Four of a Kind (2 page)

“Oops,” she said.

The other women instinctively leaned forward and peered into the pot. “Sunk,” said Alicia. Like this evening?

“The cheese is awfully thick,” said skinny Robin. “Did you cut it with wine?”

“I should have used more,” said Bess.

“So there’s wine left over somewhere?” asked Robin.

“Oh, God. So sorry. We need drinks, of course,” said Bess. “There’s a bar downstairs.”

“I was hoping to get a look around,” said Robin, standing. “This house is incredible.”

Bess asked the other two women, “Would you like a tour?”

Alicia said, “Yes, please,” slurping back her anticipatory drool. In Brooklyn, real estate was porn.

Caftan Carla, who Alicia had already characterized as intense and quiet, said, “Why not?”

“Okay,” said Bess, slapping her thighs and standing up. “Is the fondue experiment officially a failure?”

Carla said simply, “I ate a big dinner.”

“Communal dipping?” said Alicia. “Bit of a fon-don’t.”

To her surprise, the women laughed. Alicia thought,
Okay, then. Sense of humor detected
.

Robin said, “Cheese isn’t kind to me,” and patted her iron-flat stomach.
Anorexic?
thought Alicia.
Bulimic? Lactose intolerant?

Bess smiled good-naturedly and called out, “Kids! You’re up.”

On cue, three boys burst into the room from a side door at the other end of the floor. They clamored to the coffee table, grabbed the long fondue forks and fistfuls of bread chunks. Alicia recognized the smallest kid, from Joe’s class. Charlie was spearing bread with demonic zeal. Bess said, “Eric, you’re in charge.” The oldest of her sons nodded and chewed.

“You have three boys?” asked Alicia.

“And one girl,” said Bess. “Amy is my oldest. She’s sixteen. Upstairs sulking in her room, which is her favorite hobby.”

“Where’s your husband?” asked Robin.

Bess grinned. “He’s at work.”

Alicia couldn’t help asking, “Where’s that?”

“Merrill Lynch,” said Bess. “ ‘Lynch’ being the operative word. Borden is one of the few people left in his department.”

“Which is?”

“Foreign currency futures,” said Bess. “But lately he’s been doing a little bit of everything.”

“Four kids at Brownstone,” said redhead Robin, whistling low. “That’s a hundred thousand dollars a year in tuition. Why didn’t I pursue a career in foreign currency futures? Whatever that is.”

Alicia felt a mite squirmy about Robin’s overt nosiness, but Bess took it in stride. She was obviously well trained at deflecting questions about her wealth. Bess probably grew up surrounded by money, great green piles of it. That said, Bess seemed relatively normal for a loaded person, thought Alicia.

Bess took them down two flights, to the garden level. “This is my husband’s lair,” said Bess.

Alicia’s eyes took in the sights. A glass wall in the back showed the private garden, equipped with a built-in gas grill the size of a short bus. Some trees for privacy, flowering plants showing off the last bloom of the season. Alicia had desperately wanted to find an apartment with outdoor space, but even a Juliet balcony was out of their reach. Alicia was awed by the home-theater setup and the surround built-in speakers. She counted eight.

“Here we are,” said Robin, spotting the mahogany bar, fully stocked with two mirrored shelves of booze. She went behind it, and started mixing herself a cocktail. Alicia would never help herself like that in another person’s home.

“I’ll have the same,” said Bess as she watched Robin make a vodka tonic. “And for you two?”

Caftan Carla frowned. Was she a wet blanket? A lot of black moms in Brooklyn were churchgoing teetotalers.
Please don’t let her be a Bible thumper
, thought Alicia. Although that would be diverse.

“White wine, please,” said Alicia.

Carla said, “Wine would be great.”

“How many kids do you have, Carla?” asked Alicia.

“Two,” said Carla. “Boys. You?”

“Just one,” said Alicia.

Robin said, “My Stephanie is an only child, too.”

“We’re a boy-heavy bunch,” said Bess. “Six boys and only two girls among us.”

The drinks poured, the women leaned around the bar, clinked glasses, and drank.

And stared blankly at each other. And smiled awkwardly.
So much for alcohol as a social lubricant
, thought Alicia. She drank up. Perhaps things would improve by the tenth glass.

Bess said, “I really appreciate you all coming. It’s a lot to jump right in and talk about committee goals and an agenda. I thought that tonight we could just get to know each other a bit.”

They began talking about (what else?) their kids. How old, how much of a handful, bedtimes, soccer league, art class, snack preferences, the fourth-grade curriculum at Brownstone. Alicia’s mind wandered, and fixated on the paradox. How was it that discussing the most important people in your life sounded so banal? Women could blab about their kids from sunrise to sunset without exchanging a single heartfelt emotion. Even the intimate, profound experience of giving birth was usually reduced to a funny, scary, oozy story to swap like trading cards.

At work, all day, every day, she was surrounded by men who delved no deeper than last night’s Mets scores. Except for Finn Clarke, her office mate. He could make a chat about the weather seem profound. Alicia smiled to herself, flashing back to the workday, beautiful Finn standing close behind her chair, the two of them looking at the latest Paris Hilton commando paparazzi photo on her computer. “Twat is her middle name,” he said, speaking softly, making Alicia’s own twitch.

“What’s that you were saying, Alicia?” asked Robin, “about mothers having identities apart from their kids?”

Alicia forced her mind back to the women. She’d lost the last five minutes of their conversation, so she just said, “Exactly.”

Bess said, “When men meet each other, their first question is, ‘What do you do for a living?’ ”

“As if that defines who you are,” said Robin.

“Yeah,” said Alicia. “So. What
do
you do for a living?”

They laughed, even Carla, who then said, “I really need to sit. I’m on my feet all day long.”

Bess said, “Oh, God. Worst host ever. Table and chairs that way.” The blond host pointed at the unlit part of the floor. She turned on a lamp to reveal an alcove separated from the bar/home theater area by demi-walls. In the center of the room was a round table and six chairs. The tabletop was made of green felt. The chairs were hard-backed with cushioned seats.

Robin said, “What is that?”

“It’s Borden’s,” said Bess, flicking on a couple more lamps. “Remember how poker became huge a few years ago? Celebrity poker, the poker channel. Extreme poker tournaments. Poker cage matches. Borden decided he wanted to get into it. So he moved the pool table out and the poker table in.”

“What happened to the pool table?” asked Robin. “That’s my game. You can’t believe how many drinks I’ve won over the years thanks to my killer cue.”

“We moved it upstairs,” said Bess. “But I don’t think you want to hang out in the boys’ room.”

“Your house is big enough for a poker room
and
a pool room?” Alicia asked. “I feel sick.”

Carla asked, “What’s wrong?” Her tone was professional, concerned.

“Just intense jealousy. It’ll pass,” said Alicia. “Actually, it won’t.”

Bess invited them to sit. They each plunked their drinks into the table’s built-in cup holders, and smoothed their hands across the pill-free green felt. “The pathetic thing is that Borden had maybe two poker nights with his friends,” said Bess. “And that was it. I’m waiting for him to replace this with a Ping-Pong table. Or a foosball table.”

“The kids must like it,” said Alicia, reaching for the tray of red, white, and blue round plastic chips. She grabbed a stack and put it in front of her. “Chips? Chips are irresistible. Fun to hold. You can’t
not
play with them.”

Bess said, “You realize since we’re sitting down, we now have to deal a hand. That’s the rule. Does everyone know Texas Hold ’Em?”

“You do?” asked Alicia.

“I watched Borden play a few times,” said the host. “He made me practice with him.”

Carla said, “I’ve never played.”

“I can teach you,” said Bess. “It’s not too tough.”

Robin said, “We have to make it interesting. Dollar a hand.”

Alicia cringed inwardly—and, she feared, outwardly. Losing even ten bucks tonight would mean no lunch money tomorrow. They were on that tight a budget.

Carla to the rescue. “I’m philosophically opposed to gambling.”

Bess nodded. “I agree. I don’t want to take your money.”

Robin smiled and said, “Oh, you’re assuming you’re going to win?”

The host blushed prettily. “You have experience?” she asked Robin.

Robin nodded. “You have no idea.”

Alicia said, “What if we play for something else?”

“Peanuts?” asked Robin.

“Secrets,” said Alicia, amazed to hear herself say it. Her subconscious had spoken for her, and wisely. Trading secrets was a shortcut to friendship, wasn’t it?

The three other woman stared at her, their mouths partly open. Alicia felt her gut clench. She’d said the wrong thing. “I’ll reel that one back in,” she said.

“Secrets?” asked Bess, intrigued.

“Secrets
are
a woman’s currency,” said Robin.

“I have no secrets,” said Carla stridently.

Alicia watched a ripple move behind Carla’s dark eyes. This woman had secrets aplenty, she thought. “Forget it,” she said. “Stupid idea.”

Bess said, “No, I like it. Maybe not secrets per se. But something personal about ourselves. Children are the fallback conversation. You really can hide behind your kids. Especially me. I’m the only one here
who doesn’t have a career. Focusing on the kids has become my default setting. If I’m not dealing with them, I’m talking about them, or listening to other women talk about theirs. And it’s just more of the same. Same classes, activities, playgroup, haircuts, expressions, comments, opinions.”

Robin said, “And you’re looking for something different—or should I say
diverse
?”

Bess laughed. “Okay, I’ll ante up. Here’s a secret. I’m not all that gung-ho about scheduling a calendar of multicultural events and lectures.”

Robin gasped dramatically. “You’re
not
? Then I’m
out of here
.”

Bess laughed. “The real reason I invited the three of you over tonight is that you’re nothing like me.”

“You mean a WASPy, blond, rich housewife,” said Robin bluntly and, Alicia thought, rudely.

Bess took it at face value. “Frankly, yes. Most of my friendships are like talking into a mirror.”

Robin said, “So you took a look around at drop-off, and hand-picked a black woman, a frizzy-haired Jew, and a scholarship mom to be your new best friends?”

Carla hooted. The biggest reaction from her all night, and the first show of her smile, which completely transformed her face from serious to sweet. She had a rich, deep, baritone laugh that made the table vibrate. “Now that’s calling a spade a spade. Oh, I like
you
,” she said to Robin, making Alicia feel a little jealous.

Bess shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking ‘new best friends,’ but, yes, something like that.”

On principle, Alicia, the “scholarship mom,” wasn’t terribly offended. She’d suspected her middle-class status had been her claim to diversity. If she was selected by the establishment for that reason, it was the first time her relative poverty had opened a door. Actually, it was the second time. Their income threshold helped get Joe into Brownstone. Although he had trouble socially, Joe tested well. Astonishingly
well. His test scores zoomed him to the top of Brownstone’s academic scholarship list, and he’d won a full, free ride. So Joe could get a top-shelf private school education in Brooklyn. Alicia and her husband, Tim, thirty-six, had turned their lives upside down, uprooting from their Manhattan apartment of ten years. Alicia had no regrets, only insecurities about the bumpy transition to the outer borough. All of them were still getting used to the change—including Tim.

“I’m cool with it,” said Alicia. “It’s not like the other scholarship moms were having a party and I had to make a choice.”

“If the other black moms were getting together,” said Carla, obviously relieved to have the black elephant in the room acknowledged, “they didn’t invite me.”

“I’d be in a club of one,” said Robin. “Of all the Jewish families at Brownstone—and there aren’t as many as you might think—I’m the only single parent. Then again, I can—and do—party by myself and always enjoy the company.”

“So, then,” said Bess, her blue eyes flashing. “Shall I shuffle? How about we play it like this: We go around the table. Whoever deals the cards shares a little something about herself. After a showdown, the winner of the hand gets to ask a follow-up question.”

“Showdown?” asked Carla.

“When we show our cards,” said Bess.

The deck well shuffled, Bess started dealing cards. Two facedown to each player. She said, “Each player gets two cards down—the ‘pocket’ or ‘hole’ cards. Then I deal five cards faceup in the middle. The first three are called ‘the flop.’ The fourth is called ‘the turn.’ The last card is ‘the river.’ I didn’t make up these terms. They make no sense, and aren’t terribly exciting. But it is what it is.”

“Seven cards total,” said Alicia.

“Right,” continued Bess, dealing the faceup cards to the middle. “The objective is to make the best five-card hand out of the seven cards available to you. You’re supposed to bet, call, raise, or fold before
‘the flop,’ again before ‘the turn,’ again before ‘the river,’ and once after. I remember Borden saying something about ‘burn and turn.’ Not sure how that comes into it.”

“Who cares?” said Robin. “We can play by our own rules.”

“Brooklyn Hold ’Em,” said Alicia. “I’ve never been to Texas anyway.”

Bess said, “Not missing much.”

“I’d sooner go to Damascus that Dallas,” said Robin, peeking at the two cards Bess had dealt her facedown. “Remind me. What beats what?”