I stood outside the car and inhaled a deep breath as Gabe opened the door for Eva. The parking lot was on a hill overlooking the Program Center, visible through the full-leafed trees. She’s in there, I thought as Gabe offered me his arm and the three of us joined the throng of people making their way down the curving path lined with solar lights. The women stepped carefully in their heels, lifting their long shimmery dresses so they wouldn’t trip. I drew in another breath, grateful for Gabe’s arm and Eva’s chatter.
Inside the lobby, sound bounced off the high windows: piano music, laughter, people greeting each other in exaggerated voices. Eva and Gabe were immediately tugged away by her theater people. “You okay?” Gabe mouthed, and I nodded, relieved to have a moment alone. I scanned the room for Kelly, though I assumed she’d be backstage, preparing for her speech. Erik wasn’t out front either, doing his usual meet and greet, which surprised me, but then Jo Balistreri, one of the docents, said, “He’s here somewhere, but he hasn’t stopped moving for a minute.” Someone else sailed by with a “Great dress, Claire,” flung out like a flower. Ken Talevi touched my arm and said, “We missed you at dinner last night.”
And then we were entering the theater. Around me the shush of gowns and rustle of programs, the creaking of seats. Nervously, I made my way to where Annabelle and Scott were sitting with the other board members.
I know Erik gave the opening remarks. I know the artistic director introduced Kelly. But I can’t say I heard it. Suddenly, there was thunderous applause and she was striding onto the stage, face tilted to the rafters, arms spread, as if offering up the applause to Alfred and Lynn. She looked nothing like she had on Widows, where her dark hair had been straightened and she wore jeans, ballet flats, and one of her “late husband’s” T-shirts. Here, her hair was big and curly and she wore a slim-fitting black gown that looked like a tuxedo—a high-necked white collar and black bow tie, and, though it was sleeveless, white cuffs at her wrists. She was stunning and elegant and taller than I remembered, and she wasn’t just pretty but beautiful.
We were sitting in the front row—Erik had slipped into his seat once Kelly began talking—and though she glanced our way, Erik said the stage lights were too bright to see anything. Still, my face felt as if it were in a vise, every muscle straining to hold my expression steady. The rest of me wouldn’t stop trembling. It seemed incredible and impossible that this statuesque, sophisticated, accomplished woman was the girl I’d grown up with in a Delaware beach town nine hundred miles away. This was the girl who’d accidentally knocked out one of my baby teeth while doing cartwheels and, frightened she’d get into trouble, tried to glue it with Elmer’s—and I let her! The maid of honor in my first wedding and Nick’s little sister and Lucy’s aunt, Lucy’s godmother.
But she was also KJ. She’d been on the cover of People and Vanity Fair and had starred on Broadway. And just as I couldn’t make the two versions of me align, I couldn’t connect the different versions of her either.
She was talking about the Lunts, but I only vaguely heard the words. Mostly, I was focused on her—her quick, fluid gestures, more contained than I remembered, and I imagined she’d been coached to not use her hands so much. We were sitting close enough to see her face, that twitch of her lips when she was about to say something humorous—she was so familiar still! It filled me with such longing—for her, yes, the her I once knew, but for me too, who I once was. That naïve girl who believed her life would work out simply because she wanted it to. That girl—because that’s what I was even after I had Lucy—who never had to fight for anything, and so didn’t know how when she needed to.
“I’ve been away from the theater for four years,” Kelly said, “and the absence has not been good for my soul.” Soul. Had the Kelly I’d known ever used that word? She was starting to wrap up her talk and I wanted more than anything for time to slow so I could hold on to this moment when she was so close and whatever else was going to happen hadn’t yet.
I’m not sure why, but for the first time since that night four months ago when Erik had told me Kelly was being offered the master teacher position, the fear and grief—even my outlandish hope, which was as treacherous as anything—fell away. And in its place? Gratitude, of all things. Gratitude that Kelly had been my friend. How different I would have been without her. Her choosing me, all those years ago, over the prettier, more popular, more outgoing girls; her standing up for me when those girls didn’t invite me to their parties or ignored me in the cafeteria—hadn’t she shown me in a thousand ways that I was worth fighting for? Maybe I’d never learned to stand up for myself because for twenty-four years—until Lucy—she’d done it for me. But mostly, I was grateful because without Kelly there would have been no Nick, and without Nick no Lucy, and even knowing the awfulness of everything that happened, it would have been worse if I’d never had that time with Lucy at all.
Gabe handed me a vodka tonic as we watched Kelly make the rounds of the crowded lobby. Bodies angled in her direction. I saw her offer her hand to someone and heard a woman exclaim, “You do not need to introduce yourself to anyone!” Erik was with her, and he looked happy. This was his element, I thought as he bent forward to whisper something to Kelly, then nodded toward Geoff and Bunny Ellacott, who had endowed the fellowship.
“She knows you’re here, right?” Gabe said.
“I think so.” I couldn’t stop watching her.
Around us, conversations lifted and fell: That’s what I thought…Apparently, she told him…The last time I acted in a play was the third grade. I was a tree.
“A tree?” Gabe mouthed just as a waiter came by with mini bratwursts in puff pastry. Gabe grabbed one and plunked it in his mouth. I glanced again at Kelly, though I could only see her back. She was standing near the Steinway the foundation had rented for the event. Snippets of Noël Coward songs tendrilled through the conversations.
“There you are!” Annabelle said, edging next to us. She was wearing a high-necked backless red gown. Scott was carrying her heels in one hand, a drink in the other.
“Do you always make your husband follow two steps behind carrying your shoes?” Gabe asked, shifting sideways as someone squeezed by him.
“It’s usually three steps behind, sometimes four,” Scott laughed.
“It is not!” Annabelle reached over to push a strand of hair off my shoulder. “So how are you? You look stunning, by the way. You’re prettier than she is.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I love you for saying it.” We glanced at Kelly again. She and Erik were talking to Dee and Joe Daly, whose restaurant group was providing the food for this event.
Another server came by, offering figs and goat cheese in phyllo dough.
“I could live on these,” Annabelle said, taking one.
“That’s not food,” Gabe scoffed. “It’s a decoration.”
And then someone—another board member?—was pulling Annabelle away, and Eva was there with two of the fellows. “Claire grew up in the same town as Kelly,” she gushed, and I jerked my head up: What are you doing?
“No kidding, so you knew her?” one of them asked.
“What was she like?”
And right then, as if she sensed we were talking about her, Kelly glanced over at our little group and our eyes met. She arched an eyebrow and smiled the barest hint of a smile, and for a second, I felt the room careen to a stop the way it would in a movie, everyone freezing in place. She’d flashed me this look a thousand times in classrooms and at parties and across our parents’ dinner tables. It was a look that said, Can you believe this? or You doing okay? or You ready to blow this Popsicle stand? She always said that when we were leaving someplace: school, our houses, the restaurant.
You ready to blow this Popsicle stand?
And without thinking, I lifted one shoulder in a shrug and flicked my eyes, as I’d done a zillion times before too. I can’t believe this either; what the hell are we doing here? And then she turned back to her group and I turned back to Eva, feeling as if I’d just stepped from one of those rides at the state fair that spins you around so fast the centrifugal force pins you to a wall.
I made an excuse about needing to sit down—my feet were killing me!—gave Eva’s hand a quick squeeze, and wandered over to the wall of windows that faced the winding path up to the parking lot. The light was fading, although the sky held its color, a deep ultramarine blue. People were leaving, men carrying their jackets over their arms, their white shirts luminescent in the twilight. My heart was pounding. There’d been no animosity in Kelly’s look. It had been warm and conspiratorial, and I had been prepared for anything except that.
The tears were there without warning then, and I was pushing my way outside, trying to keep my face composed until I was around the corner of the building, where I leaned over, hand clamped to my mouth to stop the sobs bursting out of me.
Annabelle was suddenly there, offering me a bottle of water, Gabe behind her. I was half crouching against the wall, which was nearly impossible in my gown, and I couldn’t stop crying. “Do you want Erik?” Annabelle asked, and I cried harder.
“I’m fine,” I kept saying between sobs, “I’m fine,” until Gabe said, “You are aware that you’re bawling your eyes out, right? That hardly constitutes fine.”
Annabelle was rubbing my back. “Did something happen with KJ?”
“No.” I wiped the heels of my palms over my eyes. “It was just emotional—” She’d been with me in the delivery room. She’d been there the day of the accident. How had I lost her, lost Lucy, lost my whole life?
“Can you go get us some tissues?” Annabelle said to Gabe.
“Tissues? Please. We need paper towels, we need Bounty picker-uppers.”
“Stop.” I tried to smile, but my face crumpled back into tears.
“Maybe a Shop-Vac,” he called over his shoulder.
And then he was gone, and Annabelle was still rubbing my back. The murmur of conversation from the smokers drifted around the corner along with the smell of their cigarettes. The night was pitch-black now except for the intermittent sweep of headlights across the trees as another car left the parking lot. Finally, I stopped crying and slowly straightened up.
Annabelle gently pried my earring free of my dress where it had caught on one of the beads. “I wish you’d talk to us,” she said, her hand once again moving in slow soothing circles over my back. “Whatever happened—”
“There was an accident,” I choked out. “Someone we both loved…she was badly hurt.”
Her hand stopped for a beat, then started again. “Kelly blamed you, didn’t she?”
“It was my fault.”
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then turned to face me, taking both my hands in hers. I couldn’t look at her.
“Even if it was your fault,” she said, “I don’t care. And Eva won’t either.”
I shook my head. “It’s not what you—”
“I don’t care,” she repeated. “I just hate that you…that all summer…” Her voice wavered. “You are not going to be alone with this, okay? Do you hear me?”
I knew she didn’t understand—she probably thought a car accident and maybe I’d been driving, but it was a start, wasn’t it?
I have a daughter.
When I looked at her again, her eyes were filled with tears, and then she was grabbing me in a hug and whispering in my hair, “I mean it, Claire. You are not alone. You have us, and don’t you ever forget it.”
Before I could respond, Gabe was back with a pile of napkins, saying, “Jeez, break it up, you two,” and Annabelle was snatching the napkins and saying, “Give me those,” and handing some to me and dabbing at her own eyes, and suddenly, we were all laughing.
When I remember that night, I think of what comics and playwrights understand so well: that laughter is directly related to pain, that comedy and tragedy are just a hair’s breadth apart. I picture the three of us—me, Annabelle, and Gabe—each of us carrying such enormous secrets, each of us terrified of all we might lose if those secrets ever came out, and I can’t help but wonder if we laughed more that night, if we laughed louder, our voices echoing in the purple-black darkness, because we somehow sensed all the pain that was to follow.