The After Party (21 page)

I imagined my life had Idie remained in it. She would have been at my wedding. She would have helped me when Tommy was an infant and I could not, for the life of me, please him. She would have helped me in all manner of ways. She would have left less room for Joan.

“I was fifteen years old,” I said. “A child.”

She pointed to her charges, who were running toward us.

“
They
are children,” she said. “You stopped being a child the moment your mother got sick.”

The children reached us; Idie patted Ricky's shoulder, distractedly.

“And has she, Cecilia? Has Joan ripped you in two?” Her voice was calm, even. She did not want to alarm the children. I'd forgotten Idie's poise. I'd never once seen my mother rattle her. “I had hoped you wanted to see me for another reason. Any reason, besides her. But I knew in my heart it was Joan.”

I was silent. I was still in my mother's room, watching her die. Or no, I was younger than that, a little girl Lucinda's age, unable to defend myself against the accusations of an adult.

“You're twenty-five years old, Cecilia. A grown woman, chasing after another grown woman's secrets.”

I looked up at her. The children stood beside her in a neat row. They watched me, solemnly, and Idie leaned down. I put my hand up, unsure of what she wanted, but then her warm, dry lips met my cheek.

“I wanted to see you, Idie,” I whispered, when her face was next to mine. “
You
were my mother.”

“Oh, child,” she said. I could tell I had pleased her. She shook her head. “How I wish I had been.” She held out her hands and the younger brother claimed the right; the older, the left. “You taught me that.”

“I taught you what?” I asked, my voice high. “Tell me.” I would do anything to keep her there, in front of me, so close I could see the faint wrinkles in her crisply ironed skirt, the scuff on the toe of her white shoe.

“That you're never really mine.” She lifted her hands, and the boys' hands also rose. “How I wish you were,” she said, and her
voice was rich and honeyed, like I remembered it. The wall she had erected between us seemed to have collapsed, all at once. She'd wanted to keep her distance for her own sake, I realized. Not because she hated me.

I made to stand—to what? Take her hand from one of her charges? Idie watched me, sadly. It was all too late.

“Good-bye, Cecilia,” she said, and walked away, the boys on either side of her, Lucinda behind them. Again, I wanted to be her. Then Lucinda ran ahead, eager, for what, I did not know. She didn't know, either. Eager to see what came next.

1957

I
made it to the car before I began to cry. Idie had kissed me, as she had when I was a child: my forehead, the final step in tucking me in at night; my hand, when it was hurt and I held it out to her; my cheek, before she left Sunday mornings for church. I pressed my head against the steering wheel and tried to compose myself.

There was nothing Tommy could do that would cause me to remove myself from his life. My love for him was absolute, final. But now it occurred to me that it was not Idie who had left. I had chosen Joan; choosing her had been my strongest instinct. I did not regret my mother. Joan had helped me, and I was grateful. Even if my mother had died naturally, in the next week or two; even if I had let nature take its course, as Idie had desired—still I would have chosen Joan, the Fortiers, Evergreen. My mother had
told me not to let Joan take me. And what had I done? I had gone with her, willingly.

Last night I should have searched the hotel for Ray. Instead I had lied my way up to the penthouse to see a woman who had told me to go away.

I heard the shout of a child, and looked up to see a flock of children running to the swings. They reminded me I had my own little boy to attend to. I couldn't sit in this car all day and weep.

I thought I might see Ray's car in the driveway as I turned down our street, but he was still gone, nursing his wounds, nursing a drink, attending to his work—doing whatever it was he did when he needed to distract himself from me. But maybe—and I clung to this possibility—I hadn't behaved as badly as I'd feared. Ray, after all, had no idea where I'd gone last night.

After I stepped inside the house I listened for sounds of Maria and Tommy but heard nothing at first, and a panic rose in my throat. But, gradually, Maria's voice emerged. They were in the kitchen, Tommy in his high chair, Maria watching him feed himself green beans. He smiled when he saw me.

“Are those good?” I asked, and felt light-headed. I leaned on the kitchen counter and closed my eyes.

“Are you all right?” Maria asked. I could feel them both watching me.

I opened my eyes and smiled to show I was fine.

“Tired,” I said.

“Ah.” She turned back to Tommy. “There's my boy,” she said in her accented English as she watched Tommy pincer a bean, bring it to his mouth. “There he is.”

Motherhood meant endlessly imagining the misfortune your child might encounter. And then endlessly thinking of ways to avoid such disaster on your child's behalf. Yes, my mother had loved me, in her own way.

I watched Tommy and felt like I could see the future: he would raise his hand in class and supply an answer. He would go out to get burgers with friends and ask the waitress for onion rings instead of fries. He would tell a girl he loved her. I was allowed to be happy at the thought of Tommy's future. I deserved that happiness.

Again I envisioned my life with Idie in it, instead of Joan. My mother would have suffered for another week. Still she would have died. I would have lived in the old colonial with Idie, who would not have told me I clomped like a horse, who would have been happy to see me in the mornings, who would have made sure I was home at a decent hour, not gallivanting around town on Joan's arm.

The intimacy of waking up every morning to Joan's light snoring; the heady feeling of anticipation right before we entered a party, a club; the knowledge that I was special because Joan loved me, because I had been granted the privilege of moving through the world in her spectacular company and she had chosen me, from all the people she could have chosen: all of it gone, vanished. Instead: Idie's even, loving presence. Instead: the sound of Idie downstairs making breakfast, long before I was fully awake. Instead: her cool lips on my forehead, kissing me good night.

I'd never doubted Idie's affection for me. I'd had to work for Joan's: I'd stepped into the shadows so she would not see me spying. I'd stood alone at parties after a boy had caught her eye from
across the room. All my life, I'd been careful with her, a prudence that had only made me want her more fiercely. Because without Joan, I would have been just another girl, with none of Joan's radiance to claim as my own. Because I wasn't radiant. I wasn't anything, without Joan. I believed the world would have been indifferent to me without her.

But now I wondered what was wrong with me, that I had wanted, still wanted, a girl, now a woman, who'd always held me at a certain distance. What need in me was so great, so yawning, it could only be satisfied by Joan Fortier?

I thought of the wedding dress Idie had made me. I still had it, in a box in the attic somewhere. The details were exquisite: A line of tiny pearl buttons down the back. A lace collar, a floor-length veil. I had worn it nearly to death.

Would the world have been as indifferent to me as I had believed? Had I chosen Joan because I had been young and careless? Because Idie's steady patience was no match for Joan's wild charisma?

“There he is,” Maria said again. Tommy blinked. “Mrs. Fortier called,” she added. “She says to call her back immediately.”

•   •   •

M
ary showed me into Evergreen's formal sitting room, instead of the den, or the breakfast room. I didn't want to be there, but I needed—for my own sake—to finally close the business of Joan with Mary. I was twenty-five years old. I could no longer be Joan's keeper.

Mary seemed agitated. I perched on a silk-covered settee, Mary
directly across from me on a high-backed chair. It was one hundred degrees in there, and Mary didn't believe in air-conditioning. An electric fan sat in the corner of the room, cooling nothing. She didn't offer me a drink, the first time I could ever remember her forgetting.

I crossed my ankles and smoothed my skirt over my thighs.

“It's so hot,” I said, and then regretted saying anything. But Mary didn't seem to notice I'd spoken.

“I called you because I need help, Cece. I need help.”

I waited. Mary seemed very old all of a sudden. She looked her age. Older than that, even. She was not the mistress of Evergreen, who had presided over River Oaks for decades. No, she was an old lady, too thin, wearing a shirt that showed her prominent collarbones, a skirt that needed to be taken in.

I did not like the transformation. Shame was not a feeling I'd ever associated with the Fortiers. It was a feeling I'd only associated with my own family: my mother, who could not be trusted in social situations; my father, who lived at the Warwick with his girlfriend.

“How do you need my help, Mary?”

She looked up, alarmed. I realized I'd never called her by her first name before.

“Joan's been distant,” she said. “She hasn't come around for weeks. And then she stopped by, yesterday. She didn't look well.” She fretted with a small, needlepointed pillow beside her. “Sidney Stark,” she said, her voice lilting up at the end, as if asking me a question. “She's been with him.”

“Yes. With Sid.” There was something not quite right about the man, but it was time I stopped caring about Joan's beaus.

“Sid? On such intimate terms already.”

I shook my head, irritated. “Not at all. I've barely spoken to him.”

“So you agree, that Joan has made herself scarce as of late?”

I felt myself losing whatever edge I thought I'd had.

“I don't know!” I cried, frustrated that she was pulling me back to this old, familiar dance. “I don't know. Sometimes Joan disappears, grows distant, whatever you'd like to call it. I don't know why.” And what I thought, but didn't say:
I've got to stop caring why
.

Mary held up a hand, weakly. My outburst seemed to have drained her.

“You know I do not come from the kind of family that Furlow comes from. That you, Cecilia, come from. I used to think I meant less in the world, because of my lack of—what should I call it?—lineage.” She sounded more like her old self now. “But now I understand how very lucky I was. I don't owe any debts to anyone.” Her voice rose, almost imperceptibly, but not quite. “Joan is a target, you understand, because of her family. She always was. Something she inherited from Furlow, not me.”

“How is she a target?”

“A girl that beautiful, with that much money. She's always a target, whether she knows it or not.” And then, suddenly, Mary was completely present again. “You see, dear, Joan has been too absent. We haven't seen her in weeks. Sid is keeping her from us.”

I hated how she'd called me “dear,” as if I were a child. “Maybe she's exactly where she wants to be.”

“You're not afraid for her?”

“How are you afraid for her, Mary?”

Mary shook her head. “I don't know.”

“Are you afraid he'll hurt her?” I thought of Joan's bruise.

“He'll hurt her reputation,” she said, sharply. “He'll hurt her pride. He's using her, can't you see?”

There was a mahogany wardrobe in the corner of the room that held an assortment of amber-filled decanters. I wanted a drink desperately. I decided to get one. I stood, strode to the wardrobe, opened it, and poured myself a neat finger of scotch.

Mary looked astonished. Good. For the first time in my life, I wanted to astonish Mary Fortier. I was tired of her talk about Family and Money and Responsibility and Burden. Joan was acting badly. That was the long and the short of it.

I took a sip of my drink. It burned, pleasantly.

“What if Joan likes being used?” I asked.

Mary clasped her hand to her breast. “Cecilia!”

“You're worried people will start to talk. That's all we do, isn't it? Worry about Joan. But Joan doesn't want my help. I don't think she ever did.” I thought of her last night, in bed, the bruise on her shoulder. I thought of her asking—no,
demanding
—that I leave.

“But you
love
Joan,” Mary said. I'd never heard her voice so full of emotion. “You need to help her.”

“What do you think I can do? Remove her, limb by limb, from Sid?” I let the question linger. “I do love her.” Tears pricked my eyes. I thought of Joan as a golden-haired child, leaning against Dorie, laughing, watching the birds in the birdbath. So many years ago. Days are gods to years, my mother used to say. And it was true.

“People are already talking. Joan will do what Joan wants to do. Do you want to send her away again?” I could feel my cheeks flush. “She's twenty-five years old. If she were a child you could have Dorie clean up her mess, couldn't you, since she's back in your kitchen?”

I didn't expect an answer. Mary stared at me, stunned.

“I do love Joan,” I repeated. I thought of Tommy, at home, taking his bath. I thought of Ray, who would surely leave work soon. “But I can't help you. I have my own family, my own life.” I set my crystal glass on the low table between us. Mary picked it up and set it on a silver coaster, a gesture that seemed to bring her back to herself.

“Thank you, Cecilia. That will be all. I trust you can find your own way out. This house was yours once, as much as it was ours.”

I stood.

“It was never mine,” I said. “I think we both know that.”

“Is that so?” Mary asked.

I looked her in the eye.

“I was a live-in who helped you manage your daughter.”

•   •   •

I
lit a cigarette before I started the car. My back was damp with sweat.

The world was very still, as it always is the day after a holiday. Halfway home I almost missed my turn onto Troon, forgetting the way to my own house. The silver car behind me honked.

“Sorry, sorry,” I muttered, and waved my hand above my head. I steered the car to the side of the road, stubbed my cigarette in
the ashtray that pulled out of the dashboard. It needed to be emptied. I hadn't ever cleaned it. Ray took care of our cars, had hired a man who came to our house every other Sunday to simonize them.

The sureness I had felt at Evergreen evaporated. Mary would never forgive me.

My head began to throb. The world turned blurry, for a second.

I doubled back on the next street and pulled into the Avalon drugstore, where I picked up a pint of chocolate ice cream.

“Was your Fourth worth celebrating?” the old man behind the counter asked, winking at me. He and his wife had owned this store since I was a little girl. Joan and I used to come sit at the counter and drink Coke floats.

“It was,” I said, as he scooped. He was practiced at it, the way you get good at something you've done your entire life. “Was yours?”

“Oh yes.” He smoothed the top of the ice cream with the back of his metal scoop, as neatly as if he were putting the finishing touches on a wedding cake, then shut the glass case. The cold air felt heavenly. He handed me a brown paper bag. “And where are you off to now, dear?”

“Home,” I said, without hesitating.

•   •   •

I
f Ray was surprised to see me he didn't show it. I held up the brown paper bag as proof. “Ice cream,” I said, “to celebrate the day after the Fourth.”

Maria left early and Tommy stayed up late and it seemed that last night at the club was going to remain unmentioned, for which I was grateful. We lit sparklers when it was dark enough and let Tommy hold them, which he did with a carefulness beyond his years.

I watched Ray help Tommy and I knew I was lucky. Joan didn't belong to me the same way they did. She never could. She belonged to her mother, her father. To the man who would eventually marry her. Because surely she would marry, someday. And if she didn't marry, well—eventually she would belong to no one. And that was her choice.

“I'm keeping my distance from Joan,” I told Ray, as we lay in bed. “I've decided.”

Ray patted my hand beneath the covers. I could tell by his touch that he wanted to believe me, but couldn't, not quite.