The After Party

by Anton Disclafani

“Mmm,” I said, though I hated it. I wondered what Fred thought of what we were doing back here. If he disapproved, if he cared at all.

  Ray was waiting for us at the door. When I saw him I broke into a smile, and the night turned more promising. Going out with Joan had always, since we were teenagers, stirred me into a state of nervous excitement. I never knew what she would do. I never knew where the night would take us. Ray’s presence, I realized, was reassuring. I knew what he would do.

  “That’s him,” I said to Joan, pointing as we pulled up to the entrance. “That’s Ray.”

  Joan watched him for a moment, silently, and I began to panic. If Joan did not like Ray, if she didn’t approve of him, he would be ruined for me. I tried to stop myself from thinking it—surely Ray mattered more than what Joan thought of him—but I knew it was true.

  “He’s a doll,” she said, and grinned at me. “A doll.”

  She jumped out of the car and ran up to him, me trailing a step behind, her heels clipping the pavement.

  “Well hello,” she said when she reached him. “I hear you’ve been taking good care of Cece while I’ve been gone.”

  “Yes,” Ray said, a little uncertainly, and I slid beneath his arm, put my hand on his chest. Ray seemed buoyed by my touch. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, and tipped his head.

  “The pleasure’s all mine,” Joan nearly sang, and patted her hair before she nodded to the doorman, who swung open the door with ceremony, as if he understood her importance. And who knows, perhaps he did.

  It was a Saturday night; the place was packed. I scanned the room and saw a roped-off section in the corner. I could make out Glenn McCarthy, in his sunglasses and leopard-print ascot. He was sitting around his regular table with glamorous blondes and a few unsmiling men. I wondered if they were his bodyguards.

  I stood a few feet behind Joan. She stopped as soon as we were inside, backed up a little bit, and I wondered if she was frightened, if she wanted to leave. If returning to all this—all these people, all this noise, all the smoke and shimmer—was not, in fact, what she’d wanted. Too much, too soon, perhaps.

  I stepped away from Ray. “It’s okay,” I whispered, and touched Joan on the back. “Stay with me.”

  She looked at me with an odd little half smile I couldn’t read. Should I have left her alone? I looked at my friend, dressed in my gown, her hair in a high ponytail I’d done myself, and felt despair. I knew no one, and no one knew me.

  “Thank you,” she said. It was all I needed; I felt euphoric. But then she gathered herself, threw back her shoulders, and marched straight through the center of the room, her hand extended, waving at the people who watched as she passed. And who watched her? Everyone.

  “So that’s Joan,” Ray said, coming up behind me, encircling me with his arms.

  “Yes,” I said lightly, slipping out of his grasp. “That’s Joan.”

  Half an hour later and she was sitting at Mr. McCarthy’s table, the glamorous blondes shooting her dirty looks. An hour later and his leopard-print ascot was around her neck. Somehow she didn’t look foolish. She looked fun.

  “Looks like she picked up a few tricks in Hollywood,” Ciela said, furiously smoking a cigarette. We were standing at the bar, with Ray, watching Joan. “She hasn’t even said hi yet. Too busy with Diamond Glenn.”

  Just then Joan caught sight of us and waved, and before I knew it she was running across the room, throwing her arms around Ciela’s neck.

  “Long time no see!” she said, and laughed.

  “That’s for sure,” Ciela said. “I didn’t quite make it out to Hollywood last year.”

  But Joan didn’t take the bait; she was too enlivened—too drunk—to take offense.

  “This place is so goddamned ugly!” Joan said loudly, and I checked to make sure Glenn McCarthy wasn’t in hearing distance.

  “Joan!” I hissed. The snobs from Dallas might have called it the Damn-rock, but we were proud of the Shamrock, which was emblematic of everything about Texas we held dear. It was bigger and better and brasher, and of one thing we could be absolutely certain: there was no other place like it in the world.

  “What? I’m going to fall asleep to visions of green tonight. I want to come to a nightclub that reminds me of Paris,” she said, “or Monte Carlo! Not a leprechaun’s fantasy.” A waiter placed a glass of champagne into her outstretched hand. “They’re keeping me well-oiled,” she said, and winked.

  Ciela chortled. “Paris? Monte Carlo? You’ve never actually been to either of those places, have you, dear?”

  Joan shrugged. “I’ve read about them. Seen plenty of pictures. Taste is taste. And if you’ll excuse me . . .” And with that, she reentered the melee.

  “She reads!” Ciela said. “She looks at pictures. ‘Taste is taste,’” she mimicked, and glanced at me, waiting, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t mock Joan.

  “She’s just excited,” I said. “She’ll calm down.”

  Ciela sighed. “You’ll have to excuse me, too,” she said. “I need to visit our most vulgar of powder rooms.”

  “Is Joan always like this?” Ray asked, after Ciela had left.

  “Like what?” I asked, though I knew exactly what he meant. I took a sip of my champagne. “Let’s dance,” I said, because Ray loved to dance.

  “Okay,” Ray said, “but slow down a little bit?”

  I smiled. “I don’t want to slow down!” And we were out on the dance floor, where I could go as fast as I wanted.

  A few hours and a few glasses of champagne later and Ray and I were sitting at the bar, me practically on his lap, when Ciela ran up, breathless.

  “You’ve got to come see this,” she said giddily, and motioned outside, toward the pool, and I knew immediately she meant Joan.

  She was already halfway up the steps to the high diving board by the time I arrived. There was no way for me to get close—there must have been two hundred people on the patio next to the pool, ladies in their glimmering evening dresses, men in their slim-fitting suits, watching Joan as she ascended the steep spiral stairs. She was still in her heels. One hand gripped the railing; the other held a glass of champagne. I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t. You could feel the energy of the crowd, watching Joan. Elated. We were all waiting for what came next.

  The Shamrock’s diving board wasn’t your ordinary diving board—there was a low board, a medium board, and a high board a good thirty feet above the water. Joan had executed beautiful dives from the high board, it was true, but she’d been in a bathing suit, and she hadn’t been drunk.

  I squeezed Ray’s hand.

  “What in the hell is she doing?” he asked, and I shrugged impatiently.

  “She’s going to the top,” I whispered as she climbed. But no, she stopped at the middle board. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  She slipped off her heels and threw them into the pool, where they bobbed to the surface, and someone let out a hoot and a holler. She kept climbing.

  “She’ll kill herself,” Ray said, and I brought my hand to my mouth.

  “No she won’t!” I said. She’s just having fun, I started to say, she’s just being fun, but the crowd’s cheers drowned me out.

  When she reached the top of the stairs she tilted her glass of champagne, drained it, and gave the crowd a wide, beatific smile. Then she walked slowly to the end of the diving board. She stopped at the very edge, bobbing up and down; stretched her hand out; and let her champagne glass follow her shoes into the pool.

  And then she bent her knees, once, twice, raised her arms above her head, and dove. Ray gasped behind me; I could feel his breath on my neck. It was a beautiful sight: she leapt from the board in a perfect swan dive, toes pointed, my black dress shearing the air, and entered the water so quietly she barely made a splash.

  The crowd broke into a wild cheer.
“A perfect ten,” someone shouted. “Champagne all around!” another person yelled.

  “Let’s get this lady a towel,” Glenn said, and the crowd roared again as Joan surfaced and backstroked cleanly to the shallow end. The next day there would be a picture of Joan on the front of the gossip section, standing at the edge of the diving board, poised.

  “I’m a little tired,” Ray said, “do you think we could go?” I was torn: I didn’t want to miss anything—I’d missed an entire year!—but Joan was surrounded by people now. I couldn’t even see her, just the place where I thought she was, at the center of the throng.

  “Yes,” I said, “let’s go to your place.”

  He ushered me out to the valet stand, and then a voice behind me. Joan’s voice.

  “You’re leaving?”

  I spun around. She was shivering, one of the Shamrock’s thick green robes wrapped around her shoulders.

  “Yes,” I said. “Ray’s tired.”

  She stared at me for a second. “Don’t go,” she said softly. “Don’t leave me.”

  Ray’s car was pulling up and he looked at me quizzically. What could I do? I kissed him good night and told him I’d see him tomorrow.

  Joan’s hair was plastered against her cheeks. She’d lost an earring—luckily only a piece of costume jewelry. Fred appeared and once we were in the car Joan leaned her damp head on my shoulder.

  “Sleep with me,” she said, when we were inside the Specimen Jar, “please,” and I did so, gladly, helped her out of her wet dress, tucked her into her bed, then slid in next to her. The sheets were cool and smooth against my bare legs. The pillow was soft beneath my cheek. Joan was warm and heavy next to me. I found her hand underneath the covers.

  “Did you have fun?” I asked, struggling to keep my eyes open. It was four o’clock in the morning. A new day had already begun.

  “Oh,” she said, “I was just showing them a good time. But yes. Yes, I had fun.”

  • • •

  Ray proposed the next week, at his friend’s beach house, where we’d met.

  We stood on the damp sand of Galveston’s shore and Ray got to his knees. I thought about how he was ruining his pants; then he slid a pear-shaped diamond, flanked by two round sapphires, onto my left ring finger, and I stopped thinking about his pants.

  I held my hand away from me, like I’d seen so many women do in the movies. I’d never really liked the ocean—it was Joan who loved the water—but now the dull roar of the waves slapping the sand, over and over again, sounded lovely and comforting.

  I thought of my mother and father. I didn’t know how he had proposed, but surely she must have loved him, in that moment; surely she must have believed their love was certain, would cushion them against life’s slings and arrows.

  Something occurred to me. “Did you ask my father?”

  Ray stood, held me to him. “No,” he murmured. “I’m sorry—I thought—”

  “Good,” I said. He didn’t deserve to be asked.

  Joan was back. She would help me plan my wedding. And Ray was mine forever. My life, it seemed in that moment, was perfect.

  “I’ll never leave,” Ray said, his voice thick with emotion.

  And then he made me promise I’d never leave him, either.

  “Never,” I said, “never, ever,” and in that moment, I believed nothing more.

  • • •

  A month after Joan returned, I slipped into her room to see if she had one of my blouses. I saw the same stack of books on her bureau, untouched.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Joan had been back for nearly a year—nine months—when the Fortiers threw their annual Christmas Eve party. The mayor was there, several city councilmen; Hugh Roy Cullen was in attendance, the cherry on the sundae, one of the richest men in Texas. Joan’s name had been on the invitation, along with her parents’. For the briefest instant I’d wondered, as I’d slid the thick card stock from its envelope, if my name would be engraved next to Joan’s. But of course not.

  I comforted myself with the thought of the parties Ray and I would throw, once we were married.

  Evergreen glittered. Pine boughs woven into the grand staircase railing; little white orbs twinkling on every bush, every windowsill and eave. Joan glittered, too, a bottomless glass of champagne in her hand. She wore a red silk dress, its bodice so tight it was a second skin.

  I stood near the Christmas tree, with Ray. We would be married that summer, at Evergreen. The next party I attended here would be my wedding reception.

  The tree was two stories high, decorated with little candles in silver holders. I was sipping spiked eggnog, fiddling with one of the candles, passing my finger through its flame.

  “Are you impressed?” I asked Ray. It was the first time he’d been inside Evergreen. He saw Joan of course, when we were all out together, but he preferred to spend time with me alone. And he was working feverishly at that point, trying to prove himself at the company, so our nights together were sparse anyway. To me, it was ideal: I had Ray and I had Joan.

  “By?”

  I thought he was trying too hard to act nonchalant. “All of it! The cooks have been slaving in the kitchen for a week. The gardeners worked until three in the morning to make sure the yard was perfect. The—”

  Ray placed his hand over mine, quieting it. “Joan’s drunk as a skunk. Look at her. She can barely hold her head on straight.”

  We watched Joan for a moment. She was, indeed, gesturing widely, dipping and bobbing her head, but she wasn’t drunk. She was tipsy, animated.

  “She’s always like that,” I said. “She can handle her liquor.”

  “Hmm. Think you can find a way to introduce me to Cullen? I wouldn’t mind showing my face to him.”

  At the end of the night, after Ray had left, pleading exhaustion, I wandered out back, tired and drunk, passing a cluster of old men whispering and smoking Cubans. They nodded furtively in my direction as I passed, and I suppressed a giggle at their self-importance. It seemed impossible that Ray would ever be that old.

  I would wait and leave with Joan, whenever she was ready. Soon, Ray and I would leave parties like this together, as a couple. Soon, he would go nowhere without me, nor I without him.

  A swing hung from an oak tree, and I sat on it tentatively, not quite sure it would hold me. But it did, just as it had when we were children. There was our sandbox, covered now, unused for years.

  I thought of Idie, how kind she had been playing with me near that sandbox day after day. And it occurred to me, sitting there on our old swing, that I hadn’t seen Dorie in ages, not since Joan had left. Now Joan was back and Dorie was not.

  In the car going back to the Specimen Jar, I was alone with Joan again: the smooth leather seats, the dry heat radiating from the dashboard, the back of Fred’s bristly, gray head. I loved this car in winter.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, “what a spectacle. What a spectacular spectacle,” and giggled. She squeezed my hand. “Was Ray grumpy, darling?”

  I shook my head. “No. He’s just a little quiet tonight.”

  “A quiet man is a boring man,” Joan said, lighting a cigarette; in the flame I saw her eyes, unfocused. “But you’ve got to love a boring man. No trouble with a boring man.”

  I let her go on. Every time she called Ray boring I pressed my lips together, but I knew she meant nothing by it.

  “I’ll be married this time next year,” I said.

  “You sound sad,” Joan said quietly.

  “Do I? I’m not. I’m happy. But we won’t ever live together again. Remember how we used to say we’d marry brothers, and live in houses next door to each other?”

  “I do,” Joan said. “I do.” She laughed. I laughed, too. The idea, which had seemed so plausible to our ten-year-old selves, now seemed utterly absurd.

  “Things will change
,” I said.

  “Of course they will,” Joan said. “But, honey, you know you can’t marry me, right?”

  I was prepared to be hurt, was already, but then Joan grabbed my hand.

  “Ray loves you. You can’t really ask for more than that, can you?”

  I shook my head. It was true: Ray loved me, and I couldn’t, shouldn’t ask for more than his love, his loyalty.

  “Let’s go to Shailene’s,” she said abruptly. “Fred, take us to Shailene’s!”

  Did I want to go? Did it matter? We were going to Shailene’s, where I hoped there would be a booth and Joan would want to sit down in it.

  I watched River Oaks, perfect as a little town in a snow globe, houses lit, ornamented trees with presents underneath visible from the street. Then the globe started to spin and I leaned my head against the soft seat.

  “Joan,” I said suddenly, as the question had just occurred to me again.

  “Yes?” she murmured.

  “Where’s Dorie?”

  She said nothing. I opened my eyes, expecting to find her looking out the window, her attention caught by something other than me. Instead I found her watching me intently.

  “She’s gone,” Joan said.

  “Gone where?”

  “Just gone,” Joan said softly, and slipped out the little ashtray that lived in the door and stubbed her cigarette into it.

  Servants came and went all the time, of course. But still, Dorie had been like a mother to Joan.

  Joan had closed her eyes, and I did not push the matter because I did not want to disturb her.

  And yet, I knew she was lying to me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  1957

  A week or so after she showed up rain-soaked on my front porch, I saw Joan again at the Petroleum Club. All the girls went there for dinner once a month; it was something of a tradition, started by Darlene. She was there, of course, along with Joan and Ciela and a few others at the end of the table. Tommy was home with Ray. We all placed our orders—steak was what you got there, what each of us ordered that night, red in the middle—but when Philip, our waiter, stopped by Joan she asked for champagne.