After the Reunion (16 page)

Sue and her husband had a condominium in Vail, this pseudo Tyrolean chateau where Emily now sat in splendor. After New Year’s Sue and Karen and another friend, Linda, all decided that it would be fun to get away from their husbands for a few days and go to Vail to ski and relax, just “the girls.” It didn’t matter that Emily couldn’t ski—she certainly needed a vacation. So here she was, happy and grateful, in this beautiful place that looked like instant Switzerland, surrounded by gorgeous snow-covered mountains, smelling of wood smoke, full of rich people and celebrities and snow bunnies. During the day she walked around and looked at everything, breathed the fresh air, window-shopped. She was afraid to use her credit card, for which Ken paid the bill, for anything as frivolous as shopping. Food and shelter were another matter. At night she had dinner in restaurants with her friends. They knew so many people; everybody seemed to know everybody here.

So this was skiing. She remembered many years ago, when she had gone to that snobbish society party with Richard Caldwell at college, and Daphne the Golden Girl had been standing there with all her fancy friends talking about the best places to ski. How left out Emily had felt then, how insignificant and insecure, because that wasn’t her life at all. The party where she had met Ken … Maybe she should blame Richard Caldwell for that, instead of being thankful to him.

It was the most extraordinary thing that this morning, when she’d been having her walk, she had actually seen Daphne the Golden Girl on the street, with a little girl who was obviously her daughter, and obviously retarded. Daphne was just as beautiful as she had been at their twentieth reunion; she would always be special. This morning was the second time it had occurred to Emily that without her ever thinking it was possible, all kinds of terrible things had been happening to Daphne. Oh, and to Richard too, of course, although it was Daphne who had always awed Emily so, and who had seemed destined to live in protected, perfect bliss. The first time was when she read about Daphne’s son’s suicide: he had been mentioned in
The New York Times
, which Ken always had flown out to them on Sundays. And now this little girl. Daphne seemed very protective of her. Poor Daphne. Emily had almost had the courage to say hello to her, and then had not. Daphne didn’t even recognize
her
.

This was a perfect place for families to come with children. Everywhere there were groups of kids together, and groups of parents, and the parents and kids together; and then at night the kids went to the pizza place to play video games and eat kid food and the parents dined with their friends in expensive elegance. That night Emily went to The Left Bank for dinner with “the girls,” who knew all the best restaurants, and there was Daphne again, at the next table, this time with Richard and two other couples. Daphne was dressed all in white, and she was glowing.

“You see that woman?” Emily whispered. “I went to college with her. And her husband, too.”

“What an attractive couple,” Sue said, and went back to reading the menu.

“They were college legends,” Emily said. “I was terrified of them, they were both so sophisticated and glamorous.”

“She’s got a great lift,” Karen said. “Ask her who her doctor is.”

“No, she hasn’t,” Emily said, indignant for some reason she couldn’t explain. “She’s always looked like that.”

“That proves it,” Karen said, and laughed.

Emily and her friends were in the middle of dinner when there was a minor commotion. An adorable blond boy of about thirteen, who was apparently Daphne’s and Richard’s son, came in with the little retarded girl in tow. The child was soaking wet and shivering with cold, and crying, and the boy was looking upset and scared. Daphne stood up immediately, her face pale with concern. But Richard … Emily could hardly believe it … he just looked annoyed that his lovely dinner was being interrupted.

“Teddy!” Daphne said. “What happened?” She was wearing a jacket flung over her shoulders, and she took it off and wrapped it around the crying child.

“We were fooling around and she fell into the creek,” Teddy said.

“But where were the other boys?”

“I don’t know. They went off someplace and they took the key. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll go back with you,” Daphne said.

“Just give him the key,” Richard said wearily.

“She could have drowned!” Daphne said.

“Oh, no, it’s shallow,” Teddy said. “I fished her right out. I’m sorry, Mom. Really.”

“I sorry I cry,” the little girl said.

“Oh, Elizabeth …” Daphne said sadly, shaking her head.

“Daphne, where are you going?” Richard said.

“I’m going to put her into a nice hot tub,” Daphne said. “You all enjoy the rest of your dinner. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Don’t hold your breath on that,” Richard said. The other two couples smiled politely, pretending to be unaware of the tension. Daphne smiled back, and then she went off with the two children.

“Just another happy marriage,” Karen said.

The next day Emily looked for Daphne on the street, and when she finally saw her, with the little girl as usual, Emily went up to her. “Daphne?” she said, although she knew quite well who it was. “I’m Emily Applebaum from Radcliffe … Emily Buchman now. Remember?”

“Oh, yes,” Daphne said politely, and smiled.

Emily realized Daphne didn’t remember her, hadn’t remembered her at the reunion, probably had hardly even noticed her in the dorm all those years. It didn’t matter anymore. She went determinedly on. “I hope your daughter didn’t catch cold after last night,” she said. “I was in the restaurant.”

“Ah,” Daphne said. “No, thank you, she’s fine now. She just had a bad scare.”

“That ice can be treacherous,” Emily said. They looked at each other. “Would you like to come and have some hot chocolate with me?” Emily asked. “The Alpenrose Tearoom has lovely pastries.”

There was a pause. “I have to warn you,” Daphne said, finally. “Elizabeth’s table manners leave something to be desired.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Then let’s go,” Daphne said, and this time when she smiled the smile was real.

They sat across the table from each other in the European tearoom and talked. Emily, who was used to unhappy children from her work at the hospital, gave Elizabeth warm and friendly looks and ignored it when she smeared buttercream filling on her snow-suit. After a while Elizabeth stopped.

“I used to be so scared of you in college,” Emily said.

“College seems a million years ago,” Daphne said.

“I know. You had a camel’s hair coat. I thought it was so chic and sophisticated. I had a fur coat and I hated it. I wanted one just like yours.”

“I probably would rather have had a fur coat,” Daphne said, smiling.

“Do you remember Ken Buchman?”

“Sort of.”

“We went steady at college and got married right afterward,” Emily said. “And nothing was the way I thought it would be. I’m here because my husband threw me out. I should have left him a long time before that, but women of our generation don’t do that, do we? We keep trying to make the happy ending happen.”

“Happy endings,” Daphne said. “Ha. Some days I find it very difficult to believe in anything at all.”

“I’m sorry about your son,” Emily said. “I read about it in the paper.”

Daphne burst into tears.

Oh God, what had she done? The Golden Girl, her idol, sitting here weeping; discreetly, but definitely weeping; in a public place, her heart broken, so unlike Daphne to fall apart—what had she, Emily the idiot, done?

Elizabeth was patting her mother’s arm. “No cry,” she said. “No. No cry.”

“Don’t mind me,” Daphne said. She stopped, finally, and wiped her eyes. “It’s just that everybody has been pussyfooting around the whole subject for so long, pretending it’s going to go away, and it was such a relief when you said something.”

“Are you all right?”

“It would have been his birthday today,” Daphne said. “We all got up, and nobody said a word about it, and the rest of them went skiing as usual, and I took care of Elizabeth as usual.… I don’t know whether there’s so much emotion lying dormant that if … Oh, I just don’t know.”

Emily reached across the table impulsively and took Daphne’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Thank you. Tell me … did you have a happy life before Ken left you?”

“Not really,” Emily said. She wondered if Daphne would end what was starting to look like a possible friendship if she told her about the nervous breakdown. Then she thought: If she runs away she wasn’t worth knowing in the first place. “I was married too young and I couldn’t deal with the realities of what marriage and children actually were. I had a fantasy of perfection for everything in my life, which was really silly.”

“Ah, yes,” Daphne said. “Perfection.”

“Ken was away a lot, and I was alone a lot, and then I found out he’d been cheating, and I cracked up. I’m all right now, but it was rough for a while.”

“You cracked up because he was
cheating
?” Daphne said.

“No …” Emily thought about it. “I think it was because I wanted to go back and do it all over again differently, and I didn’t know how.”

“You didn’t know how because it’s impossible,” Daphne said.

“I know that now.”

Elizabeth was asleep with her head on the table. “You’re good with children,” Daphne said.

“Except my own,” Emily said lightly. There were some things that were too delicate to discuss, even though she was feeling quite warm and comfortable sitting here with a totally different Daphne than the one she’d known so long ago. “I really enjoyed talking to you,” she said. “Maybe you’ll come to California some time. I’ll give you my address. And I’ll give you my friend Karen’s phone number too. I seem to be living in a lot of temporary places lately, but she’ll always know where to find me.”

“Maybe you’ll come to New York,” Daphne said. “I go into town a lot. We could have lunch.”

“I’d love that,” Emily said. “I really would.”

Chapter Thirteen

As it turned out, Kit did not get the part she coveted on the new Zack Shepard film, although her friend Emma did get to be his assistant. Not Assistant Producer, of course, but Assistant
to
the Producer. Credits were regulated by the unions in Emma’s line of work. In Kit’s they were negotiated by agents. And so, as if life had offered her a good consolation prize for losing the movie, Kit landed a juicy part in a miniseries that was to run an entire week on network. Her billing read: And Kit Barnett as “Angel.”

The miniseries was full of stars, and former stars whose names still looked pretty good in an ad in
TV Guide
. There was “starring” and “co-starring” and “with” and “featuring,” and one actor got a box around his name. Kit could just imagine all those agents fighting over who got what, and the actors at home complaining that if they were going to take a cameo at least they wanted big print in the ad. She loved her billing, and sent her agent flowers.

The part was not very interesting: a congressman’s daughter who was a hooker, but Kit was aware that her complex personality would make it interesting. As she studied and worked and grew more in control of her craft she also realized that she had an innate something on screen that gave her an edge. Sometimes she was afraid to get too close to that part of her, because she was afraid she would spoil it. She didn’t want to dissect herself too much. She was neurotic? Good, she would just let it flow out into the work and enrich the character, give it layers.

The creep from class had stopped hanging around outside her house. He had found someone else to be in love with, and was actually living with her. Kit was relieved. But now that the filming was over, and it was the boring drag-end of winter, she was restless. She went to a lot of parties, had a lot of sex. She hadn’t met any man she wanted to settle down with, but she was sort of looking. Her parents were still separated. They seemed to have joint custody of Adeline, or, more likely, Adeline had custody of both of them. Adeline trundled back and forth, one day a week to her mother, who only had a small apartment, four days to “The Doctor,” who was still living in their big house. Now Kit and Peter had two duty dinners to go to every week instead of one.

Tonight would be the seventh night in a row that Kit had gone to a party. They started late and sometimes ended days later, depending on who was giving them, but Kit always went home before the sun came up, always with a man. If he wanted to hang around all day and come to the next party with her, that was fine. But it was understood that if she met someone else she liked better, she was free. He was free too, of course, but they never seemed to want to be. Why did so many people only want what they couldn’t have? She hoped that never happened to her. She was nearly twenty-two, and she supposed she was long overdue to have her heart broken, but so far she’d been lucky.

The guy she’d brought home last night was gorgeous but stupid. His name was Rick, and she’d forgotten his last name, if he’d even told her, and after fucking him all night it would be gross to ask now. While he was in the shower she looked at his driver’s license. That was when she discovered he was only seventeen. He had told her he was twenty-six, and he could have passed for it. What a liar. Kit supposed he was also not in real estate. He was probably in high school. What a jerk. Still, it was kind of amusing to have had a much younger man.

As usual, they drove to the party in separate cars. The house where the party was given was high in the hills, and there was valet parking, which was nice. A producer was giving it. Kit had never worked for him, but she hoped to someday, and in the meantime she was pleased that he had invited her when they’d met earlier in the week at another party. There were a lot of expensive cars here, and the house was beautiful, all glowing with pinkish light; reflected back on itself it seemed to be swimming in its own swimming pool.

Kit wandered around the living room looking at the people. There were candy dishes full of various kinds of pills, and several with cocaine in them, and there was food and liquor and champagne. It was a terrific party. Most of the people were attractive. Kit dipped into the candy dishes several times, as casually as if she were taking souvenir matches, and loaded her little evening bag with drugs to take home. By now she could identify everything. Daintily, like a princess, she partook of a little bit of coke, a glass of champagne, rejected a proffered joint, danced with Rick to the music that was booming loudly all over the house, tried to decide with whom she would replace him.