We got ready at her new house in Bel Air. It wasn’t huge, only three bedrooms, but it boasted a courtyard with a swimming pool under palm trees, floor-to-ceiling windows in all the interior rooms, and an elegance of line my years of architecture drooling could appreciate. “Did you ever think you’d really have a house like this?” I asked the day I arrived.
She snorted. “No way! I’m still pinching myself. Beryl told me to buy real estate, so I did.” She squeezed my hand. “A swimming pool! Just like yours.”
“It’s gorgeous,” I said, squeezing back.
By the time the makeup people and stylists were finished with us, we both looked fantastic. I was at my slimmest, thanks to an art school schedule that left little time to eat, and lots of sweaty, hot sex with Derek. They dressed me in a shimmery sheath that displayed a lot of cleavage, and swept my hair into an updo, and made up my face so that I looked like a model. I barely recognized myself and couldn’t wait for the photos.
But Suze. “Oh my God,” I breathed when she came out. Tears sprang to my eyes. “Suze!”
The gown was a tip of the hat to a flapper dress in a shade of aquamarine that matched her eyes exactly. It was beaded over net, barely there over the shoulders with a plunging back. The iridescence caught her curves and displayed her slenderness. Her hair was simply caught back in a sort of french twist that made her look glamourous, and her face was all eyes and lips. “Good, right?” she said with a crooked smile. “Properly Cinderella.”
“I’m so proud of you.”
She hugged me. Our sequins and slipperiness made a swishing sound. The stylist shrieked. “Your makeup!”
Suze whispered, “Thank you for being here to share this.”
It was a dazzling night. The press went wild for her. At the parties, everyone crowded in to talk to her, and she managed it all as if she’d been in the business for decades. She was confident and smiled easily but not too much, and listened carefully when people asked questions, then answered exactly right, every time. I’d always known she could act, but this was a whole extra talent.
Or maybe it was all the same. Maybe she was acting now, acting the part of a successful actress.
Which she was, overnight. By morning, the reviews were pouring in, and the critics adored her. By the end of two months, the movie had outearned all its competitors and was on track to being one of the highest-grossing films in history. By the end of the year, Suze had made another movie and signed to do two more. Her life grew so hectic that I wasn’t able to see her very often, and I understood.
In the photo on the shelf behind exhausted modern-day Suze, a match to one on my bedroom bureau, we are both young and beautiful, on the brink of the next chapter of our lives. Our hands are clutched so tightly you can see the white on Suze’s knuckles, and our bodies are very close together.
The woman before me in her kitchen is world weary and vulnerable. I haven’t seen her this way since we were teenagers. I think of her lying in the hospital bed after her father beat her so badly for being pregnant, utterly still, attached to all the wires and tubes. I think of the second hospital bed, after another beating, and my stomach squeezes hard.
Impulsively, I cross the room and hug her. She’s taller than me, but skinnier, and I feel her limbs like twigs and branches, not flesh. Even so, she melts into me, her face against my shoulder, her long arms around me. She sighs and tucks her nose into my neck.
We don’t say anything. I know this is what she needs, what she longs for. Why do I find it so hard to be generous? I sometimes think this is the legacy of my cold mother, who pushed and prodded and loved me but mostly did withhold affection, both toward me and toward my father.
I run a hand up and down her spine. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” I say, emphatically. “Yes.”
I feel her take a breath, fortifying herself, and she straightens, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she glances over her shoulder to where Joel is working on the breaker box. There’s something in her expression that looks stricken, and I wonder if they’ve ever talked since he burned down her father’s church. So furious. We’d all been so furious with her dad, and Joel was the one who expressed it for all of us.
A long time ago.
I say, “Joel, will you walk me through what you’ve done once you finish?”
“Sure thing. Nothing too complicated.”
“Walk us both through,” Suze says, and looks at me. “I’m going to be here awhile this time.”
“That’s good,” I say. “You need some time to heal.”
“Maybe I need to be home for good.” She looks out the window toward the Starfish Sisters. As if to illustrate how perfect the view is, a bald eagle sails between us and the rocks. A squawking madness goes off, seagulls yelling, smaller birds swirling up in crowds. The eagle snatches one and flies away, chased by three others and a pair of seagulls squalling punitive curses after him.
“Wow,” I say, awed.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “How do I forget how fantastic this place is?”
“Well, it’s an outdoor kind of fantastic. A wet outdoor fantastic.” I pause. “Um, I need a favor?”
She inclines her head. “Anything.”
I look to see where Jasmine is, and she’s in the other room, dragging around a mouse on a string for Yul Brynner to chase. In a quiet voice, I say, “Ben asked me out. Wants to go up to Poseidon on Friday night.”
“What?” she squeaks. “Phoebe!” Her face lights up. “That’s great.”
“Could Jasmine spend the night? We might be up late.”
“Oh my God, yes. We will have a blast!”
“Who will?” Jasmine asks, ambling into the room.
“Me and you. Want to spend the night with me on Friday?”
Jasmine opens her mouth wide. Her gray eyes are so bright it almost stings. “Here?”
“Where else?”
“Will I have to sleep by myself?” She gives me a side-eye, like I will complain, but what do I care? It’s kind of sweet that she still wants to sleep with an adult.
“No! You can sleep with me if you want.” Suze tilts her head. “I might cuddle you, though.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Cool, then.” She winks at me. “It’s a date.”
“Yay!” Jasmine leaps over to hug Suze. A mean little part of me twinges with jealousy—as with my grandmother, I sometimes want to be the One.
Even I know it’s petty. I should be grateful that she has so much love in her life.
“All right, then.”
“Who wants lunch?” Suze says, picking up her phone. “My treat. Sub sandwiches? Salads? Tacos?”
“Sushi,” Jasmine cries.
“Guess again,” I say. “No sushi around here.”
“There’s a whole ocean right there!” Jasmine gestures to the water.
I shrug. “Still no sushi.” Joel has wandered into the room. “Let’s let Joel choose.”
“Choose?” he echoes. He looks at Suze, and I see that he’s as dazzled by her as he ever was. She swore they were friends, but he was madly in love. I tried so hard not to see it, but it was plain.
“Lunch,” she says, and there’s something in her face, too, when she looks at him. Something lost, something confident, something full of—what? Love, heat, lostness.
Which would be weird, since they were never together. Suze returned to live with Amma after the baby was born, but Joel never came back after his stint in juvie.
But that looks like more than old friends. Maybe, I think, looking from one to the other, I got it wrong. Did Suze lie to me? A whisper of heat licks along my lungs, breathes on the lingering rift between us. Has she been lying to me all this time?
I think of the letter in my drawer, lying unopened for decades. I’m also guilty.
“Subs, tacos, salads?” Suze repeats. Her voice is silky and warm. Calm.
Joel shakes himself ever so slightly, as if he’s been off in another world. “Nah, that’s all right. I want to see if I can dig up some diagrams from this era, and I can do that best from the office.”
“I have a computer,” she says, and points to a room down the hall.
The air fills with a musky blue atmosphere, so thick I could move it around with my hands. “No. Thanks, though. I’ll be back later,” he says.