Trish Bartlett glanced at her watch as she hurried up East
Eighty-Third Street. A quarter to six. She was not late
but she didn't want to be either exactly on time or the
first to arrive. She slowed her pace and lingered at the
Korean market on Cynthia's corner, where she appraised the
cut flowers, the irises wilting and fading, the last roses
of the season already shedding their petals. She settled
at last on a pot of amber-colored zinnias that would, she
decided, make a festive centerpiece for the dinner that
marked their first book club meeting of the year. But even
as she paid for it, she regretted the purchase. Knowing
Cynthia, there would be an expensive flower arrangement,
color-coded to match the table linens and china. That was
Cynthia's style — a casual elegance, easily achieved with
a flash of plastic and the knowledge that Mae, her
housekeeper, would be on hand to clip the stems and
position the vase in exactly the right place on the
tastefully set table.
Trish balanced the flowers and shifted her briefcase,
grimacing at its weight. It bulged with the files of
patients, which she was determined to update that night.
There would be little enough time after the book club,
after Jason's swift bout of passion (a given on nights
when she returned late from a meeting, an assertion of his
power over her, compensation for his moody solitude),
after comforting Mandy, who inevitably, perhaps
instinctively, wakened when her parents' lovemaking had
reached its weary climax. Still, the patient records had
to be completed. A state inspection of the hospital loomed
and her regular hours were overscheduled, hardly allowing
time for the inevitable emergencies. She had dealt with
two that very afternoon — a thirteen-year-old girl whose
self-mutilation had escalated to what appeared to be an
actual suicide attempt, and an anorexic Sarah Lawrence
student who had collapsed in her dorm, unable to speak,
unable to stop weeping.
"I chose the wrong profession," Trish told herself
bitterly as she waited for the light to change. "Cynthia
made the right choice, damn her." She spoke the last two
words aloud and the harshness of her own voice startled
her. Cynthia, after all, was her friend, her very good
friend.
"Just whom are you damning?"
Jen, who must have been walking just a few paces behind,
sidled up to her and grinned mischievously. Although she
carried her own oversize leather portfolio, she relieved
Trish of the briefcase so that she could hold the zinnias
more easily.
"Jen. Don't sneak up on your friends like that! I was just
thinking about some idiot at the hospital who screwed up a
diagnosis," Trish lied. "No biggie."
She stooped slightly and dropped a kiss on her diminutive
friend's head, pleased to have these few moments alone
with her before the frenetic rush of hugs and breathless
greetings as the members of the book club re-convened
after the summer hiatus, each of the women clutching a
much underlined, dog-eared paperback of Anna Karenina. Of
all the members of the group, Trish felt closest to Jen,
who was never demanding, never confrontational, as calmly
acquiescent in interchanges as she was with Ian, her
longtime partner.
"You look terrific, Jen. How was the summer?"
Elfin, smiling Jen did look wonderful. The sun had brushed
her skin to a rose-gold hue and her short dark hair curled
about her head in a helmet of ringlets; a coral knit dress
hugged her small compact body.
"Not bad. A couple of good weekends and a really boring
stretch at the Rhode Island shore. Ian had a sudden urge
to paint seascapes and someone lent him a shack near
Westerly. So he painted and I read Anna Karenina and tried
to keep the sand out of my bathing suit. Do you think the
lovely Anna ever worried about getting sand up her crotch?"
"If she did, she wouldn't have talked about it," Trish
replied, laughing. "Count Leo wasn't too strong on
intimacy between women."
"Let's talk about that tonight. After the cassoulet.
That's the menu. Cynthia said it was to celebrate the
first meeting of the year. Although she didn't look all
that celebratory when I saw her at the office today.
Something was bugging her. Maybe her new assistant is too
smart or too pretty or both."
"I can't recall ever seeing our Princess Cynthia bugged by
anything," Trish reflected. "My professional opinion is
that she's free of that All About Eve syndrome."
"Maybe."
Jen frowned and looked up at the tall elm that stood
sentinel in front of Cynthia's town house. The narrow
leaves were gold-edged and trembled in the early evening
breeze. Several, newly fallen, skittered across the
pavement, brittle reminders of encroaching autumn.
Although the air was warm, she shivered involuntarily.
"Then you're doing another project with her?" Trish asked.
"There's always another project for Cynthia. No rest for
the weary or for the marketing director of Nightingale's.
This time she's rushing through a Thanksgiving catalog —
turkey-shaped pot holders, pumpkin-colored satin aprons —
upscale kitchen stuff for upscale customers who will never
go near a kitchen. It's a close deadline and I'll probably
be up all night working on it, but I'm not complaining. We
can use the money. Ian hasn't sold anything for a couple
of months now and things are sort of tight. I'm glad to
have the work. A lot of freelance graphic designers are
hurting now, so I'm pretty lucky that Cynthia knows my
phone number by heart."
"And Cynthia's pretty lucky to have you," Trish insisted
loyally.
She had seen the brochures and catalogs Jen produced so
effortlessly and she admired her friend's skill. Like many
scientists, she was awed by artistic talent, by the
intuitive creativity that was totally independent of data,
research or experiment but mysteriously flew onto canvas
and paper.
"Cynthia's a pretty lucky lady in general," Jen said
without bitterness, and Trish nodded and marveled at Jen's
generosity. Her own appraisal of Cynthia's life was tinged
with an envy that she supposed was understandable but
hardly admirable.
The truth was that Cynthia did have it all — the great job
as marketing director of Nightingale's, the high-end
boutique department store, with the great salary and even
greater perks. There was Eric, the perfect handsome
husband whose documentary films garnered award after
award. Liza and Julie, the golden-haired twin girls who
were the same age as Mandy but who were as self-assured as
Mandy was shy (the twins, Trish was certain, never wakened
in the darkness, fearful and trembling.) And, of course,
there was Mae, the live-in housekeeper assisted by a
procession of European au pairs who spoke charmingly
accented English and took exquisite care of the children
and of the wide-windowed, many-roomed house, with the
gleaming hardwood floors and the terrace that led out to
an elegantly landscaped garden. And there were, of course,
trips to exotic locations for the premieres of Eric's
films or the launching of new Nightingale's lines. A fairy-
tale life replete with the fairy-tale echo — Cynthia was
as good and generous as she was fortunate.
Trish's own envy mystified her. She had, she knew, no real
reason to envy Cynthia. She herself was living the life
she had envisaged during her dreamy undergraduate days
when medical school and marriage lay in the distant future
and she was uncertain that either could be attained. Even
in the nineties, women med students had an uphill climb,
and for scholarship students like herself the ascent had
been that much steeper. It amazed her still that against
all odds she had her career, Jason's ring snug upon her
finger, and Mandy's smiling kindergarten portrait,
discreetly placed on her desk. Jason's work was not as
glamorous as Eric's, but he was successfully chairing his
own venture capital group, his name appeared occasionally
in the Wall Street Journal, and recently he had been
urging her to look at larger co-ops and to think of buying
a summer place in the Berkshires. They were on their way,
he confided after each financial triumph, his cheeks ruddy
with success as though he were a mountain climber
approaching a long, elusive peak. Always Trish offered him
an affectionate hug, a warm smile of approval, willing her
enthusiasm to match his own. He's terrific, she told
herself severely. I have a terrific husband.
And Mandy was a precocious and affectionate child
(Cynthia's twins, Trish secretly thought, were a bit cold,
or what her colleagues in child psychology would call
emotionally stingy.) Trish knew herself to be admired by
the young women interns on her staff. One attractive
psychiatric resident had even styled her hair in imitation
of Trish's shaggy layered cut. She overheard them speaking
softly, admiringly, of her ability to juggle family and
career. Her success offered them hope. "She has such a
terrific life," she had overheard one intern say wistfully
to another. "She was smart to put off having a kid until
she was through with her residency and on staff." And it
was true. I have a terrific life, she told herself. It was
a mantra that, if repeated often enough, she might come to
believe.
Why then did she find herself comparing her life to
Cynthia's? Why did she struggle each morning to free
herself from the cocoon of sadness that ensnared her in
the night? She shrugged. Exhaustion, perhaps. Too frenetic
a pace. She should think about getting more help at home.
They could afford it. This very evening she would ask
Cynthia for the name of the agency that provided her with
all those attractive, helpful au pairs.
Her mood lifted, as though the fleeting thought was a
decision taken, and she smiled at Jen as they climbed the
broad stone steps to the polished oak door. It was Jen who
lifted the heavy brass knocker, burnished to a subtle
glow. The windows were open and they heard the strains of
a simplified "Für Elise" plucked from the strings of small
Suzuki violins. The twins were practicing and their music
wafted through the soft evening air.
The aroma of roasting meat mingled with mysterious spices
teased their nostrils and Trish realized that she was
hungry. She tried to remember whether she had eaten lunch
and could recall only nibbling an apple between a
conference with a distraught parent and a consultation
with a gastroenterologist concerned about the dietary
needs of a bulimic patient. She had referred him to Donna,
who would, no doubt, express her annoyance at the
intrusion at some point during the book club gathering,
probably between the dessert and the analysis of Anna
Karenina.
It was, in fact, Donna who opened the door to them and
beamed a welcome, hugging Jen and placing a collegial (and
perhaps forgiving) arm on Trish's shoulder. It occurred to
Trish, not for the first time, that Donna took on a
different persona when she left the hospital. At work in
her nutritionist's office, its institutional green walls
devoid of anything except charts of food pyramids and
stark drawings of the digestive system, Donna confined her
ash-blond hair to a severe bun. Her pale skin was washed
free of makeup, a long white lab coat concealed her soft
and appealing plumpness, and high white oxford shoes
reached her slender ankles. But here in Cynthia's
entryway, her loosened hair caped her shoulders in silken
sheaths, pale blue eye shadow that exactly matched her
large eyes dusted her eyelids, and blush, subtly applied,
rouged her high cheekbones. She wore a pale violet breast-
hugging sweater and matching pants; flat-heeled shoes of
the same color caressed her feet like the softest of
gloves. She had the look of a woman who had dressed for a
man, and surely one of the two men in her life would be
waiting for her after tonight's meeting, a patient lover,
summoned by cell phone to the corner of East Eighty-Third
Street — either Tim, the jazz musician, or Ray, the
scholarly neurologist. She expertly juggled the hours of
her evenings, the evenings of her week; dinner with Ray, a
concert with Tim, alternate weekends spent with one or the
other of the two men, to the wonder and admiration of the
other women. They would not want Donna's life, they
assured one another, but they marveled at the skill with
which she managed it. Of course, they told themselves,
Donna was younger than they were, which might account for
her resilience. She and Rina were the babies of the group,
tiptoeing their way through the treacherous terrain of
their early thirties.