The Vanishing Half(52)

“Why?” Kennedy asked. Stella knelt in front of her, untying her shoes.

“Because,” she said, “Daddy likes us to be at home. But if you don’t say anything, we can keep going across the street. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Her daughter put her hands on her shoulders, as if she were giving her a stern talking-to, but she was only balancing herself as she stepped out of her tennis shoes.

“Okay,” she said, so simply it stung.

Like anything, lying to her daughter became easier over time. She was raising Kennedy to lie too, although the girl would never know it. She was white; she would never think of herself as anything else. If she ever learned the truth, she would hate her mother for deceiving her. The thought flashed through her head each time Loretta called. But each time, she steeled her nerve, took her daughter by the hand, and stepped across the street.



* * *



—

ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOONS, the tan Buick pulled into the Walkers’ driveway just past lunchtime, and Cath Johansen called Stella to gossip. “I knew there wouldn’t be just one,” she said. She was convinced the colored women were there to scout out the neighborhood to plan their own eventual arrival. Stella clamped the phone against her cheek, peering through the kitchen blinds as Loretta’s girlfriends climbed out. The tall one was Belinda Cooper—her husband composed movie scores for Warner Bros. Mary Butler in the cat-eyed glasses was married to a pediatrician. She was sorority sisters with Eunice Woods, whose husband had just sold a screenplay to MGM. Stella knew basic things about the ladies that Loretta had told her, but she’d never expected to meet any of the women until one Wednesday when Loretta called to tell her that Mary was sick. Would she like to be their fourth hand?

“I’m not much of a bid whist player,” Stella said. She was terrible at cards, at any game that relied on chance.

“Honey, that’s all right,” Loretta said. “Sometimes we don’t even take out the cards.”

Playing bid whist, she learned, was mostly a guise for what the women really wanted to do, which was drink wine and gossip. Belinda Cooper, halfway through her second glass of Riesling, kept going on about a movie actor having a sloppy affair with one of the secretaries at Warner, a pretty young thing but bold as you know what, taking messages from his wife, then slipping down to his trailer to deliver much more than a missed call.

“These girls are gettin bolder today,” Loretta said. She took another drag of her cigarette, not even touching her cards. “You know me and Reg went out to Carl’s the other day and ran into Mary-Anne—”

“How is she?”

“Pregnant. Again.”

“Lawd!”

“And you know what she had to say? Euny, it’s your hand, baby.”

“Mary-Anne never liked me,” Eunice said. “You remember that time at Thelma’s wedding?”

All of their conversations went like this, around and around in loops that Stella couldn’t follow. She wasn’t meant to understand their shorthand or glean complicated backstories from the cast of characters they introduced. To be there at all, really. But she was happy to sit quietly, fiddling with her cards, listening. If Belinda and Eunice had a problem with her being there, they didn’t say. But they spoke around her, never directly to her, as if to tell Loretta, this is your responsibility. Still, the afternoon passed pleasantly enough, until the girls rushed in for snacks. It always struck Stella how natural Loretta seemed around Cindy. The girl clambered to her side, rubbing against her like a cat, and Loretta, without even breaking the conversation, reached for her. She seemed to know what Cindy wanted before she even asked for it. When the girls ran back upstairs, Eunice took a drag of her cigarette and said, “I still don’t know why you so set on doin it.”

“Doin what?” Loretta said.

“You know what. I know this is your new life now—”

“Oh please—”

“But your girl’s gonna be miserable and we all know it. It’s not worth it, just to make a point.”

“It’s not about making a point,” Loretta said. “The school’s right down the street and Cindy’s just as smart as all those other kids—”

“We know, honey,” Belinda said. “It’s not about being right. You can be right til the cows come home. But this is your one child and this is her one life.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Loretta said. Her eyes flashed, and then, remembering herself, she laughed a little, stubbing out her cigarette. “Thank God all of us don’t think like you two.”

“Let’s ask your new friend,” Eunice said. “What do you make of all of this, Mrs. Sanders?”

Stella stared down at the card table, her neck already hot.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said.

“Surely you have some opinion.”

Eunice was giving Stella a smile that reminded her of a hunting dog with a rabbit in his teeth. The more you twitched away, the tighter those jaws fastened around you.

“I wouldn’t do it,” she finally said. “Those other parents will make her life hell, they’ll want to make an example out of her. You don’t know how they talk when you’re not around—”

“And I bet you jump right to her defense too,” Eunice said.