Lydia's Party: A Novel (15 page)

The Party: 10:00
P.M.

In a burst of wine-fueled energy, the women had pushed the couch out of the way, scraping the floors, and moved the dining table in front of the fireplace. They’d set it at an angle so it would fit, though it didn’t really, and now, after dinner, the group was wedged in front of the fire, arguing about universal health care.

Platters and plates had been removed, along with the white tablecloth, after Elaine knocked over a bottle of red wine, and now a whole new meal, a banquet of desserts, had replaced them on the bare pine table. Along with the desserts, any single one of which would have been enough, the table held candlesticks, wineglasses, cups and saucers, two teapots, a coffeepot, and a forest of bottles—wine mostly, but also mineral water, grappa, and an old bottle of Fra Angelico someone had unearthed and brought along for laughs. Elaine was dribbling some in her coffee.

“I don’t care how much it costs,” Celia was saying. “A society is only as moral as how it treats its weakest members.” Jayne passed a tin of homemade candied grapefruit peel to Elaine.

“Ah. What would one of these evenings be without petrified sour fruit rinds,” Elaine said, to Maura, who’d brought it. She might as well rip out her teeth with pliers, Elaine thought. Everyone else was laughing at some story Betsy was telling now, about her clients and welfare fraud, but Elaine couldn’t shake her dark mood, and thinking about her dental problems didn’t help. She could hardly afford to have teeth.

Maura smiled, as if she hadn’t heard the insult. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to make candy next year, she thought. Her grandmother had taught her how, but the only people who’d ever liked it were all dead now. Roy had loved it. Of course, he was of an older generation that appreciated that sort of thing, she thought. They’d eaten it in bed—the tin balanced on her belly, sugar dropping onto her breasts, like snow. They’d done it every year, called it their own private Christmas. He’d spent his actual Christmas with his family.

When the tin came to her, Lydia took a piece and nibbled on the end. “Delicious,” she said, setting it down. Elaine picked up the uneaten candy and made a show of slipping it under the table to Maxine. When the dog refused it, Elaine tossed the thing into the fire. The sugar set off sparks.

“Opa!” someone said.

•   •   •

Lydia watched her guests. Everyone was talking at once now, even Elaine, even Norris, about grass-fed beef, the best place to vacation in Mexico, homelessness, Afghanistan, aging parents, Greek yogurt, college tuition, sleep apnea, the nutritional value of kale, the surprising satisfaction of silk long underwear, Botox, some novel everyone had read but her. Lydia was happy they seemed happy, but she felt exhausted.

Lately, in the midst of some gathering or the middle of a conversation, Lydia noticed she wanted to disappear. She’d make excuses, go to the bathroom, pretend to hear the telephone and leave the room. In a restaurant, the feeling would come over her so overwhelmingly that she’d need to get up and go away.
I’m sorry,
she’d say,
I need a little air
. She’d move to the outside seat or hint that she had an overactive bladder, which was less embarrassing than this other thing she didn’t have a name for, this feeling she sometimes got that she would simply explode if she had to be in close proximity to another human being for one more second. Betsy could name it, Lydia supposed. Betsy could probably even suggest medication, though even if Lydia had expected to live long enough for some calming drug to take effect, which she didn’t, she wasn’t sure she’d want to be medicated out of this feeling. A diagnosis would make the feeling a sickness, and this felt more fundamental than that.

Lydia remembered a cat she’d had—Gladys. Two weeks before Gladys died, she’d started to leave. Neighbors would call to say she was in their garage. Someone called from a sandwich shop, four blocks away.
We’ve got your cat
, they said, always kind. Lydia would bring her home and give her something special to eat, but the next day Gladys would do it again. After she died, it occurred to Lydia that Gladys had known it was time to leave. Maybe, Lydia thought, that was happening to her.

It seemed a shame, though, bad timing. She’d looked forward to the party all year and this would be her last. Now, in the midst of it, she could hardly breathe. She’d gotten stuck on the inside of the table, next to the fire. It had been fine earlier but now she felt trapped and could feel herself starting to sweat. She was plotting how to get out. She could crawl under the table, she thought, pretend it was a joke or that she wanted to pet Maxine, though that was a bit far-fetched. If she had to, she could climb over the table but that would seal it, that she was certifiable. She should just excuse herself, she thought. People did it all the time, though then she’d have to speak, interrupt Jayne, who was telling some story, to ask Celia to get up.

Lydia eyed the couch, the cool, beautiful, commodious couch, which is where she wanted to be. She wanted to lie down, just for fifteen minutes. She was trying to will herself there, where she could stretch out and be quiet and watch her friends having a lovely time. Let others talk, she thought. Let them carry this burden of social responsibility.

•   •   •

Are you all right
, someone said. She was clawing at her neck, unzipping her fleece vest to let in air.
I think I need a little air
, she said, and they let her through.

Lydia needed to tell them, she thought, before it got too late and they started to leave.

“I need to make an announcement,” she said, from the couch, but nobody heard. Celia was telling a story about Bruce Springsteen and everyone was laughing. Lydia didn’t have the energy to say it again louder. She closed her eyes and waited.

Maura

Maura couldn’t get over this feeling, even now, in the middle of a party, that everyone important in her life had betrayed her. She knew it was wrong to cling to hard feelings this way, and she tried not to. But some days Maura would wake up thinking about some thoughtless thing Roy said years before, and that would remind her of something Elaine said or something her mother had said when she was a child, and Maura wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep and all the next day and for days afterward she’d think of it.

Just teasing
, people always said, after.
Lighten up.
Stop being so sensitive
. Even tonight. Elaine had just said exactly that, after she’d made fun of the candy.

•   •   •

She’d been clumsy as a child, it was true, also bad at gym, always dropping things. Fat, of course. Though looking at the pictures now, Maura could see she hadn’t been as fat as she’d thought. Then she graduated from high school and got the job and everything changed. She lost seventeen pounds in six months. She bought new clothes, dyed her hair blond, got a perm. They were out of fashion now, but then it made a difference. When Maura saw how much difference it all made, how differently people treated her, she kept going. She got braces, then surgery. First her nose, then breast implants. After that liposuction, chin enhancement. She saved up for it the first time. Roy paid for the rest.

People misunderstood about Roy, Maura thought. They thought he was some terrible person but he could be nice, too. He called her dear. Sometimes she felt bad she’d let it go on all those years, that she hadn’t done more with her life, but other times she thought what they’d had was a kind of life, too. It was their own world, secret and with many rules, but good sometimes. Once a week he’d bring over take-out food, little presents sometimes.

•   •   •

Elaine won’t listen to this, even now. She tells Maura that Roy took the best years of her life
.
But Maura doesn’t know what that means. What else would she have been doing? Elaine says,
Anything—don’t you get it? You could have done anything.
Maura didn’t know about that. He may not have been perfect but he’d treated her better than anyone else had.

They were together twenty-one years. She’d seen him twelve days before he died, of a heart attack at the age of seventy-two, on some island in the Caribbean, celebrating his fiftieth anniversary with his wife and his four children and his eleven grandchildren and his first great-grandchild. Maura read about it in the newspaper. The obituary said he died “surrounded by those he loved most.” That had hurt, she’d had to admit. She’d always hoped that when he died, it would be with her.

It was his idea she go to college. He’d pay, he said. The catch was everything had to be secret, forever. He paid for the condo, too, every month. Now she owned it.
Big deal
, Elaine said, when Maura told her that.
You got a three-room condo with a view of the parking lot and free tuition at community college night school. His wife has two houses. His kids went to Yale.

They didn’t
all
go to Yale
, Maura said, standing up to her, which she almost never did. But that hurt. Maura felt more jealous of his children than she did of his wife. Actually, she didn’t feel at all jealous of his wife. Though at the beginning she’d wanted something more conventional. What it turned into, that was his idea.
What if we had an arrangement?
he’d said, early on, when she tried to break up with him. He was painting her toenails when he said it.

•   •   •

For years she didn’t tell anyone. Then she told Lydia, who’d been so understanding that Maura thought it would be all right to tell Elaine. Elaine was all over her to dump him.

Maura didn’t feel angry at Roy until later. Now, sometimes bad memories came back—all those holidays, alone. Somehow it was all connected—her mother, her sisters, Roy.

Elaine thought she was Maura’s defender but there were times, Maura thought, she could be as mean as the rest of them, meaner, really. What was it about her that brought out the meanness in people, Maura wondered. Even now, here at Lydia’s, among friends.

The Party: 11:30
P.M.

Despite the deep cold, snow had started to fall again, and the view out the window was a Christmas card, picturesque beyond all probability.
Snow on snow.
Inside, the fire, after its first hour of dangerous blaze and much overtending by the women, who’d taken turns poking and stoking it, had settled to a low, steady burn. Maxine had consumed most of the soup bone Maura had brought her, buried the rest in a snowdrift, and returned, covered with a white crust that began to melt the minute she walked inside. Now she was positioned at an angle under the table, her face as far away as possible from the occasional spark that flew past the fire screen and as near as possible to handouts and crumbs.

Norris was standing at the window, in her coat, watching the snow. She’d been trying to leave for an hour but her car was blocked. Jayne, never much good at parallel parking and now completely out of practice, had parked too close behind her, right up against her bumper. Norris had purposely arrived late so this wouldn’t happen, but Jayne had gotten there even later. She’d sat with Wally while he finished his supper, then stayed until he fell asleep. Now—finally, Norris thought—Jayne had gone to find her keys. They’d need to dig Jayne out, then Norris.

Jayne started to put on her coat. “You can’t leave yet,” Lydia said. “Surprises are in store.”

“We’re digging Jayne out,” Norris said, stepping outside. Two shovels leaned in a corner of the front porch. Norris picked one up and handed the other to Jayne.

Five minutes later, Jayne came back, stamping snow off her boots and asking for cat litter, for traction. Ten minutes after that, they both came in and announced the car was stuck. Norris held a cell phone to her ear. She was on hold with Triple A, she said. She pressed the speaker button and set the phone on the table. Finally, a recorded voice announced there would be a minimum six-hour wait for a plow. “What if I told you this is an emergency,” she said to the human who came on the line after she pressed more buttons. “Then I’d recommend you call the police,” the voice said. In the other room someone had turned on the television. It was official, according to the weathergirl—a blizzard. Everyone in a three-state radius was advised to stay off the roads.

Someone yelled, “Slumber party!” Glasses were clinked. Norris said something indecipherable under her breath.

•   •   •

Lydia sat in a kitchen chair, with Malcolm sprawled across her lap. Last year this would have been funny. Tonight it seemed like a bad dream. She was just too tired. Almost as soon as they’d arrived she’d been looking forward to them leaving. Though at least now she had an excuse to postpone the announcement. She’d do it in the morning, she told herself.

•   •   •

“Better call Ted and tell him not to come,” Celia said to Betsy, hoping to make her hurry, to keep Ted from leaving. If he was already on his way they’d be stuck with him all night. The last thing anyone needed, Celia thought, was Ted on the premises.

“He’s probably already on his way,” Betsy said, digging her phone out of her purse.

Celia looked at Lydia.

“What?” Betsy said, sensing conspiracy.

“Nothing,” Lydia said. “Call him and tell him you’re staying here for the night.”

“I know you think he’s overbearing,” Betsy said to Celia, holding her hand over the phone while it rang. “But it’s better than smug.”

Jayne breezed in with a stack of dirty plates. “Stop fighting, you two,” she said, though she found it entertaining. She set the plates on the counter, next to Celia, who was talking to Peter on her cell while she rinsed wineglasses. Betsy brushed past, phone to her ear, on the way to the hall for some privacy.

Lydia watched, wondering how soon she could politely retire to a horizontal surface.