by Kim Wright
She is probably referring to the soup course, which the Honduran women are carrying in. It’s quite elaborate, a swirl of two kinds of soup in a yin/yang pattern, a combination of Kelly’s roasted squash bisque and white corn chowder. It’s so lovely that everyone murmurs as it is placed before them and I sit back in my chair and begin to relax. This will be a successful party. The tables look good and the tree looks great. I may not be the über-homemaker of the group but I always do have the best tree and I know how to buy the best wines, and I am seated at the best table, even if I am clinking glasses with my marriage counselor. I laugh, more out of relief than anything else, but it’s perfectly timed with the climax of Jeff’s joke and he smiles at me. Smiles hugely, as if making me laugh was the best thing that happened to him all day.
“The thing is,” Jeff says, obviously warmed up by his appreciative audience, “men and women cheat for different reasons. Men cheat because they want the variety. But women only cheat if something is fundamentally wrong with the marriage.”
“Who told you that?” asks Lynn.
“… and that explains why two-thirds of cheating men stay and two-thirds of cheating women end up filing for divorce…” Jeff is like this. He likes statistics. He’s always working them into sermons and he gets so enthralled by his numbers that he never seems to realize the effect he’s having on other people.
“So what you’re saying,” says Michael, shocking everyone by speaking at all, “is that if a man fools around his wife shouldn’t take it personally. It’s not that he doesn’t love her, he’s just looking for a little strange.”
Jesus. Everyone’s drunk.
“You guys have gotten awfully quiet in there,” Nancy calls out. “Whatcha talking about?”
“What I wonder is how I managed to end up on the wrong side of that equation,” Lynn says. “If two-thirds of cheating men stay, how come Andy walked out on me?”
“As fast as possible on the salad,” I mutter to the Honduran woman who is clearing the soup bowls away.
“It depends on how you look at it,” says Jeff, who seems hell-bent on making a bad situation worse. “That same stat could indicate that one-third of cheating men end up falling in love with the other woman.”
“Well lucky me,” drawls Lynn. “Married to one of the cheaters who actually fell in love.” She has drained the glass of sauvignon blanc I’d chosen for the soup and salad courses and she’s clearly enjoying the chance to make Jeff uncomfortable. She tosses her head and strikes an elaborate pose, both elbows on the table and her chin rested in the nest of her hands, as wide-eyed and rapt as Audrey Hepburn in a black-and-white still. Yes, she’s definitely enjoying this—enjoying the chance to be the dinner partner, and thus the equal, of the man who signs her paychecks, the man who has done her so many public favors. Jeff and Nancy will be giving Lynn a ride home tonight. He made sure everyone knew that during the champagne hour, that he would never think of letting any woman in his employ drive these treacherous suburban streets alone.
“I like these plates,” Michael says, saving the day. “How did I end up at the special table with the pretty Christmas plates?”
I beam at him.
The salad is coming around—my signature pear and blue cheese with walnuts. “It’s fantastic, Elyse,” Kelly calls in. “Did you find this recipe on the Food Channel?” She knows full well I didn’t but her question sets off a smattering of distant laughter around the china table. Evidently they’ve got some sort of running joke going on about the Food Channel.
“She watches it goddamn 24/7,” says Mark. “I came in the other day and she was sitting on the toilet with her pants down around her ankles watching the bathroom TV. Some show about how to make three different kinds of clotted cream. Is there any wonder why this country’s going to hell?”
“So what’re y’all talking about in there?” Nancy calls out again.
“Nancy just said ‘y’all,’ ” Jeff calls back. “That’s the official signal to cut her off.”
Lynn’s Salmon in Parchment will be the next course, followed by a collection of cheeses that Nancy brought—since she’s directing the Christmas pageant she also got off the hook for heavy cooking—and we’ll wind up with Belinda’s Mocha Panna Cotta. In anticipation of the salmon, Phil comes into the living room with the pinot noir. It’s our splurge wine, and Jeff gives a whistle when Phil shows him the label.
“Wow,” Jeff says. “You two know how to do things right.”
“I thought I’d start with the expatriates,” Phil says, pouring into the big-bowled glasses. Jeff makes a big show of twirling the glass and sniffing.
“You know, when I look at you two,” says Lynn, “I always wonder to myself why you’re friends.” It’s something I’ve thought about too but never said aloud.
“Me and Phil are like two soups in one bowl,” says Jeff. “The contrast makes us each better. In fact, you should see us on the basketball court…” he adds, changing metaphors and really getting into it. “We have total Vulcan mind meld. The minute he goes up for the rebound, I turn and start down the court because I know exactly where he’s going to—”
“Just a splash,” I say quietly as Phil moves to my glass, and he nods. He knows that this is the expensive one and there’s a single bottle to go around both tables. Besides, we have two more wines coming.
“You can fill me right up,” says Lynn.
“It’s okay,” says Jeff. “She’s not driving.”
“The reason Jeff and I are such great friends,” says Phil, ignoring them and giving Lynn the same small taste he’s pouring for everyone, “is that we have all the same virtues and none of the same faults.”
“Well said,” says Jeff. “We’re both loyal…”
“True blue,” agrees Phil. “We’re the men who would never…”
“Lynn, this salmon is amazing,” Nancy calls from the china room. “You’ve outdone yourself.”
“Everything’s perfect, Elyse,” Kelly adds, even more loudly.
“Let’s hear it for our hostess,” someone says, and I swear it must have been Mark. There is the clank of forks against glasses, a couple of smacks of applause. Phil is touchingly happy that the night is a success. He smiles as he uses the white cloth to wipe the top of the pinot bottle. Careful, careful, careful. There’s not the slightest drip.
Chapter Twenty-two
I worked hard to make it nice.”
“Why? You’re not the kind of woman who gets stressed out over a dinner party.”
What makes him so sure of that?
“It might be the last time I ever host a big sit-down dinner. This could be my last Christmas in this house.”
“Why?”
It’s the morning after the party and I am in the car going to pick up Tory from my mother’s condo. For a minute I think we have a bad connection.
“I’ve told you I’m leaving. I’ve told you that a thousand times.” Doesn’t anybody take me seriously? Maybe I’m like that tree in the forest. Nobody hears me falling so evidently I don’t make a sound. Just this morning I was still cleaning up and Phil came in carrying the ashy bags that had held the luminarias. He said that last night had been nice. Yeah, I said, nice, and then he said, “That’s all I want, Elyse, for things to be nice. That’s all any man wants.”
There’s some crackling on Gerry’s end of the line. He must be in the car too. “Yeah, you say you’re leaving, but you’ve never seemed to have a concrete plan. Where are you going?”
“Not to you, so don’t worry about it.”
“Elyse…”
“Relax. You’re off the hook.”
“What about Tory?”
“She’ll come with me, of course.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Of course I am. The courts favor the mother. “I would only lose Tory if I did something really stupid, if I screwed up in some incredibly major way.”
“And I take it you don’t plan to do something really stupid.”
/> “No. You’re the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
We laugh. We’re ready to laugh. This conversation has scared us both. It’s not really a fight, but it’s the first shadow we have ever walked into. I am pulling into the complex where my mother lives, a planned community for active older adults, and I wave at the security guard, one of the residents trying to pick up a little cash. He’s about eighty and wearing golf pants and he pushes the button to raise the electronic gate.
“If I left,” Gerry says quietly, “my kids wouldn’t go with me.”
He’s probably right. Marriage is a game with different rules for men and women. Different penalties for losing too. Gerry’s wife would keep his kids and he would become the weekend dad.
“If you go,” he says, his voice still quiet, “I mean if you really go, what happens to us?”
“Nothing,” I say. I’ve cut off the car and I can hear him better. I can hear the hurt.
“Not nothing. If you’re single, everything changes.”
“I won’t need you more, so don’t worry about it.”
“You might need me less.”
In front of the parking lot there are some old people decorating an outdoor tree. The man on the ladder looks very shaky. He gets the star on but it’s crooked. The ladies on the ground below him are pointing and talking, evidently offering advice, and I realize, with a shock, that Gerry is afraid of losing me, that I have somehow become a woman that a man could lose, a woman who could break a man’s heart. It isn’t just hurt in his voice, it’s fear, and in some dim reptilian part of my mind I begin to see that Phil is afraid too. That’s why he says, “Oh good, you made thirty thousand dollars,” when he knows perfectly well I made three thousand, why he tells Kelly to take me to her manicurist, why he cuts me with so many tiny swords. I don’t know why it’s easy to hear the underemotions in your lover’s voice and so hard to hear them in your husband’s, but Gerry is helping me to understand Phil. To forgive him, even. The man on the ladder reaches up to straighten the star and makes it worse. It was leaning too far to the right and now it’s leaning too far to the left but the women on the ground must have decided not to tell him this, because he is climbing down.
“The thing is,” Gerry says, “you’re either going to need me more or need me less. If you’re single you’re going to want a whole complete boyfriend, and if I can’t be that for you, you’ll move on to someone who can.”
“What do you expect me to say?”
“Don’t say anything. Just think about what you’re risking. Not Tory and the money and the house, because I know you’ve already thought that part through. Think about the fact that you might be leaving your whole life.”
“Including you?” There is hesitation on the other end of the line, just long enough to show me my whole future, to show me everything I can and cannot have. I lower my head to the steering wheel. “You want a married mistress,” I finally say. “It’s safer that way. You and me in a hotel room—we’re the new status quo.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he says. “I’ll be here as long as you want me.”
For some reason this statement doesn’t seem to make either of us feel any better.
Chapter Twenty-three
Nancy intercepts me in the vestibule, her arms full of angel wings.
“You’ve got to help me,” she says. “I’m sinking.”
It is the Sunday night of the Christmas pageant. I’ve come to drop off Tory and walked into bedlam. Twenty kids, in various stages of biblical dress and hopped up on sugar cookies sent by some well-meaning mother, are chasing each other up and down the aisles of the sanctuary, using their shepherd crooks and wire-hanger halos as weapons. Except for a couple of fathers rigging up the Star of Bethlehem, there aren’t any parents in sight. Apparently Nancy, overconfident as usual, didn’t ask enough people to come early and help.
“Separate the boys from the girls,” I say. “That calms everybody down.”
“Belinda isn’t here,” Nancy says, a little wild-eyed. “Her parents are in town so I told her not to bother…”
“We can do it without Belinda,” I say, surprised that she’s the one Nancy thought of first. “Lynn will be here any minute and I’ll call Kelly. Do you want the angels or the shepherds?”
“I’ll take the boys,” she says, handing me the armload of wings. “You start pinning these on the girls because…” Because girls will sit still and endure an uncomfortable costume for thirty minutes and boys will not. Everyone who has ever worked on a Christmas pageant knows that. You dress the girls first and make them stand and wait. You let the boys play, then get them ready at the last minute.
I call out for a few of the older girls to follow me and take the costumes into the ladies’ bathroom. Lynn comes in a moment later and we get a production line of wing-pinning going, fitting each girl and letting her out into the hall with instructions to send in another angel. We’re almost finished when Nancy comes in to check on how we’re doing. Now that things are rolling, she seems calmer.
“What do you think of our new picture?” she says, pointing toward a portrait of a red-haired woman hanging on the wall above the couch. The woman is draped in blue and looking out with a sort of eye-locking directness.
We’d been so busy I hadn’t even noticed it. “Is that Mary?”
“There’s some question as to which Mary,” Lynn says, talking in a clinched way because she has pins in her mouth.
“Jeff doesn’t think it’s the Virgin,” says Nancy, extracting a warped-looking halo from a plastic bag.
I finish with my angel and motion to the next. “Where’d it come from?”
“Well, Miss Bessie left the church a chunk of change when she died, I guess you knew that,” says Nancy. “And a couple of months ago that mystery niece from Canada finally, I mean like after two years, got down here to sort through her stuff. It turned out Miss Bessie had stuck names on half the items in her house, things she wanted to leave to specific people. She must have known… or maybe she did it years earlier. Old people get like that. Nobody’s sure why she left this picture to the church. We figure it’s a saint of some sort, but Miss Bessie certainly wasn’t Catholic so I don’t know why she would have an oil painting of a saint.”
“It’s Mary Magdalene,” Lynn says, a little more firmly. She’s taking classes at divinity school two nights a week and it clearly bothers her that Nancy never seems to remember that. The pins are out of Lynn’s mouth now and she’s moved on to the halos. “You can tell because she has red hair. It was tradition to paint—” She hesitates, just long enough that I know she started to say the word “whores” but stopped herself when she remembered all the angels in the room. Lynn hands Nancy a halo and a few bobby pins. “If a woman in a painting had red hair it was a sign she was a certain kind of woman.”
“I’ve never heard that,” Nancy says. She’s a little flushed.
“She’s right,” I say. “But Mary Magdalene probably wasn’t a—you know, a businesswoman. They’re changing their thinking on that.”
This is dangerous turf, even for a bunch of Presbyterians. When our book club read The Da Vinci Code Jeff had become so upset by the theory that Jesus was married that he’d devoted an entire series of sermons to debunking the book. It became such a crusade that even Phil had to admit Jeff was going too far. “It’s a novel, for God’s sake,” he had said as we were driving home one Sunday. “What do you think is really upsetting him so much?” I had merely shrugged, but truthfully I was with Jeff on this one. I don’t like to think of Jesus being married either. It’s impossible to worship a husband.
I look at the picture, standing to give it my full attention. The woman looks back at me, her lips slightly parted, her eyes heavy-lidded, her long red hair caught in a gust of wind that does not seem to have affected her robe. No, definitely not the Virgin, and it is a little odd that Miss Bessie of the Many Casseroles would have such a painting in her house. It’s double-matted and heavily framed.
Someone spent a lot of money on this picture.
“Well, whoever she is and whatever she did, we decided to put her in the women’s bathroom,” Nancy says, stepping back and lifting an angel’s chin to inspect her work. “She won’t bother anyone here.”
Ten minutes later Phil and I are sitting in our usual pew, halfway down on the left. The music starts and the lights go down.
The shepherds troop by with their staffs and the wise men follow, the youngest one being firmly pushed out of the vestibule by a feminine hand, probably Nancy’s. A low ripple of laughter runs through the congregation. People love it when something fouls up at the Christmas pageant. Last year Kelly and I couldn’t find the myrrh at the last minute and we sent little Jay Penney down the aisle with a Rolodex from Jeff’s office.
Tory is crouched with the other angels behind the wall of candles. The fourteen-year-old girl who has played the lead six years running waits there for her cue. She obviously hates the role she’s been cast into, the price she must pay for having a high, clear voice. Her face is martyred and the angel costume has long ceased to fit her. The bedsheets bind her down, flattening her breasts, and her tissue-paper wings scatter gold glitter with every gesture. Belinda turns to me from two rows up, mouths something back that I don’t fully get. But I smile and nod even though my throat is tight and my eyes are filling with tears. I always cry at the Christmas pageant.
Belinda’s middle child, the girl that she threatened throughout her long tortured pregnancy to name after me, the child who is so shy that she refuses to be an angel, leaves her mother’s pew and runs to mine. I guess this is what Belinda was asking, if it would be okay for Courtney to come back and sit with me.
I pull the little girl up to my lap, her small pointy knees digging into my thighs as she climbs. Courtney has always loved me and I wonder if she somehow remembers the time, years ago, when Belinda left her at my house for the afternoon. We’d forgotten to get the diaper bag with her bottle out of the car but I hadn’t realized this until Belinda was gone. I didn’t know the name of the salon where she was going to have her hair cut. She’d barely been gone ten minutes when Courtney had begun to sob. Her shrieks awakened Tory, who was fourteen months older and soon sniveling too. I had nursed Tory exclusively and I had no formula in the cabinets and with only one car seat I could hardly take both girls to the grocery. I tried everything I could think of—pacing and singing and jumping with a baby on each hip.
