She thought of Maddie. Trapped on this island steered by a madman. What she wouldn’t give to see the girl get away. Free to be visible, invisible, whatever and whomever the girl dared. If only she could ship Maddie off the island like her bags of clothes.
The Dior was too decadent for Goodwill. It would have to go someplace after she wore it tonight one last time. Perhaps the Ladies Auxiliary Charity shop at St. John’s. She imagined the East Avalon ladies who shopped in disguise (as if privacy exists on an island with one exit!) hiding under brimmed golf hats and dark sunglasses, picking over the lost treasures of women dead, feeble, or abandoned in a nursing home by their ungrateful children.
She stood in front of the same mirror she had looked into the morning of Ginny’s wedding sixteen years ago. She straightened her spine, lifted her chin. Hell would freeze over (borrowing one of her husband’s favorites) before she gave this gem to those cheapskates, Bunny Templeton or Clara Friedrich, to wear when she was dead and buried. She promised herself she’d wear only the brightest colors for her remaining days.
*
She floated through the gold-and-cream country club dining room. Never had she not minded walking into that room—its mirrored walls multiplying the wealthy of East Avalon so she felt a claustrophobic panic. But today she was as cool as a cucumber. Or, as she’d heard Maddie say (and Oprah too), “whatever.”
The round scoops of chicken liver paté, a popular dining-hall appetizer, had always reminded her of cat food. Today, they seemed the most appetizing thing in the world. She whisked a plate off a table as she passed, dug the Melba toast into the creamy ball.
She spotted Ginny’s long blond hair hung in looping curls down her back. She felt a swell of pride—her girl had done it, gotten out of bed and made herself up! Perhaps things weren’t as dire as Veronica had feared. Then Ginny turned and she saw her daughter’s blurred look. Puffy eyes. Lipstick uncertainly applied. Ginny shifted into over-the-top enthusiasm. Mommy! When Tony leaned forward to give Veronica a peck, she stepped back. She waved a finger at the sweater wrapped around his shoulders—tendrils of curly black hair reaching out from his collar.
“What—are you off to play a set?”
She let her laughter linger as she walked away, imagining it the tail of a scorpion, hoping her jerk of a son-in-law stung.
She felt so buoyant, she didn’t even resist when Eleanor Smith, cochair of the Annual Oyster Cove Country Club Fourth of July Surf ’N’ Turf Dinner, cornered her by the shrimp cocktail and insisted on pinning a ribboned corsage to Veronica’s chest.
“Come now, Veronica,” she slurred. “All the East Avalon ladies deserve a flower.”
She knew what the beastly woman meant. Even the disgraced ladies. The merger was moving forward. Tangeman Aircraft had offered 2.1 billion, outbidding three other vultures. The news hadn’t gone public, but she was sure it was making its way ’round the club dining room, would be all over the island by the time the first firework burst overhead.
“Pin away, Ellie!” Veronica sang, relishing the confusion scrunching up the woman’s already wrinkled face.
Yes, Veronica thought, she may be dying, she may have failed in saving Old Ironsides, but at least she’d worn her sunscreen on the golf green and tennis courts. She wouldn’t look like a dried-up mummy in her casket. As the woman’s pudgy hands fumbled over her chest, she feared Eleanor might bump one of her scars or, worse, notice how the bodice sagged around the empty pockets where her breasts had been. The twit was digging into the silk again and again—silk Veronica imagined Christian Dior had reveled in after the war rations ended. All that glorious fabric hoarded for years finally free to be used in extravagant abundance! The pearl-tipped corsage pin tore tiny holes so that a wisp of thread hung loose, and Veronica used all her waning strength not to strangle the woman. At last, the trio of purple orchids were in place. Eleanor clomped away in her orthopedic flats, over to Binnie Mueller, fake smile lit, flabby arms open for a hug.
Veronica was sweating. Her heart tapping so fast she knew she needed ice water or she’d go into full palpitations. She had to yell over the din to get a soda water from the bartender. That moron Geoffrey Norris, who ran Plant 4, was telling jokes again. Every one starring a rabbi, priest, and a pinup girl, or something equally offensive. The circle of men hee-hawing at his jokes like a bunch of asses—the kind with tails. The East Avalonians were having a grand old time doing what they did best—pretending their grip on war and peace was unshakable.
She had felt so divine when their driver, Charles, first dropped her and Bob (in a docile mood, thank heavens) at the revolving glass doors of the club. She had dumped Bob with Dominic, who had become his grandfather’s nanny. Later, she spotted the boy switching Bob’s rum and Coke with his own glass of soda. He was a crafty one. Getting tipsy, making eyes at that waiter—the Hispanic boy she’d always suspected was a little light in the loafers. Touché, young Master Pencott. Touché.
She inspected the dessert table that nearly ran the length of the hall. The chocolate-peppermint molten cake was just the right amount of runny at its center, but wasn’t it so 1989? She should’ve known that Eleanor, who always played it safe no matter the game (bridge, tennis or golf), wouldn’t have made any—what was it Julius had said?—decorative gambles. If it had been up to Veronica, she’d have done something classic but almost forgotten. A revival of sorts. Baked Alaska. And once, she remembered, she’d served hollow chocolate eggs filled with strawberry mousse for a White Eagle holiday party. It had been the talk of the ladies’ bridge tournament the following week. She should do that again, she thought, and then remembered how her time was almost up.
She watched a cluster of women ooh and ahh over one another’s dresses and diamonds and recently coiffed platinum hair. Oh how giddy they must feel, pinned with exotic blooms, the very opposite of the overpruned gardens these same women paid day workers to plant around their estates. Like beautiful prison walls. Privileged prisoners, Veronica thought, shut in their beautiful houses surrounded by beautiful things, day after day, as their menfolk made the fighting machines that kept the country safe, and the coffers full.
She had been one of them. Walked her gardens, volunteered for charity, hit golf balls, tennis balls, even captained a boating race that benefitted the Korean War Veterans Association. She had kept herself busy, trying to make from out of thin air a kind of work. What was life without work?