Marly. It was at a party that my parents and I went to that I met her for the second time. There was a mix of all generations, though it was primarily for the older people. I went because I knew some of their children would be there, now themselves settled with children, and the word was it might be a larger than usual reunion of what once had been my “crowd”: university days were long behind but there were a few people I would find pleasure in meeting again. So we drank wine and ate unsavoury cheese and salmon constructions for want of anything better, devoured the quiche and baked potatoes when they first arrived, and stationed ourselves near the tables holding the wine bottles in case there was any danger of other people wanting too much of them. And so it went, and eventually the friends whose company I had been enjoying were gone, and I wished I could go too, but my mother, no drinker, was our transport.
From that point I felt like the bored children who were still left. Most of the yowlers had fallen asleep or been carted home, and the rest were obedient but bored. They had not the option of muting their senses on bad chardonnay and worse riesling.
There was an older girl slumped all alone in the centre of a big black leather sofa, and when I first saw her I wondered where her parents had got to, having let her get into that state, for by her hand on an occasional table was half a glass of wine. Then I revised my opinion; although slight, she was clearly sixteen or more: perhaps more, perhaps adult, as I began watching her slow questing eye-motions through the room and the garden. She bore herself like an adult, and was dressed in a more revealing way than a child would be permitted; and the impression of being slumped was just her size amid the vastness of the sofa.
I was about to look away and hunt out more food to buffer my stomach for the alcohol I proposed abusing it with, when she turned her gaze directly at me, and smiled broadly, though tentatively. I smiled a little back, puzzled at her, and looked politely away, so I didn’t see her reaction. I went in search of food and found little, and of wine none: it was definitely time to go home, and after I’d scoured the kitchen finding nothing I resolved to buttonhole my mother and demand that she stop her gab. Everyone left was in the capacious garden, and my route took me back through the lounge.
The girl or young woman was still there, and on seeing me produced an almost full bottle from the floor beside her and hefted it toward me in solidarity, with that winsome smile again. Well, she was quite pretty, way too young for me, but they can be fun to talk to at least, and wine at such a time was a great lubricator. I hadn’t had so much that I was about to embarrass myself. So I said hi and congratulated her on the forethought of stocking up, and she said something that gave me pause: “I saw you’d been drinking it too”.
“Well. Of the choice. The other one was ghastly.”
“You’d have to get drunk on this just to bear the other one”, she said. I laughed because I’d thought the same to myself. I wanted to pour myself a glass and move on, but she shifted so that she was no longer in the middle of the sofa. It was a token only, as I could easily have sat by her before had I wanted, but again it was an offer. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to get into a conversation this late, or collar transport immediately.
“Last one. I’m about to look for my parents and tell them it’s time to go”, I said, sitting down as if just to make it easier to pour, and as a compromise between intentions.
“Mm, mine are still there. I think they’re with yours”, she said with a gesture through the glass doors, to where indeed I could see my mother not too far away in nodding conversation with people I thought I might have seen before. But this girl seemed to be saying of course she knew who my parents were. Then she said, quite warmly, “How are you?”.
“I’m fine”, I said with a smile and a furrowed brow, now trying to work out how drunk she was. Not very, by most indicators, but she was looking full at me with an intensity that wasn’t right.
“You don’t remember me”, she stated.
I searched my mind for where I might have seen her: working at a pub, or in a shop? Was she someone new in the office, on a different floor? Baby sister of a friend of a friend? I couldn’t remember meeting anyone her age through my parents’ connexions for years. No hurt or disappointment in her voice, none that I could detect, but still. Of course I made the ritual shows that it was on the tip of my tongue, as one does, fooling no-one, but had to retreat into looking apologetic.
She looked at me with that same intensity before speaking, so I had the chance to take her in properly too. Thin, straight dark hair touching her shoulders; a small mouth, a delicate nose, grey eyes; a dusting of freckles over her breasts, and pale arms. She could have had a rag-doll childishness to her except that something in her demeanour was active and observing.
“No reason you should. It was years ago.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not very good with--”
“No, really. I was twelve.”
Now I could not work out how to react to this. When was twelve? “When was that?”, I said, stalling for time.
“Far too long ago”, she laughed, throwing her head back and letting me get a good long look at a long, perfect throat, stretching down into what I could see of her breasts. She looked at me with a delicious smile, sipped her wine, and finally said, “It was your birthday party, we only met once, and I was a twelve-year-old girl”.
“Oh, I’m afraid I probably didn’t notice you then”, I said, my teeth clutching my lower lip in apology.
“Oh you did!” she hastily corrected. “You did! Oh yes.”
“
When
was this?”
“You had a DJ.”
“A
what
?”
“A disc jockey. Playing records. I’m afraid I thought you had terrible taste in music, sorry if you still like them.”
Now I shook my head in amazement as I tried to work out how to break it to this appealing elf that she had the wrong person, that never in my craziest nightmare would I throw that sort of party. I took a quick gulp of air, then one of wine for courage, as all the time she was looking at me following my every doubt, as if tracing my lips with a pencil in her eye -- when I remembered.
“Not me. But when I was twenty-five I had a friend who had a birthday near mine, and
he
did that, and I shared the party. I hated it too. That was twelve years ago! You can’t...”
