Coming Out

by Danielle Steel

  The girls were going to Europe with friends as a graduation present, and Olympia, Harry, and Max were meeting them in Venice in August, and taking them on a driving trip through Umbria, to Lake Como, and into Switzerland, where Harry had distant relatives. Olympia was looking forward to the trip. Shortly after their return, she'd be taking the girls to Brown, and after that there would be only Max at home with her and Harry. The house already seemed too quiet to her these days, with Charlie gone. Having the girls leave too would be a real loss to her. Already now, with graduation and freedom imminent, the girls were almost never home. She had already missed Charlie terribly for the past three years. She was sorry that she and Harry hadn't decided to have more children after they had Max, but at nearly forty-five, she couldn't see herself starting with diapers and nursing schedules all over again. Those days were over for her, and having Max in their life, to bind them even closer together, seemed like an incredible gift.

  Olympia ran to open the door as soon as she heard the bell, and there was Max, in all his five-year-old splendor, with a wide, happy grin, as he threw his arms around his mother's neck and hugged her, as he always did when he saw her. He was a happy, affectionate little boy.

  “I had a great day, Mom!” he said enthusiastically. Max loved everything about life, his parents, his sisters, his brother whom he seldom saw but was crazy about, his grandmother, the sports he played, the movies he watched, the food his mother served him, his teachers, and his friends at school. “We had cupcakes for Jenny's birthday! They were chocolate with sprinkles !” He said it as though describing some rare and fabulous occurrence, although Olympia knew from volunteering in his kindergarten class that they had a birthday, with cupcakes and sprinkles, nearly every week. But to Max, every day, and the opportunities it offered, was wonderful and new.

  “That sounds yummy.” She beamed down at him, noticing the paint splattered all over his T-shirt. He dropped his sweatshirt on a chair, and she saw that his new tennis shoes were covered with paint, too. Max was exuberant about everything he did. “Did you have art today?” she asked, as he settled into a chair at the big round kitchen table, where the family shared most of their meals. There was a pretty dining room with antiques she had inherited, but they only used it for the rare dinner parties they gave, and holidays like Christmas, Chanukah, Passover, and Thanksgiving. They celebrated both sets of holidays, both Christian and Jewish, in fairness to all their children. They wanted them to appreciate and respect both traditions. At first, Olympia's mother-in-law had been leery of that, but now she privately admitted that she enjoyed it, “for the children.” The kitchen was the hub of the family wheel, and the nerve center of Olympia's operations. She had a small desk in the corner, with a computer, and a constantly precarious towering stack of papers, most of which dealt with the family. She had a small room upstairs, off their bedroom, which she used as a home office on Friday mornings, or occasionally at night, when she had a big case and brought work home with her. Most of the time, she tried to leave her law practice in the office, and focused on the children when she was home. But juggling both lives was a challenge at times. Harry and the older children admired her for how well she did it. Max didn't seem to notice. Whatever happened at home centered on the family, and not her legal work. She did her best to keep her two worlds separate. She rarely talked about her work with her children, unless they asked her. At home, she was more interested in talking about what they were doing. And she only had a sitter for Max for the hours she was at work, and not a minute longer. She loved being with him, and savored their time together.

  “How did you know we had art today?” Max asked with interest, as he bit into the turkey sandwich she had made him. She did it just the way he liked it, with the right amount of mayonnaise, and a heap of his favorite potato chips. Her motherly skills were finely honed, and four star as far as Max was concerned. Her husband and three other children agreed. She was a good cook, a devoted mother, and made herself available to listen to their woes and solve their problems. She knew most of everything they did. She never divulged secrets, and gave fairly good advice about romantic problems, or so Virginia said. Veronica usually kept her crushes to herself, as Charlie did. He kept his own counsel about his relationships at college, just as he had when he was at home and in school. Charlie was a discreet and very private person and always had been. Harry said he was a “mensch,” a man of integrity and great value. Sometimes he said Olympia was a “mensch,” too, even though she was a woman. She knew it was a real compliment from him.

  “I'm psychic,” Olympia said in answer to Max's question, smiling into the dark brown eyes that were so much like his father's. His hair was so dark and shiny, it was almost blue. “Could be the paint on your shirt gave me a little hint.” She didn't mention the shoes, and was sure he hadn't noticed. Max loved art, and like Charlie and Veronica, was an avid reader. Getting Virginia to do her reading assignments for school was a constant agony. As far as she was concerned, she had better things to do, like emailing her friends, talking on the phone, or watching MTV.

  “What does sigh-sick mean again?” Max looked puzzled for an instant, munching on a mouthful of chips, trying to remember the meaning of the word, which momentarily eluded him. He had a vocabulary well beyond his years.

  “Psychic. It means I know what you're thinking,” she explained, trying not to laugh at him. He was so damn cute.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, with a pensive look of admiration. “You always do. I guess that's what moms do.” As far as he was concerned, she knew everything.

  In Olympia's opinion, five was a great age. Whenever one of the girls told her what a monster she was, she still had Max to assure her that she could do no wrong. It was reassuring, and had been for the past couple of years, as the twins negotiated their way across the reefs and shoals of the teenage years. Particularly Virginia, who frequently disagreed with her mother, especially over things she wasn't allowed to do. Veronica's battles with her were over broader issues, and related more to the ills and injustices of the world.

  Olympia felt that adolescent girls were a lot tougher to deal with than little boys in kindergarten, to say the least, or even their college junior brother, who had always been quiet, easy to get along with, and extremely reasonable. Charlie was the family negotiator and peacemaker, anxious to see that everyone got along, particularly the two branches of his extended family. He often saw both his mother's and his father's divergent points of view and ran interference between them, and when one of his sisters had an argument with their mother, it was Charlie who translated and negotiated the peace. Veronica was the acknowledged hothead and rebel, with some occasionally dicey political points of view, and Virginia was the fluff in the family, according to her twin sister. Virginia was usually more concerned with her looks and her love life than with deeper social or political issues. Veronica and Harry engaged in long, heated discussions at night, though usually of a strikingly similar opinion. Virginia marched to a different drummer than her sister, and spent hours poring over fashion magazines, or reading the gossip from Hollywood. She said she wanted to be a model or study acting. Veronica wanted to go to law school, like Harry and her mother, and was thinking about getting into politics after college.

  Charlie hadn't figured out his future career yet, although he had only another year to do so. He was thinking of working at his father's family's investment bank right after college, or maybe studying for a year in Europe. Max was the family mascot who made everybody laugh in tense moments, and hug him whenever they laid eyes on him. All three of his older siblings adored him. Max had never met anyone who didn't like him, and he loved hanging out with his mother in the kitchen, lying on the floor just for the fun of it, drawing, or building things with blocks and Legos when she was on the phone. He was an easy child to amuse. He was almost always happy. He loved everything about his world, particularly the people in it.

  Olympia handed him a Popsicle of real fruit juice and a cookie, while she
flipped through the mail and poured herself a glass of iced tea. The weather had been warm for the past week, much to everyone's relief. It was finally spring. The warmer weather always took too long to come, as far as she was concerned. She hated the long eastern winters. By May, she was sick to death of warm coats, boots, snowsuits, mittens, and random snowstorms that came out of nowhere in April. She could hardly wait for the summer and their trip to Europe. She, Max, and Harry were going to the south of France for two weeks before they met the girls in Venice. By then, she'd be ready to escape the torrid summer heat in New York. Max was going to day camp until they left, where he could do art projects to his heart's content.

  The remains of Max's grape juice Popsicle were dripping copiously down his chin and onto his shirt as he ate the cookie, while his mother glanced at the last piece of mail in the stack, and set down her iced tea. It was a large ecru-colored envelope that looked like a wedding invitation, and she couldn't imagine a single person they knew who might be getting married. She tore it open as Max began to hum a song he had learned in school, just as she saw that it was not a wedding invitation, but an invitation to a ball that was to take place in December, a very special ball. It was an invitation to the very elite debutante cotillion where she had come out herself at eighteen. It was called The Arches, after the elegant name and design of the Astor estate where it had originally been held. The estate had long since vanished, but the name had held over the years. Several of the city's most aristocratic families had organized the event in the late 1800s, when the purpose of a debutante ball had been to present young women to society, in order that they find husbands. In the hundred and twenty-five years since it was established, the purpose of the ball had inevitably changed. Young women now appeared in “society” long before they turned eighteen, and were no longer kept sequestered in schoolrooms. Now the ball was simply a fun and rather special social event, a rite of passage with no greater meaning or intent than to have a good time in so-called polite society, and the occasion to wear beautiful white dresses for one very special evening. It was a little bit like a wedding, and there were all sorts of archaic traditions associated with it—the curtsy the girls made as they entered the ballroom under a flowered archway, the first official dance with their fathers, always a dignified and graceful waltz, just as it had been in Olympia's day, and long before that. It was an exciting moment in the lives of the young girls who were invited to make their debut at The Arches, and a memory most of them would cherish for the rest of their lives, provided no one got unduly drunk, had a fight with their escort, or had some ghastly accident to their dress before the presentation. Barring minor mishaps, it was a fun evening, and although admittedly somewhat old-fashioned and elitist, it did no one any harm. Olympia still cherished fond memories of her own debut, and had always assumed that her daughters would make their debut as well.

  She had it in perspective, and knew how unimportant it was in the real scheme of things and world events, but also how much fun it could be for the girls who did it. It was a harmless even if frivolous landmark in a girl's life. She also knew that Chauncey expected the girls to do it, and would have been horrified if they didn't. Unlike Olympia, he thought coming out as a debutante really mattered, for all the wrong reasons. She was sure Veronica would grumble, and Virginia would be so excited she would want to go shopping for the dress within hours.

  No one was expected to find husbands at debutante balls anymore, although now and then, and extremely rarely, a serious romance would be born that night, and then turn into marriage years later. But for the most part, the girls were escorted by cousins and brothers, or boys they had gone to school with. Asking a boyfriend to escort one seven months in advance was recognized as an invitation to trouble. At that age, on the eve of leaving for college, romances, no matter how hot and heavy they had been in June, usually didn't last till December. All the evening was about now was storing away one brief fairy tale memory for them to cherish and remember, and having a good time while they did it. Olympia was not surprised, but was nonetheless pleased that they had been asked. She had distanced herself so much from the official social scene in recent years that there had been the vague though unlikely possibility that the girls might have been dropped from the list. Both girls went to Spence, a school where many of the girls became debutantes, during the winter of their freshman year in college. There were other options, of course, and other debutante cotillions for slightly less blue-blooded girls. But The Arches had always been recognized as the ultimate deb ball in New York society.

  Twenty-seven years earlier, Olympia had made her debut there herself, as had her mother and both grandmothers long before her, and her great-grandmothers once upon a time. It was a tradition she was going to enjoy sharing with her girls, no matter how much the world and society at large, or her own life, had changed in the meantime. Nowadays, women worked, people got married later than ever, and it was perfectly acceptable not to marry at all. And who one married had nothing to do with blue blood or society, as far as Olympia was concerned. All she wanted was for her daughters to marry good, solid, reliable, intelligent men who treated them well. Preferably, a man like Harry, and not their father. Now, more than anything, coming out was just an excuse to look lovely, and wear long white gloves and a beautiful white evening gown, often the first one the girls presented had ever worn. It was going to be fun helping Veronica and Virginia pick their dresses, particularly as she knew the choices the girls would make would be so different, as they always were. Having twins come out at The Arches was going to be double the fun for her. She sat staring dreamily at the invitation, with a gentle smile of memory and nostalgia on her face, as Max watched. He didn't often see his mom look like that. She felt almost like a young girl again, as memories of her own coming out flooded back to her, and Max observed her with interest. He could see that she was thinking of something that made her happy.

  “What's that, Mom?” Max asked, wiping the grape juice off his chin with the back of his hand, and then brushing his hand against his jeans instead of his napkin.

  “It's an invitation for your sisters,” she said, slipping it back into the envelope, as she reminded herself to ask the committee for a duplicate invitation, so she could start an album for each girl, just like the one she had of her own debut, tucked away in the bookcase upstairs. One day it would be fun for them to have, to share with their own daughters. The twins had often looked at hers, when they were very little girls. Virginia had always said, at about Max's age, that their mom had looked like a fairy princess.

  “Is that an invitation to a birthday party?” Max gazed at her, intrigued.

  “To a coming-out ball,” she explained. “It's a big party where you wear a beautiful white dress.” She made it sound magical, like being Cinderella for one night at the ball, which in effect was what it was.

  “What do you come out of?” Max asked, looking puzzled, as his mother smiled.

  “That's a good question. You don't really come out of anything. Girls used to come out of their homes to find a husband. Now they just go to a party and have a good time.”

  “Are Ginny and Ver going to get married?” Max looked worried. He knew they were leaving for college, but getting married sounded like a much bigger deal to him.

  “No, sweetheart. They're just going to get dressed up and go to the party. Daddy and I will go and watch. Daddy will dance with them, and so will their dad. Grandma Frieda will come, too, and then we'll all come home.”

  “That sounds boring,” he said matter-of-factly. As far as Max was concerned, birthday parties were more fun. “Do I have to go?”

  “Nope. Just the grown-ups.” In fact, upholding the traditions of the event, no one younger than the correct age to be presented could come. Younger siblings were never allowed to attend. She suspected that one of them would want Charlie as an escort, and had no idea who the other twin would ask. Probably one of their friends. That was up to them. Her guess was that Veronica would corral
Charlie, and Ginny would ask a friend. They had four weeks to respond, but there was no need to wait. She would send the check in the following week. The fee to participate was very small, and was donated to a designated charity, which benefited from the event. It was impossible to pay one's way in. It was not about money, it was about being asked, either as a legacy, as in the case of her girls, or as a result of one's blue-blooded ancestry and connections, which was also the case for her girls, although Olympia never traded on how social her family had been. It was just a fact of life for them, and something that was there, part of the furniture of their history and life. She never even thought about it. She was much prouder of her own family and accomplishments than of her family's “blue blood.”

  Max went upstairs to play in his room then. Harry called and said he'd be home late. He had a conference with two other judges after court that afternoon, and she never had a chance to tell him about the invitation. It was fun, but not that big a deal. She was going to tell him about it that night, when she told the girls. After that, she had to rush to take Max to soccer. They stopped to buy groceries afterward, and both girls were home by the time she and Max got back. Both girls were in a hurry to go out, each with a different set of friends. Harry came home even later than expected, and just as Olympia was cooking dinner, and the girls flew past on their way out, Max said he felt sick and suddenly threw up.