Lydia’s Party

by Margaret Hawkins

  It had been so easy to win over Betty and Hank, Norris thought. Presents, flowers, compliments. Remembering their birthdays, for God’s sake. Holiday visits with Sam. Norris thought now they must not have resisted much, must have sensed what a little weakling their son had turned into and preferred to be on the winning team. Most people did, given the chance. Not that Norris had given them a choice. Once she made up her mind she was hard to resist.

  A force of nature, Andy used to call her, meaning it as a good thing in those days. Norris remembered how he’d say it in bed, worshipfully. I like strong women, he’d say. Arm wrestling had excited him; he’d liked it when she won. He had no idea what he was getting into, Norris thought, and even she hadn’t realized how mismatched they were, until it was too late. Norris only wished Sam had gotten more of her in him, more of whatever it was that made her capable of heartless force when necessary.

  • • •

  She was going over seventy now—even Norris thought it was too fast, in this snow. She needed to slow down, calm down. She switched her thoughts to the house, always a palliative. It was hers now, the exquisite glass-and-steel box slung low in the trees along the lake, with its bleached oak floors and stainless-steel kitchen and 360-degree views. An all-glass enclosed walkway led to the studio, where she’d installed twenty-foot ceilings and skylights and an interior balcony with a clerestory. There, the seasons surrounded her. There was nothing else to see.

  Don’t you miss culture? Some fool had asked her that at an opening when she first moved. What a joke. She spent all day, every day standing at an easel. When she got tired she read a book, listened to music. She had a lifetime supply of culture in her head. What she craved was nature. And what a poor substitute for nature culture was anyway. People who asked if she missed culture meant did she miss people. Parties, openings. God, no. Never. She preferred her trees, and silence. What a gift it had been to herself, to move there. And it wasn’t even that silent. There was the sound of water, birds, small wildlife rustling in the underbrush—the gray squirrels skittering up and down the tree trunks, screeching at each other over mulberries, in summer the bees. At night she heard owls. What was she doing in this city, she thought, dodging a pothole in the narrow one-way street as she drove through the filthy slush.

  Won’t you miss us? Someone had said it at one of these parties, after she and Andy split up and she announced she was moving north. Who was it that said that? Someone she didn’t expect sentiment from. She’d laughed, then felt sorry, realizing how cold she sounded. But they were so provincial, clinging to their little routines. Didn’t it ever occur to them to leave?

  She’d always planned to leave, and she planned to go much farther—part-time at least, when Sam graduated. She was looking into property in Panama for a winter studio. She figured she’d earned as many houses as she wanted. She’d worked harder than anyone she knew. She’d made art and raised Sam and managed Andy’s money and she’d been good at all of it, and now she was just beginning to do her best work. Or she was ready to begin, she amended.

  • • •

  Norris wondered if nature trumped everything. She was driving past a row of crumbling apartment buildings now. Certainly it trumped this shit, she thought. Probably it even trumped art, but who cared about that. It was the kind of discussion people had in art school. Such abstractions had never interested Norris. Certainly art trumped friendship, for her, at least. People called her a careerist, like that was so bad. What was wrong with that? Friendship seemed like a waste of time, by comparison. All that chatting. Though Norris had tried, with Lydia.

  Won’t you miss us? It was Lydia who’d said it—Norris remembered now. I won’t have to, she’d said, dodging the question. Nobody has to miss anybody. You can visit. We can e-mail. She was surprised they cared.

  She’d even meant it. She even threw a divorce party—for collectors, mostly, but she’d invited Lydia and told her to bring along the whole bunch of them, and they came, in someone’s SUV, like a busload of geriatric tourists, brushing snack crumbs from their laps as they climbed out of the back.

  It was the only time they visited, though, and Norris couldn’t say she was sorry. She knew the place made them uncomfortable. Envy was hard on friendships. She didn’t think she’d ever had one that hadn’t faltered on it somehow. If not envy over her success, then envy for her body. What a laugh—all these paintings and all they saw was how thin she was, thinner now than twenty years ago. It was no mystery, how she did it. Anyone could, with a little self-discipline. She starved. It sharpened her senses, too. She channeled hunger into work. She knew she’d be the only one tonight not gorging like a child at a birthday party.

  They all had theories about her success, Norris knew. It could never just be that she’d earned it. They couldn’t bear to think that. They hinted they thought it was who she knew. What a joke, Norris thought. Who did she know? Everyone now, sure, but no one then. Or they thought it was something about that residency all those years ago, as if that made any real difference. Her favorite theory was that she was successful because of her name.

  She’d changed it, that was true. She’d been named after her mother—Marie Norris O’Heaney—and dropped the corny Irish O as soon as it was legal, when she was twenty-one. She’d already dropped Marie, as soon as she got to college, desperate to distance herself from her mother. She saw now that it probably hurt her. She was a little sorry about that.

  Professionally, though, her instincts had been exactly right. It hadn’t hurt her personal life either, to have a man’s name. Men, she’d noticed, liked that little hint of androgyny.

  Lydia: 5:45 P.M.

  Lydia was trying to proofread the latest version of the letter but her eyes kept closing. The only thing that kept her awake was the sound of Spence in the kitchen, sighing. She could hear him all the way downstairs, getting ready to go out, to leave the women alone.

  He’d spent the day in his office, as he called it, the big room in the basement where he slept now and where he kept his guitars, his comic book collection, his letters from old girlfriends he thought Lydia didn’t know about, his work that she wasn’t supposed to ask about. He was upset the party was disrupting his routine and he was protesting by occupying the kitchen.

  Spence was sighing so loudly, actually groaning now, that she could hear him through the door she’d just closed, as she was supposed to, she knew. He was registering his complaint that a) generally, life was hard, and b) specifically, she was having a party for women who’d gone on record as not liking him, though she’d told him he could join them for dinner, if he wanted. It was only fair, he’d helped her clean the house—she was so tired now, he’d done most of it, really—but she knew he wouldn’t stay. He was going to some club, would probably end up sitting in on the last set. Or Lydia hoped so. It would cheer him up, and keep him out of the house.

  She knew he felt frustrated—she sympathized! The market for restored guitars, let alone banjos and ukuleles, was just not that strong these days, the economy being what it was. It had been a great idea—she’d been all for it, tired of being the breadwinning wife of a session musician, which is what he was doing when they met. She’d backed the business a thousand percent. The city was teeming with musicians, resident and visiting both, and Spence knew or at least had met most of them. Had sat in with a lot, too.

  “Best damn guitar restorer in the city,” the Chicago Reader had said. “And not a bad picker either.” Ten years ago, but still true.

  When Lydia bought him out of the house, after they split up, Spence sank every dime in the business. He’d moved in with their accountant by then, Julie, and even she agreed it seemed like a great idea.

  • • •

  I feel like I made a wrong turn somewhere, he said sometimes now, holding his head in his hands. For a long time Lydia had reassured him that he was on a path, but lately she’d been too tired.

  He�
��d feel much better, she thought, when he found out she’d willed him the house.

  Her brother would disapprove, of course, if it came to that. He’d expect everything to go to his girls. They already have everything, she would tell him, if she had the nerve to discuss it with him, which she didn’t. Or not even nerve, just forbearance. She knew what he’d say. If you had children you’d understand. Understand what, though? Rampant greed?

  When she was younger, she’d told her little brother everything. Six years her junior, he’d been the perfect, precocious confidant, but after he got married she’d had to stop. He’d become an instant expert on marital bliss and, full of advice, he wore his happy home life like armor. All he could talk about was how amazing his wife was, how outstanding his kids were. How blessed he was. It could all be hers, too, he implied, or used to, if only she’d settle down. “Family first,” he liked to say, fixing an unctuous eye on her. He’d claim that by family he meant her, too, but she knew he didn’t. He and Liv and the girls were a walled kingdom.

  She should tell Spence about the house, she knew, to set his mind at ease. And she would, but she couldn’t quite make herself, yet. She didn’t want to see his gratitude. She heard him groan again. Who is the one with a deadly disease here? she wanted to shout downstairs, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t told him that, either.

  • • •

  According to the shit-detector quiz Lydia had taken online the week before, this reluctance of hers to tell people how sick she was was yet another sign of her withholding nature, proof positive that she was officially, measurably, untrustworthy. The person who’d made up this quiz, which appeared in a popular women’s magazine Lydia read only at the hairdresser’s, maintained that all forms of discretion and privacy were actually signs of untrustworthiness. Lydia wasn’t sure she agreed but, just to be safe, she was trying to make amends. She’d planned to tell Spence today, before the party, so she could at least say he was the first to know, but now it was too late. She’d heard the door slam. She should have told Celia, too.

  • • •

  Lydia went back to the letter. Maybe she’d been right the first time. Maybe what she regretted, or should regret, is not what she didn’t do but what she did. Wasting so much time writing this crappy letter, for one thing, she thought. Her life with men, for another. She’d been skirting the issue. Spence was the least of it. She was thinking of Dennis, of course. That was terrible.

  There were others, too. Poor mixed-up Ted. Celia, back when they talked about this sort of thing, said she thought letting Spence move back after the divorce was a misguided effort to make up for the others. Lydia said, Couldn’t it just be wanting to help an old friend? Celia had given her a look that said no. That was around the time they’d stopped discussing these things.

  Maybe she should write Ted a letter, too, Lydia thought. Or give him something, at least, maybe her grandmother’s cast-iron pot. Lydia looked at the clock. She was running out of time. What would she even say? Dear Ted, I’m sorry for my part in what happened all those years ago, for adding to your confusion. She would never write such a letter. What if Betsy found it?

  Lydia had to lie down. Here at least was bedrock, though, real regret, and the nausea that went with it. Or was that the cancer, this acid tang of vomit rising in her throat? Now that she’d hit on something real, it was amazing how much else came gurgling up to lodge there, like undigested meat. She should have planned a preparty for men, Lydia thought. She could have met them at the door with a list of talking points and a tray of drinks and a stack of their left-behind T-shirts, starched and folded, like laundry in a hotel.

  • • •

  So Miss Congeniality is admitting to feeling a little hostile after all? It was Celia’s voice in Lydia’s head, again.

  Where was Celia when she needed her? Lydia wondered, though she knew. Celia was at home, waiting on a boy who was old enough to take care of himself. She should be here, Lydia thought, in a sudden fit of petulance. And not the complacent judgmental married maternal Celia, but the old raunchy one. Lydia wanted to talk to her.

  Celia

  Poor Lydia, Celia thought, wrapping cellophane over the big turkey platter she’d mounded with chopped vegetables. She had no real family. Though in some ways Celia envied her, too, having that whole house to herself. Or at least she would have it to herself, Celia thought, when she finally kicked Spence out.

  Celia was organizing herself to leave the house. Peter had already wrapped two loaves of herb bread and put them in the car, side by side on the passenger seat, bundled in dish towels and smelling of flour, like newborn twins. He’d turned on the engine so the bread would stay warm.

  “One should be plenty,” she’d said.

  “Tell her to freeze the other one, if it doesn’t get eaten,” he’d said. He meant it was a gift. Celia liked this about him, his generosity. It was clearer to her now, now that they had less. Before it had sometimes seemed like showing off.

  The ragged remains of Celia’s grocery store epiphany had followed her home and settled around Peter. Now that she was leaving the house for the evening, she’d started to miss him. Poor Lydia, Celia thought again. She had no idea what a happy home life was.

  “What are you going to do tonight?” Celia said.

  Peter was standing at the kitchen counter reading the newspaper. Griffin was at some kind of overnight retreat and Peter had the house to himself. On the kitchen table was a stack of movies he’d checked out of the library, on the way home from dropping off Griffin, all choices he knew didn’t interest Celia—three James Bond titles and underneath those something called Bicycling the Wine Country of France.

  “Making risotto,” he said. A bag of arborio rice and a little pile of oyster mushrooms sat on the counter, along with two neatly peeled cloves of garlic and a hunk of pecorino cheese. He was waiting for Celia to leave before he started cooking. Adam, Peter’s big white cat, was skulking back and forth on the counter, rubbing against Peter’s sleeve. Ever since Eve died, from feline leukemia last spring, Adam had been keeping close to Peter. Male bonding, Celia supposed.

  “Have fun,” she said, postponing her exit. She wanted him to look at her, but he’d started making a salad now, and Adam had stopped his skulking and was sitting on the counter staring at the radishes Peter had scrubbed and lined up in a neat row. He seemed distracted, and Celia could tell from the way he was acting that there was something he wasn’t telling her. His evident impatience at her slow departure made her hang around longer to try to tease it out of him. Finally he said, “Don’t you have to get going? The roads are icy.”

  “I suppose I do,” Celia said, buttoning her coat and giving him a peck on the cheek. As she leaned over to kiss him she saw the telltale package from the deli, which he’d pushed out of sight, behind the olive oil. He’d bought prosciutto and he was hiding it. He was planning to put it in the risotto and eat it all himself. He was cheating on their budget.

  Just like she was, she thought, thinking of the bakery cupcakes she’d left in the car. She decided not to mention the prosciutto.

  Peter held the door open and Celia teetered onto the ice with the big tray of vegetables. “Say hi to everybody for me,” he said, to her back. She turned carefully on the ice to wave good-bye but by the time she’d safely rotated her body, along with the huge platter, to look back at him he’d already shut the door. Through the window, which glowed with yellow light in the dark, Celia saw Peter and Adam butt heads over the kitchen sink.

  Married life was so complicated, she thought. These negotiations were so delicate, these secrets so strange but necessary. Who knew what else there was. She’d learned not to ask.

  It was something else she and Lydia would have discussed back in the old days, when Celia could trust Lydia not to judge her for the compromises she’d made. Now they had as many secrets from each other as they did from men. Although, Celia had begun to
notice lately, Lydia seemed to have more.

  Lydia: 6:15 P.M.

  Lydia was getting dressed now, laying her options on the bed. Would a purple scarf look playful, she wondered, or would it just seem forced? Past the mirror, through the bedroom window, she saw stripes of falling snow, illuminated under beams of noxious orange streetlight. She watched the little crystals spin and twinkle.

  Lydia was thinking about joy, whether it was possible in the midst of this, whatever this was. Dis-ease. Resignation. Grief, even, over the death of some version of herself, now gone. She was a little surprised to see that it was, that joy was exactly what she felt right now, looking forward to seeing her friends. Those manic little crystals insisted on it.

  Joy as opposed to happiness, Lydia thought. They were as different as silver and gray.

  Lydia ran a lint roller over the pants she planned to wear, removing bits of Malcolm’s fur. She remembered how Betsy had told her, during her trial separation from Ted, that her only criterion for dating a new man was that he possess a capacity for shared joy. CFSJ, she called it. She’d written a paper on it for a professional journal.

  • • •

  Lydia and Betsy had met for breakfast at a pancake house, on a Sunday, so there’d be no danger of running into Ted, who was singing in the choir that morning, at church. A waitress had just set plates in front of them when Betsy told her this.

  “Makes sense,” Lydia had said, buttering her toast.

  “Unlike Ted,” Betsy added, to make her point.

  Lydia looked up just in time to see Betsy’s eyes darken. “Ted doesn’t have that?” Lydia had already forgotten the name of whatever it was Betsy thought Ted was lacking, and she knew she was on shaky ground now, but she wanted to know.