The After Party Page 5

  I could feel Darlene watching me; her drink was running low. I could have poured her another; that would have been gracious.

  I leaned in close, and kept my voice low.

  “Oh, Darlene,” I said, as if I were speaking to a small child. “That was a business associate of Furlow’s. But I think it’s time for you to go home. Tommy’s bedtime, soon.” I stood, adjusted my belt. I’d had to get completely dressed and waste an outfit for Darlene’s visit. Not my best outfit, but still. I watched Darlene try to assemble the various pieces—what had just happened, exactly? How had she gone from being the bearer of valuable information to getting kicked out of Cece Buchanan’s home before her drink was even done?

  I waved good-bye from our front door as Darlene backed out of the driveway, wincing as she edged onto the vulnerable grass by the mailbox. She wasn’t a good driver. None of us were, really. We weren’t supposed to care about cars or driving so we didn’t.

  I worried for a second that Darlene would call Kenna, or Ciela, or someone further out in our group—Crystal Carruthers, or Jean Hill—and tell some sordid secret about me. But I wasn’t a ninny. I’d never revealed anything essential about myself to anyone but Joan.

  Besides, I understood Darlene. She was neither mean nor nice, smart nor dumb. She wasn’t spectacular in any way, but she aspired to be. Joan was spectacular. Joan was a target. Always had been, always would be for women like Darlene. I wasn’t spectacular, but neither was I worthy of envy, except when I stood near Joan.

  Darlene would go home, kick off her shoes, pour herself a glass of wine, fold herself onto that white leather couch, and call Kenna, recount my insult, casting herself in a virtuous light—“I was only trying to help poor Joan!”—and she and Kenna would talk for half an hour, an hour, while their maids prepared dinner and the nannies bathed the children, and by tomorrow Darlene would have forgotten all about the time Cece Buchanan practically threw her out of her house.

  I could have been meaner, I could have told her what I really thought instead of simply forcing her to leave. Most of us wanted what we couldn’t have. Darlene wanted to be more popular than Joan. I wanted Tommy to speak.

  I also wanted Joan to behave herself. She was already the talk of the town. If Darlene knew a man had left her house, everyone did. I would tell whoever asked that he was a business associate of Furlow’s, but no one would believe me.

  I stood outside for a moment longer. Inside would be a series of chores—dinner, bath time for Tommy, bed, a book he would show little interest in. Assembling all of it, cleaning it up. Making small talk with Ray. But I felt powerful after I defended Joan. I surveyed my lawn, the neat circle of ivy enclosed by our driveway, the white daylilies and pink four o’clocks. Soon everything would wilt and die in the Texas heat. But not quite yet.

  • • •

  Ray and I sat by the pool after we’d put Tommy to bed. The temperature was more pleasant out here at night.

  “I put Tommy in front of Roy Rogers,” Ray said. “He seemed to like him.”

  “Who wouldn’t like Trigger?” I asked, and Ray gave a chuckle. I didn’t want to discuss Tommy tonight. I wondered how much interest he’d shown in the television. Ray and I were divided over our son: he couldn’t bear to think anything was wrong with him. “I was slow to talk, too,” he’d say, or: “He’ll be a football star, not a rocket scientist.”

  “What’s in store for you tomorrow?” Ray asked, which is what he always asked in the evenings. I listed my plans: lunch with the ladies, the Garden Club meeting. The minutiae of a marriage; the minutiae of a life. It was these minutiae that comforted me. I’d never had someone so interested in me, before Ray. Joan wasn’t meant for the small things.

  I touched his hand, lightly, and he turned to me with unexpected intensity.

  “Do you think Tommy is lonely?” he asked.

  I could tell he’d been waiting to ask this question. Or, not this question, exactly: the real question he wanted to ask was when we could start trying for another child. It was, if not quite yet a problem, a small issue, something to be tiptoed around. Most of our friends started trying again when their first child was two. Any earlier suggested an accident. Any later suggested trouble. Tommy was already three.

  My secret was that I needed Tommy to start speaking first. I wanted assurance that our next child would speak, too; I wanted to be certain. I could never say this to Ray, but I wondered if Tommy’s silence wasn’t a reflection of how I cared for him. If I wasn’t warm enough, maternal enough; if Tommy could sense something I could not. I had learned the value of silence from my mother, after all; the less I said, the less likely she was to take offense.

  Ray would tell me this was nonsense, that I was devoted to Tommy, that anyone could see how much Tommy loved me. I wanted to believe that it was nonsense, but sometimes, in dark moments, I could not.

  “He has his Mother’s Day Outs,” I said, and I could sense Ray’s disappointment, that I would not answer his question, that I would not engage. But how could I? I was ashamed: that I was not more hopeful, that the thought of another child stirred fear in my heart instead of love.

  “That’s true,” Ray said quietly, and I leaned back in the lawn chair and closed my eyes. The air smelled of chlorine and freshly cut grass and four o’clocks. A summer smell.

  Another night, I told myself, I might have worked up the courage to answer Ray differently. Honestly. To give him a little glimpse of my heart. But tonight I was occupied with Joan, and I could not muster the effort required for such a serious conversation.

  Ray stood, leaned down, and kissed me on the forehead. “Night,” he said. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  I would go in, soon. I was exhausted, and the day would begin again in a few short hours whether I was well rested or not.

  Chapter Five

  1957

  As soon as Maria was in the door the next morning, I was out. “Be back soon,” I called over my shoulder, and slipped outside before Tommy knew what I was doing. He wouldn’t throw a tantrum, but sometimes he clung to my leg and cried, and when he did this I found it nearly impossible to leave.

  A gardener edged the lawn across the street, slow and methodical. Otherwise the neighborhood was still, too early for children to be about, splashing in pools or running through sprinklers. River Oaks was a neighborhood for families, with yards meant for sprawling games of hide-and-seek, for swing sets. The backyards, anyway. The front yards were meant to be seen.

  Joan’s house was five times too big for her—she was the only single woman in all of River Oaks who did not live with her parents. I’d always thought her husband would move into this home when Joan married, but no decent man was going to want Joan if she truly was keeping company with strange men.

  I drove by my childhood home on my way to Joan’s, owned now by a family I’d never met. An old colonial, it sat proud and tall like a soldier, with white columns and long windows and plantation shutters. I remembered my mother sitting at one of those windows, smoking a cigarette, telling me that smoking was trashy, that if she ever found me with a cigarette she’d wring my neck. Yet she had caught me, once, and she hadn’t wrung my neck; in fact, she hadn’t seemed to care at all. Right now the Confederate jasmine my mother had trained to a trellis was in bloom. I used to be able to smell it through my bedroom window.

  I rang Joan’s doorbell and listened to the electric chime reverberate through the tall-ceilinged house. Her home was Spanish style, sprawling, with a red tile roof and a rose garden that overlooked the pool. She never stepped foot in the garden.

  I waited. I might wake Joan, who wasn’t an early riser, but I didn’t care.

  Sari opened the door. She was German, and had been with Joan since our days together after high school. Every other maid in River Oaks was colored, but somehow Mary Fortier had found her daughter a Germ
an maid.

  “Here for Joan,” I said, and Sari frowned while she said hello. She was old enough to be my grandmother, and I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile. Sari made Germany seem like a place you’d never want to visit. Usually Joan opened the door herself.

  I saw Joan’s white cat, deaf as a doorknob, pad languidly across the tiled entryway and I knew, suddenly, that Joan was upstairs with him. The stranger with the unhandsome profile. Darlene had said he’d been seen leaving on Sunday; this meant he was coming and going as he pleased. There was no unfamiliar car in the driveway, at least.

  “She’s with someone, isn’t she?” I reached out and rested a hand against the doorframe.

  Sari looked at my hand, then at me.

  “She is indisposed,” she said. I could smell the scent of freshly baked bread wafting in from the kitchen. I could see beyond Sari into Joan’s spacious foyer, a vase of fresh yellow roses from the garden on the entryway table, next to a silver tray stacked with yesterday’s mail. The pile was tall with magazines and I recognized the red corner of Time, which Ray subscribed to. Joan was the only woman I knew who made a point of reading it, regaling us at our ladies’ lunches with the news of the day.

  “I know she’s here,” I said, hating the way my voice sounded, plaintive, jealous even. I knew Sari well enough to know she would tell me nothing, but I was getting frantic at the thought of Joan in there, with him. Who knew what he wanted with her? And what did she want with him?

  Joan wasn’t a child. She knew better than this.

  I backed away from the door. “Tell her I was here,” I called out. I lifted my hand in a wave.

  • • •

  Once, when we were little girls, playing at Joan’s—we were nearly always at Evergreen, with Dorie and Idie—I looked up from the moat I was building in the sandbox and Joan was gone. We must have been about four, young enough that the memory is hazy but old enough that I know it happened. Idie and Dorie were sitting in the shade of a giant oak with glasses of lemonade, chatting; I remember feeling relieved because they appeared so unconcerned.

  I stood, the sand I had not minded sitting in a moment ago suddenly irritating, nearly unbearable, and went to Idie.

  “Where’s Joanie?” I asked, and I must have sounded worried because Idie paused, held my hand in hers for a moment. She and Dorie smelled of the same lotion, which was confusing to me because I loved only Idie. I understood from a young age that Idie knew how to manage my mother, how to navigate her moods, how to shield me from her. I preferred Idie’s company to my mother’s, to almost anyone but Joan’s. She was an adult in whose presence I felt safe, though of course I would not have put it in those terms when I was a child. Then, I simply knew I loved her.

  “She’s inside,” Idie said. “She’ll be back.”

  “I want her.” I could feel tears bite my eyes.

  “You can’t have her.” Dorie’s voice. I backed into Idie’s knees and wrapped her arm around me. Dorie was stern, older than Idie and more dangerous. Joan and I rarely crossed her. “She’s in the house. She’ll be back soon. But until then, you can’t have her.” She leaned back in her chair, done with me.

  The threat of crying had disappeared. Fury had replaced it.

  “I can have her,” I said, “whenever I want her.”

  Idie began to laugh first, then Dorie, shaking her head. “Is that so, child,” she kept saying, “is that so.”

  But of course, I couldn’t have Joan whenever I wanted her, then or now or any time in between. It was a lesson I should have learned early: that Joan was never entirely mine.

  Chapter Six

  1957

  A few nights later I lay in bed, wide awake, and knew I would call Joan. She had been so good for so long. But this behavior—stealing up to a hotel room at the Shamrock, taking a man to her house, spending days with him—it alarmed me. I’d almost lost Joan once, the year she’d come back from Hollywood. I hadn’t known how to help her.

  This time I’d left her alone for as long as I could, hoped she would come to me. It didn’t serve me well to ask too many questions of her. But she had not come to me, and so I left my sleeping husband and padded down the hall to his office.

  I checked on Tommy first—was it possible to pass your child’s room at night and not peek in to make sure he was still breathing? He was, deep, even breaths you could set a clock by.

  After all the old, creaky hardwood in my childhood home I’d made the designer put fluffy beige carpet everywhere but the kitchen. On top of that lay shag rugs in vibrant colors, scattered about the house. It was impossible not to walk softly in my house.

  I closed the door to Ray’s office behind me, poured myself a finger of his nice scotch, and drank it in a single swallow. I hated the taste but liked the effect.

  I had nearly given up and set the phone back in the receiver when she answered.

  “Hello,” she said. “It can only be Cece, calling this late.” She didn’t sound drunk. She didn’t sound anything. She sounded like herself, perhaps a little annoyed.

  I sank into the soft leather chair behind Ray’s desk; my bones felt liquid.

  “It is Cece. I—”

  “Of course it is.” She exhaled, and I knew she was smoking. I associated smoke—the smell of it, the sight of a woman bringing a cigarette to her lips—with Joan.

  “Remember when you taught me to smoke?” I asked.

  “Is that something you can teach?” she asked.

  “We were at Evergreen. I think we were thirteen.”

  “Twelve,” Joan said, “we were twelve,” and I was so pleased she remembered. “You threw up in the grass and I was so worried I’d killed you.” She laughed. “But you’re tougher than that.”

  “You took care of me,” I said. “You made me change so Dorie wouldn’t smell anything on our clothes, and then you convinced our mothers to let me sleep over, even though it was a school night.”

  “You didn’t want to go home,” Joan said. “You never wanted to go home.”

  It was true: I never did. The smoke had made me sick, and I had vomited behind a garden shed, and Joan had rubbed my back and given me a cold washcloth for my forehead, and I had gotten to sleep next to her that night.

  “I used to steal Daddy’s cigarettes,” she said. “He never counted. Mama did.” She sighed. “And now my daddy doesn’t know who I am.”

  “He still loves you,” I said. I believed it was true. Loving Joan was Furlow’s instinct.

  She was quiet for a moment. “I suppose he does. I don’t know. It’s late, though. Very late. I would never call you this late. I might wake Tommy.”

  I waited. My face felt hot.

  “So what did you want to know tonight? Am I okay? I’m fine. I just need some time to be alone.”

  “But you’re not alone,” I said. I traced the rim of the heavy crystal glass.

  Joan was silent. When she spoke she sounded resigned.

  “Have you ever wondered how many lifetimes you’ve spent worrying over me?”

  “I’m your friend.”

  “I have a mother,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard me. “I have a mother to worry over me. I don’t need two.”

  I felt her words physically: a blow to the chest. Or no, it wasn’t that: it was whatever the opposite of that felt like. A sudden, sharp elimination of air from my lungs. Like a puncture. Did she know her power? Surely she did. Surely she must have.

  “But you’re a doll to worry,” she said, just when the despair was about to overwhelm me. The trick of our friendship, perhaps: Joan could be mean, she could be irritable and she could be short and she could treat me in ways I would never treat her. But she never went too far. She always came back.

  “Just be . . .” I trailed off. “Just be careful. Please.”

  “And now I have to go.” And then she was gone.r />
  There was no chance I’d sleep now. I stood, drew my finger over the spines of Ray’s books. Pulled one out. Reshelved it without registering a single thing about it.

  All these years later, I understand that worrying about Joan was a little bit like being in love. Her absence was painful. Hearing her voice, seeing her face—I felt new. I felt completely revived.

  Ray wouldn’t like this: Me, calling Joan in the middle of the night. Drinking scotch straight, like a man. I was angry at myself, too: it was three o’clock in the morning! I would have to be up in three hours, and I had wasted time on Joan, on Joan’s problems, on Joan’s life. I stood. “Enough,” I said.

  I checked on Tommy once more before sliding under the covers next to Ray. She would come to me in time. She always did. The man would go away. They always did.

  • • •

  I should have gone to her at that point. If I’d known all that was to happen in the coming weeks, I would have. Perhaps it would have stopped nothing—Joan had started on her particular course long ago.

  Some would say she was only fulfilling a destiny. But destinies can be changed. Joan had, after all, changed mine.

  Chapter Seven

  Joan ran away the spring of our senior year of high school. A week before she truly disappeared, I followed her at lunchtime. She’d stopped showing up at the cafeteria and I was tired of her leaving, tired of not knowing where she went. I slipped out of typing class and waited behind a bank of lockers for the bell to ring and Joan to emerge from Home Arts.

  She was the first person out the door and she was alone, which surprised me. Joan was usually surrounded by a throng. Now she seemed pensive, her arms wrapped around her books. It was easy to follow her blond head through the hallways, darting into a crowd of people when it seemed like she might turn around. But she never turned around. It never occurred to Joan to be careful.

  She rounded the corner and went through an open door into the gymnasium, where we had our pep rallies and watched basketball games. Where Joan had cheered, a million times. I remember the rectangles of light cast by the high windows and Joan walking through them, her books still pressed against her chest.