Текст книги "Luckiest Girl Alive"

Автор книги: Jessica Knoll

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

“Nice to see you,” I replied, which I’d traded in for “Nice to meet you” ever since Mr. Harrison first introduced himself to me like so. I was horrified, wondering how many people I’d tipped off to my pedantic rearing with all my lewd “Nice to meet you’s” over the years. The beauty of good breeding—for those lucky enough to enter this world with the golden rib—is that it’s almost impossible to authentically replicate, and poseurs will always out themselves, usually in some spectacularly embarrassing way. Every time I think I’ve climbed out of the bourgey pit, I realize something I’ve been doing wrong and my people pull me back in. You’re not fooling anyone. Take oysters, for example. I thought it was enough to pretend to love those salted loogies, but did you also know you’re supposed to place the shell exterior-side down once you’ve slurped them back? Something that small is that telling, the danger always in the details.

“And this is Andrew,” Luke said.

I slipped my hand into Andrew’s enormous paw, but my smile stalled when I finally bothered to take in his face. “Hi?” I said, and he cocked his head and looked at me funny too. “Ani, is it?”

“If you’ll follow me,” the hostess said, taking off into the restaurant and pulling the four of us with her like a magnet. I trailed Andrew, studying the back of his head, pickled with gray (now?), and wondering turned into hoping he was who I thought he was, the want practically Harlequin.

There was a traffic jam while we decided which couple should take the banquette, Luke suggesting that it go to “the girls” because we were both small (Whitney laughing, “I think that’s a compliment, Ani”) and the table, like so many things in New York, was playhouse size. This is why everyone leaves, eventually. The babies come and there are limping shopping bags and perspiring snow boots and boxes of cheap Duane Reade Christmas ornaments piled up in the foyer, and one day someone trips on the handle of a Medium Brown Bag and just breaks, and so begins the slow crawl to Westchester or Connecticut. Luke whistles—“Easy”—when I say this, but good fucking riddance. The Mrs. Monsters, lying in wait for their husbands at Dorrian’s and Brinkley’s, luring them to the suburbs when the lease runs out, the birth control not long after that. I was no stranger to Dorrian’s in my day, but I also wanted to be here, in the cramped, overpriced restaurants, the subway simmering with rude weirdos, the glossy tower that housed The Women’s Magazine, the misleadingly ambitious lady mag editors pushing pushing for less lust, more substance. “You don’t think I want to strangle myself with the scrunchie we told readers to wrap around their boyfriend’s dick?” LoLo roared once, when not a single editor came to the September lineup meeting with a blow job idea. “This is what sells.” Maybe everything in New York wouldn’t feel so playhouse size, like such a struggle to just get anywhere, if the husband hunters stayed away. But that’s the thing about New York that I think I love the most—it makes you fight for your place. I’d fight. There was no one I wouldn’t hurt to stay.

I ended up across from Andrew and Luke across from Whitney. There was talk of switching, vetoed by Luke and his corny joke that he could always eat dinner across from me. Andrew’s grapefruit knee kept kissing mine, even though my butt was pushed as far back into the banquette’s fold as possible, and I just wanted everyone to stop with the small talk, the bad jokes, so that I could find a quiet moment to narrow my eyes on Andrew and ask, “Are you?”

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said, and at first I thought he meant for invading my space. “You just look so familiar to me.” He stared, his lips parting as he slowly picked apart my disguise: the cheekbones—sharp now!—the honey highlights there to complement my Stygian hair, not force it into blond submission. “Oh sweetie,” Ruben, my colorist, clucked when I first came to see him. He pinched a chunk of yellow straw between his fingers and scowled at it like it was a cockroach.

Luke had been unraveling his dinner napkin, but he stopped and stared at Andrew.

It was one of those rare moments where you have the wherewithal to understand that something important, life altering even, is about to happen. I’ve experienced it twice before, the second time when Luke proposed. “This is going to sound crazy”—I cleared my throat—“but, are you . . . Mr. Larson?”

“Mr. Larson?” Whitney murmured, and she let out a giddy yelp as everything came together for her. “Was he your teacher?”

He must have cut off his floppy hair sometime after he left Bradley, but pop off the finance-guy mop like a Lego part, take a Photoshop pen to blur his lines and build out his jaw, and there he was: Mr. Larson. Most people, you could cover their mouths and guess if they’re smiling or not based on the shapes of their eyes. Mr. Larson’s seemed to have gotten stuck crinkled after an especially boisterous laugh.

“What a small world.” Mr. Larson laughed, amazed, his Adam’s apple shimmying in his throat. “And you go by Ani now?”

I glanced at Luke. We may as well have been at different dinner tables, part of different conversations. His expression was as sour as Mr. Larson’s was delighted. “I just got sick of people asking me how many ‘f’s in TifAni.”

“This is just crazy,” Whitney said, glancing among the three of us. She landed on Luke and seemed to realize something. “I guess this means you were at Bradley”—there was an abrupt, panicked pause as her brain completed the loop—“oh, I see, you’re TifAni.”

No one could look at each other. The waitress appeared, oblivious to the relief she offered, and asked if tap water was okay. It always is.

“Isn’t it funny how New York has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world,” Whitney said, expert hostess, skilled in maneuvering an awkward turn in the conversation. “A filthy city like this?”

We all agreed. Yes, it was funny.

“What subject?” Luke asked, suddenly, and when no one answered he added, “Did you teach?”

Mr. Larson brought an elbow to the table and leaned on it. “Honors English. Did it for two years right after I got out of college. When I couldn’t imagine not having the summers off. Remember, Whit?”

They shared a wounding, conspiratorial laugh. “Oh, I remember,” she said, shaking her napkin out. “Couldn’t wait for you to get that out of your system.” Well, I couldn’t fault her for that. I would never date a teacher either.

Andrew looked at me. “Ani was my best student though.”

I busied myself smoothing my napkin on my lap. “You don’t have to say that,” I mumbled. We both knew how epically much I’d disappointed him.

“And now she’s one of the best writers at The Women’s Magazine,” Luke said, fatherly, proudly. What a crock. Like Luke doesn’t think my “career” is just some cute filler phase before we have kids. He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “She’s come a long way.” That was his warning shot. Luke doesn’t like it when people bring up Bradley. I used to think it was because he was trying to protect me, felt so moved by that. Now I realize, Luke just wants everyone to get over it already. He still doesn’t want me participating in the documentary. He can’t quite explain why, or he can, but he doesn’t want to offend me, but I know what he’s thinking: You’re embarrassing yourself. In the Harrison world, nothing is more admirable than rimy stoicism.

“Hmmm.” Whitney tapped her nail, pink as a ballet slipper, on her lower lip. “The Women’s Magazine? I think I’ve heard of that one.” Husband hunters always say this when they find out where I work. It’s not a compliment.

“I didn’t know that’s where you ended up,” Mr. Larson said. “That’s fantastic.” He gave me the nicest smile.

Whitney noticed. “It’s been forever since I’ve picked it up. But I used to read it like it was my Bible before I met Andrew. Isn’t that what they call it? The Women’s Bible?” Her laugh was dainty. “I imagine I’ll be confiscating it from my daughter’s room at some point, the way my mother used to!” Luke laughed politely, but Mr. Larson didn’t.

I found the smile I use when children are the topic of conversation and put it on. “How old?”

“Five,” Whitney said. “Elspeth. We have a boy too, Booth. He’s almost one.” She made googly eyes at Andrew. “My little man.”

Oh, Jesus. “Great names,” I told her.

The sommelier appeared by Luke’s side and introduced himself. Did we have any questions about the menu? Luke asked if everyone was okay with white, and Whitney said she couldn’t imagine drinking anything else in this heat.

“Let’s do this Sauvignon Blanc.” Luke pointed to an eighty-dollar spot on the menu.

“Oh, I love Sauvignon Blanc,” Whitney said.

Dukan didn’t permit wine, but I had to drink to socialize with women like this. That first glass, the endorphins ballooning in my stomach, it was the only way I could realistically feign an interest in her world. Her kid’s piano lessons, her Van Cleef push present. I couldn’t believe Mr. Larson had succumbed to a woman whose greatest aspiration in life was to do the supermarket glide. When the waiter came by with the bottle, I accepted his pour gratefully.

“To finally meeting your lovely wife.” Luke raised his glass. Lovely. What a gross word. I used to love these dinners, used to love working for the wives’ approval. What an accomplishment it was when it finally blasted across their faces. Now, I was just bored. Bored, bored, bored. Is this what I’m killing myself for? Is this what I really thought would fulfill me? Twenty-seven-dollar roast chicken dinner and a fiancé who sweetly fucks me when we get home.

“And yours.” Andrew clinked his glass against mine.

“Well, not yet.” I smiled.

“Now, Ani.” Whitney was doing that thing I hate, pronouncing my name “Annie” instead of “Ah-nee.” “Luke says the wedding is in Nantucket. Why there?”

Because of the privilege inherent in the location, Whitney. Because Nantucket transcends all classes, all areas of the country. Go to South Dakota and tell some sad smug housewife you grew up on the Main Line, and she doesn’t know she’s supposed to be impressed. Tell her you summer on Nantucket—be sure to verb it like that—and she knows who the fuck she’s dealing with. That’s why, Whitney.

“Luke’s family has a place there,” I said.

Luke nodded. “Been going since I was a kid.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s going to be gorgeous.” Whitney leaned an inch closer to me. She had that hungry breath. Hollow and stale, like nothing had passed through her lips for some time. She asked Andrew, “Didn’t we go to a wedding on Nantucket a few years ago?”

“Martha’s Vineyard,” Andrew corrected. His knee brushed mine again. The wine coated my throat like cough syrup, and I realized how much better he looked older. There were a million things I wanted to ask him, and I was agitated and resentful that Luke and Whitney were here, hijacking this moment from us. “Is your family from Nantucket?” he asked Luke.

Whitney laughed. “No one is from Nantucket, Andrew.” Nantucket’s ten thousand locals would disagree, but what Whitney meant was that people like us weren’t from Nantucket. It used to thrill me when a woman like this assumed I was cut from her cloth. It meant my mask was that convincing. When did that assumption start to strum the rage? Once I got the ring, the Tribeca zip code, the Waspy white knight on one knee, once I wasn’t so distracted by trying to get my formerly French-manicured hands on all these things, I was able to take a step back and reassess. There is very little that is noble about me, and even I’m finding it hard to believe that anyone could be satisfied, really satisfied, by this existence. Either every member of the tartan club is just walking around, spiritually bereft, and not talking about it, or this truly is enough for them. I thought the end game must be pretty fucking spectacular if they were willing to protect it like they were. Luke and his entire family, his friends, their wives voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. His pro-personhood bullshit could prevent rape and incest victims, women whose lives were in danger, from having safe abortions. It could shut down Planned Parenthood.

“Oh, that will never happen,” Luke had said with a chuckle.

“But even if it doesn’t,” I said, “how can you vote for someone with a stance like that?”

“Because I don’t care, Ani.” Luke sighed. My silly feminist wrath had been cute once. “It doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t affect me. What does affect you and me though? Obama taxing the shit out of us because we’re in the highest bracket.”

“That other stuff does affect me, though.”

“You’re on birth control!” Luke bellowed. “What do you need an abortion for?”

“Luke, if it weren’t for Planned Parenthood I could have a thirteen-year-old right now.”

“I’m not doing this,” he declared, and lunged at the light switch on the wall. He stalked to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him, leaving me crying alone in the dark kitchen.

I told Luke about that night at a time when he was enamored with me, which is the only time you should ever tell anyone something shameful about yourself—when a person is mad enough about you that disgrace is endearing. Each nasty detail made his eyes bigger and yet somehow sleepier, like it was all too much to really take in, he’d process the rest later. If I were to ask Luke right now what happened to me that night, I don’t think he could tell me. “Jesus, Ani, I don’t know, it was bad, okay? I know something bad happened to you. I get it. You don’t have to remind me every fucking day.”

He knows it’s bad enough that it shouldn’t be talked about, at least. That was a major point of contention when I was first considering the documentary. “But you’re not planning on talking about that night, right?” “That night,” such comforting synecdoche. I actually had been toying with the idea of speaking into the camera, brazenly recounting what Peyton, Liam, and Dean (God, especially Dean) had done to me, but there was a problem. I didn’t have the emerald yet. And I wanted that dazzling green brag on my finger by the time we started shooting. So I twisted my mouth like I’d bitten into a lime after a tequila shot and said, “Of course not.”

“I grew up in Rye,” Luke said.

Whitney rushed to swallow her sip of wine. “I’m from Bronxville!” She dabbed a napkin at her mouth. “What high school did you go to?”

Andrew laughed. “Honey, I don’t think you were in high school at the same time as Luke was.”

Whitney threw her napkin at Andrew in mock outrage. “You never know.”

Luke laughed. “Well, actually I went to boarding school.”

“Oh.” Whitney deflated. “Never mind.” She opened her menu, and, like a yawn, everyone else had to too.

“So what’s good here?” Andrew asked. The candlelight twisted in his glasses, so that I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or Luke.

“Everything,” Luke said at the same time I said, “They do a great roast chicken.”

Whitney wrinkled her nose. “I just can’t ever bring myself to order chicken at a restaurant. And all that arsenic.” Stay-at-home mom who was also a fan of The Dr. Oz Show. My favorite kind!

“Arsenic?” I held my hand to my breast, the concern on my face an indication for her to go on. At Nell’s recommendation, I’d read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. My favorite strategy is to feign inferiority and encourage my enemy’s arrogance.

“Yes!” Whitney seemed very alarmed I didn’t appear to have heard this before. “Farmers feed it to the chickens.” She pursed her lips, disgusted. “It makes them grow faster.”

“That’s horrible,” I gasped. I’d read that same study—the actual study, not the scaremongering translation made viral by the Today show. This place wasn’t serving fucking frozen Perdue chicken breasts. “Well, I will definitely not order the roast chicken then.”

“I’m terrible!” Whitney laughed. “We’ve just met and I’ve already ruined your dinner.” She smacked her forehead with her palm. “I need to stop talking. But when you’re around a one-year-old all day, you just chatter chatter the moment you have some adult company.”

“I’m sure your kids love having you around.” I smiled, like I couldn’t wait for the day that would be me. No way she got that body by any fewer than three hours a day in the gym. No way she was going at this alone. But God help you if you asked about the Dominican nanny. They can make snide little digs about The Women’s Magazine all they want, but rearing children is real work, and you’d better duck if they so much as suspect that you’re dismissing all their real work.

“I’m so lucky I get to be with them every day.” Whitney’s lips were glossy with wine. She rubbed them together and put her chin in her hand. “Did your mother work?”

“She didn’t.” But she should have, Whitney. She should have let go of her little kept-housewife fantasy and contributed to our household. I can’t say it would have made her happier, but we didn’t have the luxury of considering happiness. We were broke, Mom signing up for new credit cards every other month to finance her Bloomingdale’s excursions, while the shoddy Sheetrock walls of our dramatic McMansion went rank with mildew we couldn’t “afford” to have removed. But you’re right, Whitney, she was so lucky she got to be with me every day.

“Mine either,” Whitney said. “It makes such a difference.”

I kept smiling. Like in the last push of a race, if you stop and walk now, you’ll never find your stride again. “Huge difference.”

Whitney tossed her hair gleefully. She loved me. Her shoulder brushed mine and her voice was low and flirty as she said, “Ani, you have to tell us. Are you doing that documentary?”

Luke draped one arm over the back of his chair and fiddled with his silverware. I watched the white slivers of light dance on the low ceiling.

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Oh, that means you’re doing it.” Whitney swatted my arm. “That’s what they told Andrew to say too—right, Andrew?”

I have this recurring dream, where something bad has happened and I need to dial 911, but I’ve lost all control over my fingers. They keep slipping across the buttons (it’s always an old-fashioned landline I’m dialing from), and every time I realize, You’re having this dream again, but this time you’re going to outsmart it. Just take it slow, I think. You can’t mess this up if you take it slow. Find the nine. Push. The one. Push. The agony of needing some-thing so immediately but the ask has got to be patient. I needed to know immediately why Mr. Larson was doing the documentary. When? Where? What would he say? Would he talk about me? Would he defend me? “I had no idea you were doing it too,” I said. “What do they want from you? Just to weigh in as kind of an observer, or something?”

The arch in Mr. Larson’s lip deepened. “Now, Ani, you know I’m not supposed to say.”

Everyone laughed, and I had to force myself to join in. I opened my mouth to push some more, but Mr. Larson said, “We should get coffee or something and talk about it.”

“Yes!” Whitney chimed in, her excitement so genuine she disabled my own. Any woman who is that keen on her husband getting coffee with another woman, ten years younger to boot, has a rock-solid marriage.

“You should,” Luke added, and I wished he hadn’t said anything at all. Because his endorsement sounded so glaringly insincere following Whitney’s.

Whitney tripped on her way out the door. She caught herself and giggled that she didn’t get out much. That wine had gone straight to her head.

Mr. Larson had ordered an Uber after dessert, and a black SUV was waiting for them at the curb, ready to take them back to their sitcom-set home in Scarsdale. Whitney kissed me on the cheek and sung into the air, “So nice to have met you. Really, what a small world.” Andrew shook Luke’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder. Then Luke stepped away, opening a space for me to slip into and say good-bye. I stood up on my tippy-toes to press my cheek against Andrew’s and feign a kiss. He pressed his hands against my back, and when he felt the bare skin there, he pulled away as though I had electrocuted him.

We watched their car nose into traffic, and I ached for Luke to wrap his arms around me and hold me against his Turnbull & Asser shirt. If he’d done that, he would have felt that I was trembling.

Instead, he just said, “That was weird, huh?” and I smiled my agreement like I hadn’t just spun off my center and knew there was no going back now.