My Dearest Friend

by Nancy Thayer

  So three nights a week Carey Ann was out, leaving Jack to baby-sit. Alexandra went to bed at nine o’clock now, and after a month of major war and minor skirmishes and a few more weeks of creative rebellions, she had settled down nicely. Most nights Jack used the quiet for work, but about once a week he invited Daphne down and they would talk about everything—his classes, Hudson, her classes of long ago, the newest novels. Everything, really, but Jack’s marriage. He told Daphne that Carey Ann was happy now, that she had friends, that she loved her night classes. He could see his wife changing before his eyes—as if she were one of his students. He was happy because Carey Ann was happy; a burden had lifted. He was changing too; he was learning that he could do only so much to help his wife and daughter be happy—no matter how hard he worked to protect them, to provide an all-encompassing shelter for them. Life would still find a way to sneak through and wham them, disorient them, discomfort them. Happiness and exhilaration could come to them totally independent of him, too. Jack did not know why this surprised him. After all, he needed his teaching, his work, to make him happy. Carey Ann and Alexandra, in all their amazing beauty, were necessary to him, but he needed his work too.

  Sometimes, when Carey Ann got involved in a long telephone conversation with a friend, talking about her course work or her teacher or a rough spot with Alexandra or about food or her period or even a recent argument with Jack, Jack would freeze where he was, listening to his wife with a mixture of satisfaction and irritation. In Kansas City she had spent hours on the phone, and now she was doing it again. He could remember his sister doing it, and his mother. Women channeled the chaos of life into the telephone and came away at peace, as if in the process they had transformed and ordered and tidied up their corner of the universe. He envied Carey Ann the rich pleasure she got from talking on the phone—sometimes her voice was so rich and intimate she sounded almost sexual. He was glad she now had good friends to talk to and good things to talk about. But sometimes he felt left out and sometimes he felt intruded upon, and diminished, as if his wife, with her words, was paring him down, tidying him up, turning him into something much less complex than he really was.

  From these telephone conversations he learned that Carey Ann truly did not mind that he spent time with Daphne, that he had drinks with her when Carey Ann was in class, that he spent hours talking to her. According to Carey Ann, Daphne was “as old as the moon.” Sometimes Carey Ann spoke of Daphne with smug pity—she felt so sorry for the older woman because her daughter had left her. Once Carey Ann had spent almost an hour discussing with a friend all the things Daphne might have done to cause Cynthia to leave her for her father. For that was the great mystery—why the girl had left her mother. What had the mother done to cause it? What terrible monstrous flaw was Daphne hiding, what cruel or crazy thing had Daphne done? Had she secretly abused her daughter somehow, verbally if not physically? Surely Daphne had done something wrong, something really dreadful. Carey Ann knew that her own daughter would never choose to leave her; they were so close, they needed each other so much, Alexandra was her sunshine, as Carey Ann was her daughter’s. Well, they would never know about Cynthia and Daphne, they would always wonder. Carey Ann would always be suspicious of Daphne, but she was proud of herself for understanding Jack’s friendship with Daphne. It made her feel mature, that she could be relaxed with Jack liking a woman that she herself did not like.

  When Cynthia wrote to her mother—for she did write once a month from California (and Daphne wrote to her daughter once a week, at least, having so many things to tell her, missing her so much, wanting Cynthia to know she was loved even though she had chosen to leave)—that she would like to come home for the three weeks of Christmas vacation, Daphne had felt elated. She had spent every extra moment fixing up the attic bedroom, which until then she had left in a general mess. She had dug the box of Cynthia’s old toys out of the storage room and lugged it up to the attic and left it there, casually, half-opened, in the corner, in case Cynthia wanted to look at them for sentimental reasons.

  Now it was Christmastime, and here Cynthia was, sitting on the floor with Baby Betsy, the doll she had had since she was four. She was playing dolls with Alexandra, who was enchanted by Baby Betsy and was intently watching Cynthia change its clothes, so that she could learn how to do it too.

  With just four days left before Christmas, Daphne, in a spurt of mushy Christmas neighborliness, had invited the three Hamiltons for dinner. Her house was too small to hold a bigger party, although she was going to have some people in for champagne and dessert on Christmas night. But Carey Ann and Alexandra were leaving on Christmas Day to fly back to Kansas City to spend some of the holiday with her family and friends. Jack would remain at home to use the vacation time to write an essay on twentieth-century writers for an international journal.

  This holiday night the Hamiltons and Millers were gathered together with good cheer. Tonight Daphne was wearing a red velvet lounging robe and heavy dangling gold earrings, giving her the majestic look of a Greek oracle or goddess, of warmth perhaps, of comfort. Certainly she had made them all comfortable tonight: a sparkling fire, candles flickering, a British boys’ choir softly heralding them from the stereo. They had just finished their apple pie laced with cinnamon, and were sipping the rest of their champagne. Jack was cozily ensconced on the sofa, Carey Ann nestled against one arm, Daphne leaning near the other, as the three adults looked at old photo albums of Cynthia as a child. On the floor, Cynthia was still enchanting Alexandra with her old doll. When a switch on her back was flicked on, Baby Betsy “crawled” across the floor in stiff, robotlike jerks. Now Cynthia had put Baby Betsy on her stomach and, lifting a hatchway in the doll’s rear end, took out two huge batteries that lay inside the doll like electric intestines.

  Daphne laughed. “Is that disgusting or what?” she said.

  “Mom!” Cynthia protested. “This was my favorite doll!”

  “I know, sweetie,” Daphne said. “I never could understand it. I always preferred those soft cuddly dolls. This doll is hard plastic; it’s like cuddling a kettle.”

  “But it crawls, like a real baby!” Cynthia said. She put the batteries back in the baby’s rear end, latched the lid, and held it against her protectively, as if it were a real child. She smoothed its hair—what was left of its hair. The doll had had so much attention over the years that it showed signs of wear and tear—hair gone, eyelashes missing, an overall look of grime coating its plastic skin.

  Cynthia handed the doll to Alexandra, who turned it on. Automatically the doll’s arms and legs started flailing in the air, and it whacked Alexandra in the face. Alexandra dropped the doll, startled. Her face scrunched up and her mouth opened to let out a wail. Quickly Cynthia flicked off the doll and handed it back to Alexandra. “There,” she said. “She’s quiet now. Let’s go up to my room and see what else I’ve got that you’d be interested in. My old stuffed animals are still up there.” She took Alexandra’s hand and led her off.

  “What a nice girl she is,” Carey Ann said as they heard the two daughters slowly making their way up the steep attic stairs. “She’s so good with Lexi.”

  “Look,” Daphne said. She pointed to a photo: Cynthia at four, at Christmas, with the brand-new Baby Betsy in her arms. The little girl in the picture had long ringlets of white-blond hair, and rosy pudgy cheeks, and plump elbows and knees, and she was wearing a dress Daphne had made for her, a long dress of white velveteen with pink bows and ribbons and lace everywhere. Cynthia looked like a doll herself, or like a sculpture made from candy.

  “It’s hard to believe,” Jack said. “Hard to believe that Cynthia was ever that small.”

  “I know,” Daphne said. “She’s so terribly grown-up these days.” She ran her finger over the picture of her young daughter, as if she could actually feel Cynthia as a child again. “Those were the sweetest days,” she said. Without realizing it, she almost crooned the words. “I sang her lullabies every night of her life until she was fiv
e. ‘Sweet and Low.’ The old Brahms favorite. A southern thing my mother used to sing to me. I think some of the happiest moments I’ve ever lived were spent rocking Cynthia in my arms in her dark bedroom, with the little shepherdess night-light glowing nearby. Everything seemed so good then, so safe. It was almost as if I were being held in someone’s arms.” For a moment all three adults sat in silence, remembering, staring deep into the fireplace, where the solid logs that had once been branches, trees, now smoked and flared, spinning before their very eyes from wood into smoke and ashes and into golden heat, rushing light.

  The sound of thumping brought them back into the present. Thud thud thud thud, and here came Cynthia into the room with Alexandra toddling along behind her as fast as her fat baby legs would take her. Cynthia had brought down the cardboard box full of stuffed animals, dolls, dress-up clothes, all the very favorite old toys, all the things that she had insisted not be part of the various tag sales and toss-outs in the past sixteen years of her life.

  “Look!” Cynthia said, grinning. She knelt on the floor and began to take things out and hand them to the enchanted Alexandra. “See this teddy bear? This furry thing—look, it’s a hand puppet.” She slipped it on and the green caterpillar began to writhe over to tickle Alexandra under the chin. “And oh, here’s my Alice!” she said, taking out an expensive Alice in Wonderland doll in a blue dress with a white apron. Cynthia looked at her mother. “I’m giving all these to Alexandra,” she said.

  “Oh!” Carey Ann exclaimed, enraptured, and fell on the floor next to the box to join in the discovery of the treasures. “Look, Lexi, a kitty!”

  Jack saw Daphne’s body tense. But still she smiled, and her voice was light. “Really, Cynthia, are you sure you want to?” she said. “I mean, it’s sweet of you, but all these things—your favorites …”

  “Oh, Mother, don’t be sappy,” Cynthia said. “I loved these things once, but that was when I was little. They mean nothing to me now, and they just clutter up your house.”

  Daphne rose and went over to stab the brass poker around in the fire. When she straightened up and looked back at her daughter her face was flushed from the heat. “I don’t mind having them around. I like them. They have memories for me too. And I thought you might want to save them for your children.”

  Cynthia was sitting on her knees, and now she leaned back on her arms, looking up at her mother. “Oh, Mother, I’m not going to have children for a million years,” she said. “Give me a break. I mean, really.”

  Daphne was moving around the room, taking up the champagne bottle, filling the glasses. Carey Ann and Alexandra were having an orgy in the toy box.

  “You never know,” Daphne said. “You might fall in love in college. Girls are changing, things are changing. People are having babies young again. In their twenties.”

  “Not this girl,” Cynthia said. “I’m not getting married. I’m not having babies when I’m in my twenties. Uggh!” She shuddered in her extreme distaste. She was very beautiful, so blond, her skin as sleek as an otter’s, her eyes clear. She was precocious and sexual and she had her own powers now and knew it.

  Daphne could not look away. Her daughter was the most beautiful thing in the world.

  “Oh, Mom, I might as well tell you now,” Cynthia said. She stood up all of a sudden and brushed at her skirt, although nothing was there. She tossed her head and gave her mother a defiant look. “Dad’s on sabbatical next year. He’s going to teach in England. I’m going to go too. I’m going to see if I can get into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. If not, I’ll try any other acting school.”

  Daphne thought: In all the fairy tales, it is the old woman who is the bad one, it is the old woman who is the witch that traps Rapunzel in the tower, that gives Snow White the poisoned apple, that tries to turn Cinderella into a kitchen slave, and now I know why. And for a split second she felt herself transforming right there in the living room, she felt her fingers contracting into gnarled and twisted claws, her nose growing long and sharp and wart-covered, her chin curving up to meet her nose, her back humping over. She was a hag. She was a hideous old hag, a cackling evil thing.

  Why tell me this now?, Daphne thought, and immediately answered herself. Because she thinks the Hamiltons will provide protection. I won’t freak out at her in front of them.

  All these thoughts flung themselves through Daphne’s head like a throng of birds, flashing through, now here, now gone. She was left standing with a glass of champagne in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. She felt such grief at this casual announcement of her daughter’s that she knew she could crush the bottle back into sand in her hands.

  “How wonderful for you, Cyn,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to live in England. How splendid that you’ll have the opportunity.” She poured champagne and drank. She crossed the room and curled up in a chair. “If you take a battery from Baby Betsy and put it in the monkey’s back, it will beat the drums,” she told Carey Ann and Alexandra. She was as normal as oatmeal, except she had forgotten to set the champagne bottle down and was holding it, unwittingly, in her right hand.

  Cynthia blinked at her mother’s understated response. She sank down onto the floor and helped Carey Ann with the electric monkey. So much of its fur had worn away, it looked sick. “Well, I may not get into RADA,” she said. “And it isn’t certain that Dad’ll go to England. But pretty certain.”

  “Have you been to England?” Daphne asked Jack brightly. So brightly. She was like a faculty wife at a tea party.

  So on they talked. They made conversation for almost another hour, until Lexi began to show signs of exhaustion. To her great delight, when the time came to go, Jack put all the dolls and animals back in the huge cardboard box, then put his daughter in on top of them all. She clapped her hands and giggled with glee. Jack staggered out the door and down the road, lugging his daughter and her new box of loot. Carey Ann followed, calling good-night.

  It was a clear cold night, no wind. Daphne shut the door against the fresh frosty air and turned briskly back to the house. “That was fun, wasn’t it?” she said. Without waiting for an answer, she began to bustle. Dishes off the table and into the kitchen, glasses off the floor, bustle, bustle, while her daughter trailed along behind, making attempts to help. Actually Cynthia got in the way more than anything. Daphne was so quick at grabbing up everything, it seemed she had fourteen hands. Daphne’s face was set in a pleasant sort of look but her eyes were deep and glazed. She turned to put the apple pie in the refrigerator just at the moment Cynthia moved to put the butter there.

  “Let’s leave these dishes till morning,” Daphne said. “I’d like to sit and relax by the fire for a while.” She wandered back into the living room, where she grabbed up the half-full bottle of champagne by its neck and plunked down, not on the sofa, but in front of it, leaning back against it so that she could stretch her feet out and warm them at the fire. Still her face was frozen.

  Cynthia sat down on the floor next to her mother, her back to the fire. “Mom,” she said intently, and then was quiet for a while, as if she had just explained everything. Finally she began again. “I hope you understand. About my going to England. I mean, this might be my only chance in my entire life.”

  “Well, of course I understand, dear. Whatever did I say that made you think differently?” Daphne said, giving her daughter a cocktail-party smile.

  “Mom.” Cynthia sighed. “I knew you would do this. I knew you would. Mother, I’m not leaving you. I’m not choosing Dad. I’m choosing England, I’m choosing excitement, possibilities, things I just couldn’t have if I stayed here. Oh, Mom, come on.”

  Daphne cocked her head, bright as an innocent, stupid little bird. Her heavy earrings swung against her face. “Why, Cynthia, I haven’t said one thing against it. I’m delighted for you, dear!”

  Cynthia banged her feet on the floor in exasperation, something she hadn’t done since she was five. “Stop it!” she yelled. “Just stop it, Mom! I know you.
I know what you’re thinking.”

  Then Cynthia saw the anger flash up in her mother’s eyes as brilliantly as the fire behind her, and fade as quickly as it had come.

  “Cynthia,” Daphne said, “I do mean it. I really am delighted for you. I’m only tired, dear—this dinner party was a lot more work than I’m used to these days.” Her voice was very gentle.

  “You miss David, don’t you?” Cynthia asked. There was something about her mother’s face just then, as Daphne let the happy mask fall to reveal her tiredness, her constrained sadness, that made Cynthia think she could ask the question.

  “Yes,” Daphne said. “Yes, very much.” Her eyes were cast down now, her face slanted away from Cynthia.

  Cynthia chewed on the skin of her little finger for a moment, thinking. At last she said quietly, “I can’t be David for you. I can’t stay here for you.”

  Daphne did not change her expression or tone of voice. Gently she said, “I never said you should, Cynthia.”

  There was some loose skin around Cynthia’s thumb, which she began to peel. Although she could not articulate it to herself, this strange act felt like something she could do while she tried to come up with the right thing to do or say. Daphne looked over at Cynthia, and her face was so full of love that Cynthia felt both thrilled and threatened.

  “Do you think,” Daphne said, “that you could remember how to play the Moonlight Sonata? I’d love to look at the fire and hear you play that.”

  “Well, I haven’t played for ages, and Dad doesn’t have a piano. I’ll make a million mistakes. But sure,” Cynthia said.