by Rona Jaffe
They came at six. Daphne and Emily had never seen Annabel’s apartment, and said it was marvelous. Except for painting, she hadn’t redecorated since she’d moved in, but flowers covered a lot of faults. “This is great,” Emily said. “When I get my new apartment finished, which will be some day in the next millennium, I will give a party.”
“Then I guess I have to have the next one,” Daphne said, “since our apartment is as finished as it’s ever going to be.”
Annabel opened the champagne. “A toast,” she said. “To each of us and all our new, wonderful lives.”
They cheered and clicked glasses and drank. Emily told them about her new apartment, which had been totally torn apart by the decorator she’d hired and was under construction while she was living in it. “I told him to leave me just one bedroom and a bathroom to use,” she said. “Not even the kitchen. I don’t care. There are two toilets standing in the middle of my kitchen floor, and no appliances at all. The kitchen looks enormous. All these men come charging in at the crack of dawn to rip down walls. My interior designer, who by the way is called that and not a decorator, says when he dies he doesn’t want to be remembered as just somebody who re-covered a chair. He didn’t want me to live in the apartment while they were doing all this stuff because he said most people who do have screaming nervous breakdowns. But I don’t mind the chaos because I know it’ll be worth it later.”
“What happened to your California apartment?” Chris asked.
“My son Peter is living in it. It has two bedrooms, so I stay in it too when I’m in L.A. Life’s so funny—all he ever wanted was a glamorous beach house, an expensive sports car, a beautiful live-in girl friend, and a killer dog to protect it all. Well, he’s got a glamorous apartment anyway, and my former car, which is a vintage Mercedes convertible, and a rather terrifying male Doberman named Chip after our cookies, and the last I heard, a lot of girl friends. And he’s only twenty-one.”
“And an old man already,” Chris said. “No more dreams.” They all laughed.
“Isn’t it amazing how we’ve ended up,” Daphne said.
“We haven’t ‘ended up’ at all,” Annabel said.
“Yes,” Daphne said, “I guess you’re right.” She looked at the three of them with affection. “I still sometimes think how strange and lovely it is that we’re all here together, good friends, after all the things that happened to us in our lives, and not even seeing each other for so long. The first time we met, at Radcliffe, we liked or didn’t like each other for such silly reasons. I remember Richard’s father used to say that you went to college to ‘meet the right people.’ Richard believed that. In his case it was to meet men he would know later in the business world. For us it was to find the right boy to marry. I think I wouldn’t have known the right person to have for a friend if I fell over her, I was so scared, and busy thinking about putting up a good front for everybody else.”
“You … scared?” Emily said, amazed.
“Of course.”
“But I thought I was the most frightened girl in the dorm,” Emily said.
“You seemed to know just what you wanted,” Chris said to Emily. “Annabel and I thought you would have grown up to be smug, which shows what we knew. I was so taken aback when I did that interview with you and found out what really happened.”
Emily smiled. “Yes, I wanted just what they told me to, and I got it. The biggest mistake of my life.”
“But we survived our mistakes,” Daphne said.
Annabel refilled their glasses. “We certainly did.”
“Emily and I had a conversation in Vail once,” Daphne said, “about being able to go back and do things differently, sort of a second chance, to do it all over again better, and we both said it was impossible. But that’s not how I’ve been feeling lately—I feel I’ve gotten that second chance.”
“I do too,” Annabel said. “And that’s why I had this party, to celebrate.” She raised her glass. “We survived not only our mistakes, but our misguided little teen-aged dreams, and the shattering of those dreams, and went on to become happier and more interesting than we ever imagined. You remember in Peter Pan, when Tinker Bell is dying, and Peter turns to the audience and tells them to clap their hands if they believe in fairies; and everybody claps their hands, and Tinker Bell’s life is saved. Well, clap your hands if you believe in surprises, and the life you save will be your own.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Emily Applebaum Buchman, forty-eight years old, beautiful and successful, stood on the terrace of her new Fifth Avenue apartment on a glorious October evening and looked out at the world. She had just come from a small party at Annabel’s house, and now she was dressed up to go to a big one at the Plaza Hotel. Behind her, in what would eventually be her new living room, was the mere skeleton of her future home, where she, too, would entertain, or perhaps just pause in her busy life for some quiet time alone. Every day the workmen carted away the rubble they had created, as if they were getting rid of her old life. She rejoiced in it.
Below her in the darkness was Central Park, and all the lighted buildings and streets of her adventure. She remembered that other terrace, off her former bedroom in California, where one frightening night she had stood watching Ken swimming frantically down below; that tiny, ominous figure to whom her destiny had been tied. It was not even three years ago, and yet it was a lifetime away.
Now that she looked back at the woman she had been, that person seemed a sad little friend from her past, but not herself. The self-deprecating, apologizing Emily who had thought herself worthless and unlovable was gone.
She knew there were people who would never love her: Ken, for instance, and even Kate and Peter. She didn’t care about Ken; and as for her children, she knew they liked her as well as they were capable of. She had done her best after the worst had been done, and now they were all adults, she and her children, and at least they got along. Some people didn’t even have as much. She was too happy lately to let any of this depress her. She was only sorry she hadn’t left Ken sooner, but even that was a mistake not worth brooding about. Each thing in its own time.
Her dress was silk with silver threads. Tonight she would dance, and maybe she would meet ten interesting men, or maybe one. She felt as if she were a freshman at Radcliffe again, going to her first Freshman Mixer, with everything ahead of her. This time she had her career, and her success, and her friends, and if she had to she could get along with only these and no man at all; but that was no reason why she couldn’t have one. She remembered when she was eighteen, going to the first dance, when Annabel had said they were “the new crop.” Out there had been what seemed a whole world of men, hoping to find her, hoping to be found, waiting to fall in love.
She had looked forward to the future then, totally unprepared for what it would really be. Now she was looking forward to it all over again; so much wiser, but still excited, still romantic, her life still unresolved, unfinished …
When it came, she planned to be ready.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Rona Jaffe
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0840-2
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