Blessing in Disguise (26 page)

He placed a callused finger over his lips, and shook his head. Pushing aside her anxiety, Cordelia slipped back into her role as hostess, darting forward to kiss Marjorie Killian’s sunken cheek.

“Lovely party,” Marjorie gushed, needlessly reaching up to smooth a wing of lacquered, frosted hair that looked as if it would survive a hurricane. “And I
adore
what you’ve done with your tree. Who but clever you would have thought of those sweet little glass ornaments?”

She followed Marjorie’s gaze to the Christmas tree, which had stolen the show from her treasured Coromandel screen, against which it stood—a ten-foot blue spruce hung with globes of Venetian blown glass, and the precious Victorian papier-mâché cherubs she had inherited from her great-grandmother Patterson. None of those tacky strings of winking electric lights; instead, there were candles fixed to each branch with tiny brass holders, their dancing flames suffusing the room with a kind of glow that had little to do with tonight’s occasion.

“Speaking of Christmas,” she asked, “will you and Dan be going away this year?”

“Saint Martin,” Marjorie drawled. “And you? Braving the festivities?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Cordelia caught the amused look on Iris’s face as she edged past. Though it was eons ago, who could forget the smug way Marjorie had pranced about after she and Dan got engaged? She’d saved her most pitying looks for Cordelia, no doubt believing her to be mourning the loss of her one true love.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking of taking a little trip myself.” The words were out of Cordelia’s mouth before she quite knew she was saying them. “To New York ... to visit Grace.” But before she could commit herself to something she’d later regret, she added quickly, “It’s not definite yet, and in any case it wouldn’t be until after the holidays, but ... Oh, Dan ...” She grabbed hold of Dan Killian, who was edging his way toward the bar like a barge toward a loading dock, and fixed him with her most compelling smile. “One itty-bitty thing: did you get that letter I sent you last week?” She’d written to him to refresh his memory about his long-ago promise to contribute to the library, and to remind him that their little chat in his office hadn’t changed anything as far as she was concerned. “I hadn’t heard from you, so ...” She let the rest of the sentence trail off meaningfully;

Dan looked embarrassed, and glanced down at the carpet, all three of his chins sinking into his collar. “Well, you see, Dellie, with all this union fuss about a strike out at the factory ... I, uh, I’ve been kind of wrapped up.”

“Never mind,” she told him in her most firmly polite voice. “I certainly didn’t ask you here tonight to discuss business. Why don’t you two help yourself to some of those lovely little salmon puffs over on that table by the piano? I’ll give you a call on Monday, Dan.” Careful. If she pushed too hard, Dan might back off altogether.

Distracted by a loud guffaw, she turned toward Beech, leaning up against the banister in the hallway with one beefy arm draped about the newel post. His face was red and dotted with sweat under his freshly mown crewcut as he brayed at some joke, undoubtedly off-color, that Deke Woodlawn, his sidekick down at Spangler Dodge, was telling him. In his too-tight tuxedo. Beech made her think of a schoolyard bully cajoled into wearing his Sunday best.

She saw Beech glance over at Gabe, now chatting with Iris and Jim over by the fireplace, and then lean in close to his buddy to whisper something she just knew had to be ugly. The two of them sniggered, and Cordelia looked away, her stomach knotting. Only her many years at playing hostess kept her from letting on that she minded, or even noticed.

Finally, the time came to serve supper, and Cordelia felt relieved to have something to do other than making polite conversation with people—most just curious, a few malicious—who all seemed to be dying to know why she’d invited Gabe. In the dining room, she directed Netta and the extra help in setting out the platters—roast turkey with cornbread-and-chestnut stuffing, chutney-glazed ham, giant prawns stuffed with crabmeat and deep-fried in a coconut batter, tomato-and-okra stew, tiny hot rolls arranged around a cut-glass bowl of whipped herb butter. She smiled and smiled until she thought her face would crack in two as she threaded her way through the packed room, making sure everyone had a plate and something to drink.

“Delicious!” Miriam White called to Cordelia as she nibbled on a shrimp. The old dragon had been president of the Junior League longer than St. Peter had been minding the gates of heaven, but beneath her fussy airs and that henna helmet she was a good soul. If it hadn’t been for Miriam’s dogged efforts, Cordelia reminded herself, the pediatric ward at Hilldale would not have gotten its CAT scan.

“No
body
knows how to give a party better than Cordelia Truscott, I always say,” she heard a voice behind her drawl. She turned to find Laura Littlefield, in seafoam chiffon, holding court with a circle of men. Admirers? At her age? Well, once a Dixie Queen, always a Dixie Queen.

It seemed hours and hours before the platters were cleared away and Sissy went scurrying off, swaying a bit on her satin heels, to round up Beech so they could cut the cake.

“Beech ... oh, Bee-eech! Where have you gotten to, you naughty old thing!”

Moments later, Cordelia heard a muffled cry, followed by a thunderous crash that seemed to emanate from the back of the house. She felt the blood drain from her face.

“Excuse me,” she muttered to Emily Newcomb beside her. “Netta must have dropped something in the kitchen.” Pushing her way through the swinging door into the old-fashioned black-and-white-tiled kitchen, Cordelia half-hoped it
was
true, that Netta had broken one of her precious plates or a crystal glass. But she knew it had to be something far worse.

She found them in the laundry room at the back of the house—Beech, Sissy, and a blond woman half in shadow, all of them frozen in a tawdry tableau. Beech was backed up against a row of shelves stacked with folded sheets and slipcovers, a furtive look stamped on his flushed face. The blonde—Janet O’Malley, she recognized now—simply looked shocked, but her smeared lipstick and half-unzipped dress told the whole ugly story. It was Sissy who was hollering—loud enough to make Cordelia grateful for the blessed thickness of old doors.

“You bastard! You fucking bastard! How dare you!
How dare you!”
Her Gerber-baby’s mouth was distorted and ugly.

At her feet, twinkling in the dim glow from the hallway, lay the remains of the champagne glass she’d been drinking from. Cordelia caught the sharp smell of alcohol mixed with the more comforting scents of soap powder and fabric softener.

“Honey. Now, listen, honey ... it’s not what you think,” Beech was sputtering, his speech nearly as slurred as Sissy’s. “I never slept with her. I would’na even a gone this far except ... except ...”

“ ’Cept you’re a lying, cheating bag of shit!” Hectic blotches the color of the champagne punch she’d been guzzling all evening stood out on Sissy’s quivering neck.

She stabbed a finger at the cowering Janet. “And
you
—I baby-sat your kids, I even baked cupcakes for your stupid Friends of Animals bake sale. Well, I hope you choke on them, you bitch!”

Cordelia, coming out of her shock, felt her limbs unlock as Sissy slumped back against the dryer and began to weep in great honking gusts. Cordelia stepped forward to gather her daughter in her arms, and looked over Sissy’s heaving shoulder at Beech, fixing him with an icy stare.

“If you are entertaining one single thought of slinking out the back door, I’ll thank you to get it right out of your head.” She spoke softly but with an edge of steel, as if he were a teenager caught shoplifting in a store she owned.

“Now. I expect you to tuck your shirttail in your trousers, and to walk out there as if nothing has happened ... as if you’re the happiest married man in the world. And I want you to tell your guests that Sissy here slipped on a wet floor and turned her ankle—nothing serious, nothing she won’t be over in a day or two. Do you
think
you can manage that, Beech?”

“Now, Mother ...” He put out a placating hand, which she froze with a look that also stopped whatever pathetic excuse he was about to lay on her. She saw the ruddy color leave his face, making the lipstick smeared over his mouth look as garish as war paint. “Okay, okay. I ... I’ll see to the guests.”

“And wipe your face before you do.”

He slunk out, Janet scampering in his wake.

“Oh ... I want to die!” sobbed Sissy in the soap-smelling dimness, flinging herself into her mother’s embrace.

Cordelia felt a twinge of disgust for the plump woman sniveling drunkenly in her arms ... while, at the same time, her heart ached for her poor little girl, who had so wanted tonight to be special.

“You are not going to die. You’re going to go up the back stairs and wash your face, and lie down until everyone’s gone. Then you and I will have a talk, and try to decide what you’re going to do.”

She would also have a talk with Ed Spangler. Sissy wouldn’t even have to know who was behind Beech’s getting transferred. And it’d do them good to have to decide if they
wanted
to be together.

Only after she had gotten Sissy settled on the bed in her old room, amid a gaggle of ancient stuffed animals—her childhood playthings, which to this day she absolutely refused to have disturbed—did Cordelia give in to the headache that had begun hammering at her temples. In her bathroom, she splashed rosewater on her throat, and pressed cotton balls dipped in witch hazel to her aching eyelids.

Downstairs again, she put on her best smile as she moved among the guests, reassuring them that Sissy would be all right.

“Netta must have spilled something on the floor,” she told Miriam White, shaking her head. “And Sissy, in those new shoes of hers—why, it was lucky she didn’t sprain something, or worse.” She could tell by the sympathetic yet knowing look on Miriam’s face that she didn’t believe that story one bit. Miriam—as well as everyone else—probably thought Sissy had had too much to drink. Well, let them think it. Better than their knowing the truth.

Then, finally, blessedly, the exodus—coats brushing up against one another at the door as kisses and promises to get together were exchanged, chirrupy goodbyes, car engines starting up, and the crunch of tires on gravel. Lydia Pinkney called out to her, “One of these days, Cordelia Truscott, I swear I am going to pry that tomato-aspic recipe loose from you!”

As the last guest was ushered out, Cordelia caught sight of Beech crossing the vestibule like a sailor aboard a listing deck, his hand shoved in his pocket, maniacally jingling his keys. She opened her mouth to warn him about driving in his condition, but, before she could get the words out, Gabe materialized out of the crowd to step in front of him.

“Why don’t you let me drive you. Beech?” he said in an easy voice that suggested nothing out of the ordinary. “I’m going that way, and I can drop you off.”

Beech shot him an irritated look. “No thanks, I’m okay. Besides, I have a car.”

“Of course. But shouldn’t you be leaving it for Caroline? She’ll be needing it, soon as she’s up to driving home.”

“I
said
I can handle it,” Beech snarled, his red face growing even redder. “Are you suggesting I can’t?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Okay,
then ...” Beech tried to push past him, but Gabe gripped his arm.

Cordelia caught the look of stunned surprise on Beech’s bovine face—former star halfback of Robert E. Lee High, at least four inches taller than Gabe—when he tried to wrestle his arm away and couldn’t.

A sort of dizziness took hold of her. Oddly, she felt both frightened and overflowing with admiration.

“Le’
go,”
Beech muttered with a baleful glare. “I
know
you understand English ... even if I don’t get why you’d want to rake leaves for a living.”

“And I know
you
understand English, Beech,” replied Gabe genially, “because you earned just enough points to pass my course.”

“Jesus, what’s with you—you take steroids?” Beech was now clumsily attempting to laugh the whole thing off.

“Come on, Beech, let’s go.” Gabe spoke kindly.

Watching Beech start to sweat like a ham in the oven, then finally sag in defeat, Cordelia knew Gabe had won.

“You know, I missed last Sunday’s game.” Gabe spoke quickly, his arm round Beech’s shoulders now. “I heard the Falcons just squeezed it out with a tremendous end run. Did you see it?”

“See
it? Man, I was out of my mind. It was goddamn
beautiful.”
Beech, who lived and breathed football, was letting himself be distracted, and be led out the door like a schoolboy. “Let me tell you how it ...” His voice trailed off as they moved out onto the porch, with Gabe tossing Cordelia a two-fingered wave over his shoulder, mouthing,
Be right back.

Cordelia felt her heart leap at the prospect of sharing a quiet nightcap with Gabe. Then she was distracted by the sight of Hollis, ambling toward the kitchen carrying a tray of used glasses. His hair, she saw, was white as a shorn lamb’s. When had he gotten so old, and so stooped? And how, when she saw him every day, could she not have noticed this?

She felt old herself ... and tired, so tired. Not just because of Sissy, either. What a strain it was playing hostess, she thought, always having to think of the right thing to say, to remember every name, to be informed and clever and witty. When she was married, it had been easier, because it had been
Gene
in the spotlight, people looking up to him, hanging on his every word.

Twenty pale roses—that’s how many she counted in the carpet runner as, without being aware of even moving her feet, she moved down the hall and into the empty parlor.

Sinking down in the wing chair by the fireplace, Cordelia closed her eyes. She found herself remembering the day she’d first laid eyes on her husband, first heard him speak. She’d been a political-science major at George Washington University—over the “dead body” of her still vehemently alive mother, who’d insisted she go to Duke—and a damned know-it-all to boot: informing her roommate, Betty Preston, who had gotten them passes to the House gallery, that she didn’t care
what
this freshman Democrat Betty was so impressed with had to say—as far as she was concerned, the way the system worked, no one man could make a difference.