Dena sighed. “Sookie, I have so many people around me all day, believe me, I am not alone.”
“I mean when you go home at night. And on holidays, for instance. Who are you with on Christmas?”
“God, not this again. I don’t need to have children just to have someone to spend Christmas with. There are plenty of places I can go.”
“Ah, but you don’t go and that’s my point. You sure won’t come to Selma to spend it with us. You know what I think? I think you sit up there in that apartment of yours all by yourself, that’s what I think.”
“Sookie, I’m not like you. I like to be alone. I really do. Anyhow, let’s get off me. I am under enough pressure as it is without having to listen to your lamebrain, Good Housekeeping theories about how miserable and all alone in the world I am. Why can’t we just have a nice visit without you constantly badgering me?”
Sookie kept driving. For a long time she did not answer. “Dena, I have something I have to tell you.”
Dena could tell by her tone that it was going to be something she did not want to hear and moaned, “Oh, God, this isn’t going to be about some new religious experience, is it?”
“No.” Sookie looked worried and glanced into the rearview mirror, then pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine. She stared straight ahead, took a deep breath. Her eyes were closed. “Dena, I know about your mother.”
Dena, startled, said, “What?”
“There, I’ve said it and I’m glad. I know I’m taking a chance of losing you as a friend, but before you get furious at me, I didn’t mean to find out. It was an accident.”
“What are talking about?”
“It was a stupid thing to do but … we … well, all the girls in the house used to think you had a secret boyfriend. And … they put me up to looking to see if you had any love letters stashed away … and I accidentally read the letter from your grandfather by mistake.”
Dena felt her face getting hot and flushed and her heart was racing.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it … and I’m sorry.…”
Dena did not say a word.
“Are you just ready to kill me?”
Before Dena could answer, a woman with short brown over-permed hair in a green cotton housedress came out of her house and looked at them with curiosity. Sookie smiled and waved at her. The woman smiled and waved back and headed down the stairs toward them. Sookie mumbled, “Oh, Lord,” and rolled down her window.
The woman came over to the car and looked in at Sookie. “Are you here to give me an estimate?”
“No, ma’am, we’re just sort of lost.”
“Oh, I thought you might be looking for my house. I’m waiting on some people from Sears to come and give me an estimate on some indoor-outdoor carpet. But I guess you’re not them, are you?”
Sookie said, “No, ma’am.” The woman looked over at Dena. “No, ma’am. We just … stopped here for a minute. We’re headed on now. But good luck with your carpet.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well … would you like to come in anyway? If you’re lost you can use the phone, and I can show you the back room where I’m thinking about putting it. You can tell me what you think.”
Sookie, realizing that they had to leave, reached to turn on the ignition. “Thank you but that’s OK.”
The woman said to Dena, “You look familiar to me … are you any kin to the Larkins?”
Sookie jumped in. “No, she’s not from here, she’s just passing through. On her way to a plane. She’s a complete stranger.”
The woman was mildly disappointed. “Oh.” She stepped back from the car. “Well, let me get back on inside in case they are trying to call me. Nice talking to you.”
“Nice talking to you too … good luck with your carpet.”
“I just hope it’s not an arm and a leg, that’s all I hope. But I guess they’ll tell me, won’t they, if they ever show up.”
Sookie pulled away and waved good-bye. They drove awhile and Dena lit a cigarette but was silent. Sookie was miserable. “Dena, if you don’t say something I am going to have a heart attack. You’re going to have to say something eventually. I don’t know what gate your plane leaves from.… Look at me; I’m so nervous I’m breaking out in hives.”
Dena spoke. “Who else did you tell?”
“Nobody!” Sookie was emphatic. “Do you think I would tell anybody else? I didn’t even tell you until now! I wanted to but I was a coward. I wanted you to like me and you kept telling me you were spending all your holidays with your mother and what a wonderful time you had. I couldn’t very well just come out and say I knew you were lying, could I? I kept inviting you to come home with me but you never would come. I didn’t know what to do. You know I was addle-brained back then; I could barely figure out what to major in, much less something like that. I didn’t know what the right thing to do was so I didn’t say anything.”
Dena took another drag of her cigarette. “Have you told Earle?”
Sookie reacted in horror. “Earle! Why in the world would I tell Earle? No, I haven’t told anybody. Do you actually think I would betray a friend? I am a good friend, Dena, you know that. And if you don’t know that by now, then you must not trust anybody. Didn’t all the Kappas come to me and tell me everything? And the Pi Phis too? And did I ever repeat one word, even when I was dying to? No, I would never betray any of my sisters, and believe me, I know plenty. I’d rather have my tongue ripped out. You say I don’t know you, the truth is you don’t know me. I am your friend whether you like it or not.”
Sookie’s chin began to quiver and she was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry I read that letter … but I would never betray you and it hurts my feelings that you think I would.”
Dena put her cigarette out in the ashtray. “You were spying on me. What do you call that?”
“That wasn’t spying. I thought it was just boyfriend stuff. That does not count for serious spying … and you know it.”
“What if I had been going with some married man?”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I knew you weren’t going with some married man, for Lord’s sake.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know.”
“How?”
“You’re not that kind of girl.”
“How do you know?”
She looked at Dena as if she had suddenly lost her mind. “How do I know? Because you’re a Kappa, that’s why!”
Sookie looked up and saw the Varsity Drive-In sign. “Can we pull in here a minute? I’m a nervous wreck.”
“All right.”
Sookie parked and turned her engine off. A girl came up and Sookie ordered a large Coke. Dena ordered nothing. Sookie said, “Listen, Dena, I know you’re mad at me but you want to know why I worry about you and badger you. That’s why. I think you still lie to me about where you go and what you do on holidays. You spend too much time alone and that’s not good for a person. I don’t care what you say. And I didn’t get that out of Good Housekeeping, either.”
“Sookie, you knew about my mother; then why do you insist on babbling on and on about how happy and how great everything was back then when you knew better?”
Sookie threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, I know, I know … don’t ask me why. I always felt so guilty about it. I guess I couldn’t face the fact that I knew, that I let you down, because I couldn’t deal with it myself. Or maybe I could have helped you or something. I don’t know the reason; you’re the one seeing the psychiatrist! Ask him. I’d like to know myself. But don’t give him my real name.”
“Her.”
“Well, her, then, or just kill me. I’m flawed, what else can I say? I am just a weak, flawed person like Mother says. All I know is that I did the best I could … even though it wasn’t much. But, Dena, you really don’t know how badly I’ve felt all these years, and if you never speak to me again as long as I live, I’ll understand. I’ll kill myself and my children will be orphans, but I’ll understand. Give me
a cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“Well, I’m going to start. I might as well, I’ve just lost my best friend.”
“Oh, Sookie, you haven’t lost your best friend.”
“I haven’t?”
“Of course not.”
“Thank heavens …”
“After all, I was lying to you, too.”
“That’s right!” Sookie turned to Dena. “Why did you lie to me? I was your best friend.”
Dena reached for Sookie’s glass. “Give me a sip of that.”
After she drank, she said, “Because I was embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed? But why? It wasn’t your fault. Besides, Dena, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed.”
Sookie took her hand. “Don’t you think we should talk about it? It must have been terrible for you.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t even think about it anymore. That was a long time ago.”
“Did you ever find out what happened?”
“No.”
“Listen, Sookie—there are only a few people who know anything about it. And I’d like to keep it that way. It’s not something I want out in public. It’s not that I’m still upset over it or anything, it’s just something I don’t want to talk about with strangers, you know? Can you understand?”
“Of course,” Sookie said. “First of all, it’s nobody’s business. Second of all, you don’t want people to feel sorry for you or pity you. I understand perfectly, and as far as I’m concerned it’s forgotten. And you know you can trust me with your life.”
An hour later, when they arrived at the airport, Sookie hugged her good-bye. Dena paused a moment before she left, and even though it was hard for her to express her feelings she said, “Sookie, you really are a good friend.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you for years, goofy!”
A Greek Bearing Gifts
New York City
1978
Julian Amsley, the president of Dena’s network, like Ira Wallace, was born on the lower east side of Manhattan and had grown up as the poor son of first-generation immigrants. Both men had been ambitious and driven, determined to claw their way out of the dirty streets one way or the other. Only their methods had been different. Wallace wanted money and power for money and power’s sake and did not care what people thought of him. Amsley wanted money and power to acquire the things he wanted most, to be accepted into society, to get as far away as he could from the seedy Greek coffee shops where his father had been a dishwasher. By the time he was eighteen, he had changed his name from Julio Andropulous to Julian Amsley, worked, and saved enough money to take speech lessons. He married the daughter of a network vice president, took a job at the network, and using his father-in-law’s contacts and name, moved up the ladder fast until he eventually got the old man’s job.
At night he studied the so-called society people as if they were a college course. He learned how they dressed, where they bought their clothes, how they named their children, where they went to school. He found out where they lived, how they lived, and what they liked. He learned French, studied art, music, drama. Amsley hired the darling of the right set, Sister Parish, to decorate his apartment and his “cottage” in the Hamptons, hired experts to buy a collection of art. He paid a down-and-out, drunken son of one of the best families to make sure he was invited to the right parties. He needed the right address and the right wife. He divorced the first wife, married another, and mysteriously managed to get an apartment in a building that would have never allowed anyone to move in who was not approved of by the board, and certainly not a person in the entertainment business. He had to buy the building but it was worth it. It had taken him decades to do it, but eventually he was rich enough and smooth enough to marry beautiful and elegant women, thinking that somehow what they had would rub off on him, change him, magically make him one of them. But self-hatred had a way of ruining the world for you. After he pursued and married the first two women from the “best families,” he had nothing but contempt for them. And eventually they left him. He had all the trappings—the money, the company of attractive women, the parties—but still that thing he wanted, class, had always eluded him, stayed just beyond his reach. He had tried to buy it, to marry it, to imitate it but nothing he did worked. It was like trying to grab smoke.
Still, his black valet had more true class in his little finger than Amsley had in his whole body and he knew it, and was baffled by it. Julian sat one night at a small white table in the middle of his huge, cold kitchen surrounded by the best stainless steel appliances that money could buy. He sat alone at 3:00 A.M., drinking a glass of milk, staring at the wall, wondering what to pursue next to try and fill that black, empty hole in his gut. He was dressed in eight-hundred-dollar black silk pajamas, a fifteen-hundred-dollar cashmere robe, soft leather slippers, and his two-hundred-dollar haircut, but underneath, he still felt like that hungry little boy from Third Avenue, still running, still desperately trying to grab an apple off the cart as it passed by. And lately Dena Nordstrom was the shining apple he was trying to grab.
The game show hostess he had been going with for two years had struck him in the head with a huge onyx ashtray while he was asleep because he wouldn’t marry her. That week she had gone back to Texas and married the man who had the second largest Cadillac dealership in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and who had always hoped she would. Amsley was looking for another beauty to take her place, and who better than Dena Nordstrom? She was just what he liked. She had class and she was hard to get.
The next day Dena received what he always sent and what had always worked before, diamonds, and she sent them right back. She turned his invitations down, week after week, but finally he said something that changed her mind. “Going out with me will give you more stature, more clout. I can introduce you to everybody who is somebody. Think of it as business, if nothing else.”
That appealed to Dena. It wasn’t love. But it wasn’t easy; Amsley was an older man but he was not harmless. He was trying to prove that he was still a virile Greek man and it came to be exhausting having to fight him off.
But by dating him, and moving in his circles, there was a feeling in the air that she was moving up. The pressures mounted. His friends had the mistaken idea that because she was at their parties she was one of their crowd. She wasn’t. She was a working girl. Her social life was work to her. When the wealthy wives were busy the mornings after, shopping, getting their faces lifted, sleeping late, Dena was at the studio—and she was getting worn out. Again.
At first she had been impressed with all the so-called beautiful people with whom Julian Amsley brought her in contact. They were for the most part active people, restless, always on the move, seeking pleasure, seeking possessions and publicity … always running in packs from place to place, from Palm Beach to Paris to Monaco or Morocco, anyplace that was the next, new In place. But after a while she found out that most of the so-called jet-setters were as boring as they were bored—and as cynical as she felt herself becoming.
The truth was that ever since Howard had died it seemed like a light had gone out inside her, and she felt more lost and lonely in the world than ever. She needed someone to inspire her. Someone who could excite her. But who?
There was one person in the world whom she had not met whom she really would like to know. She had never had the nerve. One particularly gloomy Monday morning she felt at the end of her rope and picked up the phone and called his agent. Her reply astounded Dena. “Miss Nordstrom, he usually will not meet with people, or give interviews, but our mutual friend Howard Kingsley thought so highly of you, I will do the best I can.”
Dena put the phone down. It was like a gift from heaven, if she had believed in heaven.
The Court of Two Sisters
New Orleans, Louisiana
1978
Dena flew into New Orleans in the late evening and checked into the Bourbon Orle
ans Hotel but she did not sleep. The next morning the phone in her room rang. A high, thin voice said, “Miss Nordstrom, I understand you have traveled to the Crescent City for the sole purpose of engaging in a scintillating conversation with me, is that correct?”
“Yes, Mr. Williams, I have.”
“Well, I cannot guarantee you how scintillating it will be. All I can do is to assure you that as of this morning I still have a heartbeat, so I will call for you at around eleven-thirty. Will that be convenient?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll be downstairs.”
She hung up. If someone had told her that one day she would be getting ready to meet Tennessee Williams she would not have believed them. At eleven, she was downstairs, sitting in the lobby under a palm tree, looking out on Orleans Street, hoping to see him first. She wore a thin white silk dress and was starting to freeze in the air-conditioning when a voice startled her. “Miss Nordstrom, I’m Robert, and Mr. Williams and I are here to take you to lunch.”
Tennessee Williams was standing by the front desk. He looked like a smaller version of the Count of Monte Cristo, as if he had wandered in from another century. Even his manner seemed to be that of another time. But when he spoke he was very much in the present.
“Miss Nordstrom, welcome to New Orleans. You’ve met Robert, who will accompany us through the streets, just in case I have a spell. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“I though we would take a little walk and then have a bite to eat, if that’s agreeable.”
“I would love to. This is my first trip to New Orleans.” They walked out into the brilliant sun, and the day was as humid as it was overlit.
While they walked he explained Robert’s presence.