Wish I'd Been At That Party

The New Year isn’t looking so shinny this morning. Sheets of rain pour down from a sky the color of the metal file cabinet that I have been meaning to replace because it’s depressing. I have no hangover, so obviously I didn’t have that much fun last night. Everyone at the party was part of the reasonable, respectable, upper middle class, and they didn’t get there by acting stupid at New Year’s Eve bashes. I got a good recommendation for a contractor to work on the drainage in my back yard, a few glasses of an indifferent red wine, and a glass of champagne at midnight, all to the tune of jazz elevator music playing tastefully in the background. Michelle and her man Marc were not in a real party mood, and justifiably so with the big “C” hanging over their relationship. We talked about her apartment in San Francisco she must sublet now, and her classes she must put on hold, in fact, the life she must put on hold until she gets a clean bill of health. She says the cancer is confined to her lymph nodes and spleen, stage III in oncology talk, but the possibility of a few cells having already migrated to other organs is not mentioned. We all know, but it is not a time for total honesty. Not to worry, she won’t be getting that from anyone in the house.

There are two parties in this ultra modern home that is so perfectly designed for entertaining. Michelle, Marc, Jason, Michelle’s sister Jennifer, and three of Jennifer’s beautiful, vacuous friends have gathered around the fireplace in the living room. The college girls talk about shoes, music, and boys with affected valley girl accents. I listen for a while to make sure they aren’t being ironic, but no, they’re really that bad. The other party is in the family room slash kitchen, a vast space artfully divided into comfortable zones, fish tank built into the wall, a sea of glass windows that frame a fabulous view of the lake in the daylight hours. I chat for a while with a transplanted Brit and his American wife, he a big ruddy blond, and she dark haired and petite. We talk books, people, and places, searching for some commonality, and then we move on as is prescribed for these occasions. I pause at the food table and cast an amused glance across the Virginia/Yankee/Baptist/Jewish mix of food; ham biscuits beside the lox with cream cheese, tapanade positioned near the crock pot of cocktail franks in that grape jelly/ketchup sauce. I pick up a strip of yellow pepper and move back to the living room.

Michelle is looking over her Frank Lloyd Wright coloring book Marc gave her for Christmas. We joke about the time she will spend coloring in the tiny detail while they pump more poison into her body next week. The conversation waxes and wanes. I move about the house wasting my time making small talk. I am in the living room when I hear the pop of a champagne cork and the TV being turned on. Everyone comments that Dick Clark hasn’t aged, and someone counts it down, missing the beat and getting to one before the TV announces 2007 has arrived. We all hug like we know each other well, and toast for luck. The content of my glass is some sickeningly sweet substance I do not associate with France, the only place Champagne is made according to my girl. I sit the glass down in the kitchen after we sing Happy Birthday to Michelle. My cell phone rings from my bra where I had it tucked. I move to the front porch so my husband and I can wish each other a Happy New Year. As soon as I replace the phone it rings again, this time my eldest on his way to a party in Seattle. The earth won’t turn the west coast to midnight for three more hours, but in London my girl is hopefully long asleep. Back inside, the party is over after the obligatory milling about for a half hour or so. I give Michelle a gentle hug goodbye, and Jason and I are out the door and into the car, talking over the pounding sound of the late great Jeff Buckley, a welcome relief from the vapid fare of the evening. He says it hasn’t been a good year for him, his sister, the family in general or his friends. He sees the issue with his Dad as negative and difficult, and I do not contradict him. I tell him we have nowhere to go but up, a statement on which we can agree. He asks me if I could pass if we get pulled at a checkpoint and I assure him I’m sober. We’ve both had enough small talk to last a long time, so the rest of the drive is in relative stillness except for the great rock rhythms coming from his IPOD.

My husband is asleep when I get home, so I do a knee jerk check of email, then spend a few hours working on my book. I lose track of time, even though it’s right there for me on the computer screen. The house is quiet but my concentration begins to fade when I find that same demon from the old year speaking inside my head again. A friend of mine said that it’s a drug worse than cocaine, and I know he’s not lying. I start wishing there were some reason to go wake the man I married. Only a few hours into the new year and I’m already feeling sorry for myself. I head for the guest room, away from the sounds of my husband’s snores, and sleep fitfully until 7 in the morning. Two thousand and seven is now 12 hours old and I’ve finished a pot of coffee, done some naval gazing, and accomplished nothing toward my goals for the year. I think I’ll blame the rain