by Joy Fielding
Which was the only thing that really worried Cindy.
Sometimes she’d look over at Duncan and her daughter as they were reading the morning paper at breakfast—Honey Nut Cheerios for him, Cinnamon Toast Crunch for her—and think they were almost too comfortable with each other, too settled. She marveled at Heather’s eager embrace of such a safe, middle-aged lifestyle, and wondered if being the child of divorce had played any part in it. “Why is she in such a hurry to tie herself down? She’s only nineteen. She’s in college. She should be out sleeping around,” Cindy had shocked her friends recently by confiding. “Well, when else is she going to do it?” she’d continued, painfully aware of her own reluctant celibacy.
Cindy could count on one hand the number of affairs she’d had since her divorce, two of those in the immediate aftermath of Tom’s abrupt decision to leave her for another woman, a woman he’d left for yet another other woman as soon as his divorce from Cindy became final. Seven years of other women, Cindy thought now, each woman younger and tartier than the last. A dozen at least. A baker’s dozen, she thought, feeling her jaw lock. And then along came little Fiona, the freshest tart of all. Hell, she was only eight years older than Julia. Not even a tart, for God’s sake. A cookie!
“Mom?” Heather was asking.
“Hmm?”
“Is everything all right?”
“Mrs. Carver?” Duncan reappeared at Heather’s side. The towel had been replaced by a pair of fashionably faded blue jeans. He slipped a navy T-shirt over his still-damp, utterly hairless chest. “Is something wrong? You have a very strange look on your face.”
“She’s thinking about my father,” Julia announced wearily.
“What? I am not.”
“Then why the rigor mortis smile?”
Cindy took a deep breath and tried to relax her mouth, feeling it wobble precariously from side to side. “I thought you were in such a hurry to get in the shower.”
“It’s only eight-thirty,” Julia said as Elvis began barking.
“Would someone like to go for a walk?” Duncan asked the dog, whose response was to run around in increasingly frantic circles and bark even louder. “Let’s go then, boy.” Duncan bounded down the stairs, Elvis racing ahead of him, as the phone in Cindy’s bedroom began to ring.
“If it’s Sean, I’m not here,” Julia told her mother.
“Why would Sean be calling on my line?”
“Because I won’t speak to him on mine.”
“Why won’t you speak to him?”
“Because I broke up with him, and he won’t take no for an answer. I’m not here,” Julia insisted as the phone continued to ring.
“What about you?” Cindy asked her younger daughter playfully. “Are you here?”
“Why would I want to speak to Sean?”
“Be back in twenty minutes,” Duncan called from the front door.
My best kid, Cindy thought, entering her room and reaching for the phone on the night table beside her bed.
“I’m not here,” Julia repeated from the doorway.
“Hello.”
“It’s me,” the voice announced as Cindy plopped down on the edge of her unmade bed, a headache slowly gnawing at the base of her neck.
“Is it Sean?” Julia whispered.
“It’s Leigh,” Cindy whispered back as Julia rolled disappointed eyes toward the window overlooking the backyard. Outside, the late-August sun created the illusion of peace and tranquility.
“Why are you whispering?” Cindy’s sister asked. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“I’m fine. How about you? You’re calling awfully early.”
“Early for you maybe. I’ve been up since six.”
It was Cindy’s turn to roll her eyes. Leigh had elevated sibling rivalry to a fine art. If Cindy had been up since seven o’clock, Leigh had been up since five; if Cindy had a sore throat, Leigh had a sore throat and a fever; if Cindy had a million things to do that day, Leigh had a million and one.
“This wedding is going to be the death of me,” Leigh said. “You have no idea what planning a wedding this size is like. No idea.”
“I thought everything was pretty much taken care of.” Cindy knew that Leigh had been planning her daughter’s wedding ever since Bianca was five years old. “Is there a problem?”
“Our mother is driving me absolutely nuts.”
Cindy felt her headache spreading rapidly from the top of her spine to the bridge of her nose. She tried picturing her sister, who was three years younger, two inches shorter, and fifteen pounds heavier than she was, but she couldn’t remember the color of her hair. Last week it had been a deep chestnut brown, the week before that an alarming carrot red.
“What’s she done now?” Cindy asked reluctantly.
“She doesn’t like her dress.”
“So change it.”
“It’s too late to change it. The damn dress is already made. We have fittings this afternoon. I need you to be there.”
“Me?”
“You have to convince her the dress looks fabulous. She’ll believe you. Besides, don’t you want to see Heather and Julia in their dresses?”
Cindy’s head snapped toward Julia, still watching from the doorway. “Heather and Julia have fittings this afternoon?”
“No way!” Julia exclaimed. “I’m not going. I hate that stupid dress.”
“Four o’clock. And they can’t be late,” Leigh continued, oblivious to Julia’s rant.
“I’m not wearing that god-awful purple dress.” Julia began pacing back and forth in the doorway. “I look like a giant grape.”
“The girls will be there,” Cindy said pointedly, watching her daughter throw her arms up into the air. “But I’m getting a really bad headache.”
“A headache? Please, I’ve had a migraine for two days now. Look, I have a zillion things to do. I’ll see you at four o’clock.”
“I’m not going,” Julia said as Cindy hung up the phone.
“You have to go. You’re a bridesmaid.”
“I’m busy.”
“She’s my sister.”
“Then you wear the damn dress.”
“Julia.…”
“Mother.…”
Julia spun around on her heels and disappeared into the bathroom at the end of the hall, slamming the door behind her.
(Flashback: Julia, a chubby toddler, her Shirley Temple curls framing dimpled, chipmunk cheeks, burrowing in against her mother’s pregnant belly as Cindy reads her a bedtime story; Julia, age nine, proudly displaying the fiberglass casts she wore after breaking both arms in a fall off her bicycle; Julia at thirteen, already almost a head taller than her mother, defiantly refusing to apologize for swearing at her sister; Julia the following year, packing her clothes into the new Louis Vuitton suitcase her father had bought her, then carrying it outside to his waiting BMW, leaving her childhood—and her mother—behind.)
Later Cindy would wonder whether these images had been a premonition of disaster looming, of calamity about to strike, whether she’d somehow suspected that the glimpse she’d caught of Julia disappearing behind the slammed bathroom door was the last she would see of her difficult daughter.
Probably not. How could she, after all? Why would she? It was far too early in the day to be mindful of the fact that great calamity, like great evil, often springs from the womb of the hopelessly mundane, that defining moments rarely have meaning in the present and can be seen clearly only in retrospect. And so the morning of the day Julia went missing was rightly perceived by her mother as nothing more than one in a long string of such mornings, their argument only the latest installment of their ongoing debate. Cindy thought little of it beyond that which was obvious—her daughter was giving her a hard time, what else was new?
Julia.…
Mother.…
Checkmate.
TWO
“I met this great guy.”
Cindy stared across the picnic table at her friend. Trish Sinclai
r was all careless sophistication and ageless grace. She shouldn’t have been beautiful, but she was, her face full of sharp, competing angles, her Modigliani-like features further exaggerated by the unnatural blackness of her hair, hair that hung in dramatic swirls past bony shoulders, toward the ample cleavage that peeked out over the top buttons of her bright yellow blouse. “You’re married,” Cindy reminded her.
“Not for me, silly. For you.”
Cindy lowered the back of her head to the top of her spine, lifting her face to the sun and inhaling the faintest whiff of fall. A month from now it would probably be too cool to be sitting on a picnic bench in a friend’s backyard in the middle of the day, choosing what movies to see at this year’s festival, while eating open-faced tuna sandwiches and sipping glasses of chardonnay. “Not interested.”
“Let me tell you about him before you make any hasty decisions.”
“I thought we were here to discuss movies.” Cindy looked to her friend, Meg, for help. Meg Taylor, looking closer to fifteen than forty, was as fair and flat-chested as Trish was dark and voluptuous. She sat on the other end of the long picnic bench, wearing cutoff jeans and a red-and-white-striped tank top, seemingly engrossed in the dauntingly thick catalog for this year’s festival.
“The new Patricia Rozema film sounds good,” she offered, her voice small and crinkly, like tin foil unraveling.
“What page?” Cindy asked gratefully, eager to move on. The last time Trish had fixed her up, just before Julia’s move home, had been an unmitigated disaster. At the end of the relentlessly confrontational evening with the thrice-divorced divorce attorney, the man had leaned in for what Cindy assumed was a conciliatory peck on the cheek, then rammed his tongue so far down Cindy’s throat, she’d had visions of having to call a plumber to get him out.
“Special Presentation,” Meg told her. “Page 97.”
Cindy quickly flipped through the pages of her festival catalog.
“ ‘Elegantly shot and finely performed,’ ” Meg read from the notes, “ ‘what is finally so impressive about Rozema’s new work.…”
“Isn’t she the one who makes films about lesbians?” Trish interrupted.
“Is she?” Meg asked.
Cindy’s eyes traveled back and forth between her two closest friends. Cindy and Meg had been inseparable since the eleventh grade; Cindy and Trish had bonded after colliding at the Clinique counter at Holt’s ten years ago. “Mansfield Park wasn’t about lesbians,” Cindy said, thinking that neither woman had changed substantially over the years.
“It had lesbian overtones,” Trish said.
“Mansfield Park is by Jane Austen,” Meg reminded her.
“It had definite overtones.”
“Your point being …?”
“I don’t want any lesbians this year.”
“You don’t want any lesbians?”
“I’m tired of lesbians. We saw enough films about lesbians last year.”
Cindy laughed. “You have a quota on lesbians?”
“Does that include gays?” Meg grabbed a green apple from a nearby basket and took a loud bite.
“Yes.” Trish pushed a thick layer of dark bangs away from her forehead, adjusted the heart-shaped diamond pendant at her throat. “I’m tired of them too.”
“Well, there go half the movies.” Cindy took a sip of wine, held it inside her mouth, feeling the late-August sun warm against her cheeks. Every year for the last six years, the three women had gathered in Meg’s backyard to eat, drink, and select from the hundreds of movies being previewed at the annual Toronto International Film Festival. Another year had come and gone. Another festival was upon them. Not much had changed in the interim, except Julia had come home.
Which meant everything had changed.
“You’d really like him,” Trish said, suddenly shifting gears, although it was obvious by the way she leaned into the table that she’d only been biding her time, waiting for her next opportunity to reintroduce the subject. “He’s bright, funny, good-looking.”
Cindy watched a parade of clouds float past her line of vision, several wisps breaking free to drape themselves across the sky, like cobwebs. “Not interested,” she said again.
“His name is Neil Macfarlane, and he’s Bill’s new accountant. We had dinner with him last night, and he’s to die for. I swear. You’ll love him.”
“What’s he look like?” Meg asked.
“Tall, slim, really cute.”
“How about The Winds of Change?” Cindy proposed, ignoring her two friends. “Page 257.”
Trish groaned as the women flipped to the appropriate page.
“Yikes!” Meg said, almost choking on the apple she was chewing. “Are you kidding? An Iranian film? Have you forgotten Caravan to Heaven?”
“Was that the one where the camel got stuck in the sand and it took three hours to get him out?” Trish winced at the memory.
“That’s the one.”
“So much for Iran.”
“What about France?” Cindy asked.
“All they do in French movies is talk and eat,” Meg said.
“Sometimes they have sex,” Trish told her.
“They talk during sex,” Meg said.
“So France is out?” Cindy looked from Meg to Trish, then back again. “How about this one? Night Crawlers. Page 316. It’s Swedish. Do we have a problem with Sweden?”
Meg lifted the thick, heavy catalog into her hands and read out loud, as if she’d been called on in class. “ ‘The film has a gritty feel for the seedy side of suburban life. Uncompromising and …’ ”
“Hold it,” Trish interrupted. “What did we decide ‘uncompromising’ means?”
“Well,” Cindy said, “let’s see if we can remember the code. Lyrical means …”
“Slow,” Meg answered.
“Visually stunning means …”
“Boring as hell,” Trish said.
“Uncompromising means …”
Trish and Meg exchanged knowing glances. “Handheld camera,” they agreed.
“Good. Okay,” Cindy said. “So, we don’t want lyrical, visually stunning, or uncompromising.”
“And we’ve eliminated gays, lesbians, and Iran.”
“Don’t forget France.”
“Let’s not be too hasty about France,” Cindy pleaded.
“What about Germany?”
“No sense of humor.”
“Hong Kong?”
“Too violent,” Meg said.
“Canada?”
The women stared at each other blankly.
“How about the new movie by Michael Kinsolving?” Cindy asked. “Page 186.”
“Isn’t he a bit passé?”
“He could use a hit, that’s for sure.” Again Meg lifted the heavy tome into the air and read aloud. “ ‘Fresh, stylish, contemporary, edgy.’ ” She lowered the catalog back to the picnic table, took another bite of her apple. “ ‘Edgy’ is a bit troublesome. It could be a code word for ‘low-life.’ ”
“Julia had an audition with Michael Kinsolving this morning,” Cindy said.
“Really? How’d it go?”
“I don’t know.” Cindy pulled her cell phone out of her leopard-print purse, pressed in Julia’s home number, then listened as it rang once, twice, three times. She was about to hang up when she heard Julia’s breathy whisper in her ear.
“This is Julia,” the recorded message began with seductive grace. “I’m so sorry I can’t answer your call at the moment, but I wouldn’t want to miss a thing you have to say, so please leave a message after the beep, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Or you can reach me on my cell at 416-555-4332. Thanks so much, and have a great day.”
Cindy hung up, quickly called Julia’s cell phone. “It’s your mother, sweetie,” she said when confronted by the same message. “Just phoning to see how your audition went. Call me if you get the chance. Otherwise, I’ll see you at four o’clock,” she added, unable to stop herself.
&n
bsp; “What’s at four o’clock?” Meg asked as Cindy tucked her phone back inside her purse.
“Fittings for bridesmaids’ dresses.”
“Ugh,” Trish said. “I remember being a bridesmaid at my sister’s wedding. She had the ugliest dresses you’ve ever seen. Pink taffeta, of all things. Can you picture me in pink?”
“I love pink,” Meg said.
“I was so embarrassed. I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die. And of course, the marriage didn’t last, which, to this day, I blame on the dresses. Did you have bridesmaids when you married Gordon?” she asked Meg.
“Eight,” Meg said flatly. “In pink taffeta.”
Cindy laughed at both the memory and the look on Trish’s face. “I was one of them.”
“She looks fabulous in pink taffeta,” Meg said, laughing now as well.
Strains of Beethoven’s Ninth suddenly filled the air. “My phone,” Cindy announced, reaching back into her purse. “Probably Julia.” She lifted the phone to her ear.
“I gave him your number,” Trish said quickly.
“What?”
“I gave Neil Macfarlane your number.”
“Hello?” A large male voice pushed its way out of the small phone in Cindy’s hand. “Hello? Is anybody there?”
“I can’t believe you gave someone my number without asking me first,” Cindy hissed, holding the phone tight against her chest.
“He’s really cute,” Trish said, by way of explanation.
“Hello?” the voice asked again.
“I’m sorry. Hello,” Cindy said, fighting the urge to throw the phone at her friend’s head.
“Cindy?”
“Neil?” Cindy asked in return.
He laughed. “Trish obviously told you I’d be calling.”
Cindy glared at Trish, who was pouring herself another glass of wine. “What can I do for you, Neil? I’m afraid I already have an accountant.”
“Be nice,” Trish whispered.
“In that case,” Neil said easily, “maybe you’d let me take you out to dinner one night.”
“Dinner?”
“Just because you’re mad at me, don’t take it out on him,” Trish said.
“When exactly did you have in mind?” Cindy heard herself ask.