The After Party (17 page)

“Joan,” I said softly. No response.

“Ma'am?”

I turned at the sound of Fred's voice. His eyes were more gold than brown, which I had never noticed before. I didn't think I had ever been so glad to see anyone.

“Help me,” I said, and the emotion in my voice surprised me. “I need to get her.” I pointed at Joan, though it was of course obvious who I meant, a naked woman lying between two men. “I need to take her home.”

He nodded. “Cover her,” he said, pointing at the shawl I had forgotten I was wearing. I took it off and draped Joan as best I could from the foot of the bed; I took hold of her calf and squeezed, hard, until she moaned faintly.

Then Fred was at my side, directing me to grab one of her
hands while he took the other; I tried to ignore the men on either side of me as we pulled Joan into a sitting position. I wrapped the shawl around her, but it was too small and there was too much of her. I thought ahead to how I would take the elevator upstairs and return downstairs with the long Burberry trench Joan wore when it was chilly. We would park in the garage beneath the building, where we had the least chance of seeing anyone.

Fred gathered Joan in his arms easily. “Joan,” I said, and patted her cheek. She opened her eyes, briefly, and closed them again. There was a smear of lipstick on her pale cheek.

“She's in no state to answer,” Fred said.

We were in the hallway when I noticed she was missing a diamond earring.

“One second,” I said, and darted back into the bedroom, remembering the diamond-chip necklace, the little boy's bed with the cowboy sheets. I put my hand on the sheets to feel for the earring—it would be sharp beneath my palm—and when I looked up toward Joan's pillow I saw the man with the scar watching me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Fred was in the hallway behind me, Joan in his arms, waiting, and I was suddenly terrified for us—for me and him and Joan.

“She's a good girl,” the man said, and though he spoke in a low voice I could hear every word he said.

“Evergreen,” I told Fred, when we were in the car, Joan lying across the backseat like a child who had fallen asleep at a party, the shawl covering her, her head in my lap. “Take us to Evergreen.”

He hesitated. “I think she needs to go to the hospital.”

I found Joan's pulse. I could never take her to the hospital like this.

“I can't,” I said, and bit my lip so I wouldn't cry.

“Yes, ma'am,” Fred said. “To Evergreen.”

•   •   •

J
oan went away then, for a few months. A second disappearance, two years after she'd first run away, but this one organized by all those who loved her. Mary had come to the Specimen Jar and gathered her things, and once again Joan missed spring in Houston. She missed the magnolias blooming at Evergreen, great white flowers that were easily bruised. Mary used to float them in crystal bowls throughout the house. She said the scent reminded Furlow of his childhood, though I never heard Furlow say so himself.

“I found her like this,” I told her, forcing myself to look Mary in the eye and not beyond her at the striped wallpaper hung with giant watercolors of Texas landscapes: a field of bluebonnets, a desert.
This is not my failure
, is what I meant to say. Joan was already upstairs, in her childhood bedroom, sleeping. A doctor had come to the house, then left, but his nurse had stayed. She was with Joan now. Mary wore a pale pink robe, a matching nightgown. Peach, I would have called it. The color seemed uncharacteristically feminine.

“I see. And how did she get like that?”

Her voice wasn't accusatory, not exactly, but it wasn't kind, either. I remembered the man in the bed, how he had looked at me.

“You'll have to ask her,” I said, and I would have given anything to be elsewhere, to be with Ray.

“I will,” Mary said. “I certainly will.” She turned to leave the room, but when her hand was on the doorknob she paused. “I trust this matter will go no further.”

“It has
never
gone any further.”

Mary nodded. “You're like a daughter to us, Cecilia. A daughter who behaves herself.”

“But—what will happen to Joan?” I felt ashamed for asking, but I couldn't help myself.

Mary cocked her head, as if she'd heard something beyond the door. I listened, too, but all I heard was the light footfall of a servant, the chirping of birds outside. It was still late morning. She closed her robe over her nightgown with one hand.

“Do you hope to have children, Cecilia?”

I nodded.

“Children surprise you, in all sorts of ways.” She turned to go. “Joan will be fine. She will always be fine.” She said this firmly, as if there were no room for discussion. I wanted to believe her.

“But why? Why is she like this?” I was becoming hysterical. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “What happened in Hollywood?”

Mary came to me and comforted me while I wept, smoothed my hair with her cool palm. But she told me nothing.

Joan missed the magnolias. She missed my wedding. Ray and I eloped, which nearly killed his mother but I wouldn't have it any other way. There was no reason to wait until the summer. Once Joan left, I wanted nothing more than to be married to Ray, to
leave the Specimen Jar, to be so near to my new husband I could reach out and touch him whenever I wanted. I could not recite vows in front of an audience that did not include Joan. And so we recited our vows in front of the justice of the peace and his secretary.

“Are you happy?” Ray asked, after we had been in our home for nearly a week. Already it had started to feel like mine. It was brand-new, designed by MacKie and Kamrath in the modern style, full of magnificent windows that ran the length of the walls. I was, I realized, hungry for ownership. I spent far too much money on pots and pans, on table linens, on furniture to sit in and artwork to hang. I bought a Noguchi coffee table from New York, a marvel of glass and wood; an Aladdin lamp that looked like a spaceship and cost about as much as one, too. But why not? The money had been sitting there waiting for me to spend it ever since my mother's death. Why had I waited so long?

I smiled at Ray.
Mostly
, I could have said, if I were being honest. I had a husband. I had friends. I had a beautiful home filled with beautiful things, in a beautiful neighborhood. I was twenty years old. I had my whole life ahead of me.

But I did not have Joan.

“Yes,” I said. “I am very
happy.”

1957

I
woke to Ray standing over me, holding Tommy on his hip.

“Cee,” he said urgently. “Cee.”

I tried to gain my bearings. I'd come into Ray's office because I'd been tempted to call Joan. Instead I'd allowed myself to revisit a past better left alone.

“I thought you'd gone out,” he said, his voice a little softer. “I had no idea where you were.”

Ah. He thought I'd been with Joan. But I hadn't laid eyes on Joan for a week. Not since I'd stopped by her house and seen her by the pool, naked. I'd called, but Sari had made excuses.

“No. Couldn't sleep. Got into your stash.” I nodded at the crystal decanter, a wedding present from Darlene. “Not my best idea ever.”

Ray smiled. All was forgiven. I hadn't been with Joan. I was
making an effort not to be with Joan, to live my life apart from Joan. I needed to let her do whatever she was doing with Sid Stark. I needed to pay attention to my own life, my own husband and child, in the meantime. I took Tommy from Ray—he came gladly—and noted that his diaper was leaking. Tommy wasn't potty-trained yet—I hadn't even tried. A mother from Mother's Day Out had raised her eyebrows at this fact last week, but I had too many other things to worry about, with Tommy.

“His diaper,” I said, and looked at Ray, who was checking his watch. Then he kissed me on the cheek and was gone, just like that, and I thought how easy it was for men to disappear. For men and for Joan.

And of course it wasn't Ray's responsibility, to change Tommy's diaper. I was lucky he'd even attempted it. I took Tommy upstairs, my hip getting soaked as I walked.

“Are you tee-teeing right now?” I asked Tommy. He sighed, and patted my cheek. I sighed, too. My robe, silk, would be ruined. I laid Tommy on the changing table and removed his rubber pants. I saw immediately the problem—the diaper looked as if Tommy himself had fastened it with pins. Tommy watched me, solemnly. He reached for my nose, and I leaned down, eager to feel the touch of his small, moist hand.

But I also saw how easy it was, to blame Ray for my own bad mood. He didn't know how to change a diaper properly because nobody had ever taught him. The nurses at the hospital had taught me. And Maria. Just as her name entered my mind—shouldn't she be here by now?—the doorbell rang, and Tommy grinned. My head ached.

“You like Maria,” I said. “We all like Maria. Especially on mornings like this.”

I spent the rest of the day tending to the house, fielding phone calls: from the president of the Garden Club, who wanted me to provide refreshments for next week's meeting; from Ray's mother while I was folding laundry, who called every few weeks because she “just wanted to check on things.” She was kind, Ray's mother. And not overbearing—Darlene's mother-in-law had practically moved in after her baby had been born, and Ciela's mother-in-law had twice claimed that Ciela's cooking made her ill. Which was funny, because Ciela didn't cook—her maid did. Anyway, I liked Edith: she was levelheaded and serious, like her son. After we'd eloped, she and Ray's father hosted a small cocktail party for us, in honor of our wedding. They lived near Rice, in an expensive but unremarkable house—brick and black-shuttered. They had enough money to make them comfortable, but not nearly enough to make them seen. I liked this about them: that they were solid, the opposite of flashy. Edith stopped by once every few weeks and took Tommy for half the day. At the wedding party, Edith had waited until all the guests had left and taken both my hands and told me that she and Ray's father, Ed, thought of me as their daughter now. But it was just something Edith, tipsy from the champagne toast, was saying. She already had Debbie.

The Buchanans had done more for us than my own father, anyway. A few days after the wedding a fat check had arrived in the mail. He hadn't been to Houston in years. He'd never met Tommy.

I thought about Edith for the rest of the day as I folded
Tommy's tiny shirts, sliced peaches for a cobbler, pushed Tommy in the park swings after the sun had dimmed. How would my life have looked if I'd had a mother like Edith? Would it have made me a better mother? Would Tommy be speaking by now?

The playground was deserted. “So nice, isn't it, Tommy?” I asked, savoring not having to talk to anyone. And then Tommy, who had been playing in the sandbox, filling his little bucket with sand in one spot and taking it to another spot a few feet away and dumping it, all very seriously, according to his own system of logic—he spoke.

“Ma,” I think it was. I
know
it was, because what mother doesn't recognize her own son's first word? What mother doesn't have it recorded on the deepest layer of her brain?

In a flash I was in the sandbox, holding his chubby cheeks between my palms.

“Again, Tommy! Please. Pretty, pretty please. For Ma.”

Of course I wondered if I had imagined it. Of course. And I felt guilty for wondering, but it's impossible, isn't it, to spend so much time wanting one thing, and then not be suspicious of that thing when it arrives?

•   •   •

I
was waiting for Ray by the door, Tommy on my hip. Since we'd come home from the park I'd spun around the house in a flurry of excitement, pointing things out to Tommy—“That's your rocking horse, Tommy. Say ‘neigh'! That's Mommy's lipstick. It's what she wears to disguise her natural lip color, which isn't a shocking red. Can we say ‘lip'? Or ‘red'?”

Tommy watched me, and did not utter another word. I almost told Maria but stopped midsentence, embarrassed. She might not believe me, and I wanted to savor this moment for as long as I could.

I couldn't help it, though; I wasn't entirely sure that Tommy had actually spoken, that I hadn't simply heard what I'd been wanting to hear for so long, what my friends heard from their children again and again—I saw the rest of his babyhood, then his childhood and adolescence and even his adulthood, or
especially
his adulthood, completely differently: he was going to be normal. I could taste his normalcy, so close it felt like a thing within reach. Tommy was going to be normal. He was going to speak to other little children. He was going to demand things from the little boys in the sandbox. He was going to say hi and bye to Tina. School, dates, dances, work: his life unfurled before me, thrilling and terrifying.

“He spoke,” I said, before Ray had even had a chance to close the door behind him. I'll never forget the look on his face, a look that told me he'd worried, too, though he'd pretended he hadn't.

“I can't get him to do it again,” I said. “Right, Tommy? Just the once. But he spoke. I know it. I heard it.”

“What did he say?”

I told him. Such a normal, tiny word. Insignificant. More of a sound than a word, really. Ma. And we weren't country people—Tommy couldn't call me Ma. I would be Mother. But oh, what did I care what he called me? He could call me anything in the world and I would answer.

We stood there, grinning at each other. Tommy seemed to sense the significance of the moment, because he didn't move, didn't squirm or reach for Ray.

We felt like a family. That's what I remember thinking. And then I realized I hadn't thought of Joan since Tommy had called me Ma. And I was glad.

•   •   •

F
or a few days, life was bliss. We waited for Tommy to utter another word, another sound we could tease into a word. We were happy. We were hopeful.

We didn't really have a signal for sex. Sometimes Ray turned to me, and sometimes I turned to him. Our marriage wasn't passionless but it was a marriage, with a young child. When we'd started sleeping together I'd been shy, and Ray had loved my shyness. It was never something we'd spoken of but I could tell that he liked it when I would barely look him in the eye, when I was tentative about touching him.

But that night, after Tommy had spoken, I felt shy again. I went to bed with Ray and waited while he completed his ablutions in the bathroom. I was eighteen again, ready to give myself to this new man. Joan's face flitted briefly through my mind. But then it disappeared again.

“Cee,” Ray said, and touched my breasts through my silk nightgown. I wore a silk nightgown every night, then; we all did. We needed our husbands to want us.

Moonlight illuminated the room, made it a series of soft edges. It was dark but I could still see the top of Ray's head as he rested
his forehead on my breasts, as he lifted my nightgown and kissed my hip bone. I could see his narrow back, his long arms, the body that remained a surprise to me, even after all these years. I didn't see him naked all that often. He wore pajamas, showered and dressed before I rose. We were modest with each other. I never entered the bathroom when Ray was dressing. He paid me the same courtesy.

But now he was undressing me. He drew my panties off with his thumb. I tried to pull the sheet up but he stopped my hand.

“I want to see you,” he said.

I let him. I let him draw my nightgown over my head, carefully, then lay me back down against the pillow. He was naked, too, and the sight of him, hard, next to my thigh, made me feel like a teenager again. Nervous but hopeful, as if anything could happen tonight, in this bed, with this man.

He put his finger under my chin, turned my face toward his.

But it was different now, of course, I wasn't a teenager. I felt closer to Ray than I ever had before. Closer to him than I'd ever felt to Joan. We had a child together, a life. Tommy had spoken, and Ray had believed me. I would have been skeptical if Ray had come home from an outing with Tommy and told me he'd uttered his first word. Uttered it unprompted, even. I would not have believed him.

But Ray always believed me. Such a rare thing, really. To have a person who both loved and believed you.

I raised my hand to Ray's cheek and let it hover an inch or two away from his skin. I didn't want to touch him; I wanted to almost touch him.

Ray murmured something I didn't understand, and maybe I wasn't meant to understand, and then he kissed my neck, my breasts, my stomach. He slid a hand between my knees and unclenched them with one neat motion; I hadn't realized I'd been holding them together.

And then his tongue was inside me, and I held my hands over his head, and the whole world disappeared, and it was only me and Ray and what existed between us because we had made it.

•   •   •

I
was a better person after good sex. I felt understood, I felt loved, I felt wanted. It was easy for me, to put Joan out of my mind. To mostly not think about Sid Stark and his outrageous nakedness. To convince myself that Joan was not mine alone to worry about. She had her mother, and a formidable one at that. She had more money than God. She had a father who believed she was the best gift he'd ever been given. She had more than I did, certainly. Or at least: she had started out with more.

The next several days I continued to push Joan and her family from my mind. I felt like it was good practice, to live my life without her. Practice for when Joan went away for good. I remember the exact instant I caught myself thinking that: the thought that slipped, unbidden, into my head as I was cleaning the grout in the guest bathroom.

I was applying a bleach paste to the crevice between the bathtub and the tile floor—it was such satisfying work, a task like
this. No messy conversations, no hurt feelings, no misunderstandings. I mixed baking soda and bleach until it achieved the right consistency—not too runny, was the trick—and then I called Maria away from polishing my mother's old silver, which she did every month, and we got on our hands and knees and applied the paste with a toothbrush to every square inch of grout. Which was a lot, because the entire bathroom, including all the walls, was done in an avocado tile.

I had felt inspired. “I've never thought to do this,” I said to Maria as we got started. Over the years the grout had turned yellow; it was hard to imagine the white it must have been once upon a time. Tommy was upstairs, taking his nap. We had a good hour before he woke.

So there I was, on my hands and knees, in my jeans and one of Ray's old shirts, vigorously scrubbing the grimy line of grout between the bathtub and the tile floor, the smell of the bleach so strong it felt cleansing, like swimming in Evergreen's pool.

And then the thought slithered into my head, small and sneaky: This is good practice for when Joan is gone.

I sat up too quickly and had to brace myself against the edge of the bathtub.

“Mrs. Buchanan?” I felt Maria behind me, deciding whether or not to touch me.

“I'm fine,” I said, “I'm fine.” I stood slowly. “Just a little dizzy.”

In the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of water. I stood at the window and looked at the neat grass, freshly mowed. It would be
a miracle if it made it through the end of the summer, if the heat did not kill it before then. It didn't matter how much water you gave it, how early you went out and set up the sprinkler. The sun killed everything in Houston, eventually. It had always been just a matter of time.