Mrs. Girbaldi regularly hosted blue-chip charity functions and country-club gatherings; tonight there was a holdover from a benefit for Pendleton veterans — in attendance was a disabled marine in a wheelchair, whom she was determined to help find a job. The young soldier had been wheeled next to a serving table in the corner, ostensibly to avoid his being knocked into, but the effect was to isolate him in his cagelike chair. He sat, his horsey, handsome face alert, uniform pressed into knifed ridges, his chest covered in ribbons, while his big hands fumbled with a dainty-handled cup of punch. People passed and nodded in his direction — they were a conservative, patriotic, flag-waving crowd — but the wheelchair, or rather the woundedness that it connoted, made them shy. There was no denying a discomfort with his presence — it felt awkward to congratulate him on his service or to thank him for it. Afraid that it would beg the question of the price he had paid. Was he bitter? Would that bitterness explode against a luckless well-wisher? They were there collectively for simple pleasures. Claire was there to forget, even if only temporarily, and none of them wished to be faced with the moral vagaries of the harsh, larger world outside. So, cruelly, they kept at a remove from the young man.
The crowd was more casual than usual at Mrs. Girbaldi’s affairs — older women with gray poking through their undyed hair; soft-voiced men; surfer types; youngish couples with toddlers in plush, reinforced strollers. Not the typical well-maintained, affluent, older crowd that financed local philanthropic undertakings. Amid this gathering, Minna stood out all the more.
A ripple of attention went through the room as they entered, and Claire enjoyed the vicarious glamour. Did Minna mind being the only black person to enter a crowded room? Did the double takes bother her? Claire watched and thought that if anything Minna thrived on the attention. Because, of course, her beauty trumped all. A couple passing leaned together and one said, “Probably down slumming from Hollywood.”
Minna looked away as Claire tapped the man on his shoulder and whispered, “She’s the great-granddaughter of Jean Rhys.”
He nodded, satisfied.
After they moved off, Minna laughed. “Shame on you. Name-dropping. As if they even knew who she was. Do you want another drink?”
“Why not?”
Claire moved off to the edge of the living room, surveying the scene for anyone she knew. Conversely, she wished for no attention, no one to notice her compromised self.
As Minna passed the young marine, she bent down to him. “You can’t possibly be interested in that punch. Would you like me to get you a Scotch?”
“That would be outstanding.” He laughed, his face lit up, suddenly a young man again, not simply the object of pity. Minna knelt, and he looked at her with delight. All the others who talked to him had remained standing. Of course her attentions would be every bit as recuperative as any job. Minna talked, laying her hand on his knee for emphasis. Someone took a picture of them for the local paper, mistaking her for an actress.
At the best of times, Claire was an ambivalent partygoer, but now she stood paralyzed by the thought of her lopsided chest, shielded by the frail camouflage of a gauzy, knotted scarf. Perhaps Gwen was right and a “boob man” was in order. The absurdity of such self-consciousness did nothing to mitigate it. At her age, in her condition, what did it matter anymore?
Minna moved through the room toward the bar like a lioness prowling her territory. One noticed her skin, its burnished golden brown, her long neck, her powerful stride, her softly dropping feet like sleek paws. The sensation of her nakedness still lingered, but it held no hint of shame, rather a crude-cut beauty, lacking the slightest artifice. It was the rest of them, with their pale skin and bluish veins, their thin legs and bound breasts, who required covering, modesty, and shame. Minna disappeared to the end of the line out the door.
* * *
On the couch, holding court, sat Donald Richards. He and Claire had been distant friends over the almost thirty years of his owning the ranch, although he was only there part-time. They pretended an intimacy at parties that was never followed up on. Claire imagined his debauched lifestyle had little in common with her cloistered one, but they enjoyed being bored together at parties.
The valley regularly attracted celebrities searching for the anonymity they had so eagerly shunned before fame found them. The longtime locals prided themselves on taking no notice of these Hollywood types, carrying it so far as to ignore them, and sometimes past that to outright rudeness. Often after enough ego drubbings, FOR SALE signs would spring up like dandelions, and the celebrities, full of the new hurtful knowledge that, after all, they wanted attention and fawning, would return north to where they would be courted.
One got inured to seeing movie stars in the grocery, or TV hosts pumping their own gas. One got used to the everyday fact that in person they were always shorter and had worse skin, that they were kinder and more fragile than one imagined.
Claire was fond of Don, even imagined they had a mild flirtation going over the years made of equal parts his compliments and her mockery of his stardom. She had grown protective of him. Like a particularly noxious weed, he persisted and flourished on neglect, and the whole community came to accept him.
His eyelids fluttered as Minna passed by while he listened with rapt attention to Mrs. Carsey (talking with hearing-aid loudness) about her late poodle. It must have been a handy gift to have, being an actor, portraying one thing in public while one’s private self attended to its own interests. Minna took a drink to the soldier, stopping only briefly to talk, much to his obvious disappointment.
Don motioned Claire over with an impatient wave. “Who’s your friend?”
“My new … assistant.”
“Introduce. She looks like Halle Berry. But more rustic.”
“She’s way out of your league,” Claire said, hurt pride and motherly solicitude neatly merging.
A line of autograph seekers had formed behind her. Donald’s latest movie had been released the month before. Although he was in his late forties, he played a soldier in the First Gulf War. Claire hadn’t bothered to read the reviews, although she noted in the posters that they had outlined his eyes in kohl, giving him an aging, dissolute Rudolph Valentino look that seemed at odds with the image of the wholesome, young American soldier he was supposed to be playing. In the movie, he goes AWOL, and while escaping into the desert, he meets and falls in love with a Kuwaiti princess, played by a busty Italian starlet. A jaded Romeo and a loose Juliet, and an indictment of war to boot. Claire wouldn’t say it to his face, but she thought there would be more dignity in his growing oranges.
Unbelievably there was Oscar buzz, and Donald even testified before Congress about something to do with the war, although during the actual war he had been boozing and womanizing, in and out of rehab. Now he was talking about opening an elephant-rescue sanctuary on a couple of hundred acres in the Santa Ynez valley area of central California because the terrain was supposed to resemble elephants’ habitat in Africa. All night long people came to talk to him about the Gulf wars and Afghanistan, preferring him to the real soldier.
When Minna came with her martini, Claire whisked her away outside.