by Vendela Vida
“Ta-da,” she says, and she hands me a hat.
It takes me a minute.
“Is this a bowler hat?” I ask. When reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being I hadn’t been able to picture it.
“Ja,” Ewa says. Swedes aren’t big nodders. They do the opposite of nodding—they raise their chin up and inhale and say ja at the same time.
“Yeah?” I say. I try it on and know it is probably ludicrous.
“Ja, ja,” she says, seeming noncommittal about the success of the hat she has purchased for me.
I wear it anyway. Ewa and her au pair friend Monica drop me at the party in the Jaguar that belongs to Monica’s “family.” They can’t find a parking space so they double-park outside the house so I can exit. I hold on to the back door handle a moment too long so that I’m still holding it when they start driving away. Release, I tell myself. Let go. I half-hoped they’d walk me to the door.
The party is at the home of Arabella Gschwind, Maria Fabiola’s godmother, a woman I haven’t met but who my dad says is a well-known interior decorator. “She did the living room of the Decorator Showcase house this year,” my dad told me, clearly impressed. Arabella lives in the Marina. Correction: she lives on the Marina. She lives on the street that borders the water where boats are docked and where everyone runs on the weekend, looking fit and pretending to live in Southern California. Marina Boulevard is the street in San Francisco known for its Christmas decorations. Just last month, in December, my family took a special trip to drive by the houses with all their lights and reindeer and Santas. “Pick your favorite one,” my father said, as though whatever house we chose would be ours.
“Too much,” my mother said. “Too much . . . America.” But her posture revealed the truth—she was tilting forward in the front seat to get a better view.
It’s windy out tonight. As I climb the stairs to the house I hold on to the top of my bowler hat, afraid it’s going to blow away. I’m relieved I don’t have to ring the doorbell; the door is unlocked and cracked open. When I step inside it slowly occurs to me that this is the home of Leon, that Arabella is his mom. Leon went to the French-American school last year until his parents divorced and he moved to Geneva to live with his dad. I know Leon from dancing school. Everyone knows him from dancing school. Last year, when we wanted to tease fellow classmates, we’d call their houses when we knew they weren’t home and when their parents asked if they could take a message we’d say, “Tell them Leon called.” Then we’d spell the name so there could be no confusion. We knew that when the girl returned home she would be thrilled. We imagined her calling Leon’s house and feeling rejected. That was our idea of fun.
The walls of the foyer are filled, salon style, with photos of Leon at all ages. Here he is sporting ironed shorts with suspenders. Here he is dressed in a suit and bow tie. Poor Leon, I think—such fancy clothes for a kid. I spot a woman across the room dressed in a tight white silk dress, a bolero jacket, and heels so high I worry her calves might snap. I suspect she’s the reason for Leon’s old-man wardrobe. A face-lift has never been pointed out to me before but the skin around her eyes and mouth is so taut that all I think when I see her is face-lift! She’s greeting a young man. “I’m Arabella,” she says, and kisses the young man on both cheeks. Astonished by the attention, he fails to introduce himself. “Where’s the toilet?” he asks. “The W.C.,” she corrects him, “is to the right of the Diebenkorn.” He walks away from her, feigning comprehension.
I hear the party within the heart of the house—in the living room and the dining room to the left of the foyer—but I can’t bring myself to join. The front door opens and Julia and Faith step inside. I look at them, expectantly, plaintively. We’re all here. It’s all okay. A new year. A party. A safe return. But their made-up eyes slide over me.
I check my watch. It’s 6:50. I have two hours and forty minutes until I’m picked up at 9:30. I think of a three-hour job I had passing out flyers last summer. The flyers were for a camera store that would develop three rolls of film for the price of two. The flyer was your average flyer—black and white and the word “Special!” written in red. I was instructed to stand downtown, a block away from the camera store, and to give the flyer out to anyone who passed me by. “Except homeless people,” I was told. “They don’t have cameras.”
I stood on the corner and tried to hand out flyers. Most women ignored me. Most men took a flyer. But even fifty minutes into the job I could tell I was failing. My feet hurt, I was bored, and I still had three hundred flyers to go. I needed to pee, so I went into the closest hotel, the St. Francis, and took the glass elevator up to the top floor. After determining the restroom was empty, I stuffed fifty flyers in the trash can. I could have gotten rid of the whole stack, but I felt funny. So I stood outside the men’s restroom for ten minutes until I was sure it was empty. Then I stuffed sixty flyers in the trash can of the men’s restroom. What a relief, I thought. I walked out of there with sheepish pride.
That’s what I feel like at Maria Fabiola’s welcome home party, like I have to figure out a way to dispose of huge swaths of time. I carefully prepare myself a plate of food that I eat very slowly and then with abandon so that I can get another plate later, which will take up more time. I pause thoughtfully and at length in front of each of the framed paintings. These paintings are in a different price range than the paintings my father’s gallery sells. I even spot what looks like a Chagall at the top of the stairway, but I can’t get close. The stairway is cordoned off with a burgundy velveteen rope, as though the home is an historical estate offering tours.
For the first hour of the party I don’t see Maria Fabiola. I see girls from my class, who nod politely, dismissively, or else pretend they don’t see me. I speak to Ms. Livesey for a minute and wait for her to compliment my dress, but she doesn’t. Then Julia and Faith start talking to her and they act like I’m not standing there so I float away from them and toward Mr. London, who’s eating a chip filled with guacamole. I tell him I’m enjoying the Milan Kundera novel.
“More than Salinger?” he asks, dipping another chip, this time into a bowl of salsa. I nod, not wanting to get into Salinger with him again, and then excuse myself to use the restroom. I see boys from dancing school, which I dropped out of months ago, but I don’t see Maria Fabiola. I circle the party in a way that reminds me of the shark at the aquarium in Golden Gate Park, going around and around. Eventually, I’m sure everyone can see that I’m doing laps, so I fill my plate up with food for the second time. Most guests are congregated in the main dining room. I find a small and unpopulated study on the other side of the foyer.
I sit in the corner of a red velvet couch—it’s the kind of couch that makes you sit up really straight. The coffee table is glass and stacked with enormous books about fashion—Coco Chanel, Diane von Furstenberg, Carolina Herrera. I wedge my glass of seltzer between two large books and hope it won’t spill. The food is good—risotto—and I dig into it.
I smell him before I see him. Polo by Ralph Lauren. It’s Axel, and he sits next to me on the couch. He’s with two friends who follow him into the study and sit in the two chairs on the other side of the coffee table. They put their heaping plates of food on top of the coffee-table books. A roasted red pepper slowly droops onto a book about Bauhaus, but they don’t seem to notice. I recognize one of the boys—he was on the bus with Axel that day, but I don’t know the other one. The boy from the bus is just over five feet with fine features and tan skin. The other boy has light brown hair that’s gelled attentively, and acne only on the top of his face; the bottom half of his face is clear. I speculate that the hair gel might be causing the breakouts on his forehead and wonder if anyone has told him that. The pecking order is immediately clear: Axel is in charge, and then comes the tan guy then gel boy.
They don’t say hello to me and so I continue to eat. I have a forkful of risotto halfway up to my mouth when the gelled boy says, “Hey, that rice looks like my cum.” The other two boys
turn to stare at me. My fork hovers midway between my mouth and the plate, but I know better than to eat it now. I put my fork down.
“Is it your cum?” says the tan boy.
“Yeah, maybe you saw Maria Fabulous and came all over the kitchen.”
Maria Fabulous, I think. That’s what boys called her. Of course.
“So are you going to eat it?” the gelled boy asks.
“Your cum, no?” I say. “The risotto, yes.”
Axel laughs and stares at me. He does that double-take motion where I can tell he’s just noticed that at a particular moment, from a specific angle, I can look pretty. “You’re the Swedish girl,” he says. I think of myself as Czech, not Swedish, so it takes me a minute to respond.
“Yep,” I say.
“I thought so,” he says, proudly, as though he’s just solved a mystery of great importance. “Our moms are friends.”
“Really?” I say, trying to be nonchalant. My mom talks about Axel’s mom in a reverential way. She’s so wealthy and does so much for the Swedish community (all of her good deeds are commemorated by polished plaques), but my mother knows better than to call them friends. This is something I admire about my mother: she never exaggerates a social connection.
“How can you be Swedish and not have blue eyes?” the gelled boy says.
“Ignore him,” Axel says. “I like your hat, by the way.”
I check his face for sarcasm and see none. “Thank you.”
I lift a forkful of risotto to my mouth.
“How is it?” Axel asks.
I’m still chewing.
“Are you going to spit or swallow?” says the tan boy.
“Dude, drop it,” says Axel, and turns toward me. “What’s your name again?”
“Eulabee,” I say.
“Eulogy?” says the gelled boy.
“Ignore both of them,” Axel says. His full body is turned toward me now, both his knees almost touching mine. I can smell his Polo by Ralph Lauren but there’s also another smell, almost cardamom-like, beneath the cologne. Alcohol, I realize. He’s drunk, all three of them are, or else they’re on their way.
“What are you drinking?” I ask.
Axel smiles. He has the kind of smile that reveals the man he’s going to become. I see it clearly. He is destined to sell high-end real estate—his photo, with that same smile, will be featured in a little box on laminated full-page, heavy-paper stocked flyers for Pacific Heights mansions.
“Give me your cup,” he says. I oblige. He reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and turns away from me theatrically.
After five seconds he swivels toward me once again.
“Ta da,” he says and holds the cup out to me.
“Dude,” says his gelled friend. “You should never ever become a magician.”
I close my eyes as I down the contents of my cup in one long, long gulp.
“Oh, shit,” one of the boys says.
I look at Axel, who now appears less like a future real estate magnate and more like Milan Kundera.
Suddenly, I hear a triangle, like the kind played at a symphony. Reluctantly I turn away from Axel’s beautiful face.
It is a triangle.
Arabella is holding the triangle and striking it with a wand. She pauses to allow the sound to reverberate throughout the house. She’s removed her bolero jacket—most likely to show off her toned arms as they hold the triangle. Her white dress is even snugger than I imagined. She’s not wearing underwear.
“We are gathered here today—” she begins.
“To celebrate this thing called life,” Axel’s tan friend says.
Arabella owls her head toward the study. I suspect she’s going to call him out for disrupting her speech, but her eyes are on Axel. I realize she thinks it’s Axel who’s spoken. And clearly, she likes Axel. A slow and possibly seductive smile creeps up on her orange-lipsticked mouth.
“Exactly,” she says. “We are gathered here today to celebrate life. And one life in particular. We are so grateful that our beautiful friend, my incredible goddaughter, has been returned to us.”
“Amen,” some adults whisper loudly. The girls clap. The boys whistle.
Maria Fabiola is still nowhere in sight.
“Maria Fabiola’s mom was my roommate at Vassar,” Arabella announces. “That was before . . .”
The doorbell rings and the entire crowd turns, expecting to see Maria Fabiola. Lotta, the Dutch girl enters, looking hesitant. She’s wearing a red flannel skirt, a bright yellow tank top, and a purple coat. Everyone looks disappointed that she’s not Maria Fabiola; Arabella looks disappointed to have such a terribly dressed guest. Arabella turns away abruptly as though wishing to erase the sight of her. Lotta’s eyes search the room and lock with mine. She wants to come sit with me, I can tell. But Axel’s alcoholic concoction has warmed my body and sharpened my mind and I see her for the traitor she is.
I deliberately dart my eyes away from hers. I turn them to my empty red cup and then to Axel, who mistakes the flight pattern of my eyes to mean that I want a refill. I don’t need one, but I appreciate that he’s been watching me closely enough to think that’s what I’m signaling. When Arabella resumes speaking, Axel plays the part of the bad magician. He turns away, reaches into his left suit pocket with his right hand as though about to extract a sword, but instead refills my red cup from what I imagine is an engraved silver flask.
“Calgon, take me away,” I whisper into his ear. Axel leans toward my mouth so that my lips inadvertently graze his upper earlobe. Even though I can’t see his face, I feel his body tense in pleasure. He returns the red cup to me.
We’ve missed whatever else Arabella has said. When I turn back, everyone is silent, their eyes on the stairway.
Maria Fabiola steps down the first rounded stair. Audible gasps emerge before we can even see her face. She’s wearing a long white wedding dress. She looks like the photos of debutantes in the Nob Hill Gazette. I watch as her white satin–heeled shoe takes a step around the curved staircase and then her body turns and she’s facing the crowd. She looks stunning, and five years older in the best possible way. Her hair is styled in a bun with highlighted tendrils framing her face. It dawns on me that she’s spent the day in a beauty salon—that’s why she wasn’t at school today.
She takes another step down, and then her serious face with its hazy gaze absorbs the appraisals of everyone in the crowd. I suspect she’s counting the number of people who have shown up for her—115, 120. When the room is silent, she breaks into a smile, and extends her hands diagonally in front of her, as though she’s just finished an incredible performance—a dance routine, or an aria with a high note. The party guests all break into applause.
When the clapping and whistling, finally, begins to wane, Maria Fabiola’s mother and father walk down the stairs so that they’re standing on either side of her, but one step above. Has the entire evening been choreographed like an awards ceremony? How did her parents know to halt their descent one step above hers? I am impressed.
Arabella strikes the triangle again and Maria Fabiola begins to speak.
“I want to thank you for all your support while I was missing,” she says. Her voice is soft and her tone shaky. Her voice, I decide, is part of the performance. “Now I know a lot of you are wondering what happened . . .”
The guests laugh and then quickly quash their laughter, sensing that it’s not appropriate. “Well, I’m not at liberty to tell you all the details right now because I promised ABC News an exclusive.” She’s rotating toward the far left, the middle, and the far right as she speaks, and bowing subtly. She reminds me of Glinda, the Good Witch, speaking to the Munchkins. “But I can say that I was kidnapped by foreigners and that they took me on a boat. At first, I wasn’t treated well—I almost died in the dark!—but one of the shipmates took pity on me and then they started treating me better. The ship crashed near an island, and it was then, when I swam to the island, that I was able to escape.�
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The guests start clapping.
My head feels light. I bite my own tongue with the left side of my mouth. I’m afraid I might say something. I might object, like a bad guest at a wedding interjecting something horrific during the ceremony.
Her father makes a brief, bland speech about how happy they are to have her back. Her mother thanks Arabella for throwing a party in her beautiful home. Arabella uses this acknowledgment as an opportunity to announce, “My ex-husband may live in Geneva, but our divorce was anything but Swiss. Everyone took a side. But at least I have this house.” More laughter.
Then she strikes the wand against the triangle once more—a sign, I suppose, that the performance is over. Maria Fabiola turns and ascends the staircase. Her dress has a scallop-edged train, and it swiftly recedes like an ocean wave.
“You think she got a boob job?” Axel’s tan friend asks.
“She was kidnapped,” Axel says.
“Well maybe they made her get a boob job,” the gelled friend says.
“It’s the dress,” I say. “It does that.”
They all nod, as though I’m the expert on dresses. I pick up the Diane von Furstenberg book from the coffee table to cement my new reputation.
“You want to go outside?” Axel asks me. “I know a secret balcony. Leon took me there once.”
“Sure,” I say. I follow him to the back of the study. I can feel my classmates’ eyes on him, on me, on us. I try to disguise my pleasure, but the corners of my mouth lift up against my will. He opens the door that looks like it would lead to a utility closet and I trip over the threshold.
“Watch your step,” he says belatedly and we both laugh. I’m on my knees on the balcony. He helps me up and clumsily, I stand. I’ve never been drunk before but I’m pretty sure this is what it feels like. A tumbling, hilarious, warm feeling. A cocoon against the world. A cocoon with only me and Axel inside.
The balcony is small and looks out on the marina. The view is socked in with fog. Against the white sky the black upright masts of the boats look like the measure bars on a sheet of music. The sun has set and the night air is damp and refreshing against my skin.