The After Party (12 page)

I squeezed Ray's hand.

“What in the hell is she doing?” he asked, and I shrugged impatiently.

“She's going to the top,” I whispered as she climbed. But no, she stopped at the middle board. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

She slipped off her heels and threw them into the pool, where they bobbed to the surface, and someone let out a hoot and a holler. She kept climbing.

“She'll kill herself,” Ray said, and I brought my hand to my mouth.

“No she won't!” I said.
She's just having fun
, I started to say,
she's just being fun
, but the crowd's cheers drowned me out.

When she reached the top of the stairs she tilted her glass of champagne, drained it, and gave the crowd a wide, beatific smile. Then she walked slowly to the end of the diving board. She stopped at the very edge, bobbing up and down; stretched her hand out; and let her champagne glass follow her shoes into the pool.

And then she bent her knees, once, twice, raised her arms above her head, and dove. Ray gasped behind me; I could feel his breath on my neck. It was a beautiful sight: she leapt from the board in a perfect swan dive, toes pointed, my black dress shearing the air, and entered the water so quietly she barely made a splash.

The crowd broke into a wild cheer. “A perfect ten,” someone shouted. “Champagne all around!” another person yelled.

“Let's get this lady a towel,” Glenn said, and the crowd roared again as Joan surfaced and backstroked cleanly to the shallow end. The next day there would be a picture of Joan on the front of the gossip section, standing at the edge of the diving board, poised.

“I'm a little tired,” Ray said, “do you think we could go?” I was torn: I didn't want to miss anything—I'd missed an entire year!—but Joan was surrounded by people now. I couldn't even see her, just the place where I thought she was, at the center of the throng.

“Yes,” I said, “let's go to your place.”

He ushered me out to the valet stand, and then a voice behind me. Joan's voice.

“You're leaving?”

I spun around. She was shivering, one of the Shamrock's thick green robes wrapped around her shoulders.

“Yes,” I said. “Ray's tired.”

She stared at me for a second. “Don't go,” she said softly. “Don't leave me.”

Ray's car was pulling up and he looked at me quizzically. What could I do? I kissed him good night and told him I'd see him tomorrow.

Joan's hair was plastered against her cheeks. She'd lost an earring—luckily only a piece of costume jewelry. Fred appeared and once we were in the car Joan leaned her damp head on my shoulder.

“Sleep with me,” she said, when we were inside the Specimen Jar, “please,” and I did so, gladly, helped her out of her wet dress, tucked her into her bed, then slid in next to her. The sheets were cool and smooth against my bare legs. The pillow was soft beneath my cheek. Joan was warm and heavy next to me. I found her hand underneath the covers.

“Did you have fun?” I asked, struggling to keep my eyes open. It was four o'clock in the morning. A new day had already begun.

“Oh,” she said, “I was just showing them a good time. But yes. Yes, I had fun.”

•   •   •

R
ay proposed the next week, at his friend's beach house, where we'd met.

We stood on the damp sand of Galveston's shore and Ray got
to his knees. I thought about how he was ruining his pants; then he slid a pear-shaped diamond, flanked by two round sapphires, onto my left ring finger, and I stopped thinking about his pants.

I held my hand away from me, like I'd seen so many women do in the movies. I'd never really liked the ocean—it was Joan who loved the water—but now the dull roar of the waves slapping the sand, over and over again, sounded lovely and comforting.

I thought of my mother and father. I didn't know how he had proposed, but surely she must have loved him, in that moment; surely she must have believed their love was certain, would cushion them against life's slings and arrows.

Something occurred to me. “Did you ask my father?”

Ray stood, held me to him. “No,” he murmured. “I'm sorry—I thought—”

“Good,” I said. He didn't deserve to be asked.

Joan was back. She would help me plan my wedding. And Ray was mine forever. My life, it seemed in that moment, was perfect.

“I'll never leave,” Ray said, his voice thick with emotion.

And then he made me promise I'd never leave him, either.

“Never,” I said, “never, ever,” and in that moment, I believed nothing more.

•   •   •

A
month after Joan returned, I slipped into her room to see if she had one of my blouses. I saw the same stack of books on her bureau,
untouched.

J
oan had been back for nearly a year—nine months—when the Fortiers threw their annual Christmas Eve party. The mayor was there, several city councilmen; Hugh Roy Cullen was in attendance, the cherry on the sundae, one of the richest men in Texas. Joan's name had been on the invitation, along with her parents'. For the briefest instant I'd wondered, as I'd slid the thick card stock from its envelope, if my name would be engraved next to Joan's. But of course not.

I comforted myself with the thought of the parties Ray and I would throw, once we were married.

Evergreen glittered. Pine boughs woven into the grand staircase railing; little white orbs twinkling on every bush, every windowsill and eave. Joan glittered, too, a bottomless glass of
champagne in her hand. She wore a red silk dress, its bodice so tight it was a second skin.

I stood near the Christmas tree, with Ray. We would be married that summer, at Evergreen. The next party I attended here would be my wedding reception.

The tree was two stories high, decorated with little candles in silver holders. I was sipping spiked eggnog, fiddling with one of the candles, passing my finger through its flame.

“Are you impressed?” I asked Ray. It was the first time he'd been inside Evergreen. He saw Joan of course, when we were all out together, but he preferred to spend time with me alone. And he was working feverishly at that point, trying to prove himself at the company, so our nights together were sparse anyway. To me, it was ideal: I had Ray and I had Joan.

“By?”

I thought he was trying too hard to act nonchalant. “All of it! The cooks have been slaving in the kitchen for a week. The gardeners worked until three in the morning to make sure the yard was perfect. The—”

Ray placed his hand over mine, quieting it. “Joan's drunk as a skunk. Look at her. She can barely hold her head on straight.”

We watched Joan for a moment. She was, indeed, gesturing widely, dipping and bobbing her head, but she wasn't drunk. She was tipsy, animated.

“She's always like that,” I said. “She can handle her liquor.”

“Hmm. Think you can find a way to introduce me to Cullen? I wouldn't mind showing my face to him.”

At the end of the night, after Ray had left, pleading
exhaustion, I wandered out back, tired and drunk, passing a cluster of old men whispering and smoking Cubans. They nodded furtively in my direction as I passed, and I suppressed a giggle at their self-importance. It seemed impossible that Ray would ever be that old.

I would wait and leave with Joan, whenever she was ready. Soon, Ray and I would leave parties like this together, as a couple. Soon, he would go nowhere without me, nor I without him.

A swing hung from an oak tree, and I sat on it tentatively, not quite sure it would hold me. But it did, just as it had when we were children. There was our sandbox, covered now, unused for years.

I thought of Idie, how kind she had been playing with me near that sandbox day after day. And it occurred to me, sitting there on our old swing, that I hadn't seen Dorie in ages, not since Joan had left. Now Joan was back and Dorie was not.

In the car going back to the Specimen Jar, I was alone with Joan again: the smooth leather seats, the dry heat radiating from the dashboard, the back of Fred's bristly, gray head. I loved this car in winter.

“Jesus Christ,” she said, “what a spectacle. What a spectacular spectacle,” and giggled. She squeezed my hand. “Was Ray grumpy, darling?”

I shook my head. “No. He's just a little quiet tonight.”

“A quiet man is a boring man,” Joan said, lighting a cigarette; in the flame I saw her eyes, unfocused. “But you've got to love a boring man. No trouble with a boring man.”

I let her go on. Every time she called Ray boring I pressed my lips together, but I knew she meant nothing by it.

“I'll be married this time next year,” I said.

“You sound sad,” Joan said quietly.

“Do I? I'm not. I'm happy. But we won't ever live together again. Remember how we used to say we'd marry brothers, and live in houses next door to each other?”

“I do,” Joan said. “I do.” She laughed. I laughed, too. The idea, which had seemed so plausible to our ten-year-old selves, now seemed utterly absurd.

“Things will change,” I said.

“Of course they will,” Joan said. “But, honey, you know you can't marry me, right?”

I was prepared to be hurt, was already, but then Joan grabbed my hand.

“Ray loves you. You can't really ask for more than that, can you?”

I shook my head. It was true: Ray loved me, and I couldn't, shouldn't ask for more than his love, his loyalty.

“Let's go to Shailene's,” she said abruptly. “Fred, take us to Shailene's!”

Did I want to go? Did it matter? We were going to Shailene's, where I hoped there would be a booth and Joan would want to sit down in it.

I watched River Oaks, perfect as a little town in a snow globe, houses lit, ornamented trees with presents underneath visible from the street. Then the globe started to spin and I leaned my head against the soft seat.

“Joan,” I said suddenly, as the question had just occurred to me again.

“Yes?” she murmured.

“Where's Dorie?”

She said nothing. I opened my eyes, expecting to find her looking out the window, her attention caught by something other than me. Instead I found her watching me intently.

“She's gone,” Joan said.

“Gone where?”

“Just gone,” Joan said softly, and slipped out the little ashtray that lived in the door and stubbed her cigarette into it.

Servants came and went all the time, of course. But still, Dorie had been like a mother to Joan.

Joan had closed her eyes, and I did not push the matter because I did not want to disturb her.

And yet, I knew she was lying to
me.

1957

A
week or so after she showed up rain-soaked on my front porch, I saw Joan again at the Petroleum Club. All the girls went there for dinner once a month; it was something of a tradition, started by Darlene. She was there, of course, along with Joan and Ciela and a few others at the end of the table. Tommy was home with Ray. We all placed our orders—steak was what you got there, what each of us ordered that night, red in the middle—but when Philip, our waiter, stopped by Joan she asked for champagne.

“I'm not in the eating mood, tonight, not especially. I'm in the champagne mood. A magnum,” she pronounced, and smiled brilliantly at the table. “I want to do something special for my girls.” Philip was gray-haired and quietly capable, had been our
particular waiter for as long as we'd been coming here. He didn't have to ask Joan what kind of champagne she wanted. The most expensive kind.

“What a treat!” Darlene exclaimed, even though we were already drinking cocktails, had martinis and Manhattans and, for those of us who drank more moderately, daiquiris lined up in front of us in a neat row. I wanted so badly to roll my eyes. Darlene wore a white strapless dress with a gold lamé belt, a choker of pearls around her tan throat. I thought she looked like a snake, one of those nonpoisonous ones with rings around their necks.

I turned as Philip passed behind me—“Miss Fortier will have a steak, too. Rare,” I said, and he nodded and I was grateful that the transaction had passed so quietly between us.

I myself was drinking a daiquiri, because Joan had clearly been loaded when she'd arrived at the restaurant and I'd wanted to set a good example. A lot of good that had done: Joan had already had two martinis, and was generally drinking like there was no end in sight. She could hold her liquor but sometimes it seemed like she didn't want to. Tonight was one of those nights.

The room was watching us. This was a place you came because you wanted to be seen. And we did, I suppose. Want to be seen, I mean. It wasn't even a question, where we would go each month, where we would sit once we were there. We would elicit murmurs and glances as we paraded through the room. Each of us, but Joan especially, and she would say her own hellos and darlings and can you believe it's been so longs. Joan basked in the attention, of course, we all did, but it was Joan that everyone wanted to see. Her recent dalliance seemed not to have affected her reputation;
neither Darlene nor the other girls made any mention of it. Joan had gotten lucky.

“She's on tonight,” Ciela murmured.

I turned to her, glad that she had not heard me order a meal for Joan. I knew that I worried over her too much, fussed over her like she was a child. But someone had to.

I smiled, took a sip of my daiquiri. “She's just happy,” I said. “She likes it when we're all together.”

Ciela shook her head, gazed at me for a moment. “Everyone should have a friend like you, Cece.”

Joan heard that last part. “Everyone should have a friend like Cece! I'll toast to that!” And she raised her martini and clinked glasses with Darlene and Kenna, who sat to her right and left, spilling a bit of her drink as she did it, not bothering to wipe it up; then they were off, bantering, talking and laughing about nothing.

I wasn't feeling particularly festive. Tommy hadn't wanted me to leave, and for that matter, neither had Ray. “Joan beckons, I assume,” he had said when I told him I couldn't back out. Joan had returned to her old self since that rainy afternoon in my kitchen, a brighter version, even, but I hadn't quite caught up with her. Her absence over the last two weeks had changed something in me; her absences always did.

Ciela and I were idly chatting about our children, our fallback conversation, when Darlene brought up the Daisy Dillingworth divorce. It had gotten nastier, last week—pictures of Edwin Mintz and his mistress leaving a Broadway play had been published in the
Chronicle
.

“Nothing about it's natural,” Darlene said. “She didn't stick with her kind. And now she's reaping what she sowed, isn't she?”

“Well, she sure is,” Joan said, in a falsetto voice, and Darlene beamed before she realized Joan was mocking her.

“Daisy will bring the boy back here, I bet,” I said, hoping to ease the tension that had settled over the table. “River Oaks is the perfect place to come back to, the perfect place to raise a child.” I was rambling, but I believed it: Daisy needed to be near her family. A place where she and her child would never be alone.

“I think River Oaks would be hell to come back to after New York,” Joan said. “And that child? He should stay with his daddy in the city. At least there nobody would care he was a half Jew.” She looked at us evenly, as if daring us to disagree. And she seemed as if she wanted to say more. Tell us what fools we were, how vapid and provincial we had all become.

Darlene laughed—a high-strung poodle, barking.

“River Oaks isn't hell.” I paused. I could feel the table watching me as I tried to regain my composure. “And I think people would be kind. He's a child—he doesn't belong in New York. He needs his mother.” It was true I didn't know many, or any, Jewish people, but I knew Daisy. And I knew without a doubt that River Oaks was a better place for a child than an anonymous, dirty city.

Joan lit a cigarette, took a drag before responding.

“Does he? In some cultures children are raised communally, by the whole tribe. A thousand people to tuck you in at night.”

“Did you read that in
National Geographic
?” I asked.

Joan tilted her head, gauging me. I didn't usually bite back.

“Yes, yes I did.” Joan wasn't sitting where she could see Ciela
roll her eyes, but I wished she were. I wished she could see how mentioning the
articles
she read, the places she wanted to go—all the ways in which we were not enough—won her no favors among us. “We had Dorie and Idie,” she continued. “They were like mothers to us. Better than our mothers.”

I gasped, stunned that she would mention Idie so casually, in front of all these people. Part of me wanted to fight Joan, say something nasty, not let her get away with it. But the bigger part of me wanted to pacify her.

“It sounds hard to manage, doesn't it?” I asked lightly. “A thousand parents.”

Joan twisted her cigarette into her ashtray.

“Oh, Cee, don't be such a bore. I was just teasing.”

Just then an army of white-coated waiters filed over, sliding plates with their balloonlike silver lids in front of us. I heard Joan murmur as the lids came off and revealed our bloody steaks, the trails of fat glistening in the candlelight.

“Oh, Phil,” she said, playacting at disappointment. “Honey, I didn't order a steak. Take it back, will you? Give it to a more deserving soul.”

“Of course,” he said. And he was moving to take the plate when I spoke.

“No,” I said. “It's not a mistake. You need to eat something.”

“You ordered me a steak?” Joan asked brightly, her face stretched into a smile that looked hideous to me.

“I did. You need something to soak up the poisons, don't you?” This was an old joke, something Sari had always said before we left for a night out, when we were living in the Specimen Jar.

Joan gazed at me and I stared back. Darlene fingered the pearls of her choker excitedly; Kenna pressed her hand to her mouth as if to suppress a smile. I was furious, suddenly, that Joan was antagonizing me when she should have been going to great lengths to make sure I was happy. She'd ignored us all, including the Fortiers, for two weeks! None of us behaved that way, not me nor Ciela nor Kenna nor Darlene. None of us but Joan. I thought of Ray, at home. Tommy sleeping soundly in his crib. You didn't marry and have children for pleasure, for fun; you married and had children so you could be an adult, so you could have something to worry about besides yourself. But not Joan.

“Take it away, Phil,” she demanded. And so he did. I watched him as he held out his hand; another waiter soundlessly placed a silver cover onto it; he re-covered the steak, whisked it from Joan's presence, as if it were a nuclear threat.

But then the rest of us were still faced with our nuclear threats, quickly losing heat; hot, tasty fat turning cold and chewy.

We needed a word to break the tension. From Joan, Joan who would not provide such a word in a million years. I don't think, truly, that it would have occurred to her. She was used to making messes, not cleaning them up.

“I, for one,” said Ciela, “am absolutely ravenous. Tina was busy throwing a temper tantrum during lunch and I barely had a thing to eat.” She held up a gold fork, a piece of steak stabbed through its tines. “It looks delicious.” She tasted it. “And it is.”

I was so grateful. Joan wouldn't look at me but the pall of tension that had settled over the table disintegrated, almost instantly.
The alcohol helped. So did the anticipation of our evening. No one wanted it ruined.

The steak in my own mouth tasted like tears. After I had sat for an acceptable amount of time, and everyone else was chatting, I quietly excused myself and made my way to the bathroom. The attendant, mercifully, was on a break, so I sat on the little brocaded settee and tried not to cry. I tried to focus on the gold fixtures, to distract myself from Joan.

I should have left her alone. I shouldn't have fussed, shouldn't have worried, shouldn't have made a scene.

I went to the mirror and opened my mint-green clutch, fished around for my powder and lipstick. I was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, made of netting. I'd ordered it from New York; no one would have it here for at least a season. I had matching shoes on, too, high heels covered in the same mint-green silk as my clutch. I had felt like a million bucks when I'd left the house, and now? Now I felt like nothing, no one.

I was pretty enough, as my mother had said, and I knew how to put myself together. I wondered, not for the first time, what my life would have been like had I been outrageously beautiful. Ciela was nearly as beautiful as Joan but she was missing something, that special, final spark. Darlene, Kenna, the rest of us—we were all pretty enough. Well, Darlene was, as my mother liked to say, half homely, but she knew her way around makeup.

Perhaps, I thought, as I patted powder on the circles beneath my eyes, the hollows of my temples, my life would be exactly the
same. I didn't have it in me, to act like Joan. But who knew. Perhaps beauty would have changed me.

The door groaned and I put a little smile on my face. I was expecting the bathroom attendant, hoping for Joan. Instead I got Ciela.

“Hello,” I said to her reflection as she came and stood next to me.

“Such a waste,” she said, and tapped the faucet. “Think of the pretty gold earrings you could have instead.”

I laughed, though I wasn't in the mood.

“I'm sorry I made such a fuss,” I said.

“Did you?” Ciela asked. “Make a fuss, I mean?”

“I should have known better.” I studied Ciela in the mirror, bold and blond with a hint of something exotic in her lips and eyes. She licked her finger and gave each of her eyebrows a swipe. I could tell she wanted to say something. That was why she had come in here, wasn't it? But I didn't want to talk about Joan. Ciela would not understand.

“Sometimes,” Ciela said, “I try to imagine your life. Joan Fortier's handmaiden. It gets exhausting, I imagine.”

I watched my face crumple; I tried to relax it, tried to smooth my expression, but Ciela saw.

“Is that what people say about me?” I asked. “I'm not. I'm not Joan's handmaiden. I'm her friend.”

Ciela looked at my hand. I hadn't realized I'd been fiddling with my compact. “I didn't mean to upset you. I just meant—” She hesitated. “I just meant that sometimes Joan can be cruel. Or
maybe ‘cruel' is too strong a word. Insensitive. Sometimes Joan can be insensitive.”

I almost laughed.

“Cruel? Insensitive? You have no idea what Joan is like, not really. Do you know how kind she is to Tommy? She hides that part of herself. She's different with me.” I gathered up the contents of my purse. “I know her the best of anyone in the world.”

“I don't doubt you do.”

“Then don't presume other things,” I said. “Don't presume you know me. That you know Joan.”

Ciela's expression was mild. She played her cards close to her chest, always had. My hand was on the door when she spoke again.

“Do you know what she's acting like, tonight?” She gestured, as if at something beyond the walls of the ladies' room. As if at Joan.

I needed—I
had
—to hear what she thought.

“She's acting like she did when she came back from Hollywood.”

“When she became Houston's star, you mean?” Ciela was jealous.

“When she was wild, Cece. When she was high as a kite and slept with anything within walking distance.”

“When she was young and beautiful,” I countered. “When she had Houston by the tail.”

“If that's what you want to call it,” I heard Ciela say, but I was already out the door.

•   •   •

L
ater that evening we all went back to the Shamrock and sat outside, by the pool. Ciela had begged off when we left the Petroleum Club, and I thought about doing the same thing but hadn't. I watched Ciela go and envied her a little bit: she wasn't worried she might miss something. It was like this: What was at home was known. My sleeping husband and child. And what was out here, in the great big world of the night, was yet to be revealed.

Fred drove us all over and Joan had taken the front seat, and whether she did this so she wouldn't chance sitting next to me, whether Joan thought that far in advance, or if that was something only women like me did—well, I couldn't quite read her mind.