Birthday Girls Read online

“I like my life, Abigail,” Kris said firmly.

  “Do you?” Abigail asked. “Really?”

  Maddie watched as Kris lowered her eyes and traced the edges of the photo album that remained on her lap.

  “Come out to the estate this weekend,” Abigail implored. “Come out to Windsor-on-Hudson. We’ll make our birthday wishes and spend some time together. Let’s do it,” she pleaded, “for Betty Ann.”

  “For her wish,” Maddie said, “that we should be friends forever.”

  “For her wish,” Abigail repeated.

  Whether Abigail had an agenda or not, even Kris couldn’t argue with that.

  Abigail was so happy she didn’t even mind that Sondra had shown up uninvited for dinner. She sat across from her pregnant stepdaughter, with Edmund flanking the end, creating a buffer between the stepmother and her former charge who did not know that Abigail no longer cared about trying—and failing—at being a mother, for soon it would not matter. Soon, none of the chaos would matter.

  Abigail studied her husband and mused that this euphoria must be similar to the relief one felt after deciding to commit suicide. Relief, she told herself. Yes, relief was definitely the right word. For Kris and Maddie would come this weekend, and Kris and Maddie would help make everything right. They would help make her wish come true.

  “I’m leaving Craig,” Sondra said quietly.

  Edmund nearly spilled his soup.

  A hot flash crawled up Abigail’s spine.

  “I thought you were going to have a baby,” Edmund said.

  “I am, Daddy. Which is why I’ve decided to leave him.” Tears ran down her cheeks and spilled onto the tablecloth. “He needs to get a job. He needs to grow up if he’s going to be a father.”

  Abigail did not comment that she had told her so.

  Loosening his tie, Edmund unbuttoned the top button of his collar. He glanced at his wife, probably expecting her to erupt in a rage.

  But Abigail merely took another spoonful of consommé, knowing that this did not concern her, not in the least. Sondra was an adult; she would do as she pleased.

  He turned back to his daughter. “This is a serious decision, Sondra. Are you certain it’s best for the baby?”

  Soft tears continued to wet Sondra’s cheeks. Abigail tried not to stiffen, tried not to think about her own, nearly half-a-century of held-back tears.

  “I don’t know if it’s right for the baby,” Sondra said. “But if we’re going to have a family, we have to stop sponging off you.”

  It was the first time Sondra had even hinted at fiscal responsibility, or her lack thereof. Abigail wondered what Sondra’s underlying motivation really was, then hated herself for wondering.

  “Do you still love him?” Edmund asked, his voice predictably gentle, his heart most probably breaking for his only child.

  “Of course, Daddy. I just don’t know what else to do.” Edmund pushed away his soup bowl, then looked at his wife. “Abigail? Say something, Please.”

  The sorrow that veiled his face was so real and so deep that Abigail did not have the courage to add to it. “What does Craig say about it?” she asked.

  “He wants to go back to Paris. He has a chance for a one-man show there. But I don’t want to have my baby in Paris.”

  It was interesting that she now referred to the child as my baby. “Women have babies in Paris every day,” Abigail said, then caught a glimpse of Edmund’s hurt eyes and wished that she hadn’t. “Are you planning to move back here?” she quickly added.

  Sondra shook her head. “No. I’ll get an apartment. Probably in the city. That’s where all my friends are.”

  “And money?”

  “Craig has nothing. There’s still a little left in my trust fund, but I’m planning to get a job.”

  Edmund nodded enthusiastically as if that was the sensible, mature thing for his daughter to do. Abigail did not remind him that Sondra had no skills, had not finished college, had never worked a day in her overindulged life. Not to mention that in a matter of weeks she’d be visibly pregnant.

  “I was wondering about Hardy Enterprises,” Sondra added.

  Abigail sipped her soup. “You receive your profit sharing only once a year,” she replied. “And depending on business expenses, you can never be certain how much—or how little—it will be.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about my 10 percent. I was hoping you might give me a job.”

  The muscles tightened in Abigail’s back. A job? How could she give Sondra a job? A job with a company whose chief executive officer was about to change her life? How could she entangle her stepdaughter’s future with her own—when her own was so uncertain?

  “I’m willing to work,” Sondra continued. “I’ll do anything, Abigail. Anything for my baby.”

  So this was her reason for coming tonight. This had been her motivation.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Edmund said—which Edmund would, because neither he nor Sondra had a clue what was in store for Hardy Enterprises. And the last thing Abigail must do was give them cause for doubt.

  She tried to look pleasant, tried to look concerned. “I’ll speak to Larry about it tomorrow,” she said, as Louisa entered the dining room and removed the soup bowls, setting plates of tiny lamb chops with spring peas at their places. “Perhaps we can find something for you.”

  “Thank you,” Sondra said.

  “Thank you,” Edmund echoed, and Abigail began slicing her lamb chop before she said anything she’d regret.

  Kris sat in the middle of the king-size bed in her penthouse in Trump Tower and pushed aside a cardboard container of half-eaten Chinese food. On the other side of the bed, Devon sucked on a sparerib.

  “If you had one wish to make, what would it be?” she asked her agent.

  “One wish?”

  “Yeah. The one thing you’ve always wanted. The one thing you simply must have—or do—before you die.”

  He dropped the bone on his plate and rolled onto his back with the ease of a man completely at ease in his own skin, though it had a tendency toward being fleshy despite his daily workouts. “Hmm” he pondered, staring at the mosquito netting canopy over the four-poster bed. “I guess that depends on how much time I have.”

  Kris wrapped her hands into the hem of her oversized New York Jets T-shirt. “None of us knows how much time we have, Devon. The point is, we’re all getting older. It’s time to be sure all our dreams have come true. Come on. What would you want?”

  “Well … I already have a successful career, unless you’re planning to screw that up. And I have three kids, who I think are pretty bright except for Jarrod, who will probably end up in juvenile court no matter what I do. And Claire. I have Claire.”

  “The love of your life.”

  He hesitated a heartbeat, then smiled. “Yeah.”

  “You’re lucky, Devon.” Kris climbed off the bed and moved to the cherry highboy that was littered with frames in odd shapes and sizes holding pictures of friends, her nearest and dearest—a cacophony of old and young, short and tall, also in odd shapes and sizes. Beside them now lay “Arbor Brook Days”—Maddie’s photo album—as yet unopened.

  Kris moved her eyes toward the picture of Devon and Claire with their kids, taken last summer out at the Hamptons, at the roomy cottage that his commission on Kris’s last movie deal had enabled him to buy outright. Examining Claire’s image—soft, sweet, smiling—Kris wondered if she would have been in that picture, if the faces of Devon’s children would have resembled her, not Claire, if she had been the one to marry him fifteen years ago when he’d asked. But her course had already been set by then, with her first bestseller only months away and the thoughts of suffocation-by-marriage the last thing she wanted for her life. So she had said no, let’s not mix business with pleasure.

  Best of all, Kris had never regretted it. She’d said no and Claire had said yes, and Kris hadn’t slept with Devon since. And he had become, instead of her husband, her very own brother, and hi
s family had become like her own.

  She looked down at her sweatpants and laughed “You’re so lucky; you’re the only man who’s ever seen one dressed in my finest clothes.”

  He swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the bed. “What’s going on, Kris? Why all the heavy talk?”

  She shook her head and returned to the bed, thinking how nice it was to hang out with Devon, the only man she spent time with without wanting—or needing—to fuck. “Next year I’m going to be fifty.”

  “And next year I’ll be forty-five. So?”

  “So nothing. So Abigail Hardy thinks it’s time we grab the brass ring of our lives.”

  “And make your biggest wish come true.”

  Staring into the congealing mass of pork lo mein, Kris picked up a chopstick and poked at it. “Something like that.”

  Devon grinned. “Maybe you should wish for a kitchen table.”

  She laughed. “Is that an insult?”

  “No. It’s just that one would think by the time one turned fifty, certain, well …” He waved his hand around the bed, “… certain amenities for civilized entertaining might be considered.”

  “It’s not my fault that the dining room has the best view of Fifth Avenue.” When she’d first moved into the penthouse it was the view that had captured her heart, the view that she knew she had to have while sitting at her desk, pouring out her words. Since then the entire dining room, and part of the sprawling living room, had become one continuous stretch of office space for Kris. The walls were all lined now with overflowing bookshelves, the carpeting now deeply grooved by heavy filing cabinets crammed with research notes, scraps of ideas, and first deflate. It wasn’t, after all, as though she was here that often. It wasn’t as though she had a family to cater to, or a need to create an imaginary semblance of traditional life.

  Family, she thought. No, there was no family, except Devon and Claire and their kids.

  “So what does Abigail Hardy want?” Devon asked. “Surely she already has a kitchen table.”

  “Several, I’m sure.” She poked the lo mein again. “That’s a good question, though. It’s hard to believe Abigail is in want of anything.”

  “Nor should you be.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not, Devon. Honestly, I love my life. I can’t imagine wanting anything different.” She stood up again, went to the window, and gazed out over the treetops of Central Park. “I don’t know, though. It’s a curious thought. To think that the end may be coming near, and maybe I’ve missed out on something.”

  Suddenly Devon was beside her, putting on his jacket. “Don’t think too much about it, Kris. If we start looking for things that are wrong, we’ll usually find them.” He kissed her cheek. “I gotta go. Jarrod has a basketball game tonight, and I’ve got to play Dad.”

  “You’re the only black man I know who hates basketball.”

  “True. But I’m trying to save the soul of my son.”

  Kris laughed. “A noble concept.”

  “And tiring. But what the hell. He’s mine.” Devon waved and slipped from the bedroom. “Call me in the morning,” his voice carried from the hall, followed by the sound of the door shutting behind him, closing Kris once again in her solitary world with no kitchen table and no one she could call “mine.”

  Outside in the corridor, Devon pressed the elevator call button. He leaned his head against the peach-colored marble wall and wondered what was going on with Kris, and if he should be worried or not.

  “Fuck it,” Kris said, returning to the dresser and picking up the photo album. Maybe the only way to discover if there was anything she wanted was to remind herself of how far she had come.

  She shoved aside the handwoven bedspread, its sand-and-brown geometric design in the tribal tradition of Kenya, where she had bought it, and settled down with the book.

  It was, however, a few minutes before she could open it, a few long, lingering seconds before her courage gelled.

  Finally she took a deep breath and drew back the cover.

  And there it was.

  The dining room at Windsor-on-Hudson: the linen-fold paneling that covered the walls; the carved basswood frieze that outlined the ceiling; the handblown French crystal set inside the glass-front, neoclassical cabinet.

  It was the house of Hardy. The self-contained kingdom of the rich and famous, the palace of conspicuous consumption. Where only the people were layered with veneer.

  She let out her breath. Tears drizzled from her eyes as she looked at the photo of when they were ten: a playful, innocent image of Kris smearing Abigail’s face with frosting, of Abigail’s startled look, of Maddie in her Mousketeer T-shirt, of Betty Ann.

  She stared at the picture. Had that really been them? Had they ever been so young? They were children, little girls. She ran her hand over the glossy paper, aware of how white the others were, how dark she was. The picture captured the evidence: Kris Kensington was a black girl. She was not one of them. She was a black girl in the rich white man’s dining room.

  It was then, she remembered, that she’d begun carving out her fantasies, weaving her thoughts into stories—action-packed, emotionless stories—that offered an escape from the pain: the pain of being different, the pain of being alone.

  Yet she had not been alone in the world. There had been Abigail and Maddie and Betty Ann. Since then, there had been no one, no one but the characters of her imagination. No one but other people’s families. And other people’s children.

  Silently Kris closed the book. And slowly a new idea—a wild, insane idea—began to nibble at her soul.

  “By the time I am fifty, I am going to be dead,” Maddie said, ripping another sheet of teapots-and-trivets paper from the kitchen wall and tossing it into the heap of shreds on the floor. Sophie had decided she wanted her kitchen to look more like Abigail’s, to have an earthy, woodsy decor that “enhanced relaxation.”

  “Madeline, please don’t talk like that,” Sophie admonished quietly, aiming the nozzle on the wallpaper steamer to cleanse the remnants still stuck to the plaster. She had to be the only eighty-two-year-old woman who wielded a wallpaper steamer instead of a walker. But then again, Sophie was going to live forever, not like Maddie with the deep-thinking soul.

  Maddie tipped back the brim of her painter’s cap. “What’s the difference, Mother? We’re all going to die. Any day now. Maybe today. Right here. In your wanna-be-Abigail kitchen. Slap me against the wall and paste me on, I say. Life’s got to be better on the other side.”

  Sophie sighed. “If you spent less time feeling sorry for yourself, you’d be a happier person. You’re not dead yet, Madeline. God doesn’t want you yet.”

  Maddie ripped off another sheet.

  “You need to be more like your friend Abigail. Look what she’s done with her life.”

  “Ha! It’s her fault I’m feeling this way. Birthday wishes indeed. By the time I am fifty. What a lot of crap.”

  “What are you so afraid of? You’d think that just because Parker left you it was the end of the world. Do you think Abigail would have behaved this way if it had happened to her?”

  “Well, it didn’t happen to her. It happened to me. Besides, what makes you think she’s so all-fired happy? I think she’s having a midlife crisis. It’s like she’s trying to make amends to Betty Ann. She’s trying to let go of her guilt.”

  Her mother was silent for a moment. She aimed another blast of steam at the wall. “And what about you, Madeline? Have you ever forgiven yourself?”

  “Time heals all wounds, Mother.”

  “Only if you let it.”

  Maddie stared at the wall. It must have been smooth and clean once, back in the nineteenth century when the house had been built, long before sheets of wallpaper and coats of paint covered its purity. “Sometimes I think I’m still being punished,” she said quietly. “Losing Parker. Losing the magazine. It’s as if my whole life has been tainted because of the accident.”

  “Tainted? What
about Bobby? And Timmy? You have two healthy sons, Madeline. Never forget to count your blessings. Even me. You’ve still got your mother. Abigail lost hers when she was a little girl. Your friend Kris lost hers, now, too. Your father died when you were young, but you’ve had me all these years. And you could have been killed in that car wreck, too. Maybe what you need by the time you’re fifty is a little more gratitude.” That said, Sophie plunked down the steamer and took off her work gloves.

  Guilt flowed over Maddie like volcanic lava over a town. A whole town. Manhattan, perhaps. “I am grateful for you, Mother. And I am grateful for my boys. I only wish that Parker …”

  “Parker?”

  “Well, it would have been easier if he’d never left.”

  Sophie laughed. “Easier? It would have been easier for you to work your tail off and have him keep coming home wearing the scent of some other woman? That is not easier, Madeline. That is self-destructive.”

  “If I had been different …” She wanted to continue, but she could not. The words tightened around her throat like a hangman’s noose, squeezing against the base of her skull, forcing teardrops to flow from her eyes.

  And then Sophie stepped forward and enveloped Maddie in her arms. Maddie cried and cried into the nylon sweatsuited shoulder and wondered how her mother would react if she knew what Maddie had decided her birthday wish was going to be.

  The champagne was one of their best bottles. Louis Roederer Cristal, 1985. But nothing was too good for Kris and Maddie, the friends who were going to help make her wish come true.

  “More champagne?” Abigail asked and Kris nodded. Maddie declined. They were sitting in the library at Windsor-on-Hudson. Best of all, they were alone. Abigail had paid for Louisa to take a holiday at her sister’s in Phoenix; Edmund had left for the auction in Rome; and Sondra was scouting apartments in the city where, Abigail supposed, she would stay until—and if—she needed more money. The other servants had retired to their apartments above the stables.

  They were alone, so no one would hear.

  Abigail lit another cigarette and tried to stop her hand from trembling. She was nervous and jittery and … excited. This is it, she told herself over and over. I am about to get what I want. Her pulse quickened with every drag she inhaled.