The After Party (15 page)

I knew where the key to the gate was, but as I circled behind the garden shed to retrieve it I noticed the gate was open a sliver.

Joan's leg was all I could see at first: her painted toenails, her surprisingly flat foot. (Wouldn't one expect Joan Fortier's feet to be perfect and small and arched? They were average-sized, flat, a little wide.) Then her leg, gleaming with oil. And then: well, the rest of her. She was naked as the day she was born, her entire body slick with oil. The smell came to me—coconut, tropical—and made me sad for reasons I couldn't name.

She hated tan lines. So did the rest of us, but the rest of us were more discreet with how we tanned, where. The rest of us didn't remove our bikini bottoms. We tanned on our stomachs, our tops
judiciously removed but still hanging loosely around our necks, so that we could, in an instant, refasten them should a stranger come knocking.

I wasn't a stranger. But still I wished Joan were more modest. I'd seen her naked so many times I couldn't count if I tried; I knew all the stages of her body, from little girl to adolescent to this: lean, golden thighs; the surprise of her pubic hair, darker and coarser than you would have imagined; her long, muscular torso; her heavy, unbeautiful breasts. Joan needed a brassiere for her breasts to be beautiful. Those and her feet were God's way of reminding Joan Fortier that she was mortal.

Joan didn't care. She never had taken any particular pleasure in her beauty. All the times I had eagerly unfolded the
Houston
Press
and flipped past all the boring sections to “The Town Crier” and thrilled at the sight of Joan, looking beautiful and radiant at some event, on some man's arm, though she always managed to make it look as if the man were on
her
arm—Joan barely gave these photographs a second glance. “Will make Mama happy,” she'd murmur. “She chose that dress.”

The sight of her, naked, thinner than I'd seen her in a long time, a tall drink of something clear at her hand, undid something in my soul; I wanted to slap her, to shout at her, to tell her to put some clothes on and stop acting like a teenager. But I also wanted to watch her, to stand there for as long as I could and observe Joan as I never saw her: asleep and unguarded.

I slipped through the gate and Joan shifted. She wore cat-eye sunglasses.

“Cee,” she murmured. “Come sit.” She patted the space right
next to her but I took a chair a few feet away, smoothed my skirt underneath my thighs as I sat.

She sat up a little, gazed, I thought, at me, though it was impossible to tell with the sunglasses. She laughed, and pulled a neatly folded towel from the table at her side—a towel Sari had left, I was sure—and draped it over her waist.

“I'm naked as a jaybird, aren't I? Of course, I wasn't expecting company.” But the way she said it wasn't mean, and I felt a burst of relief so pure and instantaneous I wanted to cry. She wasn't mad.

“It's hot as hell,” I said. “Hotter. You'll burn.”

Her languid smile was beginning to unnerve me.

“Oh no,” she said. “I don't burn. You know that by now. I tan, to a crisp. But I never get close enough to the sun to burn.”

Beyond Joan was a table littered with half-full drinks and ashtrays. A magnum of champagne sat in a chair, like a person. I closed my eyes. Joan had been entertaining, with Sid. Last night, the night before—did it matter when? “Doll,” I imagined Sid saying, “I have a few friends who are dying to meet you.”

“Where's Sari?” I asked.

“Sari?”

“Sari, your live-in maid? The woman who hasn't left your side since the Specimen Jar?”

“The Specimen Jar,” Joan said. “I'd forgotten how you used to call it that. I never really liked that name.”

“Ciela's the one who named it,” I said. “It just stuck . . .” I trailed off.

“It never really made sense to me,” Joan continued, as if I hadn't spoken. “Because nobody could see us up there.” She paused.
“Butterflies in a jar,” she contemplated further, something liquid in her voice.

That
was our purpose. Joan's especially.

“Beautiful bugs, trapped in glass. I suppose we were Mama's specimens, now, weren't we.”

It was like that between us sometimes, as if Joan could read my mind, as if I could read hers.

“Yes,” I said, slowly, considering, “I suppose we were. Or you were, anyway.”

She laughed, her breasts rising and falling with her shoulders. One nipple was tense, puckered; the other was smooth as glass. I turned my head.

“I just came by to see if you were all right. I wanted to hear more about Sid.” There. I'd said it. I couldn't unsay it now; his name floated between us.

“I sent Sari away,” Joan said, finally.

“A day off?”

“Sure. A day off.”

“She wouldn't have approved.” I gestured behind Joan, to the mess, to the champagne bottle that sat in a chair like a small child. I took care not to include Joan's altered state, her careless nudity.

“No,” Joan said, smiling. “That's something you two have in common.” She raised her sunglasses, and squinted desperately, like some sort of underground creature. “Goddamn it's bright.”

I stood. I was tired of this, tired of sitting there and pretending.

“Tommy misses you,” I said. “And so do I.”

I watched as Joan's eyes gradually adjusted to the sun.

“I'm right here,” she said. “I haven't gone anywhere.”

“But you have,” I said.

“Cee.” She stood, her towel falling to the ground. “Leave it.”

My attention was caught by a figure in the background: Sid, moving through the house. He was naked; his nakedness thrilled and terrified me. His silhouette was muscular and broad. How is it possible to feel repelled by and attracted to someone simultaneously? It was as if I could feel his magnetism through the door. I could feel it the same way Joan must have felt it.

O
ne night in February 1952, when Joan had been back for just short of a year, the curtain had dropped. It was time.

I was tired, the kind of exhaustion that turns you half dead. Joan rarely slept that year, and neither did I. I had never in my life dabbled in drugs but I knew Joan must have picked up the habit in California. Mostly prescription drugs, I thought—I'd found a bottle of them in her lingerie drawer.

I tried to always watch her. I would stay with her as long as I could, until she disappeared from my sight at a party or a club, and then I would fetch Fred and we would drive from haunt to haunt in the dimly lit Houston night until we found her.

But I could not always watch her. That would have been impossible: Joan wanted to vanish.

It was a Sunday night. A nothing night; I had hoped Joan would turn in early, that we could have Sari fix us ham sandwiches and stay home and watch
The Ed Sullivan Show
. Instead we had gone to Sam's, downtown. As Fred held our door open and we slipped out of the car I said a little prayer that Joan would want to go home early, or if not early, before the sun came up.

But I knew as soon as we walked into Sam's that we wouldn't be leaving any time soon. The night was busy, the air smoky, illuminated by candles and the tips of cigarettes.

Sam himself came up to greet us, dressed in a shiny gray suit too tight for his corpulent frame, his hair slicked back neatly to his skull. He was chubby and persnickety, tidy about his person, and his club was neat, too: there were never crumpled napkins beneath tables, stray cigarette butts outside of ashtrays.

“Joan,” he said, and kissed her hand. She wore a ruby-and-pearl cocktail ring shaped like a teardrop on her left hand, a gift from her father. “Cece,” he said, and waited, as if he had all the time in the world, until I offered him my hand. That I wouldn't offer it was unthinkable. Men touched women whenever they wanted, in those days. I was lucky it was my hand and not my cheek, my forehead, my lips. I didn't particularly like being touched by men. I liked when Ray touched me, and that was all.

Joan never seemed to mind. I brought it up once and she'd shrugged. “Lips are just skin,” she'd said.

“And a penis? That's just skin, too, I suppose?”

She laughed merrily. “It's all skin. Though some skin is more pleasant than other skin.”

Tonight Sam led us through the club, me a few steps behind
Joan. Women stared, then turned their heads; there was generally something cold in their gazes. Men sat back, lit a cigarette, took in Joan as if she were a drink they'd just ordered. I was irritated; Sam was taking the most circuitous route possible. Finally we stopped at an elevated booth near the stage, where we were introduced to a man from Austin, whom I'd never met; he was talking to Darlene when we approached.

“Your hair,” I said, “it's different.” She'd cut three inches off, at least.

“I'll take that as a compliment. I need another drink.” She sighed, and tilted her head toward Joan, who now had the man from Austin's attention. I hadn't bothered to remember his name.

I was surprised to see Darlene. We had been a band since high school—Joan, me, Ciela, Kenna, Darlene—and most of the time we went out on the town together. But I also understood why a woman like Joan was especially hard on a woman like Darlene, who possessed neither looks nor charm. I can't remember why Ray wasn't with us that night. Maybe he'd had to work. I do remember thinking, even without him there, that I'd hit a good place in my life. After all the turmoil of my youth, it was a pleasant surprise. Joan had returned, I was engaged, and I would be the first one of us married.

“I didn't know you would be here tonight,” I said to Darlene. Though I didn't particularly like Darlene, I was glad to see her. She was someone familiar, and I could spend the night chatting with her about nothing instead of trailing after Joan from person to person. Joan was in constant motion, darting from one person to the next in a way that suggested she was never satisfied. (At the
end of the night, when we were alone in the backseat of the car, she often complained about how tiresome she found everyone. “Water, water, everywhere, and not a single drop to drink.”)

“And yet,” Darlene said, “here I am.” She raised her hand at a passing waiter, nodded to her empty champagne glass. In thirty seconds there was another one in front of her, and me as well.

“Compliments of Sam,” the waiter said, as he set down the last glass, in front of Joan.

Darlene made a face; Sam had not sent her any compliments via champagne. And why should he? There was a good chance there would be a photographer outside at the end of the night, waiting to snap a picture of Joan; Darlene's would only appear in the columns if she happened to be next to Joan, in the right place at the right time.

Joan, who was listening to the man from Austin, briefly nodded her head at the waiter, apparently absorbed in her conversation.

Darlene stared at Joan, and I felt a surge of sympathy.

“She's just pretending,” I said. “She's not really interested.” It was true: in five minutes Joan would be off to another booth, the man from Austin left behind, wondering if he'd ever had a chance with Joan Fortier. No, I could have told him had he asked, he had not ever had a chance.

Darlene snorted. “Do you think I don't know that?” She took a long sip of her champagne; the red lipstick she left behind on the glass was thick, striated. She must have been very drunk, I thought, to leave lipstick behind on a glass like that.

In six months Darlene would meet her husband, a man fifteen years her senior who
did
have to work, but only to manage his
fortune. Darlene would find herself happy, for the first time in her life—that's what she would tell all of us, anyway. “I'm truly happy for the first, the very first time in my life!”

But for now she was a girl at a nightclub on an off night, waiting for love.

“How's Mickey?” I asked, hoping to change the subject. Mickey was the man she had been dating for a few weeks. Darlene was drunk enough that distracting her would be either very easy or very hard.

“Mickey.” She snorted again. “He's not here, is he?”

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder, and picked up the scent of Chanel No. 5.

“Cece,” Ciela said, moving into my line of vision. “Didn't think you'd be here tonight.”

My cheeks turned hot. Ciela gracefully slid into Joan's side of the banquette. “You're all here?” I asked. It was worse that Ciela was in on the plans, had probably designed them. She mattered more than Darlene. I tried to catch Joan's eye but she wouldn't look at me. She couldn't have cared less that all the rest of the girls had planned a night out without us. Without her, more to the point. “Kenna, too?”

Ciela removed a small silver compact from her alligator clutch, made a show of patting her perfectly coiffed hair.

“I just put her in a cab home, as a matter of fact. She had a little too much fun too soon.” She rolled her eyes, and laughed. “We would have invited you two but I thought Joan mentioned something about plans.” She lit a cigarette, exhaled over her shoulder, coughed a bit in a glamorous way that was completely
contrived. She was lying, we both knew that. Joan never made plans. And Ciela had been smoking since she was twelve. Smoke only soothed our throats.

In December
Reader's Digest
would publish its “Cancer by the Carton” article and though we would feel guilty about smoking from that point on, we wouldn't stop. But for now smoking carried with it just pure, simple pleasure.

I lit my own cigarette. Ciela didn't seem disappointed to see us. But she wouldn't. Ciela had perfect manners. You never really knew what she was thinking.

“What I want to know,” she said, smiling, leaning toward me, but no, she was reaching for an ashtray, “is when on earth the great Joan Fortier sleeps!”

I glanced at Joan; if she'd heard her name, she didn't let on.

“Yeah,” Darlene said, lighting her cigarette from Ciela's. “I want to know that, too.”

The truth was that Joan never slept. The truth was that Joan seemed incapable of sleep lately; I often lay with her in bed until four or five in the morning, talking about nothing, chatting about the night we'd just had, the nights that lay ahead of us, undisturbed, a row of tantalizing presents. That was how Joan spoke of them: as if each upcoming night was a promise. She slipped into the future tense so often I no longer found the habit jarring. “We'll go to the Cork Club,” she'd say, in her nightgown, her head resting on her pillow, her eyes staring straight up at the ceiling, looking at nothing, “and we'll bump into Larry and maybe he'll take us driving in his new car.” And on and on. The truth was that I often drifted off to sleep and woke to find Joan gone, not
even a note; the truth was I emerged from the bedroom to the disapproving glances of Sari, who had also failed to stop Joan from leaving. We were the same, Sari and I. Neither of us knew how to make Joan stay.

I realized Ciela and Darlene were waiting on an answer.

“Oh,” I said vaguely, “she'll sleep when she's dead.”

Darlene looked a little startled, her small, thickly lined eyes darting back and forth between me and Ciela, who just laughed.

“Won't we all,” she said, and examined her cigarette. Joan rose, her hand on the man from Austin's elbow, and I chatted with Darlene and Ciela about nothing, keeping track of Joan out of the corner of my eye.

It had been nearly two years since we'd graduated, but we might as well have been in Lamar's vast cafeteria, picking at our sandwiches, watching Joan flirt with a boy at the football team's table.

And then Darlene was gone and Ciela and I sat alone at the banquette. The evening ended where it always seemed to: all eyes on Joan. The man from Austin had pulled her onto the small cabaret stage at the back of the club, and she was obviously very drunk, and maybe something else, but still she moved gracefully to the music, swaying and turning unself-consciously, as if she were alone. She wore a black strapless dress, elaborately crisscrossed at the bust with thick white ribbon. The effect was almost masculine, as if she wore a suit of armor around her breasts.

I turned to say something to Ciela but she was gazing at Joan. I tried to see what Ciela saw.

She was too thin—Ciela would have noticed how thin Joan
had become. She seemed almost fragile, her wrists tiny, childlike; her waist dramatically drawn in as if she wore a girdle. But I had zipped Joan into that dress; she wore nothing underneath. Joan at her best was more Rita Hayworth than Vivien Leigh: being thin didn't suit her.

I glanced at the other patrons, the room filled with glittering bodies, all young except for the richest men, who were ten, twenty years older than us. Thirty. The man from Austin looked like he was in his late forties. There was not a single woman in this room over the age of twenty-five, I realized. If you were older than that you were at home, with a husband and a child. I thought of Ray, and felt a rush of unexpected relief. My days here were numbered.

All the glittering bodies were watching Joan. All the glittering bodies were captivated. I touched Ciela on the shoulder, lightly, and gestured to the room.

“They love her,” I said, and it was hard not to feel satisfied, not to take pride in Joan's beauty and charm. Hard not to take a smug pleasure in how the night had turned out: Ciela had tried to engineer the night for herself, tried to take Joan out of it completely, and look where that had gotten her.

Ciela turned to me. “Joan's troubled,” she said. “She's in trouble, Cece.”

I know
, I should have said. Did Ciela think I didn't know? I knew how much she drank; I was the one who tucked empty bottles into my largest purse and secreted them out of the Specimen Jar, though of course Sari knew what I was doing.

“She's just having fun,” I said, and I half believed it myself.

Ciela smiled, almost smirked, though Ciela was not a woman who smirked.

“Fun,” Ciela said. “Do you really think that?”

Ciela considered me for a moment. I could feel her deciding.

“Yes,” I said firmly, to put an end to the conversation.

Ciela left shortly thereafter, kissed me on each cheek like we were French. She glanced at Joan, who was behind the bar with Sam, laughing.

“Good luck with her,” she said, “though I suppose you don't need it.”

I
did
need it. It was nearly impossible to make Joan leave a club, a bar, a party. I knew Ciela and all the others wondered why I stayed, why I did what I did.

“Just move out,” Ciela had said, when Joan was in Hollywood, after I had met Ray. “Get married. Get your own place. It's not healthy, waiting for someone who might or might not be coming back.”

She was full of advice, Ciela.

I made my way to the bar.

“Baby,” a man called after me, “baby, come sit down.” It was nearly two o'clock in the morning. The alcohol had turned to sludge in my blood. I wanted to go home.

I took a seat at the nearly empty bar, next to the man from Austin, who, predictably, was waiting for Joan to leave to make his exit. He seemed harmless enough. I don't know why I thought that, exactly—just that I had somehow learned, like every other
woman on earth, to separate the men who might do me harm from the men who seemed likely not to.

“Joan,” I said. She was whispering something to Sam, who was cupping her elbow conspiratorially. I was disgusted, though I knew exactly what she would tell me.
That's what men do, Cece. They're animals. Take it as a compliment.

Now Joan was pretending not to hear me. I would be lucky to have her in the car by three.

“Joan,” I barked.

She spun around and glared at me. Sam and the man from Austin sat up straighter.