She does just what she knows she shouldn’t do. She walks through the fine jewelry area of the main floor, back to the Kentshire section, and as she does, her heart picks up speed. She hasn’t been back since that afternoon she came here with Asad. She tried on several rings, but she knew right away which one was her favorite, an antique cushion-cut diamond flanked by two emeralds, set on a thin rose-gold band. Asad beamed, took the clerk’s card.
“Can I help you with something?” the woman behind the counter says.
“No, thank you,” Smith says, shrinking away. “Just looking.”
She snakes through the clusters of people and heads for the escalator. Since she was a little girl, she’s always loved a good escalator ride, that moment when you must precisely time your first step so as not to stumble, the subtle thrill of being lifted, of seeing exactly where you are going, the more gradual ascent. Sally preferred the efficiency of the elevator, of being boxed in, of pressing a simple button and being shot up toward the sky.
Smith steps off on the seventh floor and wanders the home section. She winds through the maze of pristine items, pausing to finger the fine linens and towels, to study the delicate china patterns on display.
The small books section has always been her favorite. Bitsy raised the girls to revere books. From a young age, Smith and Sally knew how important it was to read everything, to stay flush with exquisite words, to have poetic sentences in the ear at all times. Grammar? Oh, a must. The English education at Brearley was top-notch naturally, but Bitsy did a little extra grammar work with them on the side after school. Bad grammar was a pet peeve and she made sure that her girls felt the same way.
Many evenings of their childhood, even through those demanding years of high school, the three of them would climb into Bitsy’s big bed after dinner. More often than not, Thatcher was still at the office or entertaining a client, but this worked well because it was Anderson girl time. They read together for at least thirty minutes. For their birthdays each year, Bitsy always bought three copies of the books she deemed good enough and interesting enough for the girls. The tradition dates back to when they were toddlers. Bitsy was keenly loyal to the Corner Bookstore on Madison, where she knew the owner. They would lie there, side by side, reading the same book, and when they were all finished, they would discuss it. Sally seemed to love every book. Smith was always more critical, noting inconsistencies in the prose, flaws in pace and tone.
For Smith’s birthday this year, it was Let’s Bring Back: The Lost Language Edition: A Collection of Forgotten-Yet-Delightful Words, Phrases, Praises, Insults, Idioms, and Literary Flourishes from Eras Past. Many of the sayings in the book are ones Bitsy already uses, words and expressions Smith and Sally love to mock her for using. Mom, you can’t say things like bezonian—“rascal”—or bitchfoxly—“woman of the night”—and expect us to understand.
In the past few months it’s become something of an elaborate inside joke, a secret language, a competition. Which Anderson girl can pepper her sentences with the greatest number of antiquated gems? Smith has had grand plans to load up her wedding speech with perfectly plucked phrases. That is, if she gets around to actually writing it.
“Smith!”
The sound of her name snaps her back to consciousness. A dark-haired woman waves wildly from the entrance of the children’s shop. Who is this? The woman, who’s pushing a stroller, is only vaguely familiar. It takes her a moment to place her, but it’s Francesca Slade, a classmate from Brearley. She hasn’t seen her since Talia, another Brearley girl, got married five years ago.
“It’s been years!” Francesca says, leaning over and capturing Smith in a hug. The hug is awkward, in no small part due to the fact that Fran (as they used to call her back in the day) is hugely pregnant. “Thank God for Facebook! I’m not sure I would’ve recognized you. You look so good as opposed to my fatty self. Twins, actually! We find out the sex in a few weeks and I’m gunning for girls after this tiny monster,” she says, pointing to a towheaded toddler boy in her stroller.
Smith knows his name. Cooper. She shouldn’t know his name, but she knows many random things about many people she doesn’t actually know because of social media.
“What’s Sally up to these days? Wait, don’t tell me. Facebook trivia. A doctor, no? I’ve got to say that surprised me. You always struck me as the straight arrow and she always struck me as the rather bohemian one.”
Is this a slight? Is she saying that Smith’s work is bohemian? What does this even mean?
“Funny how things happen, huh?” Smith says. “She’s getting married this weekend. I’m here for her final fitting. Pretty crazy.”
“Oh, how wonderful! I got my dress here too, but that feels like eons ago. I swear having kids totally fucks the flow of time. I know, I know, this little guy’s going to say fuck at his preschool interviews. I’ve got to watch it. I literally cannot remember my life before it was overtaken. I’m not complaining because obviously all of this madness is the best thing that’s ever happened to me even if my body’s a disaster and my husband doesn’t want to come near me . . . oh wait, I am complaining. Anyway, I’m here trying to get a little early Christmas shopping done because you know how nutty this season can be. They actually have toys here, which I never knew, and they aren’t quite as hideous as some of the others. I swear we spent this small fortune decorating this chic home and now it’s in tatters and cluttered with rainbow plastic crap and all of our antique furniture has these hideous foam edges. I’m sure you know all about that with your organization work? I’m sure you see a whole lot of ‘me’s. I was just telling Michael last night that I’ve become a type, or an archetype maybe? Smith, I swear to God I was going to be the one holding out, working all night at Goldman, doing Sheryl Sandberg proud, leaning way waaaaay in, but it just hit me when I saw this little face. The instinct was all it took. And now look at me.” She finally stops speaking, breathless.
“You look fantastic,” Smith says. A generous and harmless lie. Yes, Fran looks puffy and tired, and yes, her monologue just now bordered on manic narcissism, but still, she looks happy, or is this just a grass-is-greener thing where here is Smith, in the best shape of her life by far, wanting something other than to fit into her skinny jeans?
“Where’s the wedding?”
“At the Waldorf,” Smith says. “The Starlight Roof.”
“Oh, I love that space! So Gatsby!”
Smith went with Sally to look at several venues around the city, and though Sally fell in love with a raw loft space in SoHo, Bitsy argued fervently for the Waldorf, and it didn’t take much for Sally to acquiesce. Sally has always been a pleaser, and good about picking her Bitsy battles, and it wasn’t worth it to alienate her mother when she would be the one doing so much of the planning. They sent out save-the-dates almost a full year in advance, a thick ivory card with a black and white photograph of the Waldorf from 1971, the year their parents were married there.
“It was so good to see you,” Fran says, taking Smith’s hands. “I’m going to track you down.”
“Do,” Smith says. “But I must run. Can’t be late for the bride. Good luck with everything.”
Smith walks the length of the hall, pausing by the sleek restaurant, which hums with fashionable New Yorkers. They came here that day after they looked at rings downstairs. Asad wanted to celebrate.
Smith keeps walking and ducks into the bridal salon. The small space is hushed and smells faintly of lavender. A despondent-looking blonde perches behind a silver-leafed desk, her face lit by a computer screen. Wedding dresses hang near the entrance and Smith sifts through them. Plastic crinkles between her fingers. It’s a mournful, mocking sound. She never got to the point of buying her own dress, but she’d found it in a tiny boutique. It was vintage, made of the most exquisite Chantilly lace, and had a high neck. Somehow, it was both demure and sexy. She’d wear this to the American party in the spring, and for the celebrations in Pakistan, she imagined honoring his family by do
ing a proper henna ceremony and donning traditional garb, one of the heavily embroidered red, pink or purple shalwar kameez she saw on Pinterest accompanied by heavy gold jewelry.
When Smith looks up, she sees Bitsy and Sally walking toward her. Their arms are linked and they laugh about something. Their laughter carries melodically and Smith feels a pang of envy at their lightness. They don’t see her at first, but when they do, their faces change. Is it pity that fills their eyes? Is Smith seeing things?
“You don’t look half as hungover as Mom described,” Sally says, giggling her Sally giggle, kissing Smith on the cheek.
The three of them are ushered to the back of the boutique and into a small fitting room. The lights are dimmed slightly and a single votive candle flickers on a glass table. Three small bottles of water wait. In the hall, deferential staffers flutter around, speaking in ominous code, ducking their heads in.
Inside the room, the dress waits, a stationary cloud of white shrouded in thick plastic. A seamstress carefully removes the dress from its wrapping.
“Beautiful,” she mutters reverently, studying it, running her hand down its length.
Sally is quiet and careful in her undressing and something like somberness fills the room. Sally has always been more modest than Smith and now she stands here in her underwear and strapless bodice, arms crossed over her chest. Smith catches a glimpse of Sally’s body. Thin, but curvy.
“I can’t believe this is it,” Sally says sweetly, staring at herself in the mirror, straightening the waistband of her white underwear. “I’m getting married?”
Her voice is high and cartoonish, grating.
The seamstress helps Sally into the dress. It’s enormous, princesslike, precisely what Smith predicted her sister would pick. The seamstress zips it from behind.
It fits. It fits perfectly. There is no gushing, no giddy prancing around.
Just reverential silence.
“You look gorgeous,” Smith hears herself say.
She would say this anyway, but it also happens to be true. Her sister looks like a dream—tiny waist, antique lace trimming a bodice that reveals the slightest peek of cleavage, a full ball skirt fit for fairy-tale twirling. It’s now that Smith feels traces of what she’s been waiting to feel, hoping to feel: happiness for her sister. But this happiness swiftly gives way to an almost eerie strangeness. There’s something deeply disorienting about this moment and Smith feels light-headed, confused. They’ve always looked so much alike, have often been mistaken for twins. And so here she is, her mirrored self, in a wedding gown. It’s like a preview of her own bridal self, a cruel image of what might have been.
“Pretty as a picture,” Bitsy croons, clasping her hands in front of her.
“So, that’s it?” Sally says to the seamstress. “It’s finished. No more changes?”
The seamstress nods. Smith can detect disappointment in her sister’s questions, a touch of defeat. After a year of hunting for the dress, for the location, for the perfect details to capture them as a couple, the day is almost here. Which also means it’s almost over.
“You know my friend Callie from Princeton?” Sally says, stepping gingerly out of the dress. “She said that she felt this slight depression the day after her wedding. I can see that. This has all been kind of fun.”
This makes no sense at all to Smith, but she bites her tongue. What Smith was looking forward to was what came after the wedding. The real-life part. Nights on the couch in sweatpants watching good television and bad television too, passionate debates about current events over fine restaurant meals, the milestones of pregnancy and childhood witnessed wondrously side by side.
At the front of the salon again, the three of them float saccharine good-byes to the girl behind the computer. Another bride waits with her mother now, stars in her young blue eyes.
“How’s the registry looking?” Bitsy asks. “Tell me at least one thing is going smoothly.”
Sally smiles, turns to Smith. “Mom’s all bent out of shape because she was so proud of herself for using her French and taking over the table linens from the wedding planner and they came in wrong. Also, a few people have replied saying they are bringing uninvited plus-ones. I told her I don’t give a shit, but she’s got a nasty little bee in her bonnet.”
“It’s just that the French chickadee at the linens company is such a ne’er-do-well. We had the linens shipped from Paris, and they came in weeks ago. I just opened them and they’re all wrong. For the love of God, they’re rose. We ordered blush. And this little fluffer’s bending my ear telling me that she actually prefers rose to blush—some nonsense about a new color trend. And then I’m sitting there, ostensibly on hold, but I can hear her, on her other phone, beating her gums in French for five solid minutes about this wretched cheapskate first date she’s been on. I really don’t understand your generation, girls. All those castles in the air. Tell me, whatever happened to privacy? Whatever happened to not airing dirty laundry in public? Whatever happened to maintaining some modicum of propriety?”
Smith nods, but her mind is miles away.
“Are you okay?” Sally says, grabbing Smith’s arm.
“Not really. I found out this morning that Asad and his wife are having a baby.”
She looks up at her mother and sister, waits for a reaction, some sympathy. Sally appears genuinely shaken, but a smile spreads over Bitsy’s face. A fucking smile.
“Whaaat? I apologize if news of a baby makes me happy, dear,” Bitsy says in a furious whisper.
“Are you kidding me, Mom? He was the love of my life and he dumps me with no explanation and I’m supposed to be tickled that he’s about to become a father? Really?”
“Look, sweets, I know you’ve been having a rotten time, but you and I both know very well that he wasn’t the love of your life. You took up with him to piss Daddy off. And it worked. You made your point, but don’t pretend this fellow was something he wasn’t. You’re better than that.”
“Am I?” Smith says, fixing her mother with a glare.
“Yes, you are. Look, I can’t do this right now. I’m going to head home and fix a stiff one and take another stab at that darned seating chart. You girls should go have a cocktail and catch up. It’ll be nice; you can commiserate about how insensitive your well-meaning mother is,” Bitsy says, kissing both girls on the cheek, pointing to the restaurant.
“I’m game,” Sally says, shrugging.
“Sure,” Smith says, eyeing the restaurant. It’s the last place in the world she wants to go.
Sally threads her arm through Smith’s and leans on her shoulder, just like they used to do as girls walking down the sidewalks of their neighborhood. It’s a small thing, and a familiar one too, and Smith feels it, it, that ineffable closeness that’s evolved over time. The physical proximity to her sister is comforting and she finds herself longing for simpler times. Sally smells, as she always has, like lemon and sugar.
5:14PM
“What do you mean, you knew?”
Bottled or tap?” the waiter asks. Smith and Sally sit in the banquette by the window, giving Smith a sweeping view of Central Park.
“Fizzy water, please,” Sally answers for them with her near-childish ebullience. In moments like this, it amazes Smith that Sally is an actual doctor. That she wears the white coat and sees patients.
“Good old fizzy water. I love that you still call it that,” Smith says.
“A relic. I’ve held on to a few of them. ‘Borella’ is so much better than ‘umbrella.’ Yes, I’ll read a maz-agine during my pedicure. Sure, I’ll have a sprinkling of Parsabom on my penne. Even Briggs has begun to dip into the sacred Smith-Sally-Bitsy fictionary. It’s pretty sweet.”
“Your hair looks good,” Smith says. “I like the color. It will photograph well. And the fringe of bangs suits you.”
“Thanks,” Sally says. “I know it’s terribly clichéd to say this, but I want to look like myself, but the best version of myself. Does that make any sense?”
“Perfect sense,” Smith says, but she’s barely listening. It’s hard to focus. She fiddles with her phone, forwards her life coach her e-mail exchange with Asad so they can talk about it later. “Sorry, just had to do one quick thing. I’m all yours.”
Sally flashes a nervous smile. “Do you remember that night when Mom and Dad went out and I convinced you that we should cut our hair? Remember how we took the scissors into the bathroom and locked the door and that poor sitter—what was her name? Cristin? Crystal?—didn’t have a clue and we cut each other’s hair short and tried to curl it to look like Betty Boop? How hilarious was that?”
Smith laughs. She remembers the scene differently, as far less than hilarious. She can see them now, her parents coming through the front door after one of their countless charity events. Her father stumbling and mumbling, lubricated with alcohol, her mother sharp as ever. When Bitsy saw the girls, sheepish and freshly shorn, and the quaking sitter in the background, horror filled her eyes. And then Thatcher, catching on to the transgression, flipped in an instant from affable bow-tied banker to aggressive taskmaster. What have you girls done? Was this your idea, Smith?
“And what was our punishment?” Sally says. “An appointment at the salon at the Waldorf with her guy to remedy the situation. Unduly harsh.”
Smith looks around the restaurant and suddenly remembers why she’s been avoiding it. Memories fire at her, but her sister says something.
“I knew,” Sally says quietly, looking down.
“Knew about what?” Smith says, staring at her sister.
“About Asad and the baby.”
Smith feels her entire body stiffening. Looks down at her lap, back up at her sister, who’s visibly troubled. What the fuck?
“What do you mean, you knew?”
“Smith, calm down,” Sally says in a whisper. “You know very well that Asad and I have tons of friends in common from med school. I heard a month or so ago and I didn’t see what the point was in telling you. You’re working so hard to move on, Smith. Why would I tell you this and set you back? You’re doing so well.”
The Ramblers Page 11