The Cousins (12 page)

The lunch party afterwards was held in an old mansion known as the Haunted House, which was used for children’s parties and was both picturesque and childproof. It wasn’t a very large party—all the girls and boys from Sam’s class, the family, the proud in-laws, and a few of Jenny’s old friends. There were separate tables for the adults and the kids, and different menus, since Jenny was serving fish, which most kids hated. On one side of the room was a small, lively band, and on the other a table which had been set up as an ice-cream bar. The boys and girls were dancing, and their enjoyment was infectious.

Kenny was there, from Santa Barbara, with his son Jason but not yet with the woman he had said was the One. Olivia went around the room kissing everybody in the family, and then sat at the large round cousins’ table between Roger and Taylor. She had not seen Taylor since Grady’s funeral, and she looked a lot better. She wondered if Taylor was still on tranquilizers.

Jenny, in a silk print dress, which Olivia knew she had not bought at Julia’s, went from table to table accepting congratulations and apologizing. “I know you don’t like the hotel,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to save everyone money, and it’s close.”

“It’s fine,” Olivia said.

“I picked the Haunted House because I wanted this party to be really for the kids,” Jenny said, “and not an expensive status thing for the adults.”

“They love it,” Olivia said.

“I think so, too. And don’t forget, everyone’s coming back to our house this evening. I’m having a buffet supper.”

“We’ll be there. Did you ever decide to give Didi singing lessons?”

“We haven’t decided yet. But she’s in her room practicing all the time with her tapes. She’s very persistent. We’ll see.”

“How are you?” Olivia asked Taylor.

“I’m coming along. I’m going to a therapist. I’m going to be on Prozac for a while.”

“It’s supposed to be good.”

“I got the result of the autopsy. Grady didn’t have AIDS, but his blood alcohol was six times higher than a sober person’s.”

Olivia nodded.

“He knew he had a drinking problem,” Taylor said. “He was going to get help. Soon, he said.”

But obviously not soon enough, Olivia thought, and sighed.

“Do you remember the young man who was at the funeral who nobody knew?” Taylor asked. “Sitting in the back?”

“Yes.”

“He came over to see me. It turns out he was Grady’s lover. Grady told him he would never acknowledge him. Never. Their two worlds would have to be separate. We got friendly. He’s very nice, very spiritual. He’s interested in reincarnation. He gave me some books to read. He comes to my house and we have long talks.”

“That’s good,” Olivia said.

“I have to have something to believe in,” Taylor said. “The thought that people come back, that helps.”

“Yes, it would.”

“I never knew Grady was gay,” Taylor said. “You have to believe me. I never knew.”

“How is that possible? You were so close.”

Taylor shrugged. For someone who had not known anything about Grady’s secret life, she seemed to be taking the new revelation with great equanimity.

“I told Grady’s friend he could have something of Grady’s to remember him by.” Taylor said. “I hope you don’t mind—I gave him the two glasses you gave Grady from Aunt Lila. Grady’s friend asked for them. He said they drank a champagne toast last New Year’s Eve out of the glasses and they meant a lot to him.”

“I don’t mind,” Olivia said. So this is a new step in the journey of inheritance, she thought. My mother’s crystal glasses to me, then to my cousin, and then to his gay lover. The links of family go everywhere. She was touched that Grady’s “friend” loved him.

The music had stopped. “We have a surprise for Sam,” the piano player said into the microphone. Everyone looked over to the band area. “Didi is going to sing.”

Ten-year-old Didi was standing at the microphone, straight as a soldier, in her velvet dress, her braided hair like a crown, looking proud and excited and not nervous at all. “I want to sing this song for you, my beloved brother Sam,” she said with a twinkle. “Even though you want to kill me.”

A little ripple of laughter went around the room as the relatives remembered the story of Cain and Abel. Olivia glanced at Jenny and Paul. They were looking apprehensive. It had been one thing for Didi to beg for lessons, but another for her to get up to sing in front of so many people. They were probably hoping she wouldn’t disgrace herself. The band started to play. Didi began to sing one of the pop songs she had been listening to on tape, which Olivia had heard before and knew vaguely was a hit. Her voice was surprisingly deep and rich and resonant for such a young girl: she sounded like a juvenile cross between Bette Midler and Ethel Merman.

“She’s good,” Roger whispered, surprised.

“I know.”

Jenny and Paul’s tense faces relaxed. They began to smile, and then to beam. Olivia thought how wonderful it would be to have a celebrity in the family someday, and thought: I’m worse than a mother. When the song was over everyone applauded, not just politely, but with real enthusiasm. Didi and Sam hugged each other.

“I guess you’ll get lessons,” Jenny said.

Didi sat down, grinning, and Paul got up and went to the microphone, his arm around Sam’s shoulders. Paul was kind and gentle and professorial-looking. “Sam,” he said, “all these years when you were growing up, everybody always said: ‘What a great kid.’ From now on they’re going to say: ‘What a great young man.’ ”

That was the speech. That was it. How could you ask for more? Paul and Sam hugged and kissed, holding on to each other with pride and love. Olivia’s throat closed up and she started to cry. She remembered when Sam was just old enough to sit at a table, still the only child of young parents, Jenny pregnant with Max. They were at some family event at Uncle Seymour’s and Aunt Iris’s, and Sam had accidentally knocked over a stemmed water goblet. As the ice water spread into the linen tablecloth he had started to cry. Paul had scooped him up into his lap.

“It’s all right,” Paul had murmured soothingly. “You think we’re mad at you for spilling the water, but we’re not. It was an accident. We love you.”

Who had ever said that to her? She only remembered being screamed at when she made a mess—wasn’t that what parents always did? Harsh words and unkindness left her sick inside and stony on the outside; goodness melted her and made her fall apart. She had grown up to be a woman who always cried hardest at happy endings.

Roger handed her a tissue, but she already had one.

Aunt Myra came over to their table, making the rounds. “Isn’t this a nice party?” she said. “Nobody’s too full except me. I ate too much. And we have to eat again later at their house. Did you see Melissa? She ate nothing.”

“Melissa doesn’t eat,” Olivia said.

“Well, I guess that’s why she keeps so thin,” Aunt Myra said with her little giggle. She looked at Olivia’s dress, trying to hide her distaste. It was black and French and very expensive—it also had white stitching that looked like basting, and safety pins on it. “That’s something new,” Aunt Myra said.

“Yes.”

“It looks like it isn’t finished yet.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, you.”

After lunch they all had three hours to do what they wanted. Nick and Lynne changed their hotel; Uncle Seymour and Aunt Iris, with their age as an excuse, went back to New York; Melissa and Bill left their children with Uncle David and went running with Taylor and Tim along the banks of the Charles River; Kenny took Jason to look at Harvard Yard in case he decided he wanted to go to Harvard someday; and Olivia and Roger found a revival of the old silent movie
Metropolis
with a new rock score and went to see it.

Jenny and Paul’s house was large and very old, with a picket fence in front, big trees, and a basketball hoop on the garage door. “The kids cleaned their rooms,” Jenny said by way of greeting. “Be sure you compliment them on it. They worked hard.”

Obviously everyone had worked hard; the house was very orderly. Only the worn look of the serviceable furniture, which Jenny and Paul had bought when they were first married, revealed that this was a house where five children lived.

“What a wonderful room! So neat!” Olivia and Roger said, taking the tour, pretending surprise, while Sam looked nonchalant and the younger kids beamed.

A buffet table in the dining room was covered with platters of heaped-up cold cuts, bread, potato salad, coleslaw and paper plates. The eight youngest cousins were playing; Sam and Jason, who now considered themselves adults, were with the men; and Aunt Myra, Uncle David, and Paul’s parents were with their generation. After a moment Roger went over to talk with the men—he was being such a good sport, Olivia thought; she hoped he wasn’t bored, she hoped he might even be having a good time—and she joined the women cousins in a corner of the living room.

There were Jenny, Melissa, Lynne—the cousin by marriage who had missed their childhood—and Taylor, with Tim to translate. Olivia looked at his long, thin, aesthetic face, his straight, clean shoulder-length hair. He was a very quiet man, and she didn’t know if it was his nature or a habit he had gotten into with the family. He’s always right there with her, Olivia thought, until he becomes like another part of her body. She lip-reads, but it’s not that accurate or easy—for a real dialogue the family can’t talk to her without him. Her mother can, but they have little to say to each other. Taylor must feel so lonely with us, Olivia thought, compared to the way she feels with her deaf friends . . . and with Grady. With them she could be one-on-one, face-to-face, intimate and private.

Taylor’s expressive hands lay still in her lap when she spoke to her cousins, because they could hear, and when the cousins spoke to her Tim’s hands became a kind of telephone. But he was a man, and there were things the women didn’t want to say. It was too bad none of them liked to write letters, it was too bad nobody had bothered to get a TTY, it was too bad they had never learned anything but the most rudimentary ways of signing. They loved Taylor, and she them, but out of laziness and self-involvement they could hardly communicate.

But what about Grady?

Olivia still found it hard to believe that Taylor hadn’t known Grady was gay. He would have told her, even though he told nobody else. Wouldn’t he? And how could she not have noticed? The others had.

From the other room they could hear the laughing and screeching and banging around of the little cousins playing.

“I always wanted lots of children and now I have them,” Jenny said contentedly. “I have exactly the life I fantasized about when I was an only child all alone.”

“You weren’t so alone,” Melissa said. “You had us.”

“Just in the summer, and it wasn’t the same.”

“Did you have a happy childhood otherwise?” Olivia asked.

“I’d say so.”

“So did we,” Melissa said. “We went on such wonderful trips as a family. The skiing . . .”

“Melissa is a much better skier than I am,” Jenny said. “I didn’t learn until I had kids and needed something to do with them.”

“I had a very happy childhood,” Lynne said. “Nick and I want to have at least one more child. For Amber, and for ourselves.”

“Taylor and Grady used to swing on trees and jump off roofs,” Olivia reminisced.

“I don’t remember my childhood,” Taylor said.

“But you must remember Mandelay?” Jenny said, surprised.

“Yes. I felt safe there.”

“Then what don’t you remember?”

“The rest of it. California. It’s called repressing.” Taylor shrugged, her face stubborn and vulnerable.

The others looked at each other, their concerned glances saying Poor thing, no wonder, it was so terrible.

I wonder what else she’s chosen to forget, Olivia thought.

13

I
T WAS IN THE SIXTIES
, in New York, that Roger had met Virginia, the young woman who was to become his wife, and then his ex-wife. For women, who were still called girls, it was the time of miniskirts and little white boots, of aggressive hairpieces and thick false eyelashes and white lipstick, of trying to look like a malnourished child from outer space. The birth control pill had been invented, discos were newly popular and many people were not yet as politically involved and aware as they would be soon. The party was still going on.

Fittingly, he met Virginia at a party. She was very attractive; vivacious and thin in her simple black dress, her short, thick black hair like a shiny helmet with bangs, her large dark eyes circled and extended with black eyeliner and fringed with upper and lower false eyelashes, her face like a pale mask. She told him she was a part-time model for Rudi Gernreich, a designer so outrageous that he had created a bathing suit which completely exposed a woman’s breasts. But best of all, she was funny. Her conversation was peppered with a kind of slang he had never heard before and only partly understood; he thought perhaps she dated gangsters.

They stayed up almost all night, talking and dancing and drinking and smoking, and the next day he called to ask her out.

“Why don’t you come over tonight,” she said. “I have a color TV, and I like to watch
Bonanza
. I’ll give you a Mexican TV dinner, which, since I don’t cook, I serve right out of the tray it comes in. Could you bear it?”

“Of course,” Roger said. “I’ll bring the wine.”

She gave him the address, one of those large prewar buildings on Central Park West, overlooking the park. “And when you see me,” she added, “you won’t recognize me.”

He found that intriguing, but he was in no way prepared for how startled he would be. The girl who opened the door in a baggy sweater and narrow jeans had a scrubbed face, long light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and smallish but pretty eyes. She looked about ten years younger than the Virginia he had met the night before. When she saw the expression on his face she smiled.

“It does shock people,” she said. “This is the other me.”

“You were right,” Roger said. “I almost didn’t know you.” But he was not at all disappointed, and he could tell she knew that, too. He thought she looked a little like Audrey Hepburn, who was his favorite actress.

“Paint is such fun,” Virginia said.

She showed him around the apartment, which had large leather furniture and a spectacular view. They watched
Bonanza
and ate their TV dinners out of the foil trays, and she drank very little and did not use any offbeat slang at all. He still didn’t know her well enough to know which was the fantasy, the girl he had met last night or this one, but they both fascinated him. He was very turned on, and spent the night. After that they saw each other all the time.

Sometimes she took him to all-night after-hours clubs, or to the kind of parties he had never known existed. She took him to the Factory and introduced him to Andy Warhol. At home she gave him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and taught him how to play dominoes. What he liked most about Virginia, even more than her looks and irreverent humor, was that she was two different women, and that he never knew which one would be waiting for him. When he was with one he always knew the other was there, too, hiding. In a time of outrageous masklike makeup, wigs and artifice, she was like a kind of geisha, or even a transvestite. He was simply a veterinarian.

He fell confusedly, besottedly, in love.

One June day they had a nice little wedding, attended by only their immediate families. His parents liked Virginia. His brother, who never agreed with him on anything, didn’t; probably, Roger thought, because he was jealous. What none of them knew was how much Virginia loved her little red and black pills. Seconals and blackbirds. . . .

Roger married her in awe, lived with her in growing disillusionment, frustration and acrimony, and divorced her in sad resignation. They had fought until neither of them cared enough to fight anymore. They had been married for four years, and the day he finally left she was too stoned even to say goodbye. He supposed he should have noticed from the outset that she was addicted, and that probably neither of the two people he was living with were the real Virginia, but he was used to the uncomplication of small domestic animals whose secrets were pure.

After his divorce from Virginia, Roger went out with many women, most of whom were easy conquests enjoying their new freedom. It was as if they and he were like loaves of bread lined up on a grocery shelf, dated for quick consumption. He didn’t know if he liked this or not. The part of him that had been hurt and made wary by his marriage preferred it to making another mistake. The part of him that thought longingly of stability was lonely. And the part of him that needed fantasy and newness, the part Virginia had tapped into, was taken care of by all this romantic turnover, and so Roger was hardly aware it existed at all.

It was ironic that he met Olivia in a line to see an Audrey Hepburn movie, but that was a long time after Virginia had stopped looking like his favorite actress anyway. Olivia was tall and beautiful, with long wavy auburn hair with gold glints in it and topaz eyes; and, he thought, quite sensual—but there was also something about her that seemed grounded and intelligent, as if those qualities could not often be found all at the same time. She was wearing an odd-looking, shaggy brown sweater.

He saw these things in an instant, with a kind of déjà vu. She looked unique but familiar somehow, as if he had been waiting for her all his life, and when he saw her he was so afraid of losing her that he didn’t have the courage to speak to her. But she smiled at him. Not just a polite smile, but a big, delighted child’s grin. Her life force and her joy poured out, warming and moving him.

“Where did you get that coffee?” he asked, as if he didn’t have eyes to see to the corner.

“Over there.”

“Will you save my place?”

“Absolutely.”

Luckily it was one of those little theaters that let you bring food and drinks inside because they didn’t sell any. When he raced back from the coffee shop the line was just beginning to move. He managed to sit next to Olivia, and since they were both alone and liked what they saw they made small talk while they were waiting for the picture to begin. They had both seen it before.

“That’s an interesting sweater,” Roger said. “What’s it made of?”

“Yak.”

It was obviously not; it was some kind of fabric. He laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Are you a furrier?”

“No. I’m a veterinarian.”

“Do you take care of yaks?” Olivia asked.

“Dogs and cats mostly. One spider monkey.”

“Do you know the chances of two veterinarians sitting next to each other in a movie theater?”

They bantered some more and exchanged cards, and his life began.

But now it was over a decade later, and he was afraid of getting older, which was inevitable anyway; afraid of death, which was equally inevitable; and afraid of his ambivalence in the dangerous tightwalk between Wendy and Olivia. He didn’t know why it had taken him so long to realize that Wendy, with her sleeping pills and faked suicide, had reminded him uncomfortably of Virginia. Virginia had never tried to kill herself, but she had seemed headed toward doing it accidentally and had refused to do anything about it. She was now so far gone from his life that after she remarried and he could stop sending her alimony payments he didn’t even know where she was and had no reason to care. But something remained; it had to. He hadn’t thought about her in years, and Wendy had brought it back.

Was he attracted to crazy women who lived on the edge? And if so, what miracle had brought him to Olivia, who wanted serenity and sanity? Why couldn’t he just let Olivia be who and what she was and be content and grateful for it? Was
he
self-destructive? No, he was just a man who needed adventure once in a while to feel alive. What was so unusual about that?

He called Wendy. It was one of those early spring days in New York that gives a seductive hint of the softness to come and then the next day disappears.

“Can I come over at six o’clock?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Surprise me.”

He rang the bell to her apartment instead of using his key, because he knew she was going to be a stranger. Wendy opened the door and smiled at him like a little mouse. She had her hair tucked neatly behind her ears and was wearing small round horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

“You’re here to see the apartment,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Hawkwood.”

“Dr. Hawkwood.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Call me Roger.”

“I’m Caroline,” Wendy said. “Come in.”

There were cardboard cartons on the living room floor and it looked as if she were in the midst of packing her books. She was wearing a prim suit and blouse, corporate image, just back from the office. “You see the living room is quite large,” she said. Her voice was soft and sweet, her manner tentative and shy. She glanced at him and then looked away.

“Yes.”

“I hope the mess of packing doesn’t distract you from the really nice space.”

“Not at all,” Roger said. “Are you leaving New York?”

“No. Just moving downtown. To be closer to work.”

“Ah.”

“Let me show you the kitchen,” she said. She led him there. “It’s very well-organized for a small New York kitchen,” she said. “Do you or your wife like to cook?”

“I have no wife.”

“Oh.” She blushed, as if she had been fishing to see if he were available. “And this is the bedroom. King-sized bed, as you see, fits in easily, and two large closets.” She opened the doors to show him. The clothing hanging inside was all hers. He noticed the cat carrier next to the dresser. Two familiar hostile eyes glared out at him. “And the bathroom,” she said, moving on.

She had obviously straightened out the bathroom for his inspection; it had that look of being on display. She had even put paper guest towels on the side of the sink. The entire apartment, except for the packing, was very neat. “Did I show you the dining area?” she asked, sounding flustered.

“No.”

“Well, here it is. Right off the living room. You could make an office out of it if you wanted to, and eat in the living room. But . . . I guess you . . . don’t have dinner at home very often.”

“Not very often,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Well.” A little smile slid across her face and she looked at him wistfully. “Let me show you the sunset.”

She led him to the window. Between the buildings there was a red streak against the sky. Roger looked at her. She was doing the perfect impersonation of a demure young woman with hidden fire and longing inside. But he would have to woo her. He moved closer to her at the window and she shivered.

“It’s great,” he said. Actually, you couldn’t really see much.

“Would you . . . like a drink?” she asked.

“For the sunset?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” he said. “Thank you.”

She poured each of them a glass of white wine and they sat on the couch. “It’s a romantic apartment, don’t you think?” she said softly. “Especially for a bachelor.”

“I’m surprised you’re giving it up,” Roger said.

“Oh . . . I have some memories that aren’t so good. Time to move on.”

“A woman like you shouldn’t have painful memories.”

“What is a woman like me?”

“Beautiful. Intelligent. Sensitive.”

“I’m not beautiful,” she said.

“Caroline, believe me, you are.”

She looked down, embarrassed and pleased. “Thank you for saying that. Even though I don’t feel it.”

“Someone must have hurt you very badly to shake you that much.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Apparently not long enough.”

“These painful things linger. Not the person. Just the bad feelings he gave me about myself,” she said in a matter-of-fact and very vulnerable voice. She sipped her wine.

He felt a warm and wistful feeling, and then the stirrings of desire. He wanted to take off her conservative clothes and feel her body—even under that suit it was apparent how tempting it was. He laid his hand on hers, and when she didn’t pull away he enveloped it comfortingly. He touched her pulse with his thumb and felt it was jumping.

“No one has a right to hurt you,” he said.

“No one has the right to hurt anyone.”

“If you were my woman I would never hurt you.”

He heard the intake of her breath.

“I would cherish you. You deserve that.”

“You have such wonderful hands,” she whispered.

Roger ran his finger gently across the back of Wendy’s hand and she trembled. He took a few of the soft blonde hairs on her forearm between his thumb and forefinger and lifted them. She gave a desperate sigh, almost a moan. “Who are you?” she whispered, “Coming into my life like this . . .” Her head was back, exposing her long, lovely throat.

“I’m your destiny,” Roger said.
Destiny! What idiotic things I say to her in these sex games
, he thought, glad no one else could hear him.
But it turns me on
. He slowly began unbuttoning her corporate blouse, and where each button had been he laid his lips.

He had never before been so leisurely and caring when he had sex with her. He undressed her deliberately, kissing and caressing every part of her, holding himself back, fending off his intolerable pleasure, enjoying how out of control he made her. When he slipped inside her and she came for the last time, she screamed, and then he heard another voice, deeper, more primitive, crying out; and he realized it was himself.

They lay on the couch for a while, dazed and exhausted. Then Wendy got up and brought back two glasses of water, and they drank thirstily.

“This was the best we ever did,” he said. “It’s always been hot and fantastic between us, but this was unbelievable.”

“We’re good together,” Wendy said.

“Yes. And I love you.” He kissed her lightly and stood.

“Where are you going?”