Birthday Girls (10 page)

Anyway, the act itself had seemed a lot of mess and bother. But she had done it, and now she could tell Kris. She wondered if Kris had gone all the way too, and if she had been as disappointed.

Sometimes
it was hard to be with them. Things were happening so fast that Maddie felt she was being left behind. Abigail and Kris both had boyfriends; Betty Ann still talked about wanting one, but so far she hadn’t found one—she said she was waiting to find the perfect boy who would make a perfect husband and father to the five perfect children she intended to have. Everyone but Maddie seemed to know what she wanted.

The night of their sixteenth birthday celebration, Maddie stood before the mirror in her bedroom and wondered what it would feel like to be beautiful, to have been blessed with a body that had all the indentations where they belonged, to have the blonde hair of Abigail or the exotic looks of Kris or even the freckled cheeks of Betty Ann.

Instead, Maddie was simply Maddie. Lumpy, bumpy Maddie who had not one definable, uniquely “Maddie” feature,
had not felt her rib cage since she was about six, and had no idea why her hair had to be so thick and flat and straight. On top of it all, tonight she had cramps. Her ankles were swollen over the edges of her penny loafers, and her stomach looked like she was pregnant. As if any boy would ever come that close to Maddie to make that a possibility.

“You’re a beast,” she said into the mirror. “It’s a wonder they even want you for their friend.”

From outside came the sound of Abigail’s grandfather’s limousine crunching up the gravel drive toward Maddie’s house.

“Time to pretend you fit in,” she said to no one, because no one was at home. Her mother had gone out to play canasta, and it was just the two of them now, just the two of them since Daddy had died.

The horn honked. Maddie sighed and turned from her room. On the way downstairs she juggled her camera, trying to stuff it into her purse. Then she brushed the liquor cabinet. It rattled. She stopped.
Hey
, she thought,
we’re sixteen now
. Maybe it was time to grow up. Maybe then she’d feel as if she belonged.

Quickly she reached inside the cabinet and pulled out two bottles of wine. She tucked them under her black wool cape as the limo honked again.

They read
last year’s wishes, laughed, then ate birthday day cake. Then, despite the rain on the chilled September night, they retreated to the stables, where they sat in solemn celebration sharing the wine. Kris had brought cigarettes that she and Abigail shared; Betty Ann tried one too, coughed, tried it again, then coughed some more. She put out the smoke and swallowed her cough with a big gulp of wine.

“Let’s go to West Point and look for boys,” Kris said, grabbing the bottle from Betty Ann before she could drink the whole thing.

“Good idea,” Abigail answered. “There’s only one problem. None of us can drive. And nobody has a car.”

“That’s two problems,” Maddie replied, taking another swig from bottle-number-two and enjoying the warm feeling that spread all the way down to her toes.

“I know how to drive,” Kris said. “I just can’t get my license until next month.”

“If you drive without a license you’ll get arrested,” Betty Ann said with a hiccup.

“Only if I get caught.”

“That’s not funny. Two of my brothers got arrested.”

“For driving without a license?”

Betty Ann nodded. “They took my father’s car. They went through a stop sign and got arrested.”

“Then it was their own fault,” Kris snickered. “I’m glad I’ve never met them if they’re stupid enough to go through a stop sign.”

Betty Ann stared at the pack of Winstons that lay open on the floor. “Yeah,” she said, “they’re stupid all right. Not like you.” She pulled out another cigarette and lit it with the same quick stroke of a match as Kris had done.

“If you’re going to light that, you’d better smoke it,” Kris said.

“No problem.” Betty Ann blew out a small white cloud. “I had something stuck in my throat before, that’s all.”

Maddie wished Betty Ann would stop trying to do everything Kris did. As much as Maddie wanted to fit in, she hoped she’d never be so dumb. She wondered if Betty Ann took after her brothers. “Come on, you guys,” Maddie urged. “Let’s write down our wishes. This year we can put them in a wine bottle!”

“I brought paper,” Abigail replied, producing a small notebook, tearing off sheets, and passing them around. “And Betty Ann, nothing impossible this year.”

Last year, Betty Ann’s wish was to be as tall as Kris, which was absurd because she was nearly a foot shorter and almost six months younger and would never catch up if they lived to be a hundred and a hundred and a half.

“By the time I am seventeen,” Kris said, writing her wish with a flourish, “I hope we will be grown up enough to stop writing down these ridiculous wishes.”

“Kris!” Betty Ann shrieked. “It’s our tradition!”

“Yeah, well, I want to start a new tradition. I want to go to West Point and look for boys.”

Maddie
didn’t know what happened next, because her head was too fuzzy from too much wine. She only knew that a few minutes later they dropped their wishes into the bottle, and all piled into Abigail’s grandfather’s Rolls Royce, which Kris steered straight ahead toward West Point, the place to look for boys.

“I wish
we could find a boy for each of us,” Kris said, one hand holding the steering wheel and the other waving the empty wine bottle that now held all their birthday wishes.

“I thought you already had a boyfriend,” Maddie said from the back seat. She was trying not to notice that despite the smile pasted on Betty Ann’s face the girl sat stiffly beside her with terror-filled eyes staring out the window, as though she expected red and blue flashing lights to swoop down on them at any moment.

“Hey, I love Bloomingdale’s,” Kris replied, “but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to shop anywhere else.”

Maddie shrugged, Abigail laughed, and Betty Ann kept her gaze fixed on the yellow and orange leaves that floated to the pavement on sheets of pounding rain.

Kris set down the bottle. “How the hell do you turn the wipers up?” she asked Abigail.

“How should I know? I ride in the backseat.”

“Ah, yes,” Kris replied. “The princess. Give me a cigarette, princess.”

The two in the front seat lit cigarettes while the car continued its steep climb along the winding road.

Maddie pulled herself up behind Kris and looked over her shoulder. “Try that knob on the left,” she suggested. “For the windshield wipers.”

“Wait a minute,” Kris said. “I can’t watch this damn dark road and look at the dashboard, too.” She gripped the steering wheel with both hands. The cigarette dangled from her lips.

Maddie slouched back in the seat. Her head was beginning to ache.

They rounded another curve. The rain pelted harder.

Kris wiped the inside of the windshield with her arm. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

“Maybe you should put out your cigarette,” Betty Ann said. But Abigail and Kris both ignored her.

The windows fogged up again. Abigail leaned forward. “You need to put on the defrost.”

Kris shot her a look that said
How the hell am I supposed to know where that is?
just as the wheels skidded beneath them. “Shit,” Kris cried. “Wet leaves.” She struggled to steer away from the guard rail, away from the side of the road that was black as the night.

Maddie clutched the seat.

Betty Ann rolled down her window and started to cry.

“Turn the fucking wheel!” Abigail screamed.

Kris tried. It was too late. The car veered off the road,
smacked the guard rail, and spun around in a circle. Maddie was flung against the seat, just as she heard the sound of Abigail’s head cracking the windshield and saw Betty Ann’s tiny body propel through the open window and lurch into the rainy night.

September 1997

“I read
her wish,” Abigail said quietly now, taking another sip of Dom Pérignon and keeping her eyes steady on the lace tablecloth.

Maddie was silent. She would have bet they all had just been thinking the same thing, reliving the same nightmare in which they’d all played a part.

“Those goddamn birthday wishes,” Kris said with a sarcasm Maddie was certain the woman did not feel. Kris may be caustic, but she was not cold. Not like Abigail.

Abigail tipped back her head. “ ‘By the time I am seventeen,’ Betty Ann wrote, ‘I will make sure that we are friends forever.’ ”

A tear found its way down Maddie’s cheek.

“Why did she have to die?” Kris asked. “Of all of us, why was she the one to fucking die?”

“She died because I stole the keys to Grandfather’s car,” Abigail said in a voice so quiet, so filled with remorse, that Maddie could hardly believe it was coming from her. “She died because we were stupid teenagers.”

“No,” Kris said slowly. “She died because I was driving.”

“You’re both wrong,” Maddie added. “She died because I brought the wine. If I hadn’t brought the wine, we never would have …” Her words trailed off. The table grew silent once again.

“Would you ladies like anything else?” a voice beside them asked. “We’re getting ready to close.”

Abigail shook her head. “Just our check, please.”

Maddie glanced at her watch. Three o’clock. La Chambre, of course, was only open for lunch, for any lady of the city—for any lady who had not been killed at the age of sixteen in a senseless accident because of her three best friends.

“Next year we’ll be fifty,” Abigail said. “Let’s make it count for something. Let’s make our lives finally become what we’ve always wanted.”

“I like my life, Abigail,” Kris said firmly.

“Do you?” Abigail asked. “Really?”

Maddie watched as Kris lowered her eyes and traced the edges of the photo album that remained on her lap.

“Come out to the estate this weekend,” Abigail implored. “Come out to Windsor-on-Hudson. We’ll make our birthday wishes and spend some time together. Let’s do it,” she pleaded, “for Betty Ann.”

“For her wish,” Maddie said, “that we should be friends forever.”

“For her wish,” Abigail repeated.

Whether Abigail had an agenda or not, even Kris couldn’t argue with that.

Abigail
was so happy she didn’t even mind that Sondra had shown up uninvited for dinner. She sat across from her pregnant stepdaughter, with Edmund flanking the end, creating a buffer between the stepmother and her former
charge who did not know that Abigail no longer cared about trying—and failing—at being a mother, for soon it would not matter. Soon, none of the chaos would matter.

Abigail studied her husband and mused that this euphoria must be similar to the relief one felt after deciding to commit suicide.
Relief
, she told herself. Yes, relief was definitely the right word. For Kris and Maddie would come this weekend, and Kris and Maddie would help make everything right. They would help make her wish come true.

“I’m leaving Craig,” Sondra said quietly.

Edmund nearly spilled his soup.

A hot flash crawled up Abigail’s spine.

“I thought you were going to have a baby,” Edmund said.

“I am, Daddy. Which is why I’ve decided to leave him.” Tears ran down her cheeks and spilled onto the tablecloth. “He needs to get a job. He needs to grow up if he’s going to be a father.”

Abigail did not comment that she had told her so.

Loosening his tie, Edmund unbuttoned the top button of his collar. He glanced at his wife, probably expecting her to erupt in a rage.

But Abigail merely took another spoonful of consommé, knowing that this did not concern her, not in the least. Sondra was an adult; she would do as she pleased.

He turned back to his daughter. “This is a serious decision, Sondra. Are you certain it’s best for the baby?”

Soft tears continued to wet Sondra’s cheeks. Abigail tried not to stiffen, tried not to think about her own, nearly half-a-century of held-back tears.

“I don’t know if it’s right for the baby,” Sondra said. “But if we’re going to have a family, we have to stop sponging off you.”

It was the first time Sondra had even hinted at fiscal responsibility, or her lack thereof. Abigail wondered what Sondra’s underlying motivation really was, then hated herself for wondering.

“Do you still love him?” Edmund asked, his voice predictably gentle, his heart most probably breaking for his only child.

“Of course, Daddy. I just don’t know what else to do.” Edmund pushed away his soup bowl, then looked at his wife. “Abigail? Say something, Please.”

The sorrow that veiled his face was so real and so deep that Abigail did not have the courage to add to it. “What does Craig say about it?” she asked.

“He wants to go back to Paris. He has a chance for a one-man show there. But I don’t want to have my baby in Paris.”

It was interesting that she now referred to the child as
my
baby. “Women have babies in Paris every day,” Abigail said, then caught a glimpse of Edmund’s hurt eyes and wished that she hadn’t. “Are you planning to move back here?” she quickly added.