Mortal Friends

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Just for the hell of it, I detoured past Cynthia’s house to take another gloating look at the Sotheby’s FOR SALE sign planted outside. There was something gratifying about the notion that she was selling it, almost as if the ghost of Gay Harding was driving her out. As I looked at the old place from the driveway, I thought about that first day when Violet and I and Cynthia were all there together, and Cynthia announced there was a “new sheriff in town.” And then my mind flashed to that life-changing moment when I walked in and saw Cynthia and Grant going at it on the floor. Mrs. Harding must have been dervishing away in her grave at that point. Just goes to show how dangerous it is to thumb your nose at those old grande dames, even today. Maybe they knew something we don’t. Like how to behave.

  Suddenly a sporty blue Mercedes convertible roared up behind me, made a sharp turn into the driveway, nearly knocking me over, and stopped short. The driver got out and slammed the door shut. It was Cynthia. She marched up to me and stood with her hand on her hip and a look of cool defiance.

  “Well, well, well…. Happy now, Dream Girl?” she said.

  “Hello, Cynthia.”

  We faced off for a few seconds. False smiles at dawn.

  “You know, I didn’t do things wrong. I just did things big,” she said at last. “When all this stuff dies down, I’ll still have a pile of money to do good with.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said.

  “No, you’re not!” she snapped. “But that’s okay, because I’m gonna win in the end.” She glanced back at the house. “I never really liked this musty old place anyway, you know. I’ll be glad to get rid of it.”

  “Why’d you buy it, then?”

  She snickered. “As if you didn’t know…. Washington’s too provincial for my vision. You all are about thirty years behind the times.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You’re smug because you think you’ve won. You think you’ve driven me out of town. But you haven’t. You know what y’all are really objecting to when you object to me?”

  “What’s that?” I asked with mock earnestness.

  “I am the future. Big people doing big things in a big way and making no excuses for it. The world always objects to big change and big ideas at first. But it comes around in the end, because it has to. And here we all are, smack in the middle of things people first objected to: everything from horseless carriages to the Internet. Even women getting the vote and holding high office. You wanna know the great secret of life?” she said.

  “Let’s see—where to get a good facial in Washington?” I said.

  She looked at me with contempt. “You make everything a joke, don’t you? It’s that damn prep school humor y’all think is so amusing. No…the great secret of life is tenacity. You just stick to your guns, whatever they are, and pretend like everything’s going just fine. Nine out of ten times, things will turn out just the way you want ’em to.”

  “Well, here’s another great secret of life: knowing when you’re kidding yourself.”

  “Funny, I didn’t think that was one you were too familiar with,” she fired back.

  Why did I always set myself up for these people? Anyway, with that, she reached into her purse, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to me.

  “I just came from the printer’s. These are hot off the presses. Go on. Open it.”

  It was an invitation—not one of those gaudy, expensive jobs she used to send out, but a nice normal card on a decent ecru stock, engraved in traditional black script. When I read it over, I thought to myself, Some people have no shame, and that’s the end of the story. Here Congress was investigating her. She was being forced to sell her house and her private plane. The public outcry against her was growing. Plus she’d just endured a searing romantic humiliation, with Grant leaving her to go back to his wife. Yet none of that seemed to faze her. Because, according to this invitation, she was invited to the White House for a recepion in honor of the Dance Troupe of Morocco. It doesn’t get more prestigious than that in Washington.

  “Oh, is this for me?” I said facetiously.

  “’Fraid not, Dream Girl!” She plucked the invitation from my hand. “Just thought you’d be interested to know that I am sponsoring this great event. And that the First Lady and maybe even the President will be there, along with all the people I choose to invite.”

  “Did Senator Grider make the cut?” I asked.

  “That mangy bad-tempered old coyote? I’d only seat him next to my worst enemy—and since you’re not coming, he’s not invited.”

  The little tremolo of rage in her throat undercut her coolness credibility. I think if she could have killed me right there on the spot and gotten away with it, she would have. She turned around, stomped back to her car, and opened the door.

  “By the way, your ex-boyfriend Bob Poll is my date,” she said.

  Birds of a feather, I thought.

  With that, she ducked into the car, slammed the door hard, and screeched on up to the house. I doubt that lion’s-head knocker had ever presided over a more furious entrance.

  Violet was standing in front of the open cemetery gates.

  “Was that Cynthia you were talking to?” she asked as we entered the grounds.

  “She’s sponsoring a reception with the First Lady at the White House. She showed me the invitation.”

  Violet threw up her hands. “God help America!”

  We strolled past the chapel down one of the paths leading toward Usherville. Violet stopped.

  “Let’s go to the park. I don’t like all these dead people,” she said.

  “No, I want to show you something first. Follow me.”

  I led her around to the Hollis crypt. Before she caught up with me, I surreptitiously switched on the tape recorder in my pocket.

  “Why’d you want to come here?” Violet asked.

  “Gunner and I call this Usherville. We used to meet here so no one would know I was talking to him.”

  “Lovely,” she said sarcastically, peering into the tomb. “Can we go now?”

  “I need to talk to you. Sit down, will you?”

  “Okay, for a sec.” Violet collapsed onto the stone bench. I sat beside her. She took off her jacket. “Christ, it’s hot. I hate Indian summer. I never dress right and I always catch cold,” she said, wiping her forehead. “Listen, Rev, if it’s about the pin—I really want you to have it. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “It’s not about the pin,” I interrupted her.

  She eyed me. “What’s going on with you, Rev? You’ve been acting so weird lately. You’re kind of creeping me out.”

  This from the woman who once thought seriously of collecting serial killer art.

  “Okay, let me ask you something. All that stuff you wrote in the ‘Class Notes’…is all that true?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What word in the sentence didn’t you understand? Is all that stuff you wrote in the ‘Class Notes’ true?”

  “Sure,” she shrugged. “Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Why?”

  “You wrote that you went to law school at the University of Southern California. Did you?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, as though it were obvious.

  “And the Indian reservation and the environmental lobbying? All that’s true too?”

  “Yes,” she replied in a warier tone.

  I took a deep breath. “So, um…if I asked you who Mrs. Pagett was, you wouldn’t know?”

  She sat up straighter, brightening. “Ellie Pagett? Heavens, yes! She was this really nice old lady I knew in Chicago years ago. How do you know Mrs. Pagett?”

  I could see that the subtle approach wasn’t going to work. I guess maybe if you’ve been lying for years and years and years, you come to believe your lies on some level. Either that, or Violet was such a good actress there was no point in trying to jolt her out of character. So I just decided to go for it.

  “Violet, you’re a liar,
” I said flatly.

  I wish I could say that the heavens parted and lightning flashed and the tomb opened. But the truth is, we just sat there on that cool bench, staring at each other in this morbid bucolic setting as the birds chirped and rays of a strong afternoon sun filtered through the shade trees.

  “How dare you?” Violet said without conviction.

  “If you keep on lying to me, I can’t be friends with you anymore. That’s the end of the story.”

  “Well, then I guess we can’t be friends.” She stood up and started to walk away. I called after her.

  “I know you were expelled from DePaul! I know you worked as a companion for Mrs. Pagett and the two of you went to London together on the QE II, and that’s how you spent your so-called Junior Year Abroad! I know you never went to USC! I know you never worked on an Indian reservation! I know that Mrs. Pagett left you money, and there were questions about her death! And that’s just for starters!”

  Violet stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t move. She turned around slowly and looked at me with terrified eyes. She swallowed hard.

  “How did you find out?” she said softly.

  I had debated whether or not to tell her the truth. I knew if our friendship was going to survive, honesty had to be a two-way street. “Gunner,” I said.

  Violet went pale. “The police know?”

  “Just tell me: Did you make up all that stuff? Did you?”

  She hesitated for a long moment. Tears sprang to her eyes. She looked like a four-year-old kid who had just been caught filching cookies. She did not, by any stretch of the imagination, look like a murderer.

  “Yes,” she said at last.

  I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. You can suspect something, but until you know it for sure, it’s not the same. Now I knew for sure that Violet was a fraud.

  “Why? Why did you do it?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I did it once just for fun. Just to see how it would feel. It felt so good to be someone I wasn’t and tell all those girls who hated me how well I was doing. And then, well, I just kept on doing it. It was like I was making up a story about a girl I admired. And that girl was me.”

  “Was everything you wrote a lie?” She nodded sheepishly. “So what were you really doing all that time?” I asked her.

  “Nothing…. Just things…I don’t know. I want to forget that part of my life.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know!” she said, throwing up her hands. “Things you do when you have to survive.”

  “Such as?”

  “What are you—the Grand fucking Inquisitor?” she said, in a sudden flash of temper.

  “I want to know,” I said firmly. She wasn’t the only one who was angry. “You’ve made a fool of me for twenty years. I think I’m entitled to an explanation.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay, okay…. I’ll tell you the worst thing I did. This is the worst thing, I promise…. I lived with this guy who had a little business that wasn’t strictly legal.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “It was stupid and harmless. A lot of our friends were doing it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “He grew marijuana and sold it to people who needed it for medicinal purposes,” she said at last.

  “Medicinal purposes? Right.” I scoffed.

  “It’s true. It helps glaucoma. It’s even legal now in California. That’s not the end of the world, is it?”

  “Go on.”

  “We broke up. He got busted eventually. He went to jail. I never saw him again. That’s the worst thing I can think of.”

  “What’d you do after that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. What?”

  “I don’t know! Mrs. Pagett left me some money, so I didn’t have to get a steady job. I just kinda bummed around California and the Southwest. Worked in an art gallery in Taos. Did some stuff for a conservation group in Santa Fe. I lived in Oklahoma City. I knew some people from the reservation.”

  “But you never worked there?”

  She shook her head. “No. But they told me about it.”

  “Why’d you come to Washington?”

  She hesitated. “Truth? I knew you were here.”

  “So?”

  She stared at me. “I don’t think you realize, Rev…. You were, like, the only person who was ever really kind to me in my life—except for Mrs. Pagett.”

  “Let’s talk about Mrs. Pagett for a second.”

  “I loved her. I really did,” Violet said with great emotion.

  “There were rumors that you might have pushed her down the stairs.”

  She bristled. “You got that from Gunner?” I nodded. “Yeah, well, I know who he’s been talking to then—her horrible niece who hated Mrs. Pagett and couldn’t wait for her to die. She started that rumor because she didn’t get left anything in the will and I did. But Mrs. Pagett’s kids knew how much I loved her. Tell him to go ask them. Besides, I wasn’t even in the house when it happened. Her daughter and I came home together and found her at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Pagett was like a second mother to me. Better than the mother I had, God rest her soul.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “You don’t know, Rev. My parents weren’t particularly kind to me. They treated me more like an intrusion than a child. Mom was clinically depressed. You know what she once said to me? She said, ‘For me, the glass isn’t half empty or half full. For me, there is no glass.’ She was such a sad woman. And when I told my dad off for being such a lousy father, he said, ‘How can you say I was a lousy father when I was never there!’ He didn’t even come to my wedding, if you remember.”

  “You didn’t want him there with the gym teacher.”

  “He could’ve come without her…. Everyone always makes such a big deal about family, and how it’s only your family that counts in the end. But in my case, it’s been my friends who’ve counted much more than my family. And you’ve been my best friend, Rev. I thought if I came to Washington and looked you up, you might take me under your wing again like you did in school.”

  “Right! And I did—fool that I am.”

  “But I’m so grateful to you…. I’ve wanted to tell you the truth so many times.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t. I was too ashamed. I thought I’d put it all behind me.”

  She sank down on the bench, put her head between her hands, and wept. I just watched her, feeling this weird combination of pity and anger.

  “I still don’t really understand. Why would you make up your whole entire life?”

  Violet looked up at me. Her face was streaked with tears.

  “How else was I ever going to get anywhere in this world?” she said plaintively. “A lot of people invent themselves. My God, we live in the capital of self-invention here in Washington! You think these politicians and ambassadors are who they want us to think they are? They all make stuff up. That’s how you get elected, appointed, noticed! That’s how you get anywhere in life if your life isn’t handed to you at birth. Just because you’ve always had it so easy, Rev—”

  “I haven’t had it so easy!” I protested.

  “Oh, no? Well, I’ve got news for you: you have no idea what it’s like to be a nobody. A real nobody. A person people just look through. You were a star in school. You remember what I was like? I was a target. I had nothing going for me—nothing! Even my parents didn’t want me. The kids at school didn’t want me. Everyone wrote me off. Failure had been drummed into me from the time I was a little kid. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have survived at Wheelock. And for that, I’ll love you forever, Rev. But don’t you dare blame me for trying anything I could to make something of myself.”

  “Why did you have to lie?”

  “Think about it. Be honest with yourself. If you’d known the truth about me, would you have welcomed me with open arms when I moved here? I dou
bt it. Not even you, Rev. Would you have introduced me to Grant and all your fancy friends here if I’d just been this nobody who was your old roommate? I don’t think so!” she said. “You were proud of my accomplishments. You always mentioned them whenever I met anybody. And if you think Grant ever would have married me without my credentials—well, then, you don’t know Grant—or his parents. You were all so impressed with me and my great record.”

  “You should have had more faith in me,” I said softly.

  “Maybe. But you want to know another reason I also wrote all those things? To make myself believe them. When I looked at those ‘Class Notes,’ I was proud of that person I invented. And then a miraculous thing happened. That made-up person actually came to life! When I married Grant, I didn’t have to lie anymore. I could actually be the person I always dreamed of being.”

  “Weren’t you afraid someone would check up on you?” I asked her.

  “In the beginning? Sure. Constantly. But they don’t. I mean, it’s amazing. People don’t check. Rainy made up her mind about me right off the bat. And you know once she makes up her mind there’s no changing it unless something drastic happens. No, around here, unless you’re running for office or you do something people don’t like, you can say you’re from the fucking moon and no one will bother to check up on it. You think I’m the only person in this town who’s ever lied about their background? And if you get to be Mrs. Grant Bolton, you become Caesar’s wife—and then nobody wants to check up on you. They’re too afraid of alienating Caesar.”

  “I know Grant Bolton, and he’s no Caesar, to coin a phrase,” I said.

  “Only because Caesar didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of him, whereas Grant cares so desperately. I never met anyone who cared more what the world thinks. But most people don’t know that about him. They know he owns a bank and he’s from a powerful family. That qualifies you as Caesar these days. And when he left me for Cynthia, I was back to being a nobody again. You have no idea how I felt, Rev. It was like being an orphan somehow. I never felt so alone, ever…. Then at the first sign of trouble, what does he do? He comes running back to me because he thinks I’m safe and spotless. He would die if he knew the truth about me. He would just die….” She started crying again. “I’m begging you, begging you, not to breathe a word of this. He’ll leave me. He will!”