The Rest of Us

by Jessica Lott

  I watched them head towards the vaulted living room, where the guests crowded like a flock of trapped doves. Staring, I tripped on the corner of a rug and almost fell down on my stomach. I’d become so clumsy lately. Something to do with the excess fluid in the joints. I repressed a wave of self-pity.

  In the kitchen, Win was dressed in a lurid purple pantsuit and red apron—she was also exempt from the dress code. She was a big, coarse woman, and around her you felt crammed by her high-volume talk and the pressure to respond by laughing. She immediately got me on the subject of my pregnancy and its gastrointestinal effects. She had four children and a theory that the last boy was a depressive because she’d been going through a divorce and cried “all the damn time” while he was in utero. I didn’t like hearing this and let my attention wander to the darkened patio, where a waiter slouched against the garage smoking a cigarette, or a joint.

  Hallie came rushing in minutes later. “Suspect numero uno hasn’t showed.”

  I arched my eyebrows to indicate Win, who was standing behind me.

  “She’s in on it,” she said, steering me into the dining room.

  • • •

  The long table twinkled, as if dusted with frost, tiny points of light refracting off the cut crystal glassware and vases and high polished silver. For a moment I was overtaken, subsumed by that wordless excitement I’d experienced as a child when I saw delicately beautiful iridescent things: cellophane, paintings of fairy wings.

  In front of each plate was a fingerbowl of pink roses and a white place card with a name. Hallie pointed to the far end of the table. “I’m sitting there.” Of the nearer end: “Adán’s here. I don’t want to put him on guard by sitting too close. He knows I have sharp eyes.” She pointed to the seat to his right. “Kate’s here, next to him. Obvious, I know, but there’s no other way to do it. I put suspect number two on his other side. Liza, his golfing buddy’s wife. I don’t think it’s her—he’s not into the freckly thing. But he seems to think I’m jealous of her, so he’ll believe he has a buffer for Kate. If it is Kate. And if she shows up—I don’t know why the hell she isn’t here yet.”

  My place card was next to Liza’s. Rhinehart’s was miles away. “How come Rhinehart and I aren’t sitting next to each other?”

  Hallie rolled her eyes. “Couples are never seated together. It’s bad etiquette. So here’s how it works.” She sat in Adán’s seat, at the head of the table, to demonstrate. “This is the corner he’ll be sharing with Kate”—she waved her hand above that area, like a magician. “If he wants to touch her in secret—and believe me, if he’s fucking her, he’ll want to touch her in secret—he will have to stick his hand underneath the table here, bypassing the table leg and these weird little decorative things, to get to her knee, thigh, crotch, anywhere on her lap. He will have to do this while not looking at his hand. So here’s the genius—” In the flickering light, her eyes looked manic. “I’ve put a black substance, a marking oil—it took me forever to get the consistency right, it’s sort of like thick ink—on the leg of the table that he shares with Kate, and underneath the table here, along the diagonal path from his body to hers. If his hand is reaching for her there’s no way he can avoid brushing against the oil somewhere, and once he touches her, the evidence will be all over her white dress, wherever he put his hand.”

  She stood up, triumphant. “I even extended it over on her side in case she reaches for him. I didn’t bother with Liza’s side.”

  I was horrified. “Where did you come up with this?”

  “I read about some Brazilian society women who did it with white powder to catch a man playing footsie. My idea’s better.”

  She pointed to my seat, which was diagonally to his left. “You’re there so you can overhear any conversation and watch their body language. I put a bore on your other side so you won’t get distracted.”

  I rubbed my back, which was starting to ache. “I’m against this plan. If you’re going to make me do it, then at least put Rhinehart next to me. He’s the only person I know here.”

  “Will you stop with that? It took me over a week to come up with the seating chart!”

  I crossed my arms, annoyed, and she sighed. “All right, I guess I can put him across from you, is that good enough? He doesn’t know anything, does he?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “This is better anyway,” she said switching the cards. “Adán will be less suspicious of you then. And it puts that tramp Lindsay on Rhinehart’s other side—he’s out talking to her now. Serves you right for making such a big deal about it.” She inched over the flower arrangement so that I could have a better view of Adán’s seat.

  Win stuck her head in the dining room and announced that dinner would be ready in ten minutes and to start getting everyone to the table. In the living room, I found Rhinehart, who was talking to a dark-haired, small-boned girl with ferrety little brows. She was in a tight white dress with lace over the cleavage. I came up to them and Rhinehart encircled my thick waist.

  “We were just discussing Rimbaud. I’ve always thought Satie was his equivalent in the musical realm. Every art form has its mirror in another,” he said to Lindsay, who nodded knowingly.

  He continued, “To Neruda there is André Kertész, a mood-inflected Hungarian photographer. Very emotive work. In just the shadow of a fork against a plate, he could convey a lifetime of loneliness.”

  This was an almost word-for-word rip-off of what I had said two days ago, when I’d taken Rhinehart to see the exhibit at the ICP.

  “Time for din-din,” Hallie said, appearing next to Lindsay and taking her thin arm. Once they were out of earshot, Rhinehart said to me, “Young women are constantly touching themselves, making all these little adjustments to their clothes and hair. So distracting—I kept losing my train of thought.”

  “You seemed to be doing okay.”

  He looked expectantly around the room. “I had hoped to get one of these young fathers to discuss his methods of disciplining with me. Maybe at dinner.”

  We went into the dining room and Rhinehart found his place next to Lindsay, who was already seated. “Isn’t this fortuitous!” he said robustly, shooting an unhappy look at me.

  The man to my left, who had a rough-hewn face and a disarming way of speaking about his wife as if she wasn’t sitting two seats down, was talking about his new home in Englewood Cliffs. They were going to close on it next week. The homeowner offered to pour me a glass of wine. I passed. Across from me, Rhinehart was responding to something Lindsay said with his forced laugh, “Ha, ha, ha,” like clumps of snow falling off a roof.

  Kate had arrived finally, a little breathless, just as we were assembling at the table. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Everything about her seemed to indicate an average suburban mother, her thick sandy-colored hair, her sporty white ensemble that resembled a tennis dress with a long skirt. In fact, walking into this scene without prior knowledge, I’d place a bet that the seductress was Hallie, with that harlot-colored gown, and darting eyes, and loud, flirtatious talk at the end of the table.

  • • •

  I was trying to discreetly watch Adán, who had finally taken his seat—he’d been continuing a conversation he’d started in the other room, and once at the table, kept leaving to fetch photographs related to it. He was flush with laughter and talk, enjoying himself immensely—I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him so happy. Catching my eye, he said, “Hola, guapa! I didn’t even greet you.” He came around to my side of the table, kissing me on my cheeks, and reaching down to rest his hand on my stomach. “How beautiful you look—so happy and healthy looking. A very natural woman. And the father there—” He pointed across the table to Rhinehart, who looked as if he’d just been presented an award. “He is very happy, too. Muy orgulloso as we say in Spanish—” Adán swelled out his chest. “Very proud. Like a toreador.”

  • • •

  Kate was telling the story of why she was late—the nanny had c
ome down with the flu at the last minute, and after frantic calling around she was finally able to bribe a neighborhood girl out of her movie date to come over. “The worst is that I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll feed the kids.’ I’d made them spaghetti and meatballs! Which they love, they were over the moon, but when it comes time for them to eat, I’m already dressed, and I’m wearing this white dress”—she pointed to herself—“and two aprons, one around my hair, scrambling around trying to serve without getting near the food.”

  “And this little Bobby, he eats with his hands,” Adán said to Rhinehart. “Like this,” and he made as if he was flinging food past his mouth and behind him. He was laughing. But was this unusual? Did it indicate he’d spent time at Kate’s house alone? I’d seen him looking a little distant earlier, maybe he was thinking about her, or her abandoned kids, or about sailing away on his own boat with a twenty-year-old. How the hell was I supposed to know?

  And anyway, Liza seemed like the bigger problem, the way she kept pulling on Adán’s arm, and flashing her tan boobs and ropey biceps and big teeth. He appeared to be enjoying that, too. I watched his hands, waiting for them to creep below deck. But they remained in sight, where they could assist him with eating the salad. We just might get through this dinner without a scene after all, I thought, relieved.

  Just as the main course was being served, Rhinehart stood, presumably to go to the bathroom. Glancing over, I saw the front of his pants smeared with black. I gasped. He followed my eyes down and said, “Good Lord!”

  What had Hallie used! It looked like motor oil. He was dipping his napkin in his water glass, wiping at the stain and making it worse. I leaned across the table and said, “Maybe you should do that in the other room.”

  By now most of the table had noticed. Kate got up and went into the kitchen to retrieve salt and seltzer. Win came out, still carrying dinner plates, saying, “No, no. Bleach is the only thing.” The man next to me agreed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” his wife called down the table, “we stopped buying bleach months ago, because it yellows the fabric. We use Murphy Oil Soap,” she told the woman next to her. “It’s what chefs use on their whites.”

  “What the hell is this? Tar?” Rhinehart was running his hand under the table, where he said it felt sticky. His fingers came back coated in a viscous black fluid, so now he couldn’t touch anything.

  Adán was apologizing to everyone, saying “seat” instead of “sit” and “please ate your dinner.” He’d gotten out the flashlight and from under the table, we heard him curse. “It’s all over this legs! Everywhere!” But then he came up again, saying, “Not to worry, just a little oil in this section. The rest is fine.” But many people, watching Rhinehart still struggling with his pants, remained standing, and were nibbling on bread or asparagus spears they’d taken off their plates. One man was leaning against the wall and eating, as if at a barbecue. Liza and Lindsay and a few others had left the room and could be heard laughing in the hall. Hallie had disappeared. A woman had gotten some black on her dress, even though she’d been seated by Hallie, and was saying repeatedly that it would never come out. Other women began inspecting their dresses. Kate discovered some black on her elbow and a few drops on her knee. I stood up, banging my stomach against on the table lip and gestured furiously to Rhinehart to follow. We passed Hallie standing in the hall, frozen with indecision. Her face had gone pale, all the blood drained out, like a death mask.

  • • •

  Locked in the bathroom together, the light bouncing metallically off the stainless steel and mirrors, Rhinehart and I assessed the damage. “Did someone touch you?” I asked. “Did Lindsay?” But she had been sitting on the other side of him, away from the oily ink.

  “Why would she touch me there? I must have brushed against something.”

  Eventually, we pieced it together. Leaning over to talk to Kate, he had grabbed on to the table, coming in contact with the oil under her place setting. Hallie hadn’t been as precise as she thought in applying it. Rhinehart, black on his hands, and not noticing, had then smeared it while adjusting himself, as the pants he’d chosen to wear were too tight in the crotch.

  We’d made a mess of his pants. The entire front was a dirty gray color. The wet linen had gone transparent and I could see the tender outline of his thigh, the white section of pocket. He shook his head. “How humiliating. How could I have been so clumsy?”

  “It wasn’t entirely your fault,” I said. “I’ll tell you the whole story when we get home.”

  But he wasn’t that easily consoled. “How humiliating,” he said again, rubbing at the stain. “At this party, of all places.”

  “Since when do you care so much what others think?” I said. And then it occurred to me that he’d probably been anxious to see Hallie after all these years, which is why it had taken him so long to get ready. He was also probably self-conscious in this young, affluent crowd, some of whom knew him by his work. He was no longer just a writer. I, along with the baby, had forced him into a new role and one that could be easily caricatured—an aged goat chasing after his youth.

  I put my arms around him, spontaneously. I suddenly loved him so much, it felt like something I would never be able to find proper words for. I knew it only as this tenderness, a dull ache at the center of my heart.

  We realized we’d ruined the towel. I folded it and set it alongside the tub, behind the shower curtain. Rhinehart wondered aloud why Adán hadn’t come to check on us. “He’s such a gracious host.”

  “I think we should try and sneak out,” I said, holding his face in my hands and kissing him. He still looked upset.

  “I was really enjoying myself, too.” He sighed. “I hope they invite us back.”

  • • •

  While we were in the bathroom, Hallie must have confronted Kate. A small crowd was gathered at the end of the hall and Kate was crying—another woman had retrieved Kate’s purse and was arranging for people to move their cars so she could leave.

  “What’s going on?” Rhinehart said to me.

  I saw Adán through the open door of his study, where he was smoking a cigar with his business associates—did he know what was going on? Was he pretending not to? He no longer seemed like the host, but some defamed guest, looking deflated and ridiculous in his rumpled white tux, the red bow tie that matched his wife’s dress.

  I walked up to Hallie and saw her eyes were still burning aggressively. In a voice high with false cheer, as if Kate hadn’t just walked past her, sobbing, and out the door—she made a big, theatrical apology for Rhinehart’s pants—she’d had some men come in and fix the table leg and they had probably left grease behind. I told her I was leaving. She kissed me roughly on both cheeks, her overheated face bumping mine, and signaled that she wanted to talk to me alone, but I was angry and pretended not to notice—I’d had enough for one night.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I was dreading Hallie’s phone call. But I didn’t hear from her all day. Or the next day, or the next, and that’s when I started to wonder whether she was angry with me, or with Rhinehart for screwing up her trap. I broke down and called her. Before I could even say hello, she said, “Adán’s left me.” Then the line disconnected. I called back several more times but there was no answer. I was getting my things together to drive to Jersey, when Rhinehart stopped me. “Give her until tomorrow, at least.” And because I always seemed to be forcing people out of their shells to comfort me with assurances of their well being, I listened to him.

  The next day I went to the florist and selected a large bouquet of her favorites, sunflowers and orange roses, which we used to give each other when we were down. Fresh flowers reminded us of my dad’s farm. I had them sent to her house with a note telling her to call me when she was ready. I wrote six versions of that note, debating on whether I should include the line: “I’m worried about you.” Protective sentimentality often annoyed her, so in the end I left it off.

  The afternoon passed with n
o word, and I wondered if she was too sad to even appreciate flowers. I called, and she picked up on the first ring. “Those were from you? I thought this entire time they were from Adán!”

  “There was a card. Didn’t you see it?”

  She dropped the phone, and I could hear her in the background rustling around in the cellophane and paper. Then quiet. Then her on the phone again. “Why did you do that? I was going to call him and thank him. I would have looked like such an idiot!”

  I was apologizing, but she had hung up.

  • • •

  The following day I received a phone call from Clare Severeson. They had chosen me for the opening in the gallery’s schedule. I was stunned. My own show. She wanted to meet this week and go through my portfolio again, pulling the images we thought would work best in the space, including the series with the birds in Rhinehart’s bedroom that I had finally finished after we returned from Florida. I saw Rhinehart hovering in the doorway, listening. He disappeared. When I hung up, he was back with a bottle of sparkling cider he’d bought down at the corner store. “A solo show!” I said aloud, and we toasted. “It’s actually coming together!”

  “It was only a matter of time,” he said.

  I drained the glass. “I’m going to celebrate with some wine. Don’t give me the scolding look. It’s a special occasion. I feel like I’m at my sixth-grade graduation with this cider.”

  “It’s appropriate,” he said. “Congratulations, graduate!”