Lydia’s Party

by Margaret Hawkins

  “The things you do for love,” Celia had said, in that superior tone she got, popping another Cheeto into her mouth to punctuate her point, then popping one into Maxine’s for good measure. Maxine had been younger then, she’d eat anything.

  “Does it work for anyone?” Lydia had said, forgetting for a minute that it seemed to be working for Celia. Celia had raised her eyebrows and shrugged, avoiding Lydia’s eyes.

  It had stung, Celia going all smug like that.

  “The thing to do,” Lydia had said, yanking the pop-top off another beer. “I don’t mean now, it’s too late. But if I had a daughter? I’d tell her the thing to do is just do what you want.” Lydia squared her shoulders and took a gulp. “At least then you’d have that. Act like a man. Go be an architect in Budapest or something. Keep your sex life on the side, the way they do.”

  “It seems you did,” Celia had said, though she hadn’t meant to let herself be drawn in. “Besides, it’s not that simple. What if what she wants is to fall in love?”

  “Then she’s fucked,” Lydia had said, flinging the pop-top in the direction of the sink. She felt betrayed. It wasn’t fair that Celia was the one doling out advice on love.

  • • •

  Lydia didn’t want to think about it, even now. She should have given that drawing away years ago.

  • • •

  The phone rang. Lydia stared at it. She’d been waiting all day for a call but now she was afraid to answer. Lydia tried to read the number but something was wrong with her caller ID.

  The phone continued to ring. A part of her liked not knowing who it was. It allowed her to believe, or to visualize as she’d been told to do, that it was her doctor calling to leave a message, to tell her the tests were wrong, that the spots on her pancreas, which more recently had appeared on her liver, were gone.

  Lydia imagined calling him back. But how, why, she’d say. I don’t know, he’d say, and she’d say, What does someone in my position do now, and he’d say, There is no one else in your position so do as you like, and she’d try to imagine what that would be. Or maybe he’d say, in an intimate tone, Which position is that? She allowed herself to visualize him inviting her to dinner. He’d be wearing his stethoscope, a loosened necktie. He’d roll up his white sleeves and pour them each a glass of wine.

  Lydia spotted Spence’s boots in the corner, then, and felt embarrassed. She’d been trying to invoke the positive power of visualization but already it had backfired, as these things so often did. Embarrassment was first cousin to shame, which, everyone agreed, fed cancer. Guilt, too. Also grudges, hate, resentment, remorse—all killers. Regret was the worst, they said.

  Listing her regrets had been making her sicker!

  • • •

  Hope and gratitude, then, Lydia thought. That’s what heals, they said. Love. Though the thought of that loaded word deflated her somehow, made her feel unloved. A disapproving voice in her head—but whose? Her father’s? Some ex?—said, Not being loved, you idiot, loving, so she tried to visualize that. She reached down and buried her hand in Maxine’s thick coat, though maybe that didn’t count, it was so easy. Lydia thought about her friends then, already on their way to her house, and how good it would be to see them, how she would savor the evening after the doctor called to tell her she wasn’t dying.

  She made a quick deal with the god she wasn’t sure she believed in—if that happened, if she got a reprieve, she’d give away everything. Already she felt better! That’s what she’d announce tonight, after she got her good news—her newly formed plan to remake her life. She didn’t have time now, but she was already looking forward to a new list: How I’ll Change My Life After My Miraculous Remission.

  Lydia picked up the phone to see if there was a message, but whoever had tried to reach her hadn’t left one. Then the phone rang again. This time she grabbed it.

  Celia

  Celia got to Lydia’s house early, hoping for a chance to talk before the others got there, but when she arrived, Lydia was on the phone and wouldn’t get off. She didn’t seem to have finished dressing. Her face looked strange—maybe it was the overhead light. It was odd, though, Celia thought. She wasn’t that early and Lydia didn’t like to be seen looking bad. Even when she was a mess it was usually for dramatic effect. But now Lydia really was a mess, and agitated, holding the phone with her shoulder, gesturing to Celia to put the food in the kitchen, then turning her back so Celia couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  Celia set the food down, hung up her coat, then sat on a kitchen stool and waited. After a few minutes she opened a bottle and poured herself a glass of wine. She looked around for Maxine, to give her the treat she’d brought, but the dog was in the next room, lying sideways at Lydia’s feet, staring into the middle distance. Maxine looked worried.

  Celia heard Lydia say, No, but thanks, I’ll be all right. Thank you for calling to tell me.

  Lydia: 6:50 P.M.

  Celia stood at the foot of the stairs, suspicious. “Are you sure I can’t do something?” she called up to Lydia.

  Lydia was standing in front of her mirror, trying to think of what to do. “No,” she called back, wishing Celia would just leave her alone. “Or, open some bottles.” That should keep her busy for a while. Celia was terrible at opening bottles.

  Now would be the time to pray, Lydia thought.

  Though what would she say? Please God, don’t make me extinct, and forgive me for wasting my life. Or Don’t make me extinct yet. Or Please, God, make what I know isn’t true, true. Exist. And while you’re at it, reverse time.

  She didn’t think she could. Prayer was for children, or believers, on the fast track to heaven. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—all that. She thought again of how comforting it would be, at a time like this, to believe. Who wouldn’t like to have a little chat with Jesus right now, that all-forgiving best friend, that big boyfriend in the sky?

  Ye who are weary, come home.

  But she and Jesus had drifted apart. As she had from all her friends, if truth be told. A queasy feeling washed over her. Even she and her body had drifted apart. Or rather, it was drifting from her.

  • • •

  Lydia was remembering Sunday school. They’d prayed out loud, together—Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. She’d even sung in the choir, if quietly and out of tune. Every year she’d tried out for the Christmas pageant. She remembered praying then, for a speaking part, but she always ended up as an angel. Her name wasn’t even in the program, but it didn’t matter, they said. Every voice was precious to Jesus. Every voice raised in praise made Him glad. Or so they said, and she’d believed it.

  She’d believed it all—Baby Jesus and eternal life and that mercy was better than vengeance. It wasn’t that she was gullible. She knew it defied logic, but she’d liked that. She’d liked the riskiness of believing in something so outlandish, and when her nonbelieving friends took His name in vain she’d felt a pang, real pain. She wasn’t even Catholic but she’d stared at her palms and hoped for blood.

  • • •

  Now she stared at her face, grotesque and yellow in her magnified makeup mirror, and hoped for—what? Not blood. Who needed that, she thought, brushing on a little more powdered blush. Time—that’s what she hoped for now. She squinted into the mirror. Time and smaller pores.

  “Lydia, are you all right?”

  “I’m almost ready!”

  Lydia had thought she’d go back to church when she got old. She’d even looked forward to it, to a time when the burden to fit in with the secular world would be more easily shucked off. She’d looked forward to the privacy of old age, when she could become strange in her beliefs and no one would notice or care. She’d thought as she approached death that she would rediscover faith, had planned to include in her practice some of the more exotic beliefs the early Christian church h
ad dumped in favor of the harsher, more simplistic system it later adopted. The Gnostics believed in reincarnation.

  But here she was, as old as she was going to get, and abruptly she’d lost interest. When she needed belief most, she couldn’t summon it. Was that possible, even? Wasn’t the well of faith supposed to fill from below? But it was the physical world she wanted to hold on to now, even as it ran out of her, away from her, leaving her high and dry, between two worlds.

  It was the doctor who’d called. The test confirmed what he thought—the cancer had spread. He gave her six weeks.

  PART TWO

  The Party: 10:00 P.M.

  In a burst of wine-fueled energy, the women had pushed the couch out of the way, scraping the floors, and moved the dining table in front of the fireplace. They’d set it at an angle so it would fit, though it didn’t really, and now, after dinner, the group was wedged in front of the fire, arguing about universal health care.

  Platters and plates had been removed, along with the white tablecloth, after Elaine knocked over a bottle of red wine, and now a whole new meal, a banquet of desserts, had replaced them on the bare pine table. Along with the desserts, any single one of which would have been enough, the table held candlesticks, wineglasses, cups and saucers, two teapots, a coffeepot, and a forest of bottles—wine mostly, but also mineral water, grappa, and an old bottle of Fra Angelico someone had unearthed and brought along for laughs. Elaine was dribbling some in her coffee.

  “I don’t care how much it costs,” Celia was saying. “A society is only as moral as how it treats its weakest members.” Jayne passed a tin of homemade candied grapefruit peel to Elaine.

  “Ah. What would one of these evenings be without petrified sour fruit rinds,” Elaine said, to Maura, who’d brought it. She might as well rip out her teeth with pliers, Elaine thought. Everyone else was laughing at some story Betsy was telling now, about her clients and welfare fraud, but Elaine couldn’t shake her dark mood, and thinking about her dental problems didn’t help. She could hardly afford to have teeth.

  Maura smiled, as if she hadn’t heard the insult. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to make candy next year, she thought. Her grandmother had taught her how, but the only people who’d ever liked it were all dead now. Roy had loved it. Of course, he was of an older generation that appreciated that sort of thing, she thought. They’d eaten it in bed—the tin balanced on her belly, sugar dropping onto her breasts, like snow. They’d done it every year, called it their own private Christmas. He’d spent his actual Christmas with his family.

  When the tin came to her, Lydia took a piece and nibbled on the end. “Delicious,” she said, setting it down. Elaine picked up the uneaten candy and made a show of slipping it under the table to Maxine. When the dog refused it, Elaine tossed the thing into the fire. The sugar set off sparks.

  “Opa!” someone said.

  • • •

  Lydia watched her guests. Everyone was talking at once now, even Elaine, even Norris, about grass-fed beef, the best place to vacation in Mexico, homelessness, Afghanistan, aging parents, Greek yogurt, college tuition, sleep apnea, the nutritional value of kale, the surprising satisfaction of silk long underwear, Botox, some novel everyone had read but her. Lydia was happy they seemed happy, but she felt exhausted.

  Lately, in the midst of some gathering or the middle of a conversation, Lydia noticed she wanted to disappear. She’d make excuses, go to the bathroom, pretend to hear the telephone and leave the room. In a restaurant, the feeling would come over her so overwhelmingly that she’d need to get up and go away. I’m sorry, she’d say, I need a little air. She’d move to the outside seat or hint that she had an overactive bladder, which was less embarrassing than this other thing she didn’t have a name for, this feeling she sometimes got that she would simply explode if she had to be in close proximity to another human being for one more second. Betsy could name it, Lydia supposed. Betsy could probably even suggest medication, though even if Lydia had expected to live long enough for some calming drug to take effect, which she didn’t, she wasn’t sure she’d want to be medicated out of this feeling. A diagnosis would make the feeling a sickness, and this felt more fundamental than that.

  Lydia remembered a cat she’d had—Gladys. Two weeks before Gladys died, she’d started to leave. Neighbors would call to say she was in their garage. Someone called from a sandwich shop, four blocks away. We’ve got your cat, they said, always kind. Lydia would bring her home and give her something special to eat, but the next day Gladys would do it again. After she died, it occurred to Lydia that Gladys had known it was time to leave. Maybe, Lydia thought, that was happening to her.

  It seemed a shame, though, bad timing. She’d looked forward to the party all year and this would be her last. Now, in the midst of it, she could hardly breathe. She’d gotten stuck on the inside of the table, next to the fire. It had been fine earlier but now she felt trapped and could feel herself starting to sweat. She was plotting how to get out. She could crawl under the table, she thought, pretend it was a joke or that she wanted to pet Maxine, though that was a bit far-fetched. If she had to, she could climb over the table but that would seal it, that she was certifiable. She should just excuse herself, she thought. People did it all the time, though then she’d have to speak, interrupt Jayne, who was telling some story, to ask Celia to get up.

  Lydia eyed the couch, the cool, beautiful, commodious couch, which is where she wanted to be. She wanted to lie down, just for fifteen minutes. She was trying to will herself there, where she could stretch out and be quiet and watch her friends having a lovely time. Let others talk, she thought. Let them carry this burden of social responsibility.

  • • •

  Are you all right, someone said. She was clawing at her neck, unzipping her fleece vest to let in air. I think I need a little air, she said, and they let her through.

  Lydia needed to tell them, she thought, before it got too late and they started to leave.

  “I need to make an announcement,” she said, from the couch, but nobody heard. Celia was telling a story about Bruce Springsteen and everyone was laughing. Lydia didn’t have the energy to say it again louder. She closed her eyes and waited.

  Maura

  Maura couldn’t get over this feeling, even now, in the middle of a party, that everyone important in her life had betrayed her. She knew it was wrong to cling to hard feelings this way, and she tried not to. But some days Maura would wake up thinking about some thoughtless thing Roy said years before, and that would remind her of something Elaine said or something her mother had said when she was a child, and Maura wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep and all the next day and for days afterward she’d think of it.

  Just teasing, people always said, after. Lighten up. Stop being so sensitive. Even tonight. Elaine had just said exactly that, after she’d made fun of the candy.

  • • •

  She’d been clumsy as a child, it was true, also bad at gym, always dropping things. Fat, of course. Though looking at the pictures now, Maura could see she hadn’t been as fat as she’d thought. Then she graduated from high school and got the job and everything changed. She lost seventeen pounds in six months. She bought new clothes, dyed her hair blond, got a perm. They were out of fashion now, but then it made a difference. When Maura saw how much difference it all made, how differently people treated her, she kept going. She got braces, then surgery. First her nose, then breast implants. After that liposuction, chin enhancement. She saved up for it the first time. Roy paid for the rest.

  People misunderstood about Roy, Maura thought. They thought he was some terrible person but he could be nice, too. He called her dear. Sometimes she felt bad she’d let it go on all those years, that she hadn’t done more with her life, but other times she thought what they’d had was a kind of life, too. It was their own world, secret and with many rules, but good sometimes. Once a week he’d bring over take
-out food, little presents sometimes.

  • • •

  Elaine won’t listen to this, even now. She tells Maura that Roy took the best years of her life. But Maura doesn’t know what that means. What else would she have been doing? Elaine says, Anything—don’t you get it? You could have done anything. Maura didn’t know about that. He may not have been perfect but he’d treated her better than anyone else had.

  They were together twenty-one years. She’d seen him twelve days before he died, of a heart attack at the age of seventy-two, on some island in the Caribbean, celebrating his fiftieth anniversary with his wife and his four children and his eleven grandchildren and his first great-grandchild. Maura read about it in the newspaper. The obituary said he died “surrounded by those he loved most.” That had hurt, she’d had to admit. She’d always hoped that when he died, it would be with her.

  It was his idea she go to college. He’d pay, he said. The catch was everything had to be secret, forever. He paid for the condo, too, every month. Now she owned it. Big deal, Elaine said, when Maura told her that. You got a three-room condo with a view of the parking lot and free tuition at community college night school. His wife has two houses. His kids went to Yale.

  They didn’t all go to Yale, Maura said, standing up to her, which she almost never did. But that hurt. Maura felt more jealous of his children than she did of his wife. Actually, she didn’t feel at all jealous of his wife. Though at the beginning she’d wanted something more conventional. What it turned into, that was his idea. What if we had an arrangement? he’d said, early on, when she tried to break up with him. He was painting her toenails when he said it.