Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,88
“Let her answer,” she’d said, and Kathleen had nodded. “I wouldn’t say I miss him, because that would be pathetic,” she’d said. Truth be told, I hadn’t ever respected Kathleen much. She wore Laura Ashley dresses even though she was gaining on fifty, and her twin girls were sweet without seeming to mean it, and they’d been dorm roommates in college, an arrangement that I thought reflected poor parenting. But at this moment, sitting at Kathleen’s country French dining table, drinking the bold red wine Marse had brought, I’d been impressed. “I will say that I don’t like being alone,” Kathleen had said. “That’s all. I don’t like it.” She’d looked at Marse, who was shaking her head silently, and suddenly both of them looked older to me. They looked tired. “It sucks, doesn’t it?” said Marse to Kathleen. She looked at me, and then Kathleen looked at me. “We hate you,” said Marse, and Kathleen laughed lightly for a long time, and it had occurred to me that Marse had been faking it—maybe she wasn’t tired of being alone, and instead was trying to give an old friend someone to lean on. Marse wanted Kathleen to think they had much in common, but Kathleen was a housewife who was suddenly not a wife and not living in her house—she was a fish out of water, whereas Marse’s life made sense. Marse had a successful career, a busy social life, and a stream of romantic prospects. It wasn’t the same thing at all. Kathleen would be more lonely now precisely because she’d once had a husband and a home, not in spite of that.
I said to Marse, “Margo is living in an apartment, did I tell you that?” The rain was coming harder now, spattering the tops of my feet and ankles. Marse and I huddled closer together.
“Why would she want to do that?”
“I think it might have something to do with a boy.”
“A man,” said Marse. “She’s in college. They’re men, and she’s a woman. That’s what they want to be called, anyway.”
“I don’t think quite yet,” I said.
“You’re not ready.”
“I suppose not.”
“Who does she live with?”
At that moment, under the canopy outside the Biltmore’s stately main entrance, I could not recall her roommate’s name. “A girl from Tampa,” I said. “And I guess the girl’s boyfriend is pretty much a third roommate.”
“Have you met them?”
As a matter of fact, Margo and I had made plans that afternoon for me to come up for a weekend in October. “Not yet, but I will. Next month.”
“Do you know anything about this man?” said Marse.
“You’re interrogating me,” I said. “Margo is fine. She was paired with a roommate and she says they’re very compatible. Janelle—that’s the girl’s name. Margo gets along with the boyfriend. The apartment is right off campus—lots of kids do it, I guess. It’s common.” Even as I spoke, I felt uneasy—it had struck me as overly mature, this live-in boyfriend situation, but I’d told Dennis that I felt comforted knowing a boy would be around.
The wind was picking up, blowing around the royal palms that rimmed the Biltmore’s circular drive. Marse said, “I still think of her as thirteen years old, that brace face. Let’s get a drink. We’ll toast her independence.”
We’d had a couple of drinks each already. The bar inside the reception was serving wine, beer, and several flavors of daiquiris, which Marse had noted said a lot about the bride, and possibly about the promise of everlasting happiness. Marse didn’t want to go back to the party, so she headed to the hotel bar while I stopped in at the reception to tell Dennis where I’d be. I found him in a corner with Julia, standing close and laughing. His daiquiri was peach, hers was strawberry. Before I left them alone again, I said, “I won’t be our ride home,” and Dennis raised his glass and said, “We can take a cab.”
The hotel bar was walnut-paneled and dim, with burgundy chairs grouped around low glass tables. Marse ordered us whiskey sours, which was her drink of choice, and one I enjoyed when we were together but never once without her. “Julia is flirting with Dennis,” I said when I sat down.
“Ha!” said Marse. “Good for her.”
“Good for him,” I said. “She’s very pretty.”
“Kyle told me he was disappointed when I RSVP’d for one. That’s the word he used—he was disappointed.”
“Is he trying to prove that he can make a person bitter?”