‘Let me order the food,’ he said gently, as she rolled over and stared at the patterned wallpaper.
‘What is it Grace?’ he rubbed her back. ‘Is it something I did?’
She shook her head and bit the inside of her lip to try and stop the tears.
‘It’s not you Frank,’ she rolled onto her back to look at him. ‘You’re just perfect.’
He smiled and kissed her forehead.
‘You can tell me things, if you like. No pressure, but when you’re ready, I will listen. I’m your friend also.’
Grace nodded, but she knew she wouldn’t tell him. She hadn’t told anyone and she never would.
17
Spencer, Atlanta – 1985
Spencer sat on his porch, where he sat most nights, warm or cold. It was where he thought about his day, his months, the year since Birdie had left.
He still didn’t know what had happened. She hadn’t answered his calls and he couldn’t ask her family. They didn’t even know she had been in Atlanta. One day she was there and then she was gone again. Sometimes he thought he dreamed their time together. Making love with Birdie was as special as he had hoped it would be, and more so. Her experience with Leon had taken away her shyness and her fierce passion for him was overwhelming. Their few days and nights together had shown Spencer a new Birdie – a mature, less impetuous one. That was until she left him again.
Birdie had come and gone from his life too many times now for Spencer to forgive her. He loved her, that he was certain. But he would not pine for her, he decided. Not after the news that had come to his desk that afternoon. Birdie was a mother now. Three girls, no less. She must have conceived them just after she left Spencer, he had thought, when he counted back the months. For a brief moment he hoped that she was wrong and that they were his, and they would come out with the Blanchard eyes, blue and fringed with long lashes. But no mention of the babies’ eyes was made when he heard from Susie, Birdie’s excited mother.
Spencer had made the appropriate noises of wonder at three babies and offered Susie his congratulations but didn’t mention Birdie. He couldn’t, it hurt more than he could bear.
And now he sat on the porch of his falling down house, alone again.
The dream of him and Birdie being together, rebuilding his house and building a life was over, and he knew it.
And then he cried, openly, not caring any more. Oh Birdie, you have broken my heart, he thought as he swung back and forth in the night.
18
‘Hi, Jeff,’ said Violetta as she passed him in the hallway at the hospital.
Jeff blushed. ‘Hi, Violetta.’ He felt like a schoolboy around her.
‘How’s things?’ she asked as she filled up the water jug for her mother’s room.
‘OK. I saw you on television,’ he said.
‘It’s a silly show,’ said Violetta, suddenly ashamed.
It was a silly show. The women were made out to be vapid and pointless, which their lives were. But Violetta knew that Sabrina and CeCe did lots of work for charities, not that they showed any of that.
Violetta had much pleasure in sticking to her schedule of going out at least four nights a week as the contract stipulated, but instead of heading to parties she went to a soup kitchen to volunteer, one that her mother had supported for years, or to free poetry readings at the local student café. She went to bookstores and browsed for hours and even went to lectures at the Frick and to the Transit Museum to listen to a discussion on archaeology in the ferry terminals of New York. Lesley thought it was hilarious but Adam didn’t see the funny side when he rang to abuse Violetta.
‘I had my contract checked, I am not breaking it in any way,’ she had told him.
‘Fuck you,’ he said over the phone.
‘I already have, remember,’ she said, as she hung up on him.
New York was filled with so many things to do Violetta felt like her world was opening up. The city was not the one that she had known before as part of the privileged elite and it was fun. The camera was annoying but mostly they would film her entering the event and sometimes leaving. Lesley started to email Violetta some of New York’s more alternative events that she thought she might like to venture out to.
Between working out how much she could get away with on the TV show and working at Pajaro, she was almost having fun, until she went back to the hospital to sit with her mother.
‘Your mom’s doing better,’ Jeff was saying.
