Chapter 15
Jocelyn’s parlor was dense with people. Servers threaded through the crowd, offering canapés.
Gardenias and white freesia stood in black earthenware vessels with rough patinas that promised that each vessel was at least one hundred years old.
Emily didn’t absorb these details, nor did she notice Jocelyn’s smile of welcome from across the room, where she was engaged in conversation with a senator. Emily couldn’t look away from Gen.
Gen accepted a glass of wine. Her white dress shirt was rolled at the undone cuffs and looked sharp, hewing closely to her body.
Gen had been impatient about clothes when they were younger, but Emily once read a profile of her in a glossy magazine that described her closet: extensive in its wardrobe and meticulously ordered.
It was a small detail—the news that Gen had become tidy and now cared about clothes—but it had given Emily a pang to look at the photos and realize that she didn’t know Gen anymore.
Emily wondered whether Gen had grown into her fame and accepted that designer clothes came with the territory, or if, long ago, she had hidden a wish for better clothes because she couldn’t afford them.
Emily wondered what else about Gen might have changed…
or been revealed. Emily had read that profile about four years ago, so maybe that wardrobe had been given away or left behind with yet another ex-girlfriend.
Emily was at a spa when she had read the profile, the appointment booked by Jack as a Mother’s Day present.
Gen looked good in the photos. Confident.
The sight of her—and the fact that this was just a flat image, that Gen was now a stranger—squeezed Emily’s chest. She stole the magazine.
It felt hot in her hand. She wanted to read the profile again later, but when she left the spa, it occurred to her that Jack might find the magazine and leaf through it.
She dropped it into a bin on the street corner.
“Okay, but she broke bones, ” Gen told the interviewer when asked how she felt about being celebrated for that moment.
“I get why people are interested in what I did but it’s stupid for me to be the focus when she literally broke her body in her determination to win.
” The interviewer said, “Does this mean you believe that what you did was nothing?” “No,” Gen said, and Emily, as she read the profile, could hear the dogged tone in her voice.
“I’m saying there are different ways to be something .
I don’t know why you’re not interviewing her . ”
Even now, in Jocelyn’s parlor, Gen didn’t acknowledge Emily’s presence. Emily couldn’t tell if she had been seen and ignored or if Gen hadn’t yet noticed that she was in the room. Gen smiled guardedly at a man speaking to her. When Emily approached and their gaze met, Gen’s smile fell.
“Hi,” said Emily.
“Hello,” said the man, ruffled by the interruption.
“Will you please excuse us?” Gen said to him. “This is an old friend.”
“Of course. I’ll find you later, Ms. Hall.”
They waited until he had moved away. Determined to keep her voice light, Emily said, “How are you?”
“Ah, fine.” Mouth flat, Gen said, “I don’t know how to make small talk with you.”
“It’s not so hard. You can say, ‘It’s been a while,’ and I’ll say, ‘Too long,’ and I’ll ask how you know Jocelyn.”
“She accosted me at the Met Gala.”
“And I’ll say, ‘I bet she was charming. She always is.’?”
“True.”
“And it’s for a good cause.”
“I should have written a check and stayed at home,” Gen muttered. “I wasn’t made for this sort of party. Not like you.”
“We’re not so different.”
“If you say so.”
“I always thought we had a lot in common. Not just where we grew up. I guess it’s because, when we were younger, you were the only person who really knew me.”
Gen’s stiffness eased. “Yeah. I thought that, too. But that’s not small talk.”
“I’ll say, ‘Where’s home these days?’?”
“Here. New York. For now.”
Emily’s pulse, which had jumped when she met Gen’s eyes across the room, kept its quick pace.
“Any more questions in your small-talk repertoire?” Gen said.
Emily hesitated, unsure if Gen had had enough of her company and this was a way to indicate that the conversation should come to an end.
Gen added, “I like your questions. I want to answer them. You surprised me. I don’t mean to be rude. ”
“How’s your gran?”
“Good,” said Gen fondly. “Stubborn. I tried to buy her a place with a pool. She’s got arthritis and I thought this might help, but she told me, and I quote, to save my pennies.
She said she had no use for a pool, unless it was for the chickens to swim in.
Then she reminded me, in case I had forgotten, being so far from my roots, that chickens can’t swim. ”
“They can’t?”
“They sink after a while.”
“That is hilarious and sad. I bet chickens are jealous of ducks.”
“I mean, I am. Ducks have such nice feathers and people feed them bread.”
“So Nella’s still on the farm?”
“I paid off the mortgage.”
“When you got the Nike endorsement?”
“You’ve been keeping up on me?”
“Gen. Everyone keeps up on you.”
“You’re not everyone.”
“I always wanted to ask…” Emily trailed off, unsure if a question that was more than a decade old was one better left unanswered. “Was Nella mad at me, on my eighteenth birthday?”
“She was mad, but not at you. She thought you were in a tough place. Said we were both too young.” Emily heard the double meaning of this: too young to know what to say or do, and too young to be together forever. “We were,” Gen added.
Emily spoke quickly, while she still had the courage: “I’d like to see you again.”
Gen looked into her wineglass, then set it down on a console. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It was nice to run into you. I have to find that guy from earlier before he finds me, so I don’t get cornered. I’m going to make him donate a lot of money.”
Emily watched Gen leave. A server whisked away Gen’s half-finished glass. Emily felt a solitary distress.
“You made it,” Jocelyn said, kissing her cheek. Then she looked more closely at Emily’s face. “What’s wrong?”
Emily didn’t stay long after that. She returned to her empty studio apartment.
She left the lamps off, the apartment visible enough in the city light cast through the windows.
As she set her keys and phone on the kitchen counter, she glanced down at her hand.
She still wore her wedding ring. She had been wearing it, she realized, while she had spoken with Gen. She took it off.
The next morning, as early as was socially acceptable, she called Jocelyn. She had a favor to ask.
Emily was about to use the number Jocelyn had given her, but Gen called first. “I still remember your home phone number back in Ohio,” Gen said when Emily answered, “but I had to ask Jocelyn for this one.”
“That’s funny. I asked her for yours.” Emily leaned against the wall.
She could see the texture of its paint. She shut her eyes.
Had she always been capable of this—speaking in a carefree tone when something was too important?
As if she hadn’t flushed the moment that she heard Gen’s voice, hadn’t felt the pink stain her cheeks as though she were a piece of fruit gone ripe.
Emily was filled with a hot, private anticipation. “Why did you call?”
“I do want to see you.”
“Even if it’s a bad idea?”
“Yes.”