“Loose ends.”
“Just one, really. So … Monday evening? Six o’clock? Dinner?”
“You don’t have my telephone number.”
“I have your address.”
I opened my arms. “Kiss me good-bye, Doctor.”
THE THIRD TIME I woke up, it was full morning, and my love-struck body was twisted into a cocoon made of Doctor Paul’s sheets. I had to untangle myself before I could reach down for the alarm clock, and then I nearly went into cardiac arrest. It was ten a.m. I’d never slept that late in my life. I’d certainly never known the luxury of waking up in a man’s bed before.
Oh, ho? You don’t believe me, Vivian Schuyler, not for a second?
Very well, then. Picture me, a wise fool of a college sophomore, caressing the dampened nape of my professor’s neck, staring up at his office ceiling, moon-eyed as all get-out. I watch him heave himself up, shuck off the Trojan, straighten his trousers, and light the obligatory cigarette.
Me (dreamily): Let’s make love at your house next time. I’ll bring champagne and make you pancakes in the morning.
Professor (lovingly): Let’s just meet at the library and screw in the stacks, shall we?
But that was all in the past, wasn’t it? I rose from Doctor Paul’s bed, wrapped myself in a sheet, and found my pocketbook in the living room. I lit a cigarette and leaned against a stack of moving boxes. A piece of paper caught my eye, taped to the icebox.
Vivian
Milk in the fridge. Coffee in the pot. Toast in the cabinet. Heart in your hands. For unknown reasons, the hot water knob in the shower opens to the right.
Still dazzled.
Paul
Now, this was what I called a love note. I kissed that sweet little scrap of nonsense and slipped it into my pocketbook.
When I’d finished my cigarette, I showered, brief and scalding hot, and dressed again in my shameful clothes. I plugged in the percolator. I found fresh sheets in the box marked BEDROOM and made up Doctor Paul’s bed with precision hospital corners and lovingly fluffed-up pillows.
The clock now read eighteen minutes past eleven. I poured myself a hot one, picked up the telephone, and dialed up Margaux Lightfoot.
“Why, hello, Vivs. How was your Saturday night?”
“I met a boy, honey,” I said.
Thrilled gasp. “You didn’t!”
“I did. I’m over at his place right now, drinking coffee.”
Shocked gasp. “You didn’t!”
“I did, indeedy. Twice.” I lit another cigarette and leaned back against the cushion on the living room floor, like the tart I was. The telephone cord spiraled around my right foot.
“You’ll scare him off,” said Gogo.
“Never mind that. I’m off to Sunday lunch right now, and I need your help.”
“But what’s he like, Vivs? Is he a dreamboat?”
“The absolute boatiest. But listen. I’ve just discovered I have a long-lost aunt who murdered her husband fifty years ago. Do you think you could get your father to let me look in the archives a bit tomorrow morning?”
“Oh, Vivs, I don’t know. It’s his holiest of holies. He doesn’t even let me go in there unless it’s magazine business.”
“I could make it magazine business. I could find out what really happened and write up the story, a big investigative piece.” I unwound my foot and wound it back again the other way. “The whole thing is just so juicy, Gogo, just too succulent. Her husband was a physicist, a hotshot, entry in the E.B. and everything, and she just … disappeared. With her lover. Right before the war. Don’t you think that’s scandalous? And I never even knew!”
A current of hesitation came down the line. Gogo was the dearest of the dear, but some might say she lacked a certain je ne sais sense of adventure.
“Well, Gogo? Don’t you think it would make a perfect story?”
“Of course I do, Vivs,” she said loyally. “But you know … you aren’t really … you’re not one of the writers yet. Not officially.”
“Oh, I know I’m just fetching old Tibby’s coffee for now, but this is large change. Really large change. And you know I can tell a story. Your father knows it. I can do this, Gogo.”
“I’ll talk to him about it.”
“Mix him a martini first. You know he loves your martinis.”
“I’ll do my best, I promise. But never mind all that! I want more about this boy of yours. What’s his name? What does he do?” She lowered her voice to a whisper of guilty curiosity. “What did he do last night?”
“Oh, my twinkling stars, what didn’t he do.” I straightened from the cushion. “But I don’t have time now, Gogo. Sunday lunch starts at twelve sharp, or I’ll be heave-hoed out of the family. Which is a tempting thought, but I’ll need my inheritance one day, when my luck runs out.”
“I want details tomorrow morning, then. Especially the ones I shouldn’t hear.”
“You’ll have your details, if I have my afternoon in the archives.”
Despairing sigh. “You’re a hard woman, Vivian Schuyler.”
“One of us has to be, Gogo, dear. Go give that boy of yours a kiss from me.” I mwa-mwa’d the receiver, tossed it back in the cradle, and stared at the ceiling while I finished my coffee and cigarette.
Was I speculating about Violet, or recalling my mad honey-stained hour of excess with Doctor Paul?
I’ll let you decide that one for yourself.
NOW, you might have assumed that my mother named me Vivian after herself, and technically you’d be right. After all, we’re both Vivians, aren’t we? And we’re mother and daughter, beyond a doubt?
It’s a funny story, really. How you’ll laugh. I know I did, when my mother explained it to me over vodka gimlets one night, when I was thirteen. You see, she went into labor with me ten whole days before the due date, which was terribly inconvenient because she had this party to go to. Well, it was an important party! The van der Wahls were throwing it, you see, and everybody would be there, and Mums even had the perfect dress to minimize the disgusting bump of me, not that she ever had much bump to speak of, being five-foot-eleven in her stocking feet and always careful not to gain more than fifteen pounds during pregnancy.
Well. Anyway. There I inconveniently arrived, five days before the van der Wahls’ party, six pounds, ten ounces, and twenty-two gazelle inches long, and poor Mums had no more girl names because of my two older sisters, so she left unchanged the little card on my bassinet reading Baby Girl Schuyler, put on her party dress and her party shoes, and checked herself out of the hospital. Voilà! Disaster averted.
Except that when the nanny arrived the next day to check me out of the hospital, they needed a name in order to report the birth. I don’t know why, they just did. So the nanny said, hmm, Vivian seems like a safe choice. And the nurses said, Alrighty, Vivian it is.
Oh, but you’d never guess all this to see us now. Just look at the ardent way I swept into the Schuyler aerie on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-ninth Street, tossed an affectionate kiss on Mums’s powdered cheek, and snatched the outstretched glass from her hand.
“You slept with him, didn’t you?” she said.
“Of course I did.” I sipped delicately.