by Kris Radish
“I’ve thought the same thing, but my husband would shoot me,” Sabrina chimes in. “That man has got to loosen up.”
And their laughter ripples throughout La Guardia as the four women grab bags and race towards the car that Sara has parked illegally in a handicapped zone.
Then Connie grabs her own fingers to form praying hands because she has not had time to write from her list and slip them into her pocket but she knows exactly what would be on her slips today—everything having to do with dancing, everything having to do with letting go, everything having to do with allowing her daughters to live their very own lives.
Everything.
Connie is lacing up the back of a long black gown she snatched off the rack at a fabulous secondhand store with the help of Mattie, who she has come to realize could probably turn the world on end with one small hand, locate a lost contact lens in the middle of a gravel pit, and single-handedly direct traffic in the heart of a massive snowstorm.
The gown, which Connie decides has been pre-owned by an eccentric and very wealthy movie star, floats off her shoulders, plunges towards the middle of her breasts and makes her look magically gorgeous, miraculously slim, and utterly divine.
“Come hook me up, Jessica,” Connie yells from the bathroom, hoping that her oldest daughter, who is near exhaustion and who has managed to regain her near-goddess-like attitude, will make it through the evening without toppling into her arms or on her own face.
Jessica is still in her bathrobe when she slips into the room, takes one look at her mother, and lets go of a very audible and loud sigh.
“Oh, Mother, you look beautiful! The dress is stunning. Mattie has turned your hair into a delightful hair garden. Oh, Mom…I’m trying to act like I know everything, Mom, but tell me something new, and bend over just a little bit so I can hook this up so those beautiful breasts don’t flop into someone’s drink.”
Connie lets Jessica finish, and then smooths down the backside of the dress, and then she turns to face her, puts her hands on her shoulders and says, “I feel really sexy.”
Sexy.
Alive.
Ready to meet the press and handle them as Jessica has instructed.
Beautiful.
And even more sexy than that.
“Mother, you look sexy. I hope this guy can handle you. And I hope the swamp man doesn’t find out. You are the perfect walking advertisement for Diva’s. Beautiful. Ravishing, actually. Thank God I got your genes,” Jessica tells her, laughing.
Then they hurry. Sabrina and Macy arrive while Jessica is in the bathroom, looking as if they have been living on the Upper East Side and dressing for formal events their entire lives. They are polished, wrapped, finished, and glowing from their toenails to the Mattie-styled hair that reeks of sophistication and style. Sabrina comes in with a bottle of champagne and announces that it was sitting right outside the apartment door.
“Open the card,” Jessica yells. “I’m at the mascara stage. Hang on.”
Sabrina whistles, which almost makes Connie fall over. It’s been a while, too long, since she heard her middle daughter whistle. Sabrina always whistled when she was happy, when she was walking to her bike or car, when something magical was about to happen, and it is a sound, Connie realizes, that she has sorely missed.
“It’s from the screen stud, Jessica. It says, ‘This is your night, beautiful Jessica. Save the last dance for me. Congratulations.’”
More whistling.
And then Jessica emerges from the bathroom in a whirl of blazing red and orders them to fill four glasses, with just a sip for the pregnant sister, as quickly as possible because Jessica is about ready to jump out of her skin, her dark nylons, and the red dress that she bought because it is not only provocative and sexy but the color of passion. And she announces, as if no one has heard the news, that she is all about passion.
And Connie is about to faint.
Her three daughters. New York City. Lust and love and passion and profound moments everywhere she looks and her heart racing from one side of her life to the other to see them, just see them laughing, pouring the champagne, turning each other around to fix a hem, pull back a wisp of hair, dip a wet finger to the edge of an eye, literally jump with excitement.
And this night, with absolutely no room for a list pocket, Connie forces her list of dreams into an invisible place she has just sewn into the curve of her heart. A place for dreams, she tells herself, that are only dressed in love.
Connie takes her glass while her daughters toast Jessica, and she watches, but a part of her is not there. A part of her sees them sitting on the dining room table the time she caught them making chocolate chip cookies out of Play-Doh and real chocolate chips, and then throwing up because they thought they could actually eat them. Discovering Jessica and Sabrina tying Macy to the tree behind the garage at the moment, the exact moment, they are about to set fire to the bale of hay they have not so tenderly placed around the entire tree, so that they can burn her at the stake, and then rescue her. Connie takes a sip of the gloriously dry champagne and she sees her three girls huddled around a magazine they have discovered in the neighbors’ garbage. It’s Playboy and they are giggling and putting their hands over their own breasts to measure. She steps back to keep from crying as Jessica goes over the night’s schedule, and reminds them of their jobs—Connie, woman handling the media; Macy, caterer patrol; Sabrina, security—and she remembers three high school and college graduations, two weddings, and the way the door sounded when each one of them left for a job, a new life, a place too far away. The door closing. Lives changing. Girls turned into women. A mother unleashed and the tangle in her heart—always wondering, wanting, needing to know if she’d done all she could.
And she sees them. Three incredibly beautiful yet totally different women. Jessica, with her drive for professional success and her sometimes and recently melting emotional distance. Sabrina, with her two babies, her life in the suburbs, part of her life dancing in place while she decides where she will turn next. Macy and her man and baby lurching, so she has just discovered, towards a possible new life and direction in California where the husband will work and Macy will finish graduate school.
All of this, Connie thinks, and what came before it, what is happening now, what will happen for the rest of our lives. In seconds, maybe just one second, Connie knows she could turn this evening into a Nixon-Franklin love fest. She could drop her eyes right now and cry for a week. She could tell them everything, every single fear and regret and ache and loss and joy and let them spread it out and give her an answer, their answer, their interpretation. She could tell them all together about the list and check to see if they are compiling their own. She could tell them about how she has felt her heart really fly during the past few weeks, and how just when you think you know, you really don’t know anything.
But this is Jessica’s night. It is her weekend, and her time, and wise Connie puts her arm on Sabrina’s shoulder and she raises her shimmering glass into the air and she says she needs to offer up a toast before Frannie and Daniel appear in the horn-honking limo to whisk them away.
“Jessica, I want you to know how proud I am of who you are, what you are doing, and what you have accomplished,” she starts. “But I want you to know too, Sabrina and Macy, that I am proud of you also and your choices and especially proud that you could be here, to share this night with your sister. You are all gorgeous, wise, and terribly sexy. And all three of you, each one of you, are a dream come true for me. This is to you—all three of you. I love you.”
They touch glasses, sip the champagne and, before they can finish, the horn summons them. The horn, and O’Brien, who runs screaming up the steps and into Connie’s arms and then into the arms of “the girls,” the women who have been a part of her life so long she thinks they are her daughters too. Frannie has also purchased a long black gown that is a breathtaking visual commentary on her dark skin, her gorgeous brown and very wide eyes, the generous fig
ure she has never once apologized for but embraced her entire life. And when she sees Connie’s black dress they both laugh, grab bags and notebooks and three daughters and descend on the Irishman like a lively feminine plague.
Nothing, really, could have prepared any of them for what they are about to be a part of, witness, and remember for a very long time. The smiling limo driver delivers them to a tall, chic building that stands as if it is guarding the Hudson River and the swirling mass of activity that spreads itself out on either side of the river’s banks. There is a uniformed doorman, bright lights everywhere and three—count them, three—television remote trucks already setting up on the sidewalks.
Connie gulps and lurches for Jessica’s arm as she looks up to see a gown-clad Sara waving like a madwoman from inside of the building.
“Three trucks already, Jessica?” Connie tries to whisper.
Jessica is smiling. She is not walking but appears to be floating. Her night has started, and she is into it.
“I was hoping for just one, Mother. This is so perfect. Things are going to go through the roof.”
Meredith, Kinsey, Geneva and Sara have almost everything under control. Geneva, in her own red passion dress, looks as if she could, at that moment, have everything and everyone under control if she just snapped her fingers. She has a list in her hand, a pen sticking out of the top of her lively updo, and a partner who looks as if she would be able to catch anything or anyone that fell in between the cracks.
Besides the reporters, Geneva’s family and an assorted and flamboyant jumble of friends invited by Sara, Meredith and Kinsey, it seems—from the list Geneva is holding—that the entire state of New York may be at the event. Politicians, representatives from what appears to be every organization ever formed, neighbors, business owners, manufacturing representatives, university professors, dozens of friends—hundreds of people are here.
“This many?” Connie shrieks as she walks into the building and is immediately overwhelmed by its elegance. Gleaming floors, a view of the river that will only escalate as the night lights rise, bobbing boats tied to the dock, soft lanterns blazing on the patio, linen tablecloths. No expense, it seems, has been spared, no detail overlooked. Cinderella would never want to leave this party.
Jessica does not even stop to answer questions but has locked arms with Geneva as they prepare their last few notes for their presentation and the magical unveiling of Diva’s products that have been carefully arranged under layers of silk that match the hue of Geneva’s and Jessica’s dresses.
“Two hundred and fifty people?” Connie asks, to anyone who will answer. She looks like an Indiana doe who has just spotted her first headlight.
“Mother,” Sabrina answers firmly. “There were more people at my wedding. Think of this as a large dinner party.”
“This many people could make up an entire town,” Connie falters.
“Well, tonight we are Diva Town, Connie,” Kinsey declares, swishing past in a white tuxedo, a bright red shirt, and a tie in the shape of a sexual instrument, and moving so fast Connie can’t quite make it out.
Diva Town it is as the jazz quartet sets up. Geneva and Jessica make certain everything is complete and ready and perfect and Connie quickly organizes her press packets, grabs a glass of white wine, waves off Macy, who asks her with an upturned thumb if she is okay, and stations herself near the entrance to meet, greet, and direct.
Later she will think that it made sense—sort of, way later when months have passed and people stop her on the street and three friends she has not seen in years send her framed copies of her photo on the cover of two magazines. Later when her feet stop aching and she realizes she may never be able to wear the dress again because of the wine stains and Jessica has taught her how to be gracious about interviews and story angles and why it made sense for Connie to be there and a major, not just a minor figure on a night when she would really have rather danced on the deck with those men—all of those men.
“And really,” Connie will admit, “it was not horrible, but just a little scary until Sara leaned in and said, ‘Connie, just be yourself, for God’s sake,’ and I was and it seemed to work.”
But it started out shakily, with Geneva’s family swooping in all at once, and then a car filled with friends, and before Connie could look up and see who in the hell Mattie was bringing with her she saw Burt Reynolds getting out of a taxi with Justin about the same moment Jessica saw Justin getting out of the taxi with Burt Reynolds and, thank goodness, after the Screen Man had arrived and was noshing at her elbow. Jessica’s “holy shit” look matched Connie’s and mother and daughter’s eyes met and then they raised their shoulders at the same moment, as if they had rehearsed, and just let it all happen.
“Burt,” Connie thought as he took her in his arms and kissed her right in front of all three of her astonished daughters, and about three seconds after the guy she was supposed to dance with, and eventually did, showed up.
There was no time for necking. Not a second as Connie ushered the two southerners into the party just as a cameraman from some news magazine show galloped up to her and asked who she was.
It wasn’t a fatal mistake because Connie was just being herself, as instructed by her personal advisor, 22-year-old Sara Hanson, when she answered, “Oh, I’m just the mom. My daughter, who is part owner, is over there.”
And that is how it started.
“The mother?”
“You work there too?”
“You’re a trained nurse?”
“A whip in your pocket?”
“Indiana?”
Before Connie could answer too many questions, she raced across the lobby to Jessica, whispered in her ear, lifted her head up to watch Jessica smile and then took her daughter and Geneva by the elbow, as if she were a grade school teacher leading two girls off to the time-out corner, and almost flung them at the first cameraman.
But it didn’t work.
Connie was way too sexy, the whole idea of a grandma selling sex toys threw the reporters all right off the edge. And so, Connie, after two more glasses of wine, agreed to anything they wanted as long as Geneva and Jessica were included.
Anything, while the band played on and almost every one of the 250 invited guests arrived, and Sabrina and Macy, along with Meredith and Sara and Kinsey, worked the crowd like professional entertainers, and the champagne seemed endless and the city night sky exploded in a blaze of summer glory—anything actually meant two instant on-camera interviews, a promise for two magazine stories, quotes in five newspapers and a trade publication, and agreeing to consider one very strange but sort of cute offer from the man in charge of the building, who watched the interviews and wanted to take her golfing next Thursday at his uncle’s private club in New Jersey.
Finally, the clang of silverware against the appetizer plates sounded so beautiful to Connie it made her want to weep. It was her cue to leave her media post and become part of the crowd, a Diva fan, the mother of the bride, and when the cameras sidled up to the edge of the platform where Geneva and Jessica were making their presentation it was suddenly Mattie with her alleged blind date who got to Connie before Commissioner Michael Dennis. Mattie introducing her friend Luke, a medium-sized blond-haired guy to whom she could only say hello because the presentation was about to begin.
Connie saw.
She most certainly saw the Screen Man lean into Jessica, kiss the side of her cheek, and she saw Jessica’s hand linger on his shoulder while she pushed back her hair the exact same way she had been pushing back her hair since it grew out when she was 14 years old. Jessica pushing back her hair, and showing herself and the world that she is in charge, and walking arm in arm with Geneva to the small stage and the table of soon-to-be-exposed Diva products.
Geneva is stunning, and Jessica does not skip a beat, and just as they are about to whisk the cover off of the table, Connie Franklin Nixon feels the familiar right hand of Frannie O’Brien slip into hers and Connie thinks for a second t
hat she could be anywhere.
She could be in her damn garage, or at the new job, or slipping a pair of pruning shears through the back fence, or walking up Fifth Avenue. And as long as she can look up and see her daughters, touch O’Brien’s hand, turn and see her Diva Sisters, spy two men who want to take her golfing, out to dinner, and who knows where else, she could give a rat’s ass about the assumed protocol of her list of dreams because now she is in the middle of a very powerful and extraordinarily lovely dream.
Too fast, just too fast, the new products in their sleek red cases with ribbons and the coolest opening side-vents, invented by Justin, are passed around and photographed and Jessica has announced that Diva’s will soon be franchised and marketed, and not just in the United States. Thank God O’Brien is there, and Daniel is next to her because Connie could very easily fall right over.
“Connie, this is so fabulous,” O’Brien whispers as she raises a hand to wipe the tears off of Connie’s face.
“It is something, Frannie. Who would have thought?”
Frannie laughs just a bit too loudly and Daniel squeezes her hand to try and keep her quiet, but there is no stopping Frannie. Especially if she is with Nurse Nixon.
Connie leans over to whisper as Geneva finishes the program—announces that the bar will stay open until 2 A.M., and the band will stay until 2:30 A.M.—and tells her best friend she thinks her heart is about to explode.
“I could die right now I’m so damn happy,” Connie whispers. “This is beyond dreaming. It is.”
“Jesus, baby, don’t die before you sleep with one of these guys and can try out some of these products. I’ll kill you if you die. You’re supposed to try them all first and then call me.”
It’s Connie’s turn to laugh and all three of her daughters turn towards her because they know her sound. When they were little girls they knew if they heard that sound everything was good and when it was too quiet, as it often was, things were not so good. This night, the perfect evening, things were good. Very good.