Chapter 5 #2
James took my hand and asked what I was thinking about. I crossed my legs and thought about Silver’s pointy face glistening above water. “What’s the vibe of this place? Is it supposed to be fancy?”
“Kind of. It’s rustic.” He wagged his eyebrow at rustic. I didn’t get the joke. “It used to look different. There was a fire a few decades ago. They redid the whole interior when they rebuilt. It was a big deal, people still think it’s haunted.”
“What, with ghosts?”
“Yeah. They steal from the bar when it’s closed.”
“You believe in ghosts.”
“Technically, no,” said James. He poured two glasses of wine. “But gun to my head, maybe. What? I don’t want to deny myself the chance of becoming a bar ghost.”
“Is being an alcoholic ghost really better than just being dead?”
“Shush, they’ll hear you. I mean, growing up, did you ever get those email chains that promised death to your family or something if you didn’t forward them? I forwarded every single one.”
“I had no idea you were so superstitious.”
“Well, I was so convinced the emails worked that I even forwarded them to my mother’s doctors.
” James gave an apologetic smile, but I couldn’t tell if the sympathy was meant for himself or for me.
Sometimes James treated me like I was extraordinarily sensitive to suffering, like a Disney princess.
I wasn’t. If anything, he was the Disney princess in our relationship.
The oysters arrived, sleek and wet on a raised silver platter. James spooned a watery tincture over one of the humps.
“But your mom, she’s better now, right?” I asked. “The emails worked.”
“The emails worked. She’s in Spain with my dad. Apparently, she’s picked up pottery with the locals.”
I couldn’t imagine my mother doing pottery. Quickly I stopped the thought. Comparing my mother to other mothers felt illegal.
“She’ll like you,” he said. “I’d like to meet your mother, too.”
I squinted at my wobbling reflection on the platter’s curved surface. James handed me an oyster. “Have you two spoken yet?”
I dunked the oyster in my mouth. It shot down my throat, a grimy tongue. I fought the urge to gag.
“James!” A shriek reverberated through the room. Isabelle bounded toward us, her arms outstretched. A large dog ran in after her, sand colored and smiley with a thick swinging tail.
Isabelle turned to me. She was pale and reedy and looked a bit like a phantom, gravely beautiful with black hair and thin red lips.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” she said.
I tried to arrange my face in a way that reflected her enthusiasm.
She smelled like a nice hotel lobby, and I felt immediately depressed.
For a second we stood face-to-face before I understood to turn my cheek, onto which she planted a firm kiss.
James embraced Isabelle’s parents. They were shorter than I expected given Isabelle’s height. Also, they were both blond. I thought blondness was something people grew out of in adulthood.
“Darling,” Mrs. Hartley exclaimed, kissing James’s cheek.
Her passion alarmed me until I saw what had invited it: a small blue box encasing a silver necklace.
I recognized the brand, a jewelry boutique in Brooklyn that Lou also liked.
James must’ve brought it from the city. “Did your parents remind you?”
“You have that little faith in me, Julia?” James said. “Happy belated. Mom sends her love.”
Mrs. Hartley kissed him again before turning to me. Her eyes were a scary shade of light blue, and only the right one wrinkled at the edge. Mr. Hartley looked like most other men.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Hartley,” I said.
Mrs. Hartley turned to James. “The poor thing. Have you filled her head with horror stories about us?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He hasn’t told me anything about you.”
There was a brief silence. “Let’s sit,” Mr. Hartley said, gesturing to the chairs. “And please, call me Walter.”
There was no way I would do that.
“James, you chose the cursed table,” said Isabelle.
“It’s our favorite.” James slipped into a voice I hadn’t heard before, exaggerated and slightly juvenile, like Mickey Mouse.
“Nothing bad has ever happened to you at this table.” Isabelle looked at me. “This table has borne witness to some of the worst moments of my life. I was dumped by the milkshake man at this table. My little brother peed on me at this table. I was rejected from summer camp at this table.”
I was baffled that Isabelle just told me all this, as if I had any knowledge of the characters of her life.
Who was the milkshake man? Was I supposed to ask?
Either way, oversharing seemed to be a good tactic, because I was immediately fascinated by her.
I saved this in my head as something I could try.
“You were not rejected from camp, you were rejected from summer school at Georgetown.” James turned to me. “And Felix peed his pants just because they got his order wrong. I’m pretty sure the staff still remembers him.”
“He peed on me. Cursed table.”
Mrs. Hartley tapped her nails on the wood, commanding my attention. “You’re enjoying it here?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“You say that now. Come two months earlier and this place would’ve been completely unrecognizable. All the tourists, their litter and their music. I hardly ever go outside in July.”
“Good thing you don’t actually live here in the summer,” Isabelle said.
“Who in their right mind would?”
“I don’t know, anyone who can’t afford to just jet off to Europe.”
“You’ve solved the issue of wealth inequality, darling.”
The waiter came by. Mr. Hartley ordered a beer.
Isabelle ordered a lemonade. Mrs. Hartley asked for a dirty martini.
“Extra dirty,” she said. “And I mean extra.” On the second extra, she winked at the waiter.
I couldn’t believe she pulled this off. Nobody had mentioned my eye, which was initially a relief, but grew distressing.
Their polite avoidance only made it more obvious.
You had to point out perversions, no matter how rude it was, otherwise they lingered, dominating the conversation from the background.
The talk here was about the weather. I said nothing and finished my wine.
“It’s been so ugly recently,” Isabelle said.
Isabelle’s face was not only beautiful but also unmarred.
It bore no spots, pores, or scars, not even makeup, no sign that it really existed in the world or had ever left some cold, private room.
Mrs. Hartley’s skin was the same. Though it dimpled when she smiled, it was otherwise glassy smooth.
I thought of the creams my mother bought in bulk on Black Friday.
Then I pinched my wrist for something else to focus on.
“Katie.” James nudged me. “What do you do?”
“What?” Someone had been talking to me. Mrs. Hartley just asked me what I did. “I don’t do anything,” I said. Everybody laughed. So, I thought, this was funny.
“That’s not true,” James said. “What about your art? You paint, and you have those curations.”
It had been a long time since I’d collected or collaged anything impressive, a habit I picked up when I stopped painting.
After James demanded to see more of my paintings on the night we met, I’d drunkenly showed him my pages of napkins, tickets, and things that looked like stars but weren’t meant to be stars. He’d said it showed taste.
“I like to make piles of things that resemble something else,” I said. “For example, leaves—”
“For work, darling,” said Mrs. Hartley.
I looked at James. He gave me a small smile. “I just graduated. Well, in May. But that still feels recent. James has been helping me—we met in March—”
“Dating a student?” She said to James. “Naughty.”
Mr. Hartley chuckled and patted James’s shoulder.
James blushed. I was mortified. “Barely,” I said.
The entire table was staring at me now. I looked at James, who looked back.
An understanding passed between us. Whatever he said would be taken either as defensiveness or acceptance, and both would validate Mrs. Hartley’s implication of there being something wrong between us.
I would be responsible for releasing the pressure of the conversation.
“I don’t think the two months between us meeting and my graduation made a big difference in my mental development,” I said. My voice came out serious and cold. I knew straightaway that I’d overdone it.
“That’s okay, darling,” Mrs. Hartley said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I reached for my glass. It was empty.
“And what have you been doing since graduation?”
“Working,” I said. “At my university’s law library. It’s not a real job, just my old work study.” I cleared my throat, embarrassed at having said aloud the words work study. And then I was surprised by my embarrassment, which was new.
“Law.” Mrs. Hartley tapped James’s arm from across the table. “Your friend Tabitha’s a lawyer. You should connect them.”
“Tabitha is studying contemporary dance in Australia,” said Isabelle.
“She’s always been very talented, hasn’t she?” Mrs. Hartley said, still looking at James. “You two were always so talented.”
Isabelle sipped her wine. Mrs. Hartley turned to me. “You know about James’s adventures with Isabelle and Tabitha, don’t you? They were like the Three Musketeers. They did everything together. Or, I suppose, Isabelle tried to keep up.”
Isabelle said nothing.
“Very endearing, you three,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Your boyfriend was the ringleader. You know this, I’m sure. His brains, astonishing. Did he tell you he spoke three languages as a toddler?”
“And forgot them all by elementary school,” James said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mrs. Hartley. “We made bets about what you would become. Walter went for diplomat, but I always said you’d be a writer. You remember that speech you gave at Isabelle’s sixteenth? Made all of us weep.”
“You were right, Julia,” James said. “Only now I just write copy for consumer-packaged goods.”
“Again with the self-deprecation,” said Mrs. Hartley.