Aunt Ursula looks at me as if seeing me for the first time, then says, “Well, Cecelia may be psychic. She may have hidden talents none of us could ever imagine.”
This remark is soooo unbelievably cutting, but in a way that Hubert would never notice, that I decide to say absolutely nothing. I give Aunt Ursula a supercilious yet bored smile, and she says, “I hope you don’t mind about Lil’Bit. You two are friends?”
“I’ve never met her,” I say casually. “In fact, Hubert never even mentions her.”
“You’ll love her,” Aunt Ursula says. And just at that moment, Sir Ernie Munchnot walks up in his swimming trunks, showing off his chest which, I have to admit, does look pretty good for a guy who must be sixty, and he hugs Hubert and then me. I giggle loudly when it’s my turn and look over at Aunt Ursula, who is definitely watching this exchange and is not particularly pleased, and I say, “Oh Uncle Ernie. It’s soooo great to see you. Gosh, you’re in awfully good shape.” And he says, “How’s my favorite niece-in-law? I always told Hubert if he didn’t marry you, I would.” He puts his arm around me and we begin walking toward the patio, where lunch will be served by three small Italian women in white uniforms. “Hey,” Uncle Ernie says, “I still swim five miles a day. Exercise. That’s the key to life. I keep telling my kids, but they don’t listen.”
Princess Ursula makes a face and shakes her head. And then, she just can’t help rubbing it in, “Lil’Bit’s coming for lunch.”
“Lil’Bit? Well . . . good,” he says. “Now there’s a gal who needs to get some sense in her head. I keep telling her to stop running around and get her life together, but I think she’s been all mixed up ever since Hubert here broke up with her.” Princess Ursula gives him a disapproving look and says, “Lil’Bit is absolutely fine. She’s just not like the rest of us.” She directs this at me: “I always say she’s one of God’s heavenly creatures.”
At that moment, a car pulls into the driveway, and we all look over to where the “heavenly creature” is extracting herself, her two illegitimate children, a nanny, a stroller, and various nappies from the car. Lil’Bit is wearing—get this—an Indian sari. She picks up one of the children and takes the other by the hand. Amid this picture of motherly bliss, she looks up and waves girlishly.
“Just look at her,” Aunt Ursula exclaims. “I always say Lil’Bit is the most elegant woman I know.”
“Come and see Kirby,” Lil’Bit says to everyone in general, but mostly, I think, to Hubert. Her voice is soft, sweet, almost a whisper. She’s all shy, with her long blond hair in front of her face. Jesus. I used to look like that. I used to do that with him. That’s what he likes. That’s what works on him. It makes me sick.
In fact, I’d actually like to jump on her and rip her eyes out, but I remind myself that I won. I got him and she didn’t. I got him because I was smarter than she was. I played a completely different game. I was unavailable. Mysterious. While she played the victim. He got bored. But was that really the reason? Or was it because she had two illegitimate children, and Hubert couldn’t, in the end, “handle it”?
“Hi,” she says to me, holding out a long, bony hand. “You must be Cecelia.”
For a moment, our eyes meet, and then she hands the “baby”—a two-year old girl—to Princess Ursula, who coos disgustingly all over it, while pushing Kirby, a sullen-faced six-year-old boy, toward Hubert.
“Hey Kirby,” Hubert says, lifting the boy and shaking him slightly. “Remember me?”
“No,” Kirby says (sensibly, I think), but Hubert won’t have it; he laughs loudly and says, “Don’t you remember playing baseball? Batter up!” He swings the boy around, which makes him start screaming, and then, as is always the case in these situations, the children are whisked away, probably to be fed some sort of gruel in the kitchen.
“Still no children of your own?” Lil’Bit says, looking up at Hubert from underneath that sheaf of hair, as if this is some private joke.
And then, for absolutely no discernible reason, Lil’Bit Parsons runs to the middle of the small, rocky yard and begins spinning around until she falls to the ground.
I want to scream, “This woman is a fucking nut-case,” but as I am the only one who apparently thinks so (because the rest of them are laughing delightedly, as if they’d just witnessed a performance by Marcel Marceau), I hold my tongue, pursing my lips in disapproval.
And after that, there is nothing to be done but to endure this long, boring lunch in which Lil’Bit dominates the conversation by talking about how she’s studying with gurus (indeed, she has been told that she will become a guru herself, having been one in a past life), the importance of animal rights, the evils of caffeine, and how she’s decided to start her own Internet company and (gasp) move to New York.
Throughout this, she basically ignores me, and even though it’s clear this woman is an absolute idiot, I’m feeling smaller and smaller, wondering why I ever let them cut my hair and thinking maybe I need to buy new, flashier clothes, and I sit up very straight in my chair and handle my utensils formally, saying little and allowing a slight smile to play across my lips from time to time.
“Oh Cecelia . . . that’s it, right? Cecelia,” Lil’Bit says toward the end of the meal, “Do you work or . . . or anything?”
“Cecelia is going to start doing some charity work,” Hubert says firmly, although, as far as I can remember, I have never expressed an interest in charity work, nor do I plan to do so.
“Oh really,” Lil’Bit purrs. “What kind of charity?”
“Encephalitic babies,” I say. “You know, those kids with big heads?”
“Really,” Princess Ursula says, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t joke about . . .”
“Oh, I have something for you,” Lil’Bit says to Hubert, reaching into her bag and pulling out a deck of cards. “They’re American Indian tarot cards.” She giggles. “From when I stayed in the tepee on the reservation in Montana. Doing the Indian rights thing.”
“Thank you,” Hubert says.
“Really,” I say. “I didn’t know you were interested in the paranormal.”
“Dianna Moon is with us, and she says her husband’s body parts were taken away by aliens,” Hubert says somewhat uneasily.
Lil’Bit shuffles the cards. “That’s true, you know. I don’t think they ever found his spleen.”
“Am I actually having this conversation?” I say, to no one in particular.
“Dianna Moon is your best friend,” Hubert says.
“After you, darling,” I say, touching his arm and smiling, fakely, across the table at Lil’Bit.
“Let me read your cards,” Lil’Bit says to Hubert, in what she evidently thinks is a low, sexy voice. “I want to see your future.”
Will she never go away?
Lil’Bit looks at Hubert’s cards. She takes his hands in hers. “Oh my darling,” she says breathily. “You must be . . . careful. Don’t do anything . . . dangerous.”
This is quite simply too much for me. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I snap. Everyone looks at me. “Let me give it a try. Let me read your cards, Lil’Bit.”
“Oh, but—you have to be . . . trained,” she says.
“How do you know I’m not?” I say.
I wave Hubert out of his seat and sit down across from her.
“But I already know my cards,” she says. “I do them every day.”
“Do you?” I ask. “Are you sure?”
“You lay them out,” she says.
“You know that wouldn’t be right, Lil’Bit. You know you have to . . . touch the cards”
“Well,” Lil’Bit says, looking up at Hubert. “This should be... fun”
She begins laying out the cards And, just as I had a feeling they might be, they’re all upside down.
“How . . . interesting,” I say.
Lil’Bit sees the cards and gasps. She looks up at me. My eyes bore into hers. I can feel her squirming under my power, but she can’t do anything about it.
>
“You know what this means, don’t you?” I ask. “It means,” I say, looking around the table at Hubert, who is standing there with a disturbed yet uncomprehending look on his face; at Princess Ursula, who is readjusting her sagging cleavage; and at Uncle Ernie, who is using a knife to clean under his fingernails when he thinks no one is looking, “That Lil’Bit is a complete . . . fraud.”
In fact, I want to scream, you’re ALL complete frauds.
But I don’t.
I smile and gather up the cards, “Game over” I say.
X
I light a cigarette.
I’m dressed in a baby-blue Bentley gown, and I’m crunching across the gravel driveway with Hubert following behind me in black tie and we get into the Mercedes SL500 convertible to go to the wedding of Juliette Morganz, the “little girl from Vermont” and I think, Why can’t we be normal? Maybe we can be normal.
Do I really care?
I can tell Hubert is in a good mood, driving the car expertly along Appogoque Lane, blaring Dire Straits, glancing over at me, and it suddenly hits me: Who is this man, really? Who is he? I’ve been married to this person for two years and with him for two years before that, and I don’t really know him at all.
And he doesn’t know me.
At all.
This realization is so depressing that I sit back and fold my arms, and I can feel the good vibes suddenly expire like air leaving a balloon. He looks over again, and I can feel his mood shifting downward, and it’s all my fault as he says, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“Something is wrong,” he says, in a bored and kind of disgusted voice, “again.”
“It’s nothing,” I say, contemplating the futility of it all, how we don’t really get along that well and probably never will, as I stare out the window at a big, dried-up potato field.
“Why do we have to fight all the time?” he asks.
“I have no idea,” I say, fingering my dress, which is made of finely wrought mesh, artfully constructed so that it appears see-through but really isn’t. “Does it matter?”
“I’m tired,” he says.
“So am I,” and I look away and see that we are passing the duck pond where the “incident” occurred, the incident that brought us together in mutual horror and terror. Another thing that we simply don’t talk about.
We ride the rest of the way in silence.
I feel like crying out of self-pity but I can’t, because we’re at the church now, and there are streams of cars and people, and a valet opens my door and I slip out of the car elegantly. Hubert walks around the front of the car and our eyes meet. And then, as we have been doing for the past couple of months whenever we go out or are seen in public, we pretend that everything is perfectly . . . all right.
And as we walk toward the church, he has one hand in his pocket and one arm around my waist, and I can’t help but notice how well we fit together, how we have this perfectly easy physicality, which means pretty much nothing now, and the photographers suddenly spot us and one of them shouts, “Here comes the happy couple.” The flashbulbs go off like crazy as we stop on the landing and smile, our arms around each other, and then one of the photographers says, “Hubert! Mind if we get a photo of your wife alone? No offense,” and everyone is laughing and snapping away as Hubert moves gallantly to the side.
I stand with my hands clasped behind my back, my head high, smiling, one leg in front of the other. When I glance toward the entrance of the church, I see Hubert standing with his hands in his pockets, looking on proudly.
D.W. is right. It is all about appearances.
And later, at the reception, walking carefully across the marble floor strewn with rose petals, I am all over Hubert and he is all over me, just like we were in the old days when it first came out that we were seeing each other but as far as the world was concerned, I might just have been another girlfriend. He is holding my hand behind my back, and my hand caresses his neck, while people look at us enviously and I wonder how long I’ll be able to keep this up. Luckily, I run into Dianna almost immediately, which is a good excuse for Hubert and me to go our separate ways without arousing suspicion.
Dianna is talking to Raymond Ally, the head of Ally cosmetics. Raymond, who is at least ninety, is in a wheelchair, and Dianna is smoking a Marlboro red, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’s not really in the right kind of shape to wear the dress she’s wearing, which is: pink Bentley, gossamer thin, a dress that works if you’re flat-chested, which Dianna isn’t because she’s had breast implants. Dianna is one of those girls who looks good in photographs, but in person, there’s no hiding the fact that she’s a dirty girl, a fact that Raymond seems to appreciate.
“Look at our girl,” Raymond says to me, talking about Dianna, who has put both arms around my neck. “She’s turned out to be quite a lady.” I look at him and wonder if he’s being stupid or sarcastic, but realize, with a certain degree of HORROR, that he is being completely sincere.
“Yes, yes she is,” I say, because it really is easier to agree with people on the surface, even if you know they’re full of shit.
“And I’ll bet you don’t know what I know about her. You two are friends, right?”
“Best friends,” Dianna says, kissing me on the cheek.
Raymond tugs at my arm. “Well, as her best friend, you ought to know this. This young lady is very, very smart. I’ll betcha she’s smarter than my grandsons, and they went to Harvard. This young lady didn’t even go to college!”
“Thank you, Raymond. Isn’t he a doll?” Dianna says.
“And I’ll tell you a little secret,” Raymond says, now that he has our attention. “Most people don’t know this, but every woman who makes it on her own is smart. She’s got to have it here,” he says, pointing to Dianna’s chest. “But she’s got to have it up here too,” touching his head.
“And you can buy that,” I say, indicating his chest.
“Oh, men don’t care if they’re real or fake, as long as you got some. And if you got none, go out and buy them, or else you’re a loser. But this,” he says, tapping his head again, “this you can’t buy. You’ve either got it or you don’t. And this girl’s got it.”
Suddenly, his gnarled hand shoots out and grabs Dianna’s hand, which he pulls to his mouth and gives a large, ferocious kiss. “There,” he says. “Now you girls go and have some fun. You don’t want to be hanging around with an old man like me. Go on.”
I look at Dianna inquiringly as we move away. She shrugs. “Old men love me. Come to think of it, all men love me. Hey, I’d give that old guy a blow job if I thought it’d help. But I don’t care about men, Cecelia. I only care about you.”
“And I only care about you, too,” I say, which may or may not be true but doesn’t really matter as we make our way, nodding and smiling, through the crowd.
“Did I ever tell you that I’m the best in bed?” she asks, taking a glass of champagne off a tray.
“Yes,” I say, laughing a bit uneasily because that is exactly what Amanda used to say about herself. I believe her exact words were: “I can get any man I want because I know exactly what to do to men in bed.”
And I always wanted to scream, “Yes, but you can’t keep them.”
And look what happened to HER.
Dianna is probably just as crazy and fucked up as Amanda was and will probably go ape shit someday the way Amanda did and try to do something horrible to me, but for the moment, that is all in my future. And then D.W. approaches with Juliette Morganz, whose wedding dress consists of beads and lace and bows (definitely not Bentley) and Juliette gushes all over us and drags us off for photographs with her mother and about fifteen other assorted relatives.
I just smile. I don’t want to make any waves.
And then I’m kind of bored, so when Sandi Sandi, the hot new singer, is playing, and everyone is dancing and drunk, I wander through the house and go into a marble bathroom on the second floor and snort s
ome cocaine, which I remind myself is just for old time’s sake, and then I go back to the party, cross the dance floor, and walk out of the tent, following a boardwalk down to the pond and onto a white dock, where I light up a cigarette.
Dianna Moon follows me.
“Hey, hey,” she says. She’s stumbling a bit and pretty drunk. “Let’s get out of here.”
There’s a charmingly beat-up old rowboat which she gets in. I follow, and we almost tip over, but then we sit in the bottom of the boat and try to row a little. There’s a current and the boat drifts away from the dock.
“Hey,” Dianna says. “I have to tell you something.”
“Not about Jesus, okay?”
“Oh Cecelia. Someone told me you killed your best friend.”
“Who?” I say.
“Nevil Mouse.”
“Nevil Mouse is so . . . stupid,” I say.
“I think he hates you,” Dianna says.
“He hates me because I wouldn’t go out with him. Years ago.”
“He says you’re not what you appear to be. I told him to go fuck himself.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you killed . . . Amanda? Your best friend? You put something in her drink?”
Oh GOD. Where do people get these lies? “It was a long time ago,” I say, as if it really isn’t important. And it does seem long ago, almost as if it couldn’t have happened, although it was actually four years ago, to be exact. At the end of that long, crazy summer right after I’d met Hubert and was seeing him secretly. Amanda and I were sharing a house.
“She killed herself,” I say.
“Jesus took her.”
“No.” I shake my head. “She was drunk, and she took too much coke. She got into her car and drove into the duck pond and drowned.”
She had been on her way to Hubert’s house. On the sly.
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