Autobiography of Us (9 page)

“You’ve been seeing him all this time?”

“A little credit, please.” She looked disgusted. “He called me up out of the blue to say he had a sure thing.
Streetcar
, for Christ’s sake. I hung up on him, of course, but two minutes later the director calls and says he’ll be expecting me. Says he’s heard wonderful things and that he’s looking forward to it. I cut rehearsal to get my hair done, for crying out loud. And then Freddy shows up at the theater the morning of with that hangdog look of his to say it was all a mistake. That they booked someone ages ago and he must have missed the goddamn memo. Did I want to have goddamn
breakfast
.” She shook her head. “I don’t have
it
, is the point. The thing.”

“You’re going to be famous. Everybody says so.”

“Oh, screw everyone,” she said heatedly. “What do
you
say?”

“I think you’ll do whatever you please—just the way you always have. I’ve always thought that’s extraordinary.” I tried to smile. “I guess I think it’s always been the most extraordinary thing about you.”

She stared at me a moment longer and then her face changed, the color rushing back into her cheeks. “You do, don’t you.” She crossed the small bathroom in two steps and put her arms around me. Her hair covered my face, my eyes. “Bless you.”

She was holding me too tightly and I tried to laugh, just to see if I could breathe. “Since when do you care what I think?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the brains of this operation,” she went on. Smoke was everywhere and my eyes burned, but she kept her grip on my shoulders. “The rest of them can go to hell.”

“No one can hold a candle to you. Lindsey’s not even one little bit as pretty as you—”

“Pretty.”
She pulled back to look me in the face. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s everything,” I said, confused. “Isn’t it? Look at Elizabeth Taylor. Look at Jean Harlow. Kim Novak—”

But she was staring at me with a curious expression. “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe it’s time I face facts.” Her face was very pale in the overhead light, her skin with a shine to it as though she’d begun to sweat. “Maybe it’s all we’ve got.”

“Looks?”

“Sex.”

I glanced down at my shoes, the tips damp from the grass. Her fingers had been cool on my shoulders, surprisingly so; I could feel the ghosts of their imprints on my skin. “We’ve got a little more than that, don’t you think?”

“Speak for yourself.” I started to protest but she cut me off.

“Time to toast our fallen flower,” she said lightly, already turning away as she spoke. I stood there a moment, trying to figure out who she meant, before I followed her through the door.

* * *

Of course I’d been to one of her plays. It was something terribly modern, or modern for those times, anyway. I’m sorry to say I don’t remember the title or who wrote it. The important thing is that it was awful—the costumes garish, the stage set with clusters of potted palms, a girl with a flute ruining what gravitas the opening moments might otherwise have held. There seemed to be some conflict between the flute girl and the boy who came onstage soon after her, but because I’d slipped in just before the curtain went up and decided to stand at the back rather than bear the embarrassment of walking down the aisle to search for a seat, I had a hard time hearing either of them properly. They had yet to learn, it seemed, the art of elocution.

The play couldn’t have been more than ten minutes in when there was a clang—a bell, maybe, or else some sort of gong—and Alex appeared from behind one of the palms as though summoned. She was barefoot for reasons I was never able to discern and dressed in what can only be called a robe. Grecian, the intention must have been, though it was jeweled or sequined, sewn along the hem with something that sparkled, and draped over one shoulder in a way that left the other bare. It was a few inches too long and dyed a deep vermilion: On anyone else, it would have looked ridiculous. Of course Alex carried it off to a T.

She had what I believe you would call
presence
—a thing I have come to think you are either born with or go without. There was a languor to her movements, an ease I imagine any fine actor must have in order to inhabit that world of fictions so thoroughly you believe that even the smallest motion is genuine—the smile, the frown, the outstretched hand. She must have known how quickly she held us in her thrall. Still, what I realized as I watched from the back of the dark theater that night was that she was wonderful for one very simple reason: She loved it. Loved being up there in front of everyone, loved it with a determination that shone through her every inch. Even when she was meant to be distraught or furious, even when she was pounding the false wall at the back of the stage or mourning, so far as I could tell, the loss of that poor girl with the flute—even then she burned with a joy I can say, quite truthfully, I had never witnessed in her before.

But it will be clear to you that I never said a word to her about having been there. I never told her how marvelous she’d been, how I’d wished—suddenly, foolishly—for flowers to throw to her at the end, something remarkable. Lilies, I remember thinking wildly. Orchids. I left the theater as swiftly as I’d come in, walking through the crowd before breaking into a run as I cut across the main quad, the night air cool against my bare arms. I ran—ran as I had never run before, hard and fast, down past Cullers and out along the far edge of campus, weaving my way through the fragrant jacarandas until at last I hit open road. I had never been down that particular street, I don’t think, though it is difficult to know if I would have recognized anything that night, the trees a blur of shadows flashing past long after my legs had begun to burn.

For a while there I let myself believe I would never stop. I would go on, I told myself, in those brief, staccato thoughts the mind produces under duress—on and on. The ends of the earth, just as Alex had said. Darkest Brazil. The Amazon, where my body would grow hard and thin and I would feel no pain when the knife sliced through. Farther, I thought as my arms went loose and rubbery, a stitch taking hold in my side. I would run on and on to a place where the things of the world I lived in could no longer touch me.

But at a certain point my legs turned heavy; eventually I slowed to a walk. My breaths made ugly sounds in the stillness, and I stopped at last to lean up against a banana palm, the trunk rough through the thin material of my blouse. I stayed there for what felt like hours before starting back toward campus, the road in the darkness giving off a pale glow like the moon.

IT was night by the time the wedding party dispersed. The attendants snapped up the chairs behind us as we filed down the aisle, the sound of them clattering shut loud through the buzz of voices; two parallel lines of torches lit the path from the ceremonial arch to the tent, where the tables waited under the high white dome. Betsy and Lindsey took their seats two tables down with Buzz and Doc. My name card put me between Oliver and Charlie and across from Alex, who smoothed her skirt against the back of her legs as Bertrand Lowell pushed her chair in and sat down to her left.

“Nice evening.” Oliver leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. He gave me a wink. “How was the drive?”

“Fine.” He looked a little hurt and I tried again. “We saw a deer.”

“Did you hit it?”

“We came close.” We’d been rounding a corner somewhere north of Palm Springs when it stepped into the road, its slender head jerking up like a puppet’s.

“Pity
.”
Charlie shook the ice cubes in his glass. “Could have made a trophy out of it.” He glanced at Alex, her head tipped forward toward Bertrand Lowell. “Guess I’ll go round up some more drinks?”

Across the table, Alex laughed at Bertrand Lowell, who raised his light eyes in my direction.

I looked away quickly. “I’ll take something with tonic, please.”

I drank the glass of whatever it was Charlie brought back to the table, and then I had another. Waiters came by to make sure my wineglass stayed full; they popped champagne corks one after the next. Every now and then I heard the tiny
sssst
of moths crumpling into the candle flames. The flowers formed a screen at the center of the table, and as everything went on around me I pretended to listen to whomever was talking, nodding or laughing at the appropriate intervals. I didn’t hear a word. I was too busy watching them through the latticework of petals: Alex and Bertrand Lowell. I watched Alex dip her head toward him so the length of her hair swept across the remains of her dinner; Bertrand Lowell said something in a low voice and reached across her, casually brushing a few green curls from the ends of her mane as though it didn’t mean a thing. Believe me, it meant everything in those days to touch a girl like that.

I sat there pretending not to watch from across the table, my body angled toward the front where everyone lined up to toast the bride and groom. To my right, just beyond Buzz’s flushed face, Lindsey sat staring straight ahead. When at last the cake was cut—Benji fumbling it, of course, crumbs scattering down the front of Robin’s dress—and the band started up, it was a relief to stand. I took the hand Oliver offered me and walked with him out onto the dance floor.

Oliver wasn’t particularly light on his feet, but he tried. There wasn’t much more you could ask of a boy like him. It was hot out there in the crush of people, but I felt better immediately; the air had movement to it, at least, and when Oliver spun me my skirt twirled out, blowing up a little breeze. The band was surprisingly good. After a few songs, we were both breathing hard. Beads of sweat stood out across Oliver’s forehead.

“You alright?” He was gazing down at me with a frown.

“I’m having a ball.”

“It’s the funniest thing—” He stopped.

“Tell me.”

“It’s just,” he looked sheepish, “I could have sworn I saw you coming out of McCarren the other morning.”

“
Moi
?” I forced a laugh.

“Is there another Rebecca?” He smiled, but his eyes stayed serious. “I thought I was wrong, except the same thing happened a few weeks before. I thought maybe there was someone…”

“Someone what?”

“I don’t know. Some premed guy.” He turned me clumsily. “My father’s got me thinking they’re everywhere. Dime a dozen. Everyone but his son fighting to get out there and save lives.”

“Premed!” My voice was too loud; the sound of it made me cringe. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“You’re funny tonight.”

“Funny how?”

“Just … not quite yourself.” His face turned serious again. “If there
was
someone, you’d tell me. Wouldn’t you?”

“And if I tell you there’s no one?”

“Guess I’d have to believe you.”

“There’s no one.”

He gave me a look. “How do I know you’re not—”

“Hush.” I put my fingers to his lips, and his eyes went wide and startled.

After a few more songs, he brought me to the edge of the floor and went into the crowd and came back with fresh drinks. I didn’t especially like standing there: I kept hearing Alex’s laugh, or thinking I saw Bertrand Lowell’s dark head dipping under the overhang of the tent. When Charlie came over and mock-bowed, I looked at Oliver, motioning with my empty glass. He glanced down at his, still half full.

“Don’t let me stop you,” he said.

“I’d like to see you try.” I tried to say it lightly, but he only frowned as Charlie pulled me away.

He was a wonderful dancer, Charlie, much better than Oliver. He knew to keep his hand on the small of my back and the tips of his fingers on the other hand barely touching mine. He spun me out and reeled me back in; all at once I was having a terrific time. When he dipped me, I laughed with genuine pleasure. The song finished and we paused a minute, catching our breath.

“She’s enjoying herself tonight,” he said, jerking his head back toward our table.

“I suppose she is.”

“And you?” He looked closely at me. “You’re not drunk enough.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I am.”

He went off through the crowd and came back with another round of drinks. I’d already drunk far more than I should have, but the more I drank, the less I cared that Alex and Bertrand Lowell were still out there somewhere in the throng or sitting at the table, feeding each other forkfuls of cake. The more I drank, the easier it became to focus on how nice it felt to dance, to feel the swing of my body and the heat of Charlie’s hand against my back. I’d barely caught my breath when a boy with light-brown hair and brown eyes took my hand and pulled me back onto the dance floor. I think he told me he was Robin’s cousin. I heard myself say something inane:
She never told me she had a cousin!
or
Isn’t she a riot?
The words floated back at me from somewhere very far away. Women drifted past in their big dresses like large, pale fish; someone laughed and the sound flashed like a color, a burst of yellow that hung in the air, shimmering. I was having a harder and harder time hearing. Betsy sailed by in her green dress with Doc, his thin face bright with happiness. Robin appeared out of nowhere, leaning forward through a tangle of chiffon and lace to kiss me on the cheek.
Darling! Congratulations!
It wasn’t until the band stopped to take a break, the singer stepping to one side to cup her hands around a cigarette, that I realized I’d lost track of Alex completely.

I took the hand of whomever I had been dancing with off my arm and murmured an apology.

“Hey,” whomever it was said.

Oliver’s face appeared to my right, flushed and gleaming.

“Have you seen Alex? It’s important,” I insisted.

He shook his head. “Listen,” he started, “Charlie can be a real animal with those drinks,” but I pushed right past him.

What a sight I must have been as I made my way through the crowd! The front of my dress sagging from the heat, the gauze I’d pressed down so carefully at the beginning of the night drooping now, my hair falling out from all its pins. I kept catching my heel in the soft ground as I followed the path of torches and then the little trail leading to the cabins where we would spend the night. There was a heaviness to my arms and legs and I remember thinking, despite everything, how nice it would be to sit down right there in the grass and stretch out under the light of all those flames.