Now came the hard part. Where would she put Joe’s mother? Valentina had never been to their home before, but Sylvia knew that she’d be the most likely to cause a scene. She always spoke a decibel higher than most other people, like Stanley Kowalski yelling for Stella. And who knew what sorts of things she considered proper dinner conversation? She would put Valentina on Alan’s left. Surely he’d be able to manage her throughout the course of dinner. Alan had a way of speaking very softly. As a child, he was cautioned to be seen and not heard. And now, as the head of pediatric cardiology for Connecticut Children’s Hospital, he was accustomed to people listening carefully to him. There was never an occasion to raise his voice; he always had the floor.
That left the girls and Joe. She put Becca next to her beau, and Sarah next to her. The only spot left for Joe was across the table from the girls, next to his mother. Maybe they would just talk amongst themselves.
Six
Spring in Manhattan was beautiful, truly beautiful. The snow boots went back in the closet, as did the winter coats and the mittens. The heavy sweaters, the bulky scarves, and the hats were no longer necessary. Out came the smart-looking raincoats and lightweight jackets. Suede shoes for the days it didn’t rain. Compact umbrellas for the days it did.
Sarah loved the springtime. She loved that first day she could ditch her boots for a pretty pair of slingbacks. She loved being able to walk to work from the subway without all of the sidewalk sludge riding up on the backs of her calves. She loved the feel of the fresh air hitting her face after riding the train.
But once Sarah got to work, it was fall. The magazine worked six months ahead of time—every magazine did—so, even though it was spring in Manhattan, her mind was already on autumn. Back-to-school, fresh starts. New beginnings.
Sarah was very much in need of a new beginning. She loved reinventing herself. It was what had drawn her to the magazine world in the first place. Every season was another chance to change your wardrobe, change how the world saw you and how you saw yourself. She reveled in it.
Six months prior, Sarah had made a change. A big change. Like a snake that had shed its skin, she was a completely new being. Only most people didn’t know it yet. Part of her liked it—this holding of an important secret—but part of her did not. Some days she felt as though the weight of it would crush her.
Sarah wanted to tell her mother. Really she did. But she couldn’t. Not just yet. She had no idea how, for one thing. Or when.
“You and Joe will be on time?” her mother asked, seemingly for the millionth time.
“Yes,” Sarah said. “We will be on time.” She’d had no idea that she and Joe had cultivated such a reputation for lateness.
“Maybe even a few minutes early,” her mother said. “Just so that the house is full when the Rothschilds arrive.”
Sarah didn’t respond; her assistant was dropping more pages onto her desk for approval. They were about to close August, and Sarah was in the all-important stage of reviewing final pages before they could go to print. She couldn’t allow even the slightest error to make it through to the final book.
Sarah’s desk was a mess. She hated a mess. Sarah liked order. She liked to know where things belonged. The rest of her office was perfectly organized—color-coded folders filled her filing cabinets, two startlingly white leather Barcelona chairs faced her desk, and her bookshelf held past issues of the magazine, stacked neatly, along with some of her own original artwork, all framed lovingly by Joe. Her windowsills were clear, save for a few picture frames, staged on top of hardcover books, chosen in equal parts for the meaningfulness of their titles (The Best of Good and Time of My Life) and the colors of their book jackets (pale pinks, light yellows). A small crystal vase sat on a table between the Barcelona chairs, filled with pink champagne peonies. Joe knew they were Sarah’s favorite, and sent a bouquet each month the week the issue went to bed.
“Did you hear me?” Sylvia asked.
“Yes,” Sarah said, on autopilot, as she flipped through the draft pages. “Be on time.”
“Be early,” Sylvia said.
“I always am,” she said.
* * *
Sarah snuck out of her office for lunch. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d done that—taken a proper lunch break—and it made her feel like she was doing something illicit.
She couldn’t decide if she liked that feeling or not.
Sarah walked down to the magazine’s cafeteria (she wasn’t so bold as to actually leave the building), and marveled at how many choices were on offer. When was the last time she’d been down here? Certainly when she was an intern and part of her job description was taking lunch orders, she’d spent half her day there. But had she been in the cafeteria in the last year or so? Sarah perused the choices: a salad bar with three types of greens (field mix, romaine, spinach), and a wide range of seeds (flax, chia, hemp); a panini station where hot sandwiches were made to order. She decided on a panini with grilled chicken and pesto, hold the cheese. Soon it would be Passover, which meant no bread for a week. It was a good idea to load up on carbs.
Sarah paid for her order and then walked into the dining room. As she saw tables filled with various editors and assistants, photographers and graphic artists, she realized that she had no one to sit with. She should have made plans before coming downstairs. It was like high school all over again.
She walked by a table with three girls from the art department. Shouldn’t they be working on the pages she’d sent back? In fact, shouldn’t all of these people be working right now? The issue was closing on Friday.
Sarah’s tray rattled along, her pink lemonade threatening to spill with each step she took. Why couldn’t she find a table filled with people she knew? People she liked? Sarah had friends at the magazine.
Didn’t she?
She walked the full circle of the dining room, and then headed back up to her office to eat lunch at her desk.
Seven
It was a tiny little hair. One gray hair in the midst of many long blond ones. Becca stared at it for a long time. These tiny little gray hairs were appearing with more frequency lately; Becca was shocked every time she discovered a new one. Can a twenty-two-year-old even get a gray hair? She twisted and turned the strand of hair, pretending she wasn’t going to pull it out. She knew that she would.
It had become ritual, a part of her morning routine. She’d discovered the first one when she was blow-drying her hair straight one day. Her hair was divided into sections, ready to be forced into submission, when Becca noticed a wayward strand sticking out sideways from her head. She brushed it down with her hand, only to have it pop right back out. It seemed to defy the rules of gravity; she couldn’t get this one to lie down with the rest of the hairs on her head. She got closer to the mirror, curious to examine this strand of hair that challenged the rules of nature. But it was not a regular hair at all.
For one thing, it had a different consistency. She had a long, thick mane of silky locks, but this one was short and wiry. This one was tough. Without really thinking about it, she pulled the hair out, right at the root. It was then that she noticed its hue. It wasn’t coppery, or buttery, or even caramel.
It was silver.
The next day, she began looking for more. It became a game—how many gray hairs could she pull out on any given day? She’d stand in front of the mirror, flipping her head this way and that, hoping to section her hair off in just the right spot so as to find another offender.
Usually she stuck with the hairs close to the base of her neck or in the middle of her head, the ones you wouldn’t notice were gone. But this little hair had a lot of nerve, showing up in her part, just at her hairline, where everyone would see it. Becca pulled the hair out, and with it, three other non-gray hairs. It startled her slightly to see that she’d pulled so much hair from the front of her head, but when looked at herself in the mirror she decided that it wasn’t noticeable. She went on with her makeup routine. When her thoughts float
ed to this evening’s Seder, she tossed her hair to the side to look for some more.
* * *
Becca was good at everything. Except sitting still. She was always doing, thinking, accomplishing. She didn’t know how to do it any other way.
Her college boyfriend once asked her why she always felt like she had to be doing something. But Becca didn’t understand the question. Didn’t everyone feel this way? There were endless amounts of things to do: applications to complete, closets to be organized, opportunities to seek out. How could she spend a Saturday afternoon just sitting around when there were so many things on her to-do list?
Complete schoolwork, go to internship, apply for residency, hold teaching assistant office hours, read the newspaper, read medical journals, read a book, go to the supermarket, go to the dry cleaners, go to the drugstore, send out birthday cards, send out holiday cards, buy presents, buy presents, buy presents, put photographs into albums, call mother, call father, call sister, call brother, go to the doctor, go to the dentist, go to the ob-gyn, attend cooking class with the girls, attend movie night with the friends, go shopping with the mother, get yearly shots, get haircut. Repeat.
Becca was very busy.
And she was very good.
In the second grade, Becca’s teacher had encouraged her to enter a storytelling competition. There were whispers about how seriously Becca took her studies, even back then, and her teacher thought that this might be a good way for her to enjoy an extracurricular activity. To have fun learning, she told her mother. Sylvia objected at first. Weren’t her daughter’s grades the best in the class? Becca’s teacher confirmed that yes, Becca was her best student, but she wanted her to enjoy it a little bit more. Sylvia relented and let Becca enter the competition. After all, she knew that her daughter would win.
Students were to memorize a book, and then re-tell the story to an audience. Points were awarded for remembering the story word for word, but also for presentation. In fact, more points would be given to the student who presented the story in the most dynamic way. Becca practiced for days on end, her mother as her doting audience. With each read through, Sylvia would sit with the book in her lap, grinning from ear to ear as her daughter recalled each word perfectly. Becca would memorize the book flawlessly. There was never any doubt.
The big day came. Becca wore the new outfit her mother had bought especially for the competition: a navy dress with a flared skirt, trimmed with white piping. Becca felt very adult. For one thing, the dress was very mature-looking. Also, her mother had bought her a brand-new pair of shoes with a tiny platform. They weren’t heels, exactly, but they gently raised the pitch of her foot half an inch so she felt like she was tiptoeing around. The outfit referenced a nautical theme (but it wasn’t a sailor suit—that would be too on-the-nose, Sylvia felt), in keeping with the book Becca had memorized: Sally’s Adventure at Sea.
Becca was set to present last. As she watched her competition from backstage, she recognized a familiar feeling setting in. One she felt at the start of any academic challenge: I am going to win. She watched the first boy fumble his lines and then tear up. The second contestant, a girl with a cumbersome back brace, was counting on her cuteness to get her by. Becca could tell that she wasn’t repeating the book word for word—more like her own interpretation of it. That’s not what the contest is, she thought. Then, it was Becca’s turn. She knew her story backward and forward. There was no way this contest wasn’t hers.
But it wasn’t. The girl with the back brace won. Apparently her “dramatic flair” was the thing that clinched it for her. The judges commended her understanding of the material, and her innate storytelling abilities. As they left the auditorium, Becca’s mother whispered into her ear that the only reason they had given it to that other girl was because of her back brace.
Becca thought about the competition from time to time. The one blemish on an otherwise perfect academic record. In fact, she wrote one of her college applications about it: “The Merits of Failing,” she called it. To her, it was a lesson. You must always try harder.
Eight
Sylvia crashed into Alan as she rushed through the master bedroom.
“Get out of my way! Don’t you know what an important night this is for me?”
“I know, Syl. I know. What I don’t get is why you care so much what these people think of us,” Alan said. “Becca and Henry have only been dating for three months.”
“Do you know who this boy is?” she asked. “Who his father is?”
“I think that my daughter should be dating a man, not a boy.”
Sylvia furrowed her brow. She hated when Alan got pedantic. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” he said. “Slow down.”
“I can’t slow down!” Sylvia cried. “Our guests will be here in an hour!”
Alan was already dressed—and not in the outfit she’d laid out for him. He had on gray trousers, a light-yellow dress shirt, and a baby-blue cashmere cardigan. He looked like Mr. Rogers. Still, Sylvia had no time to think about what her husband was wearing. She had to get herself dressed. The outfit she’d laid out for herself, planned out for herself weeks earlier, now looked suburban. Dowdy, even.
“Should I wear a St. John suit?” she called to Alan from the depths of her walk-in closet. “She wears a lot of St. John suits.”
“How do you know what Henry’s mother wears?” Alan asked, appearing at her closet door. Sylvia grabbed a nearby bathrobe and covered herself.
“I Googled her,” she said quietly. She wasn’t exactly embarrassed about admitting this, but she wasn’t proud of it, either. Alan could tell because she wasn’t looking him in the eye. Sylvia always looked him directly in the eye.
In Alan’s experience, Googling anything was a bad idea. Patients routinely came into his office demanding a tilt test, or an EKG, or any other of the myriad things they’d gleaned from WebMD before coming to his office. He had once caught Becca in his office Googling an ex-boyfriend when she was supposed to be shadowing a pediatric cardiology resident.
“I don’t think Googling this boy’s parents is a good idea,” he said gently.
“Is it so bad that I worry about my daughter?” she asked, pushing Alan out of her closet and shutting the door behind him.
“How come you never worry about Gideon?” Alan asked the closet door.
Sylvia walked out. She was wearing a skirt suit.
“You look like you’re off to shul,” he said.
“What’s wrong with dressing up for a holiday?”
“Nothing,” he said. “But I think you’d do better in pants and no heels. You need to be comfortable if you’re going to be the hostess.”
“Life is harder for a woman,” Sylvia said, and retreated to her closet.
Alan wasn’t sure if she was talking about what to wear to the Seder or his previous question—why she never worried about Gideon.
Nine
Sarah opened her jewelry box—a large wooden box painted a faint white and lined in red velvet. The same jewelry box she’d had as a little girl. The same jewelry box she’d brought to college, and then to her first apartment in the city. And now to the home she shared with Joe. She ran her fingers over its contents—large, chunky designer pieces, some gifts from the designers themselves, some taken from photo shoots (not stolen, just permanently borrowed), and some gifted to her by other editors at holiday time. Old gold heart earrings, a gift from her parents for her sixteenth birthday; a gold ring with the Hebrew word Chai that her grandmother had bought her for her Bat Mitzvah; a stainless steel bracelet watch engraved with the words: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GRADUATION. LOVE, MOM AND DAD.
Then, the things that Joe had bought her over the years. A pair of jade earrings purchased in Las Vegas when Joe was at a bachelor party and had a run of luck at the craps table. A delicate silver ring that he’d given her shortly before their senior prom, all he could afford on his part-time salary from his father’s gas station. A gold n
ecklace with a charm that read LOVE that Sarah had worn all throughout college, even during the periods when she and Joe weren’t an item.
Sarah lifted the tray to reveal another section of the jewelry box, the hidden section, with the jewelry she couldn’t wear. Wouldn’t wear. But still, she liked to visit it every so often.
Sarah chose two chunky silver bangles and slid them onto her wrist. She noticed that her nail polish—a dark navy that her magazine, Sarah really, had proclaimed the “it” shade for spring—had a tiny chip on the index finger. She licked the edge of her finger, as if to fix it.
She turned toward the mirror to see how the bangles looked with her dress. Those aren’t the real you. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head. Her mother felt that the spoils of her fashion career didn’t reflect the real Sarah. Sarah’s mother wanted her to wear the jewelry that meant something, the pieces that had been given to her by her family. Pieces that were significant, that marked some milestone or had belonged to someone important. But Sarah couldn’t very well wear a pair of earrings in the shape of hearts any more than she could wear a flannel shirt tied around her waist.
Sarah modeled the bracelets, turning this way and that, examining every square inch of her appearance. The gray shift was body-conscious, but not vulgar. The hemline was the perfect length—courtesy of the in-house tailors the magazine employed—and the booties gave the look some much-needed edge. The bangles added interest to an otherwise plain sheath. Sarah was pleased with how she looked. If she really thought about it, she’d find it amusing that she’d chosen a career where outward appearance was so important, being that she had been teased mercilessly as a child for her appearance.
But she didn’t really think about it.
Ten
Alan sat in his study, reading the paper. There was a time when he would help his wife get ready for guests, but he’s learned that the house is Sylvia’s, he just gets to live here.
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