Chanel Bonfire Read Online Free PDF Page A

Guthrie, Oliver and his wife, Betty, gave a soiree for the entire theater company and staff at their mansion in the fashionable Loring Park section of Minneapolis. They were the sort of people who threw big, fancy parties, effortlessly, all the time, and they did it well. Everyone in town was there, drinking and enjoying hors d’oeuvres around one of the few swimming pools in the Twin Cities.
    While my sister and I played in the pool with my future stepfather’s children, my father stood out on the flagstone patio with his fellow actor and friend Douglas Campbell. Dougie, a larger-than-life Scotsman, was extolling the charms of an exotically beautiful French costumer who was standing on the other side of the pool surrounded by a throng of men, when my father suddenly realized he hadn’t seen his wife since they’d arrived an hour earlier.
    All I saw from the pool was my father head for the bar under an awning on the other side of the patio and refresh his drink before going inside. Apparently, after winding his way through all the imposing rooms downstairs, aggressively decorated in the old-money manner of Sister Parish with lots of chintz and antiques, my father climbed the stairs, ice cubes clinking in his glass, to locate his wife.
    When my father got to the top of the landing, he heard loud voices, one of them my mother’s, coming from behind a closed bedroom door. He opened the door and walked in. Oliver and my mother were standing very close together, and he had his hands locked on my mother’s wrists. He let go of her and they quickly sprang apart. Completely bewildered, my father asked, “What the hell’s going on here?” My mother walked wordlessly past him and Oliver followed. Then, perhaps emboldened by the discovery of their secret, the lovers walked down the stairs holding hands to where the party was in full swing.
    Mother cleared her throat dramatically. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have an announcement to make.” She looked rapturously at my stepfather, and it was then that my father knew what was so horribly true. “Oliver Rea and I are in love.” Mother moved close to him and took his arm.
    “We are leaving here together,” my future stepfather said, gazing into Mother’s eyes.
    Everybody froze mid-canapé with a scotch stuck to their hands and their mouths hanging open. Oliver and my mother glided past this frozen tableau. My father followed them outside, speechless, and watched as the lovers got into a Jag and drove off. Betty ran out of the house and up to my father. They stood there together on the sidewalk, like fire victims watching their home burn as the car disappeared into the night.
    My father turned to Betty and asked, “Did you know about this?”
    “Yes,” she answered with the world-weariness of a woman who knows her husband has chased most of her girlfriends around the coffee table and caught quite a few. “This has happened before. But,” she said, maybe to reassure my father and herself, “he always comes back.”
    My father then noticed that Betty was trembling and soaking wet. He took off his coat and wrapped it tightly around her. As they walked back to the house, she told him about the little blond girl who had started to drown in the pool.
    “I’m not much of a swimmer but I jumped in. She had sunk like a stone to the bottom of the pool, poor thing. That’s where I was when all this happened.”
    My father ran through the house to the patio, where he found my sister, bundled up in blankets on a chaise by the pool, her teeth chattering, her lips blue.
    Like all the other kids, I’d been having fun and was oblivious to what was happening until I saw the dark flash of a fully dressed woman jumping into the water. After Robbie was safely out of the pool, I stood there next to her, holding her ice-cold hand, both of us in a kind of shock to be surrounded by a crowd of people. When my father rushed up, I watched his face shift from bewildered dread to relief as he saw