Lydia’s Party

by Margaret Hawkins

  There would be dead silence by now.

  And what’s this? Lydia would say, clicking her electronic pointer in the dark, making a little arrow of light flicker around the dollar bills on the table. Why is there money here? Is she a prostitute? A waitress? Are those tips we see on her little vanity table? Lydia would lean a little cornily on that loaded word, “vanity.” It’s not much money, even adjusting for inflation. Or is it just change from her pocket, a reminder of how transitory earthly wealth is? Because as you all know, she’d say, if they were a roomful of silent, rapt twenty-year-olds, beauty is a kind of wealth, yes? Its own kind of currency, right? A commodity, even. And we all know what people do with commodities, right? She’d wait a beat, two, to let it sink in. She had them now. We trade them, don’t we? There was always some pretty child up front that nodded, usually a girl but not always.

  Does it remind you of anything else? Lydia would ask then. All this beauty gone to rot? And some bright one among them who’d paid attention all semester would say, The Dutch vanitas painters? And Lydia would say, Very good! And what was their subject? And the bright one would whisper, Death?

  • • •

  But they weren’t her class. They already knew all this. She’d dragged them to see Ida at the Art Institute the day they’d celebrated Elaine’s fiftieth birthday, years ago. They’d sneaked in a little flask and stood together in front of the painting, passing the flask around. Each one took a sip. A toast to decrepitude, Elaine had called it.

  She’d been the first to turn. Like a dead leaf, she’d said, sarcastic even then, though then they were young. Celia had taken a big swig and started to cry in front of this very painting. When they went to dinner afterward, at the Berghoff, Betsy refused to eat and proceeded to get drunk—on Riesling of all things—and tell them things about Ted they would rather not have heard. That was the painting Lydia was talking about.

  • • •

  Albright was underrated, Lydia thought, setting the paper down, sick of proofreading the damned letter yet again. Most people didn’t know he was a twin. Lydia liked to tell her classes about his identical twin brother, Malvin, who was an artist, too. The story went that when they came of age they flipped a coin and determined that Ivan would be the painter and Malvin the sculptor, except nobody ever heard of Malvin again. Imagine, she’d say, to a darkened classroom of uncomprehending eighteen-year-olds. Imagine having an identical twin with an almost identical career and for that matter an almost identical name. No wonder the poor man obsessed over what he didn’t do.

  Eppie Lederer, also known as Ann Landers, had been an identical twin, too, another of those souls forced to watch her parallel life lived out beside her. She’d also concerned herself to an unusual extent with what to do and not to do, as did her twin sister, Popo, better known as Dear Abby, who also wrote an advice column on morals and manners. Lydia happened to know they’d had a double wedding, then a falling out. They were estranged for decades. Imagine being at war with your own twin self, Lydia thought. These things were strange. Elvis Presley was a twin, too, though his brother, Jesse, died at birth. Some people said it’s why he was lonesome.

  Lydia knew all about it. She and Spence talked about it sometimes. He had a theory about brilliance coming in twos. He thought things came in pairs, that the universe supplied two of everything it needed, in case something went wrong. It was part of his larger theory about the vastness of the universe, the generosity of nature making up for its carelessness and cruelty. Think of the garden, he’d said, gesturing toward the backyard, when they discussed it. Think of thinning, of how many promising seedlings you have to kill to get one strong plant.

  The last time they’d talked about it he was coming off a fast, eating one of his radish, ginger, and tahini salads, and he was brandishing his fork, with a homegrown radish stuck on the end. Lydia remembered him standing at the kitchen counter in his spandex bike shorts, looking gaunt and anxious, his neck ropy from tension and not enough food.

  Nature anticipates death, he’d said, a little frantically. It supplies extras! He was almost shouting, slapping his free hand on the Formica counter—they’d meant to put in granite but never got around to it. He slapped the counter again, angry that the world didn’t take his theories more seriously. Think of Rembrandt and Jan Lievens, he’d said, his agitation accelerating, Shakespeare and Marlowe, Bell and Gray, Edison and Tesla, the Beatles and the Stones!

  Yes, she’d said, trying to calm him. She didn’t disagree.

  There has to be a parallel universe, he’d said, looking like he might cry. It’s how things work. He was on a roll, manic that day.

  Lydia agreed it was a fascinating theory. Maybe they’d talk about it tonight, she thought, at the party, though it presupposed intelligent design, an idea she knew some of her friends despised. Or maybe it was Spence they despised. She wished they’d get to know him better, after she was gone, if it came to that. Ask him about his theory sometime, she wanted to say. It would give them something to talk about at the funeral.

  • • •

  She returned to the letter.

  I don’t plan to list my sins of commission here. I’m more concerned with my sins of omission, or not even sins, failures. My failure to act. So here’s my list of regrets.

  My first regret is that I didn’t do more with my painting. I became discouraged. I lost my nerve. I stopped when I should have kept going.

  My second regret is that I didn’t go places I wanted to go.

  • • •

  It pained her. Lydia had thought she’d travel more later, when she had time. Now it was too late. Not that she hadn’t already taken wonderful trips—she had! Or some had been wonderful; the others made good stories. But now she wished she’d taken more. More, more, more! She felt greedy in retrospect, for what she might have had. It was a strategic error she wanted to advise them not to make. She’d wanted to ride a bathing train in Japan. She’d wanted to see Alaska. Don’t bother, people told her, it’s boring, but she didn’t care. She’d wanted to see the Globe Theatre, the northern lights, the Hermitage. Whales, bears in the wild.

  And never mind exotic locales. She’d wanted to attend a full season of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and always assumed she would, one day. Her parents had taken her when she was a child, and that enveloping world of refinement had been a revelation. The velvet-covered seats, the subdued dissonance of the orchestra tuning up, the excited silence punctuated by a few nervous coughs, and then, that first sweet note, so full of promise, not only for music but also for the lull in her parents’ lifelong argument.

  The first time, that first note, had been a defining moment. Art lulled them, she saw. Harmony begat harmony. It’s why she’d signed up for cello, though she’d dropped it when she realized she’d never be good. It was why she’d become an artist, or tried to. She could have afforded season tickets—why hadn’t she?

  She’d wanted to have lunch with her mother at the Walnut Room, at Marshall Fields, on State Street. Her mother had always said she’d take them. Lydia didn’t figure out until after she died that it was she who should have initiated the lunch. It wouldn’t have been hard at all. Now, Marshall Fields didn’t even exist. It was Macy’s now. Lydia regretted that, all of it.

  Once you opened these gates, Lydia thought, every petty thing came flooding through. It was a mistake, but now she couldn’t stop. She’d wanted to eat at a fondue restaurant—silly, but true. Early on, Spence hadn’t been interested. Later he gave up dairy out of sympathy for cows. But she could have gone with someone else. Celia would have been happy to go, if only to make Spence look bad. Though she would have made too much of it, Lydia thought, dragging along Peter and Griffin, to show Lydia what she was missing.

  Lydia knew what Spence would say about all this—dissatisfaction increases in proportion to available choice. He called it the BCAD, the breakfast cereal aisle dilemma.

 
Lydia supposed most of her regrets were laughable, but the point wasn’t her idiotic whims. The point was all this wanting and wishing but never acting. She meant to tell her friends that if they had desires, however trivial, perhaps they should consider fulfilling them now, while they still could, so they could check them off their lists and get back to living their lives.

  My third regret is that I wasn’t more kind.

  Lydia preferred not to go into detail here but she knew some of them remembered the thing with Dennis. That was terrible. The police had assured her it was an accident, that he’d just run off the road. Happens all the time, they said. Still. She regretted that.

  My fourth regret is that I didn’t sing more.

  My fifth regret is that I wasted so much time worrying about men.

  And why? Why had she done that? Why hadn’t she spent more time alone, simply enjoying her life? Or better yet, with her friends? Lydia set the letter down. She felt a little sick.

  • • •

  She’d go lay the fire, she decided. That always cleared her mind. Her father had taught her how, and she remembered his instructions exactly. Leave room for oxygen, she heard him hector when she piled the wood too tight. He was unimpressed with enthusiasm. He wanted results. If you build it right, one match should do, he said, always a genius of thrift. He’d boasted that his scoutmaster had called him One-Match Dick.

  Lydia knelt on the ashy hearth. First she set crumpled newspaper on the floor of the fireplace, then more in the grate along with the last of the dry evergreen boughs from the mantle, left over from Christmas. This was her innovation. Her father would have considered it cheating. Over those she lay kindling, small sticks she’d collected from the yard, arranged in a teepee over the paper and the evergreens, then added larger sticks to that and small logs leaning strategically on the skeletal teepee. Then a couple of big dry logs balanced against that. When she was done she hauled more wood in from the porch and set logs to lean against the fireplace to dry.

  Lydia sat back on her heels and brushed off her hands. Even a chore as simple as this exhausted her now, but it was satisfying work and she didn’t get to do it much. These days, Spence made their fires, when he was around, and when he wasn’t she mostly didn’t bother. He’d taken over the fireplace when he moved back and now he left his brown paper vegan potato chip bags and dirty paper towels in the grate and called it recycling. When it got to overflowing he’d ignite the pile with one blast from the butane torch he’d bought for caramelizing desserts, before he gave up sugar. He kept it on the hearth now, next to the fireplace tools. Please don’t do that, Lydia said when he blasted flame across the room. She said it in the quiet voice a parent used on a volatile child. She meant for her politeness to overrule his angry love of fire but it only incited him. What’s the problem? he’d say, lobbing an empty pasta box onto the pile from across the room, to make the fire flare higher.

  What was the problem? Where should she begin? For one thing, there was the unsightliness of his garbage, piled in the living room, and for another there was the flame shooter. Then there was the fact that he was there at all, living in the basement. The idea had been that it would be temporary. She thought they’d agreed. Then there were the other, more immediate problems, for instance that when she got down on the floor to check the flue she had trouble getting up. Which might be related to that other little thing, cancer.

  Be grateful for small pleasures, Lydia told herself. At least she’d laid a perfect fire. Her father would be proud—Lydia felt sure it would ignite with a single match.

  • • •

  Just then Maxine, who’d watched the fire-building proceedings quietly, walked to the fireplace, stuck her nose into Lydia’s carefully constructed pile of combustibles and extracted a big, chewy stick, causing the teepee to collapse. The bang of the hard oak logs on the cold stone hearth startled the dog. She jumped back, into the end table that held the wilted tulips, knocking them to the floor.

  Maxine glanced guiltily at Lydia. Bad dog, Lydia said, not meaning it.

  She scraped the soggy tulips off the floor and tossed them into the fireplace. She wasn’t any more effective in getting Maxine to cooperate than she was in getting Spence to. It was another thing Lydia regretted, this failure of hers to make her desires known.

  While Lydia wiped up the spilled water, the dog stood just out of reach, waving the stick, the stub of her tail and the stick going in opposite directions, like some weird arthritic metronome. Lydia knew Maxine was trying to start a game of tug of war, her old favorite, but Lydia didn’t have the energy. She was weighed down by dark thoughts, her bitter attention now focused on Spence’s bad fireplace manners.

  It was yet another thing to regret, this unforgivingness of hers. Better to let it go, she told herself. Focus on the party.

  Upstairs, Lydia made another attempt at finishing the letter. She’d keep the ending short, she decided.

  I’ll close, dear friends, with a plea concerning dogs. Indulge them. Cook them eggs on Sunday. Take them on road trips, unless of course it makes them vomit. And comb them often. It gives them so much pleasure that to deny this just seems cruel. Also it keeps shedding down. Finally, just love them. Their lives are so short.

  Norris

  Norris had left Jay in bed, pretending to be asleep. She knew he was pouting, the little fool. His feelings were hurt. He’d wanted to come along, like a dog. He should know by now, Norris thought. She didn’t like dogs.

  His little tantrum had made her late, and when she finally got out of the house it was snowing again. She’d had to reshovel the driveway, and by the time she got on the highway it was getting dark.

  Norris almost called Lydia, to cancel. She would have, if she could have been sure Jay was gone, but the possibility that he was still there, and that she’d have to throw him out, made her keep going. Take charge and take advantage, she told herself, as she did a dozen times a day. She clicked on cruise control, put her Speak Like a Native (Italian) CD in, and steered into the snow, dreaming of Venice. Her plan was to be fluent by the next Biennale.

  • • •

  The weather made the drive even longer than usual. Norris stopped only once, at Calumet Fisheries, the little one-room shack and adjacent smokehouse that clung to the banks of the Calumet River, on the far south side of Chicago. She stopped there sometimes when she drove around the lake. With no tables and no bathroom—you took the food home or ate in your car or, in hot weather, sitting on the curb—the place was a throwback, Norris’s one concession to nostalgia.

  It was a south side thing. Her family had gone when Norris was little. Her uncle Jack took all the cousins every year, the day after Thanksgiving, for fried smelts. He’d been a school janitor, his vacations were the same as theirs. It seemed pathetic and kind of funny to Norris now, that smelts—oily little fried fish with bones—was her family’s idea of what to give a child for a treat, but she still craved the taste.

  Norris’s plan was to pick up fish for Lydia’s party but, now, standing in line, absorbing the stench, she wanted to flee. The place reeked—of smoke and fish and grease and the smell of the river in the cold. Norris wasn’t used to waiting in line. She didn’t even want to go to this party, she thought. She surely didn’t need to take anything. The rest of them would show up with enough food to last a week.

  This ceremonial eating of theirs seemed more repulsive to Norris every year. She hadn’t actually been to Lydia’s party in at least three years but she saw the e-mails. Not to mention that it was a colossal waste of time—the planning, the shopping, the cooking, the endless negotiating over e-mail about who was taking what, then the setting up, the trading of recipes, and afterward, the cleaning, the storing, the dividing of leftovers. You’d think they were a bunch of Amish housewives. And all that gooey food, mounds of cooked flesh, mayonnaise, butter, cheese—it made Norris queasy just to think of it.

  Except f
or Lydia’s party, Norris made a point of avoiding occasions like this. If she had to eat at someone’s house—a collector, say—she brought her own food. Rice cakes, almonds, blueberries. A Ziploc bag of spinach she’d empty onto her plate and eat raw. She had some with her right now. She used to say she had food allergies, but now she didn’t bother to lie. She didn’t care if they were insulted. The way most people ate was disgusting, she thought. They were better off knowing that. Norris had a soft spot for Lydia, but she had the feeling this would be the last time she’d go to this party.

  Lydia: 5:15 P.M.

  The letter, Lydia decided, was ridiculous. She crumpled it, and, late as it was, started over.

  Dear Friends,

  I had planned to write a searingly honest letter that would shock us all into living more intensely, with individualized private endings for each of you. I thought it would be my legacy, in case I die, something I could leave to the world in the absence of exceptional children or good paintings. And I did try to write such a letter, but it ran long and rang false.

  So here is something more succinct and true: I have stage-four cancer and maybe I’ll die soon. Probably I will. You are my best friends and I want to give you something, in thanks.

  It was too dramatic, probably, Lydia thought. But wasn’t that what the proximity of death was supposed to do? Shock you into appreciating life? Though so far, she thought, it had only seemed to stall her. Onward, then.

  But now I can’t think of much to say other than thank you. And carry on. Your lives look brave and beautiful to me. Also—be kind, to animals and to one another. What else? Enjoy your lives. There’s nothing new here. What I mean to say is that I regret I haven’t done these things or haven’t done them enough. If I get a chance I’m going to change my ways.