My Dearest Friend (13 page)

That first semester in Westhampton had been a frazzling time for Joe, who was trying so hard to do everything perfectly so he could get tenure; Daphne wanted to be there when he got home from work or for lunch or dinner to listen to all he had to tell her. Daphne didn’t know what she wanted to do—she didn’t think she wanted to start commuting for her Ph.D. work now, not when Joe needed support and peace and quiet at home so he could concentrate on his work. She didn’t want to go to work either, in some secretarial job; she had just done that for four years. She enjoyed being able to stay in her robe, finishing her coffee in the mornings; she enjoyed watching the old house spring to new life under her hands. Now when Daphne tried to remember that first semester … when she had no women friends … what came into her mind first and most vividly was the pattern of wallpaper she had finally chosen for the kitchen, a luscious melon-colored print of basketed fruit—apricots, plums, pears, apples, grapes, all shades of orange and lavender and ruby. She had papered the walls with that, then trimmed the woodwork in melon-colored paint, and washed and painted the inside of the cupboards, even the insides of the top cupboards that no one could see. She ordered quilted fabric that matched the wallpaper and made cushions for the captain’s chairs as well as place mats and napkins. She made crisp heavy white cotton curtains for the windows. She played classical music on her stereo while she worked, and let her head fill with daydreams. She began to think that being a “homemaker” might be very pleasant.

Yet she knew she was lonely for women friends. She had had good friends at U. Mass. and still phoned them occasionally, but her life was now centered in this town, in this house. Joe wanted the inviolable security of the tenured faculty members, the complacency with which they moved through the world, the respect. Joe and Daphne yearned to be like those tenured faculty, all of whom, it seemed, had an old Jag or Rolls or MG or at least a Cadillac that had belonged to their parents, all of whom had summer places on the Vineyard or the Maine coast. The couple the Millers admired and envied the most, like everyone else at the college and, for that matter, in the town, was Hudson and Claire Jennings.

The Jenningses were just a few years older than the Millers, but they had tenure,
the house on the Vineyard, the antique auto in the garage. Hudson was handsome, in a giraffish way, with long legs and limbs and long-eyelashed huge gentle brown eyes. He had thick dark hair that fell over his forehead, and he was kind. He was also brilliant and well-liked, and it puzzled Daphne that Hudson was married to Claire, who was rather large and awkward and mannish in an English, Virginia Woolf–intellectual sort of way. Claire was very pale. She had blond hair that she wore in a twist at the back of her head, and a long face from which her lower front teeth protruded somewhat. Her eyes were a piercing blue, with heavy lids, and she radiated intelligence and “breeding.”

The younger faculty, all Anglophiles, said only Claire, of all the people they’d ever met, was “the real thing.” She knew all about birds and flowers and dogs. Claire and Hudson had no children, but somehow that seemed right to those who knew them. Claire and Hudson seemed to have sprung full-blown from the womb, married, aristocratic, educated, elite, and terribly self-possessed. Claire had a long thin mouth that seldom moved, and a remarkable smile, during which her lips did not move sideways as others’ did, but simply turned up slightly at the corners while her eyelids drooped down correspondingly over her great long oblong blue eyes. So one never knew if one was amusing Claire or boring her into a state of agony. But this all gave her tremendous power and everyone wanted to please her, and Hudson was erudite and full of clever tales, so the Jenningses were invited everywhere.

When Joe and Daphne received the invitation to the Jenningses’ for New Year’s Eve, they were wild with delight. They felt like the Chosen, and wouldn’t have traded places with anyone in the world. The Jenningses lived on one of the most prestigious streets in this prestigious town. They had a great tidy French Provincial set in three acres of lawn and garden. Joe and Daphne nearly swooned with pleasure when they were shown into the library—the
library
! And it was paneled in mahogany, with shelves and shelves of books and hunting or seascape oils hung around the fireplace and an old but not shabby Persian rug on the slate floor. This was how all college professors should live, the Millers thought: this is how they would live one day.

At one end of the room, on an elaborately carved table, stood oversize art books and small brass or porcelain sculptures set out very formally on its surface. At the other end, by the window, was a walnut drinks cart with a silver ice bucket and some ornate crystal glasses and a bottle of Dry Sack. Daphne and Joe were just settling into a deep sofa before the fire when Hudson came into the room, bringing another couple from the
college with him, the Krafts.

Otto taught German; he and Laura, whose real name was Hannelore, were both from Germany. Otto was stocky and bald even though he was only in his early thirties, with ice-cold blue eyes and amazing white teeth. He would have been thrillingly handsome except that he looked and sounded and carried himself like a Nazi. He was stiff and his speech was ponderous. In contrast, Laura seemed warm and bright and vivid, with her long dark hair held back with a paisley silk scarf and perfume wafting from her. When she crossed her legs her black evening skirt made slithery sounds as it exposed her legs almost to the hip. She was wearing patterned black hose and her thighs were long and slender; all during their friendship Daphne would envy Laura her thighs. During that long evening when Daphne and Laura first met, Daphne didn’t know whom she wanted to look at the most: dark-haired, vibrant Laura, or cool, blue-blooded Claire, or gorgeous, gentle Hudson. She tried not to stare. She tried not to feel tongue-tied. Everyone else seemed so cosmopolitan and self-assured.

They discussed college matters and college gossip. They talked about the major events of that year, and their hopes for what was to come. Claire held forth at length on the tradition of celebrating the new year, which was a celebration of the victory of order over chaos. Cultures had always celebrated the new year, she told them, as a time of purging and mortification in order to have renewal and revitalization. William the Conqueror had decreed in the eleventh century that January first was the start of the new year, but in medieval times the new year had started, more appropriately, in the spring, when the earth was coming back to life. The noisemaking, Claire thought, was probably originally from the Chinese, who exploded firecrackers and lit torches to frighten off the evil spirits.

She is so learned,
Daphne thought, looking at her hostess, who sat at ease in her wing chair, her dogs at her feet. But could she be friends with Claire? She didn’t think so. Claire seemed so … humorless. Perhaps, though, Daphne was being unfair, perhaps Claire was in pain. It was Hudson who served them their drinks and brought in the tray of cheese and crackers, and Claire had said, with a wave of her hand, “Hudson has to do these things, you see; I have a bad back.” Perhaps that accounted for Claire’s stiffness.
I wonder if she can enjoy sex,
Daphne thought, and looked over at Hudson, who to her horror was just at that moment looking at her as if he were reading her mind. She felt her face blush and immediately looked back at Claire, freshening her face with an expression
of interest.

“…  the Scots have their own tradition of serving haggis on New Year’s Eve,” Claire was saying. “Have you ever eaten haggis?” Without pausing for a response, she went on. “It’s made from a pudding of sheep’s innards and oatmeal and other such things, stuffed into a sheep’s stomach, and slit open at the table.”

Daphne looked away again, this time at Laura, and to her surprise, Laura smiled and made a funny face, rolling her eyes. Daphne grinned and looked away. She didn’t want to be disrespectful, not here. But she was glad to see that smile of Laura’s; it reminded her that this
was
New Year’s Eve, and the tradition in the twentieth-century United States, she wanted to say to Claire, was to drink too much and dance and party and eat, not to attend lectures. Daphne shifted in her chair. How old was Claire anyway? She and Hudson both seemed to be in their early thirties, but Claire acted as if she was and always had been some petrified grande dame. How could she make Hudson happy? For he was not as deadly as she. Daphne looked at Hudson as he sat in his wing chair across from Claire. Did Claire ever walk in front of this elaborate fireplace and kneel on this gorgeous Persian rug and unzip her handsome husband’s expensive gray flannel trousers and lean down to put her mouth—Hudson looked at Daphne then, and again she found herself blushing, terrified that he could read her thoughts. She looked down at her hands. Well, Claire probably didn’t do that, she thought, because of her bad back.

The night seemed to go on forever. Now and then the others managed to say a few words, but mostly Claire held forth, while Hudson sat smiling benevolently at her. At midnight, Hudson opened a bottle of champagne and they all solemnly toasted the new year and each pair of spouses exchanged chaste kisses.
I’ve got to get out of here,
Daphne thought,
before I turn to stone.

A few minutes after midnight, Laura surprised them all (even, if one could judge by the look on his face, Otto) by standing up and saying with a smile, “I’m so sorry, but we have to go now. We promised the baby-sitter we’d be home as soon after midnight as possible.”

When Hudson and Claire didn’t seem dismayed by this announcement, Daphne said, “I’m afraid we must be going along too,” and rose.

Claire didn’t get up—her back—but Hudson saw them to the door and handed out their coats and accepted their thanks for a lovely evening, and finally all four were out in the invigorating black cold of January 1, 1967. Daphne felt almost electrified by the
change—movement, walking in the open air to the car, after sitting for so long without moving—cold air after the heat of the stuffy room; she felt vividly awake, and yearned for something
more
now, like someone who has awakened from a long sleep and is hungry, or wants to throw off the covers and rush eagerly into the day.

Daphne felt warm pressure on her arm, and there, wrapped in her black Persian-lamb coat (a present, Daphne would learn later, from Laura’s wealthy German mother-in-law—and so
soft
), her dark hair falling around her face, her smile like a candle in the dark, was Laura, suddenly hugging Daphne to her. “Do you believe her? Good God. Listen, you and Joe come to our house now,” she whispered, and told Daphne the address.

In the car on the way to the Krafts’, Joe and Daphne exploded with laughter about the horrible evening at the Jenningses’, but as they pulled into the Krafts’ driveway, Joe cautioned Daphne not to say too much; he wouldn’t want any of his criticisms to get back to Hudson. And Hudson, he said again, was not like that at the college. He was enjoyable and took a great deal of interest in his colleagues and the younger faculty. He had heard that Claire had a reputation for being formal—and now they knew she deserved it.

It was late, though, and Daphne was tired, and the Krafts’ house, at first glance, from the outside, disappointed Daphne, who had been expecting something—what?—
luscious,
after meeting Laura. The porch light illuminated a traditional commonplace split-level ranch house, the kind of house Daphne liked least in all the world. She thought they were so mediocre, and this house was in a little cul-de-sac of similar split-levels. It just didn’t seem right to Daphne that an originally European college professor with a beautiful wife should live in a ranch house. Now the exhaustion of the whole late night came over her and for a moment she didn’t think she could find the energy to get out of the car to go up to the brick-and-stucco building.

But the inside of the Krafts’ house was a wonderful surprise. It was like a museum of modern art, except that it was comfortable. Everything was black, red, or white, except for the furniture, which was teak. The back wall of the living room was entirely glass, looking out over a forest, and hanging against the glass were prisms and multicolored sun disks and an amazing leaded-glass gargoyle that Laura said had come from the window of a ruined fifteenth-century German church. There were plenty of comfortable seats in the living room near the fire that Otto lit, and Daphne and Joe sank down into the plush receptive warmth of the long, deep black leather sofa.

While Otto walked the baby-sitter home, Laura brought out champagne and beautifully shaped pottery plates laden with Brie and Camembert and Edam cheese and salamis and sausages and small sweet pickles and olives and a liver pâté and a fish pâté and salty chips and sweet dark pumpernickel bread and speckled mustard. There were clever little plates and small knives and forks and spoons, and finally there was a large silver platter with eleven different kinds of elaborate cookies.

“My God,” Daphne said, “were you planning a party?”

“Oh”—Laura laughed—“no, not at all. Otto just enjoys eating and I love to cook. This is just stuff we have around. But of course for Christmas I always make lots of different cookies and breads.”

It was a feast, and it was a delight to relax at last in this bright room, to laugh and drink a little too much champagne and talk and eat. Daphne and Joe stayed until four in the morning. Joe and Otto started talking college politics, college policies, and Laura moved close to Daphne, who sat with her shoes kicked off and her feet tucked under her. That night Daphne came under Laura’s spell. Laura that night became her inspiration and teacher. She had never met anyone like Laura, who was so beautiful, and who touched people when she spoke to them, and was always touching herself while she talked, stroking her long hair or twirling a curl around her finger or slipping her hand just inside the neckline of her black silk blouse and gently, absentmindedly stroking her collarbone or turning the rings on her slender fingers. Daphne was envious of Laura’s confidence about what was important in the world.