Neely couldn’t remember what she had heard about Vicodin. It was some souped-up form of aspirin, she guessed. Well, that girdle was going to hurt plenty. She worked up some spit and swallowed a pill. It probably wouldn’t last very long. She tucked the bottle into her jeans pocket and put back everything exactly as she had found it. Lyon wouldn’t miss the pills; he had probably forgotten all about them.
Just before she turned out the lights, she noticed the outline of the suitcase in the deep plush of the closet carpet. Just in case, she thought. She got the portable handheld vacuum from the linen closet and ran it over the carpet, walking backward, erasing her footprints as she went. She didn’t think any pill could work in five minutes, but she already felt better: happier, lighter, ready to face the day ahead. She heard the car arrive, and she skipped downstairs to meet it, singing all the way.
1995.
It was Anne’s favorite time of year: late spring, just a hint of hot weather on the noon breeze, the lilacs in full bloom, her favorite flower. She was in Connecticut for a long weekend of gardening and parties. Curtis and Jerry were visiting, their first official house visit. The two couples had had a few dinners in the city. It turned out that Jerry and Bill shared several enthusiasms: the architecture of Venice, the history of the spice trade, and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the various recordings of Mozart.
“Jerry makes Bill feel smarter,” Curtis told Anne over the telephone, “and Bill makes Jerry feel straighter. The best friendships have been built on less.”
“Who would have guessed,” said Anne.
“And with them busy talking about The Magic Flute, you and I can gossip as much as we want. Oh Annie, we miss you out here. Are you really going to get married?”
“I really am. Eventually.”
“I want to be your bridesmaid.”
On Saturday morning Curtis and Jerry borrowed the Jeep to go shopping for antiques, and Bill headed for the golf course. Anne drove into town to pick up dessert.
It was a storybook Main Street, with a pretty steepled church at one end and an old stone library at the other. In between were offices and shops and two small restaurants that had been run by the same family for three generations. Anne went into the bakery and studied the selection.
She asked the clerk for a large chocolate cheesecake.
“Oh, we just sold the last one, just two seconds ago.” The clerk nodded toward the far end of the counter.
There was Nancy Bergen, watching the last chocolate cheesecake being slipped into a green-and-white-striped cardboard box.
“Be careful with the edges,” Nancy Bergen was saying. “Don’t crush it now.” She looked up. “Hello, Anne!” she cried, wiggling her fingers. “I saw you looking at this, and I knew I just had to have one!” They had been introduced, and then reintroduced, at several parties in the city. Each time Nancy said she would call Anne to schedule a lunch, but she never did. Anne knew she was too low in the pecking order. And everyone knew that Nancy didn’t really care for the company of women, unless the woman was married to someone extremely famous or accomplished.
“Yes, hello,” Anne said. Turning back to the clerk, she pointed to a plain cheesecake, of which there were several left. “Are you visiting for the weekend?” she asked Nancy.
Nancy dropped the name of the famous writer she was staying with. Anne knew he lived around here, but she had never seen him: unless their children were in school together, the artists and the bankers never mixed.
They left the shop together. Nancy was overdressed for the country, in camel-colored wool trousers and low patent-leather pumps.
“I believe I owe you a lunch,” she said in her famous rasp. “Do you have time?”
Bill wouldn’t be back from the golf course for another couple of hours. “I’d love to,” Anne said. They went to the Italian restaurant and ordered iced teas and Caesar salads. Nancy talked about her grandson, and a recent trip to Washington, and how much she was learning to love the Internet. Anne mostly listened.
“Such a pretty little town. So, tell me about this Bill,” Nancy said.
“He’s an investment banker. He grew up around here, actually. His family was—”
“A banker, how wonderful. My second husband was a banker.” Nancy told a long story about the year that New York City almost went broke. “I picked up my apartment for nothing in 1975. I mean, peanuts. You would die if I told you. Eight rooms on Park Avenue. Every night I go to bed and I tell myself, Nancy, you’ve come a long way from the Bronx! Where are you from, dear?”
“Lawrenceville, Massachusetts.”
“Of course, of course, how could I forget.” Nancy was staring at her eyes. “Dr. Barker?” she asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Your eyes. Wonderful work. Dr. Barker, am I right?”
Anne didn’t know what to say.
“Oh, my dear, you don’t have to pretend with me.” She raised her arm like a traffic cop and then flicked her hand down from the wrist. Anne tried to figure out who Nancy reminded her of. A gay man, Anne thought. She talks just like a gay man. “We all do it. Dr. Barker is great with eyes, but when you’re ready to get the rest of it done, you call me and we’ll find you someone else. But what am I talking about? You look wonderful. You won’t have to worry about that for another three years at least.”
Nancy picked up the check. “This is a lovely little town, but I’d lose my mind if I came up here every weekend. But of course you must love it. You and Bill.” She laid her corporate credit card on the china plate. “You know, we must get together for lunch in the city. I’m going to take you to the Four Seasons. We should be seen together, dear. Otherwise people will gossip. We don’t want them thinking we’re competitive, do we? Playing one network off against the other? People say such awful things about the women in our business. They pretend everything is one big catfight. And of course it isn’t that way at all, is it? You and I, after all, we do such different things. So different.”
“So very different,” Anne said. But it wasn’t true. They went after the same interviews all the time, and almost all the time Nancy won. And it would always be that way, Anne knew, whatever Keith Enright said.
A woman in tennis whites came up and asked for Nancy’s autograph. “You are such a dear,” Nancy said, taking out her heavy fountain pen. “And of course you’ll want Anne’s autograph, too.”
The woman looked at Anne but didn’t seem to recognize her. “Oh, sure,” she said. “That would be great.”
“Let me get a pen,” Anne said. She fished around her bag but couldn’t find anything. “May I?” she said to Nancy.
“Of course, dear. But not this one, they take a little bit of know-how, you don’t want to get any ink on those pretty fingers of yours.” She capped her fountain pen and took a cheap felt-tip out of her purse. “Here you go.”
They said goodbye on the sidewalk. “Aren’t the lilacs gorgeous?” Nancy said. “They were my favorite when I was growing up.”
“Mine too,” Anne said.
The sun was bright and hot on their faces. Nancy leaned close and tapped Anne’s forehead. “You go get some collagen for that, dear. It makes a world of difference. Even a monkey doctor could do it. You can ask Dr. Barker.”
* * *
I love your meat loaf,” Curtis was saying. “You have to give me your recipe.”
“Never,” Mary said. “It’s a family secret.” There were eight of them altogether: Mary and Jim, Anne and Bill, Curtis and Jerry, and Diana and Dickie, who worked at the firm with Bill. They sat at a round pine table, drinking a good red that Dickie had brought up from the city.
“That’s not a family secret,” Curtis said. “A family secret is, I don’t know. Uncle Harry was an ax murderer. Or an embezzler. Or boyfriends with J. Edgar Hoover. Meat loaf is not a secret.”
“Well, it has a secret ingredient.”
“Let me guess.” He closed his eyes. “This is too hard. You have to tell me.”
&nb
sp; “I won’t,” Mary said. “Oh Anne, he’s adorable, how come we haven’t met him before?”
“Because there’s a quota on homosexuals in Litchfield County. We couldn’t come up until someone else left,” Jerry said.
“We put them on the list,” Bill said. “But it was a long wait.”
“Did you know, meat loaf is becoming very fashionable. It’s on all the menus now.”
“I would never eat meat loaf in a restaurant,” said Diana. “My mother always told me there are three rules in life. Never let anyone take your picture naked. Never eat ground meat out. And I forget the third.”
“Never forget to send a thank-you note?” offered Mary.
“Never wear white after Labor Day?” said Jim.
“I can’t remember. It’s going to make me crazy. This is good wine!”
“Never borrow money from a friend?” said Bill.
“Never wear diamonds before five?” said Anne.
“That’s it, that’s it!” cried Diana. “Though now people wear diamonds to lunch. I see the pictures in the paper.”
“Which pictures?”
“You know, in The New York Times on Sunday. Right before the wedding pages. Speaking of which. I could do without all these couples pictures they’ve begun running. Ugh.”
“But I love them,” Mary said. “It’s so interesting, isn’t it? How people tend to find other people who are so, you know.”
“At the same level,” Jim said.
“Exactly. At least most of the time. Sometimes one of them is really much more attractive than the other.”
“Those are the most fun to read.”
“We play a little game with those,” Jim said. “It’s called ‘find the money.’ ”
“Mother went crazy when she found out they wouldn’t settle the newspaper strike before Jim and I got married,” Mary said. “She called Mr. Sulzberger to make a complaint. Time for dessert.” The women cleared the plates. Jerry and Curtis began to stand up, but Anne shook her head.
“You know who I saw at the market?” Diana said, scraping plates into the garbage. “Casey Alexander. She was in that marvelous Vermont movie, remember? They bought the old Hilliard place. For about a zillion dollars.”
“Well, her husband can afford it,” said Mary.
“And they asked the real estate agent about joining the club. Can you imagine? Alexander isn’t his real name, you know. It’s his first name. His real name has all these C’s and Z’s and J’s in it. It’s about eighty letters long.”
“And he’s about eighty years old,” Mary said.
“She seems nice,” Anne said. The two women turned to her.
“You’ve met her?” Mary asked.
“No, but. You know. From her interviews. She seems lovely. They wanted me to interview her for the show, but apparently she doesn’t do television interviews, just print.”
“Well, I’m glad they’re fixing up the Hilliard house, because it was such a wreck. But I hope that’s the end of it. Jim says if too many more of these Hollywood types buy property in town, we’re moving.”
“You wouldn’t really,” Diana said.
“You know how Jim is. He says they’ll run up the prices, and then it will be silly not to sell. And he says whenever these kinds of people move in, the whole town changes, and not for the better.”
“Changes how?” Anne asked.
“Oh, you know. Restaurants and all kinds of people who … well, don’t make me say it. They have plenty of places to live already. They don’t have to come here.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“Anne, you know exactly what I mean. Just look what’s happened to Southampton! Anyway. I saw her at the market, she was wearing these big dark sunglasses and this broad-brimmed hat, as if no one would notice. She looked ridiculous. And speaking of diamonds before five.”
They got out the dessert plates and forks.
“Chocolate cheesecake!” said Diana. “My favorite. You are too naughty. I haven’t had this in ages. They always run out on the weekends.”
Anne had switched boxes when Nancy had gone to the bathroom to reapply her lipstick. “It was the last one,” she said.
“So,” Diana said. “I’m thinking of redoing the library. Do you think Jerry could give me some advice?”
“He’s an architect, not a decorator.”
“But they always have such good taste,” Diana said.
“Maybe next time.”
Dickie had brought out the brandy. They talked for another hour—about a new sports car that had just come on the market, about whether e-mail would ever replace the telephone—and then it was time to go home.
“That really was fabulous meat loaf,” Curtis said in the car. “I loved the touch of cinnamon.”
“There was cinnamon?” Bill said.
“Tons of it. The so-called secret ingredient. Isn’t that just so waspy? Thinking cinnamon is exotic. You two have such nice friends.”
“They’re not really so nice,” Anne said.
“They’re not?”
“They’re just nice to us,” Anne said. “Because they know us.”
“Isn’t that how everyone is?” Jerry asked.
“You’re nice to everyone,” Anne said to Jerry.
“You’re nice to everyone, too,” Bill said to Anne.
“I’m not always so nice,” Anne said.
“Please! You’re the Queen of Nice!” Curtis said.
“You should see me at work.”
“Oh, I doubt it.”
“I have another side.” She told them about the switched cakes.
“But that just proves it,” Bill said as they pulled into the driveway. “You had to confess. You felt guilty. That just proves how nice you are. Nancy Bergen wouldn’t have felt guilty for a second.”
Later, when they were undressing upstairs, she turned to him. “I wish I could have seen her face.”
“Ah, revenge,” Bill said, turning back the covers. “A dish best served sweet.”
The next day Anne decided to prove how nice she really was: she telephoned Casey Alexander and invited her to lunch the following weekend.
“I understand if you’re busy,” Anne said, “on such short notice. I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
“Are you joking?” Casey said. “We’ve been here three weeks and our next-door neighbors haven’t even come by to say hello. I knew we wouldn’t exactly fit in, but I wasn’t expecting the cold-shoulder treatment.” Her voice was breathy, and higher than Anne expected. From her over-enunciated consonants and too-correct pronunciation, Anne could tell there had been voice lessons. It was a real old-fashioned movie-star accent, a Hollywood imitation of the kind of Park Avenue glamour girl that didn’t exist anymore.
They met at a restaurant at the local inn. “This is just like that old Bing Crosby movie,” Casey said. “You know, the one where they’re singing all the time?”
“That’s pretty much all the old Bing Crosby movies,” Anne said. “Holiday Inn?”
“Yes! I love that movie! I can’t wait for Christmas. I hope it snows every day. I’ve been in California too many years. I miss the snow.”
“How many years was that?” Anne asked.
“A bunch,” Casey said. Anne noticed that Casey gave vague answers to specific questions: about where she had lived, and for how long. She had been a waitress, serving breakfast to an older man who came in every day with The Wall Street Journal. Gregor always ordered the same thing, and he always left a precise 15 percent tip. After two months he asked her out, and two months after that they were married. Casey swore she didn’t know who he really was until a week before the wedding, when the pre-nup appeared.
“I thought he was just some nice old Jewish guy,” she said. “My mother always told me they took good care of their women. He was such a gentleman, you know, and we always had a lot of laughs together, you know? I didn’t have a clue about the money! He lived in this little apartment, ther
e were a lot of paintings, but I didn’t really get what they were. When he first told me I thought it was a big joke. Gregor loves to play jokes.” She started to giggle. “The movie thing was his idea. I went to the first few classes just to humor him, really. I thought maybe he didn’t want me hanging around the house all day. And I could guess what people were saying behind my back, you know, rich older man trying to buy his young wife a career. But it turned out that I really enjoyed it, and then it turned out that I’m pretty good at it.” She laughed again. “Gregor says it’s the best joke of all.”
Casey was wearing a hat and a pair of large tinted glasses. People turned to look at her as they came in.
“You should hear what Gregor says about the people around here.” Casey told a story about a party they had gone to at the club. Their real estate agent had taken them before they bought the house. “The way those wives were looking at me,” she said. “I guess I danced a little too close. Gregor loves to dance. He can dance all night.” She talked about how she wanted children. “A bunch of children,” she said. “I guess I better get started quick. Do you have children?”
Anne told her about Jenn.
“Seventeen?” Casey said. “But you don’t look it.” She asked to see a picture. Anne showed her the photograph she carried in her wallet: a picture of Jenn from last Christmas, rolling a snowball between her palms.
“She’s beautiful,” Casey said. “Seventeen. Not necessarily such a fun age.”
“We had our rough patch,” Anne said. “But lately she’s been a total sweetheart.” She knocked on the wooden table. “The divorce was so hard on her.”
“And she likes Bill?”
“She calls him the Overgrown Preppy. Here,” Anne said, passing Casey a tissue.
“Look at me,” Casey said. “Wow. The power of hormones. Every month it’s like this. Even the commercials make me cry. Especially the commercials. But I really do want kids.”
The coffee arrived. “You remind me of a friend I used to have,” Anne said. “So much. Jennifer North?”