Gossip

  I was on my feet to embrace them both.

  “Grace Holland Metcalf! Look at you! Nicky, you sly dog, is this your girl?”

  They both laughed and wriggled with pleasure at their surprise.

  “I don’t believe it, it’s too wonderful!” It was so wonderful I started to laugh.

  Grace had lost weight while she was in France, making her always trim figure positively elegant, and today she was wearing her silky wheat-colored hair in a loose bun with a red lacquered chopstick through it. She seemed to be made of cashmere, small and entirely feminine, except for an elaborately carved gold and onyx sealing ring that I recognized as her father’s. She smelled of citrus.

  “Tell me everything! How did you find each other?” They told the story of their meeting, in alternating versions. And then about their first date.

  “He took me bowling! I’d never been bowling!”

  “How was she?” I asked Nicky, amused.

  “Very good,” said Nicky at the same moment Grace cried, “Terrible!”

  When they got to the moment about halfway through their first dinner when they realized they had me in common, they both said, “There really are only six people in the world.”

  I said that was true, by which I meant that to live in a vast, mean, and dangerous world but feel that in fact it’s a trustworthy lacework of lucky coincidence is to feel richly blessed.

  When our food came, they turned to musing how, with so much in common, they hadn’t found each other before.

  “Avis and Dinah must have been at boarding school together too, weren’t they, Lovie?” I explained that we had overlapped, but Avis had been two years ahead of us.

  They wanted to know how I happened to know Avis as well as I did now, and I told them. “She’s a remarkable woman,” I said, and Grace agreed, without elaboration. Nicky glanced at her.

  When I got back to the shop, the phone was ringing. Dinah crowed, “Did you ever?”

  “You are going to have to stop calling Avis Mrs. Gotrocks now.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “You must admit, Grace is a lovely human being.”

  “Adorable,” said Dinah.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Since Sunday. I’ve been dying to call, but they so much wanted to tell you themselves.”

  We settled down to a good long chin-wag about how serious they were, what might happen next, and what Avis was going to think.

  As I already knew, there was a reason Grace had gone to Paris to finish college and not come back until now. Harrison’s death had let a genie out of a bottle in that little family. It was Harrison who had abandoned Grace in so many ways, but it was her mother she was furious with. She was angry that Avis had let her father drink himself to death. She was angry that Avis traveled so much. She was angry that in emotionally confusing circumstances, Avis reacted with good manners rather than with some passion or wisdom of the heart Grace longed for, which would have been messier but felt real. I once suggested to her that we are charged, in this life, with loving each other, but not necessarily with interfering with each other’s choices. She asked me, if she decided to hang herself, would I stand by and let her? Things seemed a good deal simpler to her at the time than they did to me. As is often the case with the young.

  You know how, when you ask about your friends’ children and all is well, you get a happy story? When I asked Avis about Grace in those years, all she said was, “She’s fine.” I knew that it made her very sad to be so distant from Grace, but she didn’t know what she had done that couldn’t be forgiven, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. I did try to tell her that it was good that Grace felt sure enough of her love to dare to be angry with her, but Avis found that pretty cold comfort.

  Meanwhile, Grace was a girl in the market for a mother, and that was not the kind of thing Dinah ever missed.

  “My friends always love my mother more than they do me,” Nicky said cheerfully. In addition to Nala, two of his high school girlfriends had stayed in touch with Dinah years after Nicky broke up with them. But from the beginning, with Grace and Dinah it was something more.

  Dinah made time for the young, and they always knew that her pleasure in their company was unfeigned. They were welcome at her table, she didn’t mind changes of plan at the last minute, she loved their jokes and the rush of ever-evolving private languages they brought into the house. She saw movies none of the rest of us saw, she knew the new bands and got the point of hip-hop when the rest of us didn’t even want to. She could do the moonwalk, she knew what vogueing was, she was always in demand to demonstrate the Mashed Potato, which the young found blissfully funny. She was sexy.

  It might be true to say that she didn’t recognize a difference between herself and them. It might have had to do with the fact that Richard had supported her for so long, a little as if he were the daddy and she were still and forever a not quite adult, or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I make too much of the difference money makes, whom you take it from, or don’t. I’m sure she would say of me that I’m incomplete because I never had children of my own. Perhaps she’d be right. Being complete is not a condition given to many of us.

  I had always tried to be a safe haven for Grace. I loved to read to her when she was little, and I brought her stylish presents, always something a little more grown-up than the age she was. When she was seven I noticed that no one had troubled to teach her to ride a two-wheeler and suggested to Avis that it was time. Grace didn’t know that. I didn’t especially want her to; I wanted to make Avis look good. If I had known that Avis was going to buy Grace a bike and have the nanny teach her to ride it, I’d have taught her myself. Just thinking about that little face makes me sad.

  Dinah was under no such restraint as trying to make Avis look good. One night when Nicky was working late we went to see The Hours with Grace, and out for a bowl of pasta afterward. Dinah got off on the subject of being the first in her class to get her period.

  “I thought I was dying,” she crowed. “I’d never heard of bleeding that didn’t mean something terrible had happened. I cried all night, thinking how sad my parents would be that I had a fatal disease. That and trying to decide what to wear on my deathbed.”

  As an oldest child, I had my own story to tell. Then Dinah said to Grace, “I suppose your mother had you all kitted out with supplies and instructions?”

  Grace said, “Are you joking? My mother hasn’t noticed I’m out of grade school. She’d still be having those fucking yellow ducks embroidered on my socks if the Women’s Exchange hadn’t gone out of business.”

  I was thinking of some way to say how well Avis meant, without sounding mealymouthed. Dinah wasn’t. She roared her great gravelly laugh. “Ducks? On your socks? You must be kidding.” It was like a romance, what had sprung up between Grace and Dinah. They couldn’t get enough of each other. I wasn’t sure myself how Dinah had come to be so important to Grace so quickly, so much more than I had ever been to her, but it happens like that sometimes. I could adduce reasons, so could you, but it wasn’t reasonable, it really was a matter of the heart. People were always falling in love with Dinah.

  Mrs. Oba’s niece, Stephanie, had come to work for me, to learn the business. She handled the walk-ins, and she could run the shop on her own if necessary, which left me free to get away for more than a long weekend now and again, a welcome development. One afternoon in early spring I came downstairs to take a break from a new inventory program I was wrestling with to find Stephanie with a tall, rather strongly built redhead whom I had never expected to meet in the flesh. She was wearing a periwinkle blue strapless sheath with a sexy kick pleat and a matching stole, appraising herself in the mirrored back wall of the showroom. On her feet she still wore a pair of ballet flats. She turned from her reflection to me as soon as I entered the room.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, taking her in every bit as carefully as she was regarding me. “That’s a marvelous color on you.” r />
  For some seconds, she just looked at me. Finally she said, “Of course, the shoes don’t help.”

  “Would you like to borrow a pair of heels?” We were now standing side by side, reflected in the mirror. She was younger than I, but not by as much as a decade. Her haircut and color were dramatic for my taste, the shade a dark russet not found in nature, and the cut severe, but well done; Frédéric Fekkai, I would guess.

  “Do you have a pair? I’m a nine.”

  “Certainly.”

  Stephanie, who had been hovering, disappeared and returned with some silver evening sandals.

  “Are you shopping for a special occasion?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, I was just . . .”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She turned her figure sideways to appraise the effect in the mirror while my reflection watched. Her belly was going a little soft; otherwise, she was admirably trim. Normally at this point in the proceedings I flatter a little, if the dress really suits the customer, or if it doesn’t, suggest something else. In this case, I stayed quiet.

  Eventually she said, “I like the built-in . . .” She put her hands on her ribs, indicating the foundation garment upon which the bodice was constructed. I nodded. “And the price?”

  I mentioned a number that was not small. She didn’t react, a sign that either she wasn’t seriously considering a purchase or that money was no object, and I didn’t think it was the latter.

  “Well,” she said at last, “I’ll think about it.”

  She turned to look at me directly. Then she turned to the dressing room, and Stephanie followed her, carrying her flats. As she drew back the curtain, I saw that there were at least five cocktail dresses on the peg inside.

  “Is Madame still considering any of these?” Stephanie asked, very correctly.

  “I liked this one.” She took it and held it up, as if she were asking what I thought of it, though she wasn’t.

  I said, “That’s a new designer for us. I think he’s going to work out very well.”

  “American?”

  “Yes. From Seattle, oddly enough.”

  “Why oddly?”

  Oh God. Why had I said anything? I’d been doing so well.

  “I don’t know, I just hadn’t thought of Seattle as a fashion hub.”

  “Oh.”

  “I guess now it’s an everything hub. What with Starbucks. And Bill Gates.” Shut up, Loviah.

  “I haven’t been there.”

  “I haven’t either. This designer came to me.”

  She stopped in the door of the dressing room. “Really? That’s interesting.”

  Was it? Why? I wanted her to go in and put her own clothes back on before I said anything dumber.

  Eventually she did. She emerged, wearing a pair of jeans and a jacket off the rack from Armani Ex. We showed her out.

  Then I went upstairs and called Gil.

  “Guess who was just here?”

  He said, “Who?”

  “Meredith.” His oldest daughter.

  We’d always wondered how much Althea knew about us, or if she knew everything and didn’t care. Either was possible. The children were a different matter. They hero-worshipped their dad, Meredith especially. As did I. Meredith’s relationship with Althea was often strained, but in spite of being what any statistician would have to call middle-aged, she was Daddy’s Little Girl.

  I described Meredith’s visit, how she had seemed prepared to try on everything in the store to kill time until I showed up. How we had circled each other, tails erect, sniffing.

  “No wagging?” he asked. He used to tease me about my little Norwich terrier, Hannah. It’s a cliché, I suppose, the childless woman and her pet, but there are reasons for clichés.

  Some helpful soul had told Meredith about me, that much was sure. The question was, what would she do about it? There’d been a time when I’d pictured having her as my stepdaughter. Someone to protect and laugh with, someone to take to Elizabeth Arden for massages and manicures. But that was always a dream I dreamed alone. Althea didn’t believe in divorce. She was Catholic, but that wasn’t why: she just thought it was common. “So undisciplined,” she was known to say. Althea gained no weight she didn’t mean to gain, barely ever was ill, never complained and never explained. It had to be like being married to the queen of England.

  We talked it over that weekend at our place in Connecticut. Sitting with his long thin frame collapsed like a stork’s into the wing chair by the fireplace, Gil looked hardy and content, still with thick dark hair, barely silvered, still with the muscular grace of the athlete he was. It was hard to believe he was nearly eighty. He wore an old tweed jacket and a pair of thick socks with slippers; the only sign of age I could see in him was that his feet were always cold.

  Hannah, the traitor, abandoned her spot beside me on the sofa and stood before him, wiggling and making a little imploring noise in her throat until he picked her up and settled her on his lap. I brought him his silver bullet, a very dry gin martini with three olives. He sipped his drink slowly, and at the end ate two of the olives and fed the third to me. He delivered this to me on the end of a toothpick, as if he were feeding a baby bird. To this day, the scent of a gin-soaked olive is enough to transport me to a happier time.

  “Do you think she just learned about me? Did she come to see what a Scarlet Woman looks like?”

  Gil was quiet, pondering. We both looked out the window at my rose garden, which was filled with color although it was early in the season.

  “Something must have happened. Something’s changed.”

  Gil didn’t like to talk about Althea with me. We were separate things to him. He’d chosen to stay in the marriage, and so had she, and I had to respect the privacy of that. So it was unusual that he said now, “Althea is coming home for the summer.”

  “Home. To New York?” I tried not to show the shock I felt. She had spent the summers in Provence for as long as I’d been in the picture.

  “I’ve taken a house in Easthampton for her. She wants to have the grandchildren out to stay with her.” Meredith had two children; George, the youngest, had one and another on the way. Clara, the classic middle child, claimed to be married to her career, which so far consisted of big parts in very small dark foreign films and a series of seriously unsuitable boyfriends.

  After a pause, I said, “Is this the new pattern? Or an experiment?”

  “Experiment, I think. She lost two old friends in France this winter. One had been ill, but the other just died in her sleep. Those were body blows. She may give up the Paris house.”

  We looked at each other. I couldn’t imagine what that would mean for us if it happened.

  “Is she likely to enjoy playing Go Fish with four-year-olds?”

  “You never know. She’s a surprising person.” I got up and took his glass into the pantry to pour him his dividend.

  “She comes from a line of long-lived women,” Gil said after I was resettled on my sofa. “When the husbands in that family die at ninety-five, the obituary always reads ‘survived by his wife and his mother.’ ”

  I understood. If she wanted to be closer to her family as these inevitable losses mounted, anyone would understand.

  And what did Meredith’s visit mean? There seemed nothing to do but wait and see.

  At a dinner party on Gramercy Park that spring, the guests were talking about their summer plans. Some people called Delafield were divorcing; my hostess’s house was right next to theirs on Georgica Pond. “It’s heartbreaking, really. They just finished the guesthouse.”

  “What happened?”

  “He has depression. But he’s been much better lately. New pills or something.”

  “I don’t think I know them.”

  “Yes you do—Paul and Elsa, second marriage, she’s from Oslo, he’s in publishing? They go to Brick Church?”

  “Is she leaving him because he’s better and now she can?”

  “That really is sad, if true.” br />
  “It might be Paul who’s leaving. I heard there was a handsome tennis pro involved.”

  “Who gets the house?”

  “She’s in the apartment, with the children. The house in Easthampton is rented.”

  “Lucky renters. Do you know them?”

  “Gil and Althea Flood. They’re older. The Realtor says they’re lovely.”

  “I thought she lived in Paris.”

  “Does she?”

  “You know, I have a friend who would be perfect for Paul.”

  I stopped listening.

  Chapter 12

  My sad and dignified friend Avis, knowing New York would hold nothing for me that summer of 2003, invited me to come visit her in Maine, where she’d been spending each August on an island since Harrison died. Her cottage was modest, two bedrooms only, with a kitchen that hadn’t been changed since the 1950s. A lady came from the village to clean once a week; otherwise she was alone. It took me two days to get there.

  As we approached it on the ferry from Northeast Harbor, the island, soft with summer grasses, appeared golden in the sun, studded randomly with austere white houses and looking altogether like an Andrew Wyeth painting. The day was gorgeous, with a high pure sky, and the bay shimmering.

  Half the population seemed to be waiting at the dock for visitors, packages from FedEx or UPS, or in our case, the crabmeat Avis had ordered for our lunch. Hefting my bags down the gangplank, I spotted her chatting happily with a short man in a navy mechanic’s jumpsuit that had TOM embroidered over the pocket. He was tanned like leather except for the white seams around his mouth and eyes. The nails on his hands were so deeply edged with black grease, it seemed they couldn’t have been clean in years. Avis was wearing a pair of baggy sun-faded pinkish shorts, espadrilles that no longer had a color, and a man’s white shirt, open at the neck. On her head was a wide-brimmed straw hat, its edges coming unwoven in places where something had chewed it over the winter. “Tom” accepted a large gray canvas sack stamped U.S. MAIL from one of the deckhands and started off up the hill, pushing his sack before him in a wheelbarrow. Avis put her hands on my shoulders and kissed the air beside my ear. It was a warm greeting; touching people is hard for Avis. She took my smaller bag, although I warned her it was the heaviest.