Wyatt turned away from her after a cursory greeting and led her back into the house. She couldn’t figure out what his costume was; he was just sort of dressed up. But then she heard voices, and they were walking down a short flight of stairs into a sunken living room.
The walls were painted the color of peach flesh, and two enormous forest green sofas faced each other at the center of the room. There was a tiled fireplace, with a fire going. The house was the kind of nice house that reminded you of its own taste, its own expense, but also of the way it had clearly been modeled on a magazine spread devoted to someone else’s even nicer house. With every large art book stacked on a low table, with every ghostly seating arrangement of furniture that had clearly never been used.
Zoë sat on one sofa with her feet curled beneath her, a pair of chunky black heels abandoned beneath the low coffee table. Three guys stood above her, almost directly over her, so that she was forced to let her head loll back onto a couch cushion in order to look up at their faces. They were dressed in varying degrees of costume—one wore a hunting cap with earflaps, and another wore a Batman cape over his otherwise normal outfit, a black mask pushed back on his forehead. One of them was a senior on the football team; he wore only his Greenwich Prep uniform and carried his helmet in one hand, which Amanda thought was actually pretty clever. Everyone else trying so hard, but he had just come as himself.
Zoë caught sight of Amanda and stuck out her tongue.
“I love your costume,” she called. “Get over here.”
Amanda, for some reason, obeyed.
“Wait until you see Madison’s costume,” Zoë said. “We went shopping in the city last week. We had to, like, bully her into buying it, I didn’t realize she was so against showing skin. Which you must know already. But she’s dressed as an angel! I mean, tell me that’s not perfect.”
The big difference, Amanda thought, between looking like me and looking like Zoë Barker is that random parts of our bodies look so different. Maybe her stomach isn’t any flatter than mine, but her collarbones look like really fragile straws, right beneath the surface of her skin. And I always have sweat on my upper lip, red bumps on the backs of my arms. And she has none of these things, and it doesn’t look like she even tries not to have them. All her effort is always concealed, and all of mine is always right out in the open.
“I can’t wait to see it,” she said. “Sounds adorable.”
“Allie’s looking for vodka,” Zoë announced. “All we have right now is rum and cranberry, it’s repulsive.”
She raised her voice artificially on those last words, so that Wyatt, who had been on his way out of the room, turned back.
“You were free to bring whatever. This isn’t your house, Barker,” he said, and left the room.
Zoë ignored him and patted the couch next to her, handing over a Solo cup. Amanda drank it down in one gulp, without having planned to do so, then held it out for more.
“So, I wanted to talk to you,” Zoë said. “Before Madison gets here. I mean, things must be so terrible for her right now. Have you been over there? Is her dad, just, like, devastated?”
“He’s been spending a lot of time in the city, I guess,” Amanda began, careful. She didn’t know if Bob was back in Greenwich yet.
“How would you know?”
“Because I saw him,” Amanda said. She knew she would regret this. There were so many different ways she could come to regret this. But she could see how seductive it was, in its way, Zoë Barker’s approach. She made you feel both interrogated and trusted, like a sidekick she was grilling to prove to herself what she already knew without question: that you were loyal.
“You saw him where? You went to their place in the city?”
“No,” Amanda said. “Just, around. I ran into him when I was walking near Grand Central.”
Zoë raised her eyebrows.
“He’s just chilling by himself in the city? Do you think he’s avoiding them?”
“No,” Amanda said, and the story was so slippery, she was losing her grip, every corner she tried to grab was sliding away from her. “No, it was like—it was a meeting. He was with a woman who used to work for him. I’m sure it was something official, like a meeting about something.”
Zoë smiled at her.
“A meeting on a random sidewalk,” she said, and then Wyatt was back in the room, and Zoë’s attention split away from Amanda’s face, from her fumbling attempts to explain Madison’s family.
BY THE TIME Madison walked in, Amanda had pounded—a term her brothers had taught her, a phrase she loved—three more drinks. She hadn’t realized until she got here that Madison might not know to expect her, but something about Zoë’s oily solicitousness had clued her in. And now she was drunk, and Madison was staring at her with undisguised contempt.
They both stood, waiting, before Madison smiled and walked over to meet Zoë’s intimation of a hug: her arms wavering in the air above her head and then wrapping around Madison, pulling her off her feet with a jerk.
“So,” Zoë began, “nobody brought the right mixers and Wyatt swears all the good stuff is locked up in his dad’s office. I think he’s just afraid to go in there without permission? He is the last person who should be in charge of this party, let me tell you. He will like flip if we leave this room and forget to re-fluff all the pillows, trust me.”
“Why is he having this party, then?” Amanda tried. Maybe if she and Madison both spoke to Zoë, it would be like they were engaged in a conversation.
“Because I own him,” Zoë said, shrugging her shoulders as though her opinions were founded on logic of such simplicity that it would be in poor taste to question them. “And this is the best party house of all time. That would be so wasteful.”
“Where are his parents?” Madison asked. Amanda could see from her face, from the small twitches in its composed facade, that she’d promised someone there would be adults here tonight.
“Oh, right. I mean I would assume they’re just in the city for some reason or other. You’ve just got to time these things right, but if we’re smart, in the spring, we’re there every Friday they spend here, and here for every Friday they spend there.”
She glanced over at Amanda before continuing.
“It’s near the museum,” she said. “You know the area, both of you?”
Amanda took another sip of her drink and swallowed hard, feeling the liquid touch every inch of her throat.
Zoë, seemingly satisfied with Amanda’s discomfort, listed toward Madison.
“Don’t tell him I said this, but the apartment in the city isn’t like this place. It’s more, you know. It’s not so over the top. The funny part is, I think Wyatt’s dad is the one with good taste.”
Amanda tried to catch Madison’s eye, thinking that eventually, after enough of this conversation, it would become abundantly clear just how much they needed each other this evening, needed the release of shared eye contact.
She smiled at Madison and let her head tilt to one side, almost invisibly, her eyes going with it. Not quite an eye roll. A more secretive eye roll.
Madison fixed her with an expression so cold, so unmistakably enraged, that it had a probably unintended effect. Because seeing that fury, kept at such a shallow surface beneath her friend’s outward face, made clear to Amanda how bad things must be at Madison’s house. Madison looked almost grotesque, maimed by her own anger.
Just as quickly, that face was gone, smoothed. Madison turned back to Zoë, smiling and sliding their bodies closer together on the couch. And Amanda saw it: the clarity, in that moment, of Madison’s choice between people who had the potential to hurt her. She must have realized, that month, that the one thing that couldn’t be taken from her was that choice.
“I’ve never seen their place in the city,” Madison said.
“Your parents have a place, too, right?” Zoë had made her first unforced error, Amanda thought. Bringing them up so quickly.
“Yes,” Madi
son said, “they do.”
A door opened that seemed to lead to a different hallway, and Allie clacked into the room, her legs wobbling on stiletto heels.
“Jackpot,” Allie said. “I found a box of Crystal Light packets!”
“Uh,” Zoë said, “not jackpot. With rum? At that point we might as well just do shots.”
“Vodka from the freezer!” Allie waved an enormous bottle of Grey Goose in the air above her head, the muscles in her arm standing at attention.
“Are you telling me there’s been vodka all this time and Wyatt’s been holding out?” Zoë said, her voice pitched louder, as if to draw the attention back from the boys, who were in their corner removing coffee table books from a credenza and debating whether it was long enough to use for a game of Beirut.
“Yeah, girl,” Allie said cheerfully. “And there’s more in there, too, there’s Ketel! Oh, Madison! Oh my God, Amanda! Hi. Didn’t even see you there. Too excited about this new discovery.”
No one seemed to notice that Amanda hadn’t spoken.
“The Ketel is weird, though,” Allie continued. “It’s this bottle I’ve never seen before.”
“It’s sort of thick and squat? A weird shape?” Madison offered. “That’s just what a magnum of Ketel looks like.”
Allie clapped with glee, and Zoë cocked her head to one side.
“My grandfather has a pantry for his vodka alone,” Madison explained.
“Oh, God,” Zoë said. “You people are just as WASPy as they come, aren’t you? Well, your mom’s people, I guess.”
Amanda watched Madison’s jaw turn to stone, saw her placing Bob somewhere further back in her mind, keeping him far from Zoë’s probing, childish fingers.
“Just teasing,” Zoë said, seizing the bottle from Allie. She squinted at the label, like an adult casting an expert eye at a bottle of wine. Was it possible she didn’t know that this kind of scrutiny made no sense for vodka? Amanda could see that Madison had recognized it, too, that she was feeling a generous superiority bloom in her chest, a slight calming of her trembling fingers.
“That’s funny, that he lied about the vodka,” Amanda offered.
Allie raised her eyebrows and said, in a stage whisper, “I’m not sure he actually knows to look for vodka in the freezer.”
It was like this conversation had been designed as torture. Everything Amanda knew about drinking, about which liquors came in which bottles, came from the D’Amico household. Her own father was a single bottle of beer on a Sunday afternoon guy.
“I’m sorry,” Madison said, “are you telling me Wyatt Welsh doesn’t drink?”
“No,” Zoë insisted, “it’s not that. He just likes dark stuff. Whiskey and the other one, the one that’s basically the same thing.”
“Bourbon,” Madison said. Amanda saw her momentarily fold in on herself and then straighten up, filing away whatever had bothered her, papers shuffled quickly past one another to keep themselves hidden.
“Nice costume,” Amanda said, loud and direct so Madison couldn’t pretend not to have heard. “I heard you guys bought it in the city.”
“Yeah, we went to Scoop.”
“Isabel’s going to kill you.”
“I doubt she’ll notice.”
On the couch, Allie had made some crack about Wyatt and suddenly Zoë was crawling all over her. A Solo cup went flying and landed with a shrill plastic yelp, spilling its fuchsia liquid across the Persian rug like a bloodstain. Unimpeded, Zoë buried her face in Allie’s neck, nuzzling her or pretending to strangle her, it wasn’t clear which, and their streaming blond hair blended together into one shining mass.
“If you do not stop talking right this second I will strangle you and then leave your body in a ditch!” Zoë said. “I will fucking destroy you. I will reveal all of your secrets. Madison and Amanda are here. They know you’ve been warned.”
“Get off me!” Allie was shrieking. And in a second, Zoë had crawled back to her side of the couch, folding her long limbs into place, like a paper doll that had, for a brief flash, become animate, and then collapsed once more to its flattened world.
“Just warning you,” she said, sipping her drink. It was Allie’s cup, of course, that had gone flying.
“I’ll go get something to wipe that up,” Madison said, “but I don’t know, the rug? Should we get that woman, the housekeeper? Her name was Maria or something?”
You remember her name, Amanda thought. Allie stood with Madison, as if to help. Zoë stared at them both.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Someone will get it later. Just don’t say anything in front of Wyatt. Grab that big pillow, the one on the floor. Just, like, drop it on top of the part of the rug that’s wet.”
Allie followed instructions, dutifully. Madison sat down again and avoided Amanda’s eye.
“Anyway,” Zoë said, “when everyone else gets here, we’ll move to the ballroom.”
“They have a ballroom?”
“Oh,” Callan called from the corner—that was his name, Amanda remembered. The football player dressed as a football player. Callan. This was the first time any boy besides Wyatt had even acknowledged that the girls were sitting here. “The baaaaaaaaaaaaallroooooooooom?”
Zoë ignored him. Allie looked in his general direction, her face breaking into a smile, but said nothing.
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Cal. You are such an infant.” Zoë fixed Allie with a disdainful pout. “Why you let that Neanderthal touch you is a mystery to me.”
“Bite me hard,” Allie replied.
Wyatt poked his head into the room again.
“Oh,” he said, “Madison. Hey. Chipster’s on his way, he just called.”
“Oh, did he call?” Zoë cooed. “Did he want to see who was here?”
Wyatt’s eyes darted to the corner, where Callan and company had now succeeded in clearing the credenza of its various decorative objects. A plum-colored vase, shaped like a calla lily, had been relegated to the floor.
“Fuck off, you guys, we can’t play Beirut in here. Come on. The housekeepers are still around. Put that crap back. Yo, Barker. Who else did you invite? How many other girls are showing up at my door?”
“Don’t worry,” Zoë said, furiously mixing vodka into the Crystal Light in her cup, pausing at intervals to lick her index finger. “Plenty of ladies will be showing up.”
“How. Many.”
“Just a few.”
“It had better be just a few. We have to set the security system before we go downstairs. Anyone who isn’t here by then is uninvited. By me. The person who lives here.”
He loped away, back down the corridor that led to the kitchen.
“It’s so fine,” Zoë continued, as if he hadn’t left. “If the housekeepers bother us, we’ll just go out there.”
She shook a thumb over her shoulder, toward the picture window that ran the length of the far wall, and Amanda noticed for the first time that the room looked down over the grottolike pool, its waterfall a steep arrangement of stones lit the same unnatural green as the fountain.
“They won’t tell Suzanne,” Allie said. “I don’t seriously believe Suzanne would care that we’re drinking.”
“She would if she saw the cars out front.” Zoë held her hand up in the air and began to inspect her manicure, nail by nail. “You know how his dad gets, everything is a potential lawsuit to Bill Welsh. He thinks everyone loves to sue as much as he does.”
“Who’s driving home?” Madison asked.
“Zoë,” Allie said, hunching her shoulders toward Madison with a conspiratorial air, “has been driving without insurance.”
“They’re going to get me insurance,” Zoë said. “As soon as I pass my test.”
“Which she can’t even take for another six months!” Allie crowed. “They don’t know she’s been driving the car. Did you see the new car outside, Madison?”
Amanda had seen the car before she knocked at the front door. It was a black Mercedes, a tiny sports
car, the kind of small, flippant car her father referred to as death-on-wheels.
“I don’t know what they expected,” Zoë said. “To buy the car early and then, what, let it sit there while I don’t drive it? My dad knows I’ve driven it.”
Amanda downed the remainder of her drink. It was sweet but hollow; there was nothing there but the promise that you’d be drunk soon.
“I have to pee,” she said unceremoniously. She stood up and left the room.
IT TOOK HER A FEW MINUTES to find a bathroom, and on her way back she found herself lingering in hallways. Maybe they’d all decamp for “the ballroom” while she was gone. Maybe she would return to find only the ghostly quiet of recently abandoned furniture. Maybe then she could call her mother to come and rescue her.
But Lori might send Jake, Amanda remembered. There was no place for her, tonight, nowhere she could go without first making some bigger decision.
She wandered into the kitchen and opened the looming Sub-Zero, peering into its various compartments, fogged with condensation. You could learn a lot about people from what they chose to keep on hand, and apparently Suzanne Welsh was someone who bought in anonymous bulk for a household that contained only three people. This was a refrigerator meant to sustain a chaotic, bustling family. Towers of jumbo cartons of Greek yogurt, the tins of whey protein, a pile of frozen steaks in their taut plastic and Styrofoam packages. Rows upon rows of diet soda cans, still shackled to one another in their plastic rings. An entire drawer of complicated-name cheeses from Balducci’s wrapped in their thick white paper. The hunks were of varying sizes and shapes, all of them still sealed and many of them past their expiration dates, purchased for impromptu dinner guests who had apparently failed to materialize.
Amanda closed all the drawers and, with her pinkie finger, wrote her initials in the mist on their chilly surfaces. Then she leaned forward and breathed, letting the heat overwhelm the evidence.
She shut the fridge and turned to the kitchen counters. In a side drawer, near the phone: the high school phone directory, a map of Rhode Island, a pack of Gauloises cigarettes that were surely the last lingering affectation left over from her junior year in Avignon, or some equally tragic backstory. She probably had them in her purse and parceled out artful glimpses of them when she rifled through it, looking for her tinted, La Roche-Posay SPF 50 concealer or a business card for whatever home décor business she’d once made a pseudo-effort to launch a few years ago. She probably kept them in a convenient pocket in the purse, hoping that Isabel D’Amico might see them once, casually. That they might bond.
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