The After Party (4 page)

She kissed me on the cheek, her breath hot in my ear, and then she was gone. John was waiting for her just inside the glass doors, and she deposited her books into his arms and patted his shoulder. I noted that she did not kiss his cheek. She was careful about what she did with boys when she was watched.

“Nice lips,” Ciela said when I reached her, and I brought my hand to my mouth, embarrassed. “What was that about?”

I shrugged. “Joan thinks she wants to go to New York.” I felt mean; there was a certain pleasure in revealing Joan's plans to Ciela, making them seem frivolous.

Ciela laughed. “New York? What would she do there?” I tried to picture it: Joan on a busy street corner, waiting for a taxicab. My idea of New York came from movies. How could she want crowds and filth when she had Evergreen? There would be so many people; she'd have to blend in among them. And would she really want to? Here, she was a star. I could see her just ahead of us, in the hallway, her arm threaded through John's. The throngs
of us—girls and boys, in various stages of becoming men and women—parting for John and Joan, our king and queen. John could have been any good-looking man. He was replaceable. But Joan was not.

“I expect,” Ciela said, as she turned into Mrs. Green's room and I turned into the restroom across the hall, “she'd meet a lot of
men.”

1957

H
ave I established our group well enough? Everyone was the same. There were hierarchies, of course, of wealth and family and beauty. But none of us were too far from the center. We were the sons and daughters of oil, some of us more directly than others. Joan, for instance, had oil in her name; so did Ciela. The rest of us had fathers and husbands who worked for people who had oil in their names.

Except for River Oaks and a few other neighborhoods, the Bayou City was nothing more than a charmless swamp out of which a lot of tall buildings had suddenly sprung, watered by oil.

Esso, Shell, Gulf, Humble—our men worked downtown in tall buildings, wore full suits and ties even in August. If you were a lawyer you lawyered and if you were a doctor you doctored for
the oil company men. You met at the Houston Club to drink amber liquor and broker deals. I'd seen oil, once. When we were young, eight or nine, Furlow had taken Joan and me up to one of his oil fields in East Texas. We were supposed to go to a Fun Club movie at the theater, which we did some Saturdays; usually it was a cartoon and a clip about the war, but there had been a polio scare—a child who lived near the ship channel had recently been diagnosed—and our mothers didn't want us going anywhere near a crowd.

Furlow let us dip our fingers into a barrel. Me timidly, because I didn't want to get my sundress dirty—there would be a price to pay, later—Joan without a second thought. It felt like nothing much—“Oily,” Joan had said, and Furlow had laughed, but I had held my hand to the sun and considered it: Joan had oil, and I did not.

There wasn't an old guard in Houston. Our parents were it. We would have been laughed out of the society registers in most places in the country but in Houston our names meant something, even if they only went back a generation. In Houston
we
meant something, and we knew it, and we were careful with our positions. We might have gotten silly when we drank but we tried never to get sloppy. We didn't do drugs. We kept our prescription painkillers at home, in the medicine cabinet, where they belonged. We didn't follow strange men into bathrooms and swallow what they placed in our palms. We knew that some people did, in other places: New York, Los Angeles. The big cities. But us? Alcohol was enough of a drug for us. It took the edge off. It made us come alive.

We didn't do strangers, either. That's why Joan's man was particularly unnerving to me. There were new people, sure, of course, all the time. Business associates of our husbands who'd just moved to town from San Diego, from Oklahoma City, once even from London. We admitted them because they had been properly vetted. We knew them from somewhere.

So many stories start when a stranger comes to town. Including this one, though not in the way I thought at first. I wouldn't understand our story—how it truly began—until years later, when I was far enough away to see it clearly. Perhaps a stranger only reveals what has been there, hiding in plain sight, all along.

•   •   •

R
ay, for his part, was bored with the idea that Joan should be more careful. “Isn't Joan always talking to some man?” he said when I brought it up the morning after our night out. “Never seemed to hurt her before.” He was looking at something slightly beyond me, as was his habit when irritated.

I didn't call Joan because I was careful with her; there were certain things she didn't tell me, at least not right away, and this man seemed to be one of those things.

Monday morning I woke and pulled the covers around my shoulders—Ray liked to turn the air-conditioning unit on high at night—and tried to push her face from my mind.

What would she be doing at this very moment? Sleeping, in her own bed. I hoped she'd left the Shamrock carefully, through a back door. I hoped they'd left separately. I felt Ray stir beside me, and then I thought of all the things I needed to do today. Call
Darlene and ask if she wanted to go to the Garden Club meeting together. She could always be counted on for things like that. Take Tommy to the park. Write a grocery list for Maria—she went to Jamail's every Monday. Plan our menu for the week.

I tried to keep myself busy, always. When I wasn't busy I could feel myself getting dangerously close to a despair that always seemed to be there, just beneath the surface: I thought of it as the ground beneath a car. When I was a teenager I'd gone on a date with a boy who wasn't from River Oaks; the car he'd picked me up in was so beaten up I could see the road through the floorboard. The sight had made me unbearably sad, and I'd feigned illness.

“My stomach,” I'd said. “It's a little tender.”

“Tender,” he repeated quietly.

He turned the car around silently, returning me to my surrogate family, my borrowed home. The moment had stayed with me. His pitiful face, angry and hurt; the quickly disappearing ground beneath my feet.

Now I had a house to run, a maid to manage, a husband and child to tend to. It was infinitely better never to see the dirty ground beneath the floorboard. It was there, of course, but why linger on it?

Life before Tommy seemed scarcely worth remembering. What had I done with all that time?

Most mornings I rose before six, so I could get breakfast together for Ray before he left for work. Ray could have gotten breakfast together himself, of course, but I tried to live my life exactly the opposite of how my mother had lived hers. I rose, brushed my teeth, and smoothed my hair into a loose bun. Most women I knew
wouldn't let their husbands see them without makeup, but I liked to think Ray and I were closer than that. I tapped Ray on the shoulder as I was leaving—“Rise and shine,” I whispered—then stopped at Tommy's room. He was waiting for me, standing up in his crib in his blue, footed pajamas, waiting to be lifted. His silhouette in the dim morning light always moved me. He was most affectionate now, would allow me to nuzzle his cheek, dot his forehead with kisses; he loved threading the tie on my silk robe through his fingers.

It was time for him to move into a real bed, but I didn't want to do that until he spoke. It seemed safer this way, to keep him contained, until he could call out if he needed me. Today he rested his warm cheek on my shoulder, and we stood there for a moment, completely still. It would be my only still time that day.

When Ray joined us we were in the kitchen, Tommy in his high chair with toast. Ray gave us each a kiss and took a seat before the plate I had set for him, and Tommy, at his side, held out his hand, waved it, and looked at Ray expectantly.
Ask for it
, I thought, but did not say. It was something I'd heard other mothers say to their children, though of course they said this to children who spoke. But Ray knew, and spooned some of his eggs and a piece of his bacon onto the high chair tray.

“Ciela invited us to Clear Lake in August,” I said instead.

“A whole weekend with JJ.”

I smiled. “I'll be there, too. And Tommy. And I think a few other couples.”

We ate in companionable silence, Ray skimming the paper, occasionally reading things out loud to us.

“Are we done?” I asked Tommy, while I wet a rag. “Yes,” I said,
“we are,” as I scrubbed his face clean. He held out his hands, so I could do those next. Those were the kinds of gestures that made me hopeful.

We were all so used to each other in the mornings. I never remembered my parents talking like this, chatting for an hour over coffee. It meant something to me, that Ray and I could pass time so easily. And everything was more hopeful in this early light, even this morning, when Joan had tied up my brain in knots. That Tommy didn't try to speak to us, even babble; that he seemed more interested in his high chair, in his hands, in the bird outside the window than us—well, he was our son. Whatever he gave us seemed like enough.

Even now, though, I wondered when Joan would call. Had I called her one too many times this week? All friendships have boundaries. I believe that: then, now, forever. One woman is more powerful than the other. Only subtly more powerful. Too big a difference, like with me and Darlene, and a close friendship never has a chance. But even in the deepest friendships, like mine and Joan's, one woman always needs the other woman less. Joan didn't spend her days wondering when I would call. If she wanted to hear my voice, she picked up the phone.

•   •   •

T
he next afternoon Darlene returned my call about the Garden Club meeting—we were beginning to plan next year's Azalea Trail, where outsiders came to River Oaks and toured our homes—and managed to invite herself over that evening for cocktails.

“It's just that it's a weekday,” I said, trying to find a way out of
the cocktails, standing in Ray's office on the second phone extension, an extravagance.

It was a poor excuse—we entertained on weekdays. But I didn't particularly care if I offended Darlene. I absentmindedly pulled one of Ray's books from the shelf. A biography of Abraham Lincoln.

“Maria's home sick. And it's a busy week.” In our group I was known as the one who pulled no punches, who told it straight, who didn't particularly care about hurting feelings. Joan laughed at this depiction, said I was the most sensitive soul she knew, and maybe I was but occasionally all the various songs and dances that came with being a woman exhausted me. At that very moment I was tired; Tommy was going to be up from his nap soon and I had promised him a trip to the park. I wanted nothing less than to entertain Darlene over gimlets.

“Is it? For me, too. And is it a busy week for Joan as well?” She sounded gleeful. I could picture her at this exact moment: three miles away, in her black and white living room, twisting the phone cord through her fingers. She would be wearing white; though she wouldn't admit it, she liked to match her furniture when she was home. Absurd, but true. Smiling—she would be smiling. Grinning, like a cat. Because she had me.

An hour and a half later, after a rushed trip to the park, where Tommy had stared at other children playing but allowed me to push him in the swings, Darlene sat in my living room, in Joan's spot on my beloved orange couch, which I'd custom-ordered from New York.

Ray, home early from work, was outside, grilling steaks. When
I'd told him Darlene was coming over, and that I was irritated, he'd shrugged and mixed me a shaker of gin gimlets.

I could see him from here. He was whistling—I could imagine the tune. Tommy was playing quietly with a wooden train set he carried around with him. He'd been devoted to this particular train set, a Christmas gift from Ray's parents, since December. Ray's parents were kind but completely loyal to Ray's sister, Debbie, who lived in Tulsa with her four stair-step children, each blonder than the last. We saw them once a year, at Christmas. I'd never seen Debbie's home, but I imagined that it was as boring and perfect as Debbie herself. It had been clear, from the very beginning, that the Buchanans would dedicate themselves to Debbie, not Ray, and not, by extension, me. They were only following the time-honored rule: upon marriage daughters remained loyal to their mothers, while sons switched their allegiances to their wives.

I had the gimlets waiting in a chrome shaker, a small plate of crackers, pickles, and cheese beside it. I owned a new Russel Wright cocktail set, squat glasses emblazoned with ruby and gold bubbles, but I wasn't using these on Darlene. Darlene got the clear glasses—though I was cutting off my nose to spite my face. Darlene would have noticed the sharp barware, unlike Joan.

I'd greeted Darlene at the front door and now she sat across from me. She wore slim white capris and a sleeveless white blouse; her eyes, which had always been small, almost beady, were thickly lined with kohl, and her cheeks were luminescent with rouge. I'd never seen Darlene without makeup. She was one of those women who made up her face first thing, took it off after her husband was asleep.

I hated her, suddenly. I nodded at her small talk about so-and-so in the Garden Club, the giant divorce that was coming her way, and took a sip of my gimlet. I kept the gin in my mouth a second too long, until it burned, before I swallowed.

“So tell me, Darlene,” I said. “What's the news?”

She traced the rim of her glass with a painted finger, pale pink.

“Well,” she said. She paused, took her own sip of gimlet, drew the moment out to capacity. “A man was seen leaving Joan's house Sunday afternoon.” She raised an eyebrow and couldn't stop herself from smiling.

“Was he?” I tried to hide my shock. Joan
never
took men to her home. She went out, with men. And if it was the man I had seen with her at the Shamrock, it meant that not only had she taken him home—I did a quick calculation—she had been with him there for over three days.

I tried to calm myself. I looked around my living room: orange and white with pops of blue. Everything was spare, modern. Gone were all traces of my mother's world: Old, ornate Victorian settees and cabinets. Dark, drab colors. The feeling that you were living with borrowed furniture, which led to the constant reminder that you were living on borrowed time.

This
was how a room should be—new and fresh and utterly carefree. I'd worked on it with a designer shortly before we moved in. It was the room that got the most light, the most sun, the most energy. I loved it. Ray had carried me over our threshold and delivered me into it as a young bride. I remembered feeling at home here, for the first time in my life. It was the only place I'd lived that wasn't Joan's or my mother's.

I could feel Darlene watching me; her drink was running low. I could have poured her another; that would have been gracious.

I leaned in close, and kept my voice low.

“Oh, Darlene,” I said, as if I were speaking to a small child. “That was a business associate of Furlow's. But I think it's time for you to go home. Tommy's bedtime, soon.” I stood, adjusted my belt. I'd had to get completely dressed and waste an outfit for Darlene's visit. Not my best outfit, but still. I watched Darlene try to assemble the various pieces—what had just happened, exactly? How had she gone from being the bearer of valuable information to getting kicked out of Cece Buchanan's home before her drink was even done?