Five Women (2 page)

“I just had an audition for an off-Broadway play,” Eve said brightly. “I was wonderful. The director liked me. He said he'd let me know in a few days if I have a callback. I have a feeling this is going to be my year. I was really marvelous—I felt the energy. Remember I keep telling you, when I feel the energy I'm unstoppable! I could see he felt my energy, too.”

“That's good,” Felicity said.

Eve was only moderately successful, but she never gave up the feeling that she was destined to become a star when she met the right people. Twenty years ago she had landed a role in a daytime soap opera that she kept for five years. During that period she was able to put away enough money to have the luxury of pursuing her career full time. On the show, Eve got the reputation of being difficult, and she never worked in a soap again, but she thought soaps were beneath her anyway and wanted to be on Broadway or in a movie, preferably a Woody Allen movie.

“Even if I get this play, I'd still rather do Broadway,” Eve said. “I need to expand. Maybe there will be contacts for me at Yellowbird tonight. You never know.”

“Well, then, I'll see you there, I guess.”

“Are Gara and Kathryn coming?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I should call some men to join us. What do you think?”

“I just want to be with my friends. I'm tired.”

“Why are you tired?” Eve snapped. “It's a state of mind.”

Oh, Eve . . .

Kathryn didn't mind her, because she liked everybody, but Felicity and Gara often asked each other why they put up with Eve. They admitted that sometimes she was fun to be with, and her unremitting narcissism and ego made them view her as a creature from another planet, which they found amusing. Gara, who as a therapist knew about these things, said that it was an interesting phenomenon of female bonding that some women tended to put up with and befriend another woman whom they really didn't much like. Felicity wondered if it was the scapegoat factor. There was something childish and nastily satisfying to have someone to complain about.

Or maybe she herself, dissatisfied with her life, was just passive and lonely. Eve got on her nerves, but she wished she had some of Eve's eternal optimism and confidence. “So I'll see you there,” Felicity said.

“Get the table I like. You know the one.”

“Gara made the reservation.”

“She doesn't care where we sit. I need to see and be seen.”

“Okay.”

“If I don't like the table they give us, I'll make them change it,” Eve said.

“I'm sure you will,” Felicity sighed. She hated it when Eve had their table changed. Eve always wanted to sit near the smoking section because she thought her important contacts would be sitting there, and then she complained when people smoked. She also hated how Eve insisted on dividing the bill up to the penny, and always managed to come out ahead. This time she was going to get there before Eve did and tell the waiter from now on Eve had to be given her own check.

She hung up. “Was that Eve?” Russell said.

“Yeah.”

“I could tell from the tone of your voice. I thought you couldn't stand her.”

“She's all right,” Felicity said. Russell even knew whom she was talking to. A closeness she would have happily welcomed from someone else made her feel frightened and trapped when it came from her husband. There were many reasons for that. But she wasn't going to think about them now. Right now she just wanted to get out of the house.

She hit the street running, hailed a cab, settled into it, gave the address of Yellowbird, and smiled.

Chapter Two

A
MONG THE NOISY SINGLES HANGOUTS
, the bars, the bagel shops, the nice little neighborhood Italian and French restaurants, the Korean all-night grocery stores, the Chinese takeout places, the pizza parlors, the coffee bars, the big supermarkets, the high rise apartment buildings, and the beat-up tenements that had been reconverted into too expensive little apartments was Yellowbird: a place like none of the others in the area. You could miss it if you walked past it too quickly. The sign was hard to read, and the windows were purposely kept inscrutable. Inside was a carefully created other world, a throwback to the past.

Yellowbird was a monument to Janis Joplin. Dark and warm, the brick walls were completely unadorned except for a huge framed black and white photograph of Janis Joplin singing—passionate, drugged-out, drunk, wild-looking, unexpectedly young, and with that great blues voice that was stilled much too early. The albums of the legendary women blues singers played, sometimes scratchily, on the sound system. From time to time, at the whim of the owner, there was someone contemporary, or even new. Interesting people came in here; you could make a friend, find love of sorts, or just not be alone. The one thing you would never have to be at Yellowbird was alone, unless you chose to be.

Billie Redmond owned this place. Forty-eight, tall, rangy, and dramatic-looking, she prowled her domain. For a few years, in the early seventies, she was a singer in the Janis Joplin style, and had a couple of hits. So for a few incandescent years she had been a rock star. You found this out quite quickly when you came here. Sometimes she had a look about her as if she were still on stage, or was remembering it—a way she moved, or tossed her head, a glance. When Billie was around you always knew who was in control, and she was always there.

Gara had asked Billie once why the place was called Yellowbird—was it a song she had written, was it the town in Texas she came from?

“No,” Billie said, sounding bored. People had asked her that same question a lot over the years. “I just like it. It sounds hopeful, you know?”

She had a strange, low, hoarse voice and a scar on her neck. Sometimes she covered the scar with a turtleneck or a scarf, and sometimes not. It seemed to Gara to be a kind of stigmata, a literal representation of the scars all of the others carried inside, but no one ever dared ask her about it. They were sure that in her brief glory days as a singer she hadn't had the voice they heard now, it would have been impossible, but of course no one would ever ask her about that either. Gara found her fascinating.

“I'm from Plano, Texas,” Billie said. “Ever heard of it? Probably not. You're a New Yorker.” She still had her Texas twang. “You didn't miss anything,” she said with a little smile. “I left real young.”

Gara knew that Billie didn't have a husband or any kind of permanent partner, but it was clear, if you watched carefully, that Billie was a lusty, independent woman who had an occasional lover when she wanted one. She would sit at the bar, watching over the reservation book, talking to men who were there alone, sometimes buying them a drink. Gara could see the electricity growing in their eyes, the subtle change in body language.

She thought of Billie's barstool as the catbird seat. They were all her guests, albeit paying guests, and there was a certain currying of favor. When Billie was bored with the bar she would wander around the room, sometimes alighting at a table or a booth, particularly later at night when she'd had a few drinks and was feeling mellow and in a mood to reminisce about interesting people she had known in the late sixties and early seventies.

Billie had a nine-year-old son, Little Billie. You could tell he was hers—they had the same eyes—but anything more about his origin was another of her mysteries. He was a very well-behaved child, with golden curls, the face of an angel, and the matter-of-fact sophistication of a child who has always lived among adults. Billie had told Gara once that she had been taking Little Billie to Yellowbird since he was born. Everybody adored him.

He was there tonight, as always, doing his homework at a back booth, with his little computer and his Walkman and his plastic violence doll. There was a cot in his mother's office in case he got sleepy. Since Billie's formal education had been minimal due to lack of interest, Little Billie was being helped with his homework by the two transvestites Gara called the Larchmont Ladies. They dressed like middle-aged suburban matrons, wearing cheap copies of Chanel suits, sensible pumps, and wigs set in the long-outdated petal look. They had become a kind of fixture here, preferring Yellowbird to the downtown clubs.

After the initial shock of their appearance, or the discovery that they were not what they pretended to be, the Larchmont Ladies turned out to be quiet and pleasant. One of them was an accountant, and he helped Little Billie with his math. The other one was reputed to be a cop. They were not lovers, only friends, or sisters if you will, although they both claimed to be straight. No one had ever seen either of them with a woman. They didn't mind being baby sitters. They called themselves Gladys and Lucy, but Little Billie called them Ralph and Tom.

Gara had been the first to arrive tonight, so she nabbed the seat with the best view of the rest of the room and ordered a bottle of white wine. Janis was singing on the sound system and she hummed along.
“Take another little piece of my heart now, bay-bay . . .”
She liked the old songs more than the new ones; the lyrics made more sense in relation to her life. Or maybe they really had been better.

“Hey,” Billie said by way of greeting.

“Hi.”

“Who's coming tonight? Kathryn? Felicity?”

“Yes,” Gara said.

“Eve?”

“I don't know.”

“She'd better not ask to have her table changed,” Billie said ominously, and walked away. Gara laughed.

The waiter arrived with the wine, menus, ice water, and biscuits. The food here was sort of Southern and not very good, and Billie hardly ever changed the menu, so there was something about it that Gara found reassuring. It was like the food of her childhood. Growing up in New York they'd had a black, Southern housekeeper who didn't cook well, but Gara's mother hadn't cooked at all. Gara had never been able to decide if this was her mother's one gesture toward being emancipated from the role of housewife, or if it was her way of being privileged. Gara had grown up to be an indifferent cook, but her ex-husband hadn't minded; he liked the two of them to eat out nearly all the time anyway, as if they were on a permanent date.

When she thought how romantic Carl had been when he wanted to be, she felt sad. She had finally gotten to the point where there were whole days when she forgot he existed, but she knew it was an act of will. She had been married to him for twenty-two years, most of her adult life. She had known him when they each had both parents. She had helped bring up his two sons from his previous marriage, on the weekends and vacation weeks that he had custody, a time that seemed so long ago. She could finish his sentences, and often he looked at her hopefully to do so. How close their bond had been—two minds with the same thought, the same references, the same memories. Perhaps that had been part of the problem. She had become too familiar. Strangers were more enticing. And at the end he had turned into a stranger, so that she was the one left yearning and enticed.

“There you are,” Kathryn said cheerfully, emerging from the dimness with a glass in her hand. “I was at the bar. I didn't see you come in.” Her skin was luminous, her hair glowed a soft, shiny copper, and she was smiling a white-toothed, perfect smile. Her outfit had probably cost four thousand dollars.

“Don't you look glamorous,” Gara said. “That suit! That handbag!”

“Well, thank you,” Kathryn said. She sat down. “God bless Mr. Henry.”

“Who?” Gara asked. She and Kathryn had a running joke about Kathryn's husbands: Gara pretended never to be able to remember their names or keep them straight. Not that three were so many these days.

“My last husband, the multi-millionaire. I finally learned how to do it right.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

“I only slept with three men in my life,” Kathryn said matter-of-factly. “And I married them all. I was a nice Catholic girl.”

And a strong one, Gara thought. Of them all, she thought Kathryn had probably had the worst trauma to deal with. Or perhaps it had only been the most dramatic. Whenever she saw Kathryn, Gara saw the scene again; an event she had not been part of, which she could only imagine. So this was Kathryn's story:

A cold, dark winter night in Boston. The woman is hiding in the backseat of the car, lying on the floor under the heavy raincoat, the man and the other woman in the front, the man driving. The woman in the back is trying not to tremble, hardly breathing. The man turns around. The woman in the back holds up the gun and blows his head off.

She had never understood how Kathryn had managed to survive this event of her past and seem so well-adjusted. It was something she wondered about often. Gara asked her sometimes, but Kathryn just shrugged with her devil-may-care attitude and said she didn't know.

The waiter poured them glasses of wine. “Well, cheers,” Kathryn said.

“Cheers. To health.”

“Oh, look who's here.”

Gara saw Felicity heading for their table, beaming with delight at the prospect of an evening out with her friends.

“How pretty she is,” Kathryn said. “All the guys are looking at her.” She chuckled in a motherly way, and Gara remembered that Kathryn's oldest son was only a year or two younger than Felicity.

“I know. She's gorgeous.”

“What are you saying?” Felicity asked.

“That you're fat and ugly,” Kathryn said. “Sit down and have a drink, we've started already.”

“I'm fat and ugly?” Felicity said in horror.

“I'm just joking, you twit. You know you're beautiful. I don't want to listen to any false modesty.”

Felicity kissed them both hello and sat next to Gara. “A drink, yes! I do need a glass of wine.” She smiled at the waiter when he poured it. “Eve Bader gets her own check,” she said. He nodded.

“I was going to pay for everybody,” Kathryn said.

“No, you can't,” Gara said.

“Okay.”

“It's so great to be away from my husband,” Felicity said.

“Well, you're taken care of, but by spring Gara and I are both going to have boyfriends,” Kathryn said. “I'm going to find them for us. You'll see.”

“For you, maybe,” Gara said.

“No, for both of us. There were some nice guys at the bar. I was talking to two of them. They're going to come over to the table later. I need a next husband.”

“You wouldn't marry
again . . . ?
”

“I'd settle for an escort at the moment,” Kathryn said. “A man to go to things with.”

Gara winced. “That makes me feel so old. An escort.”

“You're confusing it with a walker. I mean a nice, heterosexual guy who wants to have fun.”

“That's a date.”

“Nothing wrong with a date.”

“I've given up,” Gara said. “It's too late. I've forgotten how to have sex.”

“Nobody forgets.”

“I'm afraid to tell you.” She felt like a freak. Why not admit the truth? She trusted her friends. “I haven't had sex in five years,” Gara said. When the words came out and she had to listen to them, she wanted to cry.

“Five years?” Felicity gasped. “You're kidding! Five
years?
”

Kathryn did not gasp. She had not had sex in longer than that; but, of course,
she
didn't care.

Gara shrugged. The time had gone by fast and she had been occupied with much more serious things. Every day she remembered how lucky she was to be alive.

“You haven't been in mourning all this time for that ex-husband of yours?” Kathryn asked sternly.

“No,” Gara said, truthfully. “But I was busy. Breast cancer is very time-consuming.”

“But you're well now,” Felicity said.

“And it's time to find you a boyfriend,” Kathryn said. “Someone attractive and intelligent, with a sense of humor, with a nice summer house . . .”

“I
have
a nice summer house.” Her little place on the beach in Amagansett had been part of her divorce settlement. She had bought Carl out.

“You're not like me, you don't need anything from a man,” Felicity said. “You have a great deal to offer in a relationship. Not all men want twenty-three-year-olds.”

“You should take an ad in the personals,” Kathryn said.

“Fifty-five-year-old woman with one tit wants to get fucked,” Gara said dryly.

She watched as they screamed with laughter. Felicity was doubled over, tears coming out of her eyes. Gara knew their laughter was partly in shock at her forthrightness, and partly in admiration for her spirit. She had chosen to keep her cancer an almost complete secret, even from her patients, and she knew the few friends she had told wouldn't tell. They didn't understand her secrecy—after all, she had survived—but they honored it. She approached her situation with unexpected humor, and her friends looked upon this with awe.

But behind the laughter was her secret realization that, without even knowing how it had happened, she had suddenly turned around to discover that she had become one of those women who'd already had her life. As a young girl she'd seen them: the widows, the mutilated, the card players. They seemed to be at the end of their lives as women, a destiny too far away to imagine. Now, except for her career, this dwindling away into invisibility did not seem so far away anymore. But it was still incredibly foreign and strange, and it felt much too soon.

“What are you laughing about?” Eve demanded, sailing up to their table like the actress she was and glancing around to see if there was anybody in the restaurant she wanted to sit closer to. Her red hair was the color of fire, and she was wearing feather earrings and had a feather pinned in her hair, and her lipstick was almost black.