Second Chances (10 page)

“I will be daring if you also,” Fernando sparklingly offers, eyes alight, small white teeth just visible in his smile.

During those second drinks, though, Edward and Fernando again find themselves discussing women. This is possibly in part because of the somewhat festive Friday-night atmosphere in that restaurant, at that hour. Lots of women, all around. He and Fernando are, as far
as Edward can see, the only couple of men alone in the place. There seem to be very dressed up women everywhere, in their furs and small hats and pearls. But no other men without women. (Maybe just as well?)

“In fact, I had a rather difficult time of it this afternoon with a woman friend,” Edward hears himself saying. “Tears, all that.”

Fernando makes a sound that is probably sympathetic, but is there also a quick cold flash of disbelief across that extremely
bien élevé
(however you say that in Spanish) face?

Quite suddenly, then, for whatever reason or combination of reasons, including Fernando’s possible reaction, his own hopes and his second drink, Edward decides that what he is saying is quite as ridiculous as it is false. And he decides that whatever is to happen with this boy they must not,
must not
begin or even waste preliminary time with total lies. “The tears were over a fight she’d had with her lover, who drinks too much,” Edward tells Fernando, with a slight, wry smile. “Actually she’s someone I’m extremely fond of.” Speaking only the truth, he plunges ahead. “In fact, I do find that women can be quite wonderful friends. I wonder if you also feel that.”

“Oh, I too! I like them so much. For friendship.” Fervent Fernando, who then laughs as he admits, “And I do admire their clothes.”

They continue their laughing together for some moments, although Edward feels himself closer to tears of sheer joy: is it possible, at last? But the waiter just then interrupts—though deferentially, most discreetly, asking what they might care to eat.

Which they manage to order.

Still elated (dangerously so? Is he taking too much for granted?), over the smoked salmon Edward begins to talk about his work: his early writing, his current teaching job. And he soon realizes that he is talking in a way that he has not talked before, not even to Dudley, whom he often considers his favorite friend. “In many ways I like teaching very much,” he tells Fernando. “Sometimes I think almost too much, it’s too easily ego-inflating, do you know what I mean? But the worst is that it takes the same sort of energy that writing does. I wonder if I should teach, really, or if I should get into some entirely other, entirely non-literary job. And write.” Edward has never said any of this before; he has barely allowed himself to think it.

Fernando’s eyes, so marvelously flashingly changeable, now are
solemn, serious and intent as he says, “I think it is what you must do. To write again. To do anything that is necessary for that.”

“Oh, I do so enjoy talking to you,” bursts from Edward.

“I too, I too enjoy. So much.” Soft, luminous eyes.

“Fernando—”

“My friends, my certain friends call me Freddy. I should so much like that you—”

“If it weren’t for being so worried about my darling Sara, I think I might be at last quite terribly happy,” says Celeste to Polly Blake. In the absence of Dudley, now married to Sam and moved out to California, Polly has become Celeste’s closest friend. (However, Polly too is considering a move to California.) “Why must there always be one fatal flaw, though? One ugly fly in one’s nicest ointment?”

“God’s way, I suppose,” contributes Polly.

This conversation takes place in Celeste’s large bedroom, in her very pleasant new East Sixties apartment, during the short and very hurried week in April that precedes her marriage to Charles Timberlake. Celeste is indeed almost dizzily happy, “in love.” “So ridiculous, in fact quite ludicrous at my advanced age to be so madly in love,” she has more than once said to Polly, who quite probably agrees.

She is happy except for the fact that Sara, now twenty years old, is apparently lost. Somewhere in Mexico, where she was traveling with an unspecified, never described or, God forbid, not named group of friends, Berkeley classmates.

In addition to so much conversation, Celeste and Polly are also engaged in sorting out Celeste’s clothes, from her very full but perfectly organized closet—or, rather, that is Celeste’s occupation: Polly would never help or give advice in that area. “You know that basically I don’t give a shit what anyone wears, especially me,” she has said, the
shit
earning a distressed “Must you?” from Celeste, to which Polly has answered, “Yes, I must.”

Meticulous Celeste is going through the cavernous sections of that closet: blouses, suits and coats, dresses, night things, furs. Choosing what to keep for her new life with Charles Timberlake. What to give away. And then the giveaways themselves must be sorted out: some for friends, some for some reliable secondhand store. St. Vincent de Paul.

They are to travel a great, great deal, she and Charles. And as Charles keeps insisting, with an indulgent smile in Celeste’s direction, they must travel light. Actually she knows very well that he loves all her luxuriousness, all her fancy silks and cashmeres; nevertheless, both to please him and to satisfy her own innately orderly instincts, she is getting rid of a lot, a task that she has to admit to herself she enjoys. Throwing things away, getting rid of surplus stuff is cleansing; she is sure that it is good for the soul.

And, as she has just said to Polly, if it weren’t for this awful, seemingly bottomless worry over Sara—whose mother, Emma, died the year before, so cruelly, of cancer—if it weren’t for that, Celeste would be perfectly happy. But no one even knows
where
in Mexico; they simply took off, a group of kids. Being constituted as she is, a woman of will, Celeste determines not to think about Sara, about whom for the moment she can do absolutely nothing. Don’t worry unless there is something active you can do, has been one of Celeste’s more helpful personal mottoes.

If only Polly or any of her friends wore the same size 4 that Celeste wears—this wish has been repeatedly in her mind as she fingers the discards. But so far she has managed not to say this to Polly, who would snort in some awful way. However, at the sight and then the touch of a gray silk organza coat, very sheer, Florentine, impossible to pack, almost involuntarily Celeste cries out, “Oh, if only you could wear this!” Already she feels that she misses the coat, in which she has looked, she is quite aware, spectacular.

Polly laughs—the dreaded snort. “Wrapped around my old bald head? Or just over fat old naked me?” She laughs again, seemingly enjoying this imagined picture of herself. (But how can she, really?)

Since her cancer surgery two years ago (her recovery has been astounding, an amazement to her doctors) and her subsequent baldness, Polly has been given to this awful form of humor, so distressing
to her friends, and especially to Celeste, who now murmurs, “Oh, Polly.”

At which Polly laughs, or snorts again.

A long time ago (Celeste is quite sure of this) Charles and Polly had some sort of love affair: Celeste has simply, infallibly deduced this. And neither of them, neither Charles nor Polly, knows that Celeste does know. Which makes it all the more interesting for Celeste to watch. Not upsetting, really on the whole not upsetting. They were such very different people then, Charles and Polly. They were not her adored almost husband and her almost (after Dudley, now that Emma is gone) dearest friend. (In fact, both Emma and Polly were mortally ill at the same time, diagnosed within weeks of each other, so that Celeste was flying back and forth, from coast to coast, trying to care for her friends. And then Emma died, and Polly, against every prognosis, got well.)

But Polly’s “relationship” with Charles must have taken place when he was married to Jane, Celeste (correctly) believes, when he was in Paris. Probably, they actually saw very little of each other—and how perfectly inappropriate, how entirely unsuitable a match! Warm handsome sociable Charles, who is nearly a clotheshorse (more like an Edwardian dandy, actually), with his silly jokes, little songs that he hums, his flirtatious ways. And serious, heavy Polly.

Although certainly Polly was very beautiful at one time, with those pale, brilliant burning eyes, and her heavy hair, and great huge breasts. Well, she still has the eyes, and the breasts, although of course large breasts are not nearly as attractive in an older woman, as Polly now is.

These are Celeste’s thoughts concerning Charles and Polly in the daylight hours, possibly when she is with one or the other of them; at those sunny moments she will have these somewhat disbelieving, these less than kind thoughts. However, at lonelier hours, at night, she cries out against this atrocious—this almost obscene—historical fact: the love affair between Charles Timberlake and Polly Blake.
How could they?
she inwardly screams, as though she herself had been present at the time, in Paris—the location, she imagines, of their love.

She has even had to ask herself, Is the love affair with Charles what truly draws her most to Polly? Otherwise it is surely an odd-looking
friendship. But if that is true, thinks Celeste, how perverse and horrible. I am then a sort of voyeuse, oh
dear
.

“Well, anyway,” Celeste now says to Polly, with her customary briskness, as she holds up a rose-colored taffeta New Look skirt (Lord, almost twenty years old), “Anyway, no one alive could have any use for this old thing.”

“Incredibly enough I remember having one made in Paris that was quite a lot like that” is Polly’s startling response.

“Did you, darling Pol? So odd, I often forget that you were there at all.”

“Well, actually I didn’t spend much time in Paris,” Polly tells her as she has before. “I was traveling a lot. Ah, youth. But I just for some reason needed a party skirt. Oh, ‘needed,’ ” she snorts.

“Well, you certainly don’t have to be so apologetic about it,” Celeste almost snaps. (
Why
must Polly keep insisting that she really wasn’t there, was not really in Paris?) “All young women need things for parties. Don’t be such an old puritan, Pol.”

“Well, you needn’t be so cross. Such a dictator, Celeste.”

But what on earth has happened, suddenly? Polly and Celeste, so fond of each other, really, are quarreling, or nearly. In the yellow April sunshine from Celeste’s long open window, in the attractive room, now all festively strewn with pretty clothes, soft fabrics—in the midst of all this attractiveness a quarrel has erupted. It is present in their eyes, Celeste’s and Polly’s, as for an instant they simply stare at each other, glittering brown-black into pale blue.

Suppose I said it? Celeste now wonders. Suppose all vulgarly like a fishwife I said to Polly: I know you had an affair with Charles, whom you don’t—you could never deserve. You were never beautiful enough for Charles. But I
know
. You can’t pretend any longer.

Celeste shivers at the very thought of saying such a thing, such
things
. And for an instant she closes her eyes to cancel the thoughts. Opening them after an instant, she says to Polly, “I’m sorry, darling. I am being snappish today, I know. Do you think it’s pre-bridal tension, even at my age?”

“Well, that would be quite legitimate, I think.”

“The truth is,” lies Celeste, “I’m just so worried over Sara. In
some way she’s more like my daughter, you know? Especially now that Emma’s gone. I suppose it has to do with not having children, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” Enigmatic Polly, so solemn. Polly who never in a million years would have done for Charles, at any age.

Sara and her lover, a thin, towheaded boy named Alex, were picked up for buying dope in Puerto Vallarta, and that is where they are now, in jail: a single room with no floor, just smooth, unevenly worn-down dirt. No windows, no air. A toilet hole for men on one side of the room, for women on the other. People take turns shielding each other while they defecate, and then they give up on privacy, usually.

One couple, a girl from Florida and a very young Mexican boy, about sixteen, make a point of humping into each other in a corner of the room as a few people watch, idly clapping to the rhythm of their fuck. The girl, whose hair is long and blonde but now all heavily dirty, darkened, tangled, cries out as though in climax, but Sara for one does not believe her. Sara does not believe that she is at all enjoying what she does.

Sara and Alex themselves sit chastely and angrily some feet apart, and Alex, whose beauty has been so frightening, so powerful a force to Sara—Alex now looks greasy and fat; he looks like everyone else in the room. He looks like Sara. Except that this is probably how she has always looked to him: a dark fat girl whom he happened to fall into bed with, stoned. A girl who kept hanging around after that and who finally said, “Why don’t we go down to Mexico during spring break? I know a place near Vallarta where we could score some really good stuff.” And handsome, evasive Alex, with his wild white-blond curls, unkempt beard, strong nose and clear sea-green eyes, Alex said, “Yes. Well, okay. Why not?”

Sara’s birthday check from her Aunt Celeste covered the cost of the two round-trip tickets, and they found a cheap hotel out near the tiny, corny airport. The town was fairly corny too, but sometimes extremely pretty: a pink plaster wall all overgrown with falling purple flowers, with heavy, sexy blossoms. They walked a lot, Alex and Sara. They crossed the bridge where to one side women were spreading their laundry out over the rocks to dry in the sun, and where on the
other side the river came down from the hills. Where rich Americans have large fancy houses. A whole colony of them. Gringo Gulch—Alex had somehow come by that name. So disgusting.

But everything was fine, everything going really well between them: a lot of sex, early-morning sex and siesta sex and then long stoned hours of sex at night. And, in between, all those long beach hours, sun and swimming. “You should stick to bikinis, Sara,” Alex even told her. “You look really good.”