“For a week or two. Till we decide.”
Hadley looked at his wife, interested now in what she was thinking. “Till we decide what?”
Lucia turned and stared at Hadley as if it took all her strength and all her will not to upbraid him for imbecility. “Till we decide our child’s future. And I hope we shall be able to do that calmly.”
“That’s ridiculous. Babe’s future isn’t ours to decide.”
Something hard was creeping into Lucia’s eyes. “It is till the court decrees otherwise.”
Hadley frowned. “A five-minute visit from Ash Canfield, a woman she’s known since kindergarten—how on earth is that going to blight Babe’s future?”
“Ash has always had an enormous talent for stirring up mischief and she has always encouraged the, same talent in Beatrice.”
The driver began to turn. Lucia leaned forward and rapped irritably on the half-lowered glass partition.
“Kingsley, must I keep telling you not to take Roosevelt Drive till they’ve finished that construction?”
Hadley Vanderwalk waited till the television went on upstairs in Lucia’s morning room. Lucia denied following the afternoon soaps, and she never watched them on the TV in the drawing room. But he knew she was secretly hooked on them. She kept a VCR programmed to record them when she was out, and he knew for a fact she exchanged tapes with fellow addicts in her bridge-and-charity-ball set.
As soon as Hadley heard the familiar voices on the TV, their emotion muted through the ceiling, he lifted the telephone in the library and quickly punched out a number.
“Ash?” He spoke in a lowered voice. “Good to hear your voice, my dear. It’s Hadley Vanderwalk… Yes, of course we’re coming to the party, wouldn’t miss it. Now prepare yourself. I’ve a message for you from a friend in the hospital.”
“Sweetie,” a voice cried. “It’s really true—you’re back!”
Babe looked toward the door. A figure had stopped motionless on the threshold, a big-eyed, pale-haired woman in pink.
“I haven’t changed that much. Come on, it’s me—Ash!”
Recognition came flooding in. “Ash—my God!”
Arms spread, Ash Canfield took four running steps into the room. And stopped again.
The two women gazed at one another, silent and hardly breathing and not quite believing what they saw.
“Don’t I at least deserve a hug?” Babe said.
“You deserve ten million hugs.”
Ash leaned over the bed and hugged Babe and Babe hugged back, gratitude welling up and filling every inch of her.
“Sweetie, I’ve missed you. You don’t know how much.” Ash blinked hard. Tears were giving her contact lenses trouble and a smile made tiny brackets around her mouth. “You’re looking terrific. Not a pound overweight. And not a week older, damn you. Coma must have agreed with you.”
“Coma is rotten. I can hardly sit up or feed myself. My stomach has shrunk. I’m on a diet of liquid and something they call semisolids. Two male nurses have to walk me an hour a day. My memory has gaps, I’m tired half the time, I’ve been out of touch so long I can’t carry on a conversation, don’t know half the names people are dropping. And to top it off, I have to get around in that monstrosity.” Babe threw a nod toward the wheelchair.
“Eventually you graduate to crutches, I suppose?”
“So the doctor promises. And then a cane.”
“That will be very distinguished.”
“To hell with distinguished. I want to play squash again, and dance, and ride horseback.”
“You will, sweetie, you will.” Ash took unsteady possession of a chair, crossing her legs.
Babe studied her childhood friend. Ash Canfield looked very different from the image in her memory: older, more made up, more flamboyant in her choice of colors and jewels.
And there was something else, harder to pin down—a nervous energy that had taken over the room instantly.
“Care to fill me in on the mystery?” Ash asked.
“Mystery?”
“Your father made me promise not to tell a soul you’ve recovered. I gather it’s a big, big secret. I love secrets and I especially love being in on them. So spill. Who are we hiding you from?”
There was a silence.
“I don’t know,” Babe said quietly.
Gradually Ash’s smile froze and something in her eyes shifted. She was looking at Babe as if they were both far from home and lonely and if they cared to admit it both a little afraid.
“You’ll never guess who I’ve become.” Ash’s voice and everything about her had undergone a slight adjustment
“You’ve married again?” Babe said.
“No, I’m still married to Dunk, but he made the Queen’s Honors List three years ago. He’s Sir Duncan and I’m Lady Canfield, if you please. We’re mentioned in all the columns and we get asked everywhere.”
“But you always got asked everywhere.”
“And now we’re able to turn down twice as many invitations.” Ash turned in her chair. “Haven’t you got palatial digs here!”
“I’d rather be home.”
“Of course you would, but still …” Ash rose from her chair and inspected the hospital room, prowling like a cat stalking out territory. She peeked into the bathroom and came back carrying two water tumblers.
“In the meantime, in between time, look what I smuggled past the warden.” She reached into a Bergdorf’s bag and pulled out a bottle of Moët, cool and glistening. “How’s about it?”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Babe said.
“But sweetie, it’s liquid.”
“It will only put me to sleep.”
“Ah, well.” Ash twisted the wire loose, jimmied the cork with her thumbs until it popped, and quickly aimed the overflowing foam into the nearest tumbler. She took a little pillbox from her purse. The lid was mirrored, and the pills inside were pink ovals.
“What are those?” Babe asked.
“Mood elevators. I’m depressed. I have to lose twelve pounds, and Duncan’s leaving me.”
Babe and Ash had known one another since kindergarten. They’d roomed together at Miss Porter’s in Farmington and had almost been expelled for putting a bedpan of Campbell’s cream of tomato soup in the bed of a detested house mistress. They’d come out together at the New York Infirmary Ball and then roomed together at Vassar. For years they’d worn their hair the same way, worn the same dress size, shared clothes and secrets and booze and drugs, dated and loved and hated the same boys. They had both wanted to marry the same man—but Duncan Canfield had finally proposed to Ash, and Babe had instantly married the internationally famed pianist Ernst Koenig, thirty-eight years her senior. She’d done it to make Ash jealous. The marriage had lasted seven disastrous years and Ash, embroiled in her own disaster of a marriage, had never expressed the slightest jealousy. Babe had long ago forgiven her.
“Duncan’s always leaving you,” Babe said, “and he’s always coming back.”
“It feels permanent this time. And it’s happening at the worst possible moment. We’re giving a party for Gordon Dobbs.”
“Who’s he?”
“Of course you don’t know—poor sweetie. Dobbsie is the top society writer in town. Charming and sweet and funny and I adore him. It’s the two hundred other people I’m not up to. Ah, well, those are the risks of planning a party.” Ash poured herself another glass of champagne. “But let’s talk about you. Did you have any out-of-body experiences? Did you see God, or angels, or pillars of light?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What a waste.” Ash gulped pills from her palm and downed her champagne and poured another splash into her tumbler. She became even more talkative on her third glass.
She had acres of scandal about the latest world leaders and living legends and newly famous: she told Babe who was rich this month, who was beautiful, who was robbing whom, who was screwing whom. The names had changed, but otherwise it was very much the same dirt Ash had always dished.
Suddenly she broke off. “Good jumping Jehoshaphat!” she cried. “Will you look at the time? I’m going to be late for the caterers. Do you mind?” She lifted the receiver from the bedside phone and jiggled the cradle. “Your phone’s on the fritz.”