by Sloane Tanen
“Yes,” he said, smiling because he had no choice.
“Now fix your hair and tell me exactly who you’ve invited.” She beamed, thrilled she could cut the pretending.
“I will tell you nothing.” Ian smoothed his hair and zipped his mouth with his index finger and thumb. If he divulged any details before the party, Bunny’s mood might change and he couldn’t afford that. Now that her prick son wasn’t coming, Ian was feeling very nervous. He could only pray that Sam hadn’t told her that Henry had promised to be there. Anyway, as long as she stuck to champagne, Ian felt the evening would be a success.
Bunny did not stick to champagne, and the evening was not a success. Nothing trails fanfare as brutally as disgrace. Once Bunny realized Henry was not there, the party sank like the HMS Victoria, nose buried in the silt, any recovery effort impossible. The guests would have had more fun in prison watching Requiem for a Dream on a loop.
What set her off? The Frankels brought a bottle of Nolet’s Reserve Dry Gin. Bunny had promised herself she wouldn’t buy gin anymore, but if someone gave it to her? Well, that was a different story. Besides, it was her birthday. Such an extravagant gift from the Frankels—whom Bunny hadn’t even liked until then. She drank her gin as she greeted her guests graciously. She knew she looked wonderful and was in great spirits.
“Where’s Henry?” she finally whispered to Ian, who was the picture of empathy as he sat on a sofa listening to Gene Sparrow complain about his current representation. Ian knew Gene was unlikely to leave Conville and Walsh but these were the moments he lived for.
“Henry?” Ian murmured distractedly. He was being ripped away from his prey too soon.
“Yes, Ian,” she said in such glacial tones that his nose frosted. “Henry…my son.”
Ian stared at her blankly.
“Sam said he would be here,” Bunny went on. “When he told me about the surprise party a few days ago.”
Ian turned to locate Sam, who was making an urgent dash toward the loo.
“Forget Sam!” Bunny grabbed Ian’s forearm. “Where is Henry?”
“He had to cancel at the last minute, Bun.” Ian whimpered. “He had some kind of emergency. I’m sorry.”
“What kind of emergency?” Bunny asked, registering Gene’s presence and releasing Ian’s arm with a dim smile. “He’s an art historian, for fuck’s sake!”
“Maybe one of his students died of boredom?” Ian said, possibly hoping a stab at levity might be welcome. He laughed and looked at Gene, who raised his eyebrows and smiled. He was enjoying this.
“Fuck both of you.” She pointed at them, grimaced, then trotted off after Sam, who had double locked the bathroom door.
“Open the bloody door, Sam!” she shouted as she pounded the door and twisted the knob. He finally did.
The party continued uncertainly as Bunny disappeared into the bathroom with Sam. When the door reopened at last, everyone turned away, pretending not to notice Sam standing there, looking like he’d been bled by leeches.
“It’s all piss and wind anyway,” Bunny announced loudly, reentering the anxious room with an empty glass. “Let’s eat.”
When the twenty-odd guests finally sat down to dinner, Ian made a toast. Bunny half listened, using the time to evaluate everyone who had come to celebrate her entrée into dotage. Bunny behaved herself through the starters. But by the second course, she decided that the dinner was a forum for her to disabuse her guests of their ideas that they were important in her life or in the world at large.
“I like this one so much better than the other,” Bunny said to Gordon Kretcher, one of Thatcher’s former chief whips, as she reached over to straighten his marginally lopsided wig. His eyes grew wide but he remained silent. “Alopecia?” she asked, struggling to remember the particulars of his condition.
“Bladder cancer,” he answered. “But I’m fine now.”
“Of course you’re fine. And let’s not pretend you weren’t bald as an egg before.” She laughed, giving Gordon a friendly jab in the shoulder.
Bunny snapped her fingers in the direction of one of the caterers, gesturing for a refill. She noticed Elaine and her face-lift trying to make eye contact with the girl, shaking her head as if to tell her that Bunny’s request should be denied. Bunny narrowed her eyes.
“Doesn’t everyone think Elaine looks fabulous?” Bunny asked loudly, waiting for the group to look at Elaine and nod in silent agreement. “The sides are a bit swelly,” Bunny continued, blowing out her cheeks and holding the air. She exhaled, grinning. “But I’m sure things will settle down. Hard to get the timing just right, I’d imagine?”
“My God, Bunny,” Elaine said.
Someone at the far end of the table gasped.
Gene Sparrow laughed and whispered something in Daphne’s ear.
“Oooh, Sam, careful now. Keep an eye on Gene with your little wife there.” In a stage whisper, Bunny added, “Rumor has it Gene was shagging his son’s girlfriend. Quite a mess that was.”
Gene playfully raised his glass, eager to let Bunny know he was in on the fun, encouraging her to continue. Gene was a lightning rod for mischief and discord. Bunny winked at him and took another sip, peering over the rim, searching for a more susceptible target. She put her glass down and settled on Daphne, who looked as if she’d spent all of ten minutes dressing for the party. Of course, the subtext of her plainness was that she was much too practical a person to be bothered with the frivolities of fashion and hair dye. Well, Bunny thought, Daphne might be younger than her, but she was not so young that she could get away with making quite so little effort. Not by a long shot.
“Bunny,” Sam said in a warning tone, reaching across Gordon and pushing Bunny’s glass away from her. She seized the glass with her right hand and placed her left gently on his hand. Gordon scooted his chair back.
“I’m just trying to be helpful, Sam. Gene doesn’t mind. Do you, Gene?”
“Not in the least,” he said, still smiling.
Sam cleared his throat. “All well and good, but I think—”
“Darling,” she interrupted, “remember when we went to Scotland all those years ago?”
“Yes,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“What was the name of that town? It was so picturesque. Not that we saw much of it.” She laughed and nodded agreeably at Daphne. “If you know what I mean.”
Sam stood up, knocking over his wineglass. “That’s enough, Bunny.”
“Oh, sit down, Sam. Don’t be so dramatic.” Bunny snapped for someone to clean up the wine. She took another drink as the guests at the table struggled to regain their conversational composure.
“Does he still have a big cock?” she asked Daphne a few seconds later. Daphne gasped and stared into her own lap. The table went quiet. “I suppose he must. We women, unfortunately, just shrivel up,” she said, looking at Camilla Frankel, who had, like Bunny, made the choice to age naturally. “Camilla, darling,” Bunny whispered loudly, “you should ask Elaine for her doctor’s number. A little nip and tuck might help you get through this difficult time with Randolph not working. Well, perhaps not Elaine’s doctor, but there must be someone…”
“I think that’s sufficient,” Randolph said meekly.
“Ah,” she said, pointing her finger playfully at Camilla’s pocket-size husband. “Do you now, Ran? It’s really no wonder Camilla looks so exhausted, supporting the lot of you.”
By the time the salmon arrived, she’d called Ian “a gouty parasite with a taste for rugby cock”; her friend Ayala, a famed journalist and aspiring novelist, “a bit long in the tooth to attempt to be a real writer”; and Sam “a dusty old junk collector with the prudence of Truman Capote.”
“You’re just awful,” Daphne said, finally standing up to defend her husband. About time, Bunny thought, and then she laid into her about the inadvisability of wearing an ombré dress past the age of fifty.
She was merciless, but the quote that made the Daily Mail w
as Bunny’s asking the editor in chief at British Vogue, “What will you be wearing to the Duchess of Cornwall’s birthday party?”—a party to which the editor had, quite publicly, received no invitation. It was at this point that most of the guests excused themselves, some to lick their wounds, some to escape before being humiliated, and most, Bunny suspected, to talk about how sad it was that Bunny Small had come undone. Even Ian left. Bunny was alone with an empty bottle of six-hundred-pound gin, twenty-five servings of banoffee pie, and warm brandy snaps. Even Chef Keller must have slipped out; he was gone before she could tell him the rillettes were too salty.
Hailey
In retrospect, everything had happened pretty quickly after that nauseating “We will always be your mom and dad but we aren’t going to be husband and wife anymore” conversation last year. Hailey knew everybody’s parents eventually got divorced, but seeing her dad only every other weekend sucked, commuting back and forth from San Diego sucked, and the For Sale sign on the front lawn of her childhood home sucked. That sign made the house look so average, as if anybody other than Hailey could have slipped and broken her arm in the pink shower belting out “Reflection” from Mulan. Or anybody other than Jaycee could have been dumb enough to eat the gel air freshener in the laundry room on a dare. They’d spent fifteen joint birthday parties in that yard, sitting at the picnic table eating fondant cake from SallyWally’s Bakery decorated with pictures of Elmo one year and Cinderella another year and, last year, a winking emoji. Why hadn’t her parents told her that their house was already for sale? Nobody told her anything.
“Did you know?” Hailey asked Jaycee, staring at the sign as they pulled up the driveway.
Jaycee nodded. Hailey glared at her. She was still reeling from having found birth control pills in her sister’s backpack last week while she was rooting around for her math homework to copy. Birth control pills! Jaycee was having sex with Devon Pierce and hadn’t even told her. So of course Jaycee knew the house was for sale before she did. Her mom probably told her all the details while they swapped sex tips en route to the gynecologist.
Unlike Hailey, Jaycee didn’t appear to be struggling with their parents’ divorce, the move, or starting a new school junior year. Jaycee was acing her classes, had seduced the hottest guy in school, was a starting forward on the field hockey team, and had landed a choice role in Hairspray. So what if Hailey was having a hard time? Did her mom really think banning Hailey from the play would help her get her grades up? Did she really think Hailey was going to go home and study for three hours a day while everyone who mattered was in rehearsals?
Fuck Fair Hills Academy with its Olympic diving coach, its state-of-the-art theater, its stupid cafeteria with its stupid taco bar and sushi sampler. Fuck her sister and her perfect life with her perfect boyfriend and her perfect grades. Fuck her dad for not missing them and for staying in San Diego. But most of all, fuck her mom and her bullshit play and her big plans for San Francisco.
The family rule had always been that their mom never cast them in leading roles so it wouldn’t look like she was playing favorites. Never mind that they were both better than almost all the kids at whatever school they happened to be attending. Never mind that performing was the one thing Hailey was actually better at than Jaycee and that her mom knew it. Good luck without me, Mom, Hailey thought after Jaycee’s hideous preview at their grandfather’s therapy session. Good fucking luck.
“We’re going to really clean house, girls,” their father had said, hustling them through the front door before Hailey could ask any questions. He was wearing his cycling gear. She hated seeing him in Lycra.
“The house goes on the market next week. And we, my girls, are having a yard sale!”
“Ugh,” Jaycee groaned, making a beeline for their bedroom. Inside they found empty boxes their father had prepared and labeled SELL, KEEP, and TRASH in black Sharpie.
“It’s bad enough we’re being forced out of our home,” Hailey said, flopping facedown on her bed. “Now we have to sell off bits of our childhood for three dollars and under?”
“Just do it,” Jaycee said. She was sitting cross-legged in front of their bureau digging through old clothes.
Hailey flipped onto her back and stared up at all her old stuffed animals on the bookshelf. Was she supposed to just throw them in the TRASH box? She watched Jaycee carelessly fling her clothing and then her childhood toys into the boxes marked SELL, dumping her once beloved Calico Critters in there with as much sentimentality as if she were pouring bad milk down the drain. She’s a fucking alien, Hailey thought.
“Aren’t you saving anything?” Hailey asked.
“My good stuff is at Mom’s. This is all junk.” She turned over the tin phone they’d made in fourth grade. Hailey smarted as she watched Jaycee toss it into the trash.
“Done,” Jaycee said after forty minutes. She put her one KEEP box on top of her bed and sent a text message to someone. The only things she’d saved were some playbills from school shows they’d done over the years, a few pictures, and an old diary. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
Hailey laughed, disbelieving. “You’re done?”
“I’m going to get something to eat with Carrie at Del Taco. Want to come?”
“I can’t, obviously,” Hailey said, thigh-deep in memories she was having a harder time sorting out. She wanted to crawl inside the KEEP box and take a nap.
“See you later,” Jaycee said, closing the door behind her.
Hailey walked out to the front yard holding Peanut, her stuffed koala bear. Her father was arranging boxes on their picnic table.
“You’re getting rid of our picnic table?”
“It’s a small apartment, hon. No yard and it’s not going to fit in your bedroom. Unless you want to sleep on it!” Then, seeing her face: “You okay?”
“I know we’ve talked about this, but I really don’t want to stay in LA.”
He sat down and motioned for her to take a seat next to him.
“Can’t I live with you? I promise I won’t be a bother.”
He slid closer and slung an arm around her shoulder. “If you feel like you want to keep some more of your things, I think there’s some storage downstairs in the apartment complex. I get that this isn’t easy for you.”
“It’s not about that. LA is so stupid. All anybody cares about is the way you look. I can’t connect with anyone there, and Mom and Jaycee barely even talk to me. It’s like I’m invisible.”
“You belong with your mother and your sister.”
“Please, Dad.”
He shook his head. “I would love to have you here with me. And in a year or so, we can revisit the subject. It’s just not the right time.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked, because it was suddenly so obvious.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Then why can’t I stay here?”
He closed his eyes for a moment and let out a long whistle. When he finally turned to Hailey, his eyes were glassy. He cupped his hands over his nose and mouth so that when he spoke, his voice was a bit muffled. “I have a boyfriend.”
Hailey laughed, mostly because she couldn’t think of how else to respond. Maybe he was joking.
“I’m just coming to terms with this myself. His name is Gil and—”
“Oh my God, please stop!”
“I’m very happy.”
“Well, I’m so glad you’re happy! What about me? I’m not happy.”
“Please don’t personalize this, Hai. It has nothing to do with you. I mean, it does in that I want you to know Gil but…this doesn’t change anything.”
“Oh my God. You’re so dense.”
“Hailey.”
“Does Mom know?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you got divorced?”
“Well, it’s obviously an enormous factor, but our marriage hadn’t been working for quite some time. She wasn’t happy here, with me, even before. This is better for everyone
.”
“Are you fucking kidding?”
“Don’t speak to me like that.”
They sat in silence for a long time.
“You want to come on a ride with me?” he finally asked, pointing to her old bike. They used to ride together every weekend. “It might clear our heads. Then we can talk more.”
“No.”
“We need to talk about this, Hailey. You need to process.”
Hailey shook her head. “Please. Just go.”
“We’ll talk later.” He stood up and kissed her forehead. “I’m here for you,” he said, already snapping his shoe into the pedal. “I hope you know that. I’m right here.”
You’re right here? Hailey thought as she watched him ride down the street. You don’t want me to live with you, you’re spending our last weekend in our house on your bike, and you ditched us for a freaking man? In what universe are you here for anyone but yourself? No wonder you don’t have any patients!
How was she supposed to “process” that the dad she’d always counted on had been replaced by a gay man in a unitard who was more intent on wasting away in Margaritaville with Gil than he was on ensuring the stability of his sixteen-year-old daughter? And that her mom was so profoundly self-involved that she’d failed to notice that the husband she’d devoted the past fifteen years to emasculating was gay? Or that her sister wasn’t even thoughtful enough to hide the fact that she’d thrown the collage Hailey had made her in third grade in the TRASH box?
Alone in the suburban silence of her childhood home, Hailey walked quietly from room to room. The furniture looked naked. She glanced at the detritus of her youth, scattered among the twenty-odd taped-up boxes of things her father had decided were worth keeping. She went into the kitchen and sat down at the wooden table where they’d eaten God knows how many meals together. She traced her finger around a white ring Jaycee had accidentally left from a glass of orange juice when they were kids. Their mom had really laid into Jaycee about that. She’d made her cry over a water ring. Hailey had felt so bad for her sister then. That’s when they were still connected, when an injustice toward one of them was felt equally by both.