Chapter 23 Eleven Days till Christmas
23.
Eleven days till Christmas
Liz spent Saturday morning placing electric tea lights on every windowsill and shelf of Belvedere Inn, confirming and printing the final RSVP list for the hired help doing check-ins, then solving the last-minute drama of not having enough holiday-themed plastic cups by doing a quick run into town. When she returned, Babs was directing a local electrician to ensure her seminude portrait was appropriately lit, waving her cane at the red-faced man atop the ladder. “More light on the left nipple!”
“Are you sure you don’t want to move it to your bedroom?” Liz asked. “The president of your network just RSVP’d.”
“Richard?” Babs appeared unfazed. “He’s an old friend. And Dickie’s seen much more than a picture,” she added with a wink.
Liz regretted bringing it up. It was already 3:00 p.m. Guests would be arriving in a few short hours. “Okay, I really need to shower and figure out what I’m wearing.”
“Do you mind checking the caterers signed the NDA first?” Babs begged. “And handling the wine selection?”
Liz swallowed an irritated huff. “Can’t Birdie do the wine? Raf handle the caterers?”
“You’ll get it done better in half the time!” Babs exclaimed. “Those two never sent off my Christmas cards, y’know.”
Liz recalled Birdie promising she’d handle the cards the morning of the art crawl. Of course her sister hadn’t.
“No, no: more light. ” Babs refocused on the electrician, gesturing again with her cane. “I want to see those nips from outer space —”
Her mother stumbled, pitching forward.
Liz shot her arms out, catching Babs before she fell. They staggered back against the wall, knocking a mirror askew.
“Careful!” Liz steadied them both in alarm.
Babs pushed herself away from Liz, flustered. “I’m fine.” She glanced up at the startled electrician, who quickly went back to adjusting the lights.
How had her mother lost her balance? Shouldn’t this so-called sprain have healed by now? It wasn’t her imagination—her mother’s limp was getting worse.
“Mom?” Liz addressed her mother directly. “What’s really going on?”
Babs rubbed between her eyes and puffed a sigh. The confession was barely audible. “I was thrown off a horse.”
“A horse ?” Liz didn’t mean to shout. The electrician looked down from the top of the ladder. The two women moved away from him, into a corner.
“Four legs, a tail, likes to whinny?” Babs clucked in annoyance. “I was visiting a friend with a stable. Some idiot hunter fired a gun and the thing bolted. Like being shot out of a cannon.” Babs demonstrated with her hand: arcing through the air, then, splat.
“Oh, Jesus,” Liz breathed in horror. “You could’ve died.”
“My doctor was shocked it was just the ankle,” Babs said. “But I’d done that silly Western, A Cowgirl in Heels, and I guess all the stunt training kicked back in. I fell the ‘right’ way.” Babs met Liz’s gaze. “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. And you don’t need to worry. I’m fine.”
Their mother had always been proud. Even vain. When her career was in a slump, she’d claim she was choosing to spend time with her kids. Liz recalled public events where lesser actresses wearing too similar an outfit were discreetly removed. Babs didn’t simply manage her public image. She strong-armed it. Liz recalled the explanation her mother gave on the first day she arrived back at the Inn: Rolled my ankle. Promo shoot for season five had me in six-inch stilettos and down I went. Offered breezily, a perfect mix of contrition and carelessness. Such a consummate actress. Such a good liar. Had this horse thing really happened? What was the truth?
“No more lies,” Liz told her. “Tonight, tell everyone what really happened.”
“Fine,” her mother huffed. “Black Beauty one, Babs zero.”
“And next time, tell me. ” Liz shifted even closer, whispering. “Even if you don’t tell Raf and Birds: Tell me the truth, okay?”
Babs made a show of sighing, then nodded, just once.
—
Liz expected her siblings to be as shocked as she was that their mother had lied to them. But Rafi had just discovered the suit he kept in his bedroom closet for this very occasion needed an express dry clean, and Birdie was focused on what to wear. Ordinarily her sister would show up in something silly (a reindeer costume, complete with four-foot antlers) or whatever was on her bedroom floor. This year was different.
“I want to make an effort,” Birdie kept saying, rejecting everything Liz suggested. “I want to look nice. ”
“For Jecka,” Liz guessed.
Birdie flopped onto her bed with a groan. “She’s going to show up looking like the cover girl for Fancy Pants Quarterly, and I’m going to look like something catering keeps trying to push outside with a broom.”
Liz hid a smile. “I’ve never seen you so worked up over a date.”
“It’s not a date.” Birdie spoke into the pillow. “It’s a hang. How’s it going with Grace Face?”
Liz’s amusement wavered. “Do you mean, like, the pitch?”
“No, I mean, like, your clits. Are you boning?”
Propriety and delight tackled each other in Liz’s chest. “We are not ‘boning.’?”
“You should bone. She’s not seeing anyone, right?”
“No!” Liz regretted sounding so alarmed. “As far as I know. She’s always said she’s too busy to date.”
Birdie scoffed. “No one’s ever actually too busy to date.”
Liz wasn’t getting into it. “What about this?” She held up a simple but classy little black dress.
“A dress?” Birdie gagged. “Have we met? I want to look nice, not like a bank teller at a funeral.”
“This is what I was going to wear, so thanks for that.”
They both giggled. Birdie held the dress up against herself, grimacing in the mirror above the Bogart bedroom’s wet bar. “God, you’re such a Kristy.”
“Well, we can’t all be Claudias.”
“With a Stacey rising.” Birdie tossed the dress onto the bed.
Liz picked it up, folding it neatly over one arm, like a total Kristy. “Why don’t you ask Ash? Being stylish is his actual profession.”
“Yes!” Birdie was off the bed, scrambling for the door. “Brilliant idea, thanks, Liz Fizz.”
“Wait—should I wear the bank teller dress?” Liz called after her, but her sister was gone.
Liz decided against it. She needed something special this year.
She knew as soon as she found it, deep in her mother’s studio-sized closet. An emerald-green floor-length gown with a slit up the left side. A V-neck halter, backless. Babs couldn’t remember where she’d gotten it, or why she’d never gotten it tailored (Liz was a good six inches taller than her mother). The neckline was low, and the slit was high—more va-va-voom than Liz would typically wear, but hey, it was the holiday party. The gown fit like a glove, which reminded Liz that in the dresser drawer of her Audrey-themed room lay a pair of gloves. Black silk and elbow-length, à la Breakfast at Tiffany’s. After twisting her hair into a decent chignon, and paired with one of her mom’s gold necklaces…
“Wowie zowie.” Birdie whistled as Liz came down the stairs to the foyer, hours later. “Don we now our gay apparel: You look scorching, Liz Fizz! Definitely a contender for Fancy Pants Quarterly. I’m officially renewing my subscription.”
Liz caught sight of herself in a foyer mirror. An elegant, grown-ass woman stared back, hair styled, brows darkened, lips a bold mulberry red. So different from the women she’d been before: The shy, bookish, well-behaved teenager. The naive twentysomething, certain she’d live happily ever after with her college boyfriend. Now Liz was struck by the thought that if things hadn’t happened the way they did, she wouldn’t be here now. Stronger and wiser for what she went through.
Liz focused on her sister, moving her aside to let a waiter carrying a case of whiskey pass. “You look equally scorching, Birds.”
Birdie turned in a circle with a satisfied smirk. Tapered suit pants, a white button-down undone to reveal a peek of black lace, and an oversized ruby-red suit jacket, pushed up at the sleeves. Her wavy blond hair wasn’t shoved under a baseball cap, it was pulled back in an artfully messy high pony, freshly blown out. The whole effect was very queer-festive chic. “Took me, like, two hours, ” Birdie said. “The pants are Mom’s, shirt’s Raf’s, and the jacket’s Ash’s. Dope, right?”
“Hey, look at us.” Rafi joined his sisters, three glasses of Champagne threaded in his fingers. He was in his classic tux, bow tie crisp. The facial hair he’d been growing out all month aged up his boyish looks. “Black Hearts Club kids scrub up okay.”
The siblings always circled up for a toast before the party. When they were kids, it was juice in plastic cups; as teens, watered-down wine; in their twenties, some awful mixed drink. Now it was Mo?t in a crystal flute. “Cheers Belvederes,” Liz said, raising her glass.
“To us,” Rafi said.
“May we all enjoy the reason for the season,” Birdie intoned, clinking glasses. “Yuletide hooch.”
Liz and Rafi took a sip. Birdie downed the flute.
“Slow down, Squeak,” Liz said with a frown. “You don’t want to be full Lohan by the time Jecka arrives.”
“Let’s make a deal.” Birdie squeezed Liz’s shoulder. “You don’t police my drinking, and I won’t police your unresolved sexual tension with Grace Face.”
Liz’s cheeks heated. She turned to Rafi. “Where’s Ash?”
He nodded toward his room. “Getting ready.”
“ Ooh la la. ” Birdie poked him in the side.
“Just be careful with the whole Ash thing,” Liz warned. Her brother seemed to have enough self-awareness to understand his rose-colored romantic brain regularly misread things. But did he have enough self-control to keep these thoughts to himself? “Especially tonight,” she added.
“Or not.” Birdie grinned impishly, skipping toward the kitchen. “It’s not the holidays without a holiday fling!”
Liz cringed, but Rafi was already off, and the dogs were prancing underfoot dressed in puppy tuxedoes, and basically, it was all starting.
Liz spun for the kitchen. Movement on the stairs caught her eye.
Violet.
Descending the staircase. In that dress. Pale cream and pretty, floaty as a daydream. Swarovski crystals cascaded down the bodice, enhancing the garment’s delicate, ethereal beauty. Vi had worn it on the show for the episode when bothsisters, Jessica and Elizabeth, accept their respective prom-posals—from Todd—and go to the dance in the same dress, accidentally. That’s my favorite thing you’ve ever worn, Liz had said, when Vi first tried it on. You look like a princess.
Now, with her buttery blond hair ironed straight and a dusting of gold on her eyelids and shoulders, Violet once again resembled royalty as she crossed the marble foyer, a shy smile on her barely glossed lips.
“Vi,” Liz breathed, trying not to gawk and certain she was failing. “You look…” Exquisite, celestial, transcendent: none of these words came close. “Like a snow angel.”
Violet chuckled, leaning close to press her lips to Liz’s cheek.
Liz had only a second to register the hot, light sensation. To smell Violet’s rose-and-black-pepper shampoo. The combination of Violet’s sweet, spicy scent and the feeling of her lips on Liz’s cheek made Liz feel as luminescent as the little white lights wrapping the staircase.
Vi pulled back to smudge out the gloss with her thumb, smiling. “I remember you liked this dress. I pulled some strings.”
Liz was glad there was a no-phones rule at the party. A thousand pictures and opinions of this dress and the person wearing it wouldn’t show up online. Liz could keep this private for her.
Violet took a step back to admire Liz’s gown.
Liz waited, breathless for Violet’s summation.
Violet met Liz’s gaze. “Very fetching.”
Liz laughed louder than she expected.
Violet smiled, her expression turning heartfelt. “You look beautiful, Lizzie.”
Liz tried not to melt.
Outside, a car honked, pulling up. As always, Louis Armstrong’s “Cool Yule,” a jazzy holiday classic, was the first song to light up the house. From Coney Island to the Sunset Strip; Somebody’s gonna make a happy trip; Tonight, while the moon is bright.
A waiter whisked by with a tray of flutes. He was extremely handsome and, distressingly, shirtless.
“My mother hires male underwear models to serve the drinks,” Liz said, shaking her head. “She thinks it’s funny.”
They each plucked a glass and took a sip, holding each other’s gaze.
“If you get overwhelmed,” Liz said, “come find me.”
Vi tilted her head to the side, still smiling that charming, self-conscious smile. The gold flecks in her eyes shone like tinsel. “I’d rather just stick with you. So we don’t lose each other.”
“You won’t lose me, Vivi.” The old nickname unearthed itself. Violet hadn’t been Vivi since Europe.
Violet rested one hand on Liz’s forearm. “Promise?”
All the pre-party noise and hubbub faded away. Liz wasn’t aware of the barking dogs or the semi-naked waitstaff. It was just her and Violet. She’d only have to drop her mouth a few inches to feel it connect with Violet’s lips. Liz’s voice was barely a whisper. “Always.”
The doorbell rang. The spell was broken. They shifted apart.
Birdie flung the front door open. It was Holland Taylor and Sarah Paulson—as always, the first to arrive. Birdie screamed in delight at the sight of the family friends. “ Did you bring the dip?! ”
“ We brought the dip! ” they cried, presenting a bowl to a general cheer.
Liz caught Violet’s eye and they laughed. The Belvedere holiday party had officially begun.