Rich Friends (61 page)

Em, returning with vodka in her champagne glass, caught Beverly's eye.

“Em,” Beverly murmured.

The two women smiled hesitantly, then moved forward with small, Chinese-concubine steps. A long pause. Em's rouged, wrinkled cheek met Beverly's firm flesh. With the half kiss came a flood of nostalgia … Frank Sinatra 78s … Apple Blossom cologne … rationed meat, and meat loaf centered with a hard egg … hubba-hubba … USO parties … folded rush invitations … ironed rayon slips and white cotton gloves and ten o'clock Omega Delta check-ins, girlhoods lost in a time that had sunk as irretrievably as Atlantis. In the brief hug, bitterness dissolved.

As they pulled apart, Beverly's eyes were moist. “Em, I'm so happy for you,” she said.

“We're very pleased,” Em replied.

“On the way, I thought of your wedding. I guess because it was in a garden, too.”

“The reception,” Em corrected.

“The ceremony was in St. Mark's,” Beverly remembered.

“That's right. You told us to be happy forever and ever.”

“I did?”

“As we drove away. There were cans tied to the car, and I heard you calling, ‘Be happy forever and ever.'” Em spoke in her pedantic way. “Nobody else used those exact words.” She paused. “Beverly, I'm sorry about—I'm sorry.” And she was silent.

Above them, at the patio entry, stood Mrs. Linde and a graying man with a peculiar wide mouth. Between, in a tangerine dress of some very soft fabric, Alix. Em had battled to prevent one of the engraved invitations from being mailed to Alix. Cricket had wanted her, and so did Caroline—“After all, luv, she's the daughter of my oldest, my
famous
friend.” But Em, in the grip of a sudden migraine, would have carried the day if it hadn't been for Gene. He had been disturbed, deeply, when the girl was excluded from Roger's funeral: a righteous man, he had felt group-action guilt for her crackup. “There won't be a reception in my house,” Gene had stated firmly, “unless Alix is invited.” Her! Her! Em had had taut, menopausal dreams of strangling Alix, smothering her with a pillow, locking her in a dungeon filled with poisonous adders, taking a bread knife and matching the beautiful body with Roger's wounds.

The memory of these dreams hot in her, she couldn't look at Beverly.

“There's Alix,” Beverly said. “And that's Dr. Emanual. He's been looking after her since, well, since.” She swallowed hard.

“Yes,” said Em, avoiding Beverly's eyes. “And if you'll excuse me, there're two friends I must introduce.”

Caroline said to Beverly, “Don't look now, but every male at this entire gathering has his tongue hanging out. Who's that with her?”

“Dr. Emanual.”

“Oh
yes
. She did call to ask if she could bring a friend. Beauty and the beast. I'll bet he's cuh-razy over her.”

Beverly's old, mischievous smile flickered. “He's older than God, Caroline, six years older than us.”

“She must have 'em all ages,” Caroline said, glancing over Beverly's shoulder. “Oh Lawd! The cateress wants me. What can it be
now
?”

And Beverly went toward her mother and daughter, moving slowly around kaleidescoping groups. Ridiculous, she told herself. Nobody gets rattled saying hello to her own mother or her own child. Except me. I do. With Mother since I left Philip. And with Alix? Oh my God, my poor Alix. Since then, too. Beverly's lips were stiff, and she thought, as she always must, Jamie. She was relieved to find Dan at her side. “Here,” he said, handing her a glass of champagne. In the warm April sun, very close to her husband, Beverly greeted her mother, her daughter, and Dr. Emanual.

Em circulated among her friends. The dichondra was brilliant green, and Em whirled back and forth over it to the bar. One journey found her alone with Caroline.

Suddenly Caroline gripped Em's wrist, muttering, “Oh shit!”

At the obscenity, Em froze.

“Look,” Caroline ordered. “Down there.”

Alone, islanded on the grass to the left of the pool, stood Vliet and Alix. Em was at the point where her perceptions came and went, so maybe it was a trick of alcohol. Her glasses seemed to magnify. On her son's face she saw something she'd never seen before. Raw, naked pain. Even from here she could see Vliet's pain.

“They must be talking about poor Roger.”

“That hot and heavy?” Caroline demanded.

Alix was gazing up at Vliet, her eyes seemed tranced, her lips parted slightly. She seemed to have emerged at his bidding from another element, from a world with an atmosphere of heavy dew. The dewiness lay on her skin. A breeze fluttered her chiffon skirt, and the small, hexagonal pattern in Vliet's shirt picked up the tangerine. What a fabulous couple, what style! Caroline thought, then fury overtook her. He's married to
my
Cricket.

And Em was saying, “… to Cricket, so there's nothing to worry about.”

“Of course not!” Caroline's whisper was cruel. “After all, they're married. And that means
happily
ever after!”

“Don't say it like that. He loves her.”

“Did you love Sheridan?”

“Of course. And you, Gene.”

“Oh God! For once, stop mouthing platitudes. We were programmed to get married, that's all.” Her voice transmitted her hurt. “We didn't dare miss out on the white wedding, the cottage small by the waterfall, the dozen handmade cutwork place mats!”

“You've forgotten.”

“Maybe I was
hot
for his bod. You're right. I've forgotten. Now all I can remember is that he seemed so very clean, and I was expected to be married. But love! Don't give me love!”

Vliet was touching Alix's slender, bare arm, handing her his champagne glass, saying something near her cheek. Sunlight glinted a blinding path in her dark hair, and Vliet's eyes closed in what to Em seemed a paroxysm of misery.

“Then why did he marry Cricket?” she asked, stopping abruptly, flushing.
He had to
.

“How should I know?” Caroline snapped. Suddenly she began to weep. Annoyed with herself, she sniffed violently, blowing her nose in a cocktail napkin. Em set her glass on a waiter's silver tray, taking a full one, gulping. Someone spoke to her. The voice was an insect whine. Em excused herself. She advanced on the crowded bar and found her sister already there.

Vliet asked, “What's this bizarre couple, Emanual and your grandmother?”

“They came together.”

“Is he her date or what?”

“Ask Grandma. Of course she's very straight, so possibly she'll refuse to answer on the grounds you're a married man.”

“She's right, I'll grant her that. Really. From here on in, I'll have to be more circumspect.” Vliet paused. “How do I act with you?”

“I was wondering the same.”

“Shall we both punt?”

“It's a crowded field.”

“The thing is, Alix, we must decide. To ignore the last time we were together, or to drag it into the open?”

Musicians floated into “I'll Remember April,” learned for old sentimentalists at wedding gigs.

“I never should've thrown the gory details at you. I was all wrong.”

“You're being generous.”

“It was my mistake, and I'm sorry, Vliet.”

“No, it's me who's sorry,” he said, and his face melted with remembrance of fear and love and triumph that had surrounded her brass bed. He swayed toward her, his mind filling with endearments both lewd and tender. On another level he was aware of pleasantly archaic notes, a clutch of voices, a burst of semistoned laughter. My wedding party, he thought. Yet Vliet felt no guilt. Cricket aided and succored him, she understood him, she nursed his now delicate lusts, she was (and always had been) as much a part of him as his thymus, and what did Cricket or a thymus have to do with how he felt about Alix Schorer? Her eyes were on his.

“That night,” he said, hearing his voice, toneless, strange. “Know how much I wanted to stay?”

“Vliet, what happened, it wasn't your fault. I was at a bad point.”

“Stop being so goddamn generous. I was chicken of getting in too deep. Crazy? I've always been in too deep with you.”

“Vliet, don't.”

“Emanual?”

“I'm going out with him.”

“He's old, ugly, short.”

“And kind. He knows everything. He understands about me and Roger.”

Vliet touched her arm. “You're trembling,” he said. And drugged with love, aching to protect her from small, lizardlike old shrinks, Vliet felt tears form in his (just like Roger's) eyes. If I had the Lazarus touch, he thought, if it were possible, for you, Alix, I would bring him back. Or resurrect myself into him. He handed her his champagne. “This'll help.”

She raised the glass.

He said, “I love you.”

A few drops scattered. “
Please.
”

“Cricket knows.”

“It's still not to talk about.”

“I have to. Something's changed in me, Alix. It might be for the worse, but I'm different. And you are, too. You seem—resigned.”

“Matured is a better word. Let's not go into this.”

“But you do feel for me?”

“I … a lot. But Vliet, it's all mixed up with Roger.”

“Yes, Roger.” He blinked the moisture in his eyes.

“Vliet,” she said gently, “you married the right girl.”

“Really. But in no way, darling, does that alter how I feel about you.”

And Mrs. Linde was saying, “Have you congratulated Mr. and Mrs. Matheny, Alix dear?” Vliet wondered how long she'd been there, listening with pearl-hung, transparent old ears. “Or Mr. and Mrs. Reed? It's the correct thing.”

“No-no. Not yet.”

Vliet saw a barely perceptible flicker trap Alix's eye. “I'll have a go at them, too,” he said.

A little ahead of him, Alix moved with a flamenco dancer's provocative grace up the steps toward one woman who had hated her for years and the other woman whose hatred had started only a few minutes ago.

To the left of the house was a slope. Beverly climbed, her heels sinking in the grass. Birds sang in three silver birches that guarded the crest. Near the delicate trees, she stopped, noting shapes and colors with trained eyes. She saw Alix as drifting tangerine, masculine heads turning after her, she saw Mrs. Linde, with the segmented movements of age, lower her erect body into a rented white chair. They're my mother and my daughter, she thought. The silver cord might tarnish, but never can it be cut. I love them and am forever bound to them.

Alone, from this distance, she could look at Mrs. Linde and Alix without an excess of repentance. She had failed her parents, and in a far more disastrous manner, her children, yet here, under rustling birches, she was able to accept the blame. She had copped out, yes, terribly and tragically, but not from want of love. She was a flawed creature like all else in this imperfect world. Inevitably, in some way, each of us fails, first as a child, then as a parent. Nothing new or profound. The report cards already are printed: we get Fs as children,
Incomplete
s as parents.

Since morning, Em's wedding had been on her mind, and now she was picturing the too-pink stucco of the Wynan's house, she was seeing Caroline, rosy and handsome with graduated pearls knotted. There was Em, dwarfed by a cathedral train. And at a little distance, herself. Beverly alone. In that powder blue with pads widening her shoulders. Three girls. She tried to think of them as daughters. As children of the Lindes and the Wynans. Impossible. Rather, it was as if the three of them had sprung to life in a stylized Rousseau-innocent meadow, breathing less smoggy, more hopeful air. Their goals and dreams they had believed peculiar to that newly peace-blessed Truman era. They had recognized no legacy of the past. They had felt they owed nothing to the past. They had refused to crib from the past. They were the first of a new race.

To wish anyone happiness forever and ever! Could there be any remark more oblivious to lives that had come before? All her observations must have told her that her parents and the Wynans were not happy in the corny Warner Brothers style she had wished for Em and Sheridan. Yet she had meant the words. More, she had expected them to come true, and—oddly enough—had considered babies an essential element. Babies who, it should have been equally apparent, would have their own brave new world.

The shadow of a bird flickered on grass. A breeze jostled a napkin to her feet. Picking up the small square, absently smoothing it, her head tilted toward wisps of party laughter. She saw Dan looking around. Looking for me, she thought. Once she had been shamed by her need for solitude. Now she understood that solitude was the balloon that carried her to the real meaning of her life. Yet she couldn't rid herself of that old guilt. Why do I have to be by my lonesome? Pushing back soft, graying hair, she went quickly down the small incline.

She passed her mother, who leaned toward Mrs. Wynan.

“Cricket and Vliet make a lovely couple,” said Mrs. Linde, her firm voice betraying none of the indulgence with which most people address the senile. “I always think there's something so hopeful about a wedding, don't you?”

About the Author

Jacqueline Briskin (1927–2014) was the
New York Times
–bestselling author of fourteen historical novels that reflect the tumultuous changes in American society that she witnessed over her lifetime. Complete with dynamic storylines, vibrant characters, and passionate romantic relationships, her novels have sold more than twenty million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-six languages.

Briskin was born in London, England, the granddaughter of the chief rabbi of Dublin, Ireland. Her family moved to Beverly Hills, California, to escape Adolf Hitler and religious orthodoxy. A few years later, she married her best friend and the love of her life, Bert, whose family was deeply embedded in Hollywood and the movie business. When Briskin's three children were little more than toddlers, she attended a class at UCLA entitled “The Craft of Fiction.” To her surprise, it was a class about writing fiction rather than reading fiction. And so her career began.