The Wonder Spot

by Melissa Bank

  I looked at myself for a long while, and I remember it as one of the only times in my life when I saw myself as beautiful.

  When my father knocked on my door, I told him that I was undressed, not a complete lie.

  “Come say good night,” he said.

  I put on my nightgown and bathrobe and went into my parents’ bedroom. I sat at the foot of their bed. My mother put down the old New Yorker she’d been reading.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said.

  My mother looked worried, but my father, a judge, appeared as imperturbable as ever.

  “I bought a dress,” I said. “It was expensive.”

  “How expensive?” my mother said.

  I couldn’t make myself say the price out loud. I told my father that I would skip taking friends out to dinner for the rest of the year.

  My father said, “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I do.”

  My mother said, “How much was it, Sophie?”

  I said, “It was on sale.”

  She kept her eyes on me. I said that it was by a famous designer, but then I couldn’t remember who, and the label had been cut out of the dress.

  Finally I told them the price.

  Neither of my parents spoke.

  I said what Venice had: The dress was worth thousands of dollars.

  My father said, “And you feel you need a dress that’s worth thousands of dollars?”

  I didn’t answer.

  My parents took turns talking about my values. We all agreed that it was not appropriate or reasonable for me to buy a dress this expensive. We all agreed that I would return the dress. Then I remembered that my receipt was stamped FINALSALE.

  I said, “I’ll pay you back.”

  My father nodded.

  Then my mother said, “Do you love it?” which was what she said whenever we were shopping and I wanted to buy something expensive.

  She’d say, “Do you really love it?” If I said yes, she’d go on to say that I could wear that expensive garment forever, for years and years, and all year round; whatever the fabric—sheerest cotton, heaviest wool—she’d proclaim it seasonless. She’d name places I could wear it, events in the near and distant future: I could wear it to a cousin’s bar mitzvah, my brother’s graduation, my own wedding, and I could be buried in it.

  On the rare occasions when I could sustain the enthusiasm required for the purchase—there was always one final “Do you really love it?” at the register—at home the garment would hang in my closet like a cinder block around my neck.

  Now my mother got in the spirit: “Try it on for us.”

  I said, “Tomorrow.”

  . . . . .

  That winter, whenever I met Venice at the Toy Bar, she talked about Anthony; she seemed to need to—it was urgent. She talked fast so she could tell me everything before Hugh showed up.

  She now admitted that Anthony was pursuing her. For her birthday, he’d taken her to Block Island, and driving to the ferry they’d passed a huge billboard that read HAPPYBIRTHDAY, ZSAZSA.

  She said, “He calls me Zsa Zsa.”

  “I got that,” I said.

  She heard the disapproval in my tone and said, “I’ve never even kissed him, Sophie.”

  . . . . .

  One night, she told me that Anthony wanted to charter a plane to fly her to Maryland for soft-shell crabs.

  I said, “Can’t you get crabs in Providence?”

  She looked at me.

  “Are you falling in love with this guy?” I wanted to call him a lothario.

  “No.”

  “So, what are you doing with him?”

  I didn’t like her at that moment, and I could tell that she didn’t like me, either. I wondered, not for the first time, why we were friends.

  She said, “We’re not sleeping together, if that’s what you’re asking,” and I heard the distance between that and “I’ve never even kissed him.”

  Hugh walked in then.

  He seemed unsure of himself that night, and maybe that was why he’d brought Michael, a surprise to Venice, though she didn’t show it, even when Michael kissed her cheek.

  He sat down next to me and said, “We met in Quogue this summer.”

  I couldn’t really talk because of what had just happened between Venice and me—and then because of what was happening between Venice and Hugh.

  He was holding her hand, which I’d never seen him do before, and she seemed to be just barely allowing it. Once, she sort of snatched it away—she pretended it was to sip her drink—but the gesture stayed there in the air, and no one spoke for a long moment.

  Michael said, “We need to play a game,” and by “we” he meant he and I.

  I assumed that he was just giving Venice and Hugh time alone. At the bar, though, he said, “What do you want to play?” and I heard something in there that had nothing to do with his friend or my friend or friendship.

  “Checkers?” I said.

  It was dark at the bar, but that wasn’t the only reason I found it hard to see what Michael looked like. For one thing, his eyes were so deep-set there was a shadow across them. And he kept looking at me, and when I’d look over, he’d look away. I noticed his hair, though. It was straight and dark and longish, and I liked it.

  I found myself drawn to him in a way I wasn’t used to, and it was distracting. I kept losing at checkers. Every time he said, “King me,” I stopped breathing.

  He said, “Tell me your life story, Sophie Applebaum.”

  “You first,” I said.

  He made one up. He was a circus brat, he said. He told me that his father was a trapeze artist, and his mother, wearing a headdress and a spangled costume cut like a bathing suit, rode the tiger around the ring. After school, he fed the elephants, Floozy and Poco.

  “Then the circus disbanded,” he said. He shook his head. “It was really pretty sad.”

  His father couldn’t find work and his mother became a chorus girl. He said her kicks had put him through Williams.

  Another vodka tonic, and my knee touched his. When I moved it away, he said, “No,” and I moved it back.

  He was looking at me now, and not talking; neither of us was talking. I sent him an ESP message: Touch me. But he didn’t, and I shocked and thrilled myself by reaching under the bar for his hand.

  He was looking at me more intently than I’d ever been looked at, and I saw in his eyes that he needed me and wanted me, and I felt that I’d never needed and wanted anyone so much, and probably never would again.

  What I thought was: We are falling in love.

  “I’m a little tired, Sophie Applebaum,” he said. He looked at me. “I think I’m going to head home.”

  I knew what he was asking, and it reminded me of a scene Venice had read to me from Anna Karenina, when Kitty and Levin are playing a parlor game of initials and they telepathically know the words the initials stand for. I thought, We are telepathic; we are Kitty and Levin.

  Just then the model train went around the track, and we both looked up.

  We walked over to where Venice and Hugh sat.

  “I’m going to head out,” Michael said, and I said, “Me, too.”

  Venice looked up at me, and I saw an expression I hadn’t seen before—concern, I thought, or even worry. I assumed it was because of our bad crab moment, so I leaned down and, with all the affection I had for her, said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Michael said, “See you Monday,” to Hugh.

  Then we were outside, on the curb.

  Michael said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  I said, “I’m sure.”

  “I’ll want to see you anyway,” he said, “whether you come with me now or not.”

  To be fair, it was the only real lie he told.

  I cringe even now, remembering my response: “I know that.”

  . .
. . .

  For weeks, every time the hall phone rang it wasn’t Michael; every letter in my mailbox wasn’t from him.

  Venice never brought him up. When I’d ask if she’d seen him, she’d sigh and say she had. I knew it was wrong to blame her, but I did a little. When I tried to name how she was responsible or what she’d done wrong, all I could come up with was that it wouldn’t have happened to her.

  I thought about The Heiress, and what I’d do if Michael did finally knock on my door. I knew what Venice would say; if you thought about it, though, “Bar the door, Maria” was what Catherine says on her way upstairs to spend the rest of her life alone.

  I didn’t know what I’d say. I hoped that Michael’s excuse would be so good, his apology so enormous, his gesture of reconciliation so Happy Birthday, Zsa Zsa that I wouldn’t need to say anything.

  . . . . .

  I still met Venice at the Toy Bar, and she still talked about Anthony, though not as much. She tried to act like he was slowing down and possibly giving up and that she didn’t care either way. She spoke in the calm, even voice people use in an accelerating emergency.

  It was harder for me to see Hugh now because of what I knew about Anthony. I felt like I was lying, even when I was just saying hello. Hugh must have sensed what was going on, though—he seemed less and less sure of himself.

  . . . . .

  “I have to tell you something,” Venice said to me one night at the Toy Bar. “Before Hugh gets here.”

  I already knew that she was sleeping with Anthony, but I didn’t want to hear it. Once she said the words out loud, everything would change. I shook my head: Please don’t tell me.

  I could see that she didn’t want to. She steeled herself. Then she forced the words out: “Michael won’t stop calling me.” Her voice was a little shaky as she told me; she knew the risk she was taking.

  She was trying to be a good friend, and I appreciated that, in theory.

  “Don’t tell Hugh, please,” she said. “He has few enough friends as it is.”

  . . . . .

  Hugh had more friends than Venice did, though—or fewer enemies.

  We never found out who’d seen her with Anthony that weekend in Manhattan, the weekend she’d told Hugh she needed to stay in Providence to write a paper.

  She kept going over every public moment of that weekend, trying to identify the one that had cost her Hugh. She’d helped Anthony choose a tie at Barneys; they’d spiraled up and down the Guggenheim; they’d gone to the Carlyle to hear Bobby Short. She said she hadn’t seen anyone see her, not anyone she knew, and it occurred to me that she wouldn’t have noticed anyone’s gaze, she was so used to being looked at.

  . . . . .

  I avoided meeting Anthony until the following winter.

  Venice didn’t hear the dread in my voice. She told me to bring my perfect dress and she’d bring her cobalt—Anthony would figure out somewhere good for us to go—and I carried the dress in a garbage bag on the bus down.

  I stowed it with my duffel bag under the table at the Toy Bar and waited for Venice.

  She was late and walked in apologizing. She said that Anthony would be here any minute; they’d fought, she said, and he needed to cool off. She couldn’t talk about their argument because he might walk in, and she couldn’t talk about anything else.

  She looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen her, but different. I saw that she was wearing makeup, and I was so surprised that I said it out loud.

  She said, “Anthony likes to make me up.”

  “He puts makeup on you?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s good,” I said.

  She said, “He’s sort of an artist.”

  I said, “Maybe he could make me up sometime.”

  She either didn’t like the joke or didn’t hear it; she was nervous. She kept looking at her watch and taking her bangle bracelet off and putting it back on.

  When some guy came over to the table, she surprised me by inviting him to sit down. He was no more captivating than any of the men I’d seen her dismiss over the years, but she kept talking to him, and she let him buy our drinks. He was still there when Anthony walked in, and it occurred to me that she’d staged this.

  Anthony was very tall and conventionally handsome, and there was something flashy about him, or flashing—his eyes flashed; he flashed a smile. Later, whenever Venice talked about him, I pictured him in a Dracula cape.

  He didn’t sit down. He looked around the Toy Bar, and he didn’t like it. He said, “I thought we might go to the Algonquin,” and Venice stood, though we hadn’t finished our drinks.

  I got my bags from under the table, and Anthony took them from me.

  “Nice luggage,” he said, giving my garbage bag a twist. “I have the same set at home.” I thought I might like him.

  In the cab, he and Venice talked about the Algonquin Round Table and repeated the witty remarks they knew. When we got out of the cab, he held his garbage-bag arm out for her and said, “Mrs. Parker,” and she took it and said, “Thank you, Mr. Benchley.”

  Inside, though, it was just a hotel bar, and it felt like no one had said anything witty there in a long time.

  “Maybe we should get a round table,” Venice said, but Anthony said we were better off where we were. Venice moved a stool aside and stood, and Anthony sat between us. He alternated between holding her waist and his drink.

  “So,” he said, “you’re the famous Sophie from Roger.”

  “Rogers,” I said.

  He said, “Sorry?” using the word but not the intonation of apology.

  “It’s called Rogers.”

  “Right.” He said a sorrier, “Sorry.”

  Anthony seemed restless. The whole time we were there he talked about where else we could go: He’d been invited to a party uptown, or maybe we should go to Studio 54; there was a great after-hours club he knew of, but, he said, it might be early for that.

  “You know what?” I said. “I’m tired.”

  Venice looked worried. When I said that I was going to stay at my brother’s, she didn’t argue.

  We were saying good-bye when she smiled at me, and I knew what she was about to do; in a sexed-up voice, she said, “Do you mind if I sleep with your husband?”

  Maybe she wanted to restore something between us, but it seemed more like a performance for Anthony—My Funny Friendship with Sophie—and it didn’t come off. She was still explaining the joke to him when I left.

  . . . . .

  “I’m sorry Anthony was so rude,” she said on the phone the next morning.

  Anthony had seemed cold, arrogant, bored, and capable of cruelty, but not rude. What I’d mainly noticed was how nervous she’d been.

  “He felt threatened,” she said.

  I thought maybe I’d misheard her, and I said what Anthony would have: “Sorry?”

  “Because of Hugh,” she said. “Because you’re a friend of Hugh’s.”

  I didn’t know what to say; I hadn’t talked to Hugh since before they’d broken up. He hadn’t returned my calls.

  Venice was saying, “He’s insanely jealous of Hugh,” and I thought I heard a trace of an English accent in her voice. “Anyway,” she said, “we’ll go out tonight, and you can wear the dress.”

  Suddenly, I missed Hugh.

  “Anthony wants to take us to some party in SoHo,” she said. “We’ll go really late.”

  I didn’t answer right away. It occurred to me to make up an excuse, but then I said, “I don’t want to.”

  She was quiet, and I was, too.

  I couldn’t really believe that she’d decided to be with Anthony, whom I would never choose over Hugh, or choose over anyone, or choose over no one. That made it hard for me to believe that Venice and I were the same person underneath everything, which was what I thought love required.

  . . . . .

  I wore the perfect dress three times.

  In my senior year at Rogers, I wore the dress to a fraternity
formal, and it was thrilling to be approached by men who’d never noticed me, and thrilling to be swarmed. I thought, This is what it’s like to be Venice, and at first I liked it; I loved it. But it was tiring, too, and also I didn’t like my date as much as he liked me, and it seemed wrong to wear a dress that might make him like me more.

  The second time was to a Halloween party at my brother’s girlfriend’s apartment. I wore the dress with a deer mask. On the elevator up to the party, a tiny pirate said, “Who is she, Mommy?” and when Mommy asked me, I told her I was Bambi, Rudolph’s mistress.

  She looked down at her son and said, “She’s Bambi, Rudolph’s sister.”

  The last time I wore the dress was to a party Venice asked me to. It was one of those parties people gave then, men mostly; they’d rent a restaurant and invite people off of lists. You had to pay to get in. Her idea was that we go very late, and wear our dresses.

  I’d been working in New York for a year by then, and Venice had, too. She had a small part in a soap opera. We’d hardly seen each other. When I’d ask her about Anthony, she wouldn’t say much. She wanted to know when she was going to meet my new boyfriend. I said that Josh was pretty busy writing poetry.

  The party was on East Sixth Street, at an Indian restaurant decorated with magenta velvet ottomans and gold drapes. Everyone else was wearing work clothes; the men who approached me asked where I’d just come from. I stayed there for about an hour, waiting for Venice to show.

  . . . . .

  Maybe because she felt bad about standing me up, Venice told me about Anthony as she never had before. They’d had a horrible fight, she said, maybe their worst, though she added that the competition for this title was stiff. She told me how insane Anthony was and that he called her horrible names and was always accusing her of sleeping with other men, or wanting to.

  When she said that she knew she had to leave him, I said, “You absolutely do.”

  She said, “I know,” but there was no resolve in her voice.

  She did finally leave him, though; she found out he’d been pursuing another woman all along.

  . . . . .

  I wasn’t sorry that I went to the party.

  Michael looked pretty much the same, though it had been dark outside the restaurant in Quogue and in the Toy Bar, and especially dark in his bedroom. The Indian restaurant was brightly lit.