The Cousins (5 page)

“Well, that’s why I come.”

“I’ll visit you when I get some time. I promise,” Olivia said. “And now we have the rest of the day together and tonight’s the party. Let’s have fun.”

Taylor and Grady both gave her the same quizzical look. It was amazing how alike they were. “Fun,” Grady said.

“Try,” Olivia said. She thought of Roger. He would have said the same thing. Suddenly she missed him very much, and the festivities ahead without him stretched long. It had made perfect sense for him not to want to make the trip, and she couldn’t fault him, but all the same she wished he were with her, instead of in New York.

4

I
T WAS A PERFECT
September Saturday in New York. The sky was blue, the leaves in the park were beginning to turn, the air was crisp and cool with an overlay of sunshine that made it comfortable walking weather. There are very few such days in New York, and they are precious. Everyone seemed to be out—tourists with their cameras, families shopping, lovers holding hands, divorced fathers taking their kids to the zoo on custody weekend. On this bright and lovely early afternoon, Roger Hawkwood entered an almost empty movie theater, and after a moment of looking around chose a seat on the center aisle.

The lights had not yet been dimmed. Background music played. The movie quiz was on the screen, over and over, with the scrambled names of stars. He noticed some elderly couples and some people alone . . . mostly women. The women who were alone were all reading something, usually the newspaper, and they had carefully chosen seats that had several empty seats around them so no one would intrude on their space. But he knew they were lonely. He could always tell. He opened the newspaper he had brought and pretended to read it, glancing at the young woman three seats to his right.

She was about thirty, and beautiful, with a classic profile. When she moved her head her hair swung across her face like a sheet of butterscotch-colored silk, and then she ran her fingers through it, pushing it back with the nervous gesture of a teenager. She was wearing jeans and a sweater. She was tall and slim and full-breasted, like a model. You would wonder why someone who looked like her didn’t have anyone to go to the movies with or, indeed, anything better to do this afternoon in the first place. She finished reading her newspaper and put it into her tote bag, and then she sensed he was looking at her and turned to look at him. Her eyes were an amazing bright clear blue.

Roger smiled at her. She appraised him for a second and then smiled back. He knew he didn’t, after all, look dangerous. A kind, merry face, pressed jeans and Gap T-shirt and Armani jacket, his expensively cut hair still thick and dark auburn, with a little help from his barber—they were called hairdressers now and he still couldn’t get used to it—he seemed as out of place here in the Lonely Matinee as she did.

“Would you like my newspaper?” he asked, holding it out to her. “I’m finished.”

“Thank you,” she said, and took it, her slim hand reaching across the empty seats between them. She wore no wedding ring. Of course, neither did he. “Oh,” she said, and smiled at him again. “I already read this one.”

They should be having lunch together at an outdoor cafe, enjoying the early autumn day. He thought of Olivia. They had met in a movie line so long ago, but they had both gone there to see the picture. He hadn’t come here today to see this picture, he had come to indulge his fantasy. A beautiful stranger, interest at first sight, let’s run away together, I have the whole weekend. Tell me why you chose me. Turn me on.

“I’ve seen you,” she said. “In the neighborhood. You have a golden retriever.”

“Yes,” he said. “Buster.” His heart began to pound.

“You’re sweet with him.”

“I’m a sweet guy.”

She pondered this for a minute. “You should have an Irish setter,” she said.

“Why?”

“To match your hair.”
She’s flirting. I’m going to get this one. Yes!

“Then I guess you have to have my retriever,” Roger said lightly. “To go with yours.”

“Can I really trust a man who would give away his dog?”

“It would give me an excuse to visit him.”

She fastened her gaze to his and chewed down on her lip, as if she was asking herself what kind of man tried to pick up women in movie theaters. But he thought men probably tried to pick up a woman who looked like her wherever she went. Besides, she was picking him up, more than the other way around.

“Isn’t this silly,” he said, indicating the space between them. “I can’t hear you.”

“You’re not waiting for anybody?” she asked.

“No.”
I’m waiting for you
.

“Well, then,” she said lightly, and ran her fingers through her hair. Then she got up and moved to the seat next to his.

“I’m Roger,” he said. He held out his hand and smiled.

“I’m Wendy.”

They shook hands. Hers was cool and delicate. He felt his getting damp and he could hardly catch his breath. He hoped his voice didn’t sound odd. “We’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Coming here to this stuffy place on such a beautiful day. There may never be a day like this ever again.”

The lights went out and there was a drawing of a soft-drink cup and a container of popcorn on the screen. “Refreshments are on sale in the lobby,” a deep voice said from the sound system.

“Wouldn’t you rather have champagne?” Roger whispered.

A pause. “Yes.”

“Outdoors. At a sidewalk cafe.”

“I like that.”

Work fast, he thought. When the picture starts she’ll get caught up in it and you’ll have to wait till it’s over. By then she’ll be a different person.

The drawing changed to one of pursed lips with a finger on them. “Please, no talking in the theater,” the voice admonished.

“Talking,” Roger whispered, “is a vanishing art.”

“But are you good at it?”

“I pretend to be.”

She smiled.

“Shush!” the elderly woman in front said, turning around to glare at them, and turned away again.

A bright ray of light touched a drawing of a trash can with a ping. “Please deposit all trash in receptacles,” the deep voice said. Roger held up his ticket stub.

“Such as this?” he whispered. Wendy smiled again. “Come on,” he said, and held out his hand. She gave him a long and careful look, while he felt the thumping of his heart rock his body with the combination of the fear of rejection and the anticipation of the relief of success. Then she took his hand. They ran up the aisle together and out into the sunlight on the street.

He took her to a restaurant on Madison Avenue with little tables set out on the sidewalk, with white tablecloths and tiny bunches of flowers on them. Everyone there looked European and was smoking cigarettes. They ordered champagne, which came in delicate flutes.

“What do you think of fantasies?” he asked.

“Nothing wrong with fantasies as long as they don’t hurt anybody.”

He thought for an instant of Olivia and then shut her out of his mind. She was in California and she would never know. “You’re so pretty,” he said. “You don’t have an angle in which you’re not beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“Why did you pick me?” Roger asked.

“You picked me.”

“But you let me.”

“I love your face,” she said slowly. “I love your eyes. And your hands. They’re very sensitive.”

“I’m a doctor,” he said.

“I’m not surprised.”

“A veterinarian.”

“Then you
are
kind.”

“I am,” he said.

“Kindness,” she said, “is more of a lost art than conversation.”

“Who could ever be unkind to you?”

“Oh . . .” she said, and let it trail off. She sipped her champagne.

“I would protect you forever,” he said, and just for that instant he meant it. He wondered what it would be like to have her in bed for a week. In this fantasy there was no AIDS, no danger. And besides, in the real world he had a package of condoms in his pocket.

“Say that again,” she murmured.

“I would protect you forever.”

“You’re turning me on.”

“Am I?”

“You have no idea. Do you do this often? Strange women in movie theaters?”

“Never,” he said.

“Public places?”

“No. Do you?”

“No,” she said. “I’m a stockbroker. I’m extremely straight and proper. I work very hard and I like to be alone. It helps me unwind. It’s just that you . . . you brought out something in me. I don’t know. I really never act like this.”

“I never did but I always wanted to,” Roger said. “Just once in my life.”

“Can we take a walk now?” she said.

They walked hand in hand up Madison Avenue, and when they reached the corner where there was a red light they kissed and held each other. He knew she could tell he was aroused, but she didn’t move away until the light changed. “Where are we walking to?” he asked.

“My apartment.”

He felt the throbbing in his groin and thought how crazy it was, and hoped they didn’t run into anyone he knew. “Do you really want to do this?” he asked.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

She lived in a big old white building with a formal lobby and a doorman. They walked in, out of the autumn sunshine, into the soft golden glow of artificial light.

“Miss Wilton,” the doorman said, nodding. “Dr. Hawkwood.”

“Hello, Victor,” they both answered pleasantly.

As soon as they got into her apartment they tore off their clothes and Roger entered her without foreplay. He did not use the condom in his pocket. She began to come almost immediately, and after what he considered a decent interval of self-restraint he did, too.

He had been having an affair with Wendy for six months now—his first affair since he had met Olivia eleven years ago. He had met her at the gym. The Stairmaster, the nineties equivalent of the singles bar. She was seductive and playful and he was surprised that she liked him. He had bought her a juice. Before they finished it they had sensed a kind of complicity in each other.

The next time they met at the gym he took her to lunch. She was so wise, so knowing, reaching into a part of him he had been too serious—or perhaps too afraid—to see. After a brief period, when they realized they were sexual conspirators, he stopped working out three times a week and worked out only twice, telling Olivia he was going to the gym four times, and therefore leaving two days a week when he could sneak away to have sex with Wendy.

His fantasy, he realized, was that he was still young and irresistible to women, that it was the seventies, and life was still a candy box of sexual opportunities. Wendy’s fantasy was that he was going to nurture, protect and take care of her. She was neurotic enough to have so far avoided finding a man who actually would, even though Roger was sure that with her looks and brains it would have been easy. He loved Olivia and intended to continue to make his life with her. He never wanted to do anything to cause her pain. But she was reality, and she was now. He sometimes had difficulty believing, even after these six months, that someone as young and beautiful as Wendy wanted him and enjoyed playing out their dangerous games.

As long as fantasies don’t hurt anybody, he thought.

5

T
HANKSGIVING WAS
O
LIVIA’S
favorite holiday. There were no religious overtones of guilt that she wasn’t doing things properly, or not at all, and there was no need to pretend to be happy the way she felt she had to on Christmas or her birthday. On Thanksgiving all you had to do was eat too much and rejoice that you had survived another year. The other thing she loved about Thanksgiving was that she gave her wonderful feast for all their friends who had nowhere else to go—her waifs and strays—in the home she shared with Roger and their dogs, surrounded by people she cared about: a grown-up now. Thanksgiving was the only holiday she felt she was really good at.

Because of work she couldn’t prepare everything, so some of her friends brought part of the meal: pies, salad, a specialty if they liked to cook. She made the turkey, the stuffing, the too-sweet sweet potato pudding with marshmallows on top, the cranberry sauce, the winter vegetables, the corn pudding and the hominy—another starchy thing she had added over the years. It took her the entire day, helped by Peggy, their cleaning woman, and by the time the preparations were nearly finished their guests would already be gathered in her large kitchen sipping champagne, talking, helping or just watching her as if she were putting on a show. The table would be set in the dining room she and Roger seldom used, with flowers, candles, the good dishes and silver inherited from her mother and cloth napkins tied with yarn for napkin rings. Wozzle and Buster, freshly groomed for the occasion, would be basking in attention and looking for handouts, knowing they were clean and cute and that everybody liked them.

Aunt Myra, who served as sort of the family secretary, called to say she was going to Cambridge to spend Thanksgiving with Jenny and Paul. Jenny had her in-laws with their three children and Aunt Myra visiting for the week, in addition to her own five children, and claimed she was having a nervous breakdown, although Aunt Myra, giggling, said she sounded so cheerful it wasn’t true. Aunt Myra also reported that Melissa was going with her husband Bill and their three children to spend Thanksgiving in Florida with her father, Uncle David, and that Nick, with his wife and child, would be there, too.

Olivia knew that Uncle David had been seeing a woman in Florida for a long time, but wouldn’t let her get too close. She was described as “a good friend.” Melissa always said he was still grieving for Aunt Hedy after all these years and would never get over her, but Olivia’s father had told Olivia that Uncle David didn’t want anyone but his children to inherit his money. Apparently Uncle David’s good friend was not spending Thanksgiving with him and his children and grandchildren because she had children and grandchildren of her own.

Nobody could call Taylor, but Aunt Myra said she had spoken to Grady, who was going to be on location in Canada in a movie, and that Taylor and Tim were going to fly there to join him for the holiday. And Kenny called from California to wish Olivia a happy Thanksgiving and to say he was going to some island she’d never heard of with the woman he was dating at the moment. His son Jason was spending the holidays skiing with a friend from prep school and the friend’s parents; whether he was finally branching out on his own because he was older now or because he didn’t like his father’s new girlfriend, Olivia couldn’t tell.

She remembered the old Thanksgivings at Uncle Seymour and Aunt Iris’s before they all became such a mob and went their separate ways: the large Fifth Avenue apartment packed with relatives, everything flawless—the food, the flowers, the table settings, the sweet little uniformed maids coming around the long table barely able to carry the giant silver platters laden with sliced turkey and its accompaniments. After the death of their grandparents Uncle Seymour had quite naturally taken over as patriarch of the family. Aunt Julia had been older, but she didn’t have the slightest interest in running anything. In the early days Olivia had been seated between her parents, and when she got married she sat next to her husband. In between husbands, and afterwards, before Roger, she was seated between her parents again, as if only marriage prevented her from being an eternal child.

And then there were the two years after her second divorce, when she didn’t come to the family Thanksgiving. Her mother called one morning. “Uncle Seymour and I are coming over to talk to you about Thanksgiving,” Lila said in the stern, tense voice Olivia knew so well.

“What about it?” Olivia asked.

“Never mind. He’ll tell you. He has a bone to pick with you. We’re coming over Wednesday night.” It was typical of Lila and Uncle Seymour to set up anxiety for a certain period of time before coming to the point.

Uncle Seymour arrived without Aunt Iris, who liked to distance herself from anything unpleasant of a family nature, since she was a sister-in-law and knew exactly how to handle the protocol. Grady had been in New York visiting his grandmother and had come to Olivia’s apartment to help her put together the new stereo components she had finally gotten around to buying, her ex-husband having taken the good ones. Her parents arrived with Uncle Seymour, but her mother might as well have left her father at home—he sat on the most distant chair and fell into his usual half doze. Her father hated unpleasantness more than any of them. Grady was looking as if he had sneaked into an interesting movie, a look he usually had when he was around Olivia.

Her mother and Uncle Seymour sat down facing her as if they were at a business meeting. Olivia offered them something to drink and they refused. Uncle Seymour was so upset and angry that his voice cracked. “You don’t come to Thanksgiving anymore,” he said. “I heard you don’t come because you said it’s too damned
boring
.”

“I never said that,” Olivia said, genuinely amazed. Had Lila told him that? Had she ever said that to Lila? Her stomach immediately tied up into a knot of fear. There was a long silence while the two of them looked at her sternly. She remembered that awful last time she had come to his apartment for Thanksgiving. “I stopped coming because of what Hedy said,” she said.

Their expressions seemed to soften slightly. They didn’t like Hedy.

“Don’t you remember?” Olivia said. She could feel the pain again. “I had just left Stuart. Marriage number two, smasheroo. And Hedy said to me, ‘When are you ever going to do something I’m not ashamed of?’ Anna got up and left the room. I ran out too and Anna said to me, ‘That was so totally unfair. I’m not going to stay in the same room with that woman.’ Anna said that to Aunt Iris, too. Ask her.”

She could see Uncle Seymour’s face relax. Invoking the name of Anna the Perfect as her comrade-in-arms had made her distress totally valid.

“Well,” he said, “you should have told us.”

“I told my mother,” Olivia said, glaring at Lila.

“Nobody cares what Hedy says,” Lila said. “Everybody knows she’s impossible.”

“Next time you don’t have to sit near her,” Uncle Seymour said. “Problems have solutions. Now, will you start coming to Thanksgiving again?”

“Yes,” Olivia said, although the thought made her nervous.

“It’s important for the family to stay together,” Uncle Seymour said. “We have to keep up the traditions of the holidays. Thanksgiving, Passover . . .”

Olivia remembered Passovers of her youth when she had always been there, but Charlie the Perfect and Anna the Perfect had not because their parents had let them go to their school’s spring dance. No social event had ever been allowed to take precedence over The Family in her home. Yet now Charlie and Anna were more devoted to their parents than she was to hers.

“These events are for the family to be together,” Uncle Seymour said. “It’s too easy to become estranged. We have to make an effort not to drift away. You should come to these occasions.”

“Okay,” Olivia said. “I will.”

Lila was rocking her body back and forth in the wing chair, rubbing her hands together with smug glee. Olivia realized her mother looked just like a witch. “From now on the family comes first,” Lila announced.

“It doesn’t have to come first,” Uncle Seymour said mildly.

Olivia felt as if someone had tied a rope around her and then let it go. Lila cast him a desperate glance as if she had been betrayed.

“Tell her about the lawyer,” Lila said.

“Ah, yes,” Uncle Seymour said. “Did you explain to her?”

“When do I ever get to talk to her?” Lila said.

“The whole family is going to use the same lawyer to make out their wills,” Uncle Seymour said pleasantly. “He’s someone we’ve worked with in business. I don’t know who you used before, Olivia, but he’ll get in touch with you and you’ll redo yours with him.”

“Then everybody’s will be the same,” Lila said.

“We want someone we know,” Uncle Seymour said.

“You don’t know how to take care of yourself,” Lila said to Olivia. “Do you remember when you wanted to leave some money to your cleaning woman and I talked you out of it?”

“She died already,” Olivia said.

“And animals,” Lila said to Uncle Seymour. “She gives to those animal causes. And charities all over the place.”

“You’re a Jew,” Uncle Seymour said. “Never forget that. You have to give to UJA Federation. Now, while you’re alive, not just later. They cover most of the other charities you like under their umbrella. If you give to them, you don’t have to worry about giving to anybody else.”

“I give to UJA,” Olivia said.

“That should be your main contribution,” Uncle Seymour went on. “The family has given to UJA very generously all through the years because we know who we are. We have to take care of our people. Who else is going to do it? Everybody takes care of their own. Do you think anybody else cares about you? It’s very important for you to remember always that you’re part of the Jewish community, that we are Jews.”

“Okay,” Olivia said.

“That’s settled,” Lila said. She got up. “Wake up!” she said to Olivia’s father. “We’re leaving. You can sleep at home.”

Uncle Seymour stood, too. He smiled beatifically at Olivia as she handed him his coat. “Good night, Olivia darling,” he said. “Good night, Grady.”

When they left, Grady turned to Olivia and made a little face. “That speech,” he murmured.

“What about it?”

“How do you think it made me feel?”

It was the first time Olivia had realized that Grady felt like an outsider. When she looked back on it she couldn’t ever remember him and Taylor at any of their family Thanksgiving dinners, even though their grandmother lived in New York, but she had simply thought it was because they lived so far away and had lives of their own.

“How do you think this whole thing makes
me
feel?” she said, to cheer him up. “Now they have someone to report to them what I do in my will. No secrets anymore. Complete control even beyond the grave.”

Grady smiled.

The following Thanksgivings she had gone again to Uncle Seymour’s, where there were so many people that they took up the entire dining room and spilled out into the gallery, and Aunt Iris thoughtfully placed Hedy and Olivia in separate rooms so they never had to say anything to each other besides hello. Then she met Roger, and the first year they were together they went to the family to prove they were a couple, to be welcomed, and so she could show him off. After that they bought the house, and he had wanted them to have their own Thanksgiving in it, with their friends. The first time Olivia felt guilty and nervous, as if she and Roger were being unfriendly, but her mother, without even being told she wasn’t invited, rejected her first by saying “Of course you know I have to go to the family”—as if
she
weren’t family. It was actually a great relief.

The year her mother died, Olivia brought her father to her Thanksgiving dinner, and the year after that he was remarried and traveling around the world with Grace. Olivia’s Thanksgivings with Roger eventually became established as a tradition, albeit a strange one, and Aunt Iris didn’t bother asking her anymore, although Olivia knew the door was always open.

* * *

Thanksgiving Day was bright and clear. Roger had bought dried corn, and Olivia put it with the flowers on the dining room table, giving the centerpiece a wild but comfortable look. She was wearing a black bodysuit under one of her little boutique finds: a crocheted dress in autumn colors—thin and see-through and sexy—ballet slippers, and big crazy earrings. The kitchen smelled wonderful. Roger was pouring champagne. They had twenty people this year, some of whom they saw only every few months because everyone was so busy. Their friends were all getting along with each other, and everyone was saying how starved they were, how they hadn’t eaten all day, how they had been saving themselves for this feast. Because of the conversation and laughter you could hardly hear the CDs she and Roger had so carefully selected and put on the changer, but they were a cheerful background anyway.

Her friend Alys—the spelling her own—whom Olivia had known since high school, which was probably why she put up with her, was there alone, having recently broken up with her latest bad choice, and she was already slightly drunk. It was a shame, Olivia thought, that she didn’t know any nice available man to fix her up with. She looked around the room fondly at her friends. Alys came to stand beside her.

“What a politically correct party,” Alys said. “The homosexual couple; the turkey-baster single mother; the black couple; the black homosexual—that’s even better; the man whose pregnant wife could pass for his daughter; the woman whose boy toy could pass for her son; the psychic; four people in AA drinking San Pellegrino; one stray Oriental; assorted children—where are the lesbians?”

“She is not a turkey-baster single mother,” Olivia said. “Her child’s adopted.”

“Where did you get these people anyway, Central Casting?”

“Only you,” Olivia said.

“What are they, patients?”

“Clients,” Olivia corrected her. “The patients are animals.”

“Sounds like the men I meet.”

“Some are clients and others are people Roger and I have met through the years.”

“Did you ever dream back in high school that you would know so many different kinds of people? Is this New York in the nineties or what?”