Dinah twirled a strand of hair around her finger as she spoke. “We’re a very large corporation, Victoria, with offices around the world. There are opportunities for a hardworking, talented young woman like you. You won’t be answering phones or filing. I can promise you that. This is not your typical entry-level job. You’ll be working with captains of industry, editing from the start.”
Vix nodded as Dinah spoke, making mental notes. Captains of Industry. Editing from the start. Plays with her hair.
“You’ll get a decent, competitive salary and good benefits. You’ll find an apartment share. You’ll enjoy the city. And we’ll be there for you, nurturing your career, moving you up as soon as you’re ready.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got to catch the 5:30 shuttle. Can you make quick decisions? Because I’d like a yes or no right now.”
Actually, Vix didn’t have a clue. She asked if she could give her an answer the following day.
Dinah sighed. “There are others who want this job. I won’t even say how many. That’s how tight the market is.”
“I’ll take it,” Vix said. After, she couldn’t believe she’d done it.
Paisley
SHE AND MAIA take Victoria to dinner to celebrate her job. She’s the first of them to know what she’s doing next year. When Maia asks, What does Bru think? Victoria knocks over her glass of red wine. It spills on the white cloth and onto Victoria’s lap. In the commotion that follows, the question never gets answered.
She assumes that means Victoria hasn’t told Bru yet. But she’s sure he’ll follow her anywhere. She’s decided Victoria is impossibly lucky. Ever since she spent Labor Day weekend on the Vineyard and had the chance to get to know Bru, she’s developed a teensy crush on him herself. Obviously, she’s careful to keep these feelings to herself. She would never act on them except in her fantasies and fantasies don’t count.
Or maybe what it’s really about is seeing her friend adored by a great guy. Either way, Victoria has it made.
BRU CAME TO SEE VIX the first weekend in May, during a freak spring storm that began as wet snow, turned into a serious thunderstorm, and knocked out half the power in Cambridge. Not that they cared. They were in bed most of the time. Bru pinned her wrists above her head and watched her face as he drove into her. It was fierce, possessive sex and it made her uneasy. Not that it didn’t turn her on. Put her near Bru and like a knee-jerk response, her juices ran, her Power lit up. Her attraction to him never wavered.
When the rain ended they ventured out to walk along the muddy banks of the Charles. Vix longed for sunshine. She tied her new silk scarf around her neck and zipped her jacket. She’d been waiting for Bru to ask to see Five Minutes in Heaven. So far, he hadn’t. She would offer to show it to him later, after dinner, then break the news about her job.
Suddenly he stopped and blocked her path, his hands on her shoulders. She couldn’t tell from his expression what he was thinking. He took a small jeweler’s box out of his pocket and handed it to her. “We don’t have to get married right away,” he said.
Married?
“We can wait a year if you want … but I need to know at the end of my wait you’re going to be there for me. You’re going to be my wife, have my kids …”
She opened the box and choked up as she looked at the tiny diamond set in gold, sparkling on blue velvet. Do you marry someone because the sex is good? Do you marry someone because you know, deep down, he’s a decent person, even if you can’t talk about the same books? She thought about the couples she knew—her parents, Lamb and Abby, even Loren and Tim Castellano. What was it that made them choose one another? How do you ever know it’s right? “Come with me to New York,” she said, urgently.
“Why would we go to New York?”
“I’ve been offered a job there.”
“So tell them no.”
“What about Boston?” she asked, grabbing at straws. “I could probably get a job in Boston.”
“How many times do I have to tell you,” Bru said, “I hate cities. They make me claustrophobic. I’m an islander … you know that.”
“I just need some time to find out …”
“I put in indoor plumbing. I got a phone!”
She looked back at the ring. She sensed if they broke up now it wouldn’t be like last time.
“If you can’t say yes to marriage and island life that’s it. I mean it. I’ve waited four fucking years for you. You’re almost twenty-two. What’s your problem?”
“I need vitamins?” she asked, trying to lighten it up.
She could see the disappointment in his eyes turn to anger. He grabbed the jewelry box out of her hand and for a minute she thought he might hurl it into the river. But no, he shoved it back in his pocket, too practical to give in to his emotions. They were a lot alike, weren’t they? Two people who had trouble sharing their thoughts. Two people who kept everything inside. Had she mistaken his silence for depth? His wounded look for sensitivity? She didn’t know. She didn’t know any thing except she wasn’t ready. She couldn’t promise him the rest of her life. She had no idea where she was going.
Her eyes filled. Her throat felt tight. Was she making the biggest mistake of her life? “Bru … please, let’s not …” She tried to embrace him.
He pushed her aside. “I’m not enough for you anymore. That’s it, isn’t it?” He spit out the words. “The island’s not enough … now that you’re almost a Harvard graduate.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “It has nothing to do with Harvard …”
He let out an angry laugh. “Let me be the first to break the news, Victoria. You’re the one who doesn’t get it.”
PART FOUR
Didn’t We Almost
Have It All
1987–1990
35
SHE’D FINALLY ARRIVED. This was life after college, life in the real world. The world of first, last, and security. It gave her a heady feeling. She and Maia came to the city together, in June, and Paisley, who had an entry-level job at ABC, caught up with them a few weeks later. Maia took them both to Loehmann’s. “Put yourselves in my hands,” she said, gathering jackets, pants, and tops. “Trust me. No colors!” she scolded, when she caught Vix holding up a pink sweater. “Only neutrals. Sophisticated. Professional.”
“But …” Vix began.
“Trust,” Maia told her.
“This is worse than shopping with my mother,” Paisley joked. Vix laughed with her, though she couldn’t remember ever having shopped for clothes with Tawny.
Maia bought herself a pinstripe suit. Very investment banker. To go with her job on Wall Street as a trainee at Drexel Burnham. She was testing the waters before committing to an MBA. When the stock market crashed on October 19, the worst crash in history, with the Dow Jones average tumbling five hundred points in a single day, Maia became one of the first casualties. That night she sat glued to the tube, watching every financial show, looking for clues to the day’s events. But they offered none. Her Wall Street friends from Harvard were totally freaked. Even seasoned pros were in a daze. Surprisingly, no bodies flew out of tall buildings. Instead, most of them picked themselves up and went back to work. Except for Maia. Axed on the very day she wore her pinstripe suit for the first time. Vix and Paisley took her to see Fatal Attraction to distract her, maybe not the best choice, considering, but boiled rabbit jokes were making the rounds.
By the end of the week Maia developed an assortment of symptoms, convincing herself she had ovarian cancer, like Gilda Radner. When the tests proved negative she called for applications to law school and signed up for an LSAT review course. “A pinstripe suit will never go out of style,” she told Paisley and Vix. “I just don’t know about big shoulders.” A week later she found a part-time job filling in as an assistant to a real estate entrepreneur.
In early November Caitlin came to town, stopping in New York on her way back from Buenos Aires. She came directly from the airport to the apartment. She’d never met Maia and
Paisley, who referred to her as Vix’s childhood friend, but she dismissed them as quickly as she did the furnishings. “Cute … very post-college-working-girl.” She wore jeans and a big sweater, no makeup. She’d let her hair grow long. She looked fabulous. Flamenco dancing must have agreed with her. She asked Vix to spend the weekend at Lamb’s pied-a-terre at the Carlyle and while Vix threw her things together Paisley, the gracious southern hostess, offered Caitlin wine and cheese, but Caitlin declined. “Maybe some other time?”
“So, you didn’t like Buenos Aires?” Maia said.
“I liked it fine. But it’s time to move on.”
“Where will you go next?” Paisley asked.
“To Madrid, I think.”
“What will you do there?”
“What I always do … study, gather experience, fuck interesting people.”
“How lucky you are,” Maia said, with a hint of sarcasm.
“You think so?”
“You’re living out everyone’s fantasy.”
“Not everyone’s.”
In the taxi, on their way to the Carlyle, Caitlin gave Vix a flat package wrapped in red tissue paper. Vix opened it carefully and pulled out a gorgeous antique silk piano shawl, printed with poppies and edged in black fringe.
“For your graduation,” Caitlin said, kissing Vix first on one cheek, then the other. “I always forget how much I miss you when we’re apart. You look tired. You’re not getting enough sex, are you?”
Vix laughed. “Maybe I look tired from too much.”
“No,” Caitlin said. “Not enough. I can always tell. Are you seeing anyone?”
“I’ve only been in the city a few months.”
“A few months can be a long time. It used to feel like a long time when we were kids. Sometimes I wish we were twelve again. Don’t you?”
“No. I wouldn’t want to go through all that twice.”
At the Carlyle Caitlin collapsed on the sofa in the living room. “Do you realize I left Buenos Aires twenty-two hours ago and I haven’t really slept or had a proper meal since?” She picked up the phone and ordered dinner for two—shrimp and scallops over linguine, an arugula and radicchio salad, lemon tarts for dessert. While they waited she opened a bottle of chardonnay and poured them each a glass. “I want to hear everything about your work.”
But when Vix began to talk Caitlin’s eyes glazed over and Vix could tell she wasn’t really that interested. Or maybe she was as genuinely tired as she claimed because halfway through dinner she put down her plate, stretched out on the sofa, and fell asleep. Vix covered Caitlin with a blanket, finished her meal, and carried the plates of uneaten food to the tiny kitchen, where she set them in the empty fridge.
Then she turned out the lights and sat in the darkness watching Caitlin sleep, the beautiful face relaxed, the long, lithe body curled up like a cat. Later, on her way to the bedroom, she touched Caitlin’s hair, touched her cool cheek, the way she’d dreamed of touching her when they were children.
The next day Caitlin slept till noon. Vix had already finished the Times crossword puzzle and one of the lemon tarts left over from dinner.
“Thanks for last night,” Caitlin said when she awoke.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Yes, you did. You let me sleep.” She wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Oh good. You saved everything.” She came back with a plateful of cold linguine. “So now I want to hear all about your life,” she said, slurping up a mouthful, “starting with Bru’s proposal.”
“There’s not that much to tell.”
“But he gave you a ring and you said no?” Caitlin prompted.
“I said I wasn’t ready.”
“It’s supposed to be guys who aren’t ready … guys who can’t commit.”
“I guess I’m an exception to the rule.”
“You surprise me. I always thought you’d wind up married to him with a houseful of kids by the time you were thirty … leading an incredibly boring, ordinary life.”
“How could I? I signed the NBO pact, remember?”
Caitlin laughed. “NBO or die! So you’re really over him?”
“Yes, totally!” She was pleased at how sure of herself she sounded, considering that she’d called him just weeks ago, on a night she’d felt so blue, so alone, she could hardly bear it. Her hands had trembled and her mouth had gone dry when he’d answered. She should have hung up right away. Instead, haunted by the idea that he thought Harvard had turned her into an elitist, she’d said, “Just so you know … I hate snobs!” She regretted it the second the words were out of her mouth.
“Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?” he asked.
When she didn’t respond he said, “Victoria?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Do me a favor … don’t call again.”
By the time she said, “I won’t,” he’d hung up the phone.
That night Caitlin danced for her decked out in full flamenco—red and black dress cut down to reveal the tops of her breasts, a slit up to her crotch, her hair pulled back, a flower tucked behind her ear—heels and castanets clicking. A fiery, seductive dance that ended with her body on the floor … hands outstretched to her audience of one. When the music stopped Caitlin waited for her to make the next move. Finally, Vix cleared her throat and said, “I think we should go out …”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“So that was Caitlin,” Maia said when Vix got back from the Carlyle on Sunday afternoon. She and Paisley were painting the kitchen cabinets a deep blue. “It doesn’t take a shrink to see she’s jealous of us … of Paisley and me. She doesn’t want anyone in your life to be more important than her.”
“You saw all that in ten minutes?” Vix asked, tossing her overnight bag on her bed.
“I saw it the second she walked in. And the way she turned up her nose at the wine Paisley offered …”
“Caitlin’s complicated,” Vix said, changing into a T-shirt and sweatpants.
“We’re all complicated,” Maia said. “And we’ve all had friends like her.”
“I don’t think so,” Vix said, coming into the kitchen where she picked up a paintbrush, dipped it into the tray of blue paint, and got to work. “Oh, please …” Maia said. “There’s a Caitlin in every junior high. You have to get over her and get on with your life.”
“I am getting on with my life.”
Paisley
SHE HAS TO SAY, she admires Victoria for her loyalty to the Phantom Friend, as well as for having the guts to tell Bru she wasn’t ready. They never talk about him. The subject is off limits. Victoria says it’s easier that way. She realizes her crush on him was just a momentary thing. She’s way past imagining herself on a desert island with him, or any other island. Besides, there’s this guy who’s been pitching a sitcom to her boss …
36
THE PLACE THEY SHARED in Chelsea had just one bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and eight hundred square feet of open space. “Think of it as a loft,” the rental agent had said, “in a very now neighborhood.”
The week they’d moved in they constructed individual sleeping areas by hanging Indian print fabrics on rods suspended from the ceiling, making it look as if they were patients in some eclectic hospital ward. As far as privacy went, forget it. But with the threat of AIDS, with everyone talking about Safe Sex, they weren’t exactly whooping it up.
Of the three of them only Paisley slept around, refusing to waste her youth worrying about some disease she wasn’t going to get, because the men in her life were Ivy League types, from good families.
“At least insist they use condoms,” Maia lectured regularly. She’d become so cautious she swabbed the toilet seat with alcohol before sitting on it, convinced Paisley was going to bring home herpes, or the papilloma wart virus, or trich at the very least. “You don’t know who’s bi, you don’t know who’s doing what with whom …”
Every Tuesday night they at
e supper in front of the tube, watching thirtysomething. Was this where their lives were heading?
Vix’s job at Squire-Oates had turned out different than she’d expected. Working with Captains of Industry translated into editing videotapes of corporate executives during an intensive three-day course in communication, each course geared to that specific individual’s needs so he or she, but mostly he, could face a press conference with confidence when grilled about the latest mishap, lawsuit, merger, whatever, at the corporation.
It was up to Vix to catch their flaws on tape. Did he touch his balls, stroke his chin, do that thing with his jaw? Were his hands flying out of control as if he might take off at any moment? Was his speech clear and concise or did he stumble, mumble … and how about those long aaahhhhs, as if he had a tongue depressor lodged in his throat while he was trying to come up with the answer to a tough question? Did she fiddle with her jewelry, lick her lips, constantly flick her hair away from her face?
In just three days, with endless practice in front of the agency’s team of specialists, most of these Captains of Industry learned to face the camera and come off as trustworthy, believable individuals. It amazed Vix. She wondered why Dinah didn’t take the course herself.
Dinah was as determined and ambitious as any of them, yet often couldn’t make decisions. She’d sometimes drop a folder on Vix’s desk. “Victoria, I’m giving you this one,” she’d say, twisting a strand of hair around her finger or, if she was in a real bind, sucking on the ends. “Don’t disappoint me.”
Squire-Oates had an impressive client list and Vix found she was good at coming up with strategies for their campaigns to promote policies, personalities, and products. She decided she was more of an idea person than a technical one and looked forward to the day when Dinah, recognizing this, would come through on her promise to nurture her career.