With Friends Like These...

by Gillian Roberts

  The cook worried me. All through Tiffany’s scatterbrained and mean-spirited visit, Lizzie had stared at Lyle and my mother with the abstracted intensity of someone having a seizure.

  She was still staring now, after Tiffany’s departure, while Lyle and my mother resumed tart talk. My mother catalogued the varieties in the tin. Lyle chuckled and said he would have a vicarious eating thrill. She described the strawberry-kirsch tart. He made low, sexy sounds of appreciation. I felt unutterably depressed. Another unsolicited, hazard-free, sensation-free sensual experience. After safe sex, safe eating.

  I went over to Lizzie. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  The girl had difficulty pulling her attention back to me and my question. Finally, as if coming out of a trance, she answered. “Feel…bad.” Her voice had changed, been stretched too tight and was unnaturally high and thin.

  “Like what?” I whispered. I wondered if she had a medical or emotional condition, if she was in any danger.

  “Like…in my head…things clicking and falling apart.”

  “Maybe you should sit down. Have you eaten?” I didn’t think there was a set treatment protocol for things clicking and falling apart in the head, but food always seems a happy panacea. I spotted a tall container of breadsticks and extracted two—one for me and one for her. She shook her head.

  “Dieting,” she said.

  “What is this, a fad?” Food asceticism, the one religion we can all believe in. But what were we supposed to do, imitate my mother and Lyle and talk food? Discuss breadsticks? “Diet tomorrow,” I said, pushing the food into her hand.

  Lizzie tried for a smile. “So hard to lose weight around here…always tempted…”

  “I’ll bet you’re dizzy from not eating,” I said.

  Aunt Hattie’s baggy face came near for a moment. “She all right?” she asked me. “You all right, girl?”

  “Lizzie,” I said. Bad enough they didn’t introduce her, but they could try to remember her name.

  Lizzie nodded. I tapped the breadstick in her hand, and she looked at it like a zombie, and held it like a wand. “Got so scared all of a sudden,” she said, her free hand to her chest. Her tempo had slowed and her voice was returning to a deeper register. “Heart pounding. Why? And so sad.” And indeed she was blinking back the start of tears.

  Hattie looked at her, then at me, and then chose to withdraw from whatever problem the kitchen help had.

  “Has this ever happened before?” I asked.

  Lizzie shook her head, vigorously, perhaps trying to dislodge those falling, clicking entities inside. She took a jagged breath. “Sorry,” she whispered, but she still sounded like someone on the verge of a major crying jag. “Feel like a baby!”

  Over on the other side of the kitchen, the vicarious eaters seemed sated. “Like that song in Annie,” Lyle said. “Tomorrow. The tarts will come out—tomorrow, but I can’t touch them until then. And don’t worry about my sharing them. Tiff never ever breaks her diet. I’ll ration myself. One a day, like an incredibly delicious vitamin pill. I’ll cut back on the cottage cheese, to save calories.” He grinned. “But now, time to get back to my other guests. Won’t you join me, Bea? Aunt Hattie?”

  I didn’t mind being excluded, or forgotten. Not horribly, at least.

  “I’d better see to Reed,” Hattie said. “And that room business.”

  He nodded. “And Sybil.” His expression hardened.

  “If only she liked me, I’d help with her, too,” Hattie said. “Speak of the devil.”

  The kitchen doors had opened once again and two people entered. One was the young man who’d been relocating lettuce when I came in, and the other was a stern-faced woman with dark hair slicked straight back into a flamenco dancer’s chignon.

  Wife Number Two. And who would be behind Door Three?

  “Sybil?” Lyle said. “You okay?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be in here,” she said. “I always check the kitchen. After all, I have a son to take care of.”

  “Reed,” Lyle said in a gentle voice, as if speaking with a madwoman. “I know his name. He’s my son, too.”

  “Then you also know that he has allergies,” she said. “Sensitivities.” Her glance darted over each of our faces, inventorying every detail of the room. “If I don’t make sure nothing’s going to harm him, who will?”

  “I have him on my list, ma’am,” Lizzie said. “Reed Zacharias. No pomegranates, radicchio, or duck. We’re not serving any of those things.”

  “Those aren’t allergies, Sybil,” Lyle said. “Those are preferences. The boy’s fine and I wish you’d stop—”

  Sybil nodded briskly at Lizzie. “Good,” she said. “He gets sick at the thought of pomegranates.” She turned and left without another word.

  “Sometimes I think she’s crazy,” Hattie said.

  “And sometimes I know it,” Lyle completed the old joke.

  “I told her we weren’t using pomegranates when she phoned up,” Lizzie said.

  “I’ll go fix what can be fixed,” Hattie said. “I’ll get you a suite for tonight.”

  Lyle leaned over and kissed her right below the hairline. “Bless you. For this and for all the other times you’ve taken such good care of me.”

  Hattie seemed to blush between the wrinkles. She waved him away. “Try to keep your wives out of the kitchen,” she said. “Tiff’s been in and out, driving this poor girl crazy. I swear, sometimes she’s like a child.”

  Lyle shrugged, as if the peccadillos of wives were no real bother, then nodded his head in a near bow. “Well, now—although I am enjoying myself enormously here, I am being a most inconsiderate host. I dragged some of these people—some of them only semiwillingly, I’m sure—hundreds…thousands…of miles so I could see them again. So the least I could and should do is just that. See them. Come with me, Bea?”

  “Just as soon as I make sure the tarts are in a safe place,” my mother said, waving him off to his guests.

  “Thank you again and again,” he said. “It really matters to me, really touches me, that you came.” He bent to kiss my mother’s cheek, then left the kitchen.

  Lizzie lost it again and whimpered. I coughed, in some instinctive attempt to shield her.

  Hattie glared at her. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’re behaving quite oddly. Should you be handling food? I don’t want anybody catching whatever you’ve got.”

  Lizzie paled, stood, and smoothed the front of her apron. “Fine,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m not ill, just…I felt…faint. Suddenly faint. Never felt that way before.”

  “Well, make sure it doesn’t happen again. Staring the way you did at my Lyle is bad manners. After all, even though I was the one who spoke with you and made the arrangements, it was completely Lyle’s idea to come here. I tried to talk him out of it, in fact, but he was stuck on going back to the old neighborhood and completing some cycle in his mind. The point is, he’s who you have to thank for this business, and he’s an influential man. He could tell other people about this place. Recommend it, but he probably won’t if you keep that habit of gaping. It looks rude.”

  Frankly, I thought there was major rudeness going on aside from Lizzie’s staring.

  “Sorry,” Lizzie mumbled once more. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “Now you know I only told you that for your own good, don’t you?” Hattie said.

  Why is everything offered under the label of For Your Own Good always such a bitter pill? And usually only for the good of the mean-spirited person administering the rule or punishment or advice?

  “Now,” Hattie said, “I must do something about my nephew’s room. Didn’t you say you and your father owned this place? My Lyle wanted a suite. He didn’t get one. Can you take care of it?”

  Lizzie looked around the kitchen as if estimating what was left to do before dinner. Some of her gears still weren’t meshing. “My father could help, maybe.”

  “Fine. I take it he’s that man o
ut front near the door.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “That man’s been filling in. He’s more of our handyman and bellboy. My dad just got back from a trip this morning and he’s kind of jet-lagged, but ask the man at the desk for Roy. That’s my dad.”

  “Lyle and his wife can have my room,” my mother said. “We aren’t staying over.”

  Hattie shook her head. “That isn’t the point. He wanted a suite and he deserves one, and that nitwit wife of his won’t exert herself, so I will. We have the whole hotel, so nobody is going to mind switching rooms with the guest of honor. I’ll go find Roy Chapman and take care of it.”

  “Beecher,” Lizzie said. “Roy Beecher. I was married for a while. Kept the name.”

  Hattie seemed to doubt Lizzie’s marital history. She tilted her head and eyed Lizzie with her bird-of-prey cold eye. “So your name is Chapman, but your maiden name was Beecher?”

  “That’s right,” my mother said sweetly, as if Hattie had just mastered a difficult concept.

  Hattie held her head straight, flappy-skinned chins wobbling, thin though she was. And then, biting on her lower lip, she nodded and left.

  “Well, well.” My mother patted the lid of the tart tin and hoisted her Persian lamb on her hip. “If Lyle’s not taking our room, let’s use it and get rid of our coats. It’s time to really be at this party.”

  Party. I’d forgotten all about that.

  Four

  IT WAS AN INTERESTING COCKTAIL HOUR. Hours. Not interesting as in captivating, but interesting as in clinically odd and as a study of how slowly time can creep along. The players were divided, visibly, between Lyle’s past and Lyle’s present. In the past contingent there were several earnest, average-looking souls like my mother and a distant relative of Hattie’s who could have passed for Santa after Weight Watchers. Those people drank moderately, referred to Lyle’s medium as the tube, attempted to mingle, and were generally somewhat more interesting than their clothing, which was not true of the Lyle-now folks. Their gelatinous egos spread and pushed for maximum space and reduced all language, no matter what words were used, to “Me!”—and they characterized their profession as the industry.

  Lyle Zacharias himself, however, oozed charm that sometimes was convincing, and regaled his guests with anecdotes about themselves, seeming to remember and cherish every moment he had spent in their company. He had a different and flattering story for everyone. I know, because I tracked him, like a paparazzo without a camera.

  His non-showbiz guests entered The Boarding House timidly and deferentially, but Lyle had a radar that alerted him when people were in the foyer, and he’d put them at their ease and make sure they became part of the group.

  “Everybody,” he said, for example, “this is Richard Quinn.” He had his arm around a lanky, weathered man. “Quinn is my former roommate, partner, and more or less my current father-in-law. Met in college then joined forces in a grungy office off an alleyway. I was supposed to write and direct, and Quinn was going to produce. That lasted until Quinn got tired of starving and went off to better things. Played a string of villains on TV. Recognize him? The bad guy.”

  Richard Quinn’s features were ascetic rather than villainous, although I could see how, with the shift of a few facial muscles, he could be menacing. At the moment, he smiled rather shyly and said, “Been a while since I acted.”

  I knew my mother was doing an intake evaluation on the man. I wasn’t her daughter for nothing. Besides, I, too, had made note that he had entered solo, that Lyle hadn’t asked after any missing wife or longtime companion, that he was probably straight because he was Lyle’s father-in-law—a plus, despite the fact that he’d named his baby Tiffany—and that the man had cheekbones you could use as Rollerblades. Of course, having been Lyle’s college roommate, Quinn was twenty years my senior and we were generationally incompatible. I’ve tried it once and there was some hope for the relationship until I confessed that yes, I too remembered exactly where I’d been when Kennedy was assassinated. I’d been at the pediatrician’s, getting my whooping cough booster shot, and my mother had been so upset, she’d forgotten to produce the promised lollipop reward for bravery.

  Therefore, my evaluation of Richard Quinn was strictly force of habit. I thought.

  “This is Reed, everybody,” Lyle said a while later. Lord knew where the boy had slurked until this moment, since Tiffany had unhappily announced his presence earlier. He looked like the kind of kid who would have brought along an enormous stash of comic books and who would have found a secret place to read them.

  But I liked that his father’s graciousness extended to children. Not everybody’s does. Unfortunately, Lyle’s warmth hadn’t been inherited by his son, who was seriously sullen. “Reed has agreed to be bored to death at an old man’s birthday party, and I want to thank him publicly. It means a whole lot to me.”

  Lyle hugged his stiff and unbending son. Reed was in some very late larval stage. Soft and puffy, his head pushed forward pugnaciously, his eyes canvassed the room systematically, almost automatically and with no recognition. Until, that is, he spotted stepmama Tiffany, over in a corner yukking it up with TV’s own Dr. Sazarac, and gave her as evil an eye—as evil two eyes—as I’ve seen.

  His anger looked chronic, deep, and familiar. I teach at a school where lots of lost and furious children of privilege wind up. I’d seen that face many times.

  “And over there’s his gracious mother and chauffeur,” Lyle said, one hand still on his son’s shoulder. “Sybil is undoubtedly the reason Reed’s turning out so well.”

  I wondered if there was intentional irony in that statement. Maybe not. This was very much a let-bygones-be-bygones evening. Very sophisticated, indeed. Lyle’s stock escalated for complimenting his sour ex, who looked as hostile and unyielding as she had in the kitchen. She stood against the far wall, holding a drink, establishing her distance from and possible contempt for all of us and our party.

  “Sybil’s owner of a thriving landscape business,” Lyle told the rest of us. “Built it from the ground up, as they say. Sybil doesn’t have a green thumb; she has a green hand. Knows everything about anything that grows.”

  Sybil acknowledged his greetings with a quick nod. Her features were handsome, if sharp, and she did nothing to soften her appearance. She wore a high-collared black dress and no jewelry or makeup, and the starkness of her costume combined with her severe hairstyle made her look like a mourner and a shockingly dramatic contrast to her glittery successor.

  I couldn’t get over Tiffany. It had to be embarrassing to be such a blatant pneumatic, giggling stereotype, especially an anachronistic one, but then, what can be expected of girls named after retail stores? She was a commercial production—name by jewelers, body by Barbie. Her spangles barely met the definition of minimal coverage, so essence of Tiffany was everywhere, and in motion. She was extravagant with body language—fond of expansive hand movements, torso tilts, leg crosses—and semiverbal communication: giggles, exclamations, and coos. She was also in a much better mood than she’d been in, in the kitchen.

  Not a man there, including both father and son Zacharias, could take his eyes off her for very long.

  I could, however. As the hours dragged on, I became less and less captivated with party-watching. Finally, bored to the eyebrows, I fell back on tradition and excused myself to powder my nose. Maybe there’d be a new, Tiffanyized nose, etcetera, in the mirror.

  Up in the room, I powdered an all-too-familiar face. At least my disappointment was witnessed only by my mother’s Persian lamb and my down coat, both tossed on the bed along with our purses.

  Reluctantly en route back to the festivities, I decided to kill more time by checking on the cook. She’d had the opportunity to recover, to be by herself, and to eat something and raise her blood sugar, a folk cure that sometimes actually worked.

  Lizzie was flushed from bending over a sauce pot. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I felt like a jerk, but I couldn’t help myself. I
t was so…” And then the new calm was gone. Her wire whisk stopped moving. The muscles around her eyes tensed and she looked frightened and dislocated.

  “Lizzie?”

  She shook her head. “Even thinking about that feeling, about how I felt, and I start to feel it all over again.” She cleared her throat, shook her head, and turned around. “How’s the food so far? Is everything okay?”

  “I came in to compliment the chef. The crab puffs were superb. And I like the waiters, too. They don’t interrupt conversations.”

  Her golden freckles stood out against her blush. “Mr. McCoy came in and told me he liked the crab puffs, too,” she whispered. “You know him—he’s Dr. Sazarac on Second Generation.”

  I was beginning to understand what people who weren’t teaching or going to school did with their afternoons.

  “Actually, lots of guests came in. I was surprised and very flattered. People are so nice. Of course, some just wanted to see the kitchen, or to be sure I knew about their special menus. I showed them the list—I have it all written down.”

  I saw what she gestured toward, a roster of all the invitees, with notes next to perhaps a third of the names, including the no-radicchio-for-Reed nonsense. Sybil Z.—no meat. Fish okay. Richard Quinn—low cholesterol. It depressed me that he had gone from being a professional villain to a man with a mundane health problem. My father had requested low sodium. I’d probably get his salt-free meal.

  “But most people just said hi, and commented on the food or the building and the rooms,” Lizzie said.

  “You’re an excellent cook.”

  Lizzie made a rueful face. “All my life, food’s been the good news and the bad news. Well, for a while, once, other substances were the worse news. But food…that’s why I’m on a major, major diet. Once and for all, I want to prove I can do it.”

  “You look perfectly fine to me.” She did, but I felt creepy as soon as the words were out of my mouth. It’s a line best spoken by old relatives and people with no standards whatsoever, and never, ever, has it comforted a woman who’s convinced that she’s fat.