The trio reached the table and John Strong set down the cake, throwing his fingers in the air with a resounding “one-two-three,” and, as they all launched into a honeysuckle-sweet version of “Happy Birthday to You,” Mildred was charmed the Eastern European models knew all the words, surmising they must have let them celebrate birthdays behind the Iron Curtain, a thought that for the moment brought her closer to the vast melting pot of humanity. She sang out at the top of her lungs. By the time they reached the climactic “Happy birthday, dear Cynthia!” Mildred’s eyes were clouded with tears.
Cynthia smiled and blew out her candles. The maître d’ whisked away the cake and had three more chairs brought to the table. John Strong put his hands on Brooke’s shoulders and kissed her forehead, then sat down next to Grampy Harry, who seemed nonplussed by the sudden boost in star power at the table. He proudly announced he was feeling a bit of indigestion, and everyone laughed. Mildred was mortified. “Fantastic! You are the real thing, sir,” John Strong clucked with more charm than ought to be allowed. He had the kind of smile any car salesman would have bargained away his mother for. Turning to Brooke, he said, “He’s special, isn’t he?” Brooke smiled and said of course he was. “I’m going to call you Sir Special,” John Strong said. He put his arm around the old man and handed him a cigar. Cuban, he said. Smuggled in from Havana that very morning. John Strong offered one to Tom as well but he declined, and thus the famous young actor and wanna-be war hero knighted Sir Special shared a smoke, accompanied by a few serious words about cigars.
A Gargoyle reached for the bottle of champagne, filled the empty glasses all around, then shouted for the waiter to bring another bottle. “How old are you today?” she asked Cynthia.
“Nineteen.”
“Ah, nineteen,” she said, and her accent sounded exactly the way Mildred had imagined it from the magazines. “I think always of nineteen. It is like another lifetime to go.”
“How old are you now?” Mildred asked her.
“A true woman must not reveal her age,” she sighed.
“We’re twenty-three,” the other one said.
“Anna!”
Mildred giggled. “That’s hardly old.”
“In Europe, no, but in America, we are spoiled,” said the first one, Paulina, Mildred thought. “Over here, past twenty, nobody wants to hear from you nothing. And in America is where the money is. It is the difference between gray and black, right, Anna?”
Okay, she was definitely Paulina, Mildred registered, and made a mental note to remember that she was seated between John Strong and the sweeter-looking one, Anna. Yet as soon as she thought she had it straight, the two of them started tumbling like gymnasts out of their seats and gliding to the bathroom, the public telephone, or whispering together by the bar. Once John Strong had to get up and fetch them from the front of the restaurant. Another time Brooke dragged one of them out of the bathroom, and she came back with the same dour expression, though her eyeballs flared like fireflies. She told them all she was a student of soap, and nobody thought to ask how she’d embarked upon such an endeavor nor what it entailed.
John Strong tried to move things along, proposing toasts to Brooke for her work on the play, to Cynthia for her birthday and for making it through her freshman year, and finally to Mildred and Tom. “These people are parents,” he said, and chugged an entire glass of champagne.
Mildred wasn’t surprised to see Tom’s cheeks redden, yet she was practically knocked from her chair when he stood up and raised his glass. “I’d like to say a few words,” he said. The Gargoyle girls whispered heatedly to each other. Anna, the sweet one who studied soap—Mildred was getting good—looked distraught; Paulina angry. “Hey, hey, the man is speaking!” John Strong shouted. Paulina bolted from the table. “Don’t worry about her, she’s got a social disease. Go ahead, Tom.”
John Strong picked up his glass for the toast. Tom curled his tongue against his upper lip, and for a second Mildred worried he’d lost his train of thought and felt embarrassed, but thankfully he recovered, taking a deep breath and slowly beginning to speak: “Well, of course, this isn’t really my thing, so I hope you’ll all indulge my sloppiness and forgive the inarticulate moments—”
“Hear, hear!” John cheered, then put his arm around Brooke, and she fidgeted as if the limb were a heavy satchel she would be glad to relinquish at the soonest possible occasion. Mildred remembered the night she’d first met the young actor, how Brooke had nestled into his shoulder as if they were the two missing pieces of a puzzle, how much in love they’d seemed. Watching them, Mildred couldn’t help reminiscing about her own first love, who happened to be her husband. Funny, she thought, how infectious love is and how off-putting its disintegration. Mildred studied her husband as he stood, cheeks flushed and glass in hand, and wondered if she was still the one he thought of when he thought about love.
“The truth is,” Tom continued, “I just wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of Mildred and myself to say what we find ourselves mostly writing in greeting cards these days—it’s not easy watching your children leave home, right Dad?” Tom raised his glass to his father, who nodded politely. “Anyway, seeing these two girls go off into the world and make their mark, each in her very own and very dynamic way, has really been the highlight of our lives. We are so proud of you both, so moved by your creativity and inspired by your generosity, and we are just pleased as punch to be here tonight. So … cheers!”
Mildred’s cheeks radiated, her heart swelled. She was floored by Tom’s eloquence: a man of few words but he made each one count. John Strong bounced up with a champagne bottle in his hand, took a long sip, and passed it on to Grampy Harry who stood and did the same. Like this they passed around champagne bottles and cheered. Mildred glanced over at Brooke and her face seemed peculiarly void of emotion. Or was Mildred being paranoid again? Now that she thought of it, she was a bit self-conscious standing and guzzling hundred-dollar champagne in the middle of one of the finest restaurants in town, but nobody seemed to mind them causing such a ruckus—fringe benefits, again. Sometimes Mildred could hardly believe the things they got away with.
The waiter returned with slices of birthday cake and they all sat down to their final course. Mildred, though relieved to be off her feet, felt a bit wistful. If she required a few moments of introspection, however, they were robbed by Paulina Gargoyle, who returned to the table and dropped a black patent-leather handbag in front of her sister. “You are the most luckiest girl in the planet,” she said.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the telephone box. This was the one thing I ask you, I ask you can you take the big bag and you say, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ You idiot! You will not lay your fingers near it anymore. Understand?”
She looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t cry, you are simply lazy.”
“My mind is no good.”
“It’s finished … don’t go down on yourself.”
“Sometimes I think there is always a PA to follow me and picking up things and everything.”
“Anna, I said stop. Enough!”
“I totally get that,” Brooke nudged Anna.
“You too!” Paulina shouted. “Enough.”
Brooke ignored her. “I leave things all over the place, too.”
“Shut up, will you!” Paulina picked up a champagne flute by the stem and slammed it against the table. Tiny flecks of glass shattered to the floor like crystals in a snowglobe. Mildred covered her eyes.
“If you even knew what she did!” Paulina shouted at Brooke. “She is so stupid, and you, you are even more horrible encouraging her.”
“How dare you, like, come in here and insult me in front of my family!” Brooke shouted. “You weren’t even invited.”
“That’s what you think—you are so stupid!”
“Me! Have you looked in a mirror recently?”
“Okay, I think we’d better be going,” said John Strong, and grabbe
d Paulina by the arm. “Anna, you too,” he said, and they all looked at the sweet one who caressed a small piece of soap between her hands, as if she were washing. A look of panic crossed the leading man’s face. Mildred glanced over at Tom, who cut the air with his outstretched hand, a sign they shouldn’t get involved. This sort of trouble was out of their league.
Grampy Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny wrapped bar of soap. “I collect the little ones,” he said. “Got a whole jar of ’em back home. Here, take it.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Now, don’t stand on ceremony, miss. They leave more than ought to be allowed in our room. I insist.”
Anna took the tiny bar from Grampy Harry, unwrapped it, and held it under her nose. “Ah, but it is not milled,” she said. “There is an exclusive pleasure in milled soaps, and they are only sometimes found in restaurants.”
“You stupid girl!” Paulina shouted, struggling to free herself from John’s grip. “I am going to break you off your head.”
Still restraining Paulina, John nudged Anna up out of her seat with his free hand. “Give me the soap,” he said, and she held them tighter into her stomach. John turned his head to the table. “Nice seeing you all but we’ve got another party to go to.”
“Let go of me!” shouted Paulina.
“Young man,” Grampy Harry addressed John. “If you’ll allow me to offer one final word of advice.”
“What’s that, sir?” John Strong said through gritted teeth, a Gargoyle clamped in each arm.
“You are going to be so sorry only one hour from now!” Paulina shouted at Brooke. She twisted under John Strong’s shoulder but couldn’t break free. “Remember the thing you ask from me, well, you will come and cry to my feet!”
“When hell freezes over.” Brooke stood up in front of Paulina and was so dwarfed by the stealth bomber of a fashion model that Mildred found herself rising to move behind her daughter, despite her husband’s silent warning.
“Never serve only yourself,” Grampy Harry advised John Strong. “And always find the right man for the job.”
John smiled. “Thank you, Sir Special. I’ll send you a box of Havanas, but we really gotta go now.”
“Thank you for gifting me,” said Anna to Grampy Harry.
“Now hands off!” Paulina shouted. She shoved her elbow back into John Strong’s stomach. He heaved forward. The irate Gargoyle glared down at Brooke, who held her stare. For one second, they were all stilled. Mildred could hear the fizzle of champagne bubbles coming from the table, a soundtrack too elegant for Paulina as she turned and stormed out the front door. John Strong took Anna under his arm and followed, flipping his head slightly to call out a name that must have meant something to Brooke.
She picked up a champagne flute and emptied its contents into her mouth. “It’s medicinal,” she said, upon catching her mother’s worried eye. Mildred drained her own glass, hoping it might quell the pounding behind her forehead or drown out the obnoxious silence left by the glamorous, if not a bit off-color, trio.
“What a fine boy,” Grampy Harry said.
“Yeah,” Cynthia agreed. “But those models are a little creepy.”
“I know, totally,” Brooke said, then almost immediately her face collapsed as it had when she realized she’d forgotten Cynthia’s cake, and Mildred knew she remembered something, perhaps the “thing” Paulina had said she’d be crying for, and this set Mildred’s mind racing at a roadrunner’s pace. She wondered if the Gargoyle girls were some kind of front, if perhaps they were Russian spies, the kind Mildred had read about in thick bestsellers, or maybe they were drug runners, a more troublesome equation given their proximity to her daughter. America was presently embroiled in a war on drugs. Mildred remembered the Reagans appearing together on TV last fall, pleading with Americans to swing into action just as they’d done during the Second World War, as this, too, was a fight for freedom. Talk to your children about drugs, the first lady had said. But where did you start? And what if they told you it wasn’t what you thought, if you’d let them convince you it was all about image and not based the slightest in reality? Mildred shuddered, thinking again of that night in Brooke’s apartment and wondering whether she’d been hoodwinked. Such suspicions would have to wait, however, as everyone had rebounded from the previous scene, and Brooke suggested that Cynthia open her birthday present. She handed her sister a rather large box with a big red bow. Cynthia ripped it open and pulled out a thick chain and padlock, then discovered a Polaroid of the ten-speed bicycle Brooke had purchased for her. Cynthia wailed, gleefully jumping up from her seat and throwing her arms around her sister.
The two girls hugged and cried and told each other they were the best, as Mildred and Tom looked on, if not exactly upstaged (they’d given their daughter a few of the books she’d requested and a small tent she’d once admired in the sporting-goods store), then a bit perplexed. Cynthia had never expressed any interest in a bicycle, always a stalwart proponent of public transportation. She wouldn’t even let Mildred and Tom pick her up at school, preferring instead to store her few belongings on campus and ride the bus home from Philly, and as far as Mildred knew Cynthia had never even sat stationary on one of Brooke’s old bikes, all of which were still kept in the garage. Mildred glanced across the table at her husband, who shrugged and raised his eyebrows as if to say, Who knew? and by way of agreement Mildred shook her head back and forth slightly.
When the waiter passed, Tom made certain to ask that the check be delivered to him and not Brooke. If Brooke had heard him, she decided not to argue or was simply too overwhelmed by her own generosity and its effects upon her sister that she simply didn’t care. Watching Brooke run her fingers through Cynthia’s hair as the young girl giggled, the two of them shivering with delight, Mildred softened slightly and couldn’t help thinking how blessed they all were, really, and at that moment she made a silent vow to talk to each one of the girls about drugs. She would find a way. Tom yawned loudly, calling Mildred from her silent crusade, and she smiled at the dashing man aglow in the warm light of the candles, the man who’d managed to articulate so stunningly everything they’d been feeling these past few months though they hadn’t once confessed their thoughts on the subject, reminding Mildred, much like his hand between her breasts at night, that they were together in this—married—and it was more romantic than ever. She couldn’t wait to feel his body beneath the quilted covers of their king-sized bed back at the Hilton. Tom gave his wife a quick wink, then took out his money clip, and she purred silently, slathered in their connubial transference.
“What a day!” he cried.
“A wonderful day,” Brooke agreed.
And they gathered up their belongings and left the restaurant, Brooke promising outside in the breezy spring night that she and Cynthia would go directly home, and even if Mildred had suspected anything different she kept her mouth shut, heeding instead to her own agenda. There would be plenty of time for her children, she thought, plenty of time for the family. The rest of the night in the city belonged to her and her husband.
SUPERNOVA
IFIRST READ ABOUT YOUR OFF-BROADWAY SHOW in Babbling ’Bout Brooke. The article said you were playing a college student coming to terms with your sexually abusive father. There would be a confrontation scene where you remove your shirt and bra in front of him. Everyone would soon be talking about it, some of your fans balking, How dare you break the wall around your character! Jaymie Jo would never do anything that aggressive! They were so ridiculous.
The play was set to begin previews at a theatre on the first of June, two days before my eighteenth birthday, and would run through the middle of July. Six weeks plus rehearsal time was all the World producers would give you in New York. They’d constructed a special set and geared the plot toward your joining the conflicted Father Brody in the monastery. The controlled environment would save you both from animal passion. If that didn’t work, Father Brody was going to leave the priesthood.
>
As soon as I could I ordered a ticket to the first performance with my credit card and went into the city to check out the theatre, hoping I might run into you. There was another play up, and the lady at the box office told me nobody rehearsed in the same place they were going to perform. Bad luck or something.The night of the show, I drove into the city and parked my car in a garage across the street from the theatre. Having an hour to kill, I dropped into a diner with pink neon stars in the window, sat down at the counter, and ordered a cup of coffee, which tasted like motor oil. I opened four packs of sugar and mixed them with the grainy liquid. An old man next to me dribbled pea soup down his chin and mumbled into his bowl, “… It’s a hoax … blah, blah, romantic love, who cares? … Nothing to be so damn proud of …” I turned away from him, trying to concentrate on the specials scrawled on a blackboard in front of me. But it was hard. He was loud and, from what I could tell, drunk. He’d had it up to here with love. I brushed the side of my parachute pants, the pair I always wore into the city, checking for my gun.
A few years earlier, there was a man who carried a gun when he rode the subways. One day he shot four boys who he said were trying to rob him. A boy was partially paralyzed. The man was white, the boys black. The media took the man’s side, saying we had to be aware of menacing urban youth. People started talking about rising crime and violence. They were frustrated and afraid. Jack wanted Nancy to take a self-defense class. She came into the city a lot on her own and should be able to protect herself.
When I met Edie, about a year later, she said my father’s response had been racist. She said we had to beware of white people with guns. Before she got the life knocked out of her in Los Angeles. Nobody was safe anymore.
I remembered a joke Jack liked to tell:
What’s the difference between a Republican and a Democrat?
A Republican’s a Democrat who’s been mugged.
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