Rich Friends (42 page)

The Grossblatts or Philip Schorer would stop in Baltimore “on the way to New York.” Alix would invite them to dine at the apartment. There was a warning in the lovely smile which halted questions—even from Dan. Roger could smell guilt oozing from his own pores. These evenings generally precipitated one of their rare arguments.

His own parents he didn't see until the end of his third year.

Em wrote:
Dad has his vacation the last week in May. We plan to be in Baltimore
. Alix, while not in on the full extent of the Reeds' hatred, was aware she would be
persona non grata
. She hied herself to New York, locating in the Winstens' lavish Essex House apartment. Gloria Winsten, Dan's sister, arranged for men to show Alix the town.

Roger was terrified that Alix might prefer one of her Manhattan guides. He loathed himself for succumbing to cover-up. He couldn't respond to Em and Sheridan's pathetically open delight in seeing him. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Unable to admit he was living with Alix, he kept repeating her name, as if by hammering the two syllables into his parents' eardrums he could overpower their minds and hearts. Sheridan or Em would change the subject. Em, though, would find herself looking into her son's hurt eyes. Em, yearning to be fair. But how many mothers could find justice for a girl who had switched from sleeping with one son to another, for a girl who had cut a favored son from his education, who prevented the lesser but still well-beloved son from flying home—even for Christmas? Each time Roger said, “Alix,” Em's thoughts would erupt like Krakatoa. Under makeup her small face would mottle. She either would get a headache, weep, or order another vodka martini, “Straight up, please.” Finally Sheridan, who agreed with Em's prejudices, took Roger aside.

“We aren't interested in your shack job,” warned the father. “And Roger, I advise you not to do anything stupid.”

They departed. The week had cost Roger and Alix. Cost them plenty. Alix never told Roger precisely the mental cost of that week. In New York she had panicked. What if Roger, exposed to his parents, were infected by their hatred of her? What if he decided he didn't want her? What if? What if? Smoothing on new eye shadow and smiles, she charmed the dates Mrs. Winsten produced. In that single week, three men swore undying love. Two proposed, and the third, a recently burned divorcé, offered a trip to Bermuda. Alix did not believe a word. How could she? She was such a mess, so ugly. She fell prey to any witty, smart shop. By the end of that week she had spent $897 on clothes. Floors and walls weren't meeting properly. Sidewalks slanted at an alarming angle. She had shattered into a hideous swarm of anxieties. And on her return, Roger bickered with her constantly.

He didn't understand why he picked on her. He couldn't help it. She would respond in that bantering tone which further infuriated him. A chain reaction, continuing until somehow they were clinging miserably to one another, his breath moving strands of her silky hair.

The recuperation period lasted that entire muggy summer. By then, Roger had a reply of sorts to his conscience.

A ring.

Since their engagement could not be public, the ring had to carry more weight than an ordinary engagement ring. Furthermore, or so Roger decided, it must be presented in a meaningful place, their root place. California.

September brought his surgical rotation. After that, in the middle of October, came his break.

“Alix, let's go to California.”

They were in the plant-hung breakfast nook. They lived in the same cruddy apartment he'd shared with Vliet, but you'd never guess it. Alix had worked miracles.

She put down her spoon. Her throat tightened around fruit salad. For her, California was the state of families and therefore hexed.

“Using what for money?” she asked. Neither was frugal, and Alix's round trip to New York, including all those desperate clothes, was being paid off monthly by her Bank-Americard.

“My check,” Roger said.

“It'll cover fares. What'll we spend for food? Where'll we stay?”

“San Francisco,” he said. “With Cricket.”

(Cricket, for reasons that had not seeped through her infrequent communications, two years ago come Thanksgiving, had enrolled in San Francisco Institute of the Arts, and as far as Alix could tell from penciled notes, was doing as she always had done, moving through life with her camera slung around her neck, no male or ambition in sight.)

“Roger, accept it. For us, family reunions are total disaster.”

“It won't be a family reunion.”

“What then?” she asked.

“I haven't been to California in more than two years.” Alix had been—she'd flown to Los Angeles, weeping, for her Grandfather Linde's funeral. Roger said, “We won't see any parents.” And under his starched white medical-student jacket was the familiar hunch of broad shoulders.

He's spent a lot of time on the idea, Alix thought. She said, “Only Cricket?”

“Just Cricket,” he promised.

2

The first person Alix saw in San Francisco Airport was Vliet. She halted at the end of the portable landing corridor. Her face turned pink. She was back in mountain gloom, the odor of sleep, Vliet on a double bed blowing his nose and whimsically telling terrible truths about her major phobia. Roger, you lied, lied, she thought. Then amended: But Roger never lies. She glanced at him.

He was staring at his twin, the grooves between his eyes coming and going, alternate expressions of joy and bewilderment. For a moment neither brother moved. Years and a continent might have separated them, yet each had remained part of the other's interior landscape.

Vliet, one hand on the low barricade, vaulted into the crowd, swiveling his way upstream. “Hey, runt. Hey, shorty, hey.” Vliet punched his brother's arm. “Hey, surprise.”

“Vliet …”

“All you medical students are the same. Overemotional.”

“Two and a half years. What're you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

Roger socked Vliet, faking, and Vliet hit back. Two tall men clowning. Roger in worn jeans. Vliet's light hair an impeccable curve touching the collar of his well-tailored jacket.

“Pardon me,” a fat man said, swerving his briefcase around them. All at once Roger hugged his brother, kissing him on both cheeks in the French style. An airport embrace. Awkward. Not quite spontaneous. Yet as they parted, identical pairs of deep-blue eyes were blinking back tears.

After a minute Vliet turned to Alix. She formed a smile.
That's a great smile there
, he'd said.

Now he planted a kiss on her forehead. (Nice cologne, she thought, I'm glad Roger doesn't use cologne. I cannot be with Vliet, I cannot.) “The celebrated waitress,” he said.

(Roger's eyes have tears. They phone one another all the time, they write. For a few hours I can carry it off.) “The celebrated executive,” she said.

Cricket was calling, and they went through the gate. More hugging. Next to Cricket lounged a tall, actressy brunette: her thin body and large, weary eyes conveyed a type of smoldering, bruised sexuality. Vliet introduced her. RB Henderson.

“For Chrissake,” Vliet said. “You people're jamming traffic. How can anyone get off the damn plane?”

They started walking. Beyond glass walls jets taxied. Vliet dropped an arm over RB's shoulder. He said, “A friend of mine—”

“Me,” RB said.

“—has a place that's not being used. It's ours for the weekend.”

“In Carmel,” said RB.

“Carmel?” Cricket turned away. “I can't.”

“Are freebie weekends bad karma?” Vliet asked.

“I have work.”

Vliet pantomimed guffaws.

“I do,” Cricket said.

“This, little cos, is Friday. Nobody works weekends.”

“A batch of film to develop.”

“The Puritan work ethic won't wash, not for you. So be a good little kid. Quit interrupting.” He ruffled her bright curls.

For a second, misery glimmered on Cricket's face. The others were too trapped in their own emotions to notice. Except RB. And she, yawning, turned away. They were at the baggage slide.

“Well?” Vliet asked Roger.

Roger reached for a backpack, then turned to Alix. “Sounds good to me,” he said to her.

A weekend? No. Not a weekend. A betrayal. He had promised. No family. Only Cricket, small, harmless Cricket. Vliet knows all about me, Alix thought, Vliet has my number, Vliet surely sides with his parents, the Montagues. Oh God, doubtless Cricket, kinswoman, does, too.

Alix turned to the other outsider. “RB, won't so much company hassle you?”

“Who's going to be there?” RB stretched indolently. “Me, I've got a six o'clock call tomorrow morning.”

“My friend the starlet,” Vliet said. “The four of us is all. For old times' sake.” He smiled at Alix.

They both had tears, Alix thought. I can make it. I have to. “For auld lang syne.” she said.

They dropped RB off at the Fairmont. Cricket, for reasons she didn't explain, lived on the Berkeley side of the bay, and they double-parked in front of an elderly frame house until she emerged lugging a straw satchel.

In the airport parking lot, Roger had whistled at Vliet's silver Porsche, and Vliet, tossing him the keys, had said, “Be my guest.” Roger drove fast. Warm air blasted through open windows at brothers laughing—Vliet was saying this month he'd been made district manager in Orange County, seven of Van Vliets' least profitable markets. “Three of them could be closed tomorrow, except for the leases. We'd still have to pay the damn leases.” His half-humorous put-down did not hide his enthusiasm. Cricket curled quiet on the narrow back ledge. Alix, next to her, was taut in every muscle. She was waiting for Vliet to turn in his bucket seat and throw the first stone.

Pastel subdivisions were behind them when she finally looked around. How, Alix wondered, could she have forgotten this ultimate California landscape? Bluer sky, brighter sun, cattle grazing somnolent in pools of shadow from live oaks—trees that were black against lion-brown hills. Then they were tearing across one of the green valleys that feed the country, whizzing by car after glittering new car in which every passenger was tan, youthful. How had she forgotten this fertility and motionless heat, freeways shimmering like great rivers, this land in thrall to a quest for the Fountain of Youth? Here, everything was newborn. Hostage to the future. Alix tried for less literary concepts. Found none. She had missed California a lot.

She was almost at ease when they reached Carmel. “Stop,” Vliet said. A beamed cottage set far back on a brick patio. They went through a comfortable living room to the bedrooms, and Roger set their backpacks in the one with a king-size bed.

“RB's divorce settlement,” Vliet explained. “Not bad for three unconsummated months. He's Loomis Henderson, the director.”

On the patio they drank Vliet's margaritas. “To your new job,” Roger toasted. “Hey, Vliet, why're you up here?” “To see you,” Vliet answered. Right, right, he'd driven up for the weekend. “That's a big trip,” Roger said. Vliet, dropping to one knee, flung out both arms. “I'd walk a million miles for one of your scowls, buddeee.” A perfect Jolson. The twins threw back their heads, howling with laughter.

“Now,” Vliet said, “for the real reason we're gathered together.” He turned to Roger. “Cricket's got your gizmo.”

“How'd you find out?” Roger demanded.

“Easy. She told me.”

Roger turned to his cousin, “Cricket, how come?”

Vliet asked, “Isn't that the point?”

“No,” Roger said.

“You're off your bird. You want it public. Under the circumstances, I'm as public as is available.”

Alix said, “How about letting me in on this?”

Cricket, having dug through raveled straw, held out an old velvet ring box. Roger sat on the end of Alix's chaise, opening it.

An antique ring. Huge cabochon garnet with a star of diamonds surrounding a pearl. Oh lovely, Alix thought, perfect.

“It belonged to our great-grandmother,” Roger said.

“Whose it now?”

“Yours,” Roger said. “Sort of.”

“Explain sort of.”

He opened his hands.

“You'll have to be more specific,” she said.

“For that,” Vliet said, “you'd have to know our great-grandmother.”

“A trifle late, yes?”

“Great-grandmama,” Vliet said, “spent her declining years figuring how to take it with her. Finally eliminating that happiest of possibilities, she tied it up so nobody else could have it. Her jewelry—and this was one acquisitive old chick—goes to her female descendants.”

“Which eliminates me.”

Cricket put down her untouched margarita. “Some things were set aside for Grandma Wynan's branch. Not Mother or Aunt Em, but their female descendants.”

“Until we have a girl,” Roger said, “it's yours.”

“Cricket's,” Alix responded. Even the dead in Roger's family denied her.

“Rather have a new ring?” Roger's voice was hurt.

He's gone to monumental trouble for this one minute, she thought. She said quickly, “It's beautiful.”

“I wanted you to have something that's family besides me.”

“I love it.”

“You'll have to have it sized,” Vliet said. “Hey, Roger, remember anything about her?”

“Just she smelled good.”

“She did? Well, she's reputed to have had these tiny, aristocratic hands.”

“One thing about me,” Alix said, extending her left hand. “Skinny fingers.”

Venus shone in a lavender sky and Roger slid on the ring.

Vliet said, “Welcome to the family, dear Alix.”

Cricket, her plain little face glowing, hugged her.

And Roger put his arms around her. “Sweet, you're freezing.”