Suddenly, Celia couldn’t wait to get home. For starters, she’d wash her hair. Then, right in front of her, like a sign from God, she saw Peter’s absolute favorite—ripe raspberries, shipped all the way from Chile.
She grabbed two pints, then two more, and put them in her cart without even looking at the price. She had a wonderful thought then, almost an epiphany. Maybe, despite appearances, everyone here felt this way! Maybe, underneath all their tired, badly lit surfaces, their coarse bodily skins and fearful, dull eyes, there dwelled beautiful bright ageless spirits, just like hers.
Celia remembered something she’d heard on public radio. An autistic woman, who’d written a book about animals’ emotions, claimed that cats were not as cool as everyone thought. Cats had emotions, too, this woman said, exactly like dogs and people, only you couldn’t tell, because they didn’t have eyebrows to express them.
Now Celia was stunned with the profundity of it. Maybe the convergence of these two facts was the secret of universal love: 1. On the outside they all had dried mucus crusted to the ends of their noses and were wearing sweatpants and unbecoming hats. Soon all their bodies would die, but/and 2. None of them was what he or she appeared to be! Inside they were all wild and alive! Like her! Cats had emotions, too! Then, just as Celia felt drenched with oxytocin, her spirit growing so large it was about to burst out of her body and ascend to a plane of Christ-like empathy and perfect beauty, the song ended.
The glow around the fruit vanished.
Celia stood, disoriented, in mid-fondle, holding an Asian pear. Fluorescent light illuminated brown spots on the pear that matched the ones on her hand. Someone bumped her cart and didn’t apologize.
Celia caught a glimpse of her reflection in the dairy case—a tall, pale, middle-aged woman with strange hair and bad posture, wearing an overcoat with a drooping hem, blocking the aisle with a cart that contained four tiny plastic cartons of overpriced raspberries.
She put the raspberries back. They weren’t locally grown; Peter would disapprove.
An ugly new song began to play.
The autistic woman was right, Celia thought, later, driving home. Appearances were deceiving, but it went both ways. She wanted to talk to someone about this, though she couldn’t imagine whom. She couldn’t think of a single person who would listen all the way to the end, and not turn it into a joke (her sister) or end up feeling sorry for her and giving her advice (Lydia). Not Peter, that’s for sure, not anymore, maybe not ever.
Though at least he was polite enough to sit quietly while she talked, Celia reminded herself. She appreciated that.
People thought women only wanted to talk about sex and love, and, when they branched out, shoes and children and gluten-free diets. They thought women only thought of their bodies and their tender little hearts. But you could talk with anyone about those things, Celia thought. It was having someone to talk to about these other things that women craved. Or she did, at least.
Celia missed Lydia, though she’d see her tonight.
Lydia: 1:30 P.M.
Lydia was setting out dishes, a mismatched assortment left over from multiple aborted flights into domesticity. She liked things that didn’t match, she told herself. At least she thought she had. Now that this might be the last party she wondered if her sunny spin on all this old junk had been another accommodation to good-enough that she shouldn’t have made. Whatever, tonight nothing would match: the food, the chairs, the plates, the silver—partial sets of which had been handed down through death by various female relatives from a time when anyone who could afford silver had it, and polished it regularly. Her guests wouldn’t care, she knew, but maybe she should. Or should have. Too late now.
She didn’t set a place for Spence. He was going out for the evening, by agreement, and if he showed up later they’d fit him in. Though he never would fit, really. These women were her friends, not his. Of course they’d sided with her after the divorce, and when he moved back, when he had nowhere else to go, they’d disapproved.
Though most of them had softened since. As has much else, ha, she imagined saying to someone, to Celia.
Mostly she didn’t mind it, this softening. She liked the blunting effect of aging, the way things that once seemed so important had revealed themselves not to be, or not to be any longer. She liked knowing that so much difficult terrain was behind her, in the rearview mirror and shrinking fast. And she liked these accumulations—things, traditions, people, contrasting layers of friends and routines. She told herself it was just a particular version of her body that she missed, though she knew it was more than that. What she really missed was the feeling she used to have that anything was still possible.
Do not wallow, she told herself.
Again, Lydia reminded herself to let go. Everyone said, forget the bad and move on, simple as that. Even the Bible: “. . . forget those things which are behind, and reach forth unto what is before.” Something like that. (Even as a child it had seemed funny to her, being made to memorize a verse about the value of forgetting.) Forgetfulness was the secret to happiness, people said now, in magazine articles.
Lydia wasn’t sure about happiness, but she knew that, sometimes, willed amnesia was the most you could pay toward a debt of forgiveness.
• • •
She cleared a counter, put out empty bowls and platters for the food her friends would bring. She set out ladles, wide serving spoons, big serrated knives for cutting bread, little blunt knives for spreading soft cheese, tiny pickle forks. It was more than they’d need but she enjoyed handling these things. It felt good to have too much; they always brought more than they promised. She set out a stack of plates, what was left of her wedding china mixed with the chipped remains of her grandmother’s Haviland porcelain mixed with garage sale treasures mixed with some cheap terra-cotta she’d bought in Mexico on a whim between relationships when she was yet again redefining herself. Thank God that was all over now, she thought. It was another thing to add to the column of good things about aging.
Impulsively, and because she felt weak, Lydia sat down at the kitchen table and began to make a list on the yellow tablet there. “Good Things About Aging,” she wrote at the top of the page. She kept a yellow tablet on most flat surfaces, and now she reminded herself to collect them and put them away before the party, so no one would happen upon an especially embarrassing list, although at this point there was probably little left to shock her friends.
That was a good item number one, she thought, and wrote it down on the first line.
1. There’s little left that shocks your friends. They know the worst and don’t seem to care (as much as they used to).
On the next line she wrote:
2. Friends (women).
On the line after that she wrote:
3. No more waiting until a relationship ends to redefine yourself.
On the following line she wrote:
4. You don’t feel (as) embarrassed going to the movies alone. No one notices anyway.
On the next line she wrote:
5. Men leave you alone. She crossed it out.
The kitchen timer went off. Lydia abandoned the list and went to the stove. She had forgotten she was boiling potatoes. At the last minute she’d decided to make potato salad, though she couldn’t remember why. It was hard to judge how much food you’d need when you no longer had an appetite.
Jayne
Jayne was driving to Lydia’s house past a wasteland of strip malls—Vietnamese nail shops, currency exchanges, Chinese carry-out restaurants, vacuum cleaner repair shops. God, what an ugly neighborhood, she thought. Jayne was actually not going directly to Lydia’s house—not yet, anyway—but was on her way to visit Wally, her father-in-law, whose nursing home was roughly in the neighborhood. Usually Douglas went on Sundays but she’d offered to relieve him this week, since she’d be in “the provinces,” as they called the neighborhoods f
ar from the lake.
Not that visiting Wally was a chore—Douglas was uncommonly devoted, and Jayne loved Wally, too—but the place smelled bad and the drive was unpleasant, through this dreary nonscape. Jayne preferred not to drive at all and seldom did—trains and cabs were her usual modes of transportation—but unless you transferred to a bus, which Jayne did not consider an option, there was no other way to get there from where they lived, on Lake Shore Drive. Although almost any place, compared to where they lived, was, well, unpleasant. Until his father had gotten too frail, Douglas had picked Wally up every other weekend and brought him back to their lovely home, so he could spend time with Little Walt, his grandson and namesake. He’d stay overnight, in his own room, on the twenty-sixth floor in their three-bedroom condominium, in the stunning building where they lived, where even the guest room had parquet floors and a view of the lake.
“Now look at that,” Wally would say, sitting on the couch while they made dinner, gazing out the window at the sailboats. They had one, too, but Wally preferred dry land.
• • •
She forgot how nice their place was, sometimes. Coming out here reminded her.
She’d brought Wally the usual bottle, plus some Hershey bars. For years she’d tried to convert him to better chocolate—expensive, dark, Belgian, with and without nuts—but one of the aides finally admitted he gave it away, to her. Hershey bars were what he longed for, she said. They reminded him of the army, K rations—a pleasant memory, apparently. As for the bottle, it was against the rules at the Baptist home, but Wally liked his midday “snort” and everyone liked Wally. As long as he didn’t flaunt it, they looked the other way.
Jayne was dying for a smoke. Something about going to see Wally, then her old friends, whom she loved but seldom saw—Elaine, Celia, Lydia especially—put her in the mood. She supposed it was the thought of passing time, reversals of fortune, all that, that unsettled her. Jayne was anything but sentimental, but driving through these neighborhoods made her a little sad. She’d moved on, why hadn’t Lydia?
She was thinking maybe when she got to Lydia’s she could bum a smoke from her, or from Celia, if one of them had started again. She couldn’t keep track of who was on and who was off. Lydia used to smoke like a fiend. She’d made it look so attractive they’d all wanted to do it, all that nervous turning of the head and flicking of the ash, all that picking of tobacco from her lipsticked lip. Men were crazy about it, lurching out of their seats to hold a match close to her mouth while she smiled at them, a little cross-eyed, through the flame. Or maybe men were just crazy about Lydia.
“Don’t you think she’s attractive?” Jayne had asked Douglas, early on when they were first going out. It wasn’t exactly what Jayne had meant. Of course she was. Maybe what she’d meant was Do you think she’s beautiful? Women discussed it—was she, wasn’t she?
Jayne waited to see what Douglas would say.
• • •
Thinking like an art historian, Jayne had always thought that what Lydia really was, was intermittently beautiful, like some painting in a dim niche in some church somewhere in Italy with one of those timed lights you could drop coins into—beautiful when lit, when attention was paid. Beauty happened to her sometimes, then flickered out. Usually it had to do with men. At the beginning, she’d lit up around Spence.
Jayne had gone to gallery openings with them—Lydia and Spence—in the old days, back when they were a new couple. Afterward they’d go to dinner, though Spence wouldn’t eat if he had a gig later. He’d played in a band then. What a pair they’d been, so attractive, well matched, dressed all in black, like the world’s cutest, hippest salt and pepper shakers. He’d been so handsome in those days—those chiseled features, his musician’s hands. They’d just fit, both of them with that jet-black hair. It wasn’t until they broke up that Jayne found out Lydia’s true color was medium brown. Jayne remembered the night they wore matching velvet coats.
Cute as they were, they’d brought out the worst in each other, too, Jayne thought. She supposed the marriage was doomed, really. Though when she saw how they both kept repeating versions of it after, with other less suitable partners, she wondered if they shouldn’t have just stayed together and fought it out.
• • •
“Very attractive,” Douglas said, finally. “But not my type.”
“Meaning?” Jayne said.
He’d put his hands on her. “I like this.”
“No, really.” Jayne knew he did. And she was glad, but she also knew there was more to it than breast size.
He’d shrugged, let go. “She’s one of those, you know. Women.” He’d flapped his big hands.
“Elucidate,” she’d said, pinning him down with a pillow. They’d been in bed.
“You know,” he said. “Addicted to the chase. Tragic. I don’t know.” He wouldn’t elaborate.
Jayne supposed Lydia had been flirting with him. She knew what he meant, though. He meant like his ex. Douglas had already been through one divorce when they got together—and a hellacious child custody battle—and he didn’t want any more of that. They’d both been ready to settle down. Work and raising Little Walt, his boy, part-time, were demanding enough, they both felt.
Over time she’d come to know how much he liked knowing she wasn’t going to leave.
• • •
She also knew how much he would have hated knowing she was going to smoke tonight. Which she was, she’d decided. Though if no one else was, she’d be out of luck. She should stop and buy a pack now, she thought, just to be safe. She could pull over at that bowling alley, right now. It looked like the sort of place that still had a machine.
She’d always preferred buying cigarettes from a machine. She liked the privacy of it, in a back hallway, usually, in some urine-stinking alcove near the men’s room where you could stand alone and think about what you were about to do. Think about what you’ve done, the teachers used to say when they’d done something bad. She liked the clandestine feeling, that guilty anticipation, then the sound, the good soft thump when the surprisingly hefty little pack dropped into the gutter at the bottom. The sound of relief, Jayne thought. You’d pull that big silver knob—there’d always be some resistance, that last second when you had a chance to change your mind—and then it would give, like a gear, and out they’d drop, attainable bliss, into the smooth silver groove. Then came the ritual opening, the thrilling crinkle of staticky cellophane, the folding back of the cardboard lid, the tearing of the foil and then, ah. That sweet burst of smell. Tobacco.
Douglas, who’d grown up near a reservation in Wisconsin and still had relatives there, though he didn’t want people to know that, once told her the Oshkosh considered tobacco sacred. It was the opposite around here—strictly déclassé. They were converting cigarette machines into art vending machines now. You put in a token and out came a little origami sculpture instead. There was one at the Cultural Center. Just the sight of it made Jayne want to light up.
• • •
She wouldn’t be thinking this way if someone hadn’t offered her a cigarette at the park this morning. She could still smell it on her fingers. She’d put the butt in her coat pocket and rubbed it now and then, then sniffed her fingertips. Now, alone in the car on her way to the Baptist home, she wanted another.
It had been a sin of opportunity, really, not one of volition. On weekends she walked Horatio to the park in the morning, and if no one was there she unclipped his leash and let him run. This morning he’d galloped ahead, crashing through the deep snow, checking for new smells. They were all the way across the field when he’d stopped and turned, then raced back to the entrance. Someone, thickly bundled in purple, approached. Jayne knew he hoped for another dog. She watched him go, feeling guilty. She and Douglas had left him alone while they worked long hours. Now he was old, still trying to make up for a puppyhood he’d never had.
; Jayne trudged back through the snow, hoping the woman didn’t have some tiny dog inside her coat that she couldn’t set down for fear of Horatio, who only looked fierce.
• • •
Jayne smelled the cigarette before she saw it. The woman had taken off one of her big mittens and was wearing a thin leather glove on her smoking hand. She blew a mouthful of smoke and cold white air out of her pink lipsticked mouth. “Sorry,” she said, turning her head and blowing toward the street. Jayne smiled to show she didn’t mind. “Actually, I like it,” Jayne said. “I used to love to smoke.” She wanted the woman to know she didn’t disapprove.
The woman nodded. “No one knows I do this.” She raised her chin to blow more smoke. “Can’t, at home. Kids.” She rolled her eyes.
Jayne nodded. The woman was holding the cigarette behind her back. “Sorry,” she said again.
“Really,” Jayne said. “Don’t apologize. I love the smell. I miss it.”
“You want one?” the woman said.
The question came as a small shock. Did she? She hadn’t thought so, not especially, though it did smell divine. Except for the occasional communal lapse at a party, Jayne refrained, for Douglas’s sake. Douglas’s sister had died of lung cancer. He thought it was repulsive, a deal breaker, he’d called it. Besides, she’d never been a morning smoker. Her favorite time had been at night, after dinner, preferably with a glass of wine, sitting outside on her balcony in the summer, in that funky apartment she’d loved, flicking ashes over the railing. Or in a restaurant, with a man, pre-Douglas. What a pleasure that had been, after dinner in some outdoor place, on a summer evening just as the day began to cool, at a table on the street, watching the late commuters hustle past, the hungry-looking men in suits scanning women’s faces for an instant of illicit eye contact. Funny to think that such a simple pleasure was illegal now.
Lydia’s Party Page 6