My mom talked to me about the party, and she thought it was just as nice as I did. “Scarlett really is an esthete,” she gushed. “I’m always so impressed by her sense of style.” She stopped and looked around the room. “Have you seen her yet tonight?”
“No, not yet.”
“I’ll catch up with her soon. I’d love to hear her plans for the wedding, especially her dress.” Now she appraised me, looking at my outfit. “Aren’t you glad we went shopping? This is very nice,” she said approvingly about her selection for me. She turned and directed her husband’s attention away from the woman he was tête-à-tête with and over to me. “Krissy, what do you think of Lanie’s dress?” my mom prompted him, her puny little husband over whom I now towered in my heels. I stared down at him, daring him.
“It’s an interesting choice for her,” he said and wrinkled his nose as he perused me, as if besides being interesting, my dress also smelled bad.
“Interesting?” my mom repeated, her voice sharper.
He immediately turned on the charm. “It’s just such a shame that Lanie didn’t inherit your incredible eye for clothes, Juliette.”
“My mom picked it out for me,” I told him, and smiled hugely as she frowned. I saw that her restful affect had been the result of a doctor visit and not her vacation: her forehead and cheeks didn’t move as she looked at him disapprovingly.
“It’s a lovely dress,” she informed him.
“I was distracted by the person wearing it,” he said, and tried to lean up to kiss her cheek.
My mom tilted back so his lips couldn’t reach. “What is that supposed to mean? What are you trying to say about Lanie?”
I stood up tall and peered through the crowd at someone else I knew. Eve Moriarty, the new parent in my class, was here, too. “Excuse me,” I said happily to my mom, feeling like even if the evening ended at that moment, I would be pretty pleased with how it had turned out, because she was glaring at Kristian. “Bye, Mom.”
Eve eyed me warily until I re-introduced myself. I had cleaned up some from when she had seen me last, right after school and probably looking like I had gone through the wringer.
“Do you know all these people?” Eve asked me. She was holding a glass tightly in her hand, clutching it so that her knuckles were white, and her face was anxious and strained.
“I know some of them,” I said. I looked around, realizing that, in fact, I knew many of the guests. “Are they being nasty to you, Eve?”
She looked at me, surprised. “How did you know that?”
“Well, a lot of them aren’t very nice. They had little cliques in middle and high school, then they went to college where they joined the right eating clubs or frats or whatever to exclude people there. Now they do the same thing with their country clubs, or by being mean to people at parties. But it doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” she told me, and looked around like she was going to make a run for the nearest exit. “It does matter, and this is a fucking dumpster fire.” She sighed. “It’s Evie, by the way. You can call me that, now that I think I like you.”
I felt my eyes widen. “I’m…can I do something to help?”
Heath, my new student’s dad, walked over to join us. He talked to me for a few minutes about Starhurst, not really listening to my answers and watching Evie the whole time. More people drifted over too, asking Evie questions about her family, which apparently had some skeletons in its closet. She got more and more tense until Heath led her away, frowning. I watched her for a moment and then I spotted Pamela Wolfe and Brooks with their heads together, with Zara nearby on the highest of heels that she liked to wear. Brooks caught my eye and beckoned me over and I broke away from the gossiping crew I was standing with.
“She won’t open the door for me,” Zara said as I approached. “She wouldn’t even answer when I said her name.” She looked thoughtful. “Could she have escaped out the window?”
“No. It’s a two-story drop. I’ll try to get her to come out,” Brooks responded. “Lanie could come with me and talk to her.” Zara looked at me doubtfully.
“Talk to who?” I looked at the three of them. “Where’s Scarlett?”
“She’s upstairs in one of the bedrooms,” Pamela told me. “She got something on her dress and she doesn’t want to come out.” She chewed on her lip and then added, “I don’t think that’s the only issue here, but it’s the most pressing.”
“I’m going up to make an attempt,” Brooks said. “I’ll probably be able to get the door open.”
“Don’t break it down and cause a scene,” his mother urged him. “I don’t want to have a conversation with Mats’ parents about why their house is in pieces. Second floor, fourth door on the left.”
Brooks and I walked through the party together, with me feeling like the queen again. I personally wasn’t surprised by Scarlett’s dramatics. She liked attention, and she wasn’t immune to playing tricks to get it. She had even pulled exactly this move before. “Remember when Scarlett wouldn’t come out of her room before the dad and daughter dance at Starhurst?” I reminded him. But really, she hadn’t done that for attention. She had been very upset and was trying to hide it, and it made me wonder if she was now, too. Locking yourself away from the party wasn’t a good way to make people notice you and be the star of the show.
Brooks stopped on a stair. “She locked herself—that’s right. I remember. When I was the stand-in for my dad for that dance.” He offered his arm to me again. There were a lot of steps and my heels weren’t that low, either. “I sucked at that job.”
“No, you were a good stand-in. It was just a hard role to play.”
“I did my best.” He shook his head. “The middle school father-daughter dance without our dad was the worst for her. Every year my mom tried to convince her not to go, but she didn’t want to be different from her friends.” He glanced down at me. “You got her out of her room that night, right?”
I had. She had even hugged me when she came out but then ignored me at the dance in front of her real friends. “I was only able to do it because you also started yelling that you were going to take the door off the hinges. Do you have your toolbelt on tonight?”
He laughed. “I took it off right before I came in. Rosanna said it was poking her.”
I yanked away from him and almost fell down the stairs.
“Woah, Peanut. Watch yourself.” He steadied me and took back my arm. I didn’t hold on to him, though. “Rosanna told me that she knows you.”
“Me? How?”
He shrugged. “You guys were the same year, right? You must have friends in common.”
That made me laugh. “Right, sure. We must have mutual friends, ha ha. But we are exactly the same age,” I said. “She and I are both adults.” I emphasized the last word. “All grown up.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. We stopped in front of the fourth door on the left.
“I mean, Rosanna isn’t a child. Right?” I knocked hard. “Scarlett? Are you in there?”
“Go away,” a voice called from inside.
“I know that Rosanna isn’t a child. Scarlett, come out of there. Right now! There’s a houseful of people waiting for you. This is your party, brat.”
“That’s not helpful,” I whispered. “And neither am I!”
“You’re not helpful?” he asked me. “I mean it, Scar,” he ordered the door. “Come out here.”
“I mean that I’m not a child, either,” I answered, then tried the handle. “Scarlett, it’s Lanie. If you won’t come out, can I come in?”
There was silence inside the room and Brooks turned to me to say something. I held up my hand.
“Only you,” Scarlett said, her voice louder through the wood. The lock clacked and she cracked open about an inch of space for me to enter.
“I’ll be right here,” Brooks announced, and it sounded a little ominous.
I shut the door behind me and locked it. She looked like she had been crying,
hard, and Scarlett had never been a crier. She usually played it pretty cool even when she was involved in her dramatics. Crying, as everyone knew, didn’t do much for your looks. “Scarlett, what’s going on?”
She breathed out shakily. “I don’t want to go downstairs.” Her lower lip trembled.
I had gotten that from how she had locked herself in. “Is it because there’s something on your dress?”
She pointed at a miniscule stain on the silk chiffon neckline. “Lipstick.” Her face crumpled and she started to cry.
“Ok, hang on.” I opened the door to find Brooks leaning against the wall, glowering. “Can you go downstairs and get some club soda? And some ice.” He nodded.
“Maybe we can get it out,” I told Scarlett as I closed it again. “If we get the stain out, will you come down?” The tears lessened, but she didn’t answer. “Is something else bothering you?”
“Maybe.” She stared at me suspiciously. “If I tell you, are you going to repeat it?”
“I never told anyone any of your secrets,” I reminded her. Scarlett had informed me of many things over the years when we were vacation friends: the first time she smoked cigarettes, the first time she smoked pot; when she took scotch and port out of her father’s old stash and drank until she threw up; when she let a guy go up her shirt and then later, down her pants (and she did the same for him). I had never spilled a single bean, not one.
“Ok. I’ll tell you, because I don’t know who else to talk to. Everyone is going to flip out.” She swallowed. “I’m worried about marrying Mats.” Tears poured again.
I handed her a tissue as I sat down next to her. “Why?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t want to get married right now. Not to Mats. I’m not ready.” She chewed her lip. “I really, really like him but…I’m not sure.”
I nodded carefully. “That’s a problem.”
Scarlett’s temper flared. “What would you know? You’ve probably never even had a boyfriend!”
“I know that I wouldn’t marry someone who I didn’t love,” I answered, but she was right, and I felt my face heat up.
“I don’t know if I can go down to that party and face everyone.” She swallowed. “And now, my dress…”
“We may be able to fix your dress. About the other stuff—do you think that now, at this party with so many people here, it’s a good time to get into a discussion with Mats about your engagement?”
She blinked. “No, I guess not.”
Loaded questions worked on my students, too. “Ok. So we won’t worry anymore about that tonight. Let’s get you cleaned up and downstairs, and later, when you feel calmer and the two of you are alone, you can discuss what to do next,” I said briskly.
Brooks knocked, then opened the door. “Ice and club soda. And a gin and tonic.” He handed the drink to his sister and the supplies to me.
“Hold the glass on one eye in between sips and the ice on the other,” I directed her, then went to work dabbing at the lipstick stain. Scarlett took giant gulps of the drink and started to calm down, and the coldness against her face mitigated her puffy, red eyes.
But the spot on the fabric didn’t budge. “Scarlett, listen. Do not start to cry again. The club soda isn’t working, but we have some options.” I sat up and looked into her face rather than her cleavage. “One thing we could do is take a flower out of your hair and pin it over the mark. It won’t be exactly the look you were going for but I think it would still be very pretty.”
She looked down at her dress and frowned. “What’s the other option?”
“You and I could switch dresses. No one will remember that I was wearing this. It will be a little long on you but with a stapler or some tape we could fix it. I’m a whiz with school-supply tailoring. I do it almost every day in the kindergarten.”
“My dress would be too big in the boobs for you.”
All of us—and yes, that included Brooks—looked at my chest. “I can stuff it. I’ve done it before,” I admitted.
“You’d give her your dress?” Brooks asked.
“It’s her engagement party,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing, but it matters a lot to you, right?” I asked Scarlett. “Yeah, I’d switch. Why not?”
She nodded. “You don’t have to do that. Can we try a flower?”
Carefully, I extracted one perfect, white blossom from the delicate garland in her hair and I pulled a pin from mine. With a little fussing, I hid the tiny stain. “It looks good,” I said. “Can you fix your makeup or do you need help?”
“Can you help me?” Her voice was still a little quivery.
“Yes. Finish your drink while I work.” I picked up the makeup bag from the dressing table and enacted repairs, then we both critically studied her face in the mirror. “It’s good,” I pronounced. “I used more blush because you got pale and I added a little green concealer around your nose for the redness.”
“It looks nice.” Scarlett’s voice still sounded softer than usual.
“We should go down,” Brooks said. “Mom is worried.”
Scarlett nodded and took her brother’s hand. “I’m ready.”
“Do you have anything to say to Lanie?” he prompted her, and she turned back to me, her eyes down.
“Thank you, Lanie. Thanks for fixing me.” She looked up. “I’ll worry about the other thing tomorrow.”
I saw that she was still biting her lip, but at least I didn’t think she would go downstairs and start an argument with Mats in front of the other guests. “You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help.”
Brooks nodded, like she had done a good job. “Let’s go.”
But Scarlett pulled her hand away. “No, hang on. I should sneak down and act like I’ve always been there. Wait a minute and then follow me, ok?” Brooks put his head out of the door to watch her go down the hall, then he came back and sat next to me.
“Thank you,” he said. “I know she hasn’t always been the nicest person to you.”
“Or even the second nicest,” I suggested. Or the hundredth.
“Was that all that was bothering her? Her dress?”
I shrugged. “I can’t really say,” I answered, trying to sound vague.
“Offering your own dress was very generous.”
“She needed it more than I do.” I smoothed my hand down the fabric. “It would have looked really good on her. My mom bought it for me today.”
“What did your mother say to you that made you cry?” he asked me.
I sighed. “Sometimes it’s just hard to be her daughter. I don’t really want to get into it too much, but sometimes, often, she’s disappointed in me, and it hurts my feelings.”
“What does she have to be disappointed about?”
Now I was plucking at the fabric of my skirt. “Shit. Where would I start? Ok, well, I’m not a business genius, I’m not a social butterfly, I’m didn’t ever even get the grades she wanted for me in school. I’m not ambitious, I’m not…attractive. I’m not like she is, and it’s hard for her. Which sometimes makes it hard for me. I’m not sad about who I am, but she is. And even though she doesn’t come right out and say it, I know how she feels because of what she does say. Like today…” I gulped. No, the comment she’d made about how Brooks might be able to overlook all my flaws just because I was easily accessible, that was little too raw to make a joke about yet. “I mean, it’s the way she tries to ‘help’ me into being more like she is. It’s difficult at times.”
“You’re not your mom, Lanie, that’s true.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean, I appreciate the differences. Would your mom ever have done what you just did with Scarlett? Maybe you’re not collecting an entourage downstairs, but I’m glad that you’re here. We’re here, together.” He put his hand over mine, where I was messing up my dress by twisting it. “Your mom is like…fuck, I don’t know flowers very well. What’s the giant yellow one? A sunflower, right? Well, that’s her, a little too s
howy and over-the-top. You’re like that little purple one. The one that smells so good and kind of hides its face.”
“Um, a violet?” I guessed. I liked this metaphor.
“Yeah, a violet. Quiet, but sweet and lovely. A person might get sick of a sunflower, but you’d always want violets in your yard. If you know what I mean.”
“Thank you. That was…” I thought I was going to cry. “I like that idea. That I’m the violet.”
“I don’t know what you mean about not being attractive—” he started to say, but I cut him off.
“That’s ok, Brooks. You don’t have to do that. No,” I continued, when he opened his mouth again. “Please don’t.”
We sat in silence for a moment. “Well, I can understand what you’re saying about people being disappointed in you,” he told me finally. He linked our fingers together and studied them. We were holding hands. “I’m having that problem, too.”
“You?” I sat up straight on the couch. “Who is disappointed in you?”
“Well, there’s my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother? I always thought you were in the small circle she liked, you and her cats.”
“Nope. When I went to talk to her about the loan, she let me know what she thought of my poor choices. First, going to a university that no one in our family had previously attended, then heading to Europe to play games, as she called it, then taking a job outside of our family businesses. And she thinks the company I’m starting has no chance. That was one of the reasons I think she offered to give me the money, so that she could lord it over me when it failed, and make me indebted to her.”
“Verity did offer you money? I thought she said no when you asked her.”
“She wanted control of everything I was going to do. I thanked her, but turned it down. It wasn’t going to work with what she wanted me to give up. Then she told me it was a terrible idea and I was bound to fail.” He smiled a little. “I’m pretty sure she’s hoping it will go down in flames and I’ll have to crawl back to ask her for a job. That will never, never happen.”
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