“What?” she said, pretending she had been listening all the while, not lost inside herself.
“You know. The story. The door.”
“Oh, no. You know how people go in and out throughout the service.”
“But the doors usually just creak, not make that hollow booming sound. Everyone turned around-except Mother.”
Rachel smiled. The two sisters had an almost twinlike closeness. Nice for them, hard on Michelle.
“You’re saying Mom is like the defendant in that old story about the trial where the attorney announces the real killer is about to walk through the door. He doesn’t turn around because he knows he’s the real killer. So Mom knows that nothing can bring Daddy back, not even Michelle’s bat mitzvah.”
“If he were to come back, it would be for that, though.”
“Really? Not college graduations, not our marriages? Only Michelle’s bat mitzvah would bring him back?”
“You didn’t go to yours. Graduation, I mean. And I had no interest in mine because I was already planning my marriage to Henry. Did it ever occur to you,” Linda said, dropping her crankiness for earnestness, “that we both chose the kind of weddings where an absent father was less noticeable? You in Vegas, me at a brunch in the house.”
“We were only trying to save Mother money.”
“And save ourselves from disappointment. Think about it, Rachel.” Linda rose to her feet, swaying a little, like a balloon on a string, but still very graceful. “There’s always been this stupid fiction that he comes back, like some benevolent spirit, standing at the rear of the synagogue, like Elijah on Passover. He’s never come back. And he’s never coming back.”
Linda looked very pale.
“Are you okay?”
“I think I’m going to throw up. Other women have morning sickness during the first trimester. I have evening sickness in the final one.”
Linda walked with admirable dignity to the nearest stall. Rachel waited for her, noting that her sister managed to vomit rather quietly. Ah, the powers of the trained PR person, so skilled in papering things over that she knows how to mask the sound of retching. Or maybe she simply hadn’t started yet.
A girl entered, rubbing her eyes.
“Sydney.” Rachel had known Sydney Gelman, now eleven, all her life. She had been adopted when Bert and Lorraine despaired of having their own children. Less than two years later, Lorraine gave birth to twin boys.
“Oh-hello, Rachel.”
“Are you crying?”
“No. I just had an allergic reaction to the shellfish in the crepes, so Mother asked the waiter to take it away and bring me a fruit plate.”
Sydney was plump, always had been. It was a sweet, healthy plumpness, the kind that came with lustrous hair and shining eyes. Rachel thought Sydney would be much less pretty if forced to lose weight. But Aunt Lorraine lived off broiled grapefruit and Tab and didn’t see why Sydney couldn’t as well.
“Did you get to have the crepes suzette at least?”
“I don’t think I saw those.”
“Why don’t you come with me and we’ll see if there are some left in the kitchen?”
She started to take Sydney by the hand, something she would have done naturally a few years ago, before she left for college. But Sydney was only five then. To treat her that way now would be disastrous. Rachel sneaked her into the kitchen and procured a plate of sweets for her, despite the murderous glances from the man in charge of the catering crew. What was the big deal? Perhaps he didn’t want anyone eating there, but she and Sydney knew that if they took the plate back into the dining room, Lorraine would find a way to whisk that one away as well. It was a party. No one should have to diet at a party.
“Are you having a good time?”
“It’s okay,” Sydney said. “I don’t know many of these kids because I’m two classes behind them. One girl asked why I was even here and I said Michelle and I were like cousins. And she said I was lying.”
“She’s probably jealous,” Rachel said. “We are like cousins.”
“Michelle doesn’t speak to me.”
“What?”
“Don’t say anything.” Sydney’s voice, while pitched low, was panicky. “I don’t care. Really.”
Sydney was wise in her own way. It would be counterproductive to remonstrate with Michelle, but, oh, Rachel wished her sister weren’t cruel. Rachel and Linda had been kind to everyone, at their father’s insistence. The practice had served them well after he left because there were no grudges, no girls waiting for them to fall.
The party was wrapping up when Rachel returned Sydney to the ballroom. The fact that Sydney was at Rachel’s side softened Bambi’s murderous look, but not Marc’s hurt one. Rachel followed him to the BMW, resolved not to fight. This would be Michelle’s bat mitzvah day, not the day she confronted Marc.
In the car, she realized she had left her wrap behind. He didn’t want to go back and they drove another five minutes, which, as she pointed out to him, only added ten minutes to the trip. Said it nicely, still determined not to fight. The shawl was cashmere, a gift from her mother. There was no way she was going to trust it to the hotel’s lost-and-found overnight.
When she entered the ballroom, it was almost empty of people, although the fake cafés and shops were still standing. A woman was walking the ersatz French boulevard, taking it all in.
“Oh, I-I’m… I’m here to meet the caterer,” she said when she noticed Rachel. “About another job.”
The woman was dressed like the catering crew, in black slacks and a white shirt. She had blond hair and blue eyes, Rachel noted. One might even say flaxen and cornflower blue. She was thin, much too thin. She bolted for the kitchen and Rachel was tempted to follow her, but she let it go, let her go. The encounter was so odd that she had an instantaneous desire to speak to Linda about it, followed by an immediate resolve to never speak of this to anyone. She couldn’t be, she just couldn’t be. Even if she was, it was just one of those Baltimore coincidences. She very well could be hiring the same caterer. Maybe she was getting married. Hooray for her. Rachel found her wrap draped over a chair and headed out into the night.
Back in the car, she sat in silence as Marc wondered aloud again why she had abandoned him all night. He was nudging, trying to pick a fight, then backing away as if nervous about what a quarrel might bring.
“I mean, it’s okay, I can handle talking to Lorraine Gelman, although she bores me silly. She and my mom go all the way back to Park. But why would you do that to me, Rachel? You looked so pretty tonight. I just wanted to be with you. Why did you disappear?”
I don’t know. Because I was having more fun in the bathroom. Because I missed my father so much tonight. Because you have a girlfriend. Some stupid piece on the side who actually sends you notes at our house.
“There were just so many people to talk to,” she said.
Was it really only yesterday that she had opened the hand-lettered note to Marc? She wasn’t a snoop by nature. She had picked it up only because it was from Saks and she assumed it was some stupid flyer for a sale and Marc could be needlessly extravagant. She expected to find a notice of a fur sale, given the time of year, or maybe jewelry tied to Mother’s Day.
Instead she found the most explicit love letter she had ever read. A sex letter would be a better description. Your cock here, your cock there, my mouth on your cock. It seemed as if the letter went on for pages, that it was longer than Ulysses, longer than all twelve volumes in A Dance to the Music of Time, a work that Rachel and Marc both loved, but it was really only a page and a half, and it wouldn’t have been that long if the handwriting had been more controlled. Part of Rachel’s mind detached, imagining Marc’s horror at such pedestrian language, the sloppy handwriting.