Chapter 3 #2
The tightness of Anne’s smile didn’t cancel out her genuine amusement. The dry affection in James’s voice sounded just like her own wry, fond responses to Sadie’s rants about quantitative meter, or when she’d wax lyrical on the topic of Stella McCartney’s fabric draping.
Come to think of it, in some respects, Arthur was a bit like Sadie.
“James,” she said.
He stopped at the French doors and turned around.
“How did you know?”
The question left her mouth before Anne had a chance to realize it was there.
She gripped the rosé bottle harder, deeply regretting that it was unopened.
For some reason, she felt horribly exposed, like she’d pulled open her sternum, shown her ex-husband the bones and meat and gristle that disproved the lie of her smooth surface.
“How did I know I was gay?” A note of wariness lanced James’s voice.
No. Anne didn’t want to know about that. She’d never wanted to know about that. Never would. “How did you know about Arthur? That he was—the one?” It hurt to say. “That you loved him?”
“Well,” James said slowly. “I didn’t know, for a little while. And then—I just knew. All at once. Are you sure you want to hear this, Anne?”
Absolutely not. And yet something inside Anne pushed her forward. “I asked, didn’t I?”
“We were having dinner at Spago, about six, seven weeks after I met him. The conversation turned to dream trips. Bucket list items. You know.”
James had always hated vacations. They’d taken him away from his work. “Go on.”
“Arthur said he was planning to spend a few weeks in Europe later that year. Hole away in some renovated chateau in France, do nothing but go for long walks, drink wine, eat cheese, watch the stars. And I thought, We could do that together. Then I thought, I can’t not do that with him.
I can’t be apart from him. I have to be with him.
And then I thought, I can’t live without him. Simple as that.”
“Simple,” Anne echoed. Her heart knocked painfully against her ribs. “How could it be simple?”
James shrugged. A gentle smile opened his face and made it look so much younger than his sixty-five years. “With Arthur, everything’s simple.”
Once he’d gone outside, Anne stood there, unable to move. She watched James through the doors while he put a hand on his husband’s shoulder, leaning in as though he couldn’t bear another minute away.
On the other side of the deck, Sadie laughed so loudly that Anne could feel it hum through her body.
“I need another drink,” she said to nobody and then went to open the rosé.
It was a party, after all, so she wouldn’t store the bottle in the pantry, next to the crate of wine hidden inside a back cabinet.
Hidden for no reason at all, really, except that, for some reason, Anne didn’t want Sadie to see it.
* * *
A good hostess always sat apart from her spouse at dinner.
Of course, Anne hadn’t had a spouse in nearly five years, but as her co-organizer, Sadie was a little like a spouse, at least when it came to dining-party etiquette.
So Anne sat at one end of the long dining table and Sadie sat at the other, each responsible for ensuring the guests nearest to them had a nice time.
Because it was impolite to cluster family together, Claire and Arthur were at Sadie’s end while Anne had Sadie’s son and daughter-in-law on either side of her with Brooke, Brooke’s husband Dan, and James in the middle.
Seat me across from Dan, I’ll take the bullet, James had texted Anne that morning—probably the best birthday gift he could give her.
Honestly, Anne found Sadie’s family easier to relax around than her own.
Hal was a pretty remarkable kid, only a couple years out of business school and already an internal auditor for Disney.
His wife, Talisha, a lawyer, had the kind of sharp intelligence behind her eyes that was obvious to anyone who knew how to look.
As much as Sadie loved Hal, she hated the professional choices he’d made.
“For God’s sake, Sadie, he’s an accountant,” Anne had told her once. “Successful, kind, smart. He worships you. He’s never given you a second’s worth of trouble. I don’t understand how you could be even the slightest bit disappointed by him.”
“He’s an accountant for Disney.” Like it was a crime.
“That brilliant brain, that gorgeous heart, and he throws away those gifts on generating more profit for one of the world’s richest corporations.
I used to hope he’d show interest in rabbinical school, I told him repeatedly we need more Black Jews on the bimah, but—oh, Talisha—now there’s someone who’s giving back to the world.
An environmental rights lawyer! Thank God he married her. Maybe she’ll rub off on him.”
They’d rubbed off on each other, apparently. Talisha was five months along and glowing, her dark skin rich beneath the lights that illuminated the dining table.
“Have you two discussed names yet?” Anne took a delicate bite of her salmon sashimi. She’d had Nobu include a separate order of lamb rosemary miso for Talisha, who couldn’t eat raw fish at the moment. A good hostess always made sure her guests’ dietary restrictions were seamlessly addressed.
“Right now, Elijah and Ayana are the front-runners.” Hal grinned. “Although Mom is pushing hard for Sonnet or Barnabas. I told her we’d take them under consideration.”
“We will absolutely not take them under consideration,” Talisha cut in. “Baby, you know how I feel”—a quick glance at the end of the table, where Sadie sat engrossed in conversation—“about your mom’s name preferences.”
Hal’s full name was Halston Du Bois Abraham Rosenthal-Clark.
His mother had named her only child after her favorite fashion designer, her favorite intellectual, and her favorite grandfather, using the same madcap principle with which she decorated and dressed: assembling from a rich bag of treasures.
Apparently, as a child, it had taken Hal years to learn how to spell the entire thing.
“With all due respect to Hal,” Anne said, “I agree strongly.”
The corner of Talisha’s mouth quirked.
“I like Sonnet!” Hal protested. “And Barnabas isn’t the worst name I’ve ever heard. Anyway, I don’t think it’s terrible to let her think she’s helping. It makes Mom happy to feel like she’s participating in the whole thing.”
“‘The whole thing,’ meaning the fetus inside my body,” Talisha said wryly.
As important as Sadie was to Anne, she could readily admit that Sadie wasn’t exactly an ideal mother-in-law. “I’ll get her to back off.”
Talisha sighed. “Good luck. Anyway, she’s stopped bringing it up in the last couple weeks. I guess she’s had other things on her mind lately. You know, that job.”
A few days earlier, Sadie had reacted so strangely when Anne mentioned UCLA. Maybe Talisha and Hal knew more. “What about Sadie’s job?”
“The one she might take at Barnard College,” Hal said. “In New York?”
Every molecule of Anne’s skin seemed to tighten instantly. Her vision tunneled rapidly, blackening at the edges until all she could see was the oval of Hal’s unperturbed face.
“New York,” she repeated. The syllables felt thick and clumsy in her mouth.
Oh God, hadn’t Sadie said something vague a few days ago about an upcoming trip to Manhattan?
For the few seconds Anne had thought about it, she’d assumed Sadie was visiting her brother. “Barnard? Barnard. In—New York City?”
“Oh shit.” Hal glanced at Talisha. “Mom hasn’t told you yet? Shit. I’m sorry.”
“We don’t really know how it all works,” Talisha added, looking a little embarrassed, “but Sadie told us yesterday that they reached out—something about a failed search—and asked her to apply. Invited her for a pro forma campus interview. Apparently they want…”
Anne couldn’t look at Talisha, couldn’t move.
Talisha’s voice began to jumble in Anne’s ears, words tumbling over themselves until they detached from meaning and became pure noise.
New York. Sadie had applied to a job in New York.
Sadie was going to interview in New York. Sadie might move to New York.
Sadie might leave her.
“Is she planning to accept?” Anne’s voice cracked on the only question that mattered. “Does she want to take the job?”
Talisha set her fork down on her plate. “I don’t think she knows what she wants to do yet. The campus visit isn’t for a couple of weeks anyway.”
That sent a few more pumps of oxygen back into Anne’s lungs. But it wasn’t a reprieve, just a possible stay of execution. “What about—” Me. What about me? “You two? The baby? She wouldn’t leave California right before the birth of her first grandchild?”
“Apparently, it’s a really big deal,” Hal said quietly.
“An endowed position at a prestigious liberal arts college, which means a lot more money and a lot more time to write than she has now. I really don’t—Anne, you should talk to her yourself.
I just assumed she’d folded you in on this.
I mean, you’re Mom’s best friend. This impacts you, too, obviously. ”
Obviously.
The strangest thing was beginning to happen. Anne, motionless in her chair, could feel the room slipping away, as if the furniture beneath and around her had become runny paint.
Sadie sat across the table from Anne, at the far end, but Anne couldn’t look in her direction.
“I’ll talk to her,” she managed.
The rest of the dinner passed in a blur. Someone else spoke through Anne’s mouth, someone who wasn’t Anne. Through her haze of shock, Anne could feel a small pinch of gratitude for this calm voice that took over.
Plates were cleared—by whom, Anne didn’t see. The lights were dimmed—by whom, Anne didn’t know. And when a cake with blazing candles was set down in front of her and the room filled with singing, Anne forced her mouth to lift in a counterfeit smile.
On her shoulders, she felt the hands of the person who’d set down the cake in front of her. Sadie’s hands. Warm, strong. They were ink-stained, Anne knew. Sadie had tried as hard as she could to scrub them before the party, but the marks wouldn’t come off. They never came off.
When the singing stopped, Anne let her lungs fill with air, then extinguished the candles. Soft clapping rose around her. For a dazed moment, Anne wondered why anyone would ever want to applaud when the light had just gone out.
Sadie squeezed her shoulders. I’m here, that squeeze said.
When she was a girl, maybe eight or nine and in unrequited love with the future, Anne, always hovering during her mother’s nightly cold cream ritual, had received permission to look through the jewelry case on the dressing table.
“One piece, five minutes, then put it back,” Mother had said, not looking, and Anne had traced the edges of her favorite brooch, a cluster of Tahitian pearls nearly the size of her small palm.
Tried to memorize the feeling of it in her hand, its contours, the quiet pleasure of guarding something this precious.
Tried not to think: Just three more minutes left before I have to give this back. Two more minutes. One.