“Lola,” Joe explained needlessly, getting to his feet. Every eyeball in the place was trained on her, waiting to see what she’d do when she reached Joe. What she did was give him a kiss on the mouth. It was only slightly more than a peck, but still. Then she turned to me with a knockoff of her mother’s toothy greeting except no stains on those perfect ivories. We shook hands, and to my satisfaction she was wearing a ring. My athletic squeeze had to dent that ring finger just a little. The thought struck me that maybe I hung out with teenagers too much. Clearly, I hadn’t matured. But she could have kissed him on the cheek like everybody else.
Lola sat down between Joe and her mother. She made a big deal about leaning all over Joe in order to talk to me. “I’m so happy to meet you finally,” Lola said. She barely moved her lips when she spoke, making it difficult to figure out what she was saying. But it was also sexy in a maddening kind of way. Anyone would have to move in close to get the drift. “Joe has told me all about you.”
I never know how to respond to that remark. First of all, Joe doesn’t know all about me. Nobody knows all about anyone. “That’s odd, he hasn’t told me a bloody thing about you, doll,” I replied. Well, no, but it was annoying to imagine Joe talking to her about me. I noticed that Lola’s champagne glass was empty already. She must have tossed it back in about four seconds.
“I admire you so much,” Lola gushed, if you can gush through lips parted a mere quarter of an inch. “All you people with MS have such amazing attitudes. I know three MS people now, and every single one of you is so upbeat. Maybe it has something to do with the nerve damage in your brain. Do you think?”
My homeroom students tell me that when their parents lecture them on schoolwork, sex, or drugs, the rule is:
nod and smile.
I was making good use of that technique tonight. Meanwhile, Lola was pressing her breasts, which were ample, against Joe’s side as she leaned across him. I looked for telltale signs of silicone but they looked bona fide to me. Her navel did, too. Actually, I couldn’t see
that
far down, but damn close. She handed her glass to Joe. “Joe, would you be an angel and get me a refill? And for Anna, too?” It occurred to me that she was quite drunk, and no wonder. I was ashamed that jealousy had blinded me to the painfulness of her situation.
“I read your cookbook,” I said.
“Which one?” She seemed surprised.
“High-Rise Health Nut.
It was wonderful. Very smart and funny.” I hadn’t wanted to be impressed, but there it was. She was a good writer, clever, literate, and entertaining.
But my praise, in combination with half a gallon of champagne, had apparently flipped a switch. She took my hand in hers and gazed at me with beautiful if slightly unfocused eyes. “Anna. Anna. If you’d been a bitch, I wouldn’t be telling you this. But you’re obviously a special person …” She looked around for Joe who was nowhere in sight. “He’s a bad bet, Anna. I know him better than anybody, so I can say with complete authority that he’s fucked up. Closed off. Intimacy? Forget it.” She glanced around again, hair swinging like a sheet of gold, and moved in even closer. “Last summer, we go on this hiking trip in the Adirondacks, four days back in the brush. Fantastic. Campfires, shared a sleeping bag, watched meteor showers all night. Talk about bonding. Then we get home and I don’t hear from him for a month. Not a call, nothing. Dropped out. When I confronted him, guess what he said …”
She paused as if actually waiting for me to conjecture. I opened my mouth, but she went on before I could tell her that I was sorry but I thought that this conversation was somewhat inappropriate.
“He forgot about me,” she said. “Those were his very words. He’d been really busy with work and he
forgot me.”
She released my hand and tugged at her dress, which had slipped precariously low. “There’s something seriously wrong with a man like that, and believe me, it’s only one example. A year ago I would have kept my mouth shut, but lately I’ve come to believe that we women have to protect one another.”
I grasped at a response but the vivid image of Joe and Lola cocooned in a sleeping bag together under the starry sky crowded everything out of my mind. The only thing I could think of was to reach for her hand again and give it a sympathetic squeeze. Fortunately at that very moment Joe came to the rescue.
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said. It was difficult not to smile—so primitive and male after Lola’s tortured, emotional narrative. I imagined Joe in his bearskin with a club in one hand while Lola and I sat huddled in the cave complaining about how the menfolk only cared about sex and hunting for dinosaurs.
“Go ahead,” Lola said with a brave and tremulous smile. What if, given half a chance, I really would like her?
Joe steered me to the line that snaked along the buffet table. “You two seemed to have a lot to say to one another.”
I was glad not to have to shout. The band had taken it down a notch so that people wouldn’t get
agita
from eating with Jerry Lee Lewis singing. “She was just filling me in,” I said.
“On what?”
There was nothing to be gained by elucidating, so I opted for evasionary tactics. “I have to say I’m impressed,” I said. “No band ever played ‘Anna Banana’ when I walked into the room.”
“Only because nobody ever heard of it. Anyway, it’s just a hokey tradition. Lola’s kind of a favorite around here.”
“I noticed,” I said. “What were you, the king and queen of the ball?”
“Actually, yes, they used to do that.” My face must have revealed that I’d only been kidding. Joe looked sheepish. “They made us wear these corny crowns,” he went on, “and they took photos for the local newspaper. It was so ridiculous we made them stop.”
“When was that?”
“Last year.”
“On the D.L., Joe, I don’t think she’s quite over you.”
“D.L?” he asked.
“The
down low.
Sorry, teenspeak. Confidentially. Lola sweats you, big-time.”
“Don’t be silly,” Joe said, spearing a hunk of roast beef. There wasn’t a vegetable in sight unless you counted the peppers stuffed with hamburger. “We’re friends now, that’s all.”
As I scanned the table looking for something appetizing, like maybe a slice of smoked salmon or a shrimp, it all turned sparkly, kind of the way water looks in the moonlight. It was beautiful but peculiar for sure. A pot of Hungarian goulash, even when it’s
really
good, doesn’t customarily glitter like diamonds. I looked up at the lights to see what accounted for the extraordinary display dazzling before me, but just as suddenly, all returned to normal—macaroni salad and baked ham. By then I should have gotten the message that all was not well inside my brain, but I was taking such a soothing warm bath in a tubful of denial.
“Okay, Anna?” Joe asked. He’d begun to sense when I was checking myself out for trouble.
“Sure,” I said. “I think I could use the ladies’ room. Can you manage two plates?”
“It’s past the entrance on the right,” he said. “You need any help?” He was giving me that penetrating look that Ma had.
“I’m fine.” But I guess I wasn’t too fine because I headed left instead of right, and rather than finding the ladies’ room, I wound up outside a small game room with card tables. I stood in the doorway for a moment trying to get my bearings when I heard a woman’s sobs coming from inside. I should have turned away immediately, I suppose, but the sound was so heart-wrenching it brought out the Samaritan in me. Perhaps there was something I could do. Then I heard the words through the sobs, in Celeste’s unmistakably deep voice, “If she really loved him, she’d leave him alone. What kind of future does she think he’ll have with
her?”
I stood rooted on my dead legs as she wept on. “You know how I’ve always felt about physical deformity, Barbara,” she sobbed. “I know it’s not kind of me, but my God, she’s just another of his strays.” A break to blow the nose, and then, “Remember how he was always bringing home wounded animals when he was little? I knew I should have sent him to a therapist.”
That was enough. I forgot that I had to pee and wandered in a kind of trance back to the ballroom. Joe and Lola were dancing. What a couple. They looked perfect together, and I wasn’t the only person who’d noticed. A few of the women were downright misty-eyed. When Joe and Lola left the dance floor, they seemed to be wearing halos around their heads. I squinted, wondering if somebody had revived the crown ritual. Was God trying to tell me something? Like how we’d all be better off if I slipped into the night? A lady with tight curls touched my arm and told me what a lucky girl I was to have captured the heart of North Lockville’s favorite son. She actually said
captured the heart.
I hope I smiled at her.
By the time I groped my way back to the table, Joe had grown another head. It turned out to be the best friend, Steve, embracing Joe from behind. Steve’s head studied me with its chin resting on Joe’s shoulder. I noted idly that he was handsome in a careless, androgynous way, with blue eyes that seemed to penetrate to your underwear. Joe had told me that Steve was a computer genius, a musician, and the best fisherman on the Little Moose River. He was often unreliable but was much forgiven on account of his self-reproach and genuine good nature. I think ordinarily I might have been unnerved by the scrutiny of those eyes, but I just stared back in a daze.
“Get out of my way,” Steve said to Joe, shoving him unceremoniously out of his seat. “I have to talk to this woman.”
“Go easy on her,” Joe said. “Where the hell’s the chocolate? What kind of a party is this anyway?” He went off to forage the dessert table. Beside me, Lola was pretending to listen to an aging admirer, but I could feel her half leaning into my lap as she tried to overhear what was going on between me and Steve.
“He’s hooked, you know that,” Steve said. “First time for old Joe. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“I think I shouldn’t have come up here,” I said. Whatever zone I was in did not allow for temporizing.
“He counted on persuading you not to cut him loose,” Steve said.
“That wasn’t the deal.” I knew I should be telling him to butt out, but there was no resisting Steve’s eyes. The government could use this guy for getting secrets out of terrorists. “But I guess if I’d truly believed it was over, I wouldn’t have put us through this.” Whatever
this
was. “I’m so confused,” I finished lamely.
“Let’s start with what
you
want, lovely Anna.”
“If things were different, I’d want Joe. I
do
want Joe, but I can’t be happy with him.” Then I closed my mouth. Was I obligated to share my deepest conflicts with this person? It was beginning to feel as if everybody in upstate New York had lined up to get a shot at me. But Steve took my hand and kissed it. The gesture was compassionate, not flirtatious, and disarmed me completely. Then Joe arrived with a plateful of brownies and elbowed Steve out of the way. The masculine physicality of their interaction seemed like a poignant parody of the lunchroom at Cameron. I squinted at them, but they had blurred. I blinked hard, trying to clear the windshield, but it didn’t help.
Somehow we all got through until midnight. Steve went off to find his girlfriend. Celeste and Barbara returned to the table. Lola flashed her cleavage at Joe and complicitous looks at me, but my resentment had melted away. She almost seemed like someone I could be friends with under different circumstances. Then suddenly it was only ten seconds to a new year. The bandleader started counting down as guests cleared the dance floor. “Where’s everybody going?” I asked Joe.
“Tradition,” he answered.
“Four-three-two-one-midnight! Happy New Year!” To the strains of “Auld Lang Syne,” Joe kissed me, then Lola kissed both me and Joe on the lips, Celeste and Barbara hugged tearily. Then the bandleader shouted, “First dance of the new year! First dance!” Everyone quieted more or less, waiting, as he announced with a drumroll, “Our own Joe Malone and his lovely friend from New York City, Annette Bolles!” Instead of the correct “bowls” pronunciation, he said “bolls” as in “dolls.”
I averted my eyes from our table as Joe led me to the dance floor amid shouts and rowdy applause. I didn’t want to see Celeste’s expression, or Lola’s either.
“Sorry,” he murmured in my ear. “It never occurred to me they’d do this again.”
The bandleader was having a field day with “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” There was nothing to do but go with it. I melted into Joe, leaned my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes.
The trouble was, when I opened them again, it was still dark.
“Joe,” I said.
“Mm,” he murmured against my hair.
“How literal is it when they say that love is blind?”
He heard it in my voice. He stopped dancing and held me away so he could look into my face, at least I guess that’s what he was doing. Everything was pitch-black, as if I had suddenly plunged to the center of the earth where no sunlight could ever penetrate.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he said.
“I can’t see. Everything’s gone black.”
He hugged me to his side and walked me off the dance floor. I remember his hip moving against mine and the sound of the music faltering and dying away. Then it was the confusion of being handled and half carried and stuffed into a car. I heard Steve’s voice, low and calm, asking Joe if we needed an ambulance.
“I want to go home,” I kept saying. “Please, can you take me home?” I’ve turned into one of Joe’s strays now, I thought. If I was ever anything else.
Joe had to pack my things and arrange for a plane. On account of the holiday, AirMalone was short staffed, and there would be a scramble to find equipment. “I won’t be long,” Joe said, settling me on the couch in the Malone house. “My mother will stay with you.”
“Please, where’s Gus?” I said.
After a while I felt a callused hand take mine. “What’s going on?” he asked. I tried to picture him in that austere room, perched in his coveralls on one of Celeste’s ivory brocade chairs. He must have dragged it next to the couch. She wouldn’t like the tracks in the carpet.