Wanda Teely peels a crisp twenty from her pricey blue Dooney & Bourke wallet, and requests readings for both she and Evan. Evan is told that the direction of his life is about to take a dramatic and unforeseen turn. Everyone interprets this to mean that his television series will be a success. Wanda is told that she will soon meet a new client, one that may prove a rainmaker for her business.
I’m told that I will soon face a decision that will determine my fate. “Choose wisely!” The psychic wags at me a long fingernail that looks dipped in gold.
“Perhaps it will be two publishers vying for your book,” David suggests, raising his glass to me.
Wanda’s ears perk up; she inquires if I am a writer. “I’d like to read your work,” she says, with the command of someone who is not generally refused. She and David strike up a conversation. When he discovers that she represents not only authors, but a large battalion of actors for commercials and films, he makes the insufferably condescending pronouncement, “Ah, there must be people to peddle the products of your consumer society,” and follows it up with this doosey: “I’ve never quite understood the appeal of acting. It seems to me the need to pretend to be someone else is symptomatic of some inner emptiness, of not liking oneself and wishing to escape into other identities.”
I am wondering if David has recognized Evan’s face from the chewing gum ad, and if he knows exactly what he is saying, or if he has unwittingly put his big foot in his mouth.
“Children pretend all the time,” I counter. “It comes naturally to them, and from a place of joy and creativity. Are you suggesting that every child suffers from some neurosis?”
“Well, that’s quite different, you see. An adult understands the necessity of surrendering the things of childhood.” I can tell by the lines formed across his forehead, that David has gone into debate mode.
“Perhaps surrendering the dreams of childhood is not the antidote to neurosis, but the cause of it. Jesus said that to enter the Kingdom we must become as little children.” In exasperation, I gulp the rest of my margarita. This is met with silence. Nobody’s taking on Jesus.
“Ah, yes, The Gospels. Those nice little stories,” David remarks after a moment, as if they were Aesop’s Fables.
Evan watches David with a perfect poker face. Sinclair attempts to change the subject, informing David of Evan’s past career with the ballet. Certainly, David can find no grounds for neurosis in achieving a six-year run with one of the great ballet companies of the world. I feel a sudden stab of shame that my date has insulted Evan, whereas his date has extended an offer of assistance to my career.
Mercifully, David settles into a conversation with Evan about dance. Yet it soon leads into David asking Evan where he has gone to school, landing Evan in the uncomfortable position of having to say he never finished high school, something that is beyond David’s comprehension. I try to wait it out, hoping the tide will turn and Evan will be delivered from David’s undertow of questioning, but with some uncanny sixth sense David hones in on Evan’s Achilles heel: his lack of formal education.
Brandon and Dylan exchange looks. Sinclair makes attempts to interject, but is somehow edged out of the conversation. Dylan’s date doesn’t seem to detect anything amiss, as she strokes the distracted Dylan’s hair with fingers adorned in splashy rhinestone rings.
When I can take it no more I blurt out, “Okay, that’s enough. Knock it off, I know what you’re doing!”
“What am I doing?” David turns a dry gaze upon me.
“You’re doing what you always do.”
“And what would that be?”
“You quiz people about their level of education, and because most people don’t have a doctorate in physics or didn’t graduate as valedictorian at Cambridge, you then are able to sit back and feel smug about your superiority! You use your intellect like a weapon, to elevate yourself over other people, or maybe to cloak your own insecurities!” This torrent of words leaves me breathless and snorting, like a lama, for air through my nose. I could use another swig of rum, but my hands are shaking.
“I thought I was making conversation,” he says coldly. “I wasn’t aware that I quiz people.”
“You do it to everyone!” The pitch of my voice hits a high octave. Sinclair taps his glass, a signal to me that the margarita is blurring my judgment, but I’ve arrived at a point of no return. “I watch you do it all the time, you’ve even done it to Dylan, although thank God, it’s impossible to insult Dylan, he loves himself too much!”
“Thanks, I think.” Dylan attempts levity, but his expression alters radically into something that resembles pity, as if perhaps now he understands, finally, in some small way, the sort of bone-crushing intellectual snobbery that I’ve endured these past years at Princeton. I have a vision of Dylan and I as children, racing out of our Brooklyn brownstone barefoot onto hot pavement to flag down the ice cream truck, Dylan yards ahead of me, but then he turns suddenly to wait for me as my small chubby legs strain to catch up.
His arms folded over him, Evan gazes down at his impeccable shoes. Wanda looks electrified by the unfolding drama, her razor-sharp intelligence cued to something.
“It’s okay, man.” Evan absolves his interrogator with a good-natured wave of his hand, and then excuses himself to the men’s room, his receding figure bleeding into the golden shadows like a retreating prince in a fairytale.
“If I make people so uncomfortable, perhaps I should leave.” David rises slowly, assuming that I’ll protest. When I don’t, he departs. I’m breathing as if I’ve run a marathon, while everyone stares uncomfortably at the fine white linen tablecloth stained with rum where I’ve spilled my drink, all but Wanda, who studies me with a gaze like a scalpel. I gulp the last of my drink and excuse myself to the ladies room.
I lie in wait beneath the luminescent chandeliers, pacing like a leopard. When Evan emerges from the men’s room, I beckon him with animation and urgency, out to the courtyard, under the twinkling white lights strung into infinity over the towering trees, the indigo air pungent with the scent of lilies that somehow buck the cold in their terra cotta pots.
“I’m sorry about that. He’s insufferable. I never really felt the full weight of it, until tonight. I hope I never see him again as long as I live.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Evan says, but with a hologram of armor about him.
I watch him with a longing that feels like the reason I came to earth. My gaze has some softening effect on him.
“You’re cold, Haley, put this on.” Evan moves to take his tuxedo jacket off, but I stop him.
“I don’t care. I hope I catch cold. I hope I die of cold.”
Evan struggles with me, draping his jacket across my shoulders, and navigating my arms through its sleeves as if I were a stubborn toddler.
“This is some dress.” He brushes his hands over my waist, where Sinclair has sewn black marabou feathers and one blue silk rose at the back, like a delicate bustle. “Perfect for a Viennese waltz, huh?” he smiles, but I detect a ripple of jealousy.
“I’m in love with you.” The words erupt from me into the dark air of the courtyard, ignited by his touch. “I have been from the moment I first saw you in that blue bandanna on that long-ago afternoon in the Chelsea apartment. And now you’re going to go away. Your television series is going to take off and be successful, and you’ll move to the West Coast and I’ll never see you again, and I need you to know that I love you. I have to tell you now, because I may never get the chance.”
“Haley,” Evan says, with great tenderness.
“Are you sleeping with your agent?”
Evan looks as if he’s been shot. He steps back almost imperceptibly, with a sharp intake of breath, but denies nothing.
“It’s true, isn’t it? How could you do that? You don’t have to do that, to get work. You’re so talented; you could have done it on your own. How could you choose her over me?” I battle tears. “Is she so much better than me?”
“
I’ve never chosen anyone or anything over you,” he says, anguished.
“Haven’t you? Haven’t you chosen everything over me?”
“There are things that I have no control over. I don’t expect you to understand.” He looks as if there is more he would say, if he could.
“You have control over your choices, don’t you? Isn’t that the one thing we all have control over?”
“I don’t have the choices that you do,” he says defiantly. “I’m not free in the way that you’re free, Haley.”
“What does that mean? I don’t understand you.” I twist the folds of my dress. Black feathers float to the pavement.
“You have the freedom to throw away opportunities, because you have your family to fall back on. But there are people who fall back on me.”
“What are you talking about? You have the world on a string! The world is your oyster! You get everything you want. Everything just flows to you, as if from some Aladdin’s Lamp that answers your every wish! They were right about you—all of them. They said you would hurt me in the end. Dylan said your career was the most important thing to you, and he was right. You’re just like, what do you call them, ‘most people.’ You’re just like everyone else in this city, ambitious to a fault and a user!” I accuse through tears. I back away from him, as if he was lethal.
“I am not those things,” he says stoically. Yet something in his expression moves me. I reach for him, but he turns his back abruptly on me.
“Dylan was right. It was only lust you felt for me. Nothing else. That’s what this has been all about. That’s all this was ever about!” I hurl this at him, anything to keep him from walking away.
He reels as if my words landed a physical blow. “Yes, I feel lust for you,” he says, “And every other beautiful thing that the human heart can feel.”
He remains there, without his coat, without a wrinkle in his white starched shirt, his tousled hair touching his collar, a funnel of golden light framing him. He should be shivering in this weather, but Evan seems impervious to the elements, to the things that lay the rest of us up, like cold, and gravity, perhaps even love. He appears to me, at that moment, like the most wondrous creature that a benevolent Creator could dream into being, achingly inaccessible and inexpressively beautiful.
“Why is my sister crying?”
We become aware of Dylan, who has stepped from the lighted restaurant into the courtyard. Dylan stands there, with his hands in his pockets, beaming his intensity on us like a searchlight.
“It’s okay, Dylan,” I say. Intrusions on my time with Evan are always maddening, but I feel, for the first time, a strange relief at the sight of my brother. Evan retrieves the blue silk rose that has fallen from my dress, and, pressing it into my hand, whispers, “Think of me.” He turns then, and he and Dylan exchange a look that could go either way; it may dissolve into a civil nod, or erupt into a slugfest. The former occurs, and Evan disappears into the restaurant.
Snow begins to fall in the stone courtyard. The Joseph is crooning: Gigi/am I a fool without a mind/or have I merely been too blind to realize/You’re not at all that funny awkward little girl I knew/Oh no, Overnight there’s been a breathless change in you.
“Are you coming inside?” Dylan’s demeanor is watchful, but not intrusive. His silhouette looms before the backdrop of bright windows.
“I’m going to walk home. Do me a favor. Ask Sinclair to take my velvet bag home with him. It’s important, I have some of my writing in there.”
Dylan nods. “You shouldn’t walk in this cold, and it’s dark. Do you have cab fare?”
“I want to walk.” I strain to sound casual, strolling backwards over the snowy pavement as I address Dylan, hoping to put some distance between us in the dusky light so he doesn’t see my tears. “I’ll be fine.” Dylan is motionless in his dashing ensemble, the snow gathering like a white crown over his dark mane. It occurs to me, at that moment, that my brother is destined for great things. I hug Evan’s jacket about me, the only part of him I have left. It feels supernaturally warm, as if his life force were stitched into its seams. It smells of him.
Oh Gigi/Have I been standing up too close/Or back too far?/When did your sparkle turn to fire?/Your warmth become desire?/Oh what miracle has made you the way you are?
My gown rustles as I turn with a sudden resolve toward the street, quickening my step. Dylan catches up with me, hails a cab, and stuffs a twenty into my hand, then turns away, sparing me the humiliation of having to admit that he’s been right all along.
I hesitate, before rushing at him to throw my arms around his neck, and then, just as quickly, I rebound into the waiting car. As the cab wades into the slushy gray lanes, I glance back to see my brother, arms folded across his courtly coat, lighting a smoke, but looking my way.
~ 16 ~
A Wanda Scorned
I don’t see much of anyone after the black tie gala, not even Sinclair. I leave the Gigi gown draped over a dress bust in Sinclair’s apartment. There are snow stains on the hem, and when I don’t hear from Sinclair, I assume he’s angry with me for the damage. Snow ambushes the city, crippling, for a time, the ceaseless flow of the most ambitious island on earth, but, for me, it’s a welcome invasion. It cloaks the ugliness, as if it would be happy to start the city anew, with a clean white slate. Little Felix and I pass our afternoons at the Museum of Natural History, which is a short walk from the brownstone. Felix cuts a colorful figure in the snow, in his bright yellow rubbery rain gear with matching boots and hat. We don’t even begin to exhaust the museum with its myriad figures of animals and prehistoric humans, though Felix seems more fascinated with the escalators than the exhibits.
My job with the Wingtrapes has evolved slowly into a power struggle. You would think they would feel grateful, even indebted, to me for the progress that I’ve made with little Felix’s vocabulary; I speak to him all day long, teaching him the names of objects, repeating words gently to him to help his pronunciation, and reading countless books to him while he cuddles beside me, pointing to the illustrations and testing the waters of his speech. But the Wingtrapes want a personal assistant, not a nanny. Will I run this errand? Would I mind doing a load of wash? Could I fry up these chicken cutlets? It is the one time in my life that I pull rank, pointing out my Princeton education, and putting my foot down that I will not do anything that was not outlined in the initial job interview. But Randolph Wingtrape is used to getting his way and ordering people about, and the more I defy his boundary pushing, the more he tries to push the boundaries. He never does remove his items from the office space in my small apartment, and once or twice I’ve shut the bedroom door because he’s there in the off-hours rifling through papers at his desk. He shows up one day at Felix’s gym to taunt me; there’s a large glass window where parents (not that there are ever any parents present; it is mostly the nannies) may observe the children playing on the jungle gym equipment under the supervision of the trained staff. Randolph appears one day at the gym, and taunts me with, “Where is Felix? Where is he, Haley? What have you done with my son?” unnerving me to such an extent that for an excruciating thirty seconds I can’t place Felix among the children behind the glass; I can’t recall what he is wearing, or what equipment he is on; even though I knew these specifics only a moment earlier; even though I never, ever let my precious charge out of my sight for a second. But that’s the dismantling effect the creepy Randolph Wingtrape has on my psyche.
Evan’s series premieres on the Fox channel, but I can’t bring myself to watch it.
One day Brandon pays me a visit. Walking home from Endicott Books, I come upon Brandon sitting on the stoop of my brownstone, smoking a Parliament, his curls crushed under a red beret, and wearing his seventies black suede coat with its super-long fringe on the sleeves, and his usual white socks evident above his black Adidas sneakers. He palms my copy of Milan Kundera’s, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I can always trust my books to Brandon; he treats them with the same reverence
that I do. He’ll go to great lengths to keep a book looking brand new, even if it means holding it at odd angles when reading, to keep from breaking the spine.
“Why did you do that to Evan?” he asks pointedly.
I assume he’s referring to the confrontation in the courtyard. I’m speechless that Evan would share that with anyone, even Brandon.
Brandon informs me that, after I fled the ball, Sinclair gave my bulky velvet bag of stories to Wanda Everhart Teely-Turpin to take home with her to evaluate.
“She fired Evan. She read some story that you wrote about you and Evan. Wanda and Evan were involved; they were a couple, and apparently something that you wrote sent her over the edge.”
I stand there in the snowy cold in my layers of wool: gray wool tights tucked into pink boots, a short black sweater dress and heavy black hooded cardigan—and wearing the furry earmuffs that Evan bought me. I scrape my memory for what Brandon could possibly be referring to. The saxophone player across the way drops notes into the lavender air. And then I recall that my story, Blue Rose In Chelsea, was in that bag, a novella of sorts that I’ve been working on since the day I met Evan because I felt the need to record every word, every look, every encounter with him. It’s not so much a story, as one rambling journal entry, one long love letter to him.
“She fired Evan?” I repeat helplessly.
“She figured out that there was something between the two of you. I always thought there was; we all did. How could you do that to him, Haley? You know he’s got a widowed mother and two younger sisters back home in Texas who rely on him for the money he sends home.”
Have I been mowed over by a truck? There are people who fall back on me. Evan’s words echo in the cavern of memory. I had assumed Evan meant those who were earning money off him, like Wanda, or the producers of the television show.
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