Rich Friends

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  Epilogue

  On April 20, a warm, slightly hazed Sunday, the Eugene Mathenys held Open House for their daughter, Amelie Deane, and Mr. Van Vliet Reed, who, six weeks earlier, had driven to Las Vegas to get married.

  The bridal couple sat on a patio wall. Em and Sheridan stood nearby. Em would have preferred a receiving line, but Caroline had nixed the idea. A receiving line, Caroline had pronounced, was too stiff for words. Still, this being a wedding of sorts, the guests did stop to kiss and congratulate before spreading around the patio and down the terraced hill.

  There were sharply delineated groups.

  On the narrow grass of the first terrace sat Cricket’s friends. (“Is it law, luv, that the fingernails be dirty?” said Caroline sotto voce to Gene.) They drank their champagne, earnestly discussing lenses and how to get inside the frame. Vliet’s crowd lounged on the pool deck: they seemed to glitter, such was the indecent number of lovely girls. Van Vliets mingled with the Mathenys’ friends, greeting one another with champagne-scented kisses and cries of “Isn’t it a delicious day?” and “I adore that dress!” and “They just don’t get married anymore. This is my first wedding in ages!” and “Worth missing the old tennis game for, huhh, boy?” Under a yellow-striped awning that had been put up for the occasion, the Reeds’ Glendale contingent clung together for safety. Everywhere bloomed tubs of yellow and white daisies.

  The musicians, young people in jeans, were wandering back to their station, retrieving viola d’amore, lute, flute, and recorder, drifting into a pleasantly archaic “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Vliet, with graceful conducting gestures, left his bride, descending to the pool deck to introduce an old Harvard buddy around.

  Cricket swung one sandaled foot, oblivious to the social magnets drawing people together. She saw the simple truth. They were enjoying themselves. They were happy. She was happy. Sun had raised a faint shine on her forehead. She wore a yellow lace she’d discovered in a garage sale. Naturally her mother had tried to coax her into a new dress, indeed, into a trousseau (or, as the enthusiastic Caroline had purposefully mispronounced, a “torso”), but in the multiple reflections of the fitting-room mirrors, Cricket had seen the incorruptible in her small body denying these elegantly tagged clothes. “No,” she had said.

  Most people think of a wedding as a mountain that, once crossed, presents one with a pleasant or exciting new vista. Cricket had no such concept. Her ability was to give. She lacked the sense of ownership. She did not think of possessing Vliet. Or being herself possessed by matrimony. She was just happy they were together, and this happiness had the evocative power of the classical music Vliet played whenever he was home—she’d moved into his West Hollywood apartment. Those taped chords left in her a sense of surprise, wonder, and inevitability.

  Vliet, returning to her, paused to clown a small dance in front of their grandmother’s chair. As the smile gathered wrinkles on the bovine face, Cricket felt her own lips echo the smile. Vliet thought he didn’t love her, and Cricket knew it. He did. And she knew this. Since his love was uncolored by romanticism, he missed seeing it.

  “You forgot your wedding ring,” Vliet said.

  She looked down. She had. He hadn’t.

  Suddenly they both laughed.

  The party, Caroline decided, had the fine, casual ambiance she had striven after.

  “It’s coming off,” she said to Gene.

  He put his arm around her waist. “You worked hard enough.”

  “We should celebrate a son-in-law who’ll support our dee-clining years.”

  She had thrown herself into the planning, conferring interminably with Em, overriding her sister’s cautious opinion on each issue. Formal invitations versus informal, receiving line or none, refreshments, cut flowers, guest lists. The decision that had thrown Em was that Gene and Vliet would not wear suits at the garden afternoon. “Well, Sheridan will!” she had cried.

  Yet in the midst of the fiercest sibling argument, they would catch themselves. “It’s for the children,” Em would cry. And the tall sister and the short would embrace. Em almost had gotten over her reservations. (And besides, Vliet’s beautiful girls always had made her uncomfortable.) Caroline was, as she repeatedly told her friends, delirious. She adored Vliet. (Besides, she had feared Cricket would keep flopping from one bed to the next and never marry.) Neither sister mentioned the close relationship to one another. In Caroline’s mind it was just too bourgeois. Em was anxious about angering her urbane sister. Anyway, the children had eloped, and the matter was out of their hands. Em, hating herself for it, couldn’t help wondering if they’d had to.

  She turned, peering through her glasses at Cricket. Was that lace a trifle snug? The way the child dressed, fit was impossible to gauge. It actually made Em’s head ache when she considered that Cricket might have, before. Yet she couldn’t help saying to Sheridan, “Cricket looks pretty, don’t you think?”

  Sheridan wiggled his neck, trying to escape his shirt collar. Since Roger’s death he’d put on thirty pounds, and his new navy suit was hot, uncomfortable. “If she’d fix herself up a bit,” he muttered. He never would surmount that thought, incest, yet at the same time, he liked his new daughter-in-law far more than anyone else in his wife’s Family.

  “Hasn’t she gained a little weight?”

  “Married life agrees with her.”

  Just then, Beverly, with Dan, stepped through open sliding glass. Em hadn’t seen Beverly for ages. It came as a shock that Beverly’s brown hair, which flowed around shoulders slender and straight as a girl’s, was threaded with white. She doesn’t keep it colored, Em thought, and pity welled. As an archaeologist cautiously unearths stones of a dead civilization, so Em delved her emotions, discovering to her pleasure that she still felt affection for Beverly Linde. Beverly is a family friend, Em thought. Then she thought, Alix!

  Em held up her empty glass. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said to Sheridan.

  “Why not lay off today?”

  “I’ve only had champagne,” she lied, heading for the long portable bar, hoping fervently that Alix, most disputed on the guest list, wouldn’t show.

  Beverly kissed Cricket. “I’m so happy for you,” she murmured in her gentle, low voice, and then, when Cricket hugged her, “Vliet’s so very lucky.”

  “Mazeltov,” Dan said to Vliet.

  “Thank you, sir,” Vliet replied.

  “How long’ve you been married?” Beverly asked.

  “Four weeks,” Cricket said.

  “Six,” Vliet corrected. “My wife’s not much on detail.”

  “Mine either,” Dan said. “There’re advantages and disadvantages.” He spoke pleasantly. He did not like Vliet: he had seen in that charnel house the way Vliet had stared at Alix, he suspected Vliet had had more than a hand in her relapse. But Dan was Gene Matheny’s friend. So he was pleasant.

  Caroline draped an arm over her tall nephew’s shoulder. “This is a son-in-law. The prime of the species.” She laughed, and they all had to laugh with her. “Ahh, Beverly, we’re aged crones.”

  And Gene was there, kissing Beverly, shaking Dan’s hand. “Weren’t you bringing Sam?”

  “Listen,” Dan chuckled, “would you give up pitching for this?”

  Em, returning with vodka in her champagne glass, caught Beverly’s eye.

  “Em,” Beverly murmured.

  The two women smiled hesitantly, then moved forward with small, Chinese-concubine steps. A long pause. Em’s rouged, wrinkled cheek met Beverly’s firm flesh. With the half kiss came a flood of nostalgia … Frank Sinatra 78s … Apple Blossom cologne … rationed meat, and meat loaf centered with a hard egg … hubba-hubba … USO parties … folded rush invitations … ironed rayon slips and white cotton gloves and ten o’clock Omega Delta check-ins, girlhoods lost in a time that had sunk as irretrievably as Atlantis. In the brief hug, bitterness dissolved.

  As they pulled apart, Beverly’s eyes were moist. “Em, I’m so happy for you,” she said.
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br />   “We’re very pleased,” Em replied.

  “On the way, I thought of your wedding. I guess because it was in a garden, too.”

  “The reception,” Em corrected.

  “The ceremony was in St. Mark’s,” Beverly remembered.

  “That’s right. You told us to be happy forever and ever.”

  “I did?”

  “As we drove away. There were cans tied to the car, and I heard you calling, ‘Be happy forever and ever.’” Em spoke in her pedantic way. “Nobody else used those exact words.” She paused. “Beverly, I’m sorry about—I’m sorry.” And she was silent.

  Above them, at the patio entry, stood Mrs. Linde and a graying man with a peculiar wide mouth. Between, in a tangerine dress of some very soft fabric, Alix. Em had battled to prevent one of the engraved invitations from being mailed to Alix. Cricket had wanted her, and so did Caroline—“After all, luv, she’s the daughter of my oldest, my famous friend.” But Em, in the grip of a sudden migraine, would have carried the day if it hadn’t been for Gene. He had been disturbed, deeply, when the girl was excluded from Roger’s funeral: a righteous man, he had felt group-action guilt for her crackup. “There won’t be a reception in my house,” Gene had stated firmly, “unless Alix is invited.” Her! Her! Em had had taut, menopausal dreams of strangling Alix, smothering her with a pillow, locking her in a dungeon filled with poisonous adders, taking a bread knife and matching the beautiful body with Roger’s wounds.

  The memory of these dreams hot in her, she couldn’t look at Beverly.

  “There’s Alix,” Beverly said. “And that’s Dr. Emanual. He’s been looking after her since, well, since.” She swallowed hard.

  “Yes,” said Em, avoiding Beverly’s eyes. “And if you’ll excuse me, there’re two friends I must introduce.”

  Caroline said to Beverly, “Don’t look now, but every male at this entire gathering has his tongue hanging out. Who’s that with her?”

  “Dr. Emanual.”

  “Oh yes. She did call to ask if she could bring a friend. Beauty and the beast. I’ll bet he’s cuh-razy over her.”

  Beverly’s old, mischievous smile flickered. “He’s older than God, Caroline, six years older than us.”

  “She must have ’em all ages,” Caroline said, glancing over Beverly’s shoulder. “Oh Lawd! The cateress wants me. What can it be now?”

  And Beverly went toward her mother and daughter, moving slowly around kaleidescoping groups. Ridiculous, she told herself. Nobody gets rattled saying hello to her own mother or her own child. Except me. I do. With Mother since I left Philip. And with Alix? Oh my God, my poor Alix. Since then, too. Beverly’s lips were stiff, and she thought, as she always must, Jamie. She was relieved to find Dan at her side. “Here,” he said, handing her a glass of champagne. In the warm April sun, very close to her husband, Beverly greeted her mother, her daughter, and Dr. Emanual.

  Em circulated among her friends. The dichondra was brilliant green, and Em whirled back and forth over it to the bar. One journey found her alone with Caroline.

  Suddenly Caroline gripped Em’s wrist, muttering, “Oh shit!”

  At the obscenity, Em froze.

  “Look,” Caroline ordered. “Down there.”

  Alone, islanded on the grass to the left of the pool, stood Vliet and Alix. Em was at the point where her perceptions came and went, so maybe it was a trick of alcohol. Her glasses seemed to magnify. On her son’s face she saw something she’d never seen before. Raw, naked pain. Even from here she could see Vliet’s pain.

  “They must be talking about poor Roger.”

  “That hot and heavy?” Caroline demanded.

  Alix was gazing up at Vliet, her eyes seemed tranced, her lips parted slightly. She seemed to have emerged at his bidding from another element, from a world with an atmosphere of heavy dew. The dewiness lay on her skin. A breeze fluttered her chiffon skirt, and the small, hexagonal pattern in Vliet’s shirt picked up the tangerine. What a fabulous couple, what style! Caroline thought, then fury overtook her. He’s married to my Cricket.

  And Em was saying, “… to Cricket, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Of course not!” Caroline’s whisper was cruel. “After all, they’re married. And that means happily ever after!”

  “Don’t say it like that. He loves her.”

  “Did you love Sheridan?”

  “Of course. And you, Gene.”

  “Oh God! For once, stop mouthing platitudes. We were programmed to get married, that’s all.” Her voice transmitted her hurt. “We didn’t dare miss out on the white wedding, the cottage small by the waterfall, the dozen handmade cutwork place mats!”

  “You’ve forgotten.”

  “Maybe I was hot for his bod. You’re right. I’ve forgotten. Now all I can remember is that he seemed so very clean, and I was expected to be married. But love! Don’t give me love!”

  Vliet was touching Alix’s slender, bare arm, handing her his champagne glass, saying something near her cheek. Sunlight glinted a blinding path in her dark hair, and Vliet’s eyes closed in what to Em seemed a paroxysm of misery.

  “Then why did he marry Cricket?” she asked, stopping abruptly, flushing. He had to.

  “How should I know?” Caroline snapped. Suddenly she began to weep. Annoyed with herself, she sniffed violently, blowing her nose in a cocktail napkin. Em set her glass on a waiter’s silver tray, taking a full one, gulping. Someone spoke to her. The voice was an insect whine. Em excused herself. She advanced on the crowded bar and found her sister already there.

  Vliet asked, “What’s this bizarre couple, Emanual and your grandmother?”

  “They came together.”

  “Is he her date or what?”

  “Ask Grandma. Of course she’s very straight, so possibly she’ll refuse to answer on the grounds you’re a married man.”

  “She’s right, I’ll grant her that. Really. From here on in, I’ll have to be more circumspect.” Vliet paused. “How do I act with you?”

  “I was wondering the same.”

  “Shall we both punt?”

  “It’s a crowded field.”

  “The thing is, Alix, we must decide. To ignore the last time we were together, or to drag it into the open?”

  Musicians floated into “I’ll Remember April,” learned for old sentimentalists at wedding gigs.

  “I never should’ve thrown the gory details at you. I was all wrong.”

  “You’re being generous.”

  “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry, Vliet.”

  “No, it’s me who’s sorry,” he said, and his face melted with remembrance of fear and love and triumph that had surrounded her brass bed. He swayed toward her, his mind filling with endearments both lewd and tender. On another level he was aware of pleasantly archaic notes, a clutch of voices, a burst of semistoned laughter. My wedding party, he thought. Yet Vliet felt no guilt. Cricket aided and succored him, she understood him, she nursed his now delicate lusts, she was (and always had been) as much a part of him as his thymus, and what did Cricket or a thymus have to do with how he felt about Alix Schorer? Her eyes were on his.

  “That night,” he said, hearing his voice, toneless, strange. “Know how much I wanted to stay?”

  “Vliet, what happened, it wasn’t your fault. I was at a bad point.”

  “Stop being so goddamn generous. I was chicken of getting in too deep. Crazy? I’ve always been in too deep with you.”

  “Vliet, don’t.”

  “Emanual?”

  “I’m going out with him.”

  “He’s old, ugly, short.”

  “And kind. He knows everything. He understands about me and Roger.”

  Vliet touched her arm. “You’re trembling,” he said. And drugged with love, aching to protect her from small, lizardlike old shrinks, Vliet felt tears form in his (just like Roger’s) eyes. If I had the Lazarus touch, he thought, if it were possible, for you, Alix, I would bring him back. Or resurrect m
yself into him. He handed her his champagne. “This’ll help.”

  She raised the glass.

  He said, “I love you.”

  A few drops scattered. “Please.”

  “Cricket knows.”

  “It’s still not to talk about.”

  “I have to. Something’s changed in me, Alix. It might be for the worse, but I’m different. And you are, too. You seem—resigned.”

  “Matured is a better word. Let’s not go into this.”

  “But you do feel for me?”

  “I … a lot. But Vliet, it’s all mixed up with Roger.”

  “Yes, Roger.” He blinked the moisture in his eyes.

  “Vliet,” she said gently, “you married the right girl.”

  “Really. But in no way, darling, does that alter how I feel about you.”

  And Mrs. Linde was saying, “Have you congratulated Mr. and Mrs. Matheny, Alix dear?” Vliet wondered how long she’d been there, listening with pearl-hung, transparent old ears. “Or Mr. and Mrs. Reed? It’s the correct thing.”

  “No-no. Not yet.”

  Vliet saw a barely perceptible flicker trap Alix’s eye. “I’ll have a go at them, too,” he said.

  A little ahead of him, Alix moved with a flamenco dancer’s provocative grace up the steps toward one woman who had hated her for years and the other woman whose hatred had started only a few minutes ago.

  To the left of the house was a slope. Beverly climbed, her heels sinking in the grass. Birds sang in three silver birches that guarded the crest. Near the delicate trees, she stopped, noting shapes and colors with trained eyes. She saw Alix as drifting tangerine, masculine heads turning after her, she saw Mrs. Linde, with the segmented movements of age, lower her erect body into a rented white chair. They’re my mother and my daughter, she thought. The silver cord might tarnish, but never can it be cut. I love them and am forever bound to them.

  Alone, from this distance, she could look at Mrs. Linde and Alix without an excess of repentance. She had failed her parents, and in a far more disastrous manner, her children, yet here, under rustling birches, she was able to accept the blame. She had copped out, yes, terribly and tragically, but not from want of love. She was a flawed creature like all else in this imperfect world. Inevitably, in some way, each of us fails, first as a child, then as a parent. Nothing new or profound. The report cards already are printed: we get Fs as children, Incompletes as parents.