Birthday Girls

by Jean Stone

  “It is what it is,” Sophie philosophized on more than one occasion when Maddie was trying to make sense of—well, of most anything, like a half-dozen years ago when Parker had left. Maddie had gone “home” to tell her mother the news; Sophie had responded with hot tea and a warm hug and said, “It is what it is. You and the twins are welcome to move in here and stay for as long as you want.”

  So Maddie had packed up her sons and her Manhattan life and retreated to Westchester, to the house where she had been raised, to the one place that was safe because it was what it was.

  Entering the kitchen of the English stone cottage now, Maddie longed for the aroma of Sophie’s herb-roasted chicken or buttermilk muffins—the dependable promise of “comfort” food that would salve her aches and soothe her emptiness.

  She’d forgotten that today was Thursday.

  “Spinach and endive pizza,” Sophie announced in her spirited, motherly greeting.

  Thursday was the day reserved for creating one of Abigail Hardy’s “delectably healthy” dishes to pass off as dinner. Abigail’s show must have featured the pizza today; Maddie smiled in an effort to please her mother, but inwardly she cursed the fact they had cable. Sometimes there was simply no substitute for calories and saturated fat.

  She glanced around the small kitchen, which, with its low ceiling, always looked cluttered, a state that was fine with Maddie because clutter was cozy, clutter was comfortable. “Where are the twins?”

  “With their father,” Sophie replied, chop-chopping a pile of spinach on a butcherblock table. “At a Yankees game.”

  Maddie had long since given up trying to arrange regular visitation for her fifteen-year-old boys. With Parker’s schedule of flying all over the globe, any time he managed to squeeze in for them had to be tolerated. As with everything, Parker was still in control. Maddie’s secret revenge was to prove to herself that she didn’t need his child support, that every dime he sent went into a special account. There was some satisfaction in handling things alone, knowing she was capable of providing for her family without his money, without the rest of the damn money that should have been hers, not his. Not his and Sharlene’s. “How long until dinner?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  Maddie glanced at her watch. Forty-five minutes was plenty of time to have a last look at the magazine, then file it away. “I’ll be in the studio,” she said, taking her backpack and threading her way down the hall toward the back of the house, toward her private refuge where that unfortunate, genetic deep-thinking sullenness could flourish away from her mother’s well-meaning eyes.

  In the office area of the studio Maddie sat at her desk, took a bag of chocolate chip cookies from a drawer, and stuffed three in her mouth. Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out the copy of Our World.

  She ran her palm over the cover—this month, a photo of two Asian schoolchildren, their eyes set on their teacher in supposed concentration while their hands passed a note under the desks. The concept was vintage Norman Rockwell—a slice of life as seen through the children of the world. It was why Our World was such an international success: an open window into the moments of life, of people, making a difference in global understanding. And it had all been Maddie’s idea.

  She turned back the cover and flipped past the full-page ads for Concorde travel and global software and bottles of single malt scotch in red velvet pouches. Unlike Savior, there was no need for Our World to carry sexy clothing ads and perfumed inserts. It reached a higher, more upscale market. A market abundant with intelligent, educated readers. Just as Maddie had planned.

  Then the editorial page appeared. And there was Parker, smiling up at her, with that still-boyish grin that seemed to say, “I’m the only man in the world.” For Maddie, he was. Her body went limp as she stared at his picture, the two-inch-square image of the man who, for a decade, had been her husband, the man who had fathered her sons. The same man who had packed his belongings over six years ago, and along with his denim shirts and designer jeans had absconded with Maddie’s heart, Maddie’s soul, and Maddie’s business.

  She dug for the cookies and pulverized two more between her teeth.

  Parker Daniels. His very name had made her shiver as though it had come from central casting, created to make him a star.

  It wasn’t as though he was so great-looking. When she’d first spotted him at the candlelight vigil outside the Dakota the night after John Lennon was killed, what had attracted Maddie had been his … posture. For a man so short he stood incredibly tall; for a man so bereaved he was incredibly calm.

  “Imagine …” he whispered as they stood in the crowd, shoulder to shoulder, stranger to stranger. “Imagine if Lennon had never existed.”

  They walked to a café on Central Park West, surrounded by mourners, by murmurs, by tears. It was December. It was cold. And raining. But in the glow of the Christmas lights that shimmered in the street, Maddie felt warmth. And goodness. And instant love. Which came as a shock, for Maddie was already thirty-two and never expected that a man would want her, Maddie Daniels, the one who had never been special.

  It hadn’t mattered that Parker was unemployed. As they sat at a small table and sipped cappuccino, it did not embarrass her to remove her ankle-length fur coat; it did not embarrass her for him to see she was not the svelte beauty he may have expected. For once she was not self-conscious, not ashamed of her rounded, soft body. Grief, she reasoned, rids our defenses.

  “I always wanted to photograph him,” she said quietly, staring into the froth atop the thick, wide mug.

  He grinned at her through his neatly trimmed, brown beard that was frosted with raindrops. “You’re a photographer?”

  “I’m trying to be. It’s such a competitive business.”

  “Anyone can do anything with the right attitude. I have the attitude, but no direction.”

  “You don’t know what you want to be when you grow up?”

  His deep laugh made her feel warm. “I was thirty last year. I decided not to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a school janitor.”

  Maddie wasn’t sure whether or not she should laugh. Then he reached across the table and rested his hand on hers. She hoped he would never take it away.

  “I have dreams,” Parker said. “Dreams of doing things that matter.”

  “Dreams like John Lennon.”

  “Dreams that I don’t want to accomplish alone.”

  Suddenly, Parker Daniels was no longer a stranger.

  She wiped a crumb from her chin now and touched the edge of his picture.

  “Liar,” she muttered. “Rotten bastard, fucking liar.” Then she kissed the tip of her finger, pressed it to the photo, and fought back a fountain of tears.

  Rising from her chair she moved to the filing cabinet, tugged open the bottom drawer, and dropped the magazine onto the bulging pile. She looked down at the stack and decided she needed more storage space. In addition to the issues of Our World, the files were crammed now with her own—her very own—growing, private collection of black-and-white candids from the past half-dozen years, pictures of her unsuspecting, rotten bastard ex-husband expertly shot from an unseen distance through the wizardry of her telephoto lens.

  A knock on the door startled Maddie. She tried to shove the drawer shut. It was stuck.

  “Madeline!” her mother called.

  Swallowing the last mouthful of cookie, Maddie stood up quickly. The room began to spin. “What is it, Mother?”

  “Lordy, are you going deaf?” Sophie asked, pushing open the door. “There’s a phone call for you. You’ll never guess who it is.”

  Maddie steadied herself against the filing cabinet and tried to conceal the open drawer with her foot. “The president?”

  Sophie rolled her faded but still twinkling blue eyes. “It’s Abigail, Madeline. Abigail Hardy!”

  Maddie frowned. “Abigail?”

  “Hurry, hurry. You know how busy she must be …”

  “Just g
ive me a second. I’ll be right there.” She waited until Sophie had gone, then juggled the magazines, closed the drawer on Our World, and left the studio to return to her world, not his. Not theirs.

  • • •

  It had been four—or was it five?—years since she’d spoken to Abigail; not since she’d taken Sophie into the city when Abigail was a guest on Sally Jessy Raphael and they were part of the mesmerized audience. When the show was over they went to a tearoom next to the studio, where Abigail was more polished and perfect than ever, where Maddie felt like an underdog twelve-year-old again, and where Sophie glowed to be seen with the rising star whom she’d-known-when.

  After that, Maddie got gratefully busy with Savior and Abigail got busy being Abigail, and somehow they’d lost touch—which was fine with Maddie because they’d never had much in common besides Arbor Brook, and that was a lifetime ago.

  “Abigail,” Maddie said into the phone, her eyes scanning the disheveled nook in the kitchen, her free hand straightening catalogs and bills as if Abigail could see the disarray, as if Abigail would know Maddie had never changed. “I think I’m having your spinach and endive pizza for dinner.” Her hand skimmed down to her too-portly stomach and then moved up to her out-of-control, way-too-long hair.

  “Don’t hold it against me, okay?”

  It would be nice to think that Abigail had stopped taking herself seriously. Nice, but probably unrealistic. “How can you keep hawking this stuff?” Maddie asked, ignoring the “Oh, no!” look of panic in her mother’s eyes that leaped across the room and landed in her face.

  “It’s a living.”

  Maddie bit back her words. A living. As if Abigail ever needed to worry about that. As if she had, or ever would. “Well, you’re a hit in this house. My mother wouldn’t miss your show.” She fidgeted with the fringe on the hunter green linen napkins, the color of which Abigail had no doubt recommended to complement the spinach and endive of tonight’s cuisine.

  “Maddie, I’m calling because we have birthdays coming.”

  Maddie stopped. “Birthdays. Gee. Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Yours is first. And Kris’s is two weeks after mine.”

  A hearty laugh leaped from her throat. “God!” she cried. “How’d you remember that?” But as soon as she asked, Maddie knew that of course Abigail would remember, because Abigail was organized, had always been organized, probably due to some mysterious “O” gene that Maddie did not possess.

  “Have you talked with Kris lately?” Maddie continued. “I saw her on Letterman a few months ago. She looks great.” Great, yes. Great was a word for the way Kris had always looked. Sleek. Sharp. Beautiful, without the fine edge of Abigail that cautioned “Don’t touch me.”

  “I haven’t talked to her in years. That’s why I thought it would be fun to get together. We can celebrate our birthdays. Lunch at La Chambre.”

  “Lunch? The three of us?”

  “Why not?”

  Maddie couldn’t think fast enough. But then, she’d never thought fast enough around Abigail. She ran her hand through her hair once again and knew she had nothing to wear, nothing befitting lunch at La Chambre, nothing to equal Abigail. Or Kris. She glanced over at Sophie, who was now giving her the “Go, girl” sign of encouragement she had mastered whenever Maddie hesitated to try something different, like running for PTO president or buying a new car. “Well, I guess …”

  “Terrific. I’ll track down Kris through her agent and let you know the date and time. I’ll be in touch.”

  Maddie hung up the phone and stared at the receiver. Lunch with Abigail. Lunch with Kris. She was not—never had been—as pretty or as graceful or as rich as them, yet once they had accepted her. Once, when they all had been so naive.

  But they were older now, no longer innocent. And though Maddie was still not pretty or graceful or rich, she wondered if she could fool them into believing she was as successful as they were, or as happy as they surely must be.

  “Are you having lunch with her?” Sophie asked excitedly.

  Tucking the hem of her shirt into the too-tight elastic at her waist, Maddie nodded. “Yes. With Kris, too.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. You girls always had such fun …”

  Maddie drifted from the kitchen, away from her mother’s words, just as a headache began to throb at the base of her unpretty skull.

  A golden light vaulted through the fog like half a halo then disappeared behind the Matterhorn, a glittering arc on an angel’s cloud, a vision into the beyond.

  Kris was mesmerized. “Holy shit,” she whispered and abruptly stopped.

  The rope below tightened; the one above sagged.

  A tug from below snapped her footing. The piton released its hold and skittered down the face of the mountain. Shards of ice and bits of rock splayed into the wind.

  She grabbed a ledge; miraculously, it held.

  The climber beneath her stopped. “Jesus!” he yelled. “Are you trying to kill us?”

  Her heart pumped. She caught her breath. The rush was incredible. She wanted to see Peter’s face below her. She wanted to ask if he’d seen the light. Instead, she remembered the one thing she was told to never do: look down.

  “Sorry,” she cried. “I’m only trying to kill Towanda.” She smiled slowly, then nodded down at Peter and upward at Hans, to signal that she was ready again. And again, the trio of climbers—a seasoned guide, a veteran of many mountains, and tucked between them the rookie Kris Kensington—continued their guarded descent.

  They passed into the clouds. She blinked the moisture from her eyelids; she opened her mouth, held out her tongue, and tasted the shroud of dampness.

  The descent continued.

  With each tentative toehold, each grasp of her fingers, and each breath of the cool, thin air, Kris logged into memory every sensation, every touch. It was the only way she could do research, to experience every detail that she would demand of the characters in her books.

  Towanda was her latest character who was to come up against Lexi Marks, the female James Bond, heroine of the series of slam-dunk thrillers that had kept the name Kris Kensington on the New York Times bestseller list for most of the past fifteen years. Towanda, like the others, would meet her fate—this time, off the side of the Matterhorn.

  Kris willed herself not to shudder; the slip of her footing was enough to give her the sensation of falling to her death. As for the real thing, she was not ready for that. Because life for Kris Kensington just got better and better.

  Six hours later they were back at the lodge in Chamonix. Kris showered, then wriggled a white lace slipdress over her aching yet invigorated body. Brushing her ultrashort, black hair, she smiled into the mirror at the glow of her skin, at the velvet blend of fresh air and jova cream glistening and smooth on her long, fine limbs. She layered charcoal makeup around her eyes, spritzed herself with moisture, and slid into four-inch-high sandals. There was only one thing she wanted next.

  Peter opened the door to his room, a thick terry towel tucked around his waist.

  Wordlessly Kris reached for the towel, undid the loop, then watched as it glided to the floor. She kicked off her sandals, dropped to her knees, and took his immense penis in her mouth.

  Behind her, Peter closed the door.

  “You are a creature of magnificent surprises,” Peter said later, his Swiss accent light, his voice soft. They lay naked in his bed, her nutmeg complexion contrasting with his creamy whiteness as they stroked one another in post-sex, intimate touches, languishing in the after-high of wet-hot climax.

  “I’ve been scaling a mountain with you for four days,” Kris replied. “Surely this was not unexpected.”

  Peter laughed. “What stopped you from attacking me at the top? The top of the Matterhorn … what a beautiful place for sex.”

  “I didn’t want to offend Hans.”

  “No?” He leaned over and sucked her breast. The flat, dark nipple sprung to life. “Perhaps Hans would have enjoyed i
t, too.”

  “Perhaps. But it was your butt I watched all the way up the mountain.”

  “And did you fantasize about this all the way?” His hand reached down and stroked her muscled thigh.

  “Of course.” She sighed and raised her hands over her head. “Except on the way down. When I was too busy trying to stay alive.”

  His stroke stopped. “What happened, Kris? How did you slip?”

  “The light,” she answered. Her eyes widened. A prickle of excitement grazed over her flesh. Kris raised up on one elbow and felt her nipples stiffen again, felt the heat return to her thighs. “Did you see the light? It was golden and it looked like a crescent moon …”

  “The fogbow,” Peter laughed. “You saw a fogbow.”

  “A what?”

  “A fogbow. Like a rainbow. Sometimes they’re yellow, sometimes only white. We often see them above the clouds. I barely notice any longer.”

  Kris reached down and took his penis in her hand. She squeezed it gently, rubbed it deliberately. “You should notice. You should always notice. It’s the details of life that people overlook. Details that can feel so wonderful.”

  “Details like another erection?”

  “Mmm.” Slowly she stroked. Slowly the firmness returned.

  He ran his fingers through her hair. “Why do you do this? Why are you such a risk-taking woman, such a … how do you say … daredevil?”

  She smiled. “I am not a daredevil. I am a writer. I merely do research to make my books realistic.”

  His hand returned to the mass of black curls that joined her thighs. Gently a long finger probed the hair, then firmly plunged into her heat.

  “When is your wife expecting you home?” she asked.

  He laughed again. “Are you so certain I have a wife?”