With Friends Like These...

by Gillian Roberts

  “I’ll go first,” the older woman said in a thin, high voice. “My name is Priscilla Lemoyes and I was Lyle’s high school teacher. English and drama, and I’m just so proud of him! I always favored the late bloomers. Never seemed particularly interested in much, but I always knew there was something special about him. ‘I believe in you, Lyle Zacharias,’ I always said. ‘Reach for the stars.’ So I wasn’t surprised his senior year when he wrote the hit of the school. And years later, when he polished up that high school skit and it became Ace of Hearts, he sent me a ticket to opening night. He never forgot me.”

  I wondered if I’d live long enough to be told I’d played a significant role in a student’s destiny. My pupils are not only late, but seriously detained bloomers. Century plants, perhaps.

  Thinking about them reminded me of their promless condition. Poor kids. Booking the hotel had been the one high school assignment they’d handled with efficiency. I wondered if they already knew that their site was a charcoal memory.

  Shepard McCoy was staring at me with moony-stupid eyes. At least he now kept his hands to himself, so he was more embarrassing than annoying. I looked away, down, at my watch. I was ready to call it a night and get on with my life, but it was only eight-fifteen. One dinner and at least two hours to go.

  My mother eyed me. She’d tried to instill better manners than I was showing. In honor of her, I produced table talk. “You must know the Wileys, then, as well,” I said to the sweet old schoolteacher. “Janine and…” I couldn’t remember her husband’s first name.

  “There was a boy named Wiley,” Priscilla Lemoyes said. “Jerry? No—Terry. Quiet. Never had Lyle’s sparkle, but a nice enough boy.”

  “I was in the TV series that spun off Ace of Hearts, you know,” Shepard McCoy said with a half cough/half laugh meant to convey modesty while he nonetheless tooted his horn. “Played Wilfred, a rather oafish fellow, remember him?” He laughed again, hail fellow well met. “Casting against type, of course. Challenging. Critics loved me, but TV is devastating.” He lifted my hand and placed it on his, as if he were about to propose marriage. I repossessed my hand.

  “That’s where I met Lyle,” he continued. “Nobody else could have convinced me to stay in the medium. I’m a stage actor, you know. I always say, my hair was black until I met Lyle Zacharias. People magazine played up that remark, you know.”

  Every time he said you know, my fillings ached. He assumed that the minutiae of his life was part of the core of common culture—and God help us all, was it? I gave him my blankest expression, a face I hoped said, “I have zero knowledge of your career and who did you say you were again?” but his ego was made of kryptonite. If only we could divide and redistribute it, there’d be no more talk about our kids not having self-esteem, and there’d still be plenty left over for McCoy himself.

  “Are you all waiting for me?” Sybil Zacharias said abruptly. “Is it my turn now? I, for one, am related to the groom only through past mistakes. Reed opted to accept his father’s invitation, and he can’t drive yet, so I’m here as his chauffeur and…guardian, that’s all.” She swigged at her drink.

  Priscilla Lemoyes looked at her with the expression of revulsion that must have greeted that other party poop, the witch at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Sybil continued, “Lyle’s sole justification for existence is Reed. And, having spawned, I wish he’d be like a salmon and die.”

  The ruffled ex-schoolteacher gasped. “This is his party!” she hissed. “We’re his guests!”

  “You’re horrified, aren’t you?” Sybil said to the table at large. “I’m not following the rules, being polite, playing his game. Instead, I’m being honest. Much more so than a lot of others I could name in this room or at this table.”

  Richard Quinn stared at Sybil intently, with just a glint of his bad-guy persona showing through. The lighting expert whispered to his wife. Lyle’s former teacher took a series of deep breaths. Shepard McCoy, apparently oblivious to nuance or even a club over the head—if it wasn’t his head—turned around to sign an autograph for someone who identified herself as a longtime admirer.

  “My turn now? Well, I’m a real fan of Mr. Zacharias,” one of the two girls in black said with breathy urgency. “I know him through film school, but I’ve also been his critter consultant, and let me tell you, you get to know a man’s soul in my line of work.”

  Dare I ask? I dared.

  “I help people achieve greater intimacy with their animal companions,” she answered, eyes wide open and desperately sincere.

  Please, I thought, don’t let this turn out to be X-rated.

  “I have this gift.” She lowered her eyes, modestly. “I communicate telepathically with animals. I’ve been teaching Mr. Zacharias how to do it, too, and his relationship with Pompom is much fuller and stronger now. Really incredible.”

  Sybil Zacharias ordered another drink and gave the girl a look that would have withered anyone less spiritually evolved.

  “And I also think Mr. Zacharias is marvelous,” her companion said. “I’m just crazy for him. He came to our film class about a year ago and he was so funny, and smart, and quick. He told us we’re the future—and God, can you believe he included us tonight? We both just want to grow up and be him!” Her psychic buddy nodded. Presumably, so did Pompom, telepathically, somewhere.

  “Wait till you are him,” Sybil grumbled. “Wait till you’re competition.” She sipped at her freshened drink then spoke, pronouncing each word carefully: “Everybody gets excited about Lyle at first. But it’s a short honeymoon. Lyle’s a man with no old friends.”

  “Nonsense! Look around this room!” Priscilla huffed. “I myself am an old friend!”

  Sybil shrugged. “I won’t comment on the room at large. But as for you, with all due apologies, you were never in the game, never an equal, just one of his cheerleaders, so you were never in his way and never a threat.”

  Nobody else was rude enough to point out that perhaps her status as the ex-wife, plainer and two decades older than her replacement, made her less than an objective observer.

  Even my mother seemed stymied by the prospect of navigating back to the easy currents of table talk. We might have sunk into permanent silence had not smattered applause provided diversion. Priscilla Lemoyes was the first at our table to catch on. She pushed back her chair and stood and cheered as the birthday boy and his little woman entered the room. Somebody with a squeaky voice started “Happy Birthday to You.” Lyle’s face reddened above the beard as he said, “No, no, please,” until the squeaky voice stopped and our host and hostess settled at the small table where Hattie and Reed were already seated.

  Step-grandmother, stepson, stepmother, stepwife. The prefix-rich new nuclear family.

  The second his father was seated, Reed turned to Hattie, spoke briefly and urgently, and then switched chairs with her so that he was no longer next to Tiffany. Of course, as he must have realized, there was no real escape at a small round table for four. He had to be beside or across from her. He compensated by angling his chair so that he only half faced the table, then turned and very blatantly gave the thumbs-up signal in our direction.

  Sybil could barely contain her smirk.

  Back at the small center table, Lyle reached over and took the thumbs-up hand and spoke to his son in a low voice. After that, Reed resumed his vegetative state and sat with the roaring impassivity only an adolescent can truly master.

  Sybil looked satisfied. Through her child, she’d scored a pathetic and mean-spirited triumph. I wondered how much more she planned to spoil Lyle’s party.

  The lighting man said it was his turn to explain under what circumstances he’d met Lyle, although his tedious account of how, as an apprentice, he’d worked on a short-lived nature series, seemed to have nothing to do with anyone in the room. His wife nodded and simpered. The interminable tale droned on until our first course was delivered with panache by a white-gloved waiter. It wa
s a welcome diversion and a beautiful still life—red, purple, and bronze lettuces; tiny shrimp; and large pearls of caviar.

  With some prompting—from my mother, of course—Richard Quinn took his turn at the how-I’m-connected-to-this-party game. “Like Lyle said, we met in college.” And that was that. He speared a shrimp and chewed it.

  “Way back in college!” My mother was on automatic make-nice, overcompensating for the engineer’s boring monologue, Sybil Zacharias’s hostility, and her own daughter’s lack of social graces.

  And the truth is, her sledgehammer hostessing worked. Richard Quinn begrudged us a few more syllables. “Partners afterward, too, for a while. I was his producer.”

  “My goodness! Here I’ve been going on, thinking that Lyle produced Ace of Hearts,” the former teacher said. “I’m so sorry! What’s your name again?”

  Quinn shook his head. “Split before he wrote Ace. Went back to acting for a while.”

  He was stingy with words, reluctantly and minimally answering, never truly conversing. And thus ended my shortest and most feeble infatuation since third grade. If there’s one thing no woman needs, it’s another silent male from whom to beg and wheedle the daily minimum syllable requirement.

  “He travels fastest who travels alone,” Sybil said. “The Zacharias credo.”

  I tried to figure out what that meant, or, more precisely, what Sybil meant.

  “I did a show with you, you know,” Shepard McCoy told Quinn. “Movie of the Week. Something about a haunting. Science, faith, that sort of thing. My first doctor role.” He smiled, enjoying memories of himself, having forgotten his point and the need to connect his anecdote with the man toward whom he’d directed it.

  “Do you remember that show?” I asked Richard Quinn.

  He shook his head. He was not a dinner party sort of man. Had he come for Tiffany’s sake? He certainly didn’t seem to be having a good time. “Don’t act anymore,” he said after too long a pause.

  “What is it you do nowadays, then?” I asked. Free of being even potentially smitten, I now could be socially correct with him.

  “This and that.” He seemed to consider whether to continue, then decided to do so. “Opening a restaurant.”

  “With Lyle as silent partner,” Sybil said. She had not been part of this stilted conversation, but that didn’t appear to matter to her.

  Quinn shook his head. “Changed his mind. Selling off assets, not buying them.”

  “That’s just a pose, that middle-aged hippie blather.” Nonetheless, Sybil looked momentarily sober.

  “I remember when Lyle really was a hippie,” my mother said. “I remember the beads and the fringes and the beard.”

  “Still has the beard!” the lighting technician said with an air of revelation. “So there.”

  His wife put her hand to her mouth and laughed silently, secretly, like Madame Butterfly.

  Shepard leaned forward and squinted at Quinn. “It wasn’t a TV movie. It was when you played that mass murderer on Second Generation—the one who terrorized me.”

  Quinn shook his head. “Never been on Lyle’s show. Out of touch with him—”

  “Out of touch! How prissy and euphemistic,” Sybil said. “Don’t be so damned civilized! You two didn’t speak to each—”

  Quinn turned up the volume of his voice and let it roll right over her. “—until he married Tiff.”

  This time my mother’s interest wasn’t forced at all. “Your daughter, correct?”

  “Step,” Quinn said. “Married Tiff’s mother.” Yet another shrug. “She died.” The shoulder went up one more time.

  “How touching! You raised that lovely girl, then introduced her to your dear old friend!” Priscilla, the sweet old spinster schoolmarm, head spinning with untested romantic delusions, was nearly giddy with delight. “How perfect!”

  Sybil snorted and called the waiter over for yet another refill. Somebody had to flag her, take away her car keys.

  Quinn shook his head. “Nothing to do with it.”

  “Then it was destiny. And it obviously had a happy ending,” Priscilla chortled. “Just look at those lovebirds.” She smiled innocently at Sybil, whose skin mottled in little patchy blushes. “It thrills me to see that Lyle found happiness at last,” Priscilla cooed.

  Revenge for Sybil’s attempts to muddy the image of her great triumph and former student, Lyle. “I’ve never seen a happier couple,” she added, in case the salt hadn’t yet rubbed into Sybil’s jugular.

  The salads were removed, and by some silent consensus, it was decided that it was time for mid-course milling. People stood to talk to diners at other tables or to make use of the facilities upstairs or down the hall. Our table’s population declined by half. Shepard, the lighting director’s wife, and Priscilla left in succession, and I wondered if there were a social amenity that I, too, should be attending to.

  However, as I stood up, Lyle and Tiffany headed my way.

  They’d been making rounds from table to table, she looking bored and gorgeous, and he shaking hands and exchanging jokes and pleasantries with each guest. I watched as one by one faces brightened at his approach. The old attention thing again. He bent close to hear what an elderly relative said, looked concerned at another’s remarks, laughed along with a third.

  When it was our time to greet Lyle, I stood, as did my mother, and before I knew it, I was enthusiastically wishing him happy birthday and saying what a great party this was, and almost believing myself.

  “Be honest,” he said with a smile. “You’re bored silly, but you’re a great soul and you’re enduring it and helping me have the time of my life. Getting old isn’t bad with friends to share the—”

  Tiffany did not successfully stifle her noisy yawn.

  “Sorry, darling,” Lyle said. “I tend to get carried away. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mandy, we want to check how things are coming along in the kitchen. Tiff’s a perfectionist.” Tiffany impassively watched her husband through a fringe of lashes. She did not seem amused or charmed or feel the need to pretend to be.

  After Lyle and Tiffany left, I realized Richard Quinn had at some point drifted to my side. I was mildly flattered. I wasn’t interested in him, but that didn’t mean I would mind his being interested in me.

  Having approached, Quinn stood aimlessly, as if he had no idea what to do next. Very eighth grade. But I remembered the cure for it. My mother had given me lots of teen-help books, and all agreed on one universal credo for success with males. Ask him about himself. “Where are you opening that restaurant of yours?” I asked.

  “On the Delaware.”

  “Our Delaware? Here in Philadelphia?”

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  “Two weeks. The Scene.”

  “What scene?”

  “That’s its name.”

  “Ever done anything like this before?”

  He shook his head.

  Oh, Mom, you never said it would be this hard or pointless. “Tell me all about it,” I said, bypassing subtlety. And finally it appeared I had hit oil. Quinn was nearly voluble, listing problems with building codes, liquor licensing, his former backer, and the decision to add on an expensive second floor for private parties.

  “Private parties?” The God of Proms had brought this man to me. “How large a private party?”

  My voice must have been too urgent, because he looked startled and needed to think a bit. “Three hundred,” he finally said. “Why?”

  I waxed eloquent on behalf of my seniors. He seemed intensely interested in me all of a sudden. We made a date to inspect it for the following day. I was elated. The evening of my party-martyrdom had justified itself. For the first time in all history, or at least in mine, virtue would indeed be rewarded.

  Meanwhile, the party tides once again shifted and guests and waiters filtered back into the room.

  A quarter of an hour or so later, once everyone was involved with buttery-soft beef in a dark sauce, tiny crisped pota
toes, and deep-fried baby artichokes, Lyle stood and tapped his spoon on the side of his water glass. The string quartet that had been discreetly entertaining us grew silent.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your meal,” he said. “Please, continue.” And people did, so that Lyle spoke against a background of dancing knives and forks. “I want to thank you for being part of this celebration. I don’t think you can know what this means to me. In fact, I’m positive that at least a few of you don’t know why this means something to me and I’ll bet you were surprised by my invitation.” The line was greeted by scattered dry laughs.

  He cleared his throat and continued, looking down at a small stack of three-by-five cards. “Life, I have found, is not one smooth line. There are bumps. But this is a time to declare that once and for all, our differences and difficulties and misunderstandings and partings of the way are part of our histories and nothing more. I’ve been joined with each of you at certain significant junctures, and you are all part of the mosaic of my life. At a certain age—and certainly fifty is that age—it seems important to relegate collisions and scrapes to history.”

  I found the beef better than the talk, and much less schmaltzy. My attention wandered around the room. Sybil stared at her ex through slitted eyes, much more engrossed by him than I was.

  Priscilla Lemoyes’s hands were pressed together at the base of her neck, reverently. He did better with senior citizens than wives. Hattie also beamed and nodded, but Tiffany looked exactly like my students at a stupefying assembly. She examined her manicured nails, one by one, over and over.

  “I have been blessed with more than my share of life’s gifts,” Lyle was saying when I tuned in again, “so there was nothing material I wanted for my birthday. Besides, as I approached the half-century mark, I saw how cluttered my life had become. And how I had become too busy to enjoy it. Most of you”—he paused for a moment—“know I’m about to make serious changes”—another breath—“to take time to smell the roses and grow them, too, and to be with my lovely wife.”