Social Lives (20 page)

 

 

 

T
HE TEARS STUNG HER
cheeks as they streamed down her face. She had held them at bay across seven miles of winding roads, then through the thick brush that surrounded their property. Standing in the center of her room, surrounded by the flowered wallpaper, the unmade bed, the clothing draped over chairs, she was overwhelmed with relief. She covered her face with her hands to hold some of it back, but it was futile. Everything about this room, the intense familiarity of all that it held, of its smell and feel, was washing over her, washing away the mask that concealed the night.

She was sobbing as she removed her clothing, the cropped black tank and the bra beneath it, then the miniskirt and underwear. She kicked off her wedge heels, pulled from her wrists the thick band of bracelets. With her mind spinning, her emotions fully exposed, bare and raw from her core to her skin, she stepped into the shower. It had all happened so quickly.

The events played before her as water ran through her hair and down her back. Sitting in Kyle's car, the night so full of hope and anticipation, she could barely contain herself. Then the ousting to the backseat as Victoria Lawson took her place, looked at her like she was a barely tolerable distraction. That was when she should have known. Could there have been a
clearer sign? And still she had plowed ahead, determined to ride the wave to the end, where maybe, just maybe, the shreds of evidence she carried in her head would actually prove themselves to be more than pieces of an illusion she had willed together against all sense of reason. His hand on her shoulder in the cafeteria. The invitation to the party, and the ride that had brought him so far out of his way.

Her arms and legs were stinging from scratches she could only now feel. The drugs, the sheer adrenaline that had enabled her to make it home, had rendered her numb as she pushed through the wild blackberry bushes. They were dormant now from the cold, and were impossible to see in the darkness until they cut into you like barbed wire. She reached for the soap and rubbed it into her skin. The pain felt good as she flashed back to that square coffee table, the bottle of vodka, the pills. The slow return of sobriety had brought with it a disturbing sense in her gut. What had they done, all of them? Slowly, turn after turn, exposing themselves to one another in a depraved, perverted way. The creepy silence as they watched a bra come off, gaped at breasts falling on bare skin.

She scrubbed every inch of her body, washed her hair twice, then stayed beneath the water until the exhaustion overtook her. She turned off the faucet and reached for a towel, drying her face, her mouth.

She never should have gotten into that car.

But that was not the only thought that came as she wrapped herself up in long cotton pajamas and combed her hair. Kyle had driven off without her, but he had not been alone. She played back the final moments, the sound of Amanda's voice, Victoria's laughter. Had they both gone with him? And which one would he have dropped first? Amanda was farther out, almost as far as Caitlin. Would he have made excuses to take Amanda anyway so he could be alone with Victoria? Or would he not have given the matter so much as a passing thought? It had all seemed so random, how they had ended up in the cars. Like no one cared. Like it didn't really matter.

Then again, Doug had seemed pissed when she turned out to be his only passenger. Perhaps he'd had his hopes on Victoria, the only confirmed non-virgin at the party. Either way, she had known when her hand touched the door handle, when he looked out at her with a mixture of annoyance and resignation, that she should not have gotten in that car.

She sat at her desk and waited for the screen to come to life. Her nerves were shot, her eyes heavy, and it felt good, or maybe just better than the panic she had endured for the better part of the night. She logged on to the site and started to write.

Cbow: Totallyfkd—are you there? SOS. Something has happened.

 

 

 

 

 

“H
ELLO
, M
OTHER
.”

Rosalyn Barlow sat on a cold stone bench in the center of the Eddings family mausoleum. It was six thirty, and the sky was still dark as she looked up through the glass dome ceiling.

“How has it been for you, this second year of being dead?”

It had gone so quickly, these past two years, that Rosalyn had hardly felt them at all. In fact, it might as well have been mere moments since she received that call from her father.

Rosalyn let out a sigh as she stared at her mother's portrait. It was, of course, the portrait the woman had specified in her carefully drafted instructions for burial. The cremation. The urn. The placement within the mausoleum, which she had commissioned as a present to herself on her sixtieth birthday. The picture, and the words beneath it—a full-page eulogy that she had written herself. The memorial service, the caterer to use, the guests to invite. The list of mourners permitted to speak. It wasn't that she was a morbid person. Far from it. Mrs. Eddings had not planned on dying. What she had planned on was immortality, one way or another.

“My year has sucked, if you're at all interested.”

It was the smile that always got to her, the way it seemed to respond to
whatever it was Rosalyn said. Sometimes it seemed cheery. Other times sour and laced with cynicism. Today, it seemed more of a smirk as it stared back at her from the canvas.

Oh, for Christ's sake
, it was saying.
Get over yourself and move on.

“Yes, Mother. Of course. I'm not a complete imbecile.”

Still, she had come here to think, to regroup before leaving behind events that by all rights should have devastated her. She'd come on the heels of those events, and in the face of exhaustion, to reflect before coming up with yet another brilliant plan, this time to control the impending damage from her husband's affair, and to save her daughter who was digging herself a mighty large hole.

It was a strange place to do this, to think. In the center of a cemetery, surrounded by the dead, whose bones lay beneath the ground, and her mother's ashes, which were carefully sealed in the sterling silver urn she was now holding in her hands. But it was precisely that—the presence of the dead—that opened the gate to the thoughts that were, on every other day, unavailable to her. Death was inevitable. Death would come. And when it did, even the most carefully laid plans would not be enough to stop the waves of indifference from rolling in, slowly erasing the lives that were lived. It had been a mere two years, and already the famous Mrs. Eddings was little more than a blip on the memories of those she had known. Rosalyn's father was remarried. Her brother in London. It was Rosalyn and Rosalyn alone who carried the woman in her soul. And this was not by conscious choice.

She might have escaped this fate of carrying around a woman who was not only dead but also wholly unworthy of such a favor. But she had been branded years ago with her mother's imprint after making choices that could not be undone.

It was the knowledge of this fact that was now consuming her as she held her dead mother in her hands. Ashes. That was all that was left of the force that had stood in her path like a fallen tree, the path she sometimes believed she should have taken. And whether or not that was so, there was no doubt she would long for it until she, too, was nothing but ash. In this room, among the dead, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to look down that path to a vision of a young man. It was a vision of love that she could hardly recall. Still, it had been there. She saw his face—the olive skin, the dark wavy hair, and the wonder he held in his eyes at sights he had never seen.
Paris had grown old for her. At seventeen, she had been there nearly a dozen times. For him, a middle-class kid from Maine, it was magical.

The regret of following her mother's orders to return home had not come for years. Wasn't that always how it was with the young? There is nothing that can't be fixed. Nothing that can't be salvaged. And so she had plowed forward, numb from the profound loss of her first real love. She passed every test, met every expectation that was laid out for her. And when she did, new ones were put in place, like the little jumps and tunnels at a dog show. Over this one. Under that one. To the finish line.

Only there was no finish line. Her mother was dead, and she was still jumping and crawling.

Not that she disliked her life. Her husband lately, perhaps. Her friends, some. And the moment she left this room, she would again feel the invisible girders of a social structure that were stronger than steel. Her place in the community, the schools, the country club, the charity work and social engagements. She was raising five children who would never want for anything, who would be exposed to every corner of the world through travel and education. It was as meaningful a life as any other, as far as meaning went. After all, meaning was hardly intrinsic.

And that was precisely what made crossroads so tricky. She could blame her mother all day long for losing the life she might have had. It wouldn't change a damned thing—not the fact that she had not chosen that path, or the impossibility of knowing how her life would have otherwise turned out. The journey had been her own, and it had taken incredible restraint for her not to tell Caitlin just how similar they were. There was nothing her daughter could do that would shock her, nothing she couldn't understand from a place, not of empathy, but of familiarity.

“Yes, Mother. I know what you would do.” Her hands were gripped tightly around the handles of the urn, her knuckles white. “Should I accept the Conrads into the club as well? Would that make them grateful? Would it make them indebted enough?”

There had been a Kyle Conrad in Rosalyn's life years before. Handsome, popular. Every mother's dream for her daughter. And Rosalyn had delivered, doing things that had to be done to keep him by her side all through junior year. Until the trip to Paris. And upon her return, there had been a price to pay to win him back.

“Should I send him an invitation to my daughter's bedroom?”

Her mother was still smirking at her. Nothing and no one could ever loosen the woman's grip on her own righteousness, and Rosalyn felt it even now.

“There are things you don't know, Mother. Things that would wipe that smile right off your face.”

But she knew that wasn't true. Her mother had been immune to feelings of guilt, shame, or even mild regret. She would never stop smiling, never stop believing that everything she had done had been for the best. And Rosalyn's perfect life gave her more than enough ammunition.

“I won't be coming next year,” she said softly as she placed the urn back on the white marble pedestal built to hold it into eternity. “But don't worry. I'll have someone polish you.”

Her mother had been clever, but she hadn't been intelligent. Had she been intelligent, she would have opened her mind to the possibility of her own failings, her severe miscalculations. It would have been pointless to tell the woman about the happiness Rosalyn had felt in Paris that summer, how her eyes had been opened to a new version of herself. A version she liked. Had Mrs. Eddings even allowed herself to believe it, it still would have done nothing to weaken the woman's resolve, or change the course of events that had come to pass.

As Rosalyn stood to leave, she felt the presence of another person in the cold stone building. She turned toward the door and found Eva standing just inside its borders.

“You look like hell,” Eva said. Wearing a tight Juicy sweatsuit and no makeup, Eva wasn't exactly looking herself either.

“I could say the same.” Rosalyn had planned on fleeing this place, on pushing her mother's smile from her thoughts and letting her mind find comfort within the plans that still had to be formulated. Now the keeper of her memories was blocking the door.

“I told you I wasn't coming this year,” she said.

Eva shrugged her shoulders and took a step toward her friend. “And I knew you still would.”

Rosalyn nodded. Of course Eva knew. Eva always knew, but even so, she seemed oddly sure of herself. This was their secret, Rosalyn's homage to her mother's crypt after the Halloween party. She had come alone the first
year, after the party was over and her husband was dead drunk and asleep. But she had not left alone. Eva had made a point of it.

Silently, the two women sat on the stone bench facing Mrs. Eddings. They looked between the urn and the portrait, Rosalyn feeling what she was feeling, and Eva holding whatever part of those feelings Rosalyn couldn't bear. Eva had been there that summer, the study-abroad trip to Paris their junior year. It was one of the many programs that made the Wilshire Academy so prestigious. The students who were chosen studied at the Sorbonne, living in university dormitories that were chaperoned by a handful of teachers. Of course, with Paris at their doorstep,
supervision
was a generous term, and the summer had become as much about becoming fluent in promiscuity as in learning the French language. Eva knew the joy that had found the young Rosalyn Eddings that summer, and the damage that followed upon her return. The weight of all this was particularly heavy on this early morning after seeing Barlow with Jacks hours before.