Life After Life (18 page)

He’s the one who grew up here but still didn’t know the people they really needed to know. She told him how she could see and understand the strata of the town so much better than he could because she was an implant. Of course she meant to say
transplant,
but she said implant, and he has never let her forget that. He brings it up every time they argue, in fact, and she sees
that
as a kind of harassment, certainly something worth mentioning to her lawyer when the time comes. Of course she knew the correct word was
transplant.
She accidentally said
implant,
and he in all his smart-ass glory said:
You and all the other boobs.
She is the reason they are even on the A list in town; she got them invited to everything so they could meet all the right people. It’s what she came from, after all. She had not grown up that way, but she was
supposed
to have and that was a well-known fact. She couldn’t help that her grandfather lost everything in the depression. That loss did not change the blood that coursed through her veins and the long line of wealthy important people she descended from. And of course meeting Dr. Andrew Porter had changed all that. He didn’t belong in that town any more than she did and yet there he was. He was originally from Raleigh with parents who had deep roots in one of the better parts of Alabama and his wife was from Pennsylvania, and though Kendra wanted to be like and possess so much about her, she also really didn’t care for her. Those are the hardest friends to have. Those you just know you
should
have when really you detest them. Ben said she was jealous and that she needed to be more careful that her jealousy and coveting didn’t show, which pissed her off beyond belief. She didn’t speak to him for days after that. The truth was all those expensive clothes were wasted on Liz Porter. She did not have the body for designer clothes like Kendra does. Liz has the look of a rich girl but an ordinary-looking rich girl and that’s where someone like Kendra comes in. She is someone who can pull off having it all.

She and Ben went to dinner at their house one night, and everything switched just like that—a lightbulb glared in full romantic glory above her head. That night was the beginning of it all. After that, everything in her life looked shabby and cheap. She wants a huge bathroom with steam showers and heat lamps and a heated floor. She wants a bathroom so huge that there would be room for someone to come in and set up a massage table—so much better to have them come to you than to go down to that one dreadful place in town offering massages, the Big Chill, an operation run by a woman who used to work as an assistant in a smoke-out facility, which some say doubled as abortion clinic/whorehouse. No one with a brain would go there for a massage, and Kendra has a brain, a beautiful brain, and a good heart and a beautiful body or so she has been told by Andrew, who actually gives a damn, so what else matters? She would rather dive into that awful snake-infested river than go to such a place even though Liz Porter has been and reported back that it was a lovely little spa—massages, facials, pedicures. The girl who did her toenails was a darling, tattooed all over and smart as a whip. They only play music from the sixties and seventies and they burn patchouli incense. “It’s cute,” Liz Porter said. “I love retro.”

Well, Kendra loves retro, too; of course she does, but only retro that is worth her time. Like she would love to own a ’68 Mustang convertible, which Andrew says she will someday. “You have to be patient,” he whispered in her ear just recently; they were at the hospital gift store where she was pretending to buy something for a sick friend. He followed her back to a corner filled with cheap kid things like Beanie Babies and coloring books and he cupped her ass with one hand and pulled her in close for one hard second before turning back out into the world and complimenting the ancient woman at the counter on her fine selection of pediatric gifts.

Kendra wants her own dressing room with little globe lights all around a great big mirror. Maybe she will even have a three-way mirror with a platform like at Nordstrom. She is someone who really should be in New York or Chicago or Boston instead of here where you can’t even find what Oprah recommends you buy to use and wear. She is by nature, a beautiful woman, everyone tells her so. Her hair is blond and only in recent years has needed the benefit of highlights—she is a perfect size 4 and small enough that she can wear three-inch heels and still keep all the men in the room—even the shortest ones—feeling manly. Part of it is the good fortune of nature, but there is also a lot of care and maintenance that goes into it.

She picks up a rawhide bone and throws it in the trash. She keeps finding them everywhere, sick little reminders. That damn dog, pissing if she yelled at it, and she had no choice but to yell at it, so ill trained and fucked up. She has no time for dredging up all kinds of sympathy for fucked-up creatures. That’s another thing she told Ben about that crazy friend of his; who even has time for fucked-up people when there are so many good ones? That stupid dog would have ruined all these wonderful rugs that came from that sad old man and there was no way that Kendra was going to let that happen. She still can’t get over the good deal she got—and
she
got the good deal,
she
is the one who dealt with that pathetic guy so sick with grief to let all those nice Persian rugs go along with a huge mahogany sideboard and a baby grand piano. She said as much to Liz while doing her “Oh, do you really like this?” routine, which she has more than perfected only to see the drop in Liz’s expression, the wash of compassion, and that pissed Kendra off and made her add, “Bless his heart.” Of course Liz can act all compassionate on his behalf because she has always been handed everything in life without having to do anything to get it. Kendra, on the other hand, has been robbed in life, the fortune that should have accompanied her good family name long compromised.

Kendra can’t imagine any death or tragic event that would make her unaware of rugs worth thousands of dollars, that is, if they aren’t coated in dog piss. The rug in the living room alone was appraised at over twenty, and when Liz Porter came over and oohed and ahhed, Kendra knew that finally
she
had something Liz wanted. Liz with her plain, plump rich girl look—and that is where money makes a huge difference. An overweight body in cheap clothes is just as hideous as it sounds, but you can take a plump girl and squeeze her into expensive clothes and it does make a difference.
Elegant pearl dripping sausages,
Kendra thinks. Nothing is going to hide what is unattractive, of course, but a person can distract and it is clear Liz has been raised and groomed to do just that. Liz even knelt right there in Kendra’s living room, tasteful black skirt riding up the heft of her thighs, while she rubbed her hands over the threads, admiring the intricate patterns—she even knew about this particular kind of rug and had little boring stories to tell about the poverty-stricken people who wove them over a century ago, like anybody cared to hear that. The dog came in about then and Kendra yanked her onto the back porch and locked the door. She was not about to have that goddamned mongrel pissing around with Liz Porter in the room. Liz Porter had two King Charles spaniels, which they had driven to DC to buy, and she had also been to Fairfield Spa down in Savannah several times when her husband thought she looked tired. Of course, she can go and enjoy herself at patchouli stink-hole cheap massage; that’s slumming for her. She can afford to slum
because
she is married to Andrew Porter. She has a husband who is worth a shit. She told Ben how Liz Porter went to a weeklong spa and sometimes flew to New York just to see a show and buy new clothes. “That’s the kind of man she’s married to,” she said.

“The kind who likes to get rid of his wife?” He waved one of his stupid wands over her head and then pulled a dead rubber chicken out of his sleeve. He had a wreath of ivy on his head and was carrying a sheet he planned to wear like a toga to introduce his upcoming triple feature:
Ben Hur
and
El Cid
and
Cleopatra.

“Oh, ha ha,” she said. “He’s a heart surgeon and still manages to do all that needs to be done, including being a real husband.” She had said that several times but lately has had to stop saying it given what is going to happen very soon. Now she is trying to be coolly polite and only arguing back late at night when she knows Abby is asleep and he has had enough to drink that he won’t fully remember. The last time she said something like that, Ben had said, “So maybe he can give you a heart, like the Tin Man.” And then he laughed and laughed, fell back on the bed with his dirty shoes still on, and laughed. “Oh, that’s right,” he sputtered. “The Tin Man actually already
had
a heart—won’t work then.”

“You are just jealous,” she said, but then stopped because Abby was there in the doorway with that stinking Dollbaby. Abby had tied one of Kendra’s nice
retro
Vera scarves she got on eBay around the mutt’s neck, and it got Kendra’s attention off of her sarcastic husband and back to the dog and her daughter who never tries to do anything to improve her looks even with all of Kendra’s help and suggestions.

“If we have to have a dog,” she said, “at least get one I won’t be ashamed to walk! One that looks like a dog.”

And with that Ben mumbled that she should get a job and buy her own fucking dog.

She told him that a
job
was not in their marital agreement, that the marital agreement was that he would use that business degree he got or finish that law degree he used to get her to marry him. When she decided to marry him, he was going back to school and in the interim he was in business with his old roommate and friend, a terribly unattractive boy who had no social skills and terrible hygiene but was flat out rolling in dough. Her moment of reckoning was when she realized that Ben was not in it for what she thought. Ben talked the ugly idiot into cutting ties with his demanding (and extremely successful) father and doing his own thing.

“Hey, man,” she heard Ben say. “Life is short. And if you want to work in forestry, that’s your choice.” The two were drinking beer out on the back stoop of their dump rental house and passing a joint. “And you sell yourself so short, man. C’mon, you think all you are is what your dad gave you? You don’t see who you really are?”

The puffed-up pussy was crying by then and Kendra had wanted to take a broom and sweep them both out into the yard like the wasted strays they were.

“Look at you, man,” Ben said. “You actually read
Ulysses,
and you’re the only one who got an A in that class. And you knew how to rewire the sound system, remember? What about all your great ideas? You’re a geek, man. The world is yours on a silver platter.”

She knew then that everything she wanted had gone right down the tubes, and to make it worse, she was already pregnant with something that had not been her idea. Before she even had the chance to say she didn’t want it, he had all but given out cigars, so proud of himself. She was holding a piece of Wedgewood china, a gift from one of her mother’s friends, and she threw it against the wall.

They still get postcards from the old friend, long ago reunited with his dad and making a mint. “You deserve a share of that,” she has said. “You need to be more assertive—like call him up and say, ‘Hey? Remember me? I’m the only person who even treated you like a human and could stand to be around you,’” but he couldn’t hear her.

“Hey, man, good for you,” she heard him say into the phone when the guy called from some European vacation or the huge summer home he and his wife were building over on Bald Head Island. And his wife was beautiful—young and beautiful—and hadn’t even had a baby yet.

“He owes you,” she said, often enough that he told her she reminded him of that fairy tale where the greedy wife keeps sending the poor husband out to wish for bigger and bigger until they wind up with nothing. “Or the one where the man gets so pissed off at her nagging that he uses his last wish to wish the big sausage got stuck to her face for a nose or something like that—remember that one? I love that story. Abby would love that story.”

“I am the last person to be greedy,” she said. “There is not a greedy bone in my body. I just want you to be appreciated for your own part in him being the success he is. Without you he would have killed himself or something, or should have.”

“Here it is.” He pulled out a postcard from his drawer. “Here is what you’ve been searching for. It says, ‘Thanks, man. You have been such a good friend to me.’” She grabbed and tore it, and he told her to produce a similar artifact from her drawer. He said, “Let’s see who thinks you’re nice.” She could tell he was getting ready to light into her but then froze in the way he always does when Abby enters the room. And there she was, a mini carbon copy of him. Everybody said that, too, and it infuriated her. Oh, she’s the spitting image of Ben. Kendra’s blond hair and blue eyes were lost in the mix and so was her body. Abby has dark wiry hair and a chunky little body, and what kind of mother would she be if she didn’t make her lose weight? Of course she needed a regimen for exercise. Doesn’t the child see when they try on clothes in the junior department how they all fit her mom? Shouldn’t that make a kid want to lose weight and improve her looks? But instead she is
his
child and as a result doesn’t care
who
her friends are and doesn’t care
what
she wears. She just doesn’t care about anything except that goddamned dog.