I'm Glad About You (12 page)

Things hadn’t changed. Alison cautiously opened the front door—it had been standing half ajar, so there was no reason really to ring—and for a moment watched a bunch of total strangers laugh and shout at one another. She was glad that she had bothered to put on several choice pieces of her new wardrobe; Dennis was hanging out with people who dressed considerably better than she or any of their friends had in high school. These people had jobs and money and they seemed to think that a Christmas party was the perfect opportunity to show all that off. The house was just as she remembered it—exquisite—although the beautiful lines of the mansion’s soaring front foyer were obscured by the numbers of partygoers who truly seemed crushed into every odd corner they could find. Even though this was a fancier crowd, the rules of too much alcohol still, apparently, applied. Everyone was smiling and laughing and flirting cheerfully; they had all already had maybe two or three. It was numbers four, five, and six when things got a little wilder.

But as well as she knew this party, she didn’t know any of the players, and for a moment she panicked. It was a learned fear, something that she had just picked up in the past few months. In New York, when you walked into a party alone, you really
were
alone, and unless your host had invited you in order to palm you off on someone who was looking to be fixed up, no one was going to even bother saying hello. Up to this moment, she would have said that Cincinnati truly was different when it came to the party scene; when you arrived by yourself, people would welcome you politely, usher you in, and introduce you to their friends, who would ask engaging questions and try to make you feel at home. But now she wasn’t sure where she was. This party looked impenetrable and, given her already heightened nerves, downright terrifying. She almost turned and ran.

“Not so fast,” laughed a voice at her shoulder. A hand actually reached out and held her in place.

“Dennis! Merry Christmas!” She smiled professionally. Dennis looked exactly the same, his open and sunny Midwestern grin undercut by skittering eyes which were slightly too obvious in their hunger for things which would be bad for him. His dark hair was still thick, thinning only at the temples, which made him look even more sardonic than he was. He gave her the once-over with that hedonist’s appreciation she had seen before, but it wasn’t a source of real worry; in the past few years, Dennis was consistently too drunk to really try anything more than an inconvenient grope. In high school, he always seemed radical in his decadence, but it was easy to see now what a coward he was. Flushed with drink, hiding in Cincinnati, working at P&G—and she really had no idea what he did there, since he never shared the specifics—hovering constantly around the wealth and privilege accorded to a father he despised, Dennis was now in the full flower of his weakness.
If he’d left Ohio he would have turned into nothing, but it would have made a man of him
, she thought.
He’ll turn into nothing here and it will just make him even more bitter than he is already.

“You look fantastic,” she said.

“Well, you look like a scared rabbit,” he told her, with a superior glint in his eye. He kissed her on the cheek, lingering just a second too long.

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“What do I mean by ‘scared rabbit’? I mean ‘delicious,’ Alison; you look good enough to eat. The boots are a terrific touch and they make you nice and tall. Well done. Now, let’s get this over with.” He put his arm around her shoulder and steered her straight into the heart of the crowd.

“Do you think I could take my coat off and get a drink, Dennis?” Alison laughed. Her heart was literally pounding; she could hear the blood in her ears.

“Absolutely, give me that, and what would you like?” He peeled her coat deftly off her shoulders and draped it over his arm. “Van, you have to meet Alison! Alison Moore, this is Van. Evangeline Wallace, she’s Kyle’s wife, and she took Kyle’s name, isn’t that right, Van? Sorry, Evangeline.” Alison stared. She had had no idea, honestly, that the interloper wife was standing there, right in front of her.

“You can call me Van,” Van laughed. She had a perfect laugh, silvery, delightful.

“Yes, but why would you, if the real thing is Evangeline! Isn’t it fantastic, Al, someone in Illinois actually named their kid
Evangeline
.”

“Well, I wasn’t born in Illinois! We’re really transplanted Southerners,” Evangeline declared cheerfully. “My mother is from Louisiana.” She reached out and shook Alison’s hand. Alison shook it back, nodded politely, and hoped that her smile was coming off better than it felt like. She couldn’t believe it. Evangeline, or Van, or whatever her name was, was no taller than five foot one, and she had a perfect little peach of a figure. Her skin was a creamy kind of pink, and she had startling blue eyes, a blue so dark it looked like a lake in the mountains in the winter. Her mouth was wide and delicate with a crazy fullness in the middle where the upper lip parted from the lower with an unconsciously lovely lift. This chick was a total blonde cupcake. Alison knew that’s what men wanted, how could you
not
know, just growing up in America, that every boy out there innately just wanted some sweet little blonde thing to smile up at him, but
Kyle
? That’s what
Kyle
wanted, too?

“I’ve really been looking forward to meeting you,” Alison told her, with what she hoped sounded like sincerity. “I’m an old friend of Kyle’s.”

“Of course I know who you are!” Van smiled. “I’ve heard all about you!”

“Nothing too bad, I hope!”

“Not at all. Everyone was so excited when you were on that television show. That must have been so exciting for you.”

“It was nerve-wracking, but fun.”

“Well, everyone in Cincinnati was talking about it, it seemed like. We were so sorry to miss it. We were having dinner with Kyle’s parents and his mom was worried it might be too violent. And who can blame her! It’s awful, some of the things they put on television, just ridiculous anymore.”

Alison blinked. This last zinger was clearly an uncalled-for dig, although who was kidding who? They both were expected to hate each other on sight, and they most certainly did. She was just stunned that a total stranger would feel free to haul out big moralistic guns about what Alison was doing for a living within the first thirty seconds of conversation. Dennis, watching the whole thing, was practically licking his chops.

“Where
is
Kyle?” he asked. “I thought he was here a second ago.”

“Oh, he went to get me a club soda,” Van explained.

“A club soda? You’re not drinking?” Dennis raised that eyebrow again. It was starting to look like he practiced it, in the mirror.

“No, I’m not.”

“It’s a Christmas party, you don’t want even a glass of wine?”

“No thanks.” Her tone was deliberately blank, as if she were landing the words without intent.

“Why, Van, you sly puss.” Dennis focused his attention on her with a sudden glee.

“What is that supposed to mean, Dennis?” she countered. “You are always acting like you know some big secret.”

“Do you have a big secret?”

“If I did, I certainly would not tell you.”

“I’ll just get it out of Kyle.”

“You will not, because maybe Kyle doesn’t know.”

“Then there
is
a big secret.”

“There’s always a big secret.”

“Not this big.”

“Stop it, Dennis. You’re terrible. Where
is
Kyle?” Van arched her neck toward the light, as she looked around with eager delight, trying to spot Kyle in the crowd. Alison knew the whole performance was for her benefit, and in a swift moment of clarity she found it terrifically unfair, that they both thought it so clever to torture her this way. She had never done anything to Dennis worse than refuse to hook up with him while she was in love with the boy he proclaimed was his best friend. And this Van, Kyle’s new wife? Alison had never done anything to her at all. Yet here they were, performing an excruciating opera—which centered on the pain they must be causing her—solely for their own amusement.

“I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly and completely at the end of her emotional rope. “I’m going to go get myself a drink.”

“Oh, let me!” Dennis said, smiling his devil’s grin.

“I’m not a fucking child, Dennis; I can get my own fucking drink,” she told him, pulling out her potent ability with the word “fuck” in an unflinching warning.

“Well, I guess you need one,” he informed her, as bitchy as an old theater queen.

“That’s right, I do,” she shot back, as she turned away from them both. She knew that this would instantly become a part of the lore surrounding her unpromising meeting with Kyle’s idiotic blonde wife.
Good
, she thought.

Across the room and behind a pillar Kyle watched Alison turn, her pride and her anger flashing like a sword in battle. Then, there it was: The color rose to her cheeks and he recognized the quick shame which overcame her every time she let her temper get the better of her. The sight of her—vulnerable, stylish, alone—unmoored his heart beyond reason. She looked taller, somehow, and more slender than he remembered. Her hair was longer, and cut into subtle layers which revealed the occasional auburn highlights buried in the dark, textured browns. He had told himself, in the past, that those hidden streaks of auburn were his alone; as he came to know every inch of her they had revealed themselves readily to his seeking hands while remaining elusive to the unknowing eyes of others. Now that some clever New York hairstylist had uncovered them with a swipe of the scissors, he felt lost and adrift. Those hidden glints of red were no longer his, and neither was she.

But that was on her; it was all on her. She was always the one to end things, usually with no warning; they would be completely drunk on each other in every way possible, and then it was like she would simply turn the spigot off and disappear inside herself. Then the other Alison showed up, the one who was cold and clinical and determined that it was long past time to end this. That Alison wouldn’t even discuss things. It was like dealing with someone who had multiple personality disorder, frankly. He remembered all the times he would show up at her house, or her dorm at college, or that exhausted apartment she shared with those hippies in Seattle. Every time she would open the door, his nerves would stand completely on edge, waiting to find out which one of her was in charge. If she smiled and threw her arms around him, they were going to have an amazing night. If she couldn’t meet his eyes, not so much.

But the first Alison—the one he was in love with—always returned to him. That was the reason he held on with such determination, even during the months of separation and break-offs. Those times always seemed to be merely necessary, part of the cost of adulthood, and education. They had fallen in love in
high school
, for crying out loud, and even though they started applying to colleges at the same time, there was no discussion, ever, that they might apply to the same school. It wasn’t done. They were too young. Too young and too sensible. His parents had sat him down at the well-worn Formica table in the kitchen and told him soberly that they thought it would be a bad idea; they loved Alison and they knew he did too, but college was a time to broaden your world as well as your mind, and going to school with your high school sweetheart would cut you off from all that. He nodded and accepted everything they said, swallowing the panic that threatened to rise up like gorge from his stomach; he was an essentially obedient young man, and the idea of defying his parents on a point so patently established in the local cultural lore was not in his skill set. When he presented this reality to Alison, she thought about it only briefly, then shrugged. Her parents had not given her the same speech—there was too much chaos over at the Moores’ for things like parental guidance, honestly—but she had assumed that this would be the lay of the land.

“Well, if they’re going to split us up for four years,” she said thoughtfully, “we need to get busy.” And with that she climbed onto his lap, straddling him with those long legs, reaching under his shirt, and kissing him with a passion that never ceased to thrill him. They were sitting on a floor in the corner of the Moore family room behind the piano; it was one of the few relatively private spaces in that small house full of people but it wasn’t like they couldn’t be seen, if someone went looking. Alison didn’t care; she never did, even after her mother had found them one night so close to having sex they might actually have fallen off that cliff if Rose’s spot-on timing—and enraged disgust—hadn’t intervened. Kyle remembered every one of those make-out sessions with a vividness which still frightened him; at night, when he would return to these memories obsessively, living in the heat of the past, he wondered if they would ever wear thin. As of this instant, they had not.

It was a spectacularly delusional dance. He truly hated her, and had already laid full responsibility for the creeping mediocrity of his marriage at Alison’s feet. But even as he privately nursed this whisper of blame—for a disaster which hadn’t even occurred yet—he simultaneously drowned, every chance he got, in the memories of their time together. Outwardly, no one would ever know. He barely knew himself, the cost of holding those two opposing psychological rivers right up next to each other, day in and day out. But he had a powerful mind, and an even more powerful will, put in place by years of Catholic indoctrination. No one would ever have to know.

The question now, of course, was how to get out of there without having to speak to her. He was furious with Dennis, who had told him in no uncertain terms that Alison had
not
been invited, and that there was no chance whatsoever that she would show up. He was furious with Van, who had insisted on coming even though he tried to beg off a half dozen times, on the off chance that in spite of his protestations Dennis actually might try to pull something like this. And he was furious with Alison, who he knew in his heart had come to check out and judge the woman he had married instead of her.
Instead of her.
He hated thinking of the two of them in the same sentence; his past and his future were completely different lives and there was no point in comparing the two women, and even if he did—
even if he did
—Van clearly was the superior choice. She was more beautiful, and there was a supple grace to her blonde loveliness which was, frankly, relaxing. “Relaxing” was the last word you would use in regard to any aspect of Alison. Van was every bit as intelligent as Alison, if not more so; Alison’s erratic emotionalism always crippled her in an argument. And Van was loyal. He knew that she would never turn on him, or abandon him, under any circumstance. The same could not be said of Alison.