by Rona Jaffe
“That proves it,” Karen said, and laughed.
Emily and her friends were in the middle of dinner when there was a minor commotion. An adorable blond boy of about thirteen, who was apparently Daphne’s and Richard’s son, came in with the little retarded girl in tow. The child was soaking wet and shivering with cold, and crying, and the boy was looking upset and scared. Daphne stood up immediately, her face pale with concern. But Richard … Emily could hardly believe it … he just looked annoyed that his lovely dinner was being interrupted.
“Teddy!” Daphne said. “What happened?” She was wearing a jacket flung over her shoulders, and she took it off and wrapped it around the crying child.
“We were fooling around and she fell into the creek,” Teddy said.
“But where were the other boys?”
“I don’t know. They went off someplace and they took the key. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll go back with you,” Daphne said.
“Just give him the key,” Richard said wearily.
“She could have drowned!” Daphne said.
“Oh, no, it’s shallow,” Teddy said. “I fished her right out. I’m sorry, Mom. Really.”
“I sorry I cry,” the little girl said.
“Oh, Elizabeth …” Daphne said sadly, shaking her head.
“Daphne, where are you going?” Richard said.
“I’m going to put her into a nice hot tub,” Daphne said. “You all enjoy the rest of your dinner. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Don’t hold your breath on that,” Richard said. The other two couples smiled politely, pretending to be unaware of the tension. Daphne smiled back, and then she went off with the two children.
“Just another happy marriage,” Karen said.
The next day Emily looked for Daphne on the street, and when she finally saw her, with the little girl as usual, Emily went up to her. “Daphne?” she said, although she knew quite well who it was. “I’m Emily Applebaum from Radcliffe … Emily Buchman now. Remember?”
“Oh, yes,” Daphne said politely, and smiled.
Emily realized Daphne didn’t remember her, hadn’t remembered her at the reunion, probably had hardly even noticed her in the dorm all those years. It didn’t matter anymore. She went determinedly on. “I hope your daughter didn’t catch cold after last night,” she said. “I was in the restaurant.”
“Ah,” Daphne said. “No, thank you, she’s fine now. She just had a bad scare.”
“That ice can be treacherous,” Emily said. They looked at each other. “Would you like to come and have some hot chocolate with me?” Emily asked. “The Alpenrose Tearoom has lovely pastries.”
There was a pause. “I have to warn you,” Daphne said, finally. “Elizabeth’s table manners leave something to be desired.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Then let’s go,” Daphne said, and this time when she smiled the smile was real.
They sat across the table from each other in the European tearoom and talked. Emily, who was used to unhappy children from her work at the hospital, gave Elizabeth warm and friendly looks and ignored it when she smeared buttercream filling on her snow-suit. After a while Elizabeth stopped.
“I used to be so scared of you in college,” Emily said.
“College seems a million years ago,” Daphne said.
“I know. You had a camel’s hair coat. I thought it was so chic and sophisticated. I had a fur coat and I hated it. I wanted one just like yours.”
“I probably would rather have had a fur coat,” Daphne said, smiling.
“Do you remember Ken Buchman?”
“Sort of.”
“We went steady at college and got married right afterward,” Emily said. “And nothing was the way I thought it would be. I’m here because my husband threw me out. I should have left him a long time before that, but women of our generation don’t do that, do we? We keep trying to make the happy ending happen.”
“Happy endings,” Daphne said. “Ha. Some days I find it very difficult to believe in anything at all.”
“I’m sorry about your son,” Emily said. “I read about it in the paper.”
Daphne burst into tears.
Oh God, what had she done? The Golden Girl, her idol, sitting here weeping; discreetly, but definitely weeping; in a public place, her heart broken, so unlike Daphne to fall apart—what had she, Emily the idiot, done?
Elizabeth was patting her mother’s arm. “No cry,” she said. “No. No cry.”
“Don’t mind me,” Daphne said. She stopped, finally, and wiped her eyes. “It’s just that everybody has been pussyfooting around the whole subject for so long, pretending it’s going to go away, and it was such a relief when you said something.”
“Are you all right?”
“It would have been his birthday today,” Daphne said. “We all got up, and nobody said a word about it, and the rest of them went skiing as usual, and I took care of Elizabeth as usual.… I don’t know whether there’s so much emotion lying dormant that if … Oh, I just don’t know.”
Emily reached across the table impulsively and took Daphne’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Thank you. Tell me … did you have a happy life before Ken left you?”
“Not really,” Emily said. She wondered if Daphne would end what was starting to look like a possible friendship if she told her about the nervous breakdown. Then she thought: If she runs away she wasn’t worth knowing in the first place. “I was married too young and I couldn’t deal with the realities of what marriage and children actually were. I had a fantasy of perfection for everything in my life, which was really silly.”
“Ah, yes,” Daphne said. “Perfection.”
“Ken was away a lot, and I was alone a lot, and then I found out he’d been cheating, and I cracked up. I’m all right now, but it was rough for a while.”
“You cracked up because he was cheating?” Daphne said.
“No …” Emily thought about it. “I think it was because I wanted to go back and do it all over again differently, and I didn’t know how.”
“You didn’t know how because it’s impossible,” Daphne said.
“I know that now.”
Elizabeth was asleep with her head on the table. “You’re good with children,” Daphne said.
“Except my own,” Emily said lightly. There were some things that were too delicate to discuss, even though she was feeling quite warm and comfortable sitting here with a totally different Daphne than the one she’d known so long ago. “I really enjoyed talking to you,” she said. “Maybe you’ll come to California some time. I’ll give you my address. And I’ll give you my friend Karen’s phone number too. I seem to be living in a lot of temporary places lately, but she’ll always know where to find me.”
“Maybe you’ll come to New York,” Daphne said. “I go into town a lot. We could have lunch.”
“I’d love that,” Emily said. “I really would.”
Chapter Thirteen
As it turned out, Kit did not get the part she coveted on the new Zack Shepard film, although her friend Emma did get to be his assistant. Not Assistant Producer, of course, but Assistant to the Producer. Credits were regulated by the unions in Emma’s line of work. In Kit’s they were negotiated by agents. And so, as if life had offered her a good consolation prize for losing the movie, Kit landed a juicy part in a miniseries that was to run an entire week on network. Her billing read: And Kit Barnett as “Angel.”
The miniseries was full of stars, and former stars whose names still looked pretty good in an ad in TV Guide. There was “starring” and “co-starring” and “with” and “featuring,” and one actor got a box around his name. Kit could just imagine all those agents fighting over who got what, and the actors at home complaining that if they were going to take a cameo at least they wanted big print in the ad. She loved her billing, and sent her agent flowers.
The part was not very
interesting: a congressman’s daughter who was a hooker, but Kit was aware that her complex personality would make it interesting. As she studied and worked and grew more in control of her craft she also realized that she had an innate something on screen that gave her an edge. Sometimes she was afraid to get too close to that part of her, because she was afraid she would spoil it. She didn’t want to dissect herself too much. She was neurotic? Good, she would just let it flow out into the work and enrich the character, give it layers.
The creep from class had stopped hanging around outside her house. He had found someone else to be in love with, and was actually living with her. Kit was relieved. But now that the filming was over, and it was the boring drag-end of winter, she was restless. She went to a lot of parties, had a lot of sex. She hadn’t met any man she wanted to settle down with, but she was sort of looking. Her parents were still separated. They seemed to have joint custody of Adeline, or, more likely, Adeline had custody of both of them. Adeline trundled back and forth, one day a week to her mother, who only had a small apartment, four days to “The Doctor,” who was still living in their big house. Now Kit and Peter had two duty dinners to go to every week instead of one.
Tonight would be the seventh night in a row that Kit had gone to a party. They started late and sometimes ended days later, depending on who was giving them, but Kit always went home before the sun came up, always with a man. If he wanted to hang around all day and come to the next party with her, that was fine. But it was understood that if she met someone else she liked better, she was free. He was free too, of course, but they never seemed to want to be. Why did so many people only want what they couldn’t have? She hoped that never happened to her. She was nearly twenty-two, and she supposed she was long overdue to have her heart broken, but so far she’d been lucky.
The guy she’d brought home last night was gorgeous but stupid. His name was Rick, and she’d forgotten his last name, if he’d even told her, and after fucking him all night it would be gross to ask now. While he was in the shower she looked at his driver’s license. That was when she discovered he was only seventeen. He had told her he was twenty-six, and he could have passed for it. What a liar. Kit supposed he was also not in real estate. He was probably in high school. What a jerk. Still, it was kind of amusing to have had a much younger man.
As usual, they drove to the party in separate cars. The house where the party was given was high in the hills, and there was valet parking, which was nice. A producer was giving it. Kit had never worked for him, but she hoped to someday, and in the meantime she was pleased that he had invited her when they’d met earlier in the week at another party. There were a lot of expensive cars here, and the house was beautiful, all glowing with pinkish light; reflected back on itself it seemed to be swimming in its own swimming pool.
Kit wandered around the living room looking at the people. There were candy dishes full of various kinds of pills, and several with cocaine in them, and there was food and liquor and champagne. It was a terrific party. Most of the people were attractive. Kit dipped into the candy dishes several times, as casually as if she were taking souvenir matches, and loaded her little evening bag with drugs to take home. By now she could identify everything. Daintily, like a princess, she partook of a little bit of coke, a glass of champagne, rejected a proffered joint, danced with Rick to the music that was booming loudly all over the house, tried to decide with whom she would replace him.
She noticed one of the actors from her recent miniseries; Jed Soames, the one with the box around his name. He was totally drunk, and had never been attractive in the first place, besides being too old. He came weaving over to her. “Dance?” he said.
“Mmm.” She just kept moving, and he lurched along in front of her. Rick was already dancing with someone else.
“What’s your name?” Soames asked. She realized he didn’t recognize her.
“Kit Barnett. We were in The Monument together. By the way, you were very good.”
He peered at her. “Did we fuck?”
What a creep! She looked at him coolly, trying to think of the ultimate putdown. “I don’t remember,” she said, and walked away.
There was a projection room, where people were watching one of the producer’s old movies, lounging around on soft, deep couches, and there was a game room where other people were shooting pool and playing video games. Very, very nice, very, very chic. And upstairs there were bedrooms where couples and groups repaired to have sex if none of the other diversions appealed to them. Kit accepted another glass of champagne from a waiter and smiled back at a totally adorable blond guy who was smiling at her. He had on tight jeans, a tight T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, and a terrific body. The Mickey Mouse put her off a little, but at least it didn’t have sequins.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Mac.”
“I’m Kit.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not in est, I’m not a vegetarian, and I won’t ask your sign,” he said.
“I hate Rodeo Drive, I don’t jog, and I won’t ask what kind of car you drive,” she said.
“I think I love you,” he said.
“I hope so,” she said. They both laughed. She held up her glass of champagne and let him sip from it. He put his arm around her waist and kissed her. She kissed him back. He was a marvelous kisser, slow and sensuous and not too aggressive. He acted as if he were tasting her. She started to feel it all through her body, and she decided he was what she wanted for this evening. She wanted him right now. But it was too early to go home, and this was a good party. They were standing outside one of the bedrooms, and Kit opened the door with her free hand and then she drew back and looked into his eyes and smiled. He looked so cute and pleased. He followed her into the bedroom. Her heart was racing, and she knew his was too.
It took a few moments for her eyes to get used to the dark. There were gleaming naked figures intertwined on the huge bed; what finally seemed to be a man and two women. The three of them were very busy working on each other, and then the man groaned with pleasure and sat up to change his position. Kit was looking right into his face. It was her father.
All he saw of her was a silhouetted shape because she was standing in front of the open door. But she saw him. She had never heard him make sexual sounds, but she recognized the timbre of his voice. There was no doubt. It was her elusive daddy, the almighty hotshot doctor, in bed with two women he’d probably just met, fucking in front of her very eyes. A wave of nausea hit her, rising from the pit of her stomach into her throat, and she fled to the bathroom and locked the door.
Safe behind her barricade, on her knees, Kit gagged and vomited into the toilet as though she could never stop. She was shuddering and sweating, throwing up all the hate and fear and anger that had been hiding inside her all her life. And in spite of the champagne, and whatever she’d eaten, all it tasted like was pool water.
She tasted the chlorine on her tongue, and thought for a moment she had gone insane. Gallons of swimming pool water were inside her, coming up, and she was a child again. How could this be happening? Inside her head she was screaming to be rescued, and no one ever came.
Finally she stopped, and sat on the cool tile floor resting. The people outside probably thought she was just another drunk. She flushed the toilet, and washed her hands and mouth and sweaty face, and neatly combed her damp hair. The most important thing on her mind now was how to get out of here without her father seeing her and realizing that she knew what he was up to. It was of no importance that she was at this particular party. She had a right to be. This was her life, until she decided she wanted some other kind of life. But her father had no right to be here, fucking strangers in front of her. As far as Kit was concerned, he had violated the incest taboo. It was disgusting, and it frightened her. It was a betrayal.
She opened the bathroom door noiselessly and looked out. Her father was still on the bed doing whatever he had been doing with the tw
o women, totally oblivious of her, so she sneaked out of the room. Mickey Mouse was nowhere to be seen. Ah well … She sort of hoped he would be in the hall waiting for her, or in the living room just below, but no. Sex was the last thing on her mind right now, but he had seemed nice and she wished she had a friend. She wandered around for a little while looking for him, and then realized he had found someone else to tell he loved, so she went outside and had the parking guy bring up her car.
Driving home, Kit sang aloud to cheer herself up, to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “Snow nose, the cokehead doctor, has a very runny nose. When he goes out to parties, he likes to take off his clothes.” She parked her car in front of her house and went inside and changed to one of the T-shirts she slept in, and then opened a bottle of wine. Her ever-present music was playing on the stereo. She put a nice little bowl on the coffee table and poured all the pills she had taken from the party into it. Very nice, very chic, just like the party she’d left. She tried to think of someone she liked enough to invite over, but couldn’t. “Here’s to me,” she said, toasting herself.
Should she take an upper or a downer? She wasn’t sure what her mood was. When in doubt take a Valium. Kit took three. She finished the bottle of wine and felt perfectly foul. What would happen if she died? Would anyone care? Would she care? She took a Quaalude and waited to feel better. She only felt worse; fuzzy, light-headed, nauseated again. She was afraid she was going to black out, so she lay on her bed, propped up on all her pillows because she felt so sick. There had to be an easier way to commit suicide. She thought about it for a while, trying to decide what she really wanted to do. She was miserable and lonely, but she didn’t want to die. She reached over to the phone beside her bed and called the police.
“I took too many pills,” she told the cop on the phone. “A whole bunch of stuff.”
“Who is this?”
“You’d better send someone over. A male cop, not a woman. And be sure he’s cute.”
“I can’t send anyone over unless you tell me where,” he said. It was obvious from her voice that she wasn’t kidding, and from his that he knew it.