The Light of Paris(33)

“I’m pretty much the sun around which the Magnolia social scene orbits,” Henry said, as if he were admitting a great burden. I snorted into my water, imagining him at the country club with Betsy Lynn Chivers and my mother and Lydia Endicott, who always looked as though she had been soaked in lemon juice.

“Henry used to be in a band with my boyfriend.” Sharon gestured at Henry with her knife as she went back to her pancakes.

“A band? Well, aren’t you full of hidden secrets,” I said.

“It was a long time ago. And we were really atrocious.”

“So why’d you quit? Atrocious sells these days, or haven’t you heard?”

“I got too old for that crap. Staying out all night at clubs with kids ten years younger than me? Not my idea of a good time. Also, I found it was much more rewarding to do things I didn’t suck at.”

“Hey, are you doing anything for First Friday this weekend?” Cassandra looked up from her assault on Sharon’s breakfast and squinted up at Henry.

“Oh, you know. The usual. Feeding hungry people. What about you?”

“There’s a knitting group meeting in the store and I’ve got a fiber artist who’s displaying some of her stuff. It’s amazing—you should come check it out if you can get away.”

“I should be able to,” Henry said.

“What’s First Friday?” I asked.

“First Friday of every month they close off the street and make it like a block party. All the stores and restaurants do something special, there’s live music. You should come! It’s a good time.”

“They block off the whole street? My mother must hate it.”

“So you’ll come, then,” Henry said.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“And don’t forget, you’re invited for dinner at the restaurant. Anytime you like.” He pointed his newspaper at me and I nodded obediently. “Speaking of which, I’ve got to bail. Nice to see you all. Cassandra, let me know if you all want refreshments for Friday. We’ll work something out.”

“Awesome,” she said, and he waved as he turned and headed back up the hill toward my mother’s house and his restaurant.

“How do you know Henry?” Sharon asked.

“We just met in the yard the other day,” I said, omitting the parts about my pajamas and my strawberry feeding frenzy.

“He’s a nice guy.”

“My mother can’t stand him.”

“Well, you can’t ask for better proof than that,” she said, flashing me a wicked grin.

The three of us sat in the sunshine, lingering over coffee long after the waitress had cleared our dishes. I lived so much of my life in taxicabs, in climate-controlled rooms, that I had forgotten what a real neighborhood felt like, one where people lived and worked and ran into each other by coincidence instead of by engraved invitation. As we sat, people came by—people Sharon knew, people Cassandra knew, artists and musicians and store owners. Wanee, who owned the Thai restaurant down the street, stopped by long enough to say hello and invite me to lunch there. Cassandra introduced me to Kira, a sculptor who owned an art-supply store a few blocks away, and Pete, who had bought the coffee shop with his partner, and Sharon’s boyfriend, Kevin, arrived with the twins in tow and dark circles under his eyes and we talked and laughed and watched the kids running around the now empty tables. I automatically reached into my purse for my antacids, and realized, with a little jolt of surprise, that my stomach didn’t hurt.

Walking home, the noise of The Row fading behind me, absorbed by the trees shading the sidewalk and whispering soft blessings above my head, I couldn’t stop smiling. How funny, how sad, to realize at this late date that Magnolia wasn’t only the country club and Ashley Hathaway and Ladies Association literacy fundraisers. It was Cassandra and knitting groups and Kevin’s band and restaurateurs and people who opened Wiccan shops on The Row and sold crystals and sage and led past-life-regression workshops.

It made me love Magnolia in a way I never had. How many First Fridays had I missed? How many meals with people whose stories could make me laugh and who made me want to sit them down and say, “Now, tell me everything about this thing you love”? How much had I missed out on because I had never thought to push the boundaries of what I knew? And who was I doing this for? The hair, the clothes, the right committees, the perfect husband who wasn’t the perfect husband for me—I certainly didn’t care about any of those things, and I didn’t like most of the people who did. So why did it matter to me?

My mother’s house, which had always seemed so big, seemed so small as I turned up the walk toward the front door. Looking to the side, I saw the restaurant’s parking lot was empty, but I could still hear sounds from inside, faint music and a clatter of pans and an occasional shouted demand. I longed to be there. I longed to be back at the table at the café down the street, greeting everyone who came by, getting to know them and this new way of seeing my hometown.





eight





MARGIE


   1924




Margie sat alone at breakfast in the hotel, fuming. Evelyn hadn’t come back the night before; her bed lay as still and untouched as when she had left. Margie had tried to read a novel, had tried to write, first a story and then a letter to her mother. But how could she explain the truth now, when the last letter she had sent had been lies?