Son of Destruction

32




The Lunch Bunch


There’s nothing like a good fire to bring out all your best friends. It’s ghoulish but true, it’s a fantastic bonding time. Thank God nobody was hurt.

Most of us went to bed early – imagine, on a Saturday night, but it was the day after the biggest bash of the year and the Kalen party wiped us out! We went to the Colemans’ for cocktails about Kara’s brother from Detroit but it was a done deal; since we were getting over Friday night, we’d be at Kara’s all dressed up and smiling at five sharp and out by eight. No stylishly late arrivals for us and no kicking back with the Colemans after, dishing the other guests and finishing off the wine. When everybody’s seen everybody for two nights running, you just get tired.

Some people went out for fried shrimp and slaw at the Shrimp Tank afterward, but most of us were so worn out by all the work we did on that party and drained by the disaster that we ate all Kara’s hot hors d’oeuvres and went straight home to crackers and cheese, TV in our jammies, early to bed.

Our kids might be out helling around but nobody begrudges them; our good old boys were thinking, shit, it’s their turn. Then they thought, but it’s still my turn! We felt it in the way they shifted in the bed, twitchy as horny high school boys, and we knew what was up front and center in their heads. Then we rolled them over and they forgot.

The sirens woke us up.

We went running out, and everybody that wasn’t within earshot, Cathy or Betsy Cashwell phoned. We have everybody that matters on speed dial. Even Nenna snapped to, although of course by the time she got here there wouldn’t be much left to see – her fault, really, for letting Davis stick her in that corny Venetian knockoff over in Far Acres, where only rich outsiders live.

We ran out in our sweats, shortie gowns, raincoats, kaftans, the first thing we grabbed; lipstick, of course, but no makeup, we barely had time to comb our hair. Half of us look OK when we’re au pretty much naturel, but the other half are a fright – no names, please! Face it, some women should never be seen without a bra, insulting the public with native-lady boobs and bellies rolling out of control, and, you want to know what’s unfair? This is unfair. Except for the stubble and their hair being mussed up, our men looked pretty much the same as they do in the day.

Outside the sky was all the wrong color, talk about your unearthly glow.

Every piece of rolling stock in the city came pouring in to Coral Shores; they rushed down Coral Boulevard like the spray out of a fire hose, cop cars and fire trucks, city cars with giant speakers and ambulances toting machines to restore breathing, or jump-start your heart. Our street looked like a laser tag park, what with all the revolving strobes and all those sirens! Cop cars, yowling like cats in heat. The Bellingers came boiling out of Sallie’s Lexus; naturally they were the first people Betsy phoned. They were first over the bridge after the rescue units passed, too bad they have to live in town, but Grammy Bellinger’s Victorian on Bay Drive is too nice to leave. Poor Chape looked distracted and crazy with worry, and Sallie, my God! She almost got hit by TV Nine. We lit out after the news van, crazy to see what burned. Sallie got up and dove into the mainstream along with us, running down the road to Coral Circle. The night turned orange, what a sight!

God-almighty, the Tills’ house was on fire.

Now, Boyd and Carole Till fly to Paris every spring even though it’s still beautiful down here, and they jet to Maine as soon as they get back from France. With Boyd’s money, everybody could. Easter Monday rain or shine they pull down their teakwood Rolos and arm the alarms and walk away without a care. You can do that in Coral Shores; we are protected. Shoresafe Security is that good.

Besides, we watch out for each other here.

Why, in Coral Shores you can throw a stone in any direction and hit a friend. We all grew up together, like one big family! We learned manners and flirting at the cotillions in junior high; never mind that we smoked grass outside the Malobar at intermission or that in eighth grade, sex disrupted the flirting and we cried all the way home in the car. We’ve been through so much together that whatever happens to you, there isn’t a one of us who can’t sign her sympathy note: Been There.

We live so close that we can walk to our friends’ parties in our Manolos, all silky in the night. At Christmas if it’s cool enough, we throw on our furs that we bought for New York and go house to house. Last year the Tills had a living crèche outside, with people in robes and shepherd outfits in a life-sized manger; we thought Boyd hired them but Betsy says they were volunteers from Carole’s church.

The Tills can take off whenever they want because they have more than Shoresafe Security. They have friends! We watch out for their house, and for more reasons than Carole thinks. Sad to say, Boyd has some pretty weird friends dropping by when his wife goes away. Stitch picked up on it when he was out speed-walking last year, bikers and worse people spilling out at dawn.

Richer than God, and Boyd has a personality disorder. You wouldn’t know it to look at him and we’ve never seen it in Fort Jude but, poor Carole, Boyd is a cross-dresser, which is probably why they travel so much. Maybe that kind of thing goes over better in Paris than here. If he’d let Carole have that baby she wanted so bad, maybe he wouldn’t be flouncing around in Carole’s pretty things. Once she came back from her Godchild’s christening in Atlanta and found grease spots all down the front of her black velvet, and he ruined her Fortuny pleated dress! Carole started FJHS after we left for college and Boyd is way older, which probably explains a lot.

But why did Boyd’s house get on fire?

Fortunately, it stands all by itself the far side of the circle, so nothing else caught. With the circle jammed with city trucks, we ended up in Lillian Lipton’s front yard. Buck and Stitch had to bang on her door because Miss Lillian isn’t deaf exactly, but age has made her just a little dumb, and they didn’t want her to see the fire and get confused. She came out blinking, but she has the sweetest smile, and she was thrilled to see them. Of course they promised to keep the flames off her roof. She thanked them and invited us up on the porch, so we’d get a better view. Then she went in the kitchen to make coffee, which is what you do.

It was interesting, being together with nothing but our nightclothes between us and all the others’ bodies; it made us softer, unguarded and rumpled from our beds. Man, woman. Woman, man, with only the smoke and the products we put on to keep us sweet to mask our body smells. Here in the night we had a choice between flirting and the usual sibling etiquette, which protects us all.

Generally we treat each other’s men like sandbox friends – big smile, no agenda, it’s for the best, but seeing Buck in briefs and a dress shirt and baggy old Stitch in his striped pajamas and Chape with those ripped-looking abs and thighs, with nothing between us but the underwear he slept in, brought it home:

How many things polite society protects and defends, in and of itself.

Watching Chape, we had to wonder whether Sallie has a harder row to hoe than she lets on, as in, whether Chape is gone for a reason all those times he says it’s work. Then there was Al Watson, twenty years younger than Bette so we only see them at big parties, but who could keep from looking at Al?

Miss Lillian came out with a nice coffee tray and she put on the porch light so she could see to pour; the Nabisco wafers were a nice distraction, which was just as well. Then the light went off and we focused on the fire.

Tills’ kitchen wing roof caved in and flames shot up. You wouldn’t expect a tile-roofed stucco to burn so bright, but the parquet floors and poor Carole’s antiques and draperies fed it for quite a while. When the firemen bashed out the Rolos we half-expected to see kids in drag screeching and flailing inside, you know, Boyd’s special friends, or Boyd himself in one of Carole’s shifts or at the very least some vagrant running out with his hair on fire, but whoever broke in was either dead already, or long gone.

Thank God our kids are OK. As soon as we heard the sirens, we phoned.

At first there was so much racket that we couldn’t hear ourselves think but finally even the TV people and the ambulances left. The fire had died and officials were going into the wreckage to inspect. Sane people would have gone home, but we weren’t finished here.

We had to talk. Not that we hadn’t already begun to speculate.

Somebody said, ‘Good thing they weren’t home.’

‘Just so you know, the paramedics took Cal Simmons away on a stretcher. Heart failure.’

‘Good thing they found him in time.’

‘Good thing,’ everybody said. Good thing this. Good thing that.

‘Thank God nobody was hurt.’ Good thing.

‘That we know of. Boyd was into people we don’t know about.’

‘What do you mean?

‘What if one of Boyd’s scuzzy bikers . . .’

‘You don’t know that they’re bikers.’

‘They sure as hell aren’t regulars at the Fort Jude Club.’

‘Whatever they are. Shit, so, what, he gave one a key to the house?’

‘Like, it was a grudge fire? Like, because Boyd pissed off someone?’

‘What makes you think it was arson?’

‘It had to be arson. Look how fast it went up.’ Buck is on the City Council, so he’s in tight with the police and fire chiefs, who were buzzing around in yellow-taped slickers like hornets looking for somebody to sting. ‘I’ll find out.’ he said, and trotted across the street to ask.

‘These things don’t just happen.’

Sallie was maybe too quick to reassure us. ‘Sometimes they do. Could have been the furnace.’

‘In April?’

‘Or their wiring!’

Somebody snapped, ‘Or their grandmother blew up,’ and everybody laughed.

Old stories never lose their power. Tribute to maturity: only one of us brought it up. Testimony that even accidental fires make us nervous? We had to turn it into a joke, although it was nervous laughter.

Mariel said, ‘Well, it’s not like there haven’t been a lot of little fires.’

‘You mean the Warrens’ trellis.’

‘And the Boyles’ garage.’

‘Plus, our cabana at the beach!’

‘That was nothing like this. Those were all nuisance fires.’

‘Little things. Things kids do. Hell, we set a few in our time.’

‘This is different.’

‘Kids,’ Chape said stiffly, and God only knows why he scowled the way he did. ‘What makes you think it was kids?’

At that very moment Sallie clapped her hands to her face. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, loud enough to distract us. ‘Poor Carole! What’ll she do when she hears?’

Naturally Betsy already knew. ‘It’s insured. The adjuster’s on his way.’

‘Who says?’

‘Carole, of course.’ We had to forgive Betsy for being just a little smug. She’s the only one of us with Carole’s Paris hotel on speed dial. ‘After all, somebody had to break the news.’

‘How did she take it? Did she scream when you told her? Did she cry?’

‘It’s morning in Paris. She was very calm.’

‘Poor Carole! Is she OK?’

‘I’m worried about her, if you want to know the truth. She was too calm. Everything burned to a cinder and all she said was, “You know, Betsy, it might be just as well.”’

‘What might be just as well?’

If it had been one of us asking we would have ragged on her, what are you, clueless? But it wasn’t any of us, standing here in our jammies, it was Nenna, showing up late in high heels and full makeup, a living reproach.

‘I came as soon as I heard.’

After an hour in front of the mirror. We could tell.

‘Too late, you missed it. It’s nothing but cinders now.’

We love Sallie, she’s so forgiving. ‘Come on up here, girl.’

‘Miss Lillian made coffee.’

We gathered around, hot to fill her in. Kara said, ‘Look! I’ve got pictures on my phone.’

Then our voices went from warm to cold. ‘Oh, Davis.’

‘Hello, Davis.’

We all said hello although we aren’t speaking to him after what he did to her.

Ironic, in a way, that the group’s known philanderer was the only man out here fully dressed. He and Nenna didn’t look too happy, really. They looked like they were fighting when the phone rang and on the long car ride over they fixed their faces so we wouldn’t know.

It’s interesting. We were all furious at Davis for how he did Nenna, but even though we’d always thought he was not nearly good enough for her, now that we knew about his secret lover, he almost looked good to us.

Where our men were running around looking like they’d been slept in, Davis looked cool in an oxford cloth shirt and ironed jeans, new topsiders, no socks. He had his collar open and the cuffs rolled back, and something about standing out here in our night-things talking to Nenna’s soon-to-be-ex husband made us over-conscious of bodies: his, ours.

Davis did a pretend salute with the smile he’d probably been using on girls behind Nenna’s back for years. ‘Ladies . . .’

Then something better came along and we forgot.

Whoever he was, this new man looked good, exciting, and only partly because he was new. Young. Very much himself out here in the dark with us. Tall, with a forelock that kept falling in his face.

Then somebody whispered, ‘It’s him!’

It was. Dan Carteret, that we’d heard so much about. He was the spitting image of Lucy, and now that he was here, we wondered why Jessie didn’t say he was gorgeous, like, was she was trying to keep him for herself? What was she, sitting down there at the Flordana thinking up ways to lure him into her suite, like, Me first? Well, tough. Instead of falling down with Jessie Vukovich who, sweet as she is, would do it with anybody, he was here among us, and backlit by the cops’ headlights and the smoking afterglow of the Tills’ ruined house, like maybe he’d come to tell us who did what to his mother that we still talk about, but never actually knew.

Somebody turned on Miss Lillian’s burglar light so we could all take a better look. He stood down there on the walk, knuckling his head until Nenna – no, our friend Nenna – turned to see what we were staring at, and didn’t she light up.

And didn’t she trill, all surprised and charmed, ‘Why, Dan!’

We thought he’d bound up the steps so she’d be forced to introduce him but he hung back, swiveling from us to the smoldering remains and back with a baffled squint. Then he said, ‘You called?’

Oh, you clever bitch.

Well, didn’t Nenna rush down the steps like a girl on prom night – and who could blame her, with Davis the rat standing right there, picture of a man asking for it?

For a woman who’s been flattened and tromped on by a slick liar like Davis McCall, it was like landing a karate kick in his whitened teeth: take that. No, better. And why shouldn’t she leave with him, she’s practically single now . . . but, Lucy’s son! We’d give anything to know what Nenna told this lovely man to get him here, and more to know what happened after they got in his car and rolled out of Coral Shores.

Things finally died down but we were all too disrupted to go straight home, so Betsy had us over for toast and coffee in the glossy new kitchen she built with the settlement from Clive. Kara ran home for her banana bread and Cathy went next door for butter and that calamondin marmalade she loves to make. Somebody thought to bring Miss Lillian and she sat among us in her chenille bathrobe, looking thrilled. Nobody saw where Davis went. He knew we didn’t want him here.

We looked at our men, who were sweet and rumpled and ordinary now that we had all come in out of the dark, and we thanked whatever gods take care of us that we were here with them, not Davis. We took turns talking to poor Carole in Paris while our men pestered Buck for details he’d picked up from the fire marshal. Somebody turned on the TV and we waited for video of the fire to show up on the news.

Of course we were upset!

If a thing like that could happen to Carole, what could happen to us?

Being together like this, homefolks getting down in Betsy’s kitchen, made us feel better. It always does. The coffee was good, and worn and frazzled as we were, we felt more or less restored. While we were still debriefing, rehashing everything we knew and guessing at the rest, the sun came up and there wasn’t a one of us who wasn’t thinking: Too bad it has to end. It took us a long time to say good night because we were tired as hell but we didn’t want to let it go. We and our men started home, walking through the early morning two by two, and that weird, weird night ended up in a normal morning way.