Nancy’s Theory of Style (2 page)

Nancy
reluctantly abandoned the hope that she
was experiencing mental problems and turned to see her beautiful cousin Roberta
gliding toward her, because Roberta was one of those women who moved so
smoothly you glanced down to make sure she wasn’t levitating.

Roberta, known as Birdie, was arm and
arm with one of her grimy male companions. She swung a small glossy shopping
bag in her free hand. Birdie had a child, but you wouldn’t know it from her
delicate shape, encased in a boat-neck jacquard sheath dress.

Smiling at Lizette,
Nancy
said, “Let’s talk tomorrow about your
party,” and went to meet her cousin.

“Birdie,”
Nancy
said and was going to give her cousin a
kiss, but Birdie turned to intercept a drink from the smiling waiter who’d suddenly
appeared.

Birdie’s black hair was cut short so
that it accentuated the clear, green eyes that photographers loved because of
the way they caught the light. Her appearance of fragility, which men mistook
for actual fragility, always made
Nancy
feel like a clumsy 12-year-old with a self-inflicted haircut and nails bitten
to the quick.

“Thank you,” Birdie said throatily to
the waiter. Birdie wasn’t a snob about men, as was evident by her current
escort. Turning to him she said, “Leo, go entertain yourself.”

The hollow-eyed skeleton trembled even
though he was wearing a pea-coat. He muttered an assent before heading for the
nearest tray of canapés.

Birdie handed
Nancy
the shopping bag and said, “I picked it
up at La Maison Guerlain and it reminded me of you, not the way you are now,
but the way you should be, Nanny Girl when you grow up.”

Nancy
glanced in the bag and saw an elegantly
wrapped box. “Thank you, but as a grown up and a married woman, I wish you
wouldn’t use that nickname.”

Birdie laughed, a seductive ripple of
sound. “You’ve only been married a month, Nanny. I wanted to lay bets on how
long it will last. Mother said that was rude, but really, Nanny, you’ll be
gnawing your arm off to get out of this trap. Todd Chambers, he’s as dull,
lumbering, and braying as a walrus.”

 
“Birdie,
I know how much you enjoy getting a reaction, but I’m afraid I’m too busy to
accommodate your special needs today. Everyone adores Todd.”
Nancy
saw Birdie’s friend Leo stuffing
coconut prawns and mango skewers into his coat pockets. “Where did you dig Leo
up? Literally, since he has a formaldehyde-in-the-veins aspic.”

“Suspended in gelatin?” Birdie said with
a smile. “You’re so funny, Nanny. Leo’s very special. He’s a musical genius. His
father’s a fire and brimstone type from the
Central Valley
,
so the boy’s irrevocably damaged.” Birdie said it as if it was an
accomplishment. Then she looked around at the crowd. “Are these your friends?”

“You would have met them had you come to
the wedding.”

“I promise to come to your next wedding.”

“One is enough for me, thank you,
because it was an utter dream. It’s so happy-making to see you again. I had no
idea you were around.”

“I tried to visit my parents, but you
know how that goes,” Birdie said. Her parents had a beautiful place in
Santa Barbara
, and
Nancy
loved to visit them. “The lifelong parent-child relationship is unnatural in
the animal world. I don’t know how you put up with yours.”

“I adore my parents, Birdie. They are
delightful people.”

Birdie raised her neatly arched eyebrows.
“Anyway, my mother mentioned that you were having a get-together with the lively
young people, her words, and I brought Leo because I thought it might be
amusing.”

Birdie gazed upon the flat lot and the
new development of enormous houses on the low hills, which would turn brown and
dry with summer heat soon enough. “Such a dismal landscape.”

“It takes a little vision to see what it
will be,”
Nancy
said, trusting that Todd had
been right when he said the area would be the Marin of the
South
Bay
.
“Villagio Tuscana is an extrêmement desirable community.”
Nancy
hoped that Birdie wouldn’t answer in French, since
Nancy
had missed her year abroad to stay
close to Todd.

“Sweetie, there’s nothing Tuscan about
this place. You know I don’t care about these things, but is it the right time
to build? Your father was going on about how he told you to buy in an
established neighborhood.”

Nancy
had asked Todd the same question. “Location
is more important than the market, Birdie, the timing is right to buy this
choice lot and hire the contractor we want. We’re going to be very happy here.”

“Oh, that naive American dream that a
house can bring happiness and fulfillment.”

Nancy
smiled pleasantly. “Birdie, I know you
don’t mean it, so I try not to take your little jabs personally.”

“Always exhibiting such self-control, Nanny,
always the good little girl.”

“Speaking of which…”
Nancy
was about to ask where Birdie’s
daughter was when Birdie tilted her neat head on her elegant neck, as if she’d
heard a distant martini shaker.

 
“Well,
I’ve got to dash. Leo’s got a gig in
Santa
Cruz
. Why don’t you come with us? It’s never too late
to begin to live an authentic life.”

Nancy
laughed and said, “Run from bliss to
chaos? Thank you, but, no.”

“Consider it an open offer. Ciao,
Nanny.”

“Bye, bye, Birdie.”
Nancy
watched to make sure that Birdie actually
took Leo with her and saw them get into a dusty new burgundy Cadillac sedan that
was missing license plates.

Nancy
could relax now that Birdie had left. She
turned to look at her laughing, happy friends and caught Todd’s eye across the
lot. He smiled and raised his glass to her. She blew a kiss to him.

Everyone was having fun, except for one gangly
young man half-hidden behind the vermillion and emerald fronds of a potted
banana tree.
Nancy
picked up two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter and went to the man.

Her pal, GP, which stood for Geek
Prince, gave her a grateful smile. His long face, Eurasian features, and
bleached hair would have worked on someone with confidence. He twitched his
shoulders in his beautiful sooty black suit.

“GP, how are you?”
Nancy
asked and handed him the drink.

“Hey,
Nancy
,” he said as he stepped in to give her
a kiss and then changed his mind and patted her back awkwardly. “Thanks for
inviting me.”

“I’m ecstatic that you came,” she said, happy
that Todd had let her invite the classmate who’d lived down the hall from
Nancy
frosh year. She’d
been charmed by his awkward sincerity and his fascination with her invaluable
observations about life.

She slipped her arm through his and
said, “Who dressed you?”

“I have a personal shopper. Is it wrong?
It’s Armani. I heard you mention Armani once.”

 
“You
always listen so well. The suit is exquisite, but it’s not who you are. We
should always live an authentic life,” she said paraphrasing Birdie, even
though
Nancy
believed
most people should run screaming from their authentic selves.

“It’s not comfortable,” he admitted with
another twitch.

“It’s not comfortable, because you keep
fidgeting. I know it seems counterintuitive, but I really think you should
embrace your inner nerd to be chic,” she said. “I’ll go shopping with you and
give you a reverse-makeover. It’ll be noodles of fun, a lasagna of laughs. How’s
business school?”

“Even worse than summer camp. I hate it.”

“Everyone does. Except Todd, because
he’s so competitive. Why don’t you drop out and get a PhD, so I can call you
Doc?”

“In what? All I ever liked was history,
but I don’t want to be a prof. I want to do something that has a positive
meaning, something that improves lives. Like the way you’ve hired all these
people to work on this party.”

“GP, I shall give your career path some
pondering. Now come and mingle. I know I’ve taught you how.”

He smiled. “Like a hundred times. All I
have to do is ask questions and people will think I’m fascinating.”

“You’re my best student,” she said and
pulled him over to Lizette’s husband, Bill.

“Bill, you remember GP, don’t you? He’s
wild about vineyard history.” Then addressing, GP, she said, “Bill’s doing all
sorts of mad experiments in ebology at his family’s Paleolithic vineyard.”

“It’s enology and our vineyard only goes
back to the 1870s,” Bill said and to GP he added, “
Nancy
always looks bored when I talk about
grape genomics and flavor chemistry.”

“I categorically deny that! I’m passionately
interested in the minutia of your whatever. However, I must go check in with
the caterer about canapés.”

As
Nancy
walked away she heard GP say, “Grape genomics?” How’s that applicable to
winemaking?”

She smiled and thought of how much good
she was doing just by being in the world. She spotted Todd, who was cornered by
Junie Burns, and hurried to rescue him.

“Junie!”
Nancy
reached out to the tall woman with
unruly russet hair. As they exchanged air kisses,
Nancy
noticed harsh aldehyde notes in Junie’s
perfume and saw the unevenness of her thick liquid eyeliner on her melty
chocolate brown eyes.

“How have you been?”
Nancy
said. Over Junie’s shoulder,
Nancy
saw Todd mouth a
thank-god and move off.

“Good!
 
Well, you know,” Junie said in her whispery
voice. The sleeveless blouse she wore now was too tight in the shoulders and
the arm-holes gaped showing a slice of beige bra. “Busy with work and I just
got named president of the Alumni Singles.”

“Maybe you’ll meet someone!”

Junie’s head shook as loosely as a
bobble-head doll. Then she looked around and noticed that Todd was gone. “The
guys I meet always want feminine girls, and I’m, well…”

“You’re fabulous, Junie! I’d kill to be
as tall as you. I’d wear four-inch heels and stalk into rooms like an irate
dominatrix. Let’s spend a day together soon, okay? We’ll go shopping and to the
salon.”
Nancy
wanted
others to see how attractive Junie could be.

“I’d love that,” Junie whispered shyly.

Nancy
heard shouted hellos and looked to see
a tall, sandy-haired man walking into the party. “Excuse me, Junie. I’ve got to
say hello to someone.”

Junie followed
Nancy
’s
glance and blushed so
Nancy
said quietly, “When we get together I’m going to give you some flirting tips,
too. Won’t that be fun?”

She made her way over the sand to the good-looking
man in the jeans, white shirt, and light-weight blazer. “Why, Bailey, Todd said
you couldn’t make it.”

Bailey Carson Whiteside III was
well-over six-foot and he bent to give her a kiss on the cheek. “I rescheduled
a few things so I could see you. This is for you. It’s heavy.” He handed her a
large glossy gift bag with a red ribbon tying the handles together.

She took the bag and said, “Bricks for
the house?”

“Books on Mies van der Rohe, Alvar
Aalto, and Jean Prouve. I thought you might like reading them while you work on
the house.”

“You’re always so thoughtful, Bailey!” His
hazel eyes looked right at her in a way that made her feel shy. “You shouldn’t
have.”

“Less is more, except where books are
concerned,” he said. “I envy you building a house.”

“Why not buy one of the lots here?”
Nancy
said. “Wouldn’t it
be fun to be neighbors?”

“It would be great, but I’m going to
study the housing market a little longer before making any decisions. Where’s
Todd? I want to tell him about a great opportunity with a sports medicine group.”

“He’s somewhere nearby.”
Nancy
looked around, but
didn’t see Todd. She dropped her voice. “No doubt he’s hiding from Junie and
her monologues about city zoning law.”
 

After the party, Nancy and Todd drove
back to
San Francisco
and the condo that he’d bought as a bachelor. On the ride up the elevator,
Nancy
noticed a chip on
the baseboard, and as they walked down the corridor she saw the unevenness of
the paint on the walls. Someone (Todd) had spilled coffee on the carpeting
months before and a shadow of the stain remained.