by R. J. Jacobs
Once the food is in place, I set out serving spoons and flatware. I keep my chin down and my eyes on what I am doing as I mind the correct distances between silverware and plates and napkins until everything is just so. As more guests began to arrive, I light the burners, and wide, blue flames lap at the bottoms of the chafing dishes.
People who attend parties like these don’t often look at the servers, I notice, which makes it easier to observe them. Rich people seem healthier than regular folks, somehow, like walking advertisements for how people should be. It’s like they take special vitamins no one else is allowed to buy or even knows about. I look on as perfect families with impeccable hair and flawless, new-looking clothes arrive, one after another. In one perfect family, the father wears a sports coat with a polo shirt underneath, his hand gripping the neck of a bottle of white wine. The mother wears a white-and-blue sundress and cradles a plate of cookies that are iced a half-inch thick.
“This is the land where the Botox flows,” I hear Andre say under his breath, nudging Malik, who smiles and seems to pay no attention.
The guests begin to settle in, and I stand back as they pick at the food I’ve set out. I try to look busy, to make myself dim, so I can to eavesdrop on their conversations.
“Nashville’s not just a country-music town. It’s a health-care town,” I overhear a man in a white polo shirt saying. “It’s why we’re recession-proof. People don’t stop going to their doctor if the economy slows down. Am I right?”
“I wish someone would tell people to stop moving here,” the woman beside him answers, in a low voice. “People keep coming and coming, from all over. Half of Chicago must have moved here by now.”
“Do you blame them?” the white polo shirt man asks, and the small crowd that’s gathered around him all laugh. He wipes condensation from the glass in his hand and sips, winking.
Don’t look at anyone directly, I remind myself. Don’t let anyone catch your eye. That’s part of staying dim and going unnoticed. I focus my gaze on the man’s chestnut-brown leather shoes and try not to wonder how much they cost, while tiny gusts of wind make leaf-shaped shadows roll over everything.
After a while, I look for Ken. I walk to the backyard, where a tall, muscular boy flips his hair out of his eyes with a quick turn of his chin. This is Sean Peterson, I realize, because he stands like he’s at home—leaning back on his heels. He and his friends have hair that brushes their eyelids and all wear polo shirts a size too tight. One has popped his collar up around his neck. I watch as Sean whispers something that makes all the boys around him teasingly shove each other. One pretends to fall to the ground, as if he’d been punched.
“No way,” another says. “There’s just absolutely no way.”
Sean shrugs, his blonde eyebrow rising into a small arch. His mouth forms a reckless smile.
What is it like to talk with other teenagers? To have real friends? I can’t help the empty feeling in my stomach as I wonder. Growing up, there were times I’d had … the word for people you cooperate with … allies—other kids who watched my back while I watched theirs. Maybe someone I might tell a little lie for, but a real friend? No.
I feel someone move close by. I step out of the way, and when I look, Lane Peterson is beside me, carrying a glass filled with ice, something clear, and tiny sprig of mint. The glass sweats in her hand and the ice inside clinks as she stirs it with her fingertip.
She has the kind of graceful smile that makes people around her smile too. It’s like magic. “See?” she says to me. “Sean’s already found his position. You’d think he’d want to greet a few guests inside at his own graduation party.” She pauses, thoughtfully, like there is an inside joke between us. “Since he won’t listen to me, do you suppose his girlfriend can convince him to come in and talk to the other guests when she gets here?”
I fumble for words, tongue-tied as usual.
“What’s your name?” she asks, smiling as she cocks her head.
I’m staring at her, wide-eyed, when Ken rushes up, wiping his hands feverishly on a kitchen towel. “This is Jessie,” he says, “She’s a little quiet. Anything I can help with, Mrs. Peterson?”
“Oh, no, Jessie is doing a wonderful job,” Lane Peterson tells Ken. “The food looks absolutely superb. But before I forget, one thing I should tell you, that the side door your guys keep coming in and out of blows closed and locks with the slightest breeze. If that happens, we keep the spare key under the planter. Right there.” She points past me, nearly brushing against my shoulder, at the side of the kitchen, where the door is propped open for the moment. Beside it is another screen like the one Lane had used to adjust the light and turn on the fans. A shiny metal key juts out from the interior part of the deadbolt, just below the glass. You can never be too careful, I think, remembering stories I overheard in jail about opening doors locked with a deadbolt by simply breaking the window above and turning it.
Lane is so close that I can smell the subtle sweetness of the skin lotion she must use. Don’t touch me, I think for the second time today, please. I can’t help but remember my close call with Ms. Carr earlier, and the last thing I need is to have to talk myself out of a fight-or-flight reflex now. I picture me knocking something over, or worse, then everyone’s heads turning.
Lane’s eyes twinkle as she moves away, almost like she can sense I need extra space. I feel my shoulders relax slightly as she does.
Ken gives me a quick nod and scans the party, seemingly looking for food-service items that need attending to. “Everything’s on point, I think. I’m going to make sure there’s enough ice around drinks in those coolers. Will you make sure those chafers aren’t turned up too high? Last time, Andre almost boiled one over.”
More guests continue to file in—some entering formally through the front door, some coming through the side entrance, and some coming down the driveway toward the deck and backyard, like we had done.
I go to the buffet area where the rear of the house opens onto the deck where Lane sits on the outdoor sofa beside the man I assume is her husband Brian, “the psychopath.” He’s been in the same spot since we arrived, leaning back, arms over the back of the furniture. I’m not the best judge of character, but he doesn’t seem scary to me. Maybe that’s the point, I realize. Maybe he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as people say. Lane rests her hand on his arm. When he speaks to her, she tilts her head back and laughs.
Like his son, Brian has sandy blonde hair parted on the side, just long enough to curl near the end. The collar of his tailored shirt is wrinkled. He swishes a wineglass around and speaks to the people around him loudly enough that I can hear him as I quickly check the chafing dishes. Andre actually has turned one up too high, so I lower the flame. It warms my fingertips and the back of my hand, which still has a few marks left from where I wasn’t careful enough early on working for Ken. Catering and cooking can be very rough on hands.
Brian’s voice carries to where I’m standing, his words slightly lazy from alcohol. “No, no, it’s all Lane’s doing.” He waves his hand dismissively before scratching at the back of his head.
Lane squints and pinches her fingers together as if showing something small. “Just a little helicoptering. But how can you not? Between texting and Snapchatting, and God-knows-what, you really have to keep an eye on everything nowadays. Otherwise, you have no idea what your kid is up to.”
A woman seated across from them mock-applauds. Another smiles knowingly.
I move to another chafer and adjust the flame, so close it threatens to singe my skin. I’m thinking about what helicoptering means when someone whispers and the heads of a few guests turn. I feel the energy in the room change but force myself to not look up.
Before I see her, before I even hear a voice, I know who has come in the front door.
It’s like a dream has begun, and the worst-case scenario I’d hardly let myself imagine when I signed that nondisclosure form comes rushing into the present.
I’m jus
t outside on the deck, but I hear Shelly James singing the word “hell-oooo” and the click-clack of her shoes across the hardwood floor.
5
I freeze, too terrified to do anything but hold still. Finally, I set down a glass that I realize I’m holding so tightly it might break, and grip the tabletop to stop the feeling that I’m falling.
Whenever I’ve seen Shelly in the past, she’s looked as if she is more than real. Her hair is practically a legend of its own—a wave behind her, blonde ringlets the size of napkin holders. Her skin always looks flawless and seems to actually glow. But a person who couldn’t see or hear would still know if she entered the room they were in. She has a presence you feel beyond the regular five senses.
Except the Shelly I’m seeing from the corner of my eye doesn’t look like herself. She sets a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter a little too roughly and stumbles as she opens her arms to greet the woman beside her. Her face looks thin and drawn, and her gaze seems somehow distant. Her eyes, even from this far away, look clouded. The pitch and tone of her voice sound right, but I notice a blur between her words, a softness.
Everyone around Shelly seems to move like they are underwater. Brian stands up for the first time and starts toward her. Lane stands too, but does not move except to wring her hands. A woman seated at the far end of the sofa looks like she wants to turn and stare but has managed to keep her eyes locked forward as if through sheer force of will. Nashville has a code of not bothering entertainers, not interrupting them in restaurants. Definitely not asking for autographs.
“Somebody’s been having a few late nights lately,” I hear a voice murmur somewhere behind me.
“I hear her long nights have actually been going on for some time,” another voice answers.
A short chuckle follows.
I want to turn around and glare to show my disapproval. I want to pick up something and throw it at the two gossips behind me. They have no idea what they’re talking about, I tell myself as I breathe in and out, deeply, until I feel another shift in energy.
When Owen James enters behind Shelly, I think I will shrink into nothing. My desire to disappear is so intense I feel myself begin to actually fade.
When I followed the tour, I read an article that described Owen as “impish, bright-eyed, precisely scruffy,” and “unnaturally thin into his late-thirties.” This evening, he wears all black as usual, his pearly shirt buttons shining like they’re lit. He looks a little like a cigarette ad in an old men’s magazine—except for the fringes of his brown hair, which are frosted at the tips and glossy with hairspray. He is short compared to Shelly, who is nearly six feet tall, but he walks like he owns the world, wearing a deeply lined smile on his very tan face.
My eyes flash back to Shelly, who runs a hand through her hair. Her shoulders poke up from her loose-fitting dress. A guest points, and I realize Owen has left the front door open. I enter the kitchen from the place where I’d been frozen on the deck and rush along the back hallway to close it when I see Finch James appear in the doorway. I stop so quickly my shoes squeak as I slide a few inches across the gleaming hardwood. I turn my face to hide. Finch pauses for half a beat and seems to scan the room before striding past me to the backyard.
Finch: the only child, now grown into a teenager. I haven’t seen her, or a picture of her, in months. Tonight, she looks almost my age, maybe partly because of the dark makeup around her eyes. She wears tight jeans and a loose linen shirt that swishes in sync with her hair. The first time I heard Finch’s voice was also the first time I got in trouble after the Jameses’ tour—the start of being known by their security team. I was crouched beside a dressing-room door under an arena in Orlando. I’d waited until I could catch the handle of a flung-open exterior door, then slipped inside and gone dim, winding my way through the maze of backstage until I heard the voice that stopped me dead in my tracks.
“To unwind,” Shelly was saying. My back to a wall beside her door, I could see her blonde curls reflected in a sheet of glass on the other side of the hallway. Even in the hall, her perfume smelled like orange blossoms. I held my breath to listen. She was talking to Finch.
“Stop! Mom, just stop. No, you’re not. You’re not!” Finch’s voice dropped into a gentler tone I could barely hear, “But to where, really? And why?”
A chorus of laughter exploded in another room, where people were clearly celebrating. Notes blew from a saxophone. I moved even closer to Shelly’s door, but could still hardly make out her voice. Finch’s, however, was clear as day. “Dad’s with Robert. He’ll be here for a while. Let’s go to the hotel. Please. I’ll order some food. We’ll find a movie to watch on TV or something.”
Then came a crash—something heavy, like a table overturning and the chaos of rolling cups and broken glass.
“Mom!”
My hand froze in place, shaking over the doorknob. That was me: a helpless observer, unable to participate, unable to intervene—orbiting around, not permitted to land. I made a fist and shoved it into my pocket. There was nothing I could do but listen.
“You’re welcome,” Finch said.
Shelly asked a question I still couldn’t quite hear, to which Finch replied, very coldly, “I’m sure Dad has no idea.”
I must have been listening closely because I missed the approach of two men who looked like football players in yellow polo shirts striding toward me. One spoke into a crackling walkie-talkie. It was too late to not be seen, but not too late to run. I took off breathless into the warm Floridian night where the air was so thick it seemed like it should be visible, the guards’ footsteps hammering behind me. White light reflected off fountain-generated wavelets in a nearby retention pond. I saw a blur of red taillights as I crossed a road and heard the growl of brakes and the thump of car stereo bass. I tore off running. By the time of the tour’s next stop, all security carried flyers with black-and-white prints of my blurred face, wide-eyed, as I dashed away from the blinding light.
Now, my heart is beating so fast it feels unnatural, like I can actually hear it inside me. What’s happening feels like a dream that is just about to end—I am both included, and not, and there are too many pieces to process at once.
I have to be careful, I know. The chances someone will recognize me have just increased dramatically. I must be especially dim. I keep my expression blank in order to look relaxed, but what I want is to be invisible. I hear Ms. Parsons’s words again in my head. Fifteen years. Ms. Parsons told me once with a concerned look that I don’t seem to understand risk. Maybe that’s true. If I did, even the thought of going back to jail for fifteen years for breaking an order of protection would be enough to make me run out of this party.
But I know why it isn’t. Another part of me has come alive. Warm energy surrounds my heart and seems to fill my lungs. Inside, I feel pink. I feel known, in a weird way, like I’m lucky the James family has showed up—I have that tiny sense that I’m back with my family, even though, rationally, I know that’s not true. Part of my heart feels like it is, and for right now that’s just enough to keep me where I am.
I know I should hide, but I know too that it will be apparent if I do—there is still so much to be done for the party. I move to the kitchen, where I can see both the patio and the backyard, picking up half-empty cups and dirty plates, listening in on conversations as well as I can, looking at no one directly, as Owen and Shelly come onto the deck.
Through the window I watch as Finch approaches Sean. He drinks deeply from a red cup as she reaches up and brushes his hair from his eyes.
Brian has left the patio and is beside them, his face lit up like a child who has just discovered something. He sets his wineglass down gently in the grass, unlocks his phone with his thumb, and waves Finch and Sean together. He says something to them that I imagine is, “I want a picture of you two.”
“Dad,” Sean mouths, his voice too low to hear, before biting his bottom lip as his eyes sweep around, as if his father doesn’t understand
what he’s suggesting. Finch straightens up beside him, licks the front of her teeth, and tucks her hair behind her ears. She twists a thin gold chain around her neck. The lights above make stars inside her dark eyes. Brian tests the image on the phone screen, then closes one eye as he finds the best angle.
Someone behind me is watching, like I am, through a window. A voice beside me says to another guest, “So sweet. It does all go unbelievably fast. One minute they’re small, the next, they’re grown up and off to school. Look at him especially, so grown up.”
“Where …?”
I hear the name of a college.
“… early decision.”
“… as center midfield, what he played in high school. The coach helped Sean network some. Of course, Brian being Brian didn’t hurt.”
“He gets so embarrassed to be the center of attention. Look.”
A flash comes, then another, the teenagers holding their smiles so long the hair on the back of my neck stands up, though I don’t know why. When the picture taking ends, Sean and Finch turn away as if slightly lost, disoriented after being released from expectations.
I catch the side of the door frame to steady myself as the edges of the world spin a little. My legs seem to hollow out. My eyes won’t leave Finch. I want to trade lives with her. I’m not ashamed to think it.
From the corner of my eye, I catch Lane hugging Owen’s shoulder, then hooking her arm through Shelly’s, saying, “I’m so glad you’re here! Come on to the deck, everyone’s been waiting to see you.” She leads Shelly to a seat on the outdoor sofa while Shelly’s eyes sweep from one side of the deck area to the other. When the toe of Shelly’s shoe catches between two tiles and she begins to stumble forward, Lane tightens her arm to catch her, keeping a tight smile on her lips the whole time. When she points to a space where she wants Shelly to sit, two people move over to make room.
Shelly mutters something to herself, then throws her head back, laughing at whatever it was. She reaches for a wineglass that belonged to the person who had been in her seat before her, but Owen stops her, putting his hand over the rim. When Shelly pushes his hand away, her hand catches the side of the glass, which topples over onto the table but miraculously stays intact.