2. Juliette
— ? —
Juliette
The Dean Foundation Spring Gala arrives before the anniversary has finished healing, and I am standing in Eleanor Dean’s ballroom wearing four thousand dollars’ worth of borrowed confidence and trying to remember that I chose this life.
The gala is the kind of event where the flowers cost more than most people’s mortgages and everyone air-kisses everyone else while mentally calculating net worth. I’ve been to seven of them now, one for every year I’ve known Zachary, and they never get easier.
“Juliette, darling.” Eleanor materializes beside me in a cloud of Chanel and disapproval. “You look lovely. Is that last season’s Marchesa?”
“It’s vintage.” I keep my voice light, the way you keep your voice light when you’re being knifed in a ballroom. “I found it at an estate sale in-”
“How resourceful of you.” She’s already looking past me, scanning the room for more important conversations. “I do admire your ability to make do. It’s very…” She pauses, and the pause is a weapon. “Plucky.”
Plucky. The word lands exactly where she aimed it. Not elegant. Not sophisticated. Plucky, like I’m a scrappy orphan in a Victorian novel, clutching my secondhand dress and hoping no one notices I don’t belong.
“Thank you,” I say, because what else can I say?
“Zachary is with the Thayer delegation by the bar. I’ve seated you at table nine for dinner.”
Table nine. I pull up the mental map of Eleanor’s seating charts, the elaborate social hierarchy she encodes in table numbers.
“I thought I’d be at the family table.”
“The family table is reserved for donors and board members tonight, darling. Surely you understand. The Harringtons specifically requested - well.” She waves a hand, dismissing six years of marriage with a gesture. “These things require delicate management.”
“Of course they do.”
“You know how these events are.” Eleanor’s hand lands on my arm, perfectly manicured nails pressing just slightly too hard. “The Prescotts will be at table nine. Lovely family. Patricia runs the auxiliary committee, very involved in the literacy initiative. I’m sure you’ll find plenty to discuss.”
The auxiliary committee. Not the foundation board. Not the donor circle. The auxiliary, where they put the wives who write checks but don’t make decisions.
“I should find my seat,” I say.
“That’s probably best. I believe they’re already on the second course.”
She’s gone before I’ve finished processing that I’m late to a table I didn’t know I’d been assigned to, gliding toward a cluster of foundation board members, serene in the certainty that no one has ever dared seat her at the overflow table.
I make it halfway across the room before Patricia Prescott intercepts me.
“Juliette!” She’s a small woman in her sixties, draped in enough pearls to anchor a yacht, and she’s smiling the way people smile right before they hurt you on purpose. “I was hoping I’d catch you before dinner ended. We missed you at the literacy committee meeting last Tuesday.”
“I wasn’t aware there was a meeting.”
“Oh, how strange.” Her brow furrows with rehearsed concern.
“I could have sworn Eleanor said she’d told you.
We discussed the summer reading program, made some decisions about the volunteer schedule…
” She trails off, letting the implication settle.
“But I’m sure she just forgot. She’s been so busy with the gala. ”
She didn’t forget. Eleanor has never forgotten anything in her life. Forgetting would require a lapse in control, and Eleanor Dean does not lapse.
“I’ll catch up on the minutes,” I say.
“Of course you will.” Patricia’s hand finds my elbow, steering me toward the edge of the room with maternal pressure.
“You know, it’s so important to stay involved.
Some of the younger wives, they think showing up to the galas is enough, but the real work happens in the committees.
The relationships. The-” She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “The visibility.”
“I appreciate the advice.”
“I just hate to see you sidelined, dear. You have so much potential.” Her grip tightens slightly. “If you ever need guidance on navigating these waters, I’m always happy to help. God knows Eleanor can be… particular.”
The sympathy is worse than the snub. At least Eleanor’s cruelty is honest.
“That’s very kind of you.”
“We girls have to stick together.” She releases my elbow with a final pat. “Now go find your seat. The Morrisons have been asking about you.”
They haven’t. I’m certain they haven’t. But I smile and nod and make my way toward table nine, where my place card is waiting next to the emergency exit, as far from the family table as it’s physically possible to be while still remaining in the same ballroom.
I met my husband beside an emergency exit. Eleanor has no idea she’s seated me on theme.
I’m almost there when the crowd shifts and gives me a clear line to the bar.
Zachary is standing exactly where Eleanor said he’d be, but he’s not with the Thayer delegation. He’s with Nicole Dunne.
Nicole, who dated him for years before I existed.
Nicole, whose family has been intertwined with the Deans since their grandparents shared a summer house in the Hamptons.
Nicole, who Eleanor still invites to every family event and seats at the family table and mentions in the tone that means this is who he should have married.
She’s got her hand on his arm.
Not aggressively, not possessively. Just casually, like touching him is something she’s entitled to. Like she has a permanent claim that my ring doesn’t supersede.
They’re laughing. His head is tilted toward her in that way he tilts when he’s actually listening, actually present, and I try to remember the last time he tilted toward me like that and come up empty.
I could turn around. Find table nine. Eat my dinner and make small talk and pretend I didn’t see my husband looking at another woman like she’s the most interesting person in the room.
But I’ve spent six years pretending, and I’m tired.
I cross the room with my shoulders back and my chin up and my heart doing a thing I refuse to examine until I’m alone with wine.
“Zachary.” I reach for his hand because I need to be touching him, need to establish that whatever claim Nicole thinks she has, I have paperwork. “I was looking for you.”
His face rearranges itself when he sees me. Guilt, maybe. Or the expression he gets when two parts of his life collide in ways he’d prefer to manage separately.
“Jules.” He squeezes my hand but doesn’t pull me closer. “You remember Nicole.”
“Of course.” I turn my smile toward her. “Nicole. It’s been a while.”
“Juliette.” Her smile is immaculate, the smile of a woman who learned to weaponize politeness before she learned long division. “I was just telling Zach about the sailing trip. Do you remember, Zach? The summer your father’s boat lost its rigging off Martha’s Vineyard?”
Zach. The nickname scrapes.
“I don’t think I’ve heard this one,” I say.
“Oh, it’s a classic.” Nicole’s laugh is musical, practiced. “We were stranded for hours. Zachary had to flag down a passing yacht by waving his shirt over his head like a castaway. Very heroic. Very…” She glances at him with an expression uncomfortably close to ownership. “Very Zach.”
“That was a long time ago,” Zachary says.
“Some things stay with you.” Nicole’s hand is still on his arm. Still hasn’t moved. “We practically grew up on that boat. Remember the summer we sailed to Nantucket? You swore you’d never set foot on land again.”
“And yet,” I say. “Here he is. Landlocked. Married.”
Nicole’s smile holds, but it costs her.
“Landlocked,” she repeats, recovering, tasting the word. “That’s one way to describe Boston.”
“It’s the nautical way. I thought you’d appreciate it.”
I don’t have a story about a boat. I don’t have summers in the Hamptons or childhood nicknames or years of shared history that predates me. I have six years and a ring and a husband who won’t look at me while his ex-girlfriend reminisces about their adolescence.
“That sounds lovely,” I say into the pause. “Zachary, can I steal you for a moment?”
“Of course.” He’s already disengaging, already moving with me, and I should feel victorious. I don’t. I’ve won a contest no one else was competing in. “Nicole, excuse us.”
“Of course.” Her smile doesn’t waver. “We should catch up more later, Zach. Your mother mentioned wanting to discuss the literacy initiative. Apparently I’m being recruited.”
Of course she is.
I wait until we’re out of earshot before I speak.
“Eleanor seated me at table nine.”
“What?” He frowns. “That can’t be right.”
“She said the family table is for donors and board members tonight. Apparently the Harringtons required delicate management.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“When?”
“What?”
“When will you talk to her?” I stop walking, forcing him to stop with me. “Tonight? Tomorrow? At the next gala, when she seats me in the parking lot?”
“Jules-”
“I’m not asking you to start a war, Zachary. I’m asking you to notice that this keeps happening.”
“I notice.”
“Do you? Because I’ve been noticing for six years, and I’m starting to wonder if we’re looking at the same thing.”
His jaw tightens. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is table nine.”
“I said I’ll talk to her.”
“You say that every time.” My voice is steady, but something underneath it is cracking. “And then you don’t, or you do and nothing changes, and I end up at another table with another set of wives who look at me like I’m a cautionary tale about marrying above your station.”
“Is that what you think this is?”
“I think your mother thinks this is temporary. I think she’s been waiting six years for you to come to your senses.
And I think-” I stop, because the next words are too honest for a ballroom.
“I just wanted five minutes with my husband. That’s all.
Five minutes where I’m not competing with your family or your ex-girlfriend or whatever crisis needs managing tonight. ”
“You’re not competing.”
“Then why does it feel like I’m losing?”