Rich Friends (24 page)

“Now I ask you kinda confidentially,” Vliet laughed, “ain't she sweet?”

His mother laughed.

Alix didn't. She was imagining Mrs. Reed all young and happy, possibly wearing that horrendous gown for the first time. Maybe Mr. Reed had told her she looked swell as he handed her the corsage. Maybe after the Pink Rose Ball he had tried to make out—neck and pet—although with Mrs. Reed this was difficult to imagine. Most likely they'd gone to a drive-in for cheeseburgers while the car radio played those soupy records Vliet collected. Maybe that night Mr. Reed had asked her to marry him. To Alix, the most poignant thing was that Mrs. Reed had spent the evening without foreknowledge that one day she would color her hair too yellow, have sad arms, wrinkles grooved in her neck and face. She had lived that pink evening in unknowing joy. Nostalgia for Em's innocence overflowed in Alix. Her eyes grew moist.

Vliet had glanced over Em's head at her, and she didn't try to hide her emotion. Alix never minded showing emotion—if it didn't reveal her inadequacies.

The front door slammed. Roger? Alix never found out.

Em said good-bye. “Alix, remember me to your mother, will you?”

“Of course I will. Mrs. Reed, I really enjoyed myself.” Impulsively Alix bent to kiss Em's dry cheek. Em kissed her back.

“Do come again, dear.”

“I'd love that.”

Em's hand went up, shading her glasses from strong afternoon sun. She said to Vliet, “Bring Alix back soon.”

As they moved along the Ventura Inbound, Alix said, “She's a nice lady.”

“Why shouldn't she be? She knows I'm safe.”

“Safe?”

“Unimpeachably. She's executrix of our trusts until we're thirty—”

“Not your father?” Alix interrupted.

“Nope. The money came from her Van Vliet grandmother, and the terms are that it's nothing to do with him. Or us. Oh, to be spent on us, but only at Ma's discretion. Which, if you know Ma, means until the age of thirty or self-support, whichever comes first, no woman can hook us.”

Alix nodded. This solved the financial end.

“She's very high on our becoming doctors.”

“Status? My sons the?”

“Not exactly. Ma considers it total failure not to finish every damn thing you start. Never start unless you're willing to go through with it. Perseverance wins the crown. Et cetera.”

“Do I detect bitterness?”

“None at all. I'm with her. It's the only way, Alix, to get it together,” Vliet said. A black-and-white sheriff's car cut ahead of them. Vliet slowed. “Have you gotten the point?”

“About your trusts?”

“Alix, I do wish you'd learn to catch on faster. We have a relationship. It can't be permanent, but it is sincere.”

“They must have sensitivity training at Harvard.”

He chuckled, taking her hand.

But still she held out.

6

“I'm crazy about this,” Alix yelled, holding out her arms, whirling in a great circle.

“The beach?” Cricket asked.

The girls, tall and short, were trotting along wet sand, occasionally splashing through whipped-cream licks of surf. Cricket's left foot pointed outward, causing her to run with a kind of rolling skip.

“This summer and everything about it!” Alix whirled again. “I am so HAPPY and RELAXED.” Not a confession she would have shouted at anyone else, for it implied that neither happiness nor relaxation were her customary state. “The seaweed, the jellyfish, the sun, the sand fleas. You. Vliet.”

“Roger?”

“Roger judges me.”

“That's just his personality. He's not smooth. But he's strong. And good.”

“Obviously why he's passed sentence. I mean, you must've noticed he's always chopping me down.”

Cricket had squatted to dig in wet sand. Small freckled fingers uncovered a shell.

Alix sat next to her. Cricket cleaned the pink interior of the shell, lying back to finish the job. She didn't notice that her hair was getting all sandy.

Alix could not for the life of her understand Cricket.

Conversationally, Cricket never shone. As a listener, too, she could fail, gazing off into the distance. If a subject caught her interest, though, the gray eyes opened wide, an ingenuousness that was flattering. But it was her total disinterest in appearances of every type that boggled Alix. Cricket wore the same denim bikini day after day, she let the fine sprinkling of blonde hairs grow unimpeded on her legs and under her arms. She never carried a comb. When tired, she limped, yet she never stopped any activity in order to conceal this. Also, she must be some sort of brain, graduating before sixteen, but she expressed surprise that Hamlet suffered an Oedipus complex and thought Dostoyevsky wrote
Resurrection
, and, oddest of all, didn't try to cover up these goofs with a clever crack. Alix never was quite able to believe that anyone could be disinterested in climbing the degrees of superiority that make up the human pecking order. So she had decided that Cricket was like water. So transparent she was more complicated than complicated. To Cricket, Alix could confess her failings and feel better. Water quenches and leaves no trace.

She admitted, “He doesn't like me—Roger.”

“You scare him.”

“Who? Me? Why?”

“Oh, you know.”

“I don't.”

“Look in a mirror.”

“Don't have one at hand. Anyway, why does he have to deal with me like I'm a third-time offender?”

“He's not easy, like Vliet. But he's better in an emergency.”

“For that I keep aspirin on my shelf,” Alix retorted, then thought of Roger's strong supporting arm when she'd been caught in yesterday's wicked undertow. She flushed.

Cricket asked, “Don't you like him?”

“Aren't you listening, Cricket? He—does—not—like—me.”

“What's that got to do with how you feel?”

“Everything.”

“Remember that first day? I figured it'd be you and Roger.”

Alix laughed a little too loudly, “But why?”

Cricket raised the shell. A few leftover grains of sand dropped. She blinked. “I want Vliet for me.”

“Oh Cricket, you snotnose! Quit the teasing. I hate being teased.” She grabbed a small hand, yanking Cricket to her feet. “Come on.”

When they got back, the towels were unattended. Cricket sat on her frayed blue one, positioning the shell as if she were about to photograph it. Alix, ever conscious of her appearance, decided her back needed more tan. She stretched facedown, listening to nearby transistors and the ever-present mumble of the sea. Where were the twins, she wondered drowsily.

“Hey Vliet!”

Roger's pass was purposefully high, and Vliet had to jump for the striped beach ball. He held it with both hands, running in and out of low-tide wavelets, his long legs pumping high, his hips swiveling in almost girlish grace as if he were running a broken field. Roger, using his high school linebacker form, closed in. Vliet swerved. The ball dropped. Roger recovered. He punted far into the Pacific. The twins raced into the sea, spuming saltwater, pivoting around bathers, simultaneously diving under a small, breaking wave. Vliet reached the ball first, pushing it out. Out again. They swam after a bobbing orange-and-yellow circle, Vliet's long arms and legs moving easily, Roger—a strong swimmer—plowing doggedly. They gasped, heaved, blew saltwater. Vliet had slowed. Roger, seeing this, churned into a sprint. They were far from shore. Vliet trod water while Roger retrieved the ball, holding it up, Atlas triumphant. Both boys laughed. And with an identical jerk of neck muscles, threw wet hair, brown and blond, out of identical blue eyes. They turned on their backs to float in gently bucking water. Neither had spoken. Since babyhood it had been like this: spontaneously they would break into wild action that was half play and half rivalry.

Roger paddled with his hands, the sun a golden blaze behind his closed eyelids. He had a broad, probing mind. For a few minutes he and his brother had merged. He was pondering if this symbiosis dated back to that other sea, tideless and amniotic, or from some warm primate blood tie ancient beyond man. Roger's human contacts were few and very deep. This one was a miracle. Don't let me always need to win, he thought.

The loss of an inflated beach ball meant nothing to Vliet. SOP. Roger dominated in school, athletics, purpose, areas that to Vliet were of no importance. He, Vliet, wanted the real goods, money, a Porsche with a tape deck, records, the best girls, popularity, and to attain these he would inflict kindness or cruelty with equal indifference. He had many friends. He had no idea how closely he was tied to his twin.

Still, without speaking, the boys turned toward the beach, swimming the butterfly, paired dolphins curving in and out of glittering blue water.

Alix woke. Roger was lying on his stomach two feet from her.

She wanted him to talk to her. She would ask him to. It was that easy. Instinctive moments when the thought is the act are rare in most people. Even more so in Alix. Her life was complicated and full of striving, yet sometimes, without understanding why, she could reach out with no self-consciousness.

“Roger,” she whispered.

His eyes opened. “What's up?” He spoke as softly.

“Talk to me?”

“What about?”

“Just talk.”

“Give me more of an opening.”

“The grant,” she said.

“It wouldn't interest you.”

“I'm asking,” she said, “as a friend.”

He stared at her, then rolled so he was facing her. Sand clung to his chest and he rubbed at it. “Not a grant. A job,” he said. “Bjork got it for me. At County General. He's doing research there.”

“What kind?”

“Sickle cell. I got to be an orderly with his patients. I prefer working with patients.”

“Why?”

He thought a moment. “When people are sick I feel helpless, impotent. Doing something, whatever it is, to make them better helps me. Nothing noble. Anyway, I met Bjork through this boy—”

“The gardener's boy?”

“Uh-huh. Not our gardener, we don't have one. But he came along in the truck, around the neighborhood, a nice little kid about eight. Johnny. He was small for his age and he got a lot of infections. He often had these crises—”

“Crises?”

“Bad pain. In his abdomen. The gardener told me he was just a weak child, and they didn't bother with doctors anymore. I sort of guessed what it was.” Roger swallowed as if he had a sore throat. “Last summer I took him over to County General. That's when I met Bjork.”

“What, exactly, does it mean, sickle cell?”

“Well, normal blood cells are bioconcave. Disk-shape. People with sickle cell don't get enough oxygen, so the cells are misshapen.”

“Into a sickle?”

“That's right.”

“Why the pains in his stomach?”

“Ordinarily a blood cell lives about a hundred and twenty days, a sickled one about sixty. The spleen has to enlarge to absorb all the damaged cells.”

“Can they cure it?”

“Alleviate only. Jesus, do you realize how few doctors can diagnose it, even?”

Her voice below the mumbling sea, she said, “You did.”

He looked embarrassed, pleased.

“When did you decide?” she asked. “I mean, that you wanted medicine?”

Roger turned on his back, hands under his neck. Alix was tremendously conscious of dark, thick axial hair. “So long ago it's hard to remember. Maybe it had something to do with Dad's being a pharmacist. I don't know. I've always wanted to be a doctor.”

“Are you so sure about everything?”

“Jesus, no!”

“But you are about this?”

“This, yes.”

(Later it occurred to Alix that neither of them had mentioned that other embryo physician, Vliet.)

“What're you going to do?” Roger asked.

Try to stay afloat, she thought, shrugging.

“You have a major?”

“I'll find one,” she said. And work my butt off, she thought. “Roger, it goes without saying, careers turn me off. As the daughter of that famous Beverly Hills housewife.”

“Your mother?” Roger asked, bewildered. “Mrs. Grossblatt?”

“She's known as Beverly Schorer in the art world.”

“She paints?”

“Part-time. Never more than twenty hours a day. She's in the best collections and museums throughout Europe and the US, as her brochure tells us. Including the Guggenheim.” Envy mingled with pride. Ugly, Alix decided. And boastful. “Roger, face it, you're the fortunate exception with this cosmic goal thing. I'm the rule.”

Bare, heavy legs walked between them, scattering sand. Vliet, who had been sleeping on Alix's other side, woke up.

7

A knock at her door. “Alix?” Beverly said.

Alix shoved
Arrowsmith
under the chaise pillow and began combing her hair, which she'd just shampooed. “Come in,” she said.

Beverly, Alix noted, had on her large-eyed expression. Her cheeks were flushed. Shutting the door, she walked slowly to the armchair and sat twisting her plain gold ring. “I wish I knew how to put this.”

Put what? Faster than a speeding bullet, Alix knew what.

“The Pill?” she asked, smiling too widely.

Beverly's flush deepened. “I thought.…”

Alix went to her mirror. Drops of water scattered as she passed her comb through wet hair.

“Would you like …? Alix, I can't say this properly.”

“Try. Be mod. With it.”

“Please don't make it so difficult.”

“Mother, I'm willing to lay odds there's no easy way. So why not come right out? Do I need the egg killer?”

“You sound, well, so hard.”

“It's an awkward scene.”

“You were such a nice little girl.”

“I wasn't.” In Alix's head a crazed animal ran circles. Circles never end. Why was she so terrified? Everyone, even her mother, expected her to be screwing herself dizzy. But she was afraid. Wasn't that just like her? Well, living on a flat surface makes one afraid of any shadow.