The After Party Page 7

  “Mary thinks we gave Joanie too much. Let her have too much freedom. But a girl like Joan,” he said, spreading his hands, “what else were we supposed to do? Do you know a movie agent took Mary aside after the debutante ball? He happened to be there, one of the girls was a cousin of his. He thought he could make Joan famous.”

  He looked straight at me.

  “Do you think that’s where she went? To Hollywood?”

  My face flamed red. This was the first I’d heard of a movie agent. Joan had told me nothing.

  “Maybe.” I tried to make my voice sound hopeful. I thought of the boy in the bleachers. I thought of John, who’d been smitten with Joan. I imagined Joan at a casting call, like I’d read about in magazines, surrounded by other beautiful young women. Hollywood seemed as good a guess as any.

  Furlow sighed, took off his hat and put it back on. “Mary thinks that’s where she’s gone. I just don’t know why she didn’t tell us. I would have let her go.”

  He would not have let her go.

  “I gave my girl everything,” he said, and the emotion in his voice caught me off guard. “Everything,” he repeated.

  And still she had left. Furlow stared at me. Joan, leaving his world, without permission: he could not make sense of it.

  After Furlow said good-bye, with no more information than he had come with, I went into my new, modern bathroom, with a showerhead so wide that standing underneath it felt like being caught in rain.

  I studied my reflection. I wasn’t surprised Joan had been singled out among all us debs.

  In that moment I felt like nothing so much as a paid companion, the spinster, the homely friend from one of the Victorian novels we’d had to read in English class. Except my companion, my purpose, my reason for existence, had jumped ship.

  • • •

  “Hollywood,” Ciela said one night, near the end of the summer. We sat on the white leather couch in the Specimen Jar’s living room, playing mahjong with an old Bakelite set I’d discovered in a closet. We were still in our bikinis, robes untied. We’d spent the day by the pool, as we’d spent most of our days that summer. How I would have spent them had Joan been here.

  Mary had called me to Evergreen the day before, to let me know that they’d found Joan. She was, as Mary had suspected, in Hollywood. And she was not planning to come back any time soon.

  “Yes,” I said, “Mrs. Fortier said she’s trying to become a star.” I tried to keep my voice casual.

  “The great mystery is solved,” Ciela said, and I didn’t like her tone, but I liked that she was making light of Joan and her ambition, turning them ridiculous. She didn’t belong in Hollywood. She belonged here, with me. All our plans, all our schemes: We were going to go out every night, become regulars at the Cork Club. We were going to spend two weeks in the Hill Country. We were going to escape to Galveston when the heat became unbearable. We were going to Paris next spring, where Joan was going to lead us around the city and practice her French. We were going to come back to Houston and find handsome, older men—not the boys we had dated in high school—and go on double dates. We were going to live the lives we had been imagining since middle school.

  But Joan had changed her mind. She hadn’t picked up the telephone. She hadn’t picked up a pen. She hadn’t even relayed a message for me through Mary. Had I done something wrong, offended Joan in some profound way? I racked my brain. Had she seen me that afternoon, in the gymnasium? Had I spent too much time with Ciela, become too close to her? Had I defended Mary too staunchly? But none of my offenses, real or imagined, were big enough to merit Joan’s departure. I knew that. Her sudden exit, her new life, her reluctance to return to Houston—none of it was because of me.

  “It must hurt your feelings that she didn’t tell you,” Ciela said. She was looking at me sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Cece.”

  I almost told her. We were very drunk and it was very late. Despair. The word was on the tip of my tongue. It wasn’t a word I remembered ever using before. It was a word for women in novels, for heroines in film; it wasn’t a word for Cece Beirne from River Oaks, Texas.

  But that’s what I felt, wasn’t it? Not hurt; hurt was how I had felt when a photographer had come to Evergreen to take the Fortier family Christmas picture and it was a given that I would not be in it. Hurt was how I had felt when my father and his new wife had not remembered my birthday, even though I hadn’t truly expected them to. Hurt was another thing entirely. You could forget a hurt feeling; you could forgive it.

  When Joan left I felt emptied out, a particular kind of hollowing I had felt when my mother died.

  “Cece?” Ciela said, waiting for my response. Did she care about me, or did she just want the dirt? I wondered. Did she want me to tell her that Joan was not the girl I thought she had been? That our great friendship was a farce?

  She had benefited from Joan’s absence, after all, invited now to every party, every opening, every concert. She’d even appeared in the “The Town Crier” last weekend, leaving the Cork Club. It would have been Joan’s picture, if Joan had been here.

  I took a deep breath. “You can’t tell a living soul,” I said. “Mary Fortier would have me beheaded.” I drew a finger across my neck. Ciela watched me with a knitted brow, her head tilted. “I knew. She told me everything.”

  “Everything,” Ciela echoed, and I wasn’t sure if she believed me, but it didn’t matter. I had closed the subject of Joan.

  Chapter Eight

  1957

  I was soaking my delicates—I liked to wash them myself—in the laundry room, listening to the soft thud of Maria’s footsteps as she played with Tommy upstairs. The phone rang, and I rushed to the kitchen to get it.

  “Hello?”

  “Cece, can you hear me? This is Mary Fortier,” she said, even though I’d known who she was the instant I’d heard her voice, deep and firm, a man’s voice, with a Littlefield drawl she’d never tried to undo. I’d always liked that about Mary: she’d tell you in a second she’d grown up without two nickels to rub together.

  “I can hear you.” Like most people over a certain age, she didn’t quite trust the telephone. I drew my fingers across the rows of canned vegetables: corn, green beans, beets. We hadn’t built a backyard bomb shelter, like our neighbors the Dempseys, but I had more canned foods than we’d eat in a lifetime.

  “Good. Joan’s indisposed this week”—at this I froze; did she know what Joan was up to?—“but Furlow’s been asking about her. He wants to see her, and I thought you might be able to come instead. Would you consider it?”

  “I’ll be over this afternoon,” I promised, “with Tommy.”

  • • •

  I dressed Tommy in his navy-blue sailor suit and combed his hair with a little bit of Ray’s pomade. “So handsome,” I said, when I was done, and Tommy gave me a tiny smile, which made my day. My week, even.

  I slowed down as we approached Evergreen, set back from the road, screened by those enormous magnolia trees. It was one of the biggest houses in River Oaks, second only to the Hoggs’ mansion, Bayou Bend, on Westcott. It had been designed by Staub and Briscoe and built on two lots; its magnificent gardens were the work of Ruth London herself. Furlow had originally intended Evergreen as a country estate, a retreat from the crush of downtown Houston, but after Evergreen was completed he and Mary decided they never wanted to leave.

  Furlow had been heir to a Louisiana family fortune, made on cotton and sugarcane, divested before, as he called it, the War Between the States; the fortune had multiplied, then been largely lost by a reckless father before Furlow came into his own. I couldn’t think of a more classic Southern coming-of-age story. Furlow liked to think of himself as a Southern gentleman from another world turned Texan. He wore Lucchese cowboy boots and a custom-made cowboy hat, even now.

  Furlow and Mary lived at Evergreen alone these days, with a dozen servants
to help Mary keep an eye on her declining husband. Once Furlow had roamed all the way to one of the entrances of River Oaks; Fred had circled the neighborhood for hours before he found him.

  I felt a peculiar mixture of dread and longing as I turned into their red gravel driveway. All these years later, I still felt privileged to be invited here, though I knew I should have outgrown such feelings. I knew people thought my attachment to Joan strange. It would have been normal for me to grow up and scale back my devotion to her. But our friendship was different from other friendships. My own husband didn’t understand it. He was a man, after all. He wasn’t capable of female devotion.

  Now I felt disoriented, anger at Joan bubbling up though I tried to tamp it down.

  My hair looked frizzy in my compact and I tried to smooth it down. It was curly and I wanted it to be straight, and I wasted a lot of time in my youth trying to make it that way. I tilted the compact and checked my lipstick, my light swipes of rouge. I had good coloring—even, olive skin and red lips, courtesy of my mother—so I didn’t need much makeup.

  “Mommy’s biding her time, isn’t she?” I asked Tommy, who was looking out the window. “Let’s go see Uncle Furlow and Aunt Mary. Let’s show them what a big boy you are.”

  I stepped across the gravel, noted the satisfying crunch beneath my shoes. The work that went into this place astonished me. The gravel was raked, by hand, every evening. There were servants’ quarters out back—Little Green, Mary used to call it—where six full-time employees lived. My mother used to seethe over the servants’ quarters; I had that, she used to say. That’s how we used to live. What use does Mary Fortier from Littlefield have for a ladies’ maid?

  I used the front door, instead of the side door I would have used with Joan. I hesitated at the doorbell, Tommy on my hip—was I standing on ceremony? But it was a thousand degrees outside and I could feel my hair getting bigger and bigger the longer we stood there so I rang the doorbell, and almost immediately Stewart answered. Mary appeared behind him and ushered me in, took my pocketbook and kissed my cheek. I murmured hello to Stewart, who, in the way of all Evergreen servants, barely acknowledged me. He had always been thin, a meatless kind of man; now, in his old age, he looked positively concave.

  “Hello, dear,” Mary said. She looked me up and down in her appraising, affectionate way.

  She wore an ordinary skirt and blouse, her uniform. If she had been born in the era of pants, she would have worn nothing else. The only hint of her wealth: a diamond the size of a cherry on her ring finger. And of course in the way she carried herself, as if the world would bend to her, which it always had, since she’d married Furlow.

  She used her lack of beauty to her advantage. No one expected a plain woman to want so much. Mary commanded a room in such a way as to suggest that good looks were frivolous, a symptom of superficiality. Still, she took pleasure in Joan’s beauty. I remembered getting ready for our junior prom, glancing in the bathroom mirror and being startled by the reflection of Mary, standing at the edge of the door and watching us—watching Joan. It would be easy to say that Mary was jealous of Joan’s beauty. But what I saw that day, in Mary’s expression, wasn’t jealousy. It was pride, a specific brand of wonder.

  “Aren’t you something, today,” she said, nodding at my sundress. It was a simple style that covered my upper arms and fell to my knees. “This way,” she murmured now, “Furlow’s in his office.”

  Furlow sat behind his massive mahogany desk, looking at a magazine, and from this vantage point you would not have known his mind was turning to cotton. He looked like the handsome Furlow Fortier of my youth: aged, of course, his hair white, his cheeks striated with the deep lines earned by spending most of his young life on oil fields. On the desk there was a single picture, in a silver frame: Joan, as a little girl. She sat on a pony, grinning at the camera.

  I was nervous, suddenly, hesitated at the door, but then Mary’s hand was on my back, pushing me forward.

  “Joan?” Furlow asked, looking up. The magazine he was gazing at was a gossip rag, mainly pictures, something he wouldn’t have looked twice at in his old life.

  “No, Furlow,” Mary said firmly. “It’s Cece, Joan’s best friend. She’s married to Ray Buchanan. She’s like another daughter.” She walked across the room to Furlow as she spoke, and I stood there, dumbly. She smoothed Furlow’s collar, helped him stand and walk to a chair, and gestured for me to take the one across from it.

  “She lived with us for a few years in high school—how many was it, Cece?”

  Like all capable women, Mary had a memory like an elephant’s. But she wanted me to speak.

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, for two and a half years. After my mother died and my father moved away. Every Sunday we used to eat outside. Dorie would serve us fried chicken and biscuits on paper plates. We loved it.”

  Mary looked at me for a moment. It was a misstep to mention Dorie, who had left the Fortiers’ employ under mysterious circumstances years earlier.

  I wanted to take back the reference to Dorie, but then Mary spoke.

  “Dorie and Idie took such good care of you and Joan for such a long time.”

  The last time I’d seen Idie was at my mother’s funeral; at the end of it, in the receiving line, she’d hugged me and it had felt so familiar I’d had to bite my cheek to stop myself from crying. I wanted her to never stop touching me.

  Furlow had perked up at the mention of Joan. I saw with a pang that he was dressed beautifully, in well-ironed linen slacks and a soft blue knit shirt, his boots shined to within an inch of their life. Tommy squirmed on my lap and I put him down, looked to Mary to make sure it was okay; she nodded. There wasn’t a third chair so she perched on the edge of Furlow’s desk, like, I couldn’t help but think, a chaperone.

  Tommy backed up until he found my knees. His hand was in his mouth, as was his habit in any new situation.

  “He’s shy,” I said. “Let’s take your hand out of your mouth.” I regretted not bringing his train to distract him.

  Furlow clapped his hands, suddenly. “He’s a delightful boy!” he said, laughing. “Delightful!” I flushed with pleasure.

  Furlow leaned forward. “Who are you?” he said softly, to Tommy, and when I looked at Mary she shrugged, a smile playing across her lips. “It’s better to laugh at it than cry over it,” she always said, whenever Joan or I was upset. I hadn’t thought of her saying that in years. But once upon a time, during our theatrical high school years, she had said it often.

  “It’s the highlight of his week,” she said, and I thought she meant this visit, with me and Tommy, but then she went on, “when Joan visits.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “How is she these days?” Mary asked.

  “She?”

  “Joan,” she said, with a careful casualness, and I understood all at once that Mary had invited me to Evergreen to find out what I knew about Joan.

  “Oh,” I said with a nervous laugh. “I’m sure she’s fine. When I spoke to her the other night she was,” I said. “Fine,” I added.

  Mary nodded, and I couldn’t tell what she knew: Had she already heard that Joan had a man at her house and called me over to find out how far the gossip had spread? Or did she know only that her daughter was absent? At least Furlow would never learn anything of Joan’s behavior. He would not have been able to comprehend it.

  “Has she been in touch?” I asked, after a moment, but Mary only gazed at me benignly.

  “We’re gearing up for a hot summer,” she said. We passed the time watching Tommy with Furlow, chatting about nothing. Tommy was wary of Furlow at first, but by the end of the visit he sat in Furlow’s lap.

  As I stood by the front door, preparing to leave, Mary gave me a firm hug. She didn’t touch lightly, in the way of most women.

  “Thank you for coming, and for bringing the boy. It did Furlow s
ome good,” she said. But she gripped my hand and did not let go.

  There was nothing I could do to help Mary. I didn’t know what Joan was up to, was the truth. I didn’t know how long she was planning on staying away from Evergreen, or why she stayed away in the first place. Surely she knew how much she meant to her parents, Furlow especially. I had been anxious for Joan, but now I was angry. Joan was an adult. She wasn’t nineteen anymore; I shouldn’t have been worried about failing her. She should have been worried about failing her mother, her father. And me.

  I helped Tommy into the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Joan had been so kind to me when I’d first come here. Had been so kind to me as my mother lay dying. But she had been more than that. She had shown me, and my mother, compassion beyond her fifteen years. And now she couldn’t tear herself away from her romance, her sex—whatever you wanted to call it—to reassure her father, her father who was losing his mind but still yearned for his child.

  Chapter Nine

  I can recall every inch of my mother’s body, even now, all these years later. What happened to her was not a thing you forget. The first time I saw her wounds, when a nurse was changing the bandages, I ran into the bathroom and vomited. It looked like a child had gone to work with a pair of scissors, not like the careful handiwork of a surgeon. I was grateful my mother was asleep. The nurse had looked at me sympathetically.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she’d said, but I never got used to it. My mother had gone into surgery with a hard knot in her left breast, which her doctor had discovered after she had complained of a burning sensation. She woke up in the hospital and both her breasts were gone. She was thirty-six years old. She couldn’t lift her arms because the muscle had been taken along with her breasts. Carrying her to the bathroom back at home was nearly impossible, because she couldn’t cling to my neck, so she used a bedpan. And it was only me there to help her—she wouldn’t tolerate the nurse the hospital sent, and Idie’s presence was only permissible if my mother was so knocked out by drugs she no longer cared who saw her.