Chapter 13
thirteen
LYDIA
I had a tray of my grandmother-in-law’s good glasses in my hands when Dan Lemont called us all in.
I put it down on the map table and went in last and stood near the door, which is where I go. Zach found me across all those heads and gave me the look that means one more hour and I’ll have you in a car.
Magda signed with a pen out of Romina’s bag, because my grandfather-in-law’s pen didn’t work and she thought that was funny. She put her hand flat on the paper for a second afterward before she let it go.
I loved every person in that room and I stood by that door with my hands behind my back and I was so proud of my husband I could have burst.
Dan did the part about James Wright. He did the napkin, which somehow always lands. He did the part about two families and one mountain—all of it. It’s a story that never gets old to everyone else.
Then he said, “And we are not letting this thing get designed by a firm out of Denver.”
And I thought, finally, because I have been telling Zach for two years that the Denver people would put brass on everything and call it a look.
Then Dan said Shayna’s name.
The room kept going and nobody stopped. Jill made a noise. Magda said oh, good, out loud, to nobody in particular. And Simon, my person, put his cup down so he could clap with both hands.
I didn’t move. The floor felt like it might go out from underneath my feet but I stayed put. I pulled it together enough to at least not look insane, and my ears filled up with water.
I looked at the floor and somewhere in the back of it all, I heard Dan keep going. It was like no one else seemed to understand that there were two realities here. The one before I found out Shayna was given what I’ve been asking for, and the one after.
And then everything from the last few days arrived at once.
Jill Lemont holding both my hands by the coffee urn with her rings digging in. You must be so pleased. It’s just wonderful for her, and honestly, sweetheart, wonderful for you. I know it’s been such a lot on your plate.
Magda in the hall with a vase. You’ll have some help now. About time.
It wasn’t the job. If Zach had come home in June and told me he was bringing somebody in over the top of me, I would have argued. I would have lost. I’d have gotten over it… eventually.
They knew for days, all of them, and every one of them decided separately and quietly that it would be nicer if I heard it in a room full of them.
Shayna said something gracious. She said she’d be learning from me, mostly. She said everything you’re standing in, Lydia found.
And I looked at her while she said it and understood that she didn’t know either. Nobody had told her whose job it was. She was being generous with a thing she believed was hers to be generous with.
I didn’t decide to speak. It just sort of happened. My mouth opened and my own voice came out of it, flat, from over by the door, and to no one in particular, really.
“I’ve been asking for that job for two years.”
Petey laughed, because he thought it was a joke. Then he stopped because he saw the look on my face.
I heard my own sentence land. I heard it go around that room and come back to me as an uncomfortable thing that no one wanted to hear.
Nobody had anywhere to look.
And Romina, who has worked for that family since long before I met any of them, put down what she was holding and walked the entire length of that room and stood next to me. She didn’t say a word. She came and stood close enough that our arms were touching.
I have never been so grateful to a woman I have never once had a real conversation with.
And then my husband put his arm around me.
He pulled me into his side, laughing, and told the room I’d been up since before the birds doing flowers nobody had asked me to do. It had been a long week for everybody in this house, apparently.
He was warm about it. It didn’t feel warm to me.
I went still under his arm and he squeezed my shoulder, because he thought I was embarrassed and he was getting me out of it. I let him. The room was full and one of us had to be fine.
Then he said, “Come here, all of you. Come on. Before Dan does the napkin again.”
And they came.
All of them, over to us, laughing, so relieved to be let off the hook from the awkward moment. Jill got the coffee moving. Somebody put a hand on my back on the way past. It was done in about ten seconds.
I stood inside my husband’s arm and watched everyone close in on us.
Magda got my hand on her way through.
“Now you’ll have some help, sweetheart. You’ve been carrying far too much of it.”
“Thank you, Magda,” I said.
He got me in the hall by the coats before lunch and told me it was Dan’s ask, and that Shayna is qualified, which she is. Then he told me he’d done it for me.
I straightened his collar and sent him back in, and I have never in my life wanted so badly to break something in somebody else’s house.
Then I was the picture-perfect wife for the rest of the day.
I laughed in the right places, I smiled and helped and kept the conversation going because I love Magda’s story and I love her.
I even laughed at Petey.
Jill Lemont told me twice more how pleased I must be. The second time she did it with her hand on my arm and her rings turned in.
Shayna came near me once and I moved. I physically moved, mid-sentence, into another group, like a coward. I know she saw me do it.
Simon found me and went on a very long tangent about a jacket. Then he asked whether I thought Shayna would want him on fabrics, if the design seat came with a budget.
“Do you think she’d want me?” he said. “Actually want me? Not just because she’s nice.”
“I think she’d be lucky.”
“Girl.” He put both hands on my shoulders. “Say it like you mean it.”
“I think she’d be lucky, Simon. For real.”
He was so happy. He has wanted somebody to ask him for an opinion his entire working life and this was apparently his chance.
I did not go near my husband once. I’m not sure he even noticed.
Romina found me by the back door with my coat already on.
“You look like a woman who wants to be outside.”
“I just want some air.”
“Mm.” She didn’t move out of the doorway. Then she said, “When you decide to do this under your own name, call me first. Not the company. Me.”
“Romina.”
“I’m not being kind to you,” she said. “I’d like the work. They can say whatever they want in there, but I know who has the eye.”
By the time I sat in Magda’s car it was dark.
I sat out there with the keys in my hand long enough that the windows went white.
I thought about what I’d say to Magda in the morning and about who would do the flowers. I was busy working out how to leave a house without inconveniencing a single person inside it.
The party was still going on through the wall of the house. Somebody had put music on. And I could pick my husband out of the whole of it through a wall and a windshield, because I always can.
Then I put the keys back on the hook by the door.
Not tonight. Not with Magda’s window right over that gravel, and not with a house still full of people who thought it had been a lovely day.
I’d wait.