Chapter 3 May 2021
3
MAY 2021
V esper Ellis climbed up on the step stool to reach the deep blue glasses in the cupboard. They had been nested inside one another on the top shelf since the last time she’d used them, which had been over a year ago, and she needed to wash them all again before she could add them to the tray.
She inspected them as she took them down, two in each hand, set them on the counter, and reached up for the next four. The color was gorgeous, a perfect sapphire, the eyes of the angels in Renaissance paintings she’d seen, a pigment which she’d read had been made by grinding up lapis lazuli.
It almost made Vesper feel guilty for hating the glasses. It did not seem to her to be wise to serve anybody anything outdoors in a vessel that wasn’t fully transparent. As a child she had been given lemonade in a deep green glass, and when she took a sip, the hornet that had flown into it for some of the sugary drink had stung her lip to make its escape.
One of the adults present that day made the predictable remark that pretty girls’ lips were sometimes described as “bee-stung.” She wished him dead for over an hour, and then determined to forget he existed, which was as close to obliteration as she could achieve.
Vesper arranged the blue glasses on paper doilies on a tray of their own, but kept them all upside down. It would have been unthinkable not to have enough glasses for the garden party, and all the clear tumblers and stemware and highball glasses had been placed on the dining tables and the bar according to their natural purposes.
Vesper felt slightly dizzy for a second as she stepped off the stool. This was George’s fault, and she mentally placed it on his side of the balance sheet. He always seemed to have his most desperate desire for her at inconvenient times—often so late at night that she didn’t get back to sleep before the alarm went off. This time it had been at dawn, when he was fully aware that she was preparing to entertain three dozen people at midday and had to get started.
All her emotions about the day were strong—first rage at his selfishness and uncaring attitude about the effort she’d been expending for days and the importance, not just to his business standing, but to her reputation too, damn it, for getting social events right. And then there was the warm feeling of being adored and desired by her husband, a sensation that started out faint and not at all fair compensation for her annoyance, but grew as the closeness and touch continued, until it made the negative feelings start to seem foolish and distant and then overwhelmed them completely. The feelings were vivid, but then once again they ended with her having to rouse herself from a state of profound relaxation to start performing tiresome chores in rapid succession to make this day happen.
She had once very tentatively and obliquely asked her mother about George’s timing, or really, alluded to it, just putting it in front of her in case she knew something that Vesper should know. Her mother, whose name was Iolanthe, a crime of a name perpetrated on her at birth that she had also visited upon her daughter when she called her Vesper, said, “He’s going to feel that way about somebody. If he’s worth keeping, you should do your best to make sure it’s you. You’re lucky you’re so beautiful that what happens is up to you. You’re both in your twenties, young enough to find ways to make both of you happy.”
This morning Vesper had just given George a final kiss before she climbed into the bath, and now she was fresh, subtly perfumed, powdered, and made-up. She was all efficiency and motion.
There was pride too. Vesper could have spent a lot of money putting on these events for their friends and George’s colleagues. There were caterers in the Valley who were very good, even excellent. They brought their own dishes and linens and tables and chairs and five or ten staff to deploy them and to park the guests’ cars. She still believed there were advantages to doing things the way her mother and grandmother had done them. People didn’t pay magicians because they wanted rabbits removed from hats. They wanted the pleasure of seeing rabbits appear from the hats so smoothly that it seemed natural and inevitable. She stepped onto the back porch and looked at her preparations. Yes, she had done it again—rabbits.
Everything was right, tastefully chosen and arranged. The tables were set, the food was cooking, the bar was overstocked with liquor bottles with famous labels, wine of four kinds to pair with the entrees beside the correct glasses ready to be filled.
In a moment the first guests were arriving. Vesper greeted five or six couples with hugs and then swooped away to the kitchen to pick up a platter the timer at the back of her brain told her was ready and return with it. When she was back, there were enough other women who were looking for a chance to help, and a couple men too. The next trays and platters were brought out behind her and she simply had to say, “That goes over there,” and point.
Couples were coming into the backyard steadily now—people didn’t want to be fashionably late at noon. George appeared at the bar making sure everybody was coaxed into having a glass of liquid to hold, and when the stream of people produced its own pourers to relieve him, he went around greeting guests he had missed and chatting with each of them. Vesper had assumed he would become the social George, and here he was, as expected, another part of the magic she was performing. When he wanted to, he could be magnificent—the warm friend who looked you right in the eye and asked about you as though he had been looking forward to seeing you all week. He remembered your kids’ names and wanted to introduce you to this other friend who had the same interest you did.
She walked toward the kitchen because she had to keep things moving. She had not forgotten any of the timers she had set—the oven, the sense of how long things should simmer on the stove, how long other things should cool in the refrigerator. On the way toward the house, she glanced at the levels of people’s drinks and how many of the hors d’oeuvres were gone and adjusted her sense of when the next trays should materialize.
Because the number of guests at this afternoon party was near the limit of the house’s capacity, Vesper allowed four of her friends to deputize themselves to help in the kitchen and in the serving. This time when Vesper went out the kitchen door, she was bringing main dishes, and she was one of five carrying large trays. As soon as the trays were placed at the ends of the long tables, the five were on their way back into the kitchen for the next load, an array of side dishes.
This was the part where coordination and timing were at their most crucial, and Vesper kept the machine moving steadily. At one point, as she was coming out to the kitchen steps with two large bowls, George held the door for her and said quietly in her ear, “This is great, Ves. Everybody loves everything,” then kissed her cheek as she passed.
Her hands were full, so she couldn’t brush off the damp spot from his kiss, and she felt it for a few seconds before the sensation faded and was replaced by impressions about how her arrangements were working and decisions about what she would do next.
After the two-and-a-half-hour lunch, alcoholic drinks reappeared. The afternoon was hot and the drinking seemed to gain popularity more strongly than Vesper considered ideal, so she and her friend Tiffany Shaw deployed the tray of fresh iced tea and lemonade pitchers and glasses and called them to the attention of the guests at each table. Soft drinks had been in bowls of ice in visible places all afternoon, but an hour later she gauged that she needed to do some more adjusting. Alcohol had the advantage that it impaired judgement enough to make more alcohol seem like a good idea.
Vesper was aware that bringing out coffee was like playing the Last Dance music, but she judged that the coffee hour had been reached. She filled and plugged in the big coffee maker and Tiffany came out carrying the tray of cups and saucers. Others delivered plates of cookies and light dessert items. Soon the competition between liquid refreshments turned, the sun had sunk west of the rooftop, and the air was cooling.
Almost an hour later, people began bringing plates, glasses, and silverware into the kitchen, and many of them took this opportunity to thank their hostess and then follow the driveway out toward their cars parked along the street.
Vesper had begun a phased clean-up hours earlier, as soon as the entrees had been served, and the trays that had carried out food and drinks had returned with plates and glasses. By now most of the items from the early parts of the party had been through the dishwasher and put back in the cupboards.
During this part of the day, while the sun sank further, Vesper had to begin circulating again, mainly to oversee the reloading of the last trays that were headed for the kitchen, but also to get thanked, hugged, and bid goodbye. She made sure she was smiley and relaxed about all of this as though it had happened by itself, while frequently giving credit to her deputies by name. As the afternoon light began to fade and evening approached, she wondered where George was. She supposed that he was walking guests to their cars and saying goodbye. George was like that, a host who paid personal attention to each guest. She still had so many things to occupy her that she had to set thoughts about him aside for the moment. They’d tell each other everything later.
When the work was almost all done, Vesper was finally alone. She sat on one of the tall stools along the breakfast counter and looked at the spotless kitchen. With a lot of help from her friends, she had managed it again. She looked up at the clock. It was eight fifty. The lunch party had lasted over six hours, and the final cleanup almost three.
What the hell had happened to George? Every time she had seen him, he had been circulating, laughing at somebody’s witticisms, introducing people to each other, serving them something, or handing them a glass. They had exchanged a few waves, a brief touch or a word a few times. But now he had been gone for almost three hours. She started thinking of reasons why she shouldn’t be irritated at him. She had a few to choose from, so she picked the one with an element of self-interest.
She didn’t want to have done this huge undertaking and then end the long day with an argument. She deserved praise and gratitude, and she would get them if she didn’t start a fight. George was sometimes a dope, but he was appreciative. There was also a bit of uncertainty in her mind about where he was and why. Maybe he was driving someone home who’d drunk too much to drive safely. He was that kind of guy too, and he would be thoughtful enough to have done it quietly to avoid embarrassing the inebriated couple.
While she was waiting and her curiosity was in danger of becoming worry, the last load in the dishwasher finished, so she opened it and put everything away. He still wasn’t home. She switched on the outdoor lights and went out into the backyard to see if she could find anything that hadn’t been picked up, wiped off, stacked, or straightened. This kept her physically occupied for a few minutes, but she kept her cell phone in her hand in case George called her to pick him up.
She was back inside and called his cell number, but when the call went to voicemail, she felt her heart pumping in her chest and wondered if this was the moment when everything went bad. In spite of the fact that she’d been on her feet for most of the day, she couldn’t sit still. She began to pace back and forth in the living room. She called her friend Tiffany Shaw to ask if she’d happened to see George near the end of the party. Was he talking with anybody in particular? Heading in one direction or another? She called two more friends, but none of them described seeing him doing anything Vesper hadn’t seen or assumed. Then she saw headlights appear at the end of the driveway, and her pulse began to slow. He must have driven the couple home and then waited for a taxi or Uber instead of calling her to pick him up, because he’d known she’d be worn out.
She stared out the front window without trying to pretend she wasn’t. It wouldn’t hurt for George to know how much she loved him and worried about him. She saw a man in silhouette getting out of the car in the space behind the glare of the headlights, but it didn’t look like George from here, and the Uber didn’t back out and leave. The driver got out too, and the car’s lights went off. The driver was short. She was a woman.
Could that man be George? No. They were probably a pair of guests who had left something. People were always leaving their phones somewhere, and that was one of the few things nobody could bear to be without until the next day. The two converged at the front of their dark car and headed up the front steps. Vesper turned on the porch light and saw the night-colored uniforms and the gleam of the badges, and she knew that they’d come to tell her this part of her life was over.