“Well, sure,” Mina said. “If your in-laws were Suzanne, you’d pick the hotel over their house, too.”
Isabel paused for a moment and Mina was afraid they weren’t allowed to insult these women today, that it was meant to be one of their more allusive, unmentioned conversations. Then Isabel laughed.
“Right,” she said, “she kept saying, ‘I can’t imagine why they won’t just stay with us, we have all these extra rooms!’”
“What else?”
“She kept asking why we were there. She kept referring to the kids as my ‘gang.’”
“I actually really like that. They’re your street toughs.”
“Right,” Isabel said. “Right, right, right.” For a moment, it seemed as if that would be all.
“Is something wrong?” Mina said.
“She implied that we wouldn’t be able to come to the museum party,” Isabel said. “The spring benefit, and we’re only in November now, and she was acting like our RSVPs were late coming back to her and so it must be that we couldn’t make it this year.”
“Classy.”
“She used the phrase ‘not up for it this year,’” Isabel said, her voice lowered.
“Just forget it,” Mina said. “Just put it right out of your mind.”
They both paused, as if to consider and then dismiss this thought without calling attention to its absurdity.
“I just kept thinking how we both used to be Weiss wives together,” Isabel said. “When Bill Welsh left, I really thought that was it for me and Suzanne. I didn’t think she could possibly aggravate me as much, when she was just another mom at school, as she had at Weiss. But I was naive.”
“Well,” Mina murmured.
“I used to try to be kinder. I’d try not to let her see what I thought of her. But then she’d start to talk about how smart he was, that Neanderthal son of hers, or she’d talk about some woman who wasn’t there, whose husband hadn’t been invited to the retreat that year, and how he was probably sleeping with his secretary. And I could just never be nice, not for more than ten minutes.”
Mina nodded, but didn’t speak.
“It always made me so furious, listening to her, just, savaging everyone else’s marriages,” Isabel said, softly.
“I know,” Mina said. “I know just what you mean.”
She waited in silence, waited for a cue from Isabel.
“I couldn’t be nice,” Isabel repeated.
Mina saw that it was her job to move them on from this part of the conversation.
“That isn’t what’s going on. Suzanne is far too afraid to hold on to any grudges, I promise you. I’m sure she was just worried that, if she didn’t come say hello, you’d feel snubbed.”
Isabel laughed.
“Is that where we’ve ended up?” she said. “I’m going to be worried about a snub from Suzanne Welsh?”
“Well,” Mina said, helpless.
“She asked me if we’ve heard from Kiki McGinniss,” Isabel said. “She asked if anyone knows how she and Jim are doing.”
Mina waited for more, but it seemed Isabel might actually want the question.
“Have he and Bob been in touch?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel said. “I couldn’t say this to her, obviously, but how would I know? Jim hasn’t been on the phone any of the times when I’ve answered. It’s always been guys one level below. They must have spoken, since the summer. They must have still been talking after Jim had to step down. But I don’t know.” Her voice had gone suddenly taut with ill-disguised panic.
“It’s not her business,” Mina said feebly. Commenting on the status of Bob’s détente with his former best friend, the man who’d left the firm in disgrace last June, didn’t seem like something she’d be able to do without a misstep.
“Exactly,” Isabel said. “Oh, God, also. Madison says she’s going on a date with Chip Abbott?”
Her voice trailed up at the end of the sentence, like a teenager. Mina laughed and traded stories about Lacey Abbott—they agreed she seemed like a gem—and didn’t ask any more questions. Suddenly, then, they had stopped talking about Suzanne Welsh. Maybe this was how it would be; Mina wouldn’t be shut out entirely. Their friendship existing in brief bursts, like the fractured sunlight that spilled into Mina’s library in the late afternoons, winking through the branches of her trees.
Just before they hung up, Mina remembered something.
“Wait,” she said. “Suzanne Welsh, do you remember how she told you, that time—God, it must have been years ago—”
“Yes,” Isabel said, picking it up seamlessly. “How he gives her a bonus, at Christmastime? Do you know I mentioned that, right afterward, to Madison? I told her that in the elevator on our way up to the room. I thought it would make her feel better. Suzanne, waiting on the edge of her seat all December, waiting to see how much money her husband was giving her at the end of the year. And Madison already knew! Apparently, at some point, Lily told her.”
Mina felt a sharp, biting pinch at the nape of her neck.
“They talk about things like that?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel said.
This was the time, Mina thought, to mention that she had seen Lily at Saks. It wasn’t even a secret. There was no information embedded there to hurt anyone; it was of absolutely no import that she’d declined to mention it at the time. But now they were actually discussing it, Suzanne, the idea that Isabel had to work to keep them on her side. Now it seemed relevant.
But then it was back, the chilled smoothness in the voice on the phone.
“I should go get dressed,” Isabel said. “Lunch with Concetta.”
“Oh, God, I completely forgot you’d agreed to do that. You really should have made him come along.”
“Yes,” Isabel said, and then the conversation was over, Mina knew it. See you soon, they told each other, and hung up.
MINA WAS IN THE PRODUCE SECTION when she saw Alexandra Barker, smelling a melon, holding it in front of her face and watching Mina from behind it.
Mina waved. Alexandra chucked the melon into her cart, waved back, and stalked around the corner into an aisle.
This was unpleasant. To be pumped for information by Alexandra Barker was bad enough; to feel that she was stalking you through the displays of misting vegetables, waiting for the moment when you might accidentally speak one of your private thoughts out loud, was much more distressing.
Mina was gathering the ingredients for Tom’s favorite pasta sauce, debating whether to use sour cream or whole milk yogurt, when she felt eyes on her once again. This time it was a guy, much younger than her. Cute, maybe, in the way young women seemed to like these days. They prized the nerdier ones, now. In Mina’s heyday, marrying a balding, slightly hook-nosed kid with glasses was considered settling, an admission of the fact that it was very difficult to find a handsome man who was also going to make the salary you’d been hoping for. Now, girls just out of school didn’t seem to like them too pretty, didn’t seem to write them off for being skinny. And certainly not for having glasses.
Of course, Mina had been grasping at whatever she could get, and had been as surprised as anyone when that turned out to be Tom.
This kid had glasses, and that coarse sort of curly hair that could look by turns adorable or distasteful, depending on the lighting and how recently he’d showered. His hairline was strong and consistent on his forehead, good for him. He had a hungry look to him, was the best way she could think to describe it. She’d noticed him a few times already in the grocery store, always somewhere in her general area, but now he seemed to be almost openly watching her. He was pretending to read the label on a carton of milk. Whatever he did for a living, she hoped it didn’t involve subtle surveillance.
She turned back to the sour cream. When she pushed her cart away, turning to leave the dairy aisle, he was suddenly right there looking at cottage cheese, and she’d rammed into his foot.
“Jesus,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “Why are you sorry? Are you all right?”
He bent over, his tight jeans looking like they might rip without warning, and massaged his ankle.
“Totally,” he said. “And also totally not your fault. I was tuned out.”
“Sure,” Mina said, resisting the impulse to reply with “totally.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Do we—we’ve met, no?”
“I don’t think so!” she replied, trying still to remain charmed, breezy, telling herself she had no reason to be concerned.
“I do,” he said. “I think—your daughter is friends with Madison D’Amico, isn’t she?”
“Mmm,” Mina said. She looked beyond him, toward the front of the store and the registers. Was Alexandra Barker still here? The thing was for Alexandra not to overhear this, if it was anything. Alexandra might see it and just think Mina was bored, flirting with some younger man. Much preferable.
“That has to be it,” he said.
“Really,” she said, and she couldn’t help it, the disgust was creeping into her voice. “Does it? You know Madison?”
“Well, no,” he said. “I’ve met her. I’m actually a journalist. Formerly a reporter, now I’m actually starting a new venture. And I’d love to talk to you for just a second—”
Mina pushed past him, hopefully grazing his ankle again, and she made it through checkout without seeing Alexandra once. She raced through the parking lot, the cart rattling madly along the asphalt, and she had half her bags loaded into the car when he appeared again, like some sinister jack-in-the-box.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was inappropriate, for me to approach you in the store. I just thought I recognized you. And if you’d let me explain what I do, I think you might find that we could work together. I understand you’re close with the family. No doubt, it’s been troubling for you to see the way they’ve been portrayed. In the media. I think there’s more to the story. And you must know that there is.”
“Enough,” Mina said. “Please get away from my car.”
“Bob D’Amico has not spoken publicly, really, since that week,” he hammered on. “So the attention is, for all intents and purposes, on him. People are waiting for him to speak up. Once he does—or, alternatively, if they just get tired of waiting—the attention will turn to the rest of the family. To their close associates. People will want another perspective.”
“If I see you near Madison D’Amico, anywhere in this town, I will call the fucking cops,” Mina said. “And trust me, they’ll take my word over yours, whatever I decide to tell them.”
She put the last of the bags into her trunk and slammed the lid down, forcing the kid to leap back in order to save his fingertips. She sailed the cart away into an empty parking spot and hurried around to her door.
It was only later, driving away, that it occurred to her that even if he’d been bluffing to say that her daughter was a friend of Madison’s, he still might well know that she did have a daughter.
Her panic spiked, but by the time she pulled into her garage she was calm, had gathered herself back. There was no possible reason to tell Tom, or even Isabel. She’d handled it, hadn’t she? She’d been handling all of it, all along.
TWENTY-THREE
The day after Thanksgiving, which had consisted of a hushed dinner uptown and an early bedtime at the Pierre, Madison sat with her mother and her brothers at Grandpop’s old favorite table at the roof restaurant in the Yale Club. It was the table farthest from the dining room’s entrance, in the southeast corner of the room. In spring or in summer, the glass doors behind them would have been flung open to the rooftop patio, and they would have been able to step outside with their glasses to look down on the dingy grandeur of Grand Central. At the tiny taxis below, the people scurrying down Vanderbilt Avenue, reduced to just the tops of their miniscule heads.
Her grandma Concetta, her nonna, was late.
It was odd that her mother had chosen the club for this lunch, although only marginally odder than the fact that this lunch was even taking place without Madison’s father there to moderate. Isabel must have assumed that Concetta would disapprove, no matter where they ate, and decided she might as well choose a place that brought with it warm memories of Grandpop, of the way every employee in the building had known which was Mr. Berkeley’s table.
Still, this did not explain the fact that Isabel was having lunch with Concetta at all.
It was possible that this might be real estate related, that they might need to lean harder on Nonna, one final time, in an effort to get her to sell the building in Brooklyn. She’d now refused at least four times to let Madison’s father broker a deal, find her a new place with a few more modern comforts. At one point Bob had even floated the possibility that Nonna could live year-round in their city apartment, but the mention of Manhattan had sent her into apoplexy. They’ll carry me out feet first, she’d said, and repeated with gusto, until Isabel had asked her please to stop making death jokes in front of the twins, who were then five years old and found it upsetting to see the adults laughing about her theoretical demise.
They’d been waiting here for almost fifteen minutes.
“What are we thinking will be her opener?” Madison tried. “I’m guessing, how the rowdy black kids forced them to close down the pool and ruined her afternoon walks in McCarren Park.”
“Be nice,” her mother said.
“I am,” Madison said. “I’ve been trying to store up things I think she’d enjoy, and I’ve got a good one. Allie’s little sister told her that you aren’t allowed to say ‘flesh colored’ anymore when you’re talking about a peach crayon, because it’s offensive. Heard that months ago but I’ve just been waiting to dangle it in front of Nonna and see if she takes the bait.”
Her mother’s mouth twitched, and she lifted her martini glass to her face.
“Madison,” she said, “your grandmother loves you. She’s from a different generation, the way she discusses things like that. Maybe you can just lob her some softballs, as a favor to me? Ask her about Genoa, about her parents before they came here. She wasn’t there, but she still likes the stories.”
“I love the stories,” Madison conceded. “Not always the person.”
“No one’s trying to convince you that’s backward, sweetheart, believe me. But just, as a favor to me?”
“Well,” Madison said. “While we’re waiting, why don’t you pay me back for my last favor.”
Her mother smiled down at the tablecloth.
“Your last favor isn’t done yet,” she said. “The weekend isn’t over.”
“Why are you selling the art?”
“Madison, I don’t think you really need me to explain that.”
“Are we in that much trouble, that we’re going to start living off the money we make from selling art?”
“No,” her mother said.
“Then what, it’s a big symbolic gesture? Do we really think people are that stupid?”
She could feel her cheeks burning. She didn’t understand how suddenly she’d grown so upset, without warning. But her mother’s unflappable gaze, the absence of distress, worked like the opposite of a balm. It inflamed Madison’s every nerve ending. How could her mother be this casual about the things they loved?
“I’m not saying they’re stupid,” Isabel said, “but yes, the symbols matter.”
“But you love it,” Madison said, “all of it.”
Her mother sipped her martini. “You’re worried about your painting, aren’t you?”
Madison heard herself make a noise halfway between a scoff and a sob.
“I’m worried about all of it,” she said.
“Well,” Isabel said, “don’t worry. Your father wants to keep your painting, Madison. It’s the one thing he cared about keeping.”
Madison chose this moment to unfold her napkin, to square the tips of her fork and knife, to smooth her small segment of tablecloth. She looked over at the twins, who were bo
th sitting slumped in their seats, their hands folded in their khaki-clad laps, and she felt a barbed pang at the realization that she’d completely ignored them, that she should have pressed her mother later, when they couldn’t hear. But it was too late. She turned back to her mother.
“He knows you’re doing this? He’s letting you?”
Isabel laughed. And then she fixed her eyes on something behind Madison and waved. Concetta had arrived.
She was bundling herself through the crowded dining room, the maître d’ prancing and nervous in her wake. She reached the table and lugged herself around to the farthest seat, wheezing as if she was weighed down with shopping bags, when in fact she wore a demure blue skirt suit and had clearly been to her hairdresser.
Isabel made to stand and smacked the table with her knee, rattling the ice cubes in their water glasses.
“Sorry,” she said. “Concetta, we were thinking you might sit there by Madison.”
But Nonna had already heaved herself into a seat with a great sigh.
“I know,” she began, “girls, I know, I know. I hadda wait like you wouldn’t have believed on the G train.”
She reached both hands out into the air above the table, miming a big hug for Madison.
“Lovely,” she said, “you look gorgeous, kid. How are you?”
She still hadn’t quite spoken to Isabel, who had drained her martini in one fluid knock.
Maybe, Madison thought, this was why Isabel had brought her along. It didn’t bother her, she was happy to be used as a buffer. But she didn’t see why Isabel couldn’t have told her this right away, been transparent about it.
One thing her mother had learned, maybe from Gran Berkeley: how to turn everyone, everything, into a useful buffer.
“You know we would happily have arranged a ride, Concetta,” Isabel said, immediately shattering the pane between them.
“Well, that’s a slippery slope,” Concetta shot back. “I let you all have your way, and soon we’re at, you know, a limo to take me to the corner market every time I need groceries.” She turned back to Madison and squinted at her. “Does your mother ever let you eat, little one?”
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