Authors: Beth Gutcheon
Love those earrings, by the way.”
“Aren’t they cute? I found them on Melrose.”
“You keep saying you’ll take me; I don’t know any of the good places down there anymore.”
“Just tell me when,” said Eloise. They were crunching away on their salads, dressing on the side.
“Who is that over there, is that Jean Simmons?”
230
Five Fortunes / 231
Eloise put on her glasses and looked across at the women at the window table overlooking Rodeo Drive.
“I think it is. She looks great, doesn’t she?”
“Great. So what’s going on?” Carol tore a piece of bread off the half loaf in the basket on the table, and gnawed on it.
“Butter?”
“No.”
“My stepmother wants me to come up for the weekend. Bring Trisha, never mind that she’s got a horse show. To celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“The adoption of the Chinese houseperson who looked after my father.”
“The
what
?” Carol was bug-eyed.
“Didn’t I tell you? It’s official this week. I am about to have a new sister. And brother-in-law, and nephew. I think Rae may be a sand-wich short of a picnic, I really do. The only thing I like about this whole deal is it’s making my brother shit green.”
“Wait a minute. What’s your stepmother’s name? Rae?”
“Yes?”
“Was your maiden name Strouse? Rae Strouse,
she’s
your father’s gold-digging fan dancer?”
Eloise was staring at her. This was not the round of sarcastic groaning she’d looked forward to.
“This is too much, this is
so
funny! Rae Strouse is one of my fat-farm buddies! She called me this morning, as a matter of fact. I think she’s the greatest.”
It was Eloise’s turn to gape. Carol Haines was a high-powered lawyer and Eloise was a divorced Beverly Hills housewife, a category of person with which that township was unusually well supplied.
Eloise was always aware that in the subtle algebra of friendship, what Eloise brought to the table did not equal what Carol did.
Therefore Carol said to Eloise whatever it occurred to her to say, because in the end, if something derailed the friendship, that would mean that many more lunch hours in which Carol would be free to eat tuna fish at her desk and keep
232 / Beth Gutcheon
working, while Eloise was careful to weigh first what Carol would enjoy or approve of, because if something derailed the friendship that would mean that many more days in the year when she had nothing at all on her schedule except waiting on Trisha and talking to the pool man.
Rae was a buddy of Carol Haines all of a sudden? You could almost hear the gears stripping in her conversational machinery as Eloise adjusted to this fact.
“She is, she’s one of my fat-farm buddies,” said Carol, who was perfectly capable of performing two sides of a conversation herself, and thus never minded when a companion was struck dumb. “I thought she was the greatest. She did this cartwheel in yoga class?
She was just neat fun, she was like our den mom.”
“She
is
quite a piece of work,” said Eloise weakly. She was suddenly hit with a ghastly thought: did Rae say such slighting and nasty things about her stepchildren as they had been saying about her for twenty-two years? And if so, would Carol remember? “What did you call her about?”
“She called me. We’re forming a political action committee.”
There was another tiny gap in the conversation. “Do you see our waiter? I’d love one more glass of wine,” said Eloise, shifting so suddenly in her chair that she almost fell off it. A political action committee? What the hell was that? Since when was Rae into politics?
“A friend of ours from The Cloisters, Laura Lopez? She’s going to run for the Senate, and we’re all going to help her.”
Carol waited a moment for Eloise to press for details, but Eloise had locked eyes with a distant busboy and was waggling a perfect crimson fingernail in her empty wineglass while assuming a pleading expression. Carol carried on, content if unbidden.
“I think it will be great fun. It’s like EMILY’s List, you know?
Don’t you write them checks every time you turn around?”
“Absolutely,” said Eloise, diving into her fresh glass of chardon-nay. “How do you plan to raise the money?” What she really wanted to know was, who was Emily, and why didn’t Carol introduce her interesting friends to Eloise, but she was too savvy to ask a question like that directly.
Five Fortunes / 233
“What we’ll do right away is give parties to raise money. Rae says her house will work for that, so we’ll do one in San Francisco first.
Her son, Walter…well, you must know Walter, he’s your…”
“Yes,” said Eloise. “And it’s a lovely house.”
“Knows tons of political people. So he draws a couple of heavy hitters, and Rae has beautiful food and flowers, and we’ll have a topic for the evening. Rae thinks Walter can get the First Lady to come, and you have fifty people and charge them a thousand dollars each, and after dinner there’s a talk about health care. Or something.”
Eloise said, with absolute sincerity, “That
does
sound like fun.” In fact, for the first time in years, it sounded like something amusing to do for which she herself possessed a few of the necessary qualific-ations. Unlike the things she’d been trying lately. Like taking up ballet. Or becoming a movie producer.
Then she caught another thought on the chin. Walter knows the
First Lady
?
“Then we’ll do one here. This is a
great
town for rich Democratic women. Rich Democrats, period…”
A problem occurred to Eloise. “Does it have to be only for Democrats?” She and her brother had voted Republican for years, though they had never told their father that.
“Not at all. There’s plenty of common ground. We’ll get Dianne and Barbara, and maybe Barbra or Jane will come…” Hollywood always called famous people by their first names. Even if you’d never met them and never hoped to. It was like living in Detroit and expecting the guy on the next stool to know what you meant by Chrysler.
“What we talked about this morning is where to give it. My house in Hancock Park would have been
perfect
, but…” Carol had lost it in the divorce wars. Not that she had minded especially.
Eloise said, “Well,
my
house…”
Carol put down her fork. She looked at Eloise with wide eyes.
“
Your
house! Your house is
perfect
! Remember that gorgeous Christmas party you and David gave…?”
Did she remember? She had insisted on buying the house
because
it would be so great for parties. And she’d given some doozies before 234 / Beth Gutcheon
David stopped coming home at night. Wouldn’t David come unglued if the First Lady came to
her
house?
“Are you serious now?” Carol asked, putting her hand on Eloise’s arm. She was excited.
“Completely. I’d love to help.”
“Oh god, this is going to be lots of fun. I can’t wait to tell Rae! This is
so cool
! Do you mind?” And she pulled out her electronic Filofax, and flipped open her cellular phone.
“Hello, Rae? Sweetie, it’s Carol again. You won’t believe who I’m having lunch with!”
J
ill’s homeless person seemed to have disappeared during the ten days she was gone. She came out of their building in the mornings, onto a street glistening with snow, and her nerves tightened as she turned the corner onto Park Avenue South heading for the subway. But morning after morning, there was nobody there.
“It was probably just a coincidence that he ever found you, sweetie,” Amy said. “You didn’t encourage him, did you? People don’t keep on with that sort of thing if they don’t get anything out of it. You handled it right, and he’s gone.”
“I hope so, but I still think maybe I should move.” Jill thought about those flat brown eyes, the way they stared at her. She could not work out if MacDuff had been trying to frighten her, or wanting to hurt her, or wanting something else she couldn’t imagine. His face was a mask, like the head of a stone god. The only part that seemed to be living tissue was the strange yellowish whites of his eyes.
He always had the book in his pocket. He didn’t have the bowling bag anymore; now he carried a blue nylon sports bag with a Pepsi logo on it. All December, in spite of the fact that the weather had turned bitter, he had worn that dull gray sweater. It couldn’t have been much help against the wind.
“I did check with the housing office about a dorm room,” Jill said to her mother.
Amy put down her grapefruit spoon. Jill had been talking about 235
236 / Beth Gutcheon
moving up to the Barnard campus, but Amy didn’t think she’d ever do it.
“Do they have anything?”
“They think so. Some people always move off campus at midyear.
They said to check back at the end of the week.”
“Well, dearie…” Amy was feeling something she hadn’t expected.
She was thinking about the breakfast table, alone with Noah. She was thinking of mid-afternoon, with no Jill coming through the door with news of the classroom, or the subways, or the shops on Prince Street, or what was showing at the Angelika. “What are the rooms like?”
“Probably horrible.” Jill looked at her watch and got up. “Have a good day, Mum. Where will you be?”
“I don’t know. Shopping this morning. Probably here, this afternoon. I feel like cooking something.”
“Great. Keep warm.”
Amy went shopping. She went to Saks and went up and down the escalators. She looked at all the spring clothes, and ordered a couple of dresses for those benefit things you end up at every season even though you swear you’re going to stay home in your bathrobe and watch a movie.
For lunch she bought a big soft pretzel on the street and ate it slowly as she walked home, enjoying the salty warmth in her hand and in her mouth, while the still air was so bright and sharply cold.
Noah was scornful of people who ate on the street, as if it were akin to giving birth in a hedgerow. Eating was an intimate function and should be done in private. Noah ate only sitting down, and only at mealtimes.
She did cook when she got home that afternoon. Something was making her feel mournful, so she took the opportunity to reproduce her grandmother’s recipe for a very sticky tray of cinnamon buns.
The whole house smelled like the house in Coeur d’Alene when Jill came home.
Five Fortunes / 237
Friday the Barnard housing office said they had a single room available in Reid Hall, and Sunday Jill moved out. She had her sound system in a cardboard box and her clothes in an old steamer trunk that she would use as a coffee table. Her computer was packed in a box full of Styrofoam. With the printer it took up most of the backseat of the taxi, and Jill sat in front with the driver. Amy offered to come with her and help her move in, but Jill said she would be fine. She’d call her as soon as she had a phone hooked up. Amy stood on the sidewalk and waved as the car pulled away. She had no idea she would feel so bereft; she had always imagined that Jill’s being well enough to leave home would be cause for celebration. All these long five years, when she’d felt so hemmed in by Jill’s fragility, she hadn’t guessed how much she would miss the confinement if it were suddenly whisked off like a bell jar.
“I don’t know what to do with myself,” she said to Dagmar on the telephone. Dagmar was home in bed with the flu. “I’m sitting around the house trying to figure out how long it will be till we have grandchildren.”
On the other end, she heard Dagmar blowing her nose.
“At least you have a business.”
“I know, but…”
“Don’t tell me, I know all about it. You have three choices. Join a board, take a lover, or learn a foreign language.”
“Another one? I’m still working on French.”
“Or take up the piano.”
“How about pottery? They have classes at the Art Students League.”
“If you’re going to do arts and crafts at least do something useful, like goldsmithing. I don’t want to start getting clay ashtrays from you for Christmas. Why don’t you get a dog?”
“A dog! You know, that’s a great idea? Did you ever have a dog?”
“We always had mutts. Knowing Noah, you better get something really chic, like a bichon frise.”
238 / Beth Gutcheon
“I wonder if Barnes and Noble is still open, I can go get some dog books.”
She did get the dog books, but not the dog. Noah was completely opposed. “They either shed, or yap, or soil the carpets.”
“Not if they’re well trained…”
“And what about when we travel?”
“There are kennels. Or pet sitters. Besides, when do we travel?”
“We just went to Mexico. And then the guests arrive and the dog gallops up and smells their crotches…no. Really, Amy. I am fifty-nine years old and my last child just left home. Let’s just have some time by ourselves, shall we.”
It was a long week for Amy. It took Jill until Wednesday to call to say she had a phone and an answering machine. Amy worried night and day until she heard from her. When she finally did call, it made Amy feel silly. Jill sounded fine. She had made new friends on the hall. She had found some girls who had even more CDs than she did, and they were making mixes for each other, whatever that meant. She had met a boy who loved computers. She was joining a feminist dance troupe.
“What is a feminist dance troupe?”
“It’s women dancers who refuse to be prevented by conventional stereotypes of feminine beauty from using their bodies to express themselves.”
Amy tried to deconstruct this sentence by herself, but gave up.
“I’m still not quite…”
“We’re all fat,” said Jill. And then she roared with laughter. Amy laughed too, although it occurred to her that compared to her weight at maximum blimpage, Jill was a good deal less fat than she had been.
“And do you give performances?”
“Yes, I think so, though I don’t know that anyone comes to them.
Some of us refuse to be constrained by conventional ideas of tech-nique as well as other stereotypes. We have a lot of fun though.”