New Year's Eve (13 page)

Anne straightened up and stamped her foot. “You creep! I practically pass out and you tell me to die instead?”

“Stopped you from fainting, didn't it?”

She glared at him, and he looked straight back at her, and her eyes dropped first. “I'm sorry, Lee. I was … um … tense about seeing Con and meeting Jade.” Nice thing to say to your current boy, she thought, flushing with shame.

“Let's get something to eat,” Lee said. “You need calories, you're too thin anyhow. Keep you from getting dizzy again. Don't ask for diet soda, have some of those little hot croissants instead.”

He filled an entire plate with them. The plates were heavy white crockery. Anne bit into her croissant. It was filled with crab. Anne hated crab. She ate it anyway so Lee wouldn't yell.

Across the room Kip and Con were dancing a mile a minute: hard and strong and rhythmic rock.

There was always so much energy in Kip; so much strength.

Con for once matched it: nothing laid back, nothing casual.

Anne ate a second croissant. This time it was ham.

Con was doing an athletic maneuver that jerked his entire muscular body from his lifted wrists to his snapping waist. Kip watched for a minute and then imitated it perfectly. Con suddenly tossed her in and out in a fifties' rock step. Then Kip moved into the Twist, making her peach gown shiver violently. Con followed suit.

“You realize,” Anne said, “that you and I are watching the people we really love.”

That was the trouble with girls, Lee thought. They'd come out with the truth, just when you didn't want to be thinking about it.

Lee steered clear of how much he loved Kip. Attack was always safer than defense. He said, “So you still love Con?”

“The same amount you still love Kip.”

“Who says I love Kip?”

“You haven't taken your eyes off her since we got here.”

“Unrequited love,” he said, intending it to be a joke.

Anne touched the front of his white shirt, where the lace met the buttons. “It is requited, Lee.” He could have Kip in a heartbeat if he just made the move.

But English can be a confusing language.

Lee didn't know whose requited love they were talking about, and he could not bring himself to ask. He thought she meant Kip really did love Mike, and Mike really did love Kip; it just didn't show. Lee thought she meant he should stay out of it: Mike and Kip were fine.

So they ate more croissants instead of talking.

When the number was over, Kip and Con pulled apart, laughing the way couples do after a wild satisfying dance.

They stood awkwardly during the band's silence.

Lee and Anne watched.

But Mike acted. He was very responsive to other people's interest in Kip, and he hadn't come between Con and Kip because it had not crossed his mind that Con was going to ask her to dance. Mike practically trotted over to get between them again. He was so possessive it made Lee sick. He hated that kind of thing: where the girl was like a pet dog on a leash. It made Lee angry with Kip for submitting like that.

I'll call her Katharine from now on, he thought, just like she wants. She'll be somebody else, then, and I won't be all the time thinking of the Kip I wanted.

But as for Con, he forgot Kip right away. He made no note of Mike's jealousy—he didn't even see it.

He moved in Anne's direction.

Anne was hypnotized by him.

She could not look away.

She could not
think
away.

Anne's on a leash, too, Lee thought. But she likes it there. Con says one word right, and she's his. Old Jade can stay in the hospital for eleven hundred weeks.

Anne grew stiffer and stiffer beside him. If she faints, Lee thought, I'll just step out of the way and let Con catch her.

With a great effort, Lee prevented himself from turning to see where Mike and Kip went. Girls talk about this stuff, he thought. If Anne says Mike really loves Kip, then he really does, and that's that. He couldn't believe he was hurting all over
again
. Once was enough. He hadn't seen Kip in weeks and weeks. How long was this dumb feeling going to last?

Con stopped in front of them. Smiled. Showed off his tan. Tucked his thumbs in his cummerbund. Said, “Hi there.”

Safe. No names. Passing the conversational ball on to Lee and Anne.

What exactly was Lee supposed to do now? Be gallant and save Anne from Con's adolescent clutches? Turn Anne over and stay at the dance alone? Become a threesome?

A
DELICATE MANY-FACETED
diamond glittering on a gold band.

Matt slid it onto the fourth finger of Emily's left hand. She had never worn a ring on that finger. She had never worn rings on her left hand at all. Her hand was very pale; all the summer's tan was long gone. It rested on the velvet of her gown like a full page diamond ad of a jewel lying in soft folds of velvet. Her fingers were small, and very thin, and the ring was in perfect proportion.

Without the ring, it was a pretty, little girl's hand.

With the ring, it was a woman's.

I am engaged, Emily thought.

“Matt?” she whispered.

“I love you,” he whispered back.

The piano danced. The lights trembled. The ferns bent low.

“
Wife
?” Emily whispered. “I can't believe that I might be somebody's wife. That's such a—a grown-up word, Matt! Me. A wife.”

She saw that Matt—who was utterly practical: Matt, whose cars would never run out of gas, whose homework was always done, whose shoelaces were always replaced before they broke—Matt had not had a single practical thought about this.

And she, Emily, who was dreamy and romantic—who never even saw the gas gauge, let alone filled the tank, who only remembered to study the night before the exam, and who constantly had to wear the same outfit twice in a row because she forgot to do her laundry—Emily could see only the harsh realities.

Where do we live? What do we live on? What about high school and college and incomes and futures and babies? What about rent and car insurance and groceries?

Matt was thinking: the ring is right! How much I love her! This is her rescue. I'll be her knight in shining armor and we'll live happily ever after.

Emily wrapped her arms around Matt, buried her face in his jacket and sobbed. “Don't cry,” Matt said. “Nothing can go wrong now because we'll be together.”

Backward, Emily thought.
Everything
will go wrong if we get married. Marriage?

That's what grown-ups do. I want to be an ordinary kid. I want a home with two parents who like me, so I can date Matt, and finish high school, and laugh, and love.

Matt was ruffling her hair. He was rather enjoying her tears: he must think they were tears of joy and relief.

I can't say Matt, the last thing on earth I want is to get married! Because I love him as much as he loves me. It's just that—

Matt held her left hand up, rotating it so the tiny diamond caught the light and sparkled. “That's a car,” he told her. “That's my '54 Cadillac sitting on your fourth finger.”

“Oh, Matthew,” Emily said, kissing him, “that's the prettiest '54 Cadillac a girl ever owned.” She thought—If I leave the ring on, I'm saying Yes. I can't say yes. It'll destroy both of us. We're not ready … but if I say
no
, it'll destroy Matt.

Am I going to get married just to be polite?

She said, “Oh, Matt, I love you so much. I love you for caring about me and wanting to solve all my problems and—”

“Forget
wanting
to,” Matt said. She had never seen him so utterly pleased with himself. “I've always
wanted
to. Now I'm
going
to. It's settled, M&M.”

“So.” The cop released her wrist very slowly. “Little dressed up for stealing cars, aren't you?”

“You scared me!” Molly yelled at the cop. “You had no right to sneak up on me like that!”

“You have a right to break into this car, maybe?”

“It's my car!” she yelled at him. “I—I locked my purse in with my keys. See?”

He looked in. The car was locked, and a large purse was on the floor of the passenger side.

“Where's your coat?” he asked her.

She was shivering violently in the freezing damp garage. “It's inside The Hadley. I checked it in the coatroom before I realized I'd left my purse in the car.” Molly had been picked up once, at a bar, where the police thought there might be drugs. She had gotten out of it, even though she was too young to be drinking there. She had been questioned twice over the fire at Rushing River Inn and gotten out of that, too.

The cop said, “You here for a New Year's Eve dance?”

She managed a flirty smile. “Mm-hmm. Like my dress?”

Luckily for Molly it was too dark for him to see much of her dress. He said, “So where's your date?”

“Inside. Dancing.”

It was the wrong answer. The cop was immediately suspicious again. “He let you come out here? He didn't come himself?”

Molly licked her lips. “Listen, he's a creep, all right? The best I could do. And then like a fool I left my bag in the car. You can unlock it for me, can't you? Don't you have one of those metal things that slides between the window and the lock and unlocks it?”

The cop nodded. “I could unlock it for you,” he said. “You'll need to show me your driver's license and the car registration when I do.”

It was a bad situation. Molly tried to think of the best out. The registration, of course, was Christopher's father's. If she had to get Christopher, the cop would go with her. She'd have to enter that ballroom with a big blue-uniformed irritable policeman next to her. No, no, no, a thousand times no! That was what she had planned for Beth Rose and Anne and Kip: the humiliation, the questions, the fear … and always, afterward, people who remembered that scene would not trust them. Just as nobody trusted Molly now because of that dumb fire, that dumb Kip. If Molly had to open her purse, and the envelopes were visible, it would all backfire.

But if she didn't have her purse, she wouldn't be able to carry out her plan for the night!

And she was going to win this time! She was going to make those girls pay, and pay forever and ever, and that was that! Molly wasn't yielding to some policeman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Molly began weeping. “My boyfriend is—well, he's just a nothing. A zero. It isn't my fault. I need my Kleenex! The dance just started and already it's terrible, and I've never been popular, and he's dancing with somebody else, and I don't even have my purse so I can put on lipstick. And it's New Year's Eve, and I have to stay past midnight, and I'm freezing down here, and I locked myself out of the car!”

And the cop fell for it.

He apologized for making a tough night worse. He broke into the car for her, and told her that once when he'd been sixteen, a girl he took dancing totally humiliated him, but now he'd forgotten it, there was light at the end of the tunnel, there really was.

And he walked her all the way to The Hadley's doors, just like a gentleman.

Jerk, Molly Nelmes thought.

Beth Rose took the crazy wig off Gwynnie's head. “Where do you even find these?” she said.

“Daddy takes me into New York when he goes on business.”

Beth Rose shook her head. “My parents would never let me out of the house in something like that, let alone pay for it.”

Gwynnie laughed. “My parents don't let me in the house with it.”

“What do you mean?”

Gwynnie braided her rat's tail so that it fell straight down to her check. It would have made Beth cross-eyed.

“My parents let me wear anything I like when I'm out of the house, but at home I have to dress in what pleases them. It's the reverse of most kids' rules. My best friend where we used to live could slouch around the house in sweatshirts and sweatpants, and wear her hair in rollers, and have cream on her face, and socks with holes in them. When I'm at home I have to be a lady.”

It boggled the mind to imagine Gwynnie as “a lady.”

“I know,” Gwynnie said. “I know. You guys call me The Vampire. But at home, I'm Little Miss Laura Ashley. Sweet little skirts and feminine blouses.”

“You own sweet skirts? Feminine blouses? You lie, Gwynnie.”

“Frequently,” Gwynnie admitted. “But not this time. My parents are very strict.”

“Get out of town.”

“No, really. At home I have to be very careful what I wear.”

“What about the rat's tail?” Beth Rose said, tweaking it lightly. “This is not exactly Little Miss Laura Ashley.”

Gwynnie nodded. “At home I have to curl it neatly back and fasten it with a pretty pin so it doesn't drip like a rusty faucet.” She made a terrible face into the mirror. “That's my father's expression,” she added. “He says I look like a rusty faucet dripping, but he doesn't mind what I look like when he doesn't have to see it.”

Beth tried to imagine parents who said, Sure, look like a vampire when you leave the house, we don't care. Now she really wanted to go to Gwynnie's. “What'll you wear tonight at your party?” she asked.

“Mom's bought me a floor-length paisley challis skirt and a dark wool shirt and a string of pearls. I look like a debutante.”

“Has Gary ever seen you like that?”

“Oh, sure. He doesn't stick around though, when I'm ordinary. He's a rather shallow person, didn't you think so, when you went out with him? He likes everything smooth and easy and going his way and that's about as far as he's thought anything out. He's fun though; I kind of like him.”

I'll never sleep tonight, Beth Rose thought. I'll have so much to think about I'll be awake till supper tomorrow.

“But then you kind of like everybody, don't you?” Gwynnie said to Beth. “I think that's so sweet. You manage to get in a nice word no matter how hard you have to struggle to think of one. I like that in a person. I wouldn't want it in me, mind you. I prefer to think of nasty things to say. But I like it in a friend. So. What do you think? Shall we be friends?”