18. Gobble Gobble #2
Davi and Liam could probably have wild, crazy sex in her room without anyone knowing, but she adores Mrs. Wully and would never want to disappoint her. And, too, Davi can’t afford to get Honor Boarded.
But since they have some leeway, Davi invites Liam to watch a movie in the common room of South.
They choose something called The Holdovers, which is about—wait for it!—kids who have been left behind over holiday break at a boarding school.
“Life imitates art,” Liam says.
The movie is good, almost too good for Davi to be distracted—though she is a little distracted, because she and Liam are alone in a dark room with no one else around.
She lies across one sofa, and although she assumed Liam would lie across the other sofa, he’s chosen to sit on the floor in front of Davi.
Eventually he leans back, his head is at her shins, and she becomes fixated with the color of his hair.
When he got to Tiffin, it was a light strawberry blond, but now it’s darker—the red, russet, and gold of autumn leaves.
Davi imagines giving him a scalp massage, then moving her hands down to knead his neck and shoulders.
But she keeps her hands tucked demurely under her pillow and her eyes (mostly) on the screen. Chasing is still Out.
When the credits roll, Liam gets to his feet and offers Davi a hand to pull her up. She doesn’t want their parting to be weird, but she’d also like him to go before Mrs. Wully appears. She reaches up to hug him, and he squeezes her so tightly, he lifts her off the ground.
“You’re tiny,” he says.
Before she can think of a witty response (all that comes to mind is “You’re big,” which feels cringey), Liam’s phone buzzes with a text.
He holds it out for Davi to see: a picture of Pippa with a tall, imposing blond man—her father, Davi assumes—drinking martinis next to Romy Mars and Sofia Coppola at the Polo Bar.
“That could be you,” Davi says.
“Nah,” Liam says. “I’m good right here.”
He puts an arm around Davi and holds his phone out to snap a selfie. Before Davi can protest—her hair is matted, she isn’t even wearing concealer—she hears the swooping noise. He’s sent the picture to Pippa.
And just like that, Davi thinks, they’re in their own movie.
Charley’s train is half an hour late getting into Baltimore’s Penn Station.
Every seat was taken, people were standing in the aisles, and even the Quiet Car felt like a frat party, especially after some dude in a Dartmouth sweatshirt spilled his Bud Light on Charley’s copy of Amity Gaige’s Heartwood.
“Seriously?” Charley whispered to him.
“Deadass,” he said. Then, “I need to take a leak. Where’s the pisser on this worm?” And everyone shushed him.
It’s almost ten when Charley enters the grand concourse with its majestic stained glass ceiling and giant schedule board.
Charley thinks of all the times she and her mother would come pick up her father returning from a trip to DC; back then, the board was manually operated and made a clickety-clacking sound that Charley loved.
Charley searches for her mother, then sends a text: Where are you?
Is it too much to ask for Fran to be waiting so they can get home?
Is she out front, idling in the car? Charley is about to go check when Fran sends a text back. Paying my tab, be right there.
Charley sits on the top of her roller bag; her head drops forward on her neck.
Her eyes burn, she’s too tired to pull out her book and read.
She misses East already; that morning at Tiffin feels like three days ago.
She should have just gotten off the train in New York and spent Thanksgiving with East. She has no desire to endure one more holiday with her mother and Joey.
“Charlotte.”
Charley looks up. Her mother is wearing her good navy coat and gold hoop earrings. Her hair is down. She looks pretty but unfocused. The only time Fran calls Charley “Charlotte” is when she’s angry or she’s been drinking.
“Where were you?” Charley asks.
“Brass Tap, across the street.”
Charley huffs.
“You were late,” Fran says. “And I had to leave Linda Stevenson’s party to come get you.”
“Sorry to be such a burden,” Charley says. “I could have taken an Uber.”
“But you’re home for Thanksgiving!” Fran says and she finally snatches Charley up in a hug. “My baby is home!”
“Exactly,” Charley grumbles into her mother’s shoulder.
When Fran pulls away, she hands Charley the car keys. “I think you’d better drive.”
On the way back to Towson, Charley listens to Fran’s grievances.
Joey refused to attend the Stevensons’ annual night-before-Thanksgiving party, famous for ending with all the respectable adults in Charley’s neighborhood throwing back Sex on the Beach shots and dancing to ’80s music.
(Does Charley blame Joey for taking a pass?
Charley has attended this party herself many times—she was perennially recruited to babysit the younger kids—and she can’t unsee Mr. Stevenson dancing to Frankie Goes to Hollywood on top of the kitchen island.)
“All I asked is that he make an appearance,” Fran says. “He told me it’s an old-person party and that everyone talks down to him…”
This is probably true, Charley thinks. Linda Stevenson is the head of human resources at Brown Brothers, and the other parents are all doctors at Hopkins and big shots at Wells Fargo and Constellation Energy. Joey works for Fran, planting rhododendrons.
“I’m sure he wanted to stay home so he could talk to his girlfriend,” Fran says.
Charley raises an eyebrow. “I thought you guys were in counseling.”
“We are,” Fran says. “It isn’t helping. He won’t come clean about the affair he’s been having. He won’t let me near his phone.”
Charley isn’t sure what to say. She’s desperate for her mother and Joey to split, but she can’t bear to see her mother suffering.
And yet, Charley thinks, she has no one to blame but herself.
When Charley wakes up on Thursday morning, she FaceTimes East. At the last minute, O’Malley persuaded Jesse Eastman to drive out to the Hamptons house.
“She wanted an ‘off-season coastal holiday vibe,’” East says, using air quotes.
“And since she keeps my father’s nuts in her Birkin, that’s where we are.
” He points the phone out the window so Charley can see the moody striations of amber sand, ocean the color of bluestone slate, and a gunmetal sky.
It’s far more beautiful than the view out Charley’s window; next door, Mr. Dunwiddy is struggling with his Christmas lights. “There’s nothing to do out here.”
“You could walk on the beach,” Charley says.
“By myself?” East says. He flops back on his bed and holds up a copy of Natchez Burning; Charley found it for him in the stacks of the Sink, thinking he’d like Greg Iles. “I’m going to read, I guess.”
Charley sighs. She loves him so much it’s stupid.
She ventures downstairs, fully expecting to find her mother elbow-deep in sweet potatoes—but the only person in the kitchen is Joey.
Shit, Charley thinks. She nearly turns around, but she’ll perish without coffee.
“Hey, Charley,” Joey says. He has kept his hair short, and he appears to have been working out; he’s lost his gut, and his arms and shoulders are huge. “I got sesame bagels and scallion cream cheese, your favorite.”
Charley almost smiles. As good as Chef Haz’s cooking is, she’s been dreaming about a toasted sesame bagel with scallion cream cheese from THB.
“Thanks.”
“How’s school?” Joey asks. “How’s everyone?”
Charley pours herself coffee, then pulls a bagel from the white paper bag on the counter, slices it in half, and drops it in the toaster.
She refuses to indulge Joey’s fantasy of a pleasant catch-up conversation, and she resents the way he’s asking after “everyone.” Joey ambushed Charley’s Family Weekend the year before, essentially setting the female population of Tiffin aflame.
They all thought he was a DILF; it’s enough to make Charley hurl.
“Where’s my mother?” she asks.
“Still in bed,” Joey says. “She had quite a night.”
Yes, Charley thinks. After they got home from the train station, Fran marched defiantly back to the Stevensons’ house. If she hurried, she said, she could make it before they played George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90.”
As Charley’s bagel pops up from the toaster, she gets a funny-bad feeling. Joey rose early to go to Towson Hot Bagels, which is where Charley used to work. Her best friend, Beatrix, also works there—but would Beatrix have been working Thanksgiving morning?
“Did you see Beatrix when you went to get the bagels?” Charley asks. Fran thinks Joey is having an affair, and Beatrix has long been certain that Joey is obsessed with her. Charley ruled out a Joey-and-Beatrix romance because it would be so insane. But what if…?
“Who?” Joey says.
“Never mind,” Charley says.
Back upstairs, Charley climbs into bed to read The Goldfinch, a book Mav suggested for her since it is, in part, about a painting.
Tomorrow, Charley is planning on going to the Walters Art Museum, and on Saturday, the Baltimore Museum of Art, though she won’t tell East this. He resents all things Mav-related.
Eventually, cooking smells waft up from the kitchen. Charley sends her mother a text: What time are we eating?
5 p.m., her mother says. But downstairs at 4 p.m., please. I’m making charcuterie and the Ravens are on.
Not a chance, Charley thinks. Her goal is to have as little contact with Joey as possible.
But by midafternoon, Charley is feeling froggy.
She texted Beatrix to see if she wanted to go for a walk, but Beatrix didn’t respond.
Charley hopes that’s because she’s visiting her grandmother at the retirement community in Bel Air and not because she’s angry at Charley.
(Charley half-assed her “help” with Beatrix’s college essay, fixing only syntax and punctuation.) Or worse, avoiding Charley because she’s sleeping with Joey.