty and I would laugh about it. Mister Big-Shot Editor from New York City, and the best he can do is 'Your eyes are like cornflowers.' And I'd ask her, 'Kitty, why? Why him?' I mean, I could get it if it was, like, some Harrison Ford type, some older, sophisticated, good-looking guy to, you know, take her shopping and teach her the ways of the world."

"Joel Asch didn't do that?"

Dorie laughed--a brief, angry snort. "Well, he took her shopping, all right. Bought her a pair of pearl earrings. She was so proud of them, she wore them every single day for the rest of the school year. And I guess he gave her a job too. At least that's what I heard. Like I said, we didn't stay friends. She knew I didn't approve of what she was doing." She set her plate back on the coffee table. "My father left my mother for another woman--a younger woman--so you can imagine I wasn't real happy to see her running around with some other woman's husband. I was," she said, and sighed, "a woman of very high ideals at the time."

"Do you remember the names of any of the other men?"

She shook her head again. "I made it a point not to ask. She knew I didn't like it, so she kept me away from it. When they called, she'd take the telephone into the hall, and she'd have them pick her up at the library--not that they'd have wanted to come to the dorms, I guess." She patted her lips with a pale pink linen napkin and looked at the peach-and-pale-green cloisonne clock on her desk.

"When you asked her why, did she tell you?"

Dorie flashed me a rueful smile. "She said she had her reasons. I told her whatever she wanted, whatever she was looking for, there were other ways to get it, bright as she was. Good as she was." Her eyes filled with tears again. She blinked, dabbed at them, then fanned her lashes. "I should have tried harder. Poor Kitty. And those poor baby girls."