Birthday Girls

by Jean Stone

  And Kris! Talk about someone who didn’t seem to realize it was time to grow up. She had an annoying way of acting as though she was still twenty-five, from her inch-long acrylic fingernails to her downright embarrassing micro skirt. They might fly in the bizarre circles Kris traveled in, but Abigail was thankful no one she knew—no one who mattered—was in La Chambre, to witness the women she called friends.

  Then she took another drag and reminded herself that they were her friends, her only friends in the world. The friends she needed now more than ever.

  Clearly, Abigail would have to use her best ammunition to get them to agree to help.

  “No smoking,” a voice said behind her.

  In the mirror Abigail saw a black uniformed matron holding a stack of white terry towels. She let out the smoke, opened her purse, and handed the woman a twenty dollar bill.

  “We got no ashtrays in here,” the matron said as she quickly made the twenty disappear into her pocket. “You’re not supposed to smoke.”

  Abigail leaned over and flicked the ash in the hand-painted sink. She inhaled again. The woman set the towels on the counter and went into a stall.

  Looking into the mirror, Abigail frowned. Perhaps this had been a mistake. Perhaps Maddie and Kris were too involved in their own lives. Perhaps too many years had passed for her to expect to count on their friendship.

  Suddenly another hot flash wound its way up the back of her neck. It crept around to her cheeks, clawed down her back, her arms, her legs. Damn, she said to herself, closing her eyes. Damn, damn, damn. She couldn’t let this happen. She had to make it stop. She had to change her life. There was only one way. Dammit, there was only one way.

  “You’re gonna get me in trouble,” came the matron’s voice again.

  Abigail opened her eyes, took another drag, then drowned the cigarette in the sink. “Lady,” she said, “we’re all in trouble.” Then she picked up her purse, tossed back her hair, and left the ladies room to set forth on her mission.

  • • •

  Maddie had chosen a Monte Cristo over the salad. Cracked crab and salmon skin salad seemed a bit too “Abigail.” She nibbled on a potato chip, settled into her long-ago role as the thorn between the roses, and decided that if not exactly comfortable, it was a role that at least was familiar: the underdog among the favorites, the ugly duckling amid the swans. Well, she reasoned, scrutinizing her friends, it’s nice to know none of us has changed.

  Kris was her usual great, flashy self, and beneath it all she was still very sincere. She was certainly preoccupied, as if braced for Abigail to pounce, but Maddie thought she was overreacting. Writers, she supposed, did that sometimes, and Kris had always had a tendency for extremes.

  As for Abigail, well, she was no more weird than Maddie had expected: uptight and inflexible, with the look in her eyes that scolded, even when her words sounded like compliments. Abigail was Abigail, still searching for perfection. Abigail definitely hadn’t changed.

  But best of all, neither of them seemed to care about Parker. There had been no rapid-fire questions of “Why did he leave?” or “How did you stand it?” There had been no sympathetic “poor-you’s,” which surely would have come if she’d told them about Sharlene, the twenty-nine-year-old beauty who had stolen her life, the woman who stood five inches taller than Maddie and weighed forty pounds less, the woman Parker loved instead of her. There had been no pity, which Maddie could not have withstood, even from them, her very best friends.

  She took a bite of her sandwich and slowly chewed, deciding that all in all it was okay that she’d come.

  Then Abigail cleared her throat. “I’m glad you brought the photo albums, Maddie. It gives me a chance to bring something up.”

  Maddie set down her sandwich and exchanged a quick look with Kris, whose dark eyes told her the time had come.

  “The way I see it, girls,” Abigail said, setting down her fork beside the cracked crab and sipping her Dom Pérignon, “this is our last chance.”

  And then Maddie knew. She didn’t know what, she didn’t know how, but she knew Kris had been right: this quaint little luncheon reunion was about something far greater than birthdays. Abigail had an agenda. And it had something to do with them.

  “We’re about to turn forty-nine,” Abigail said.

  Maddie stuffed another bite of turkey and ham drenched with melted cheese into her mouth and wondered why everything had to be such a big deal. Why, to Abigail, everything always had to be such a big, life-or-death deal.

  Abigail set her mouth in a clench, then leaned across the lace-covered table. “Face it,” she warned. “Next year we’ll be fifty.”

  The food stuck in Maddie’s throat. She reached for her sandwich again.

  “Half a fucking century,” Kris moaned, rolling her dark eyes. “It’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Exciting?” Abigail retorted. “I hardly think that’s an appropriate word.”

  “Oh, come on, Abby,” Kris said with a laugh, though Maddie winced because they all knew how Abigail hated it when anyone—even one of them—called her Abby. “Are you about to say that turning fifty is going to bother you? Is that what this lunch is all about?”

  As Abigail took another drink, she was trembling. Maddie watched her place both hands on the glass to steady it. A wave of foreboding rose from the toes of Maddie’s high-buttoned shoes and rolled up to the cameo at her throat.

  “We have a year left,” Abigail continued, her eyes moving first to Maddie, then to Kris. “I think we should make our birthday wishes. Write them down. The way we used to.”

  Maddie washed down her food with a deep gulp of water. And suddenly every ounce of her being, every nerve in her body, told her to get up now. Get up and leave the restaurant and pretend that this luncheon had never happened.

  Instead she spoke quietly. “I thought we’d agreed to never do that again.”

  Beside her, Kris was mute.

  “Maybe we were wrong,” Abigail said without looking up. “And maybe … just maybe … we owe it to Betty Ann.”

  The table grew quiet. The Monte Cristo turned over in Maddie’s stomach. She wanted to look at Kris, but she could not. She could only stare at her half-eaten sandwich and wish that she’d never been born.

  September 1958

  Arbor Brook was a school for young ladies nestled on two thousand wooded acres that hugged the Hudson River. It had graduated an impressive roster of daughters of presidents and corporate kings, so it was natural for Grandfather to enroll Abigail there.

  She had, however, refused to live in the residence hall.

  “You’ll make friends if you live there,” Grandfather said.

  “I don’t need any friends. I want to live here.” What she really wanted to say was that she wanted to be with him—that she promised to do everything right and be a good girl. Maybe then he wouldn’t look away each time she entered the room, wouldn’t mind that she’d had to come here to stay, wouldn’t blame her that his only son—her father—was dead. She twisted the bracelet that hung from her wrist and touched the tiny gold locket that held Daddy’s picture and Mommy’s, too.

  “You can’t live here,” Grandfather insisted. “I’m away too much.”

  She wanted to ask why he traveled so often when he had such a beautiful house to live in. Louisa had showed her pictures of the grand bails Grandfather had once hosted here, of the three hundred guests who came in masquerade and filled the huge drawing room with laughter and dancing; she’d told Abigail about the wonderful dinner parties where fifty people were served in the main dining room—seven courses, including lemon sorbet in between. When Abigail asked Louisa why Grandfather had stopped, the woman said it must have had something to do with Grandfather’s son—Abigail’s father—as if a piece of Grandfather had died with him, too, on that snow-covered mountain in St. Moritz.

  So Abigail did not ask why he went away so much. Instead she decided if she did everything right, then maybe Grandfather would s
tay home more often. Maybe he’d want to be with her. And maybe someday he’d let her have a masquerade ball.

  “But Louisa said the school is only ten miles away,” she said, trying not to whine, because Grandfather hated that. “Smitty can drive me.”

  “No,” he answered.

  “But I promise to ride Lady every day after school, and keep up my piano lessons, too.” She disliked horseback riding almost as much as playing the piano, but it would be worth it. Anything would be worth it. “Besides,” she added, “Louisa would have no one to take care of.”

  She wasn’t sure which argument had worked, but finally Grandfather relented.

  Yet by her second year at Arbor Brook, Grandfather was still gone more than he was home. Lonely and bored, Abigail at last made one friend, a girl named Kris Kensington.

  It was fun sometimes to stay after school and hang around in Kris’s room at the dorm, even though Kris’s roommate, a girl named Betty Ann, was younger and tagged along all the time, trying to be grown up like them.

  “I think of her like a kid sister,” Kris explained when Abigail complained that Betty Ann was a pest. “Besides, she has five brothers. Five! You never know when that might come in handy.”

  Though Abigail wasn’t quite sure what Kris meant, she decided that if Betty Ann’s five brothers were important to Kris, surely Betty Ann must be important, too. So she said it was fine for Betty Ann to come along, which it was, because it meant being with Kris. And Abigail really liked Kris: Kris wasn’t afraid of anything, including Mr. Hamilton, the science teacher, and besides, it was kind of adventurous having a colored girl as a friend—a girl from South Africa, which Abigail had asked Louisa to show her on the big globe in the library back at the estate.

  Early one autumn afternoon Abigail perched on the tightly made, dormitory-twin bed and watched Kris try to find an outfit for the parents’ tea next weekend, something different from the shapeless navy jumper that was the proper uniform of Arbor Brook girls. Kris pulled on a yellow shirtwaist dress and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror.

  “I wonder if I’ll ever have boobs,” she commented, studying the straight line that went from her long neck to her toes.

  Abigail frowned. “I don’t think we’re supposed to have them in the fifth grade.”

  Kris ran her hands down the bumpless front of her dress. “Maddie Kavner has them.”

  “Does not.”

  “Does too. She wears a bra and everything.”

  Abigail pushed her face into a pillow and howled. “Don’t tell me that! God! That’s disgusting!” She tossed away the pillow. “How do you know? Did Betty Ann tell you?” Kris’s five-brothered roommate had made friends with Maddie, who, like Abigail, commuted each day—though instead of arriving in a Rolls Royce, Maddie was delivered in a noisy Volkswagen.

  “Betty Ann’s too young to know what boobs are.” Squinting, Kris leaned toward the mirror. “Should I wear short gloves or elbow-length with this?”

  “With what?” came Betty Ann’s voice as she skipped into the room, followed closely by Maddie, the one with the boobs and the bra.

  Abigail turned her head to avoid staring at Maddie Kavner’s chest, even though she was dying to look.

  “Wow,” Betty Ann continued. “I love that dress.”

  “I feel like a third grader at a birthday party,” Kris said, flopping down beside Abigail on the bed.

  “My birthday’s this Friday,” Abigail said, her eyes locked on Kris.

  “Mine’s next month,” Kris added.

  “Oooh,” Betty Ann went on, “let’s have a party.” She quickly turned to Maddie, who was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “When’s your birthday, Maddie?”

  “It was,” the girl answered. “I turned ten two weeks ago.”

  “I won’t be ten until February,” Betty Ann said, “But I can pretend! Oh, please, let’s ask if we can have a party.”

  The idea of eating dormitory food served on stainless steel trays repulsed Abigail. But a party was something else, something that Kris might like, too. “Let’s have a party at my house instead,” she said. “Just the four of us.”

  “And we’ll celebrate together!” Betty Ann exclaimed. “All our birthdays at the same time.”

  “I can bring my records,” Maddie said, stepping forward, two distinct golf ball shapes defining the front of her jumper. Abigail wondered if Maddie had formed them with socks. “I have Buddy Holly and Elvis.”

  “So do I,” Abigail said, “and I have a new hi-fi.”

  Maddie said nothing.

  “A birthday party,” Kris commented. “Great. I’ll be sure to wear this dress.”

  • • •

  The party had been a success.

  At first Maddie was embarrassed that she’d worn her new Mousketeer T-shirt, the one with the box-lettered black stencil of her name across the front and the official Mickey Mouse Club emblem in red and black on the back.

  “Maybe we should call you Annette,” Kris said, referring to the lines of Maddie’s bra that showed through the thin cotton. But Betty Ann said Kris was jealous because she’d be wearing an undershirt for the rest of her life, and then Abigail laughed and said she was surprised that Betty Ann knew what bras were at all, seeing as how she was younger and had five brothers and all.

  They soon learned that Betty Ann knew about much more than that: her mother had given her a book called Now You Are Ten, and it told what was going to happen to them—all of them—that they would start bleeding from between their legs.

  Abigail said, “Impossible.”

  Maddie hadn’t heard anything like that either but was simply glad that the conversation had moved from her chest.

  “She’s right,” Kris announced. “It’s called your period and it comes every month.”

  Abigail looked skeptical and suggested it was time to eat.

  After chicken and potato salad and chips that they ate off gold-rimmed china with a fancy crest on the bottom, the woman named Louisa presented them with their cake. Maddie thought it was the perfect time to use her new camera, the kind with a timer. Everyone groaned except Betty Ann.

  “I love pictures,” she cried with that pixie-like grin that few people—even Abigail—could say no to.

  “Okay, let’s stand behind the cake,” Abigail ordered. “we should line up like Rockettes.”

  Maddie winced. She did not want to pretend to be a Rockette. Everyone knew she was too short. And too fat. But her friends fell into position, one knee raised, hands on hips, flat chests out.

  Maddie looked through the lens. “It looks boring,” she said. “Let’s make it more fun.”

  Without speaking, Kris smiled. Then she leaned over, scooped two pink-frosting roses from the edge of the cake, and pushed them into Abigail’s face.

  The hostess screamed.

  “Perfect!” Maddie shouted, set the timer, and raced around to be in the shot.

  Click.

  While the housekeeper muttered and cleaned up the mess, Betty Ann made her pronouncement about birthday wishes.

  “Please, please, please,” she begged the others. “Please let’s write down our birthday wishes and seal them in a bottle.”

  And because Betty Ann was Betty Ann and no one could say no to her, they wrote down their wishes and put them in an old milk bottle Louisa brought from the pantry.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” the woman warned. “It might come true.”

  The girls all giggled, and Maddie wrote down her wish, deciding that she liked her new friends after all.

  “By the time I’m eleven,” Maddie carefully wrote, “I hope I have filled an album with pictures of me and my friends.” Then she erased the last four words and wrote “my friends and me,” just in case her college-English-professor father ever read her secret birthday wish.

  • • •

  1960

  By the time they were twelve, it had become a tradition.

  “This is the most
important year ever,” Betty Ann said as they clustered on the floor of Abigail’s bedroom, the milk bottle by their side, the slips of paper ready to accept their birthday wishes.

  “Why?” Kris asked.

  “Because next year we’ll be teenagers, and we’ll get to do whatever we want!”

  Abigail stopped herself from commenting that technically Betty Ann would not be a teenager for a year and a half. And that with her tiny size, she’d probably still pass for eight, ten at the most.

  “Can we have boyfriends?” Kris asked.

  “Well …” Betty Ann said quietly, “Sure. I suppose. But I was thinking more that we can wear nylons and lipstick.” Thirteen, after all, was the magical year at Arbor Brook when young girls were expected to be transformed into young ladies.

  “Grandfather lets me wear lipstick already,” Abigail said. Poising her pen with the shocking pink ink over her slip of paper, she added, “I’m going to wish that Grandfather will take me to Venice. I want to see the gondolas.” So far, she’d not accompanied Grandfather on any of his business trips. She hoped that would change, now that she’d be thirteen, almost an adult.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to know each other’s wishes until next year. Until we see if they came true,” Maddie said.

  “Let’s make this year an exception,” Abigail said. “Because we’ll be teenagers.”

  Kris chewed the tip of her pencil. “And no ranking on each other if we think our wishes are stupid?”

  “No ranking,” Abigail agreed.

  Maddie nodded. “Okay. So I’m going to wish that my father gets well.”

  The room grew silent. They all knew Maddie’s father had that dreaded disease … the one that began with a “c” … the one no one talked about. Maddie looked away. “What are you going to wish for, Kris?”

  Her black eyes sparkled. “A boyfriend. Definitely a boyfriend.”

  “Oh, no,” Betty Ann whined.

  “What’s wrong with that? It’s time I had one.”

  Betty Ann frowned. “You wouldn’t be in such a hurry to have a boyfriend if you had five brothers.”