The Unexpected Waltz

by Kim Wright

  How did he know that? More to the point, how had he failed to know that I’d always wanted to go to Scotland? Things began to break apart that year, as if Tory was the linchpin holding us all together and when she left we flew off into different directions. “Scotland,” I’d repeated, and he’d said, “Yeah, so give her two or three.” Meaning two or three thousand. I gave her four. Elyse had been astounded and even Phil had sent us a thank-you card. Across the bottom he’d printed, “You two always did know how to make me look like shit.”

  “I guess he’s kidding,” I said. “Do you think he’s kidding?”

  “Of course he’s kidding,” Mark said. “That’s Phil’s sense of humor.”

  “I never thought of Phil as having a sense of humor.”

  “Any man who’d marry Elyse would have to have a hell of a sense of humor.” Which sounds mean, but Mark smiled when he said it, and over the years I have gradually been forced into the knowledge that even Mark and Elyse actually got along in a certain way. They used to pick at each other, but there was never any rancor in it and Mark flat-out loved Tory. That wasn’t even an effort. I’m stranded with the knowledge that it was my presence that made everyone uncomfortable, my anxious assumption that they couldn’t all possibly get along, that I was the only thing they could ever have in common.

  Tory and Elyse both headed west three years ago, but not together. Tory had been accepted at the University of Texas and Elyse was finally making good on her longtime threat to move to the desert. But despite the fact that we’ve scattered, we still have our holiday rituals. They fly in mid-December and stay the week leading up to Christmas with me. Right after the holiday Elyse moves on to her mother’s house and Tory leaves with Phil and her stepmother to celebrate New Year’s in some sunny place. This time I think it’s Aruba.

  Last year was somber, overshadowed by the rarely acknowledged fact that it was the first Christmas since Mark’s death. Despite the fact that there are nine beds in this house, Tory had insisted on sleeping on the couch in Mark’s office. “It still smells like him in there,” she’d said, and once I heard her crying through the door. Since it was just the three of us, I made Cornish game hens instead of a turkey, put up only the tabletop tree, and hung our little stockings. But this year I’m determined to pull out all the stops.

  ELYSE IS DUE TO arrive this morning, but first I’m meeting the other girls from group class to give Nik his Christmas present. Apparently he once told Isabel he wanted a black leather jacket and she’d never forgotten. When I saw how quick everyone was to donate to Nik’s gift, I realized that I’m not the only one who feels protective toward him. “Where’s he going to go on the actual day of Christmas?” Steve had asked, with the concern one bachelor feels for another, and Harry had reached in his wallet, pulled out a fifty, and said, “Poor kid.”

  We’d ended up with enough money for a seriously nice jacket and Isabel has it in the trunk of her car. She didn’t wrap it or put it in a box, but rather just left it on the hanger, swathed in great expanses of red tissue paper. It looks like something James Dean would have worn. It’s the American dream cut out of leather.

  We know we can’t present it to him in front of Anatoly and Quinn, who are getting gift certificates and bottles of wine, so a few of the women have agreed to converge in the parking lot at 9:50 a.m., before he meets Pamela for her ten o’clock lesson. Our timing is good. We’ve only been sitting bunched up in Isabel’s car for a few minutes when Nik pulls into the parking lot.

  I don’t particularly like seeing Nik outside the studio. He looks younger in the daylight. Small veins are visible through his pale skin and he slumps a little when he’s wearing his jeans. Isabel honks her horn. He walks over slowly, blinking with uncertainty, and we all get out as Isabel pops the trunk. The jacket lies there, zipped over a headless red torso. It’s a little alarming really, as if we’ve all collectively stumbled upon a crime scene.

  But he knows at once what we’ve done, and he startles me by squealing. It’s a sound like a little girl would make—high and pure and full of unfeigned joy.

  "THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE," Elyse says when I meet her at the airport. An odd remark considering that I’m the one who never left. I’d sat in the cell phone parking lot waiting for her to call and tell me she’d landed, and then I swung around to the arrivals lane, which was insanely busy. She tossed her suitcase in the back and jumped in fast, amid honking horns, so we didn’t get the chance to hug. We just patted each other’s shoulders.

  “This place is a zoo,” Elyse says as I weave among the stopped cars. “I’m sorry we’re going to have to come back in two days for Tory.”

  It’s been a sore point for weeks that Tory is arranging her travel plans around a party her boyfriend’s parents are hosting back in Austin. She’s dating the son of a conservative pro-life senator, something I suspect is an attempt to jab at her mother, to prove to the universe she sure as hell isn’t getting the chipotle chicken. But who knows, maybe she loves the boy. Her e-mails are full of references to the wonders of Jason.

  “She’s got to find her own path,” Elyse says vaguely, as if we’ve been discussing it. “Evidently she was a big hit at the senator’s holiday party.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be?” Thanks to a father who’s a dentist and a stepmother who’s a dermatologist, Tory has flawless skin and teeth. She wears her thick golden hair pulled back in a headband that makes her look like Alice come straight from Wonderland. She’s perfect breeding stock, the ideal daughter-in-law for a politician, an asset to any family Christmas card. “You don’t think she’s going to marry that boy, do you?”

  Elyse shakes her head. “She won’t push it that far. Nobody in their right mind marries the first man they ever sleep with.”

  “You think she’s sleeping with him?”

  Elyse pauses, then murmurs, “Well, it never occurred to me that she wasn’t . . .” which is a reasonable response, unless you factor in that the ultimate way for a girl to rebel against a mother like Elyse would be to remain a virgin.

  Throughout the years I’ve been on the receiving end of many late-night weepy phone calls—some from Elyse and some from Tory, but they have all begun with the line “You can’t believe what she said to me this time . . .” For a while I fantasized that I would mediate between them, that I would be the one to broker a compromise, but of course that was never my place, and besides, things are shifting. Ever since Tory has gone off to college, Elyse has thrown in the metaphorical towel and they seem to be getting along better, as if the sheer geographic distance has brought them some peace. I do my part to give them this neutral place and to make it nice, stocking up on the strange peppers and herbs that Elyse likes to cook with, going overboard with the decorations, cranking down the heat to the stone-coldness that Tory’s hyperrevved metabolism requires. I don’t mind sleeping with an extra blanket if that’s what makes the girl happy.

  I feel for Tory. I understand how hard it is to not be Elyse.

  “Well, at least Wonderboy won’t be joining us around the holiday table,” Elyse says. “For a while I think she planned to spring him on me and Phil at the same time. Oh and Janet,” she adds, remembering the woman who replaced her like she always does, as an afterthought. “I didn’t tell Tory that Jason wasn’t welcome, of course. That would have been like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I told her he was completely welcome and that’s when she said he couldn’t make it. I think she’s trying to use him to shock me.”

  Elyse and I break into the giggles. Trying to use a man to shock Elyse would never work. Men like Elyse. Let me rephrase that. All men like Elyse. Even the ones you don’t expect. Let me rephrase again. Especially the ones you don’t expect. Someday, when the moment comes that Jason and Elyse do eventually meet, they will undoubtedly become confidants by the end of the first glass of wine and poor Tory will be forced to throw herself into the Rio Grande.

  "THA
T'S PRETTY," ELYSE SAYS. She’s dragged her suitcase as far as the dining room and is staring at what I think of as “my last tablescape.” One for the road, the end of an era, but I’m still a bit proud of it—a line of red ribbons and irregularly shaped crystals and dried brambles from the rose garden, running the length of the table in what I consider an artful snarl. “Of course you always did . . .” Her voice fades as she wanders her way into the kitchen and I hear the pop of my refrigerator door opening.

  I stand frowning down at the tablescape, wondering exactly what she had been starting to say. I suspect Elyse finds my interests trivial. One Christmas, sometime after Elyse moved to Arizona, I’d decided to throw a dinner party in her honor. The old gang was coming, friends from years ago whom I hardly saw myself anymore. I’d gone into the pantry for something. I guess I’d been dashing around, but no more than usual. Is it a crime to want things to be nice? I’d burned a CD of light jazz for the background because sometimes there’s a lull in conversation and that always goes better if there’s music. It makes it seem almost like the lull was planned. I’d screwed up the crab cakes the first time and had to remake them and maybe I fussed a little more than I should have. It was about an hour before everyone was due and I came out of the pantry to find Elyse and Mark laughing. “You know what she called you?” he said, leaning against the counter and swirling his scotch. “She said you’re like a geisha. A geisha on amphetamines.”

  “Do you think I’ve overdone it?” I ask Elyse, shaking myself out of the memory and following her into the kitchen. “I was at this party a couple of weeks ago and the centerpieces were actually roses on mirrors, if you can believe it, and I started thinking thorns were better, and jagged crystals, so it would be sort of like the same idea deconstructed, you know, like the boring old centerpiece had blown apart and the roses had died and the mirror had broken. Deconstruction is very big right now.”

  “Right,” she says absentmindedly, staring inside the refrigerator.

  I persist. “There’s art in that, you know, things falling apart. You said it was pretty, but it’s not supposed to be pretty. It’s supposed to be real.”

  “Right,” she says again, either too bored or too polite to point out to me that she’s the actual artist, the one who really knows about these things.

  “It’s just that last year was so gloomy and this year I wanted things to be more festive. Back to normal.”

  “Are you having your usual big party?”

  “No. Of course not. Who would I invite?”

  “What about your dance studio buddies?”

  “None of them have ever been to my house. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Why?” Elyse leans away from the refrigerator door and looks around my big, shiny kitchen. “Are you afraid they won’t like you if they know where you live?”

  Actually I’m afraid they might like me more. Or at least like me different. I look around the kitchen too, and through the doors into the dining room with that monstrous tablescape running down the center of the table. “You think I’ve overdone it, don’t you?”

  “Of course not, baby, why are you getting upset? Everything’s beautiful. You want to make some salad?”

  “We could go out for lunch.”

  “Do you mind if we wait until dinner?” I shake my head. She got up at God knows what hour this morning, of course she just wants to shower and relax. She slams the refrigerator door and a Christmas card flies off the front, one I’d stuck on with a snowman magnet.

  “It’s from Nik,” I say.

  She picks it up and looks inside. “See you son,” she reads.

  “Isn’t that cute? He meant ‘See you soon,’ because I haven’t told anybody this but I’m doing a little recital while you and Tory will be here. Nik is meeting me at the hospice Christmas dinner and we’re going to waltz to ‘Silver Bells.’ Carolina has been after me to dance for her for weeks and this seems like a good time to do it. You’ll come, won’t you? Do you think hospice will freak out Tory?”

  “Of course we’ll come.”

  “I thought you and I can go over there tomorrow and watch a movie. I want you to meet Carolina. And maybe you can come with me to my dance lesson too, if it’s not too much—”

  “Kelly,” Elyse says, her voice firm but kind. “What are you doing? There’s no way in hell I’m going to miss the chance to meet Carolina and Nik. You talk about them all the time. Why do you get so jumpy like this whenever two parts of your life come together? Tory will be fine at hospice. She’s a big girl. And we both want to see you dance.”

  The kitchen is suddenly blurry with my tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I cry all the time lately.”

  “Christmas makes people emotional.” Elyse sticks Nik’s card back on the fridge. “See you son,” she says softly. “That’s a funny mistake to make.”

  "ARE YOU SURE WE want to watch something this sad?” Elyse says when she notices the movie I’ve picked out for our visit with Carolina.

  “This isn’t sad.”

  “You don’t call a brain tumor sad?”

  “She gets the brain tumor in Dark Victory. In Now, Voyager all she does is fall in love with a married man.”

  “Oh yeah, right. A comedy.”

  “How is Gerry, anyway?”

  “He’s great. He’s always great. He doesn’t know how to be anything else.” Elyse looks up at the crooked wreath on the Hospice House doorway and her face tightens a little. “This is going to be hard, isn’t it?”

  I’m used to the house of death, since I come here five times a week and sometimes I forget the effect it has on other people. I link my arm through Elyse’s. “You’re going to like her. And yeah, that’s exactly what’s going to make it hard.”

  We find Carolina in her room. Getting her back on the IVs and meds has stabilized her a bit and she hugs us both and grins when she sees the bottle of wine Elyse has smuggled in her purse. She won’t drink much of it. With so many painkillers in her system, a thimbleful of alcohol is enough to get her looped. But she likes the idea that I bring it on movie nights, along with the bag of popcorn and the oversize box of Raisinets.

  “Oh good. Bette Davis,” she says when she sees me open the DVD case.

  “I’m teaching her about the heyday of Hollywood,” I tell Elyse as we all climb into the bed together. Carolina is so thin now that she lies between us like a child; Elyse unscrews the wine cap while I fiddle with the remote. “We’ve done Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford and we’re halfway through the classics of Miss Bette Davis.”

  “You need to get her going on Elizabeth,” Elyse says. “Or maybe Lana.” She has always referred to movie stars exclusively by their first names, as if they were old childhood friends of hers.

  “Elizabeth is up next.”

  “I like Bette Davis,” Carolina says, her mouth full of popcorn. “She’s so real.”

  “That she is,” says Elyse. “And I’ve got to tell you, it totally gets on my nerves.”

  Carolina laughs delightedly and I can see Elyse has already charmed her. She pours glasses of syrah for me and her, a smaller one for Carolina, and the movie begins.

  I always forget how disturbingly plain Bette is at the beginning of Now, Voyager, with her tight bun and wire-rimmed glasses and sensible clothes. I gulp the first couple of inches of wine and hold out my glass. Elyse tops me off, her eyes never leaving the screen. It’s not like we haven’t seen this movie a hundred times, like I don’t know that within minutes she’ll go to the sanatorium and have her big makeover. There’s no reason to worry that the movie is going to somehow change course and Bette will get stuck in ugly-land or that she’ll never get on that cruise ship and fall in love.

  Elyse suddenly picks up the remote and hits Pause, freezing Bette with her mouth open and her eyes bulging.

  “Is this the one where the guy puts two cigaret
tes in his mouth and lights them both at once?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she says ‘Forget the moon and keep the stars’?”

  “The actual line is ‘Don’t ask for the moon, we have the stars.’”

  “It’s coming back to me.” She picks up the remote again but I find myself blurting something before she can press the button. It pops out in a little hiccup.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love,” I say.

  Carolina and Elyse both shift in the bed to look at me.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I say to Elyse. “You’re thinking that if I wasn’t in love with Daniel, I sure as hell gave a good imitation of it, but that wasn’t love, it was obsession. He was like some itch right in the middle of my back that I couldn’t scratch. And then poor Mark . . . there was a woman at a charity dinner who said I gave him a lovely home and that’s all that matters, but do you think that’s really all that matters? Because I’ve been faking, faking it my whole life, and I think Mark sort of knew that. I’d catch him looking at me sometimes like a dog who doesn’t understand why you put him outside in the yard, and I don’t want to be like this but I always have been, and I don’t know how to stop and now I’m fifty-two, which seems significant, because it’s like the number of weeks in a year or the number of cards in a deck. It’s a big number. So that has to mean something, don’t you think, although maybe it just means I’m getting old. The kind of old where it’s too late to change. What do you think?”

  Elyse seems strangely frozen, much like Bette, but when I come to the end of my speech and take a big, defiant swig of wine she exhales slowly and considers her answer. “I don’t think it’s too late,” she finally says.