“A what?” Sarah asked, a look of horror slowly registering on her face.
“A tie substitute,” Joe said, positioning himself in front of the mirror so he could admire the strange piece of string dangling around his neck
“Well, you can’t wear it.”
“Well, I am wearing it.” He turned to her and smiled.
Whenever Joe thinks he’s losing an argument, he always flashes her a big smile.
He’s always had a perfect smile. These are the types of things you know about a person you’ve known since you were thirteen years old. Just as Joe knows that Sarah’s teeth are only perfect because of four very painful years of braces. And that the kids in middle school used to call her Bugs, because her gigantic overbite and two very large front teeth made her look like Bugs Bunny. Her teeth have been perfect for over ten years, but Sarah still doesn’t ever show them to anybody.
“I really don’t want you to wear that thing—”
“It’s a lariat,” he said.
“I don’t care what you call it,” she said, “you can’t wear it to my parents’ house.”
“So, this is what this is all about,” he said, as if he’d just figured it out now, for the very first time. “Your mother.”
“This is not about my mother,” Sarah said, her words clipped. “It’s the first Passover Seder. You need to wear a tie.”
“There’s nothing in the Book of Exodus that says you need to wear a tie.”
“Don’t get cute with me.”
“I can’t help it,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders. “I am cute.”
Sarah knew there was only one solution. Just one way out. The only way to rectify this situation was to seduce him. To get him undressed and into bed. Then, in the afterglow, when they hurried to get re-dressed, she could casually suggest that he wear an actual tie. There would be no way for him to deny her.
In the sexiest way possible, she said: “You are cute,” and then proceeded to unzip her dress and let it fall to the ground. She took the clip out of her hair, let the strands fall to her shoulders in a way that she thought would be considered beguiling, and gave Joe her best come hither look.
And he did. Come hither, that is. They kissed. She unbuttoned his shirt, his pants, quickly. Then Joe started laughing and pulled away.
“You know,” he whispered into Sarah’s ear, “we can have sex now, but I’m still going to wear the lariat.”
She pushed him away and put her dress back on.
Fifteen
Sylvia imagined Ursella Rothschild walking into her home for the first time. Was the entryway pristine? Were the flowers standing at attention? Was the powder room spotless?
Well, hello!
Welcome to my home.
Welcome to our home, we’re so pleased you could make it.
Sylvia examined the entryway wallpaper. One of the edges was peeling, ever so slightly. She chastised herself for not thinking to get it replaced. Wasn’t grasscloth the latest trend? But then she imagined how taken Ursella would be with the floral arrangement Sylvia had commissioned for the entryway table, and her shoulders began to release.
May I take your coats?
Sylvia opened the front closet. She smiled as she saw that her hard work in staging was a success. The wood hangers, all in the same dark glaze, were lined up perfectly, all leaning in the same direction. The shelf above the hanging rod held two large wicker baskets, one overflowing with sports equipment, the other filled with gloves and scarves and hats. We’re an outdoorsy family, it said. You like to ski in Aspen? We love to ski, too! The smell of pine drifted out subtly. Sylvia had been very specific with the salesperson that the smell of the hangers should not be overpowering.
On to the powder room. The lavender soap bottle was almost full. She didn’t want it to be completely full (like she was trying too hard), but she didn’t want it to run out over the course of the dinner, either. The new linen hand towels were perfect, just perfect. She fingered the edge of one as she looked at herself in the mirror.
On to the dining room, where Sylvia went over the table settings. Again. Joe was seated next to Edmond. That was probably a mistake. What could Joe possibly have to talk about with Edmond Rothschild? Transmissions?
So Sarah and Joe were switched. This put Joe next to Ursella. Sylvia sighed. It would be easier to do the table arrangements without Joe. She took his tiny little place card and put it on the sideboard. She would worry about where to put him after she did her final run-through of the house. If only it were as easy to get rid of him in real life.
Sylvia knows times are different now. She knows you don’t have to make a good marriage, like she had to when she was young. She doesn’t want to pressure her daughter like her mother pressured her. Still, she thinks Sarah could do much, much better than Joe.
Being married to a smart, handsome, wealthy doctor certainly has worked out well for Sylvia. It may not have been her childhood dream, this life she was living, but it was a dream come true. There was no doubt about that.
Was it wrong to want the same for her daughters?
If she had her druthers, Sarah would be attending this dinner with a new, more appropriate boyfriend, and the table would be perfect. But she had created the best table she could, given the circumstances. She called for Alan to come downstairs, to admire her handiwork.
“Looks good,” he said.
“You barely looked at it,” she said.
“I looked at it,” he said, with a laugh in his voice, “but anyway, I never have to worry. Everything you do is perfect.”
She smiled. Somewhere deep inside of her, she hated that she needed Alan’s approval on everything, but she shoved that feeling down, reveling in the fact that Alan thought it looked perfect.
Sylvia had never thought it would happen for her. A relationship, that is. She never thought she’d be able to find anyone who was in love with her, much less someone handsome and rich. Someone who had money, who would give her all the things she’d never had in her life. Who would make sure her mother never had to work or worry about money again.
Sylvia had been so proud to graduate college, even though most of her friends had left college already to get married. After she had collected her diploma, she rushed to her mother’s side, sure that she had finally made her proud. But her mother didn’t even look at the diploma. She tried to smile for her daughter’s benefit, but Sylvia could see it in her eyes. Her mother wasn’t happy that Sylvia had graduated—she was disappointed. As her mother calmly explained to her later that day, Sylvia was an old maid now. She had missed her window. She would never get married.
But, she did. And if she really thinks about it, it fills her with joy to know that her daughters can have the opportunities she never had. Becca was fulfilling Sylvia’s life’s dream by becoming a doctor. Sarah was diddling about in the fashion world, but Sylvia held out hope that she’d eventually come to realize she belonged in medical school. And on the arm of a more respectable beau.
Still, she sleeps with one eye open. Even after thirty years of marriage, she’s still wary. Still thinks he’s going to leave her. That’s why she always works so hard, that’s why she fights, fights, fights.
Sixteen
Ursella had wanted to ship Henry off to a military academy. This was way back when he first started getting failing grades, before it was too late. Ursella said Edmond coddled Henry. But Edmond saw no reason why his son couldn’t benefit from all of the advantages he’d had as a boy. He’d had his father’s help getting into Princeton. He had joined the family business upon graduation. There was no denying the old boy network—why shouldn’t his son reap the benefits?
It took Edmond far too long to see what was happening. He made excuses.
He’s just a boy.
It’s only middle school.
He’ll come out of it.
Ursella tried to change Edmond’s mind, but Edmond wouldn’t hear of it. He’d been shipped off to boarding school, and he rese
nted it. He felt a child’s place was with his parents, and did whatever he had to do to keep Henry enrolled in his Manhattan prep school.
Edmond’s own father had spoken of character—the sort of character that could only be earned by attending a school two hundred and twenty-three miles from one’s childhood home. Each fall, Edmond would beg his mother to let him stay home and attend a school in Manhattan, but each fall, his mother reminded Edmond of his responsibility to his family; after all, as the eldest of four siblings, it was incumbent on him to show the others what was best for all of them.
Edmond and Ursella fought often about Henry. Edmond felt that Ursella didn’t spend enough time at home. She should be helping him with his schoolwork more, rather than focusing on her myriad charity commitments. Ursella felt that Edmond should spend fewer late nights at the office.
What could he do? There was something Edmond wasn’t telling Ursella, something he’d kept from her for over a year. (But more on that later.)
The cheating scandal. Henry would never come back from that, Edmund decided. How could he?
This girl. This girl, with her impressive family and medical school background—she was the answer. She would set Henry straight. She would make him a better man.
Seventeen
Edmond emerged wearing his best gray pin-striped suit and a red silk tie patterned with tiny boats. “You look like you’re running for office,” Ursella said in her heavily accented English. Edmond had found her accent so sexy when they first met. He still did.
Ursella retreated to her walk-in closet. She dressed carefully as Edmond stood watching. She still had a dancer’s body. Her back was muscular, taut, and lean. Her arms, still graceful and long. Muscle memory. She removed her silk kimono and stepped into the skirt of her suit. Slowly, she turned around. She felt his eyes on her. She could always feel his eyes on her.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“You,” he said.
“You need to change your tie.”
He dutifully went back to his closet and chose a pink silk tie, one with tiny elephants on it. By the time he got back to Ursella’s closet, she was already dressed.
She wore a cream-colored knit skirt suit with delicate piping on the edges. Her high heels served to show off her legs. Ursella had great legs. Her hair was in the dancer’s knot worn since forever. She wore very little makeup. When they first met, she routinely wore a dark crimson red lipstick that stained Edmond’s face whenever he tried to kiss her. Which was often. Now, she wears a pale pink on her lips. But there don’t seem to be many opportunities these days for stolen kisses.
“You look beautiful,” he said. She didn’t say thank you. She simply nodded. After all, it was a statement of fact.
Ursella examined her husband, every square inch of him—from the way he’d combed his hair, to the shave he’d gotten that afternoon at the barber, to his tie, to his socks.
“You look better.”
Eighteen
“Wheels up in a half,” Henry heard his father call from down the hall.
Henry hated being back in his childhood room. The corkboard that held up old photographs, mementos from his high school days, and invitations to the graduation parties he’d received. The navy-blue duvet that he’d been using since middle school. Even the embroidered pillow announcing his name and birth date seemed a painful reminder that he was too old to be living here.
His dorm room at college was smaller than his en suite bathroom at home, but still, he felt nostalgic for it. He even missed the shared bathrooms, filled with so much mold and filth you had to wear flip-flops to avoid getting a fungus infection. He thought about Becca’s apartment. It was a tiny apartment, shared with three other girls, close to the Columbia campus, but it was hers. She might have only a 125-square-foot bedroom to call her own, but living there signaled freedom. It told the world that she was doing something with her life, she was going somewhere. She wasn’t a fuck-up who’d cheated her way out of college.
His mother walked into his room without knocking, and marched toward his closet.
“You will wear this,” she said, hanging a charcoal-gray suit on the door.
“Becca said I don’t have to wear a suit,” Henry said, his voice suddenly small. “I was going to wear my navy sports coat and a pair of gray pants.”
“Let me see,” Ursella said, and waited.
Henry motioned to his bed, where he’d laid out his clothes like a child.
“What tie?” she asked.
“I wasn’t planning to wear a tie.”
“You’ll wear a tie,” she said. “And the suit I’ve picked out. I want you to show some respect for this girl’s family. This dinner is important.”
Henry’s mother walked back into his closet. He could hear the motorized tie rack she’d had installed when he began prep school.
“This,” she said, handing him a light-yellow tie with tiny little boats on it. He wanted to tell her that he could pick out his own tie. He wanted to tell her that it was okay if he didn’t wear one. But he looked into her eyes, so filled with anger and disappointment, and he took the tie from her hands.
“We are leaving in twenty minutes,” she said. He nodded back and Ursella left his room.
Henry dressed slowly, the way he did almost everything. He never felt a need to hurry. A lifetime of being waited on had taught him that he needn’t rush—the world would wait for Henry Rothschild. Unfortunately for Henry, the world now seemed to be passing him by.
He put on the pants, shirt, and jacket. As he slid his feet into a pair of black loafers, he wondered if she would march him right back into his room to pick out a different pair of shoes for him, too. He made himself laugh, thinking about the fact that she’d also forgotten to select his socks. Thees is an import-ant din-nare, he mimicked. You must be weer-ing the cor-rect socks.
He checked himself out in the mirror. Pretty good. He and his dad had visited the barber earlier to get haircuts and shaves, and he was pleased with his appearance. He held the yellow tie up to his neck. He thought it made him look weak, like a little boy. He put the tie back, and scanned his tie collection. He stopped when he came to a lavender tie. It matched his outfit—he’d always been taught that lavender works well with charcoal gray—and he had a fleeting thought about the color purple. The color purple, he remembers from his prep school European studies class, is the color of royalty.
This dinner may be important. They may be trying to impress Becca’s family. (For what reason, Henry truly didn’t know.) But they should be trying to impress him, too. After all, he was, over all else, a Rothschild.
Nineteen
Becca did not like to make people wait for her. She considered lateness to be rude; being late was telling the other party that your time was more valuable than theirs. This was not a message she wanted to send to the Rothschilds. This was why she was already halfway down the stairs when the doorman called to let her know that the Rothschilds were parked outside.
“Get up,” Henry’s mother told him through closed lips. “Help your girlfriend into the car.”
Henry wanted to tell Ursella that there was no need—that his father was already opening the car door—but he didn’t want to fight with her. She seemed even more tightly wound than usual today, and Henry was afraid she might break.
Henry stepped out of the car just as Edmond was helping Becca into it. He kissed her awkwardly. What was the protocol in front of one’s father? He settled on a chaste kiss on the cheek. He wished that Edmond would loosen his grip on Becca’s elbow so that he could help her into the car himself, but Edmond did not, so Henry stood idly by as his father played the perfect gentleman to his girlfriend. Once Becca was situated in the car, Henry got in. His father sat in the front, next to the driver, and they were off.
Henry looked out his window as the driver made his way toward the West Side Highway. Seeing all of the other cars on the road, he remembered something he used to do on long car rides when he was
a little boy. He would take note of the other vehicles close to theirs and keep tabs on them. Which one was in which lane, which got to the traffic lights first. He imagined that they were all in a race, and the one that got to its destination first was the winner.
Young Henry understood that winning was important. The way trophies were displayed. The way certificates were framed. Although nothing compared to the room dedicated to his mother’s illustrious ballet career. Photographs and newspaper clippings on the walls, costumes exhibited on mannequins, playbills encased in a glass table.
Before he knew what he was doing, Henry had memorized the color, make, and model of seven different cars, was monitoring which car was in which lane. When their car got in front of all the others, Henry smiled to himself.
“What?” Becca whispered to him.
“Oh nothing,” he said, reaching his hands to hers. Becca examined her cuticles. Her thumb had a Band-Aid around it from where she’d bitten a hangnail until it bled.
“How are your studies, dear?” Ursella asked Becca.
As Becca answered Henry’s mother, Henry could detect the faint smell of his father’s aftershave wafting toward the backseat. It was a smell he associated with his childhood—that faint mix of lemon and verbena that was slapped on after a visit to the barber, and he knew that he probably smelled of it, too, but the odor suddenly suffocated him. He could almost see the scent making its way back—from Edmond’s neck in the front seat, over the headrest, and into Henry’s unassuming nostrils. It was like a snake, slowly coming at him, winding its way into the backseat and around Henry’s neck. He turned his head toward the window, tried to enjoy the view of Yankee Stadium as they made their way north, but the smell. He couldn’t get rid of that smell. Coming toward him, enveloping him, attacking him. Henry could barely catch his breath.
He opened his window a crack, and immediately, his mother complained.
The Dinner Party: A Novel Page 4