Theo came over to the patio and stood with her. “Do they know everyone’s watching them?”
“They seem oblivious,” Isabel said. “But stop staring.” She was staring, too. Anthony spoke and Alice laughed, her head tilted back as if to drink in the afternoon sunlight, her silver earrings sparkling.
“This is a little different from the party you and I met at,” Theo said.
“The quality of the alcohol is better, for one thing,” Isabel said.
“Also the furniture didn’t come out of Dumpsters.”
“Do you remember that armchair I used to have? The beige one with the peacocks on it and the holes in the arms?”
“God, it was ugly,” Theo said.
“I loved it,” Isabel said.
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe how we used to live.”
Isabel didn’t reply. They could go on agreeably or they could fall into an argument, it was hard to say which would happen. She steered the conversation back to Alice and Anthony. “They seem to like each other so far. If he asks her for a date, Doc will be unbearable.”
Theo smiled, as if to say Isabel’s mother was always unbearable. “You disappointed her by finding your own husband.”
“That’s the least of the ways I disappointed her. But you’re right. I should have let her do it. Maybe I would have ended up with an obliging, good-natured kind of guy.”
“You would have been bored. Anyhow, lots of people think I’m obliging and good-natured.”
“Sure,” Isabel teased. “Debbie.” Debbie was his secretary.
“Not just her.”
“And not the least bit conceited, either.”
Theo smiled and appealed—good-naturedly, Isabel had to admit—to her father, who was passing by. “Your daughter’s calling me names,” he said. “Did you bring her up to insult her husband?”
“I tried to bring all my girls up to be deferential creatures,” Judge Rubin said. “But what chance did I have?”
He went on past them, slightly stooped in his suit and tie, his eyes gleaming through his glasses like two steel ball bearings. Isabel could never tell if he enjoyed his wife’s parties or merely tolerated them, as he tolerated her emotionalism, her interfering nature, and her constant chatter. He was a quiet man who valued intellect over feeling and who had found useful work that engaged his mind and filled most of the hours of the week. If his family life was not all that it might have been, he had his consolations. He loved his daughters and was proud of their successes. He had, however, left their upbringing mostly to his wife, who had strong, vociferous opinions about these things.
Isabel saw Alice leave Anthony and go into the house. “Let’s talk to him,” she said to Theo.
“You go,” Theo said. “I need another drink.”
Isabel and Anthony talked about sea turtles. He had spent his junior year abroad in a remote Costa Rican village whose inhabitants’ principal source of income derived from the collection and sale of sea turtle eggs.
“They weren’t the endangered kind, of course,” he said. “There were hundreds of them! Maybe thousands.” His eyes grew dreamy as he spoke, as though he were seeing the creatures in his mind, paddling toward the beach. “They came in at night, and the whole village would go down to the shore. It was extraordinary. The ocean was black and the whole sky was lit up with stars, and these enormous turtles would be lumbering up out of the water. Pushing through the sand. They laid their eggs, and in the morning they were gone.”
Isabel liked his enthusiasm so much that she didn’t tell him the leatherbacks probably would have been threatened, if not actually endangered.
“I understand you used to study reptiles,” he said. “What attracted you to that subject?”
Isabel looked at him, at his thoughtful, attentive expression, his warm eyes focused on her as though nothing mattered in the world except her answer, and she found herself searching for a response to match his interest. “Maybe because they’re so inscrutable. They never give anything away,” she said, smiling and turning the conversation back to him. “What were you doing in Costa Rica?”
“Teaching English. Ostensibly.” He laughed. “Going to the beach. Eating mangoes.”
Isabel laughed, too. He had an expansive way of being pleased that made you feel that pleasure lay all around you, waiting to be picked up. “Why did you come back?”
“For a girl,” he said. “Girls were my weakness.”
“You got over that?”
“Oh yes. Growing up took care of it. Now my weakness is women.” He laughed again and laid his hand on her arm, saying more seriously, “I’m nearly forty now, though. It’s time to concentrate. Time to stop getting lost in the garden and find the perfect rose.”
Alice came out of the house and walked toward them over the lawn. She was holding a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “Alice, stop it!” Isabel called. “That’s the caterers’ job.”
Alice came over and offered them little quiches. “I’m just helping out,” she said.
“Helping out,” Isabel said to Anthony. “That’s Alice’s weakness.” She took the tray from her sister and moved away, leaving the two of them alone. When she glanced back over her shoulder, Anthony had Alice by the hand and was leading her off in the direction of the bar, while she, laughing, protested that she didn’t want anything to drink.
“But you have to,” Isabel heard Anthony say. “You need to lose yourself in the spirit of celebration.”
“I don’t want to lose myself,” Alice said. “I’ve spent too many years looking for myself.”
“How brave,” Anthony said. “Personally, I hide from myself as much as I can.”
Isabel circulated with the tray of quiches, chatting with the En-rights and the Lowensteins, the Hochmans and Mrs. Schwartz. These were older men and women, her parents’ friends, their hair silver or sparse or dyed, dressed in clothes they filled out more completely than they would have a decade or two before. People who had known Isabel all her life.
“Now, dear,” Mrs. Lowenstein said, drawing Isabel close to her soft, pouchy, powdered skin, to her big teeth framed in orange lipstick. “When are you going to start a family? I wouldn’t leave it for too long if I were you. And it would make your mother so happy.”
“Oh, my mother is happy enough,” Isabel said.
“Nonsense! You young people think life is all about careers and cars and vacation houses. Wait until you get to be old, darling. You’ll see what’s important then.”
Isabel did her best to smile.
There were no men under thirty-five at the party, so Tina was talking to Theo. They sat together under an umbrella. Isabel offered them the last quiche.
Tina waved the tray away. “Those are eighty percent fat. And all afternoon all anyone has said to me is how exactly I look like Doc!”
Isabel looked at their mother, who was talking to frail, stooped Sylvia Wirth. “She looks pretty good compared with some of them,” she said.
“Maybe if she lost twenty pounds,” Tina said. “Your figure never recovers after you have children, no matter what they say about situps and vitamin E cream.” She recrossed her legs, showing another inch of brown, slim, muscular thigh.
Alice, Isabel noticed, was drinking champagne with Anthony Wolf by the fence. But as she watched, Simon Goldenstern joined them. He put his arm cozily around Alice and walked her a few steps away. His brow was furrowed as though he were talking seriously, but he carried his long limbs so casually, with such insouciance, that he seemed not to care very much about anything. She heard him say, “Don’t believe anything he says to you. He’s dangerous. I’ve known him since we were twelve years old.”
Alice laughed helplessly and stumbled on the grass. Simon caught her arm and held her until she got her balance back. He smiled his half-amused smile. “He’s plied you with drink, hasn’t he?”
“No, no,” Alice said.
Anthony came back toward them now, just as Isabel, too, approached. All four of the
m converged on the trampled lawn. “What’s Simon saying?” Anthony said. “He’s always been jealous of me.”
Alice looked at the tray Isabel was still carrying. “You got rid of all the quiches!” she said. “Good work! The catering people are just standing around in the kitchen.”
Isabel looked at her sister with concern. Her cheeks were flushed, and she really did seem to have had too much to drink.
“Alice,” Anthony said, “let’s go sit down.” He laid his hand on her arm and tried to lead her toward a table.
“Don’t go with him, Alice,” Simon said.
“Let her go,” Isabel said to Simon, watching in alarm as the two men seemed about to have a tug-of-war over her sister.
“Yes, let me go,” Alice said. “I need to sit down.”
Simon Goldenstern released his hold, shrugging. Alice stumbled off with Anthony to a table. Simon looked at Isabel and said, “He’s really not to be trusted, you know.”
“Men, as a rule, are not,” Isabel said.
The party lurched on into the cool of the evening. The buffet tables filled with food and then emptied again, and the cake was produced, round and white and decorated with flowers.
There were toasts. Isabel, elected by her sisters, gave one for the family, a two-minute tribute she had sweated over and that, she hoped, was reasonably honest. She said, among other things, “My parents’ married life may not have been without its moments of contentiousness”—at this she smiled, hoping people would laugh, which they did—“but here they still are after forty years! Still committed to each other, and as well matched as they ever were.” To her surprise, tears came into her eyes as she spoke.
After her speech, and the showy embrace by her mother that followed it (her father kissed her on the cheek and gave her a dry little smile), Isabel felt she had to get out of the crowd. She crept slowly toward the back until she was able to slip around the side of the house. There she found Marco, sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette.
She was pleased to see him. He seemed young and vibrant after her parents’ friends—probably twenty-four or twenty-five. “Did you get anything to eat?” she asked.
“I’m not hungry. Is it a good party?”
“I don’t know. I hate parties.” She had meant to throw this off casually, but the words seemed to take shape and acquire weight as she said them, like the fairy tale where the princess’s words turn into toads.
“Your mother’s been very excited about it.”
“My mother’s a very excitable person.”
“Well, forty years. That’s a big deal.”
“How long have your parents been married?” Isabel asked, trying to change the subject.
“My father’s dead,” Marco said. “But they were married about twenty-five years, I think. Now my mom’s worried he’s up in heaven ruining his health the way he did down here, without her around to look after him.”
“What did he used to do?”
“He worked too hard. Not that she could stop him. He had a factory job, but he was also a labor organizer. He’d come home, have dinner, and go out again to meetings.”
“My dad’s like that,” Isabel said.
“And he never exercised. He never walked anywhere. You know that motorcycle of mine? It was his. When I got home from college after he died, my mom had had it all tuned up and everything. She said he’d want to look down and see me riding it.”
“Where did you go to college?” Isabel asked, surprised.
“Georgia Tech. I played baseball, but I hurt my rotator cuff and I couldn’t pitch anymore. So I went home.” Marco lit another cigarette. A bird trilled in the holly behind them.
“Is that a wren?” Isabel strained her ears to listen. She was happy to have been able to get Marco the job with her mother, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the story of his life. “When I was a kid, my babysitter could identify all the birds by their songs.”
“I went over to Rudner’s today,” Marco said.
“I’d think you’d want to stay away from there.” Rudner’s was the nursery from which Marco had been fired.
“It’s because of the Kawasaki. Rudner has it locked up in his office. He says I can have it when I give him back the money.”
“But you didn’t take the money,” Isabel said.
“He thinks I did.”
She stared at him. His matter-of-factness shocked her. She could see that something had to be done and that he was in no position to do it. She stood up. “I’m going to get my sister,” she said. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Your sister?” Marco said, mystified.
As Isabel went back around the house, she heard doors opening and shutting, footsteps crunching gravel. A car started up. Something had shifted in the party. An invisible message seemed to have gone out like a scent, announcing that it was time to go. People gathered up purses and sighed, wishing one another good night. The caterers had already cleared away most of the dishes, and now they waited like vultures for the tablecloths.
“Good-bye!” voices called out of the dusk.
“A wonderful party. And you were so lucky with the weather!”
“Do you have to go already? Good night! Good night!”
Isabel slipped through the guests like a fish, looking for Alice. She was all the way down at the bottom of the garden, where it was quite dark, when she heard a familiar voice say, “So, Prince Charming has made his choice.”
Someone laughed. “She does look like a princess, doesn’t she? It’s that hair, that pale, red gold hair. You had your eye on her, too, didn’t you?”
“I’ve got to give you credit. I guessed you’d go for the younger one.”
“No. Those days are over.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“Well, this time it’s true.”
In the pause, Isabel was sure Simon Goldenstern was smiling his ironic smile. “It’s funny,” he said. “The three of them don’t seem like sisters. They’re so different. There’s the . . . let’s see. The princess, the sex kitten, and, what would you call the third one?”
“Oh God, Simon. Don’t start.”
“The little missus,” Simon finished with satisfaction, and Isabel fled silently back up the dark lawn, bursting with fury and hilarity.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The doorbell always sounded distinct when Alice rang it—Isabel couldn’t explain this—as though it communicated itself directly to her body. She was expecting both Alice and Marco, but when the doorbell rang, Isabel knew it was her sister. Theo, as he often did, had gone back to the office after dinner.
Alice stood on the stoop with her hands over her head, fending off the rain. Isabel pulled her inside. Alice’s hair dripped and sparkled in the hall.
“Where’s your umbrella?” Isabel said, leading her sister into the kitchen and finding a dish towel.
“I left it somewhere,” Alice said vaguely. She dried herself off, combed her hair, and put on fresh lipstick. She should have looked like her usual, decorous, professional self, but she didn’t quite.
The house was brick, with green and ocher walls inside and dark yellow silk drapes by the street windows. It wasn’t a big house, but it was elegant. Isabel liked the sense that everything was not immediately exposed, that you had to look carefully into the corners to see what was there. You had to sit still and let your eyes adjust. She and Alice sat in the two armchairs facing the fire-place with the old wooden clock ticking on the mantel beside the glass bowls, the soapstone turtle, the amber egg. Natural history prints hung on the walls: a frilled lizard, a legless glass lizard, a wood frog, a spring peeper.
“Thanks for doing this,” Isabel said.
Alice said, “I was glad to have something I had to do tonight.”
“An excuse?” Isabel asked, smiling.
Alice laughed. “Yes,” she said. “To slow things down a little.”
Was it that she looked tired? Isabel wondered. Alice did look ti
red, but at the same time she seemed to glow with a pearly light. Even the shadows under her eyes glowed, blue black, like mussel shells. “Do you really want things to slow down?” Isabel asked.
“Oh,” Alice said, “I don’t know.”
The doorbell rang again, and Isabel went to let Marco in. He stood on the step under his black umbrella, holding a dish covered in foil.
“You didn’t have to bring anything,” Isabel said.
“It’s nothing.” Marco smiled as he came into the hall and stamped water from his shoes, trying to conceal his discomfort. Isabel had said her sister wouldn’t take money for helping him, which was good, because he didn’t have any money. Still, he felt awkward. At the last minute he had grabbed the dish of sweet Salvadoran quesadillas Marielena had left in his fridge so he wouldn’t arrive empty-handed. He was getting tired of Mari, her tears and demands and her cheap perfume, but she reminded him of home in a way he sometimes felt a need for, although other times he felt he could not get far enough away.
Isabel took the dish and he followed her into the living room, where Alice rose from a chair to shake his hand. She was older than her sister, with fine lines around her eyes and across her forehead, but there was something about her—a kind of brilliance—that made him look again. She had fine bones and fine, reddish hair, and her plain black skirt and gray silk blouse and light makeup were completely different from the red dresses and crimson lipstick Mari liked to wear, as though she were trying to attract the attention of a bull. “Are you really a lawyer?” he said, smiling, as he shook her hand. “You’re far too beautiful.”
This Side of Married Page 4