Rich and Pretty (17 page)

“I see. I'm better than a bad apology but not so good, because, I'm still a tacky slut who . . . fucks the help. Is that accurate?”

“You know what? You can play it that way. That's totally fine. It's obviously not about the help, and you know it. It's obviously not about being a slut, and you know it.”

“It's about what, then? It's about me being me, and not being you. This is what it's about, Sarah. I am me, and you are you, and there was no difference there for, I don't know, a decade? But now there is. And you get mad at me, for being me. And I get mad at you, for being you. Except you never actually get mad, you just get, morally superior. And smug. And I don't know what else. And I get mad. And then we don't talk and it's a whole fucking thing.”

“What are you even talking about now?” Sarah is pacing the small area of the bedroom.

“I don't know.” She doesn't. But she does. Lauren means what she's said and can't totally believe that she's said it. Sarah seems, on some level, to disapprove of almost everything she does. She's still bringing up Gabe's name, years after the fact. “Is this friendship or is this force of habit?”

“I don't know what that means.” Sarah is still whispering.

Lauren looks at her. She's more tired than angry.

Sarah shakes her head. “I don't know what you're saying.”

Lauren sighs. “I shouldn't have . . .” She doesn't know how to finish the sentence. She's not sure what she's apologizing for.

“I'm going to the beach,” Sarah says. “I'll see you there.” She leaves via the room's private terrace. Lauren lies on the bed for twenty minutes, staring at the ceiling, before joining the rest of
the party in the cabana they've reserved until noon. The car will take them to the airport at one thirty.

She will shower, one final, hot shower in this glorious bathroom, though her hair will still feel salty, her feet still sandy. She will put on the jeans and the shirt and the cardigan, though it's too hot for a cardigan, because it will be cold on the plane, she knows. She will leave behind the three issues of
The New Yorker
that she'd brought with her, having read them entirely, except for one article about baseball. She will leave behind twenty dollars on the nightstand, for the housekeeper. She will scurry through the lobby and into the car quickly, but she won't see the waiter, so it's fine. She won't watch while Sarah signs the bill, which she's already told them all repeatedly she's going to do and therefore none of them will put up any kind of fuss about it. She will be quiet on the car ride to the airport, they will all be quiet on the car ride to the airport, studying their phones, already thinking about work, and boyfriends and husbands or lack of boyfriends and husbands, about winter coats and the way the city smells when it's cold outside. The sky will grow dark as the plane continues north, and the city will come into focus as light, a glorious array of lights, as the plane dips below the clouds and the pilot gives his well-rehearsed speech about not moving about the cabin and so on. And she will know that when the pilot says the words
Flight attendants, prepare for arrival,
that will mean arrival is truly imminent, because the approach to the city is a long one, the lights misleading; you will think you're there but you're still a ways off, and then there it is, nearer, nearer, so near it seems you'll plunge into the sea, it seems the plane's wheels will skim the roofs of the cars on the highways, but none of that will happen, all will be well.

T
he people on the street
—the disappointed-looking businessman with snow on the cuffs of his pants, the Chinese grandmother moving very slowly, umbrella doing little to protect her, the postman in his cloudy blue fatigues—seem defeated. A sadness more persistent than the snow seems to settle on the city. We think of January as winter's heart, but in truth, it's only its beginning. There is much yet to get through.

Sarah doesn't succumb to this sadness. She feels liberated. Christmas had been so much distraction. One of Huck's timeworn jokes: Their religion is gift giving. For Christmas, you didn't ask for humble, stupid things, common, cheap things, because those you'd get anyway: stockings stuffed full of card games and candies, tiny, plastic things meant for Barbie; later, earrings and bracelets and rolled-up pairs of tights; later still, gift cards and jewelry with a more adult seriousness, no charms in the shapes of cats. At ten: a horse, a beautiful young thing, called Bellatrix. She boarded in the Bronx, and Sarah's mother drove her up twice a week to ride. That had been her year of the horse. Her clothes were equestrian,
the books she read heroic narratives about girls riding through danger or somehow, with the intercession of their fearless steeds, saving the family farm. Her allowance was saved for a dreamt-of new saddle, so expensive that it would have taken her literal years to accrue enough, but somehow that never occurred to her, as a child.

She lost interest, of course. Kids lose interest, and Bellatrix was sold three years later. Later, at fifteen, she'd realize how weirdly sexual it is, this thing with girls and horses, and she'd feel strange. That year: Cartier watch. Again, much desired; she wears it even now. She had wept viciously the day she'd misplaced it in the locker room before swim class, but one of the custodians had seen it on the bench, taken it to the main office for safekeeping, and her anguish had lasted only an hour or so. Then at seventeen: the car, the compact BMW she'd wanted, but in blue, which Huck had deemed more sensible than red, and not a convertible, because Lulu was convinced that in an accident you'd be decapitated.

This year, Sarah had prevailed on Fiona to accompany her to Barneys, and they came up with an asymmetrical necklace, something between a collar and a bird's nest, set with gems in an array of pastel shades. Lulu loved it. Huck was harder, but also somehow easier: A book would suffice, the rarer and odder the better, but this year, she'd wanted something to communicate her as-yet-unspoken thanks for shouldering the expense of the wedding and the attendant hassle as well. She'd been mindful of this for months and had poked around online to see what was at auction, had almost splurged on some first editions (Updike, signed; Shaw, pristine) but had then done one better by purchasing, from a small
auction house based in Dallas, a handwritten letter from Winston Churchill to his brother.

For Ruth, Dan's mother, retired after years in private practice as a psychiatrist, from her and Dan together, a set of illustrated volumes surveying the work of John Singer Sargent. Ruth was going to devote her retirement to painting. She did watercolors and was very good. She had the sort of precise eye and steady hand required by the medium. For Andrew, Dan's father, a pair of leather gloves: truly beautiful, horribly expensive. This came after much discussion with Dan, who seemed as puzzled by his father as she was. Fathers are a mystery. Anyway, it gets cold in Michigan.

They spent the day at Huck and Lulu's, the whole new family together. Lulu did the cooking, feeling too guilty to employ temporary help. She spent hours on hallacas, wrapped lovingly in banana leaves. They sat in the dining room, set with the best china, and Huck told stories while Ruth, conscientious Emily's List donor, gritted her teeth. Sarah hadn't bothered to implore Huck to keep it nonpartisan; it was worse if you admonished him like that. Ruth took two very healthy whiskies after dinner and hurried out, after dessert, claiming a nascent headache. It had been, overall, a success.

Willa's office is in a strange corner of the city
with no particular character: a small hotel, a kitchen supply showroom open to the trade only, a shuttered Turkish restaurant, heavy maroon curtains still draped across its doors. The office is on the second floor, with big windows looking out over the quiet street and lots of potted orchids that are miraculously thriving despite the dry winter air.

“How are you holding up?” Willa has a bemused, I-told-you-so demeanor. Wedding planning is her calling; her business depends on making it seem an impossibility.

Sarah sees Willa not as a mechanic or plumber, an expert called in to address something she couldn't possibly do herself, but rather as one of the caterers Lulu trusts: someone to do a job she's capable of but can't spare time for. “I'm holding up,” she tells her. It's not a lie. She feels fine.

“Things are going wonderfully on this end,” Willa says. They're at a small, round table, set with a teapot and little cups, like girls playing at tea party. The place is full of this kind of frippery: slipper chairs, coffee-table books, doilies under the orchids' terra-cotta pots, stuff chosen to appeal to the average bride, the Willa bride.

“That's great,” says Sarah. There's a pad of paper and a cup of sharpened pencils on the table, in case she needs to take notes. She doesn't feel any particular need to take notes.

“Why don't I get the cakes and we'll get started then?”

“That's great,” Sarah says again. She was expecting the table would be laid already. She's impatient. She doesn't enjoy being around Willa: She thinks her forceful empathy conceals something—condescension, bitterness, it's not clear what. But she is efficient. She disappears into the backroom to retrieve the samples of cake.

There's vanilla, with a thin band of raspberry between its layers; there's chocolate, with a coating of crushed, salty nuts; there's coconut, with a suggestion of banana, somehow; there's another chocolate with mint that tastes like a Girl Scout cookie. They're all good. Sarah likes dessert but getting through Christmas while being mindful of her regimen, her plan—
diet
is such a disgusting
word—was so hard. It seems crazy to be sitting in this strange room on Twenty-Fifth Street eating seven pieces of cake in the middle of the afternoon, but you make concessions. She ate the papaya dulce that Lulu made for Christmas dinner, even though it wasn't all that good, and she had one accidentally fattening meal with Lauren, their own holiday celebration.

It's a ritual with precedent: just the two of them, the chance to swap gifts and get drunk and talk shit before disappearing into family and obligation. She texted Lauren a couple of weeks after coming back from the island, banter, though Sarah was still—
mad
wasn't the word, but there was a word for the feeling, somewhere. Still, tradition is tradition. Lauren must have felt the same way, because a plan was made, and kept, a bar in Tribeca: subway tile, mustachioed bartenders, one-dollar oyster specials.

“I'm not sure I understand the appeal of oysters.” Lauren fiddled on her stool, the puffy coat hanging on its back taking up too much space.

“They're erotic, right?” Sarah made a face. “I think people just pretend to like them because it seems sophisticated.”

“How's the wedding coming along?”

Sarah shrugged. “It's coming.”

“I had the best idea. I'm actually so excited to tell you. I wanted to tell you face-to-face. Are you ready?”

Sarah nodded.

“Here it is: rehearsal dinner. I was thinking we should do something totally different, basically the opposite of the wedding. Like you don't want a fancy meal, you don't want place cards and tablecloths and all that, you want fun, light, festive, delicious. You want Mexican!” She paused, triumphant.

“I already called Ventaja,” Lauren went on. “They've got a private room, holds up to forty very comfortably, and we've already done a menu. Tacos, guacamole, that sort of thing. And I was thinking, because we don't want to go too crazy the night before, we could do churros for dessert. Anyway.” She reached into the pocket of the coat perched behind her and handed Sarah a piece of paper. “Here's the menu we did. You can nix anything you don't like obviously. Or the whole idea. I don't know. I put down a deposit, but it's refundable. So be honest, like, if you hate the idea.”

Sarah was surprised. She took the piece of paper, didn't read it. She looked up at Lauren. She still had a trace of the tan she'd replenished on their trip. “You know, technically, the rehearsal dinner is the groom's family's deal. Ruth had some idea, I can't remember the details. But obviously your plan is going to be a million times cooler than whatever she's cooking up.”

“Who cares about technicalities?” Lauren shrugged. “Don't worry about your mother-in-law. I'll talk to Dan. I'll take care of everything. If. I mean, if you're into it.”

Sarah had been so mad. It didn't disappear, but it no longer seemed fair to be mad at her, or as mad. “Thank you.” She meant it. “Thank you.”

This is Lauren's way: disappointing, and then far exceeding, expectations. Even now, Sarah still doesn't get it—why she'd fuck someone, not just someone, a stranger (and, as she'd admit only to herself, as she'd never say out loud: a waiter, it's worse that he's a waiter), and turn what was supposed to be a trip about the five of them, together, having stupid, harmless fun, into something about herself.

“Any favorites?” Willa looks down at her, expectantly.

Sarah can't remember how any of them tasted, particularly. She chooses the vanilla. She likes that pretty little slash of red in it.

She's taken on more shifts at the store, lately.
One of the longtime employees has left and they've frozen hiring. Sarah doesn't mind, in fact enjoys having more demands on her time, since she's shifted so many of the responsibilities—finding the tent, ordering the cake, checking the response cards against the invitation list, figuring out the outdoor lighting scheme—to Willa.

It's a dead time for retail, but a boom time for their store: People deaccession once-prized possessions to make room for their holiday loot. Paper bags full of books in particular, but also: vases, unwanted pillows, lamps, picture frames, the occasional painting or sculptural oddity. The pink sale was her brainchild, and it's proven a success in the two years past: The store transformed into a sea of pinks and reds, a nod to Valentine's Day. She poured pink foil-wrapped chocolate kisses into a Blenko bowl ($400) and stationed it by the cash register. The first day of the sale, an interior designer came in and swooped up two thousand dollars' worth of stuff, destined, she told Sarah, for the bedroom of a teenage girl whose parents are renovating their five-bedroom in the Apthorp.

Sarah still needs to find a tuxedo for Dan. She needs to coordinate with her future mother-in-law the details for the postwedding brunch on Sunday afternoon, which she'd like to have in this bistro on Park Avenue South that has a lovely, sky-lit garden room. She's bought a small weight, ten pounds, and curls it up toward her head,
sixty times on each side in the mornings, before her shower, hoping to tame the subtle wiggle of her upper arms. And there's honeymoon research: She's trying to figure out the best time of year to go to Botswana. She's reading Norman Rush in preparation.

Understaffed as they are, she knows they need her, but today something more important has come up. She telephones the store, tells Jacob that she won't be in that afternoon. Jacob is flustered but she is impatient and thinks, for the first time ever,
Oh for Christ's sake, it's only a shop
. She's so overwhelmed, she doesn't pause for more than a second to feel satisfied by the fact that they do need her there, after all.

Then she calls Dan, pacing nervously on a stretch of Thirty-Ninth Street, making a circuit from the free newspaper kiosk to the fire hydrant. A Sikh shopkeeper studies her suspiciously, and she stares him down icily. Dan is in the middle of prepping the big presentation, which is due to go off to The Hague next week. Their conversations when he is at work are never that fulfilling—monosyllables, nodding—so when she hangs up, she calls Lauren.