“So Franklin tells me that you’re living with a woman now.”
“Yeah.”
Alice’s eyes brightened with a flare of enlightenment; she had never been able to understand Connie’s manic affairs or the way she had flatly turned down the men Alice would introduce her to, and now here was the simple explanation: Connie was gay. “Is that good?”
“Yes, it is. I really love her.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“How’re things between you and Roger?”
Alice looked away and shrugged. “Okay, I guess. We’re not that close these days. He’s seeing somebody else, actually. He’s off somewhere with her tonight, I think.”
“Oh!”
“It’s not a crisis. I think that it’s probably good for both of us. I’d be interested in an affair myself, but there’s nobody around at the moment. Roger has a lot of access to single girls. He’s gotten to be a pretty big deal, you know.”
There was another shift in the surface of Alice’s face and Connie saw a sudden resemblance to the person she’d seen in the mirror yesterday, right after her dental appointment — one half of the face was alertly contemplating the world with expectation and confidence, while the other had fallen under the weight of it. The eyes expressed the fatigue and rancor of a small, hardworking person carrying her life around on her back like a set of symbols and circumstances that she could stand apart from and arrange.
“Do you think that you’ll stay married?”
“Oh, yes. I mean, my marriage with Roger is like … a project I’d never drop. And I want to have children soon.”
Connie looked at the sadness in her jaw and the tired eyes, and she wanted to put her arms around Alice, to hold her and comfort her. Then either the face or her perception changed, and she was once again looking at a handsome, self-assured, wealthy woman with polite, curious, impenetrable eyes. “You know that we moved, don’t you? We bought a wonderful co-op in Soho. We’ll be having a party sometime soon. I should invite you.”
“Oh, Alice!” A man in a paisley jacket with a smile like a bludgeon swooped toward them and took Alice’s elbow. “I must introduce you to Alex here…. Hi,” he said to Connie. “Are you a painter too?”
Connie said no, and Alice waved a tiny good-bye with her fingers and went to meet Alex. Connie walked into the next room with her drink and got a hunk of chocolate cake and stood eating it out of one hand, dropping crumbs on the floor. A man asked her if she was a writer and she got involved in drunken conversations with three different people, in which almost nothing was said. The last was interrupted when Franklin appeared, his eyelids thick and purple, and took her by the arm. “Here’s a woman you’ve just got to meet. She’s incredibly intelligent and she’s a writer for The New Yorker. Cathy! Cathy! This is Constance Weymouth, an incredible writer, one of the most brilliant writers I know. You’ve got a lot to talk about.”
An attractive gray-haired woman with large blue eyes stood facing her uncertainly but gamely. Connie shook her hand and they traded magazine gossip until it became apparent that while a great friendship could possibly be forged between them, the present situation precluded it.
Two more couples shifted and undulated in the corner, and Connie watched them with a mournful and diffuse concentration. Their flat-footed steps were neither graceful nor dynamic, but their goodwill infused their clumsy gestures — the hand outstretched to squeeze a partner’s hand, the sudden eye contact — with a gentle, faded romance that made Connie want to go home and be with Deana.
She found Franklin in the middle of two conversations about sculpture and Libya and said good-bye to him quickly. As she was putting on her coat, Alice turned toward her and smiled, holding a finger up in the paisley man’s face. “Are you leaving?” She came hurriedly across the floor. “Do you want to wait a little while? I’m going soon.”
Connie felt an eagerness light in her eyes and then fade. She hesitated.
“Well, if you’re in a rush, go ahead. But here, let me give you my card.” Alice had her business card ready in her hand. “It’s our new phone number. Why don’t you call?”
They said it was good seeing each other, made more stunted hugging gestures and settled for hand squeezes.
Connie walked three blocks before hailing a cab. “You think you know what you’re doing, but you don’t,” a huddled drunk informed her. She gave him a dollar bill and walked on, silently agreeing. Why hadn’t she waited for Alice? “Alice loves you, Connie,” Franklin had said. A couple across the street were embracing against a crumbling brick wall; the man’s hand was under the woman’s short leather skirt. Because she’d been ending a cycle and they weren’t friends anymore, Constance thought. She stopped before a garbage-choked wastebasket and pulled Alice’s card from her pocket. She started to throw it away and then changed her mind. You never know. One day she might come upon this card and decide it would be good to talk to somebody she hadn’t spoken to in years. She pocketed the little piece of cardboard and hailed a cab that was roaring down the street like a desperate animal.
Heaven
WHEN VIRGINIA THOUGHT of their life in Florida, it was veiled by a blue-and-green tropical haze. Ocean water lapped a white sand beach. Starfish lay on the shore and lobsters awkwardly strolled it. There was a white house with a blue roof. On the front porch were tin cans housing smelly clams and crayfish that walked in circles, brushing the sides of the cans with their antennae; they had been brought by her son Charles, and left for him and his brother, Daniel, to squat over and watch from time to time.
She imagined her young daughters in matching red shorts, their blond hair pulled back by rubber bands. The muscles of their long legs throbbed as they jumped rope or chased each other, rubber thongs patting their small, dirty heels with every step. A family picnic was being held in the front yard on an old patchwork quilt. Watermelon juice ran down their sleeves.
Jarold was holding Magdalen in the ocean so she could kick and splash without fear. He was laughing, he was pink; his hair lay in wet ridges against his large, handsome head.
Twenty years later, Virginia thought of Florida with pained and superstitious but reverent wonder, as though it was a paradise she had forfeited without knowing it. She thought of it almost every night as she lay on the couch before the humming, fuzzing TV set in the den of their New Jersey home. She lay with her head on a hard little throw pillow, staring out of the picture window into the darkened back yard at the faint glimmer of the rusting barbecue tray. She thought that if they had stayed in Florida, her son would still be alive. She knew it didn’t make any sense, but that’s what she thought.
When Virginia met Lily, her fifteen-year-old niece, Lily had said to her, “Grandmother used to tell us about you all the time. She said you could pick oranges in your back yard. She said you once found a lobster walking in your living room. She said there’d be tornadoes and your house would flood, and horrible snakes would come in. You sounded so exotic. It didn’t seem like you could be related to us.”
They were riding in the warm car with their seat belts on. Virginia had just picked Lily up at the Newark airport because Lily was coming to live with them.
Virginia had been charmed by her remark.
Lily’s mother was visiting Jarold and Virginia. It had been almost eight years since Virginia had spent so much time with her sister.