Rich Friends (2 page)

Sheridan glanced around. “The kissing's over,” he said, lifting his free hand, glancing at his steel watch. “We can hit the road.”

She gripped his fingers tighter. “There's still the cake.”

“Let 'em eat cake,” Sheridan said with his short laugh, “when we're gone.”

“I have to c-cut it.”

“Bring it on, then.”

“I can't. I mean, the bride sh-shouldn't,” little Em stammered. How could she argue with Sheridan?

He bent swiftly, saying in her small, flat ear, “If we stick around too long, they'll get the idea we're not eager.”

Darts like needles stuck downward in the pit of Em's stomach. She wasn't. Eager. She was terrified. She had taken the blood tests, Mazzini and Kahn, and afterward Dr. Porter had given her premarital counseling. Which meant he'd examined her on a leather table with spread metal stirrups (pure torture) and said he'd fit her for a diaphragm after the honeymoon, when the hymen was broken. Back in his office he had penciled male and female organs. Em stared at his memo pad, hypnotized. In cramped second-floor bedrooms of the Omega Delta house she and her friends often discussed aberrations like the man and woman not fitting or getting stuck and remaining that way until separated by the fire department. Dr. Porter's voice was cheerful, easy, yet his words were infinitely more disturbing. This was about to happen. Happen to her! “Orgasm,” he had paused, then gone on to tell her she would know she'd achieved it when she felt an urge similar to the need to urinate. And she wasn't even one for petting!

Sheridan's muscular arm snaked around her and she felt his warm, dampish side pressing affectionately against her. Again she was overwhelmed by the miracle. They were married. She would be a good wife, she vowed earnestly. Would, would, would.

“I'll find Caroline. She'll get Lucidda to wheel it out.”

“Atsmygirl.”

Em rose on her grass-stained white shoes. Nearsighted, she had refused to wear glasses on her day of days. She squinted to find her sister, who was also her maid of honor.

Near the pyracantha hedge stood Caroline, face shadowed by a wide-brimmed horsehair hat, gesturing and chattering with Van Vliets. The Family, the entire group dressed with impeccable simplicity for a garden wedding, adults and children alike endowed with a terrifying (to Em) air of self-possession that said they owned any bit of earth that they chose to stand on. Em grew nervous, awkward with her wealthy Van Vliet relations, all of them, even her grandmother.

Em gathered her bridal train under one arm, and veiled head high, tugged Sheridan's hand. At the same moment Caroline, seeing her, patted her grandmother's arm in farewell and came over with the forthright confidence of a prima ballerina. Em heaved a sigh of relief. She wouldn't have to talk to Them.

Tiny beads of sweat stood out on Caroline's forehead, and her normally pink cheeks were crimson. Almost nineteen, she was a tall girl with a healthy, full-blooded Edwardian handsomeness. And great style. Despite her maid of honor's dress with its dowdy sweetheart neckline (the bride's choice) Caroline managed to look chic. Or
chick
, as she purposefully mispronounced. Caroline's black hair was set in a loose pageboy with a few strands permitted to drift casually onto her forehead, drawing attention to her sparkling blue eyes and the color in her cheeks, to her blue eyes and cheeks so rosy. Her graduated pearls were knotted to the fashionable choker length. In Caroline's attractive presence, Em felt her bridal splendor disappear. Em, shrinking and fading like a rag doll washed in the Bendix. She was used to it. The only time she let it get to her came when she saw Caroline with the Family. This alone she envied her sister: her ease with Them. Sheridan slowed, his hand tightening on hers, an unspoken admission that They unnerved him, too.

“Hot!” Caroline fanned herself vigorously. “Sweaty the bride, and so on.” She laughed. Caroline's laughter was a rare gift. People melted on its receipt. It emerged from deep in Caroline's chest and had an almost raucous note like a calliope, a joyous, golden invitation to have some fun. Em couldn't help smiling. Tall Caroline embraced her short elder sister with one arm while with the other she drew Sheridan closer, breathing a champagne-scented kiss in the air between them.

“The cake,” Sheridan said.

“Cake?” Caroline fluttered black lashes.

He made a cutting gesture.

“Oh
that
cake. Luv, it's about time. The bubbly's run dry.” Caroline laughed again, and Em, anxious as she was, couldn't keep back an echoing chuckle. “Mother!” Caroline exclaimed. “Why on earth she kept
in
sisting we didn't need another case! We children were meant to be blotting up the fruit punch. Remember, Em, I—”

Sheridan interrupted, “We'll get it cut now.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Caroline's salute tilted her wide-brimmed hat.

And she started for the patio, moving with agonizing slowness, or so it seemed to Em, pausing to smile, laugh, speak, touch an arm, an eternity before a wisp of pink skirt narrowly escaped being trapped by the screen door.

3

Caroline leaned against the Bendix, staring at the three-tiered cake. Stiff it was, and less digestible-looking than the china bride and groom simpering under a quadruple arch of tightly folded fabric flowers. Trust Em and Mother! In their conventional minds a wedding cake
must
look like this. Caroline, tossing her hat to the linoleum, started to unfold cloth flowers.

These impingements of the family (or, as her parents and Em capitalized, the Family—like the Holy One) grated on Caroline's healthy nerves. The house was wildly neat, the arrangements so faw-ncy that something inevitably went wrong. For example, at her eighteenth birthday tea last August 13, the Wynans' ancient golden retriever had lifted a leg to Uncle Richard's white flannels. Of course the family—and Caroline—had thought this hilarious, and—equally of course—any mention of the great pee incident still reduced Mother to quivering middle-age curds and apologies. Poor Mother. As if any act of a Glendale dog could disturb them.

Caroline glanced through the uncurtained service porch window and saw Van Vliets standing apart from other guests. The family. Handsome. Witty. Descendants of the hardworking little Dutchman who in 1858 had traveled from New York by steamer to Panama, losing three fingers to snakebite as he crossed the Isthmus on his journey to the fly-infested village of Los Angeles. Here, everything profited him. His original stock of tea, bottles of spice, yeast powders, and dishes (along with the flour that the china had been packed in) he parlayed into a thriving grocery business near the Plaza. The village grew into a town, Southern Pacific railroad ties were laid, he opened another shop, and another. His lush, black-haired bride was heiress to the Garcia land grant. The resulting Van Vliets came in two sizes. Dark, tall, rosy ones, like Caroline. Little ones, like Em, who generally were fair. The small blond ones, strangely, all had narrow, pinch-tilted noses as if God had taken thumb and forefinger, tweaking to give His little Van Vliets distinction.

Mrs. Wynan alone had the size of a dark one with the light hair and tilted nose of a small one. On her broad, flat face, the Van Vliet nose spread too wide. She resembled a shy Hereford. She was the oldest child, but that didn't prevent her from being terrified of her two worldly brothers and their elegant wives. And of her cousins, so many years younger. Even of her own mother. They in turn were amused. She was so Glendale. No other life would have fit Mrs. Wynan as well as this, with her squirrel-jawed, loving, unsuccessful dentist husband, her two daughters, needlework of some kind eternally in her large, doughy hands.

Poor Mother. Caroline pushed at a shining black strand. Poor Mother. But Caroline knew
she
herself didn't fit in smug, snug Glendale. She never mentioned her mother's patronymic—wild horses couldn't drag the name from her—yet in her rare bad moments she had a rune to cast: I am a Van Vliet of the Van Vliets.

The china bride and groom teetered.

“Omigawd,” Caroline muttered, hastily grabbing to save it. She mangled a wire arch of flowers and crushed two rosettes. Glaring at the damage, she leaned forward, searching the garden for Beverly. Seventy guests with insects swarming above them. She scanned the view beyond the screen door. Attended by their crew-cut boyfriends were her dowdy Omega Delta sisters. (She had been bid by good houses, Tri Delt and Theta, but it never had entered Caroline's loyal head to pledge a different house from Em.)

Caroline hurried through the square kitchen, opening the back door. Garbage cans overflowed with torn silver wrapping, ribbons, and excelsior. She saw Beverly.

“Ahhah!” Caroline cried. “Caught you!”

Party noises funneled down the narrow drive. Beverly didn't hear. Purse under her arm, head bent on long, slender neck, she lit a Tareyton. She really is unique, Caroline thought. Why
must
she be so antisocial?

Though totally dissimilar, the two had been best friends since a cold, clear afternoon when Miss Marron, the gray-haired witch who ruled third grade, had dispatched them with a note to the principal.
Making a disturbance
, Miss Marron had written. Belching, she meant. Beverly hadn't. Caroline had. As they walked, Beverly murmured her admiration of Caroline, surely the world's champeen ventriloquist belcher, and Caroline praised Beverly's heroism, not snitching. When they reached the slotted shade of the pergola, Caroline said, “Let's be best friends.” “You mean that?” Beverly's soft voice raised in surprise. “Sure.” “Honestly and truly?” “Forever and ever,” Caroline vowed. Surprisingly, they
had
remained a joint force during the wars of adolescence. And unknown to Beverly, Caroline had gotten her pledged to Omega Delta in an epic chapter-room session. “I don't give a damn about the alums and their tacky prejudices! She's witty and talented and better than anyone else we're bidding and she's
my best friend
!” Small Em, always striving to be fair-minded, had risen from her president's desk to agree with Caroline. This past year Caroline hadn't seen quite so much of Beverly. Nothing planned. She still felt as warm, but the best-friend season was past. They were growing up. So, Caroline wondered as she watched Beverly take that first drag, why should she feel this sense of loss? Well, who else knew how unguarded Beverly was?

Beverly realized she was being watched. “Sneaking one,” she said, holding up the hand with the cigarette. “You know Mother.”

“I know you.” Caroline deepened her voice. “I vant to be alone.” She decided her Garbo was definitely lesser Wynan. She remembered something. “Lloyd's here.”

“He is? But he said after five.”

“A tall V-12 paying his ree-spects to your parents. Anyone else fit the description?” Caroline shook her head. “A real hardship case you've got there.”

Beverly stubbed out the fresh cigarette, starting for the garden.

“Hold on! I
need
you.”

“But Lloyd—he must be ready for a transfusion.” Beverly's soft voice trembled.

Lloyd was shy, true, but the depth of Beverly's sensitivity got to Caroline. “Your fine artistic hand, luv, is unique,” she asserted. “And the cake's a horror.”

So Beverly, the art major, loosened cloth flowers with slender, deft fingers while listening to Caroline's gossip about the guests, joining in the infectious laughter.

“Interested in the destination?” Caroline asked.

Beverly looked up, her mouth opening a little. Surprised. Em had kept everyone, including her sister and parents, in the dark about the location of her honeymoon.

Caroline smiled tantalizingly, holding a long Fire and Ice fingernail to her matching magenta lips. “Don't breathe a word. Sequoia. Keep working. Sheridan's bought a double sleeping bag from the Sears catalog.” Caroline winced. “Imagine. Sears! Em's going to lose it under the open sky.”

“Like Olie de Havilland and Charlie Boyer in
Hold Back the Dawn.
” Beverly's tone was properly sophisticated, yet a sigh escaped.

“It means no, N-O bathroom. That Sheridan! He didn't even
ask
her.”

After a moment Beverly asked, “Caroline, don't you, well, need a bathroom for, uhh, junk?”

They looked at one another, bewildered. Neck they did, plenty, Caroline and Beverly. Neither, though, took part in those mungy little chats at the Omega Delta house—Caroline felt considerably more worldwise than anyone
there
. Mrs. Wynan and Mrs. Linde, thank God, weren't the sort to have comfy talks. When the time came, the two girls agreed, the man would know.

“Em saw Dr. Porter,” Caroline said finally. “She must be fully equipped and informed.”

“Ca-a-aroline,” called a male voice outside the screen door. “Where you hiding?”

“Ain't nobody here but us chickens.” Caroline bent to retrieve her maid of honor hat, smiling into the sunlight. From this angle the young man must have quite a view. Black hair spilling over pink cheeks and firm breast tops. She said to Beverly, “That's good enough. I'll get Lucidda to wheel out the monstrosity. Go rescue Lloyd.”

She ran into the baking heat of the patio.

Beverly went the long way around, moving dreamily through the kitchen. Outside, she saw Lloyd, shifting his weight from one long bell-bottomed leg to the other as he faced her parents. Beverly hurried, her high heels sinking in grass, around clusters of laughing guests.

Lloyd: a quiet, mathematically inclined Catholic boy who played Bach on his oboe, smelled of peppermint, and came from St. Paul, a leftover from Caltech's Navy officer-training program. He was wearing his whites.

Lloyd saw her first. His smile showed lower teeth. Mr. Linde turned. His smile showed dentures that Dr. Wynan had fiddled over endlessly.

Mrs. Linde said, “We've been wondering where you were, dear.” Her voice was firm, assured.