But then Francie started singing “Over the Rainbow” and only a few verses in she started to weep. “Mom?” Melody said, weakly.
“It’s just so, so sad,” Francie said. She turned to them. “The studios killed Judy Garland. They killed her. That voice and what a tragedy. They made her and then they killed her.” The girls were sitting quietly, nervously giggling. “Uppers to work all day. Downers to sleep at night. She was just a kid.” Francie stood now, facing them, her robe gaping a little in front. “I wanted to be an actress. I could have gone to Hollywood.”
“You could have been a real contender, Fran,” Leo said, leaning against the doorjamb, amused.
“Why didn’t you?” Beth said, brightening a little. She wanted to go to Hollywood, talked about it all the time. Her parents had taken her on a family trip to Universal Studios the previous summer and she’d loved every minute of it, talked about the studio tour like she’d flown to Los Angeles for a screen test.
“My father wouldn’t let me.” Francie sat on a large enormous club chair across from the girls. “He thought it was unseemly. He insisted I go to college, stay home. Then I met Leonard and got knocked up and that was that.”
“Mom!”
Francie scowled at Melody and waved her hand like she was waving away tiny gnats. “Oh, relax, Emily Post.” She closed her eyes and put her feet up on an ottoman and started to nod off. From across the room, Leo shrugged at Melody. The shrug was more resigned than sympathetic. See? the shrug said. Remember this the next time you want to invite friends over.
When Beth’s mother arrived to take the girls home, she surveyed the scene—the baby-shower cake, Francie lightly snoring in a robe, the empty martini glass on the piano—and quietly closed the pocket doors between the living room and the front hall. As she helped the girls button their coats and locate mittens, Melody heard Beth tell her mother, “She said I was the pretty one. Why did she say Leah was a lesbian?”
Melody had been scared to show up at school the next day, worried about what her friends would say about her weepy, inebriated, odd mother. But all they talked about was the extremely cool birthday party where Leo Plumb, a high school senior, had sung and danced with them and taught them how to gamble.
“Hey, Betty!” the three girls would say—with affection, not mockery—when they saw Melody in the hall. She’d never been happier than those weeks and months at the end of sixth grade.
So Melody had been stunned—and thrilled—when Jack and Walker offered to host a fortieth birthday dinner in her honor. Every year she told Walt that all she wanted was a quiet birthday celebration at home with her family and she was always, always disappointed when he believed her.
“I really think Leo is going to come through tonight,” she said, flipping down the sun visor and applying lipstick in the tiny mirror. “I think he’s going to surprise everyone with good news.”
“That certainly would be a surprise.”
“I don’t know why, but something about birthdays brings out the best in Leo. Really.”
“If you say so.”
“I do!” Melody turned the radio up and hummed along with a song she sort of knew. Leo’s e-mail had been vague, true, but it was also encouraging. She’d nearly memorized the long paragraph, something about an exciting project for Nathan that was coming together “very quickly,” how he’d left town to meet with some investors and would be out of touch but back with a progress report in time for her birthday dinner. “I’m very optimistic,” he’d written.
Walter raised his voice a little to be heard above the radio. “What I really think,” he said, “is the sooner everyone lets go of Leo as their personal savior, the better off everyone will be. Including you. Including us.”