On impulse, she darted into a shop and bought a turquoise skirt of a gauzy fabric that fell to her knees. It was too expensive, she told herself, and besides, she had nowhere to wear it, but she watched happily as the smiling young Asian saleswoman wrapped it in bright pink tissue paper and placed it in an oversize stiff black shopping bag. It was, she realized, the first new piece of clothing she had bought since Neil’s death. Like a convalescent charting her own recovery, she counted this as a good sign. She would wear it to Lauren’s dinner party that very evening.
Swinging her shopping bag, she entered La Grenouille, the small French restaurant Renee Evers had selected, which was almost obscured by a hibiscus bush heavy with pink blossoms.
“Ms. Gordon? Ms. Evers is waiting for you.”
The suave, smiling maître d’ led her to a table.
Renee Evers was a tall woman whose thick blond hair was fashionably unkempt. The ubiquitous California chic harlequin-framed sunglasses were perched on her forehead and heavy ceramic bracelets slid up and down her freckled arms. She toyed with her silver pendant, tracing its sharp geometric design and finally tucking it beneath the high stiff polished-cotton collar of her burgundy linen dress. Idly then, she removed her dangling silver earrings, studied them, replaced them and rummaged in her huge straw purse. She was a woman whose hands had to be constantly moving, Elaine realized, and she imagined her moving through her gallery, rearranging objects, moving a vase from one plinth to another, placing one bowl in a window and setting a sculpture at an odd angle.
Her voice was deep and pleasant, her accent distinctly New England. She was pleased to meet Elaine.
“I bought some of your pieces from Mimi,” she said. “Some I kept. Some I sold. My clients love innovative designs, especially new arrivals to California.”
“Why newcomers in particular?” Elaine asked.
“I guess it’s because almost every new Angelino is yearning to be transformed. L.A. isn’t just a different city, it’s a new life. Instant rebirth. A chance to reinvent themselves, their surroundings. I know I felt that way when I first came out here from Boston. Straight out of college. Back east I felt that I’d been a failure, maybe beginning in kindergarten. I couldn’t live up to my parents’ expectations and I couldn’t escape their judgment. I wanted to be far enough away so that they wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing, so I could build a new life on my own terms. I chose L.A. because the Pacific Ocean is really pretty far from Boston harbor. And I think that holds true for a lot of my clients, especially relocated easterners. They want homes that don’t remind them of houses left behind, decorative objects that are different from any they owned before. It’s a funny thing but do you know what I sell the most? Bookends. They’re off the shelves as soon as I set them out. I think that it’s because the books my clients place between them celebrate the new lives they’ve chosen, announce their identities, their new interests—art books, photography books, books of poetry, printed pages on display, advertising choices, defining lifestyle. You don’t happen to have any ideas for ceramic bookends, do you?”
Elaine smiled.
“Actually, I do,” she said. She reached into her bag and showed Renee the photos of some of her recent work including several sets of bookends in varying shapes, crescents and ovoids, turrets and globes, smoothly glazed or dappled.
She wondered, as Renee studied the photos, if Peter, too, had chosen to study in L.A. and then to live there, because the west coast city was, in fact, so distant, at such a far remove from Neil and herself, from an acceptance which he might have mistaken for indifference. Elaine recalled how Sarah had perceived that calm quiescence to be dishonest although dishonest was not the word Sarah had used.
But Renee Evers’s words rang true. Once settled on the Pacific coast, from his student years on, Peter had reinvented himself, abandoned the boy he had been and created a new persona and furnished himself with a new set, new props, new costumes just as he created new sets, new props, new costumes for the films and commercials he produced.
The troubling thought lingered as she and Renee studied the menu and gave the very pretty waitress their order.
“Another refugee from the east. An actress waiting to be discovered,” Elaine guessed as the girl walked away.
“And some of our kids are fleeing to the east.” Renee shrugged. “Go figure. My own daughter is living in Connecticut and my son is in Rhode Island. Since my husband died they keep after me to live closer to them, even live with them but I keep telling them that my life is still my own. I’ve been widowed, not crippled. I can’t imagine being dependent on my kids although they’re great—loving supportive etcetera, etcetera. But to have my life entangled with theirs would be like writing a letter of resignation and I’ll be damned if I’m ready to resign from my own life as I’ve always lived it. Do you know what I mean? But I assume you do. Mimi told me that you were recently widowed.”
“I do know what you mean,” Elaine said. “But I was thinking only today of juggling time—of working out here a couple of months a year if I could arrange studio space.”
“Oh, I can help you with that easily,” Renee said. “Would you excuse me for a second, I have to call the gallery and naturally I forgot to bring my phone.”
“Of course.”
Alone at the table, Elaine glanced about the restaurant.
The long, silver-walled room was dimly lit, as though offering a penumbral refuge from the broad Santa Monica Boulevard, so bright with sunlight. The tables, covered with paisley cloths, each with a basket of fresh flowers at the center, were placed far apart and those in the rear were set into small alcoves. Elaine had not even noticed them when she entered. But now she saw that even the table at the very rear of the room was occupied. She could not see the faces of the man and woman because their heads were bent close but she noted that their fingers were intertwined. The young woman’s auburn hair brushed her companion’s forehead. He bent his head even lower and kissed her hand. Lovers, Elaine thought with a tinge of envy. She remembered Neil’s fingers threading their way through hers, the touch of his smooth skin against her own hands calloused and hardened as they were by tinctures and chemicals. She watched the couple greedily as though their noontime intimacy might magically dilute her own solitude.
As she watched, the man stood briefly to remove his navy blue blazer. She saw then that his shirt was mustard-colored and when he turned briefly to talk to the waitress, she saw his face clearly. Her heart stopped. Peter. It was Peter. She watched as he spoke to his companion, perhaps discussing a choice of dessert, of wine and then he turned again to the waitress. She saw the smile that played on his lips, the softness of desire in his eyes, as he pointed to the menu. The waitress glided away and once again they inclined their heads toward each other but now his hand rested on her outstretched arm.
Elaine looked away, smiled at Renee who had returned to the table, at the waitress who was setting her salad down and again stared across the room. She was not mistaken. It was her son. Her breath came in harsh gasps, her hand trembled. She nibbled at her food and set her fork down.
“Are you all right, Elaine?” Renee asked.
“Actually, I’m afraid I have a migraine coming on,” she lied. “I hate to run but—”
“No. It’s fine. I understand about migraines. I get them myself. Look, don’t feel you have to stay. We’ll talk on the phone about the studio space you’ll need. You are interested, aren’t you?” Renee was solicitous, concerned.
“Yes. Yes, I am. I’m glad we had a chance to meet.”
Elaine spoke truthfully. She liked Renee Evers. She was a nice woman, an understanding sister in the sorority of the bereaved. Their meeting, however brief, had been reassuring. Studio space could be arranged. There would be a market for her ceramics. She could escape with ease into her work, resume the design of the mosaic, her energies diverted from the tensions of her son’s home, so newly threatening.
Hurriedly then, she rose. It was
important that she leave the restaurant before Peter saw her.
“We’ll talk,” Renee said. “Feel better.”
“Yes. I will. Of course I will. And thank you.”
She was halfway down the street when she heard running footsteps. Peter, she thought. Peter had seen her and was pursuing her. Oh, what will I say to him? She hesitated and slowly turned. It was the pretty waitress, flushed and breathless, who held out her shiny black shopping bag.
“You forgot this,” she said.
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
Clutching it, she hurried on. The bag was heavy in her grasp and she wondered why she had bought a garment in so vivid a color. Had she fallen victim to the Los Angeles contagion—was she too trying to reinvent herself?
eleven
Elaine was surprised to find Lauren at home when she returned from Santa Monica.
“Didn’t you go to your class?” she asked in surprise.
Lauren shrugged.
“I was halfway there and suddenly I just felt exhausted. And I began to think of everything I had to do for tonight. So I just got off the freeway, turned and came home.”
Her tone was flat and she sat quite still, staring through the glass patio door at the violet-and-blue tubular flowers on the newly blooming jacaranda tree. Sensual flowers, Elaine thought, but then all the flora of California, the pepper trees laden with red berries, the thickly blossomed fruit trees, the red and magenta bougainvillea, burgeoned in a riot of brightness, of effortless reproduction, exuding the teasing fragrance that hung heavy in the air.
“You’re probably just a little tense about the surgery,” Elaine said.
“I suppose.” Again Lauren spoke without affect and still she remained motionless, ignoring Maria who padded into the room, hesitated and left. The phone rang but Lauren did not answer it.
“The machine will get it,” she said dismissively when Elaine reached for it.
“Lauren, is everything all right?” Elaine asked daringly. She and her daughter-in-law had never had a conversation of any intimacy, observing careful parameters.
Lauren nodded.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be? I’m just awfully tired. I’ve arranged for the kids to be picked up so I think I’ll just grab a nap.”
She went upstairs then and Elaine knew instinctively that Lauren would not nap. She would lie on her bed, her eyes wide open, blanketed by a misery she would not acknowledge.
It was clear to Elaine that Lauren knew that there was something very wrong with her marriage, that she was conscious of Peter’s too frequent absences, his odd irritability. But did she know any more than that? Elaine wondered. Did she herself, in fact, know any more than that? It might well be that the young woman with flame-colored hair was a casual friend of Peter’s, perhaps even a colleague, that the lunch in the dimly lit restaurant at the ocean’s edge was in fact a business meeting grown suddenly intense. But even as she struggled to create a plausible scenario, she knew herself to be wrong. She had, in those isolated moments, witnessed a deeply sexual intimacy. She had seen Peter’s face clearly, discerned the desire in his eyes. He was, she knew with sudden certainty, having an affair. He was skating perilously on the very thin ice of infidelity.
Anxiety gripped her and she hurried to her own room, where like Lauren, she lay across the bed and struggled to organize her thoughts. She had never thought about the sex lives of her adult children. It had been bewildering enough to watch their infant bodies mature, to see the small limbs that had entwined themselves so trustingly about her neck and shoulders, the tender pink flesh whose sweet softness she had soaped, morph into strong and healthy boys and girls. Her sons’ voices deepened, her daughters’ waists narrowed, their laughter was bold, vested with eagerness and anticipation. Bathroom doors were locked, bedroom doors closed, physical privacy observed. Her children grew and grew, racing through the years into complex pubescence, sprinting into adulthood, marrying, taking lovers. Her babies were now men and women, themselves parents of growing children. They had crossed into emotional and physical territory into which she could not and would not trespass. Their sexuality was mysterious to her. It had not occurred to her ever to conjure up a mental picture of Sarah and Moshe in their marriage bed, of Peter and Lauren or Lisa and David engaged in the act of love. Oddly, it was Denis and Andrew who triggered her imaginings. She had asked Neil once how he dealt with the mental image of their younger son and his partner entangled in sexual intimacy. “I don’t.” Neil had smiled. “I’m a psychoanalyst trained at suppression.”
It seemed impossible then, to think of Peter involved with a woman who was not his wife, to imagine him lying beside a woman whose flame-colored hair tumbled over his bare shoulders, a women whose face Elaine had seen only for the briefest of moments.
She thrust the thought aside. Eric and Renée arrived home and she went downstairs to caution them to be quiet because their mother was very tired and they must not waken her from her nap. She was having guests for dinner and needed the rest, she told them. The children nodded indifferently. Midweek dinner guests were not a rarity for them and they were, after all, used to eating alone while staring at a video on nights when their parents had company.
Elaine dressed quickly, pleased that her long silver earrings went so well with her new turquoise skirt. She swept her dark hair back, frowning at the silver strands that wove their way through its thickness. Her own vanity amused her. For whom was she dressing with such care? For Lauren, she decided. The dinner party was important to her and Elaine felt a new urgency to please this daughter-in-law who had so suddenly and unexpectedly engaged her sympathy. Poor Lauren, she thought and her voice was troubled when she spoke to Lisa who phoned just as she went downstairs to help Maria arrange the flowers.
“Are you okay, Mom? Is everything all right?” Lisa asked.
“Fine. Everything’s fine,” she assured her daughter. “Lauren and Peter are great. And the kids are marvelous.” That last, at least, was true, she thought as she listened absently to Lisa’s description of a weekend with David in Washington and her optimism about the progress of her adoption application. The little girl was beautiful in the photos the adoption agency had sent but the Russians were, of course, being total shits, asking for more and more documentation, demanding additional fees for minor adjustments.
“Adoption’s not only stressful, it’s expensive,” Lisa complained. “But it’s worth it. I really want this child, Mom.” Her voice, usually so confident and authoritative, was strangely plaintive.
“It will all work out,” Elaine said reassuringly.
Lisa’s yearning perplexed her. Why, she wondered, had her daughter opted for adoption rather than marriage and motherhood or even motherhood without marriage? But Lisa’s reasons were concealed behind a veil of silence and Elaine and Neil had agreed to respect that self-imposed and puzzling privacy. “She’ll speak to us when she’s ready,” Neil had said, ever the patient professional, prepared to wait for a breakthrough. But Neil had died and the questions that had haunted them remained unasked and thus unanswered.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Lisa’s response was flat and without conviction.
Elaine, guiltily, was relieved when the doorbell sounded.
“I have to get the door,” she told her daughter. “I’ll call you at the end of the week. Please, Lisa, don’t worry.”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
Of course she was fine, Elaine thought. Lisa was self-sufficient, motivated, the excellent student who became an excellent physician and, surprising them all, a brilliant businesswoman. There was no need to worry about her, she assured herself, as she opened the door to Herb Glasser.
His thick silver hair was neatly brushed, his blue-and-white striped seersucker suit immaculately pressed. He was a handsome man, Elaine thought and when he bent to kiss her cheek, she recognized the fragrance of his aftershave lotion. It was the brand Neil had favored. Herb could not have known that, of course, yet s
he was oddly grateful to him for wearing it. It did not surprise her that he was the first to arrive. He had, she suspected, waited impatiently to set out for Canyon Drive, looking too frequently at his watch, anxious to escape the emptiness of his own home, the solitude of yet another long evening alone.
Lauren, elegant in black satin harem pants and a sheer, wide-sleeved white shirt through which her skin glowed golden, hurried into the room. She kissed her father and glanced worriedly at her watch.
“Peter promised that he would be early,” she said plaintively.
“Probably he got delayed. Very bad delays on the freeway.” Herb smiled reassuringly at his daughter.
“He knew that it was important to me that he be here early.”
Lauren went to the window, looked out at the gathering darkness.
“So he’ll be a little late. Nobody else is here yet. I’ll make the drinks. Don’t worry.” He spoke in the calming rhythmic tone of a parent trying to soothe an unhappy child. He glanced at Elaine, a mute plea for assistance.
“He’ll be here any minute, Lauren,” Elaine said. “He would have called if he was going to be really late.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Reluctantly, Lauren allowed herself to be comforted.
But Peter had still not arrived by the time the other guests swept in, three attractive young couples, exuding excitement because of a school budget that had passed and a country club fundraiser had succeeded beyond expectations. They toasted their success with champagne spritzers and plucked canapés from the silver tray Maria carried through the room.
“Ooh, yummy.”
“Ooh, delicious. Did you get the endives at the green market?”
“I love the green market.”
The women, all determinedly slender, wore linen dresses in pastel colors, halter topped or scoop necked, their sun-streaked hair floating about their shoulders, their voices musical, their laughter easy. Their husbands, in chinos and soft cotton shirts, smiled at them, spoke to each other with great seriousness. They were men whose separate worlds converged, California style. Their wives were friends, their children went to the same schools. They did deals together, belonged to the same club, the same synagogue, which they referred to jokingly as the VBS.
Open Doors Page 17