The After Party (26 page)

“She's told me a lot of things, Ray. She's explained herself. She's—”

“What did she tell you?” he interrupted. “What exactly did she say?”

I looked down at my hands, at my week-old manicure, my purse. I couldn't tell Ray what she had told me.

“Cece?”

I looked up at him. “She's leaving,” I said. “She's moving away.”

“I don't care.” And then: “You promised me.”

“I promise I'll be back,” I said. “I promise things will be different.” As I said it, I wondered how many wives had said this to how many husbands; how many husbands had said it to how many wives. I could see that Ray wanted to believe me.

He said nothing, simply watched me as I made my way to the front door. I was halfway out when he spoke again.

“What's going to happen, Cece?”

I stopped. “What do you mean?”

“When does this end?” He raised his hands, let them drop. “Is there an end, to Joan?”

He understood. There was not an end to Joan. She went on forever and ever.

But that was not what he meant.

“Yes,” I said. “I've ended it. I just need to see her one last time.”

He shook his head in disgust.

“I'm trying to be honest,” I said.

Ray snorted. “Do you want a prize? No. You only want Joan.” I could tell he wanted to ask something else of me. I was going to be late, but answering Ray's question seemed the least I could do.

“Do you love Joan,” he asked, quietly, “like you love me?”

I stopped. “How could you think that?”

“It's a fair question,” he said.

Was it? I tried to think. I tried to clear my head.

“I've never loved anyone that way but you.”

Ray nodded. “If you leave, I can't promise I'll take you back.”

I didn't look at his face, didn't pause or ask him to repeat himself so I could make sure I understood him. I understood him. If I looked at my husband's face, the face I knew best of anyone's, besides my own, and my child's, I would not leave my house, I would stay and never know what Joan wanted.

If I'd had to choose between Ray and Joan, a lifetime of one
or the other, I'd have chosen Ray. Of course. But I wasn't really choosing, not truly. Ray would take me back, he would let me in again. I would explain; I would make him see.

And perhaps that was why it didn't feel like a choice, that night. Ray was too steady, too good and earnest. He always wanted me. He was always there.

I left because I didn't think he meant it.

•   •   •

T
he Cork Club was quiet that night. There were businessmen scattered throughout the place, sipping scotch, making what I supposed were important decisions. One of them, a bald-pated man with the red cheeks of an alcoholic, stared at me frankly, but mainly I was ignored. I wore a wedding ring, for one; and two—well, at twenty-five, I was getting too old.

I sat down at a little table, meant for two; Louis came a second later with two champagne flutes dangling upside down from his hand, a bottle of champagne.

“Oh,” I said, not wanting to hurt his feelings. “I didn't order this.”

“Miss Fortier called ahead,” he said, not meeting my eye, focusing instead on the ceremony of the champagne, cradling it in a white cloth, as if it were, I couldn't help but think, a baby. “It's been in the Fortier locker for years,” he murmured, running his hand across the label, upon which was scrawled a lot of French words that meant nothing to me. “Bollinger R.D., 1952,” he said. “Champagne.”

“We should wait to open it,” I said. “Until Joan comes.”

“Of course,” Louis demurred.

And just then Joan did come, as if I had summoned her. A deep, calm pleasure settled over me, and I realized it had been so, so long since Joan had made me happy in this way. But here she was, coming to meet me, on time, even—she burst into the room in a strapless red silk dress, a matching capelet tied around her shoulders. I wondered, of course, where she had gotten it—New York? Paris? I wondered when Joan had had time to think about fashion, in the past few months. And then I knew that Sid had bought it for her.

“Sid,” I said, as she sat down. I reached across the table and felt the stiff, fine material of her capelet between my fingers.

Joan nodded. “He loves me in red.” What else did he love her in? Joan chatted with Louis while he opened the champagne and I took her in, my friend who seemed so different from the friend I had encountered last night—so much less vulnerable than the Joan in Glenwood.

I startled at the pop of the cork, muffled under Louis's white napkin.

Joan beamed. “It's a celebration,” she said.

“Of what?” What exactly were we celebrating? Her sad story? The secret she had kept since we were teenagers? That she was leaving me, for good?

“You, Cece! We don't celebrate you enough, do we?” There was something false in her voice.

We touched glasses: a light clink. I thought of Ray, who surely wouldn't be sleeping—he would be pacing, or paging through a book, trying to distract himself—and I had the sudden impulse
to smash my glass into Joan's, but the urge passed almost as soon as it had appeared.

I sipped my champagne. Joan sipped hers. We were quiet, a rarity for us. We both felt the same lack of verve, the same undercurrent of melancholy.

“I need,” Joan said, and her voice caught. She was nervous, which touched me. “I need to tell you some other things,” she said, “and I need you to listen.” She drained her glass, and Louis was beside us again in a flash, refilling it.

She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. The cigarette, the smoke, seemed the only thing that stood between Joan and her hysteria. The cigarette was a comfort, a way for her to remain calm.

“Here's what I have to tell you,” she said. She cleared her throat. I flicked my champagne glass with my finger.

“I need money,” she said. She paused, took a deep breath, followed by a long drag from her cigarette.

I had guessed, before she told me. Perhaps I had known all along.

“You can have mine,” I said, though I knew as I offered that she would never accept.

“No, Cece. I can't.”

“Oh, Joan,” I said. “What are you planning?”

She stubbed her cigarette out in the green glass ashtray, took another sip of champagne.

“Joan,” I said, and my voice was desperate.

She looked me straight in the eye.

“I need to disappear.”

I listened, quietly.

“Sid saw how unhappy I was, when he came here. He agreed to help me. It's good for him, too. He needs money, too.”

I laughed. “He has money, Joan.” I thought of his big Cadillac, his flashy suits, his gold money clip. “I thought that was the main attraction.” It was mean to say, but Joan didn't notice.

“He made money in Hereford,” she said, “and then he lost it. He has the trappings of money. But not much more.”

“Like you.”

She nodded. “Exactly like me.”

“How is he going to help you?”

She glanced behind her, making sure nobody was within earshot. The way she had walked in this evening, the clothes she was wearing, the champagne she had called out of the locker—it was all bravado.

“You can tell me,” I said, though I was afraid to hear what she had to say.

She laughed, agitatedly. “I'm going to disappear, with Sid. And Sid is going to ask Mama for money.”

“You're going to blackmail your own mother?” I asked. “What makes you think she'll pay?”

“She'll pay.”

“But why would she pay?”

“Because,” she said, and she would not meet my eye, “Sid is going to tell her he'll hurt me if she doesn't. He's already hinted.”

I was confused, then stunned as I slowly assembled Joan's plot. The bruise, Mary's admission that she was afraid for Joan. Afraid of Sid. This was why?

“Oh,” I said.

“Oh, what? I'm not above anything.”

“No,” I said. “It seems you're not.”

She shrugged. “Sid and I have a mutual purpose. He's going to help me disappear. We'll go somewhere else, start over.”

“Disappear,” I repeated. The idea was unfathomable. “You're going to disappear.” I laughed. I couldn't help it. “You've never not been Joan Fortier, do you know that? Since we were little girls, everyone knew who you were before you walked into a room. You think you can give that all up, so easily?” I snapped my fingers. “Like that? I think you're mistaken.” I grew angrier and angrier as I spoke. “You tried once,” I said. “That didn't work out so well.” I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that I was being cruel. But I didn't care. Joan had been cruel to me, hadn't she? Letting me think I knew her, that I understood her, for so many years.

“I
hate
being Joan Fortier,” she said. “I hate her. I hate what she did.”

My anger disappeared. “You were so young,” I said.

She shrugged. “I need to leave, Cece.”

I thought of Mary. “This will kill your mother.”

“Yes,” she said, without hesitating. “Yes, it will. But you'll learn to live without me.”

You'll.
“We'll see each other a few times a year,” I said. “We'll talk in between.” I could already picture it: telling Ray that I was going to see my father, then stealing off to a bright new city. Joan picking me up at the airport, ferrying me to her penthouse.

“No,” Joan said.

“No?”

“I can't.”

“You can't,” I repeated, slowly putting the pieces together. “Or you won't?”

Joan looked pained. “You know me too well,” she said, finally, “and I need to be unknown.”

“You don't get to start over!” I cried. “We're not children. This isn't a game. You can't decide to start again, just because you want to. Just because you've decided that you don't like your old life anymore.”

“There's nothing for me here,” Joan said. “There was David, but he's gone.”

“So you met me here tonight to tell me good-bye. In a public place, so I wouldn't make a scene.”

She reached across the table and grabbed my hand, her grip desperate.

“I have to,” she said. “I think you
do
get to start over, when your child dies.”

Joan watched me like I was the only person in the world. It had been so long since she'd looked at me like that. She would never look that way at me again.

I heard her call my name as I half walked, half ran through the club, my heels sinking into the carpet. I felt as if I were running through sand. This time I was running away from Joan, when it had always been the other way around.

“Excuse me, miss,” a man said as I slipped past him, through the doors. I was making a spectacle of myself.

I wanted to be somewhere else. I didn't know where—not at home, with Ray, who hated me. I would get my car and then
decide. A hotel, maybe. Somewhere I knew no one. If Joan could disappear, then so could I. Why not? Who was stopping me?

Then I was outside. The heat greeted me, an old, familiar friend. The air so thick it felt like you could cut it. I slowed to a walk. A valet tipped his cap.

I didn't know where to go. My plans vanished. I was lost.

Then Joan's hand was on my shoulder. My own hand went to hers, instinctively.

“I don't want you to leave,” I said. It was one thing to imagine her in a different city, with an address, a phone number. A way I could reach her. It was quite another to imagine her gone forever.

“I know.” She guided me onto a little bench next to the valet stand, the coolness of the iron beneath my thighs, through the silk of my dress, a relief. This was where ladies in heels sat and waited for their cars to be brought up by the valets. You could see Houston from here. Its industry, its breadth. I would never live anywhere else. I belonged to this place, as Joan did. As we all did. But unlike Joan, I could never leave. I didn't want to. My child lived here, and so did my husband.

For the first time in my life, I had something over Joan. I could destroy her plan in a second.

“Why tell me?”

She began to speak, then stopped short.

“Why tell me?” I asked again. “I could go to your mother. I could go to the police.”

Joan shook her head. “I trust you.”

“How can you say you trust me? When you've told me nothing for years and years.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, and her voice was mournful. “I'm telling you because I want one person in the world to know. To know me—I want you to know me, Cece.”

I was moved. I couldn't help it.

“Can you trust Sid?”

She nodded. “Don't worry about Sid. I've known him for a long time. Don't worry about me.”

“Oh, Joan,” I said. “You think this'll work? You think you can just disappear? You think your mother will ever stop looking for you?”

“The world is large. I'll find a little pocket, slip into it. It'll be as if I never existed. I almost did it, once before. I could have done it, if I'd had money. It's a plan I've been thinking of for years.”

“Years,” I echoed. “I thought you were happy.”

Joan squeezed my hand. “Did you really?”

“I really did.”

It was Joan's gift, or curse—I didn't know which—to be so unfathomable.

I had failed her. We had all failed her.

I heard a rumbling off in the distance; a black Cadillac rounded the corner. Joan stiffened, alert. It was Sid's car.

“Promise,” Joan said, “promise you'll help me.”

Joan had helped me, when we were young. If I could go back in time, what would I tell the younger versions of ourselves? I would tell Joan to be careful. I would tell her not to be so careless with her love. I would tell myself the same thing. I knew I needed Joan gone as much as she needed to be gone. My life was not my own, when she was in it.