Birthday Girls (28 page)

The waiter returned and set down a glass.

“If you don’t want to tell me, fine. I’ll be on the next flight out of this stifling, godforsaken country.”

Her tears spilled over. She tried to swallow again; this time her throat closed. She wished she could blame it on
the dust in the air, but Kris knew she could not. Raising her hands to her face, she let the tears come.

Devon reached over and put his hand on hers. “Kris …”

She shook her head. “My life was so … so in control. I was so happy.” She removed her hands and wiped her eyes. “I cannot believe how I’ve screwed things up.”

Overhead the fan continued to drone. Around them people moved in the slow motion of heat. Between them hung an invisible veil that Kris knew must be lowered, must be dropped.

And so, amid her tears, she told him. She told him about Abigail’s grandfather, about her abortion, about her birthday wish to have a child. She told him about blurting out her secret to Abigail. She did not tell him about Edmund or about Abigail’s birthday wish. It didn’t seem right somehow; it didn’t seem fair.

“This man,” Devon asked, “Abigail’s grandfather. Did he rape you?”

Kris smiled. “No, darling Devon. It was totally consensual.” She tipped back her head and forced a laugh. “I thought he loved me! I was sixteen years old and thought a sixty-one-year-old man loved me.”

“Jesus, Kris. The man should have been arrested.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t his fault. I came on to him. I suppose some shrink would say I was looking for a father figure. My parents traveled all over the world and I hardly ever saw them …”

“That’s no excuse!” He rolled his eyes and rubbed his brow. “Christ, I can’t believe this.”

“Believe it.” She reached over and took Devon’s glass, suddenly thirsty. “The funny thing is, I was okay with it. Sure, it was hard at first. We were at the estate when I told him. We were by the reflecting pool. He told me he would give me money for an abortion, money to get out of the country. It was only 1964. I couldn’t have had one in the States. Not legally, anyway.”

Devon waited. Devon listened. He had moved forward on his chair with balled fists and a tight jaw. But he listened.

“I threw a fit. I told him I didn’t want his goddamn money, that he should save it for his princess Abigail. Then I jumped into the reflecting pool, swam as fast as I could to the other end, got out and hiked, dripping wet, nearly ten miles back to school. It was the last time I ever saw him.”

Pausing a moment, she stared into Devon’s glass. “I had the abortion on a back street in Harlem. And I was okay with it,” she repeated, nodding her head. “I was okay with it.”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows.

“It seems to me that if you were okay with it, you wouldn’t have decided to have a child before you turn fifty. I think you’ve probably wanted the family thing all along, but you were afraid, Kris.” He took her hand again. “I wish you’d realized it sooner.”

She stared down at his dark, familiar hand. “Yeah,” she responded. “Me, too.”

They sat a few minutes longer, the paddle fan aching above.

“Come on, girl,” Devon said at last. “I’m going to take you home.”

She placed her other hand on top of his. “Devon? Do you know if they’re planning anything? A service or something for Abigail?”

“We can find out. But if you want to go, girl, you’re not going alone.”

Whoever
had planned the memorial service obviously didn’t know that Abigail thought poinsettia were tacky. Or
maybe they simply didn’t care. It was, after all, two days before Christmas, and maybe this was just easier.

It had taken all the courage Kris could muster to come here today, yet she knew it was essential, a first step in determining if Abigail had killed herself or if she had not.

The transatlantic phone call to Windsor-on-Hudson had been difficult: Edmund had seemed a bit tentative—or had it merely been grief?—yet he’d said he’d be most appreciative if she could make it.

No, there had been no further word from the police.

No, Abigail’s body had not yet been found.

Yes, she had left a suicide note.

“It’s going to be a private service,” he added. “I couldn’t take the media hype.”

Kris had not asked if Abigail had been wearing the heirloom jewelry. Or if Edmund believed it was all Kris’s fault.

With Devon at her side, his hand lightly resting on hers, she sat in the cold chapel on the grounds of the estate now and shifted her eyes to the small stone altar and tried to focus on the white-robed minister. His monotone moved from the twenty-third psalm into a eulogy to which Kris half-listened as he extolled the praises of the dearly departed.

Departed
, she thought.
But for where?
To the hereafter—if there was one—or to another continent in the here and now?

She scanned the other mourners, trying to distract herself: there was Louisa, of course, who, along with Edmund, seemed the only ones to truly be grieving. Sondra was there, her belly outstretched now; and hypocritical Larry, whose bewildered expression must be caused by the duplicitous feelings of delight that Abigail was gone from his life and gut-deep fear of what would happen to the money, how
he would pay his overstretched bills. Kris wondered if he and Sondra would now go forward with Larry’s plan to make her a star—
exploit
her in the name of a dollar. Or a few million.

Next to Larry sat Grady, the studly young fan dressed in a charcoal silk suit that must have cost Larry a few hundred weeks’ paychecks; behind them was a montage of mourners Kris didn’t know, except for that awful man, the Gauguin collector, and the pearl-necked, portly woman from Thanksgiving dinner.

And Maddie was there. With her small, white-haired mother, Sophie, whom Kris had not seen in fifteen years but who looked exactly the same, as if aging were a process she’d yet to endure.

Her gaze moved back to Maddie. It must have been Maddie, she reasoned. Abigail must have relented, told Maddie of the plan, and implored her to drive the “getaway” car. There was no one else she could have turned to, no one else she could come close to being able to trust.

Please, God
, Kris found herself praying in the stillness of the chapel,
please let it be that Maddie helped her escape. Please let it be that Abigail is still alive
.

Only then, Kris knew, could she be absolved of her guilt. Only then could she accept that Abigail was not another Betty Ann, and that Kris had not been responsible for her death as well.

When the
last amen had been whispered, they walked en masse up the hill, through the barren winter gardens, past the iced-over reflecting pool. Kris did not pause. Then they moved up to the house.

The small buffet had been catered—Larry’s doing, apparently,
for he fussed over the napkins and chatted with the service people as though he were in charge now, King of the Hill.

As Kris placed a tiny cream cheese sandwich on her plate, Larry approached.

“Kris, darling,” he crooned. “Poor Abigail.”

She flashed her eyes at him. “Save it, Larry,” she growled through her teeth. “Save it for someone who believes you.”

He jumped back as if he’d been shot.

“Excuse me,” she said to Devon, dropping a sandwich onto his plate and moving through the crowd, head held high. There was only one person she needed to speak with now. Only one person here who she ever needed to speak with again. The fact that she had been so angry about being left in L.A. no longer mattered—it was over and done with, and she needed her now.

“Maddie,” Kris said as she reached her old classmate, her old friend.

Maddie was dressed in a long, navy dress, a bit of the old dowdiness creeping in around the corners of her madeup eyes.
Some things
, Kris thought,
even Helena Rubenstein cannot effectively change
.

“Kris,” Maddie responded, fresh tears coming as she planted a kiss on Kris’s cheek. “This is so awful …”

If she had helped Abigail escape, it wasn’t apparent. For a photographer, Maddie was being one hell of an actress.

“Oh,” she continued, pulling away from Kris, “Kris, you remember my mother.”

Kris nodded, shook Sophie’s hand, and wondered why on earth Maddie always acted as if her life were so pathetic when she had a perfectly good mother and two perfectly healthy sons. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Kavner. Would you mind if I borrowed Maddie a moment? I’d like to take a walk outside with her.”

• • •

It was cold
. The air held the brittleness of winter’s mission, of another year ending, of death. They walked from the terrace in silence, then stepped down the stairs to the garden.

“I’ve been crying for a week,” Maddie said. “Was my grief convincing?”

A smile crept slowly across Kris’s face; a thousand weights slid from her heart. “Thank God,” she whispered. Abigail was alive; Maddie had helped.

“Well, at least one of us had our birthday wish come true,” Maddie continued. “I’m a little surprised she took such a brazen approach, though. The Tappan Zee Bridge? Oooh,” Maddie shivered with a half-grin.

“Abigail always loved melodrama,” Kris replied.

They passed through a small glade encircled with evergreen trees, near where Kris and Edmund first talked.

“Did she say where she was going?” Kris asked. “The last thing I knew, she had ruled out Madrid.”

Maddie paused. She put out her arm and halted Kris. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“No. But then, this all happened rather suddenly.”

Maddie looked off toward the trees, her expression blank. “For a while I thought she’d kept me out of her confidence on purpose. I guess she decided it’s better if no one—not even us—knows where she is.”

“I suppose. But did she wear the jewelry?”

“Jewelry?”

God
, Kris thought,
sometimes Maddie can be so dense
. She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her long seal coat. “The diamond brooch. The bracelet. The things she’d planned to sell for money to live on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. She never told me about any jewelry. I’ve been busy, though. I haven’t spoken to Abigail since she took me shopping after Thanksgiving.”

The December air grew suddenly colder, its gray sky, grayer, its stillness more still. Muffled calls of winter birds—cardinals perhaps, or tiny snowbirds—merged with the distant murmurs of the mourners that drifted down the hill from the house.

“Maddie,” Kris said slowly, closing her eyes to cushion the answer she did not want to hear. “Didn’t you help Abigail fake her death?”

Maddie hesitated a moment, a long, painful moment. “Me?” she asked. “No. Didn’t you?”

Kris opened her eyes. “Oh, fuck,” she said softly.

Larry
stood in the kitchen at Windsor-on-Hudson and watched Kris through the window. Somehow, the bitch must have learned of his plan to ruin Abigail.

Not that it mattered, because she couldn’t prove anything.

No
, he thought staring out at the long, lean woman who seemed to think she had all the answers, the only thing that mattered now was how Larry Kaminski could turn this around. And how he was going to come out on top.

Maddie
sat beside Sophie in the Volvo as they drove home after the memorial service. She had not felt up to driving; her vision was blurred again, probably from the stress, probably from the damn menopause, menopause, the noun. She gazed out at the roadside wondering what had happened.

Could Abigail really be dead?

From the corner of her eye Maddie watched her mother, poised in posture, studying the road. It had always
been so easy to talk to Sophie—to talk about anything, to tell her everything.

Well, maybe not everything, for Maddie suspected her mother would hardly approve of her ongoing need for Parker. So she did not share her feelings; she did not speak of her frustration and her anger and her bottled-up love.

Yet she should be able to tell her about Abigail. But there was something about the unspoken, scared trust of birthday wishes and vows to best friends. No, she decided, she could not tell Sophie about Abigail.

As the gray winter landscape rolled past the slow-moving car, Maddie wished there had been more time to talk with Kris. Before Maddie had left, Kris told her she knew what she’d do next—that she’d get to the bottom of this Abigail business once and for all, and she promised to stay in touch.

No matter what Kris thought, Maddie simply did not believe that Abigail would kill herself for real. Then again, she remembered that she never would have believed that Abigail would have wanted a brand new life.

A new life, she thought, then wondered if that was what she herself had. Her new “look,” her new clothes, a new “man” in her life. It was all so confusing. It was not what she’d wanted. It was not what she’d wished for. When she was with Cody, she loved it. When she was with Parker, it felt so … right. But when she was with neither … 
Oh, God
, she half-moaned.

Sophie glanced over. “You okay?”

Maddie nodded, then closed her eyes to the dull sun. “A little headache, that’s all.”

They drove past the synagogue where she and Parker had been married, where, in her dreams, they would be married again. If Sophie had any nostalgia for the temple, she didn’t say.

Turning down the road that lead to the stone cottage, Sophie spoke. “I hope Bobby is packed.”

The knot that had been in Maddie’s stomach since her conversation with Kris resurfaced. “Packed?”

Sophie laughed. “He’ll probably remember his rollerblades and forget his clothes.”

Irritation rose. “What are you talking about?”

“Packing. For Paris. I was just saying that Bobby will probably forget his clothes. It’s a good thing I slipped in his Hanukkah presents …”

Maddie flicked her eyes once again out the window. She’d forgotten that Bobby was leaving today. How could she have forgotten? Bobby wanted to go; Timmy wanted to stay—a decision that had caused a momentary flare-up between him and his father.