Chapter 2
My mother used to say, “The only way you’ll get yourself a man is if you sew your mouth shut.
” Actually, what she used to say was, If you sew your stupid, stupid mouth shut.
Anyway, it was good advice as it turned out.
When I met Roy, he would tell me, “You’re so sweet and quiet.
I love that about you. You’re like an oasis of calm in the chaos of life. ”
It would serve me well to remember that, I think—too late, obviously.
A hush has descended on the proceedings. You could hear a brioche crumb drop.
“Jodie!” Roy barks finally, shock and dismay etched all over his handsome face. Then Meredith drops her champagne flute, sending pieces of glass scattering all over the stone floor.
I get up. “I’ll clean it up.” I just need a moment anyway, and I rush to the kitchen, take a deep breath, then return with a broom and pan.
“Jodie, leave it,” Roy snaps when I return. “Marie will do it.”
Except Marie is standing as still as everyone else, gazing at Roy with something like pity mixed with helplessness.
She makes a show of looking around for a clear spot to put down her tray, as if she’d really like to help rather than watch the lady of the house on her hands and knees mopping the floor, but what can she do?
“It’s fine,” I say. I’m crouching by Meredith, who has moved by one-tenth of an inch. “I’ve got to get the cake anyway.” I’m barely out the door with my pan full of glass when I hear Meredith ask in a low voice. “Is she all right?”
I stop and listen, but I can’t make out the rest.
In the kitchen, I stand at the sink and bite my knuckle so hard, my teeth leave a perfect half-circle of white indentations. I have to calm down. I can’t mess this up.
I close my eyes and picture my roses outside the window, shimmering little droplets of water clinging to their velvet petals.
I think of the drapes I saw at Williams-Sonoma that I’ve been wanting to buy for our bedroom, creamy linen with messy garlands of roses, birds, and butterflies.
I can just imagine what they would look like on our windows, gently billowing in the spring breeze.
There. That’s better. I open my eyes, pick up the pan, and empty it into the trash.
Then I lift the Black Forest cake with buttercream frosting and dark chocolate ganache drips from the cooling rack and put it on the cake plate.
I get the toffee shards I made earlier from the refrigerator and carefully arrange them on top of the cake.
I open the drawer and take out a packet of tall, thin birthday candles.
I put a single one in the middle. It’s not a big birthday, and what grown man wants to blow out forty-three candles anyway?
Who wants all that spittle and germs on their chocolate drip?
Nobody. I’ll ask him to snuff it out between his fingers, or I’ll do it for him.
Marie walks in and puts down a pile of dirty plates on the counter. She flicks the trash can open with the foot pedal, about to scrape the contents of a dirty plate into it.
I glance at the broken glass on top of the trash.
“Actually, Marie, I’ll do that.”
She looks at me with surprise, but before she has a chance to object, I’ve taken the dirty plate from her. “Can you make sure everyone out there has a full glass of champagne, please? I’m going to bring out the birthday cake.”
“Very well, Mrs. Davies.”
“Thank you.”
I wait until she’s gone and go back to studying my creation.
Then I move one of the delicate toffee shapes slightly to the side.
There. That will mark the piece that I’ll cut for Meredith.
I retrieve the thinnest, sharpest shards of glass from the trash and examine them in my hand.
I select one that’s both long and jagged, and push it into the cake, right where I put the piece of toffee that marks Meredith’s slice.
It’s not that I hate her, it’s just that I didn’t like the way she spoke about my baby, how lucky it was that I lost it.
I never had a baby on the way; I just ordered the fake test online.
Those tests always come back positive when you pee on them.
That’s the point, but still. Meredith didn’t know that.
And I don’t think you should talk about other women’s babies like that. Even if they were never real.
I’m about to push in another shard of glass when Eileen walks in unsteadily, an empty bottle of champagne dangling from her fingers. I spin my head around so fast my hair flicks into my eyes.
She freezes, staring at the cake. I swallow, scrambling for excuses, when she blurts, “My God, Jodie, that looks incredible.”
I let out a breath. “Thank you, Eileen.” I open the trash with my foot and brush my hands over it.
“You’re so talented. That must have taken hours.”
“I love cooking, so you know, it’s not a chore or anything.”
“Lucky Roy. My husband will be flirting with you all night once he sees this, if he hasn’t already. Now. I’m on a mission, so don’t let me get distracted. We need one more bottle of champagne.” She holds the empty bottle up.
“There are lots more of those in the refrigerator,” I say lightly. My heart is still racing. I smooth my hair back and tuck it behind my ear.
Eileen tilts her head at me. “You know, you really do look like her.”
I return to rearranging bits of toffee on my cake. “Who?”
“Deborah.”
“You think so? It’s hard to tell from a painting.”
“I was looking at her photo earlier, the one on the console table in the hall,” she says. “Wait. I’ll show you.” She puts down the empty bottle on the counter.
“No,” I say quickly. “You don’t need to show me.”
“Just wait. I’ll be right back.”
I press my fingers against my eyelids. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
“There,” she says. She has returned, triumphantly holding the photo up. It’s a vacation snap of Deborah standing on a boat deck with the gray sea behind her. She’s in three-quarter profile, grinning broadly at the camera, her hair swept back by the wind.
“Look.” Eileen holds up the photo right in front of my face.
I glance at it and shrug, then pick up a knife and smooth some of the buttercream. “Like I said, Roy has a type.”
“No, look. It’s the ears,” she says, frowning now. “So interesting…” She touches her own earlobe. “Most people have hanging earlobes. Yours are attached, like Deborah’s. And the shape of your ears is very distinctive. It’s quite unusual that you’d both have them.”
She frowns at me, holding the frame against her chest, waiting for me to agree, I guess. I take the photograph from her and put it on the counter, face down.
“You wanted some more champagne?” I say.
She blinks. “Right! Yes. Thank you.” She opens the refrigerator. “You’re probably related, you know. Quite closely, I’d say. What an amazing coincidence that would be! I must tell Roy. You could be cousins—”
I’ve slammed the fridge door shut, making her jump. I smile to soften the blow. “We’re not cousins.”
Eileen has gone pale. “I…”
“I like you, Eileen, truly. But don’t say anything to Roy. You know what he’s like. Talking about Deborah upsets him, you understand?”
She stares at me, her face twitching. She nods. “I didn’t… I…”
I open the refrigerator again and take out a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. I hand it to her. “Here you are, Eileen. And please ask Roy to open it. He loves opening bottles of champagne.”
She nods, takes the bottle from me, and stares at it like she’s reading the label, but her mouth is shaking. “I’m sorry if I—”
“Not at all. Just don’t mention it to Roy. Like I said, it would upset him. And it’s not even true, so…” I smile, shoulders shrugging up. “You’d upset him for nothing.”
She blinks, nods a lot. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking.”
“No harm done, Eileen. But I do need your assurance that you won’t say anything.”
“God, I promise I won’t. I won’t breathe a word.”
“Thank you, Eileen.”
She walks away even more unsteadily than before, hugging her bottle.
I watch her leave, then light the candle and stare at the cake for a few moments. I shake my head, chuckling to myself, and retrieve the glass shard I’d inserted into Meredith’s slice of cake.
I shake my head. Don’t be silly, I chide myself. You’re not going to make friends that way!