Amber House (30 page)

Yes. Really. Princess
and
sweetheart.

“I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,” I said cheerfully, trying, really trying, to be gracious. I stuck out my hand toward Mr. Ultra-White-Teeth. “You are?”

He took my hand. “I am Mr. Poole.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Sarah. Or you can call me Parsons.” I grinned to show I was harmless. “Just not
sweetheart
. And definitely not
princess
. Deal?”

He froze a tiny bit, then smiled and thawed. “Parsons, huh? I can work with that. Okay, Parsons.” He pointed. “Angelique you know. This is Kathy, the manicurist; Louise, hair removal; and Jennie, tanning
artiste
. We’ve got a lot to do, people, so let’s get started.” He tossed me a little cotton kimono. “Down to your skivvies, Parsons.”

I caught it and trudged into the bathroom, the walk of the condemned.

When I returned, they sat me in a salon chair, leaned me back, and put up the leg rest. Then the three women I hadn’t met before took up positions on all sides and started working. Louise waxed, Kathy polished, and Jennie buffed dead skin from neglected areas all up and down my left side. “Takes the tan wrong,” she said. “You’ll get spots.” When all three were done, they shifted position. While they worked, they talked about the party.

“Did you see the casino?”

“Gondolas on the water.”

“All those cases of champagne.”

I did my best to pretend I wasn’t there. I pretty much felt like a slab of meat being dressed for roasting. Then Jennie hustled me off to the bathroom shower for my airbrushed tan, inexpensive bikini thoughtfully provided.

I was soft skinned, hair free, and lightly browned all over. The trio of ladies packed up, wished me a happy birthday, collected envelopes from Mr. Poole, and departed.

I returned to the chair so Angelique could get started on my hair. She flattened, curled, combed, pinned, gave me a once-over with an acrid-smelling spray, then stepped back with a triumphant smile. I leaned toward the vanity mirror to inspect the final product.

At the back of my head sat a sleek, draping knot, held by one large gold comb shaped like a cluster of leaves. The formality of it was counterbalanced by my bangs, spiked slightly and swept to one side. “Wow,” I managed, a little breathlessly.

She gave me a quick hug and whispered in my ear, “Good luck, hon.” Then she collected her envelope and made her escape. That left just Mr. Poole and me.

He opened up an enormous leather-bound cosmetics case with a collection of bottles and tubes and tins of powders that even my mother would find extreme. Every product you could ever need in every shade you could possibly imagine.

“You really going to use all of that?” I joked.

“If I have to,” he said grimly.

“Um, I have this bruise on my forehead —”

“Yeah-huh. Hard to miss. I’ll handle it.”

For the better part of an hour he worked in silence. He cleaned and prepped thoroughly, then started in with an air-brush, applying layer after layer of shading. He added false
eyelashes one at a time, with tweezers. He combed on mascara with a tiny brush. He filled in my eyebrows, hand painted my lips. Finally, with a brush and some clear but shiny liquid, Mr. Poole painted curlicues around the corners of my eyes. He fixed a handful of crystals in the drying design.

“In case you don’t want your face covered all night,” he said. “Mask to go, as it were.” He stood back to admire his work. “You clean up nice, Parsons.”

I checked myself in the mirror. I didn’t know how he’d done it. My too-long nose looked aristocratic and elegant. My cheeks had a lovely concave curve rising to highlighted cheekbones. My large eyes looked even larger. And my lips — I had always considered them too thin, but not now. Not under a layer of Mr. Poole’s artful shaping.

“Um,” I said, “can you, like, varnish this” — I indicated my facial area with my hand — “so that it stays this way permanently?”

He laughed. “I
am
a genius, Parsons, but you can learn how to do it too. You’ve got good bones. Just remember, there are damn few natural beauties in this world.”

“Thank you
very
much.”

He leaned down and gave me a little squeeze. “You are very, very welcome, princess.” He grinned, all perfect teeth. I laughed. “Now let’s go get you dressed.”

I lifted my eyebrows.

“No,” he assured me, “I am not coming in the room. Just have to check the finished product.”

I led him up to the flowered bedroom, which he pronounced “gorgeous.” He waited outside while I put on my party armor. Then I opened the door.

“Oh, my word,” he said, “she looks absolutely fabulous. I am so proud.” He made a little twirling motion with his hand, so I revolved three hundred and sixty degrees. “Is that a Marsden?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised.

“Thought so. She does good work.”

“Um, they gave me this with the dress.” I handed him the little vial of gold dust.

He put some moisturizer in his palm, worked in the dust, then smoothed the mixture over my shoulders, forearms, and collarbone.

“There. You’re Cinderella now, Parsons. Enjoy it.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“Do more than try. A night like this doesn’t happen that many times in any girl’s life.” He squeezed my hand. “Got to run. Almost curtain time.” He smiled and was gone.

I didn’t know quite what to do with myself. I checked in Sammy’s room, but Sam and Dad were gone. I walked out to the landing, to the row of windows overlooking the stone patios and river. The workers all seemed to be gone too, except for waiters in white, who milled around talking to one another, waiting. It was five twenty — the party started at six. The sun had just set and the moon was a merest sliver on the eastern horizon. When it rose, it would be full.

Just to please my mother
, I thought.

The air was feeling a little thick. I reached to unlatch the window, to catch the breeze off the river. I saw my grandmother’s hand meet mine in the same action. She stood a little to the right, enjoying the fresh air, her face shadowed in the dusky twilight.

A little boy came up behind her, his green eyes wide. “Who is that lady?” he asked her, pointing. “She looks like a princess.”

My grandmother turned my way, but clearly couldn’t see me. “You see someone, sweetheart?”

“Yes.” He considered a moment. “Do you think I am awake?”

“Yes, I think you are awake,” she said, “but I don’t know if you can take my word for it.” She smiled and moved on, down the hall.

He looked at me again. “Who are you, lady?” he whispered.

I didn’t know if I should speak. How could he see me? How could he be talking to me?

“My name is Sarah.”

“Sarah,” he repeated. “Hi, Sarah.”

I saw the scars then, fresher and more vivid than the ones I knew, tracing down his hand and up his face.

The little boy, of course, was Jackson.

My mother’s voice reached me before she crested the stairs. “Sarah? You ready? It’s almost time.”

The light changed slightly, and the little boy Jackson disappeared. My throat hurt — filled with words I wished I had been able to say to him. Something to let him know that things would be all right. That he wasn’t crazy.

He wasn’t crazy.

“Sarah?”

I turned quickly. She looked tired and worried and harassed. But when she saw me, her face broke into the most wonderful smile.

“Sarah,” she said softly, “you look so beautiful.”

I had to stop myself from bursting into tears, it felt that good. “I don’t look half as pretty as you, Mom.”

And she did look even better than usual. The gown clung to her figure in a way that shouldn’t be allowed on mothers of teenaged girls. The green gem glittered just above her cleavage.

Mom made a brushing gesture with her hand. “I know you think I’m pretty — and I’m glad, and I thank you. But you are so much lovelier than I ever was.”

I shook my head.

“You don’t know,” she said. “You only see the things you think are imperfections. You don’t realize that my kind of prettiness is the ordinary kind, the kind you see on boxes of hair dye and can’t remember ten seconds later. Your kind of loveliness is unforgettable.”

I felt my nose tingling again.

“For God’s sake, don’t cry.” She laughed. “Mr. Poole has left the building.”

I gasped out a chuckle and carefully dried the corner of my eye with my fingertip.

She reached out and fingered my leaf pendant. “Is this what Robert’s son gave you?”

“Yeah. Pretty nice, huh?”

“Yes,” she said. “He did good.” She seemed impressed. “Come on down and show your dad before everybody gets here.”

“Oh, wait,” I said, and I ran back to my room. I came back out with Fiona’s golden mask. I held it up before my eyes.

“Good heavens,” Mom said, “that’s wonderful.”

“It was your mom’s, I think. I — found it in a drawer.” I wondered why I bothered to lie.

“Must have been hers. Everything was.”

She turned down the stairs and I followed, thinking about the little boy. Thinking maybe I had been too hard on Jackson, who had, apparently, known me a
lot
longer than I had known him. I felt for that kid — never knowing what was real, or what was possible. His thoughts — his
emotions
— getting tangled up in a girl he couldn’t be sure even existed. It would make a person doubt his sanity.

As Mom and I hit the lower landing, the photographer from
Southern Home
yelled, “Hold it!” Mom reached for my hand and put on a brilliant smile. I tried to do the same. I hated smiling for cameras.

The photographer asked for a few shots of “the birthday girl by herself,” so Mom went down and stood next to him. I focused on her eyes and smiled for her. It was easier.

Dad and Sam were watching some dinosaur program in Gramma’s room. Sam saw me first and his eyes opened really big. “You look like a fairy tale, Sarah.”

“Thanks, bud.”

Dad stood up. He looked very, you know, secret-agent-in-an-Italian-tuxedo. Since he was one of the permanently rumpled kind of guys, I was a little amazed. He told me I looked “beautiful, so much like your mother,” at which point Mom abruptly said it was time to meet-and-greet. She, as hostess; I, as the honoree. Dad was going to hang with Sam awhile and come out later.

The senator was the first to arrive, of course. He was going to stand next to Mom to help her with names and give everyone a solid dose of his charm. He clamped my hand and wished me a “magical birthday,” then positioned himself strategically.

Richard shook hands with Mom before he came to greet me. His smile was so shy, it hardly got past the corners of his eyes. He reached out and touched a gold leaf.

I said, “It looks perfect, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “
You
look perfect, Sarah.”

I gave him a huge foolish grin. “Oh, no,” I said. “It’s Parsons to you, Hathaway. You don’t want to make me feel like some girlie girl, do you?”

He grinned back. “Maybe.”

“Can you stand here with me?” I whispered. “I don’t think I have the guts to do this by myself.”

“I can’t,” he said. “And you do. I’ll see you in a little while.”

He disappeared just as the front door opened. It pretty much stayed open for the next half hour. I could glimpse through the opening a steady stream of headlights coming down the drive. The photographer crouched to the side and snapped this or that guest, I assumed based upon name-recognition value, because it wasn’t for the best costumes. Only about half the people had
gone all-out, with the rest in formal wear and a token mask. As I was, come to think of it.

My mother greeted each arrival with high-pitched goodwill, as if she were excited to see every single one of them. I shook hands, one after another, with a fixed smile, trying to be friendly, thanking them for their birthday wishes.

Many of them held out a present for me to take, and just as soon as I had exclaimed over it, a woman in a Pirouette costume took it from me and carried it to a table. When the table began to mound up, more party staffers moved loads of wrapped packages to some other spot in the house. It
was
going to be a mountain of gifts. I hoped my mother did not expect me to write all the thank-you notes by myself.

When the flow of people petered out, Mom told me I should go mingle. She stayed in the front hall to greet the late arrivers. I went to look for Richard.

I made my way among the throng of guests who were already placing their contributions to cancer research upon the green felt of the blackjack tables. I went out onto the patio through the open French doors. Then I stopped and marveled.

I had seen bits and pieces of my mother’s party, but I had never put it all together into this, had never built in my mind’s eye this —
spectacle
— that she had been able to imagine down to the very last detail.

It took my breath away.

Walking out through the French doors was like walking back across time into a seventeenth-century Venetian festival. The full moon was rising up just over the treetops, fat and deeply orange from the sunset, like the god of pumpkins come to bless the autumn revelry. A white and black harlequin dance floor
spilled out in a three-level cascade, punctuated in the corners with ornate, branching gold-washed candelabras. Long tables brimming with cheeses and crudités and fruit and tiny cakes flanked the floors on every level. Beyond this, on the lawn, all the little circular tables were arranged under the oldest trees, tucked beneath a ceiling of white and gold netting that swept from branch to branch.

A purple and blue satin-swathed stage stood outside the conservatory, false-lit from the front by candles set in copper holders, but caught more securely in light from spots hidden in the trees. At the moment, it bore a trio of jugglers.

The partygoers milled and mingled, flitting about like ghosts, their costumes and masks coming in and out of focus in the glow cast by the lanterns and the tiny lights that filled the garden. Jesters in motley wandered among the guests, clowning, performing tricks, and handing out tokens. These could be traded for a ride with the gondoliers hired to pole couples amongst water-lily lanterns floating on the surface of the Severn.

It was a total fantasy. I didn’t know how Mom had pulled it off. Overwhelmed, I leaned against a post and stared.

As I watched, the scene shifted. Another party played out before me — a scene of sequined flapper-era dresses and tailed tuxes. Ragtime music blared from a small band. I looked for the red-haired woman I knew must be there. And found, at the far end of the patio, someone who looked like my grandmother. Staring at me, a question in her eyes.
Wh
—

Then a high-pitched squeal stabbed my eardrums and I was grabbed from behind.

“Lordy!” Kathryn’s voice cried as she spun me around and the real world came back into focus. “You look ah-mazing.”

She wore a short skirt of frothy silk chiffon that had been draped around what was basically a full-body corset of pink satin ruching. I couldn’t wrap my mind around how she’d been able to
get into it. Almost as much of a mystery were the two pink feather wings poking out between the golden curls on her back.

“Are you — an angel?” I said.

“No,” she said, laughing. “I’m a flamingo, silly!”

I laughed too. I could see it now: the pink, the feathers, the black fishnets. Kathryn beamed. You’d positively hate her for being so perfect, except, with Kathryn, it was impossible not to love her. She was like Sammy, in a way. There was some kind of innocence there, a lack of guile that charmed.

“Where’s your table?” she asked.

“I haven’t got one yet.”

“Sit with me.” She slipped her arm through mine and started guiding me along. “Just so you know,” she whispered, “Morgan and I broke up — entirely mutual, really for the best — but I am actively trying to make him regret it. So I decided I am
so
making out with one of the guys from Ataxia tonight.”

I almost choked.

“Well, of course, since you’re the birthday girl, I’ll let you have first dibs,” she said quickly. “I mean, the lead singer is nice, but I’ve got a thing for drummers too. So either one is fine.”

All I could manage was, “It’s okay, don’t worry about me.”

She burst into laughter. “I keep forgetting: Sarah Parsons needs loosening.”

Flamingo-angel that she was, Kathryn led me to the exact table I had been looking for; Richard stood to get my chair when we walked up. I tried not to blush. Kathryn sat down next to Chad, who stood belatedly to get her chair. Olivia was sitting in one of the two remaining seats.

“What are you?” Olivia asked once I’d sat down.

“I’m sorry?” I responded, confused by the accusatory tone in her voice.

She gestured to my gown. “I don’t get it.”

“Duh. Sarah is Autumn,” Kathryn chimed in. “Can’t you tell?”

I shot a glance toward Kathryn that I hoped conveyed my gratitude.

“One hell of a party,” Chad offered.

“Omigod, it’s
unbelievable
,” Kathryn enthused. “Look at these tables. Your mother is
in-sane
.”

In addition to the flowers, the shimmering cloth of each table was littered with fall leaves and tiny candles held in makeshift votives carved from mini-pumpkins. Each place was set with mismatched silver flatware from the collections of ten generations of Amber House brides — all of it polished into seeming liquidity, the gleaming surfaces dancing in the light cast by the candles.

“
Oooh
, lookit,” Kathryn went on excitedly. She pointed at a woman dressed in flamboyant purple, hovering over the hand of a man at the next table. “A fortune-teller! We’ve
got
to get our fortunes told.”

“There was another one at the tables down below,” someone said.

The fortune-teller chose that moment to look over. At me. She frowned the smallest bit, then returned to the palm in front of her.

“I’m going for something to eat,” Richard said, standing. “Looks like they’re bringing out the main courses.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said. “Only thing I’ve eaten all day is some leftover coleslaw.”

At the buffet table, servers were slicing prime rib and roast turkey. There were sides of potatoes, rice, rolls, and the ubiquitous corn cake. Six or seven different vegetable dishes, salads, sauces, and dressing. We both loaded our plates.

“Think we got enough here, Parsons?” Richard put his hand on the small of my back, and it sent a little jolt through me. My pleasure must have been apparent, because I noticed a tall,
blonde-haired woman at the far end of the buffet, watching us with amusement. Or perhaps not. Hard to tell under her mask. I felt embarrassed. I linked my free arm in Richard’s and started us back to our table.

When we returned to our seats, the fortune-teller was bent over Kathryn’s palm. “What a love line,” the woman said. “So many admirers.”

Kathryn nodded and smiled. “I know, right?”

“Excellent health your whole life. You will never want. You will find your true love. Maybe someone you will meet tonight?”