I'm Glad About You(30)

“Were you watching?”

“I was waiting for my club soda, which took you so long to deliver it’s flat. So yes, I was watching, and you did more than say ‘hello’ to each other.”

Kyle let that one land for a moment before he deigned to respond to it. This harping about Alison was a repeat offense with Van, and sometimes the best way to deal with it was to let her go too far. The silence bloomed, and he took another sip of his watery scotch. He knew how to outwait her. It usually didn’t take very long.

“Well, that’s great,” she said, glancing away with unmasked contempt. “That’s just perfect.” He considered letting that hang out there as well, but they were in public, and there was an unexpected ferocity behind Van’s agitation.

“I don’t know what you’re mad at me for,” he told her. “I didn’t even want to come to this party. That was your idea. As I told you, Dennis said she wasn’t coming, I didn’t fully believe him, just for the record, I’m not an idiot, so I said I thought we should stay home. I said it more than once. You were the one who insisted we come.”

“You knew she would be here.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. That’s— I just told you a moment ago that in fact, I didn’t—”

“You just said—”

“I said I knew there was a chance I was being lied to. But generally I try to assume that I’m not.”

“Whatever—”

“Not whatever. No. I was told she wasn’t going to be here. That is what we both were told.”

“I don’t—”

“In spite of which, you, apparently, at least so you say, knew she would be here, and you wanted to come! Insisted on it, in fact. Which, if logic serves, would indicate that you were the one who wanted to see her, not me.”

“Maybe logic isn’t everything.”

“Clearly it’s failed us tonight. If you don’t want to be here now, we can go home.”

“Why, because you can’t stand to be in the same room with her?”

“Fine, then let’s stay, since we’re both having so much fun.”

“I have no friends here,” Van hissed, furious now. “Everyone is your friend, and they haven’t been exactly welcoming, so if I get invited to one Christmas party maybe I might want to go. Even if your ex-girlfriend is going to be there.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Everybody loves you. My parents adore you. And Dennis thinks you’re great.” This wasn’t strictly accurate. Whenever they met for dinner, or drinks, or a casual movie, the conversation was cool and impersonal unless Dennis decided that Van needed to be flirted up, in which case all burners went on high. In other social situations Van was effortlessly positive and poised, presenting herself confidently as the working wife of a young doctor in Cincinnati. But that’s pretty much where things had leveled off. Kyle told himself it was just a matter of time till everyone got to know each other but even his parents seemed to have settled into a kind of withholding formality. Susan was still trying too hard publicly and not giving anything privately. For all her charms, Van had not been let in, and he did not know why. The sudden recognition of the pain and loneliness that this exclusion must be causing her softened the irrationality of his mood.

“Look. We should go,” he said. “Really. It’s not the only Christmas party. And if it isn’t going to be fun, I don’t see any point in staying.” He meant it as a kindness, but Van’s eyes flickered at this, settling themselves into some sort of sullen, disappointed rage. Why? He was saying, I can see that this is no fun for you, let’s get out of here. Why would that piss her off?

Whether he knew why or not, it most certainly had. “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” she replied. “Besides, if we walk out within instants of your little tête-à-tête with your old girlfriend, people will be gossiping for weeks.”

“I can’t imagine that people find us that fascinating, Van.”

“You can count on it, Kyle,” she informed him. And with that she plastered on a lovely, bright smile, and waved her hideous glass of dead club soda at Dennis, who was in fact watching them with a shred too much interest from across the room. “Help! Help!” she called with her bubbling laugh. “He’s failed me utterly!”

She was so pretty and impermeable. She said things which were clearly meant to express something about her interior life but he simply couldn’t understand what she meant, or even what the words meant. It was like talking to a puppet. It was less coherent than talking to a puppet. With a puppet, you could take things at face value, and interpret backward, to what the hidden meaning might be when you worked what you knew about the identity of the puppet master into the equation. But there was no puppet, no puppet master, only words that indicated emotions in a way which revealed nothing, words which simply mystified the workings of the heart even further. If his head was made of glass, then hers was iron, or stone.

“His interview with the great actress was more impressive than mine,” Van informed Dennis, who had joined them behind the pillar. “At least it went on long enough for my club soda to lose all its fizz.”

“Well, that’s a metaphor if I’ve ever heard one,” Dennis noted.