Stuart pretend-wrestled the phone away from her and turned toward me, smiling.
“So Drue’s been telling me about your artwork.”
“Oh,” I said, surreptitiously wiping my sweaty hands on my skirt again. “That’s generous. It’s just crafts, really.”
“Daphne’s an influencer,” Drue said, her voice full of pride. She put her arm around me and gave me a squeeze.
Stuart introduced me to his sister, Arden, whom I also recognized from the show, where she’d briefly appeared during the hometown visit episode. Arden had her brother’s coloring, the same dark hair and dark eyes, but where he was matinee-idol handsome, she had a kind of rabbit-y look, with thin lips, big front teeth, a gummy smile, and a pointy chin. Clearly, Stuart had scooped up the best the Lowe gene pool had to offer, and Arden had yet to succumb to the injectables many New York women used to rearranged their faces.
“So how does being an influencer work?” Arden asked.
I couldn’t tell if she was truly interested, or if she was just being polite, but I answered anyhow. “Well, you start off with some kind of online platform, like a YouTube channel or a blog,” I began. Arden nodded along as I explained how I’d started my blog, how I’d found my sponsors, and how I’d started to make money, with companies sending me pieces of clothing, or sometimes just links to their websites so that I could pick something out, along with a code for my followers to use when they clicked through to make a purchase. “How much would you get from each sale?” Arden asked. “Not a lot,” I told her. “Especially not when you factor in the time it takes to style and photograph the clothes, and write about them, and promote them, and send the brand your analytics when the campaign is done.”
As I talked, the Lowe parents wandered over. Mrs. Lowe had brown shoulder-length hair and Arden’s thin-lipped smile; Mr. Lowe had Stuart’s compact build and a line of Frankenstein-y stitches circling his bald spot. “Hair transplant surgery,” he said cheerfully, patting the bristly new growth. “The doctor promised it would all be filled in by the big day.”
That, I decided, was my cue. “Excuse me,” I said, and headed off to take a stroll through the place where Drue and Stu would be building their life together. The apartment was lovely, full of custom millwork and gleaming floors, decorated in tasteful shades of beige and greige and cream, with gold and navy-blue accents. I saw granite and white marble countertops, textured wallpaper and glass-paned cupboards and the framed black-and-white photographs that Drue told me she and Stuart had started to collect. The centerpiece of the dining room was a modern lighting fixture with eight frosted-glass bulbs at the ends of undulating stainless-steel tubes. It looked like an electrified octopus, and I knew that it had cost more than five thousand dollars, because Drue had told me.
As for the guests themselves, I thought, sourly, that they looked like the results of a successful eugenics experiment, filled with members of what Darshi called the Lucky Sperm Club. The women were all slender; the men were all fit; everyone had perfect teeth and gleaming hair and beautiful, expensive clothes. A handful of the men, like Uncle Mel, looked their age, but most of the men and all of the women seemed to have hit the pause button at fifty and spent the next years with their faces getting tauter and rounder instead of sagging and wrinkled. I tugged at the hem of my dress as inferiority and shame settled over me like a familiar cloak. I forced myself to stand up straight as I edged toward the wall to people-watch.
I spotted Drue’s father holding court in the living room with a glass of some amber-colored liquor in his hand. He was still dark-haired and handsome, the picture of the successful executive in a suit that had probably been made to measure, but when he excused himself from the group of people he’d been talking to and made his way to the bar, the droop of his shoulders and the way he seemed to plod across the Brazilian mahogany floors suggested weary resignation instead of father-of-the-bride joy. He looked like a man at a business function that he wasn’t enjoying instead of a man celebrating his daughter’s big day. More than once I saw him glance at the heavy gold watch on his wrist as he waited for his drink, or rock back and forth, from his heels to his toes and back again, as if he couldn’t wait to make a break for the door. And I saw the way Drue’s eyes would follow him, even when she was in a conversation with someone else; the way she seemed to be waiting for him to notice her, praise her, congratulate her, even just acknowledge her.
Lily Cavanaugh was perched on a couch on the opposite side of the room, in a gleaming teal taffeta skirt with a black jersey boat-neck top that put the ridges of her collarbones on display. While Mr. Cavanaugh seemed impatient, she just looked bored, her gaze moving from bookcase to fireplace, from antique bar cart to abstract artwork with an expression that said I’ve seen all of this before. When she caught sight of me, her eyes stopped moving. She trilled my name—“Daphne!”—in her husky voice, crossing the room to take both of my hands in hers. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek twist; her lips were so plump and shiny that they looked like two tiny glossy sausages parked on the lower half of her face. She smelled the same way I remembered from high school, like heavy, musky perfume with undertones of cigarettes, and she had the same aristocratic voice, the same sharp jawline and imperious tilt to her head. Drue told me that in college, Lily Cavanaugh had ridden horses competitively, and Drue’s father, to her sorrow. “Should’ve stuck with horses,” Drue would say.
“You look lovely,” she said.
“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Cavanaugh,” I said. “It’s so good to see you again.” I tried not to think too hard about what this terrifyingly thin, terrifyingly chic woman’s real opinion of my looks might have been. “You must be so happy for Drue.”
She gave me a brittle smile and said, “Well.” I wasn’t sure if that was the beginning of a longer reply or her answer in its entirety, but I didn’t have a chance to find out, because the next minute, Drue was grabbing my arm.
“Mére, I’m going to steal Daphne for a minute. She needs to meet the rest of the bridesmaids!” Drue pulled me into another living room—this one with a flat-screen TV, disguised as a painting, hanging over a fireplace—and introduced me to Minerva, a petite woman with dark hair pulled severely back from her face. Minerva spoke with a faint, unplaceable accent. Her skin was blemish-free and creamy, her eyes were big and brown, subtly tilted at the corners, and her makeup was so extreme, with contoured cheekbones and thick, black brows that extended above and beyond her own eyebrows, that I thought if I ever saw her makeup-free, I wouldn’t recognize her. “Minerva is the pore whisperer. Her salon was just named one of the best in the city in New York magazine!”
“And Drue’s my very best client,” said Minerva. A bridesmaid/facialist, I thought, feeling a little giddy. Because of course!
I met Natalie, Drue’s assistant, a striking young woman with dark, glossy skin, full red lips, and a corona of curls that framed her face and added four inches to her height. Natalie wore gold cuffs on each wrist and gold bars through her ears. “You have got to check out Natalie’s Instagram,” Drue said. “She does this steampunk Afro-futuristic thing. It’s amazing!” I met Cousin Pat, who was expecting, and Cousin Clair, who’d just had a baby. They reminded me of Ainsley and Avery back in high school; both pale, imperfect copies of Drue, with versions of her features and her hair. Cousin Pat looked ready to pop—“eight weeks to go,” she said, with a tense smile and an expression suggesting that I wasn’t the first guest to ask about her due date. Cousin Clair had the haunted, sleepless look I’d seen before on the faces of mothers with newborns. They gave Drue tired smiles and me limp handshakes.
“And come meet Corina!” Drue led me to a flaxen-haired woman in a dress made of floaty panels of beige and cream-colored lace. Corina was tiny, maybe five feet tall, with rosebud lips and wide pale-blue eyes. Some of her hair had been plaited into a narrow braid that followed the curve of her head. The rest hung loose, halfway down her back. She looked otherworldly, like a fairy princess, with her dreamy gaze
and her hair, which was such a pale blond that it looked almost silver under the light.
“Hi, honey,” Drue said, bending to embrace Corina.
“Hi, sweetie,” Corina said back, in the breathy whisper I remembered from the show. “Thank you so much for having me.” She looked around, wide-eyed and pleased-looking. “New York City is amazing. The Big Apple. I can’t believe I’m here!”
“Is it your first time in the city?” I asked.
“My first time since the show.”
“Oh, right,” I said, remembering. The cast of All the Single Ladies had spent a long weekend in New York. One of them—not Corina—had been chosen for a Dream Date: a ride through Central Park in a horse and carriage, followed by dinner at a restaurant that had paid for the privilege of being featured on the show. The rest of the women had stayed in their hotel suite, forming and re-forming alliances and gossiping to the camera. “You didn’t get out much, though, right?”
She shook her head, silvery hair swishing. “I’m just so glad to be here. And so excited! I want to see the Statue of Liberty… and the Empire State Building… and Times Square…” Drue and I exchanged a knowing, native New Yorker glance over her head.
“And I’m meeting an agent!” Corina said. Her voice was high and breathy, like a parody of a little girl’s.
“For DJing?” I asked.
“For Instagram!” she said. She widened her eyes. “There’s already a diet tea that wants to collaborate. And a waist trainer!”
“Lucky you,” said Drue, giving me another eye roll over Corina’s head. I forced myself to smile. Of course all of the participants in reality shows were hot commodities on social media. Of course Corina had brands lining up to hire her. Of course I had to suffer humiliation and shame to get my tiny toehold on the Internet, while petite, pretty blondes had fame and fortune handed to them, with a pot of diet tea and a waist trainer. Of course.
Shame and envy and impotent rage washed over me. I made myself breathe, made myself focus. Name five things you can see. Rich person, rich person, rich person, rich person, and me, I thought, and smiled.
After Corina had drifted off toward the bar, Drue pulled me into a corner, where we sat down on a blue velvet chaise longue. “So what do you think of Stuart?”
What could I say? “He seems great. Very friendly and smart.”
Drue gave me a look of fond exasperation. “That’s all?”
“Well, we haven’t really talked.”
She rolled her eyes. “What’s to talk about? He’s hot, he’s famous, and he went to Harvard. And he’s launching the most amazing business.” She straightened her back, raised her chin, and folded her hands at her waist. “Two words,” she said, with a smile lifting the corner of her mouth. “Brain smoothies.”
I blinked.
“He’s going to make brain-food smoothies! Smoothies with organic ingredients designed to boost mental performance.”
“So, not smoothies made out of brains?”
Drue shook her head. “No brains. Just oat milk and CBD oil. Folic acid. Manganese. All that good stuff!”
Stuart hurried over. He was smiling, but his expression was vaguely alarmed. “Are you making my smoothies sound silly?”
“I’m not making them sound anything!” Drue said, snaking her arm around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m describing them in a full and factual manner.”
“She’s making them sound silly,” Stuart said, half to me, half to himself. His smile seemed to have lost a few degrees of wattage. “They’re not. We’ve got researchers on our board. These ingredients have been scientifically proven to boost performance.”
“Mental performance,” said Drue. “Not sexual.” She nudged him. “Maybe in a year or so, we’ll roll those out.”
Stuart’s smile showed his teeth. He gave her a squeeze that looked like it might have hurt.
“Sex smoothies!” I said. My voice was too loud, too hearty, too big. “My goodness. The future is now!”
“You know it.” Stuart looked past me, over toward the door, his face lighting up as he saw someone. “Brett!” he hollered. “Hey, man, over here!”
Brett came barreling toward Stuart, arms open for a hug. As the two of them thumped chests and slapped backs, I felt my heart fall, as if someone had opened a trapdoor in my solar plexus and my insides were preparing to plummet onto the floor. I shrank backward, shot Drue a desperate look, then stood up, fast, and said, “I think I’m going to get another drink.” I hurried over to the bar, head down, with Drue right behind me.
“What?” Drue asked. “What is it? Do you know Brett?”
Did I know Brett. The previous fall, I’d finally worked up the courage to download a dating app, the one that introduced you to friends of your friends. I had not been hopeful, but the weather had turned cool, and the holidays were coming. I pictured myself walking through Central Park underneath a canopy of bright leaves, holding hands with a faceless man, or bringing someone home for Chanukah for my parents to meet. So I’d tried. I’d posted a shot of my face and had taken care to also include not just a full-body shot, but a picture where I’d posed with other women, in case potential matches wanted to compare and contrast. After rejecting “full-figured,” “plus-size,” “curvy,” and “Rubenesque,” I’d used the word “fat” as part of my description. Brett and I had exchanged phone numbers, texted for three days, and talked on the phone for two more, conversations that started off superficial—Where do you live? What do you do?—moved through personal, and tiptoed right up to the edge of racy. By the time we were ready to meet in person, he was calling me Daph, and I knew the names of his parents, his childhood dog, and his favorite book and sports team, and the story of his last relationship. He already sounded a lot more impressive, a lot more lively, than my previous beau, whose finest quality, according to Darshi, was that you barely knew he was around.
By the night we were going to meet for drinks, I was sure he was The One, the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow, the man I would marry or, at least, have fulfilling sex with. I used a Groupon to have my hair blown out and styled, and gave the girl who’d shampooed me an extra ten bucks to stick a pair of false eyelashes on my lids, a feat I could only manage about fifty percent of the time. I wore one of my favorite dresses, a form-fitting knee-length tank-style in a flattering shade of fuchsia. I got to the bar early and arranged myself at a high-top table for two, sitting very straight, with my knees pointed one way and my neck angled in the opposite direction, because, once, I’d read a model saying that the less comfortable you felt, the more natural you looked. My lipstick was perfect, and my curls were still curling. When Brett walked in, in navy-blue suit pants and a light-blue shirt, with his suit jacket hooked on two fingers and hanging over his shoulder, my heartbeat sped up. Our eyes met. I waved. He smiled.
“You must be Daphne,” he said.
“I must be.” In person, he was a little older-looking than he was in his pictures, his hair a little thinner and his teeth less bright, but who was I to complain? He was the guy whose voice I’d fallen asleep to the night before, lying in bed with the phone pressed to my ear.
He looked me over—or, at least, he looked over the parts of me that he could see. “I’m going to get a beer. What would you like?”
It was the year that everyone was drinking Aperol spritz, so that’s what I requested. I watched his back as he went toward the bar, the bald spot that had not been part of my fantasies gleaming under the bar’s pin lights. I watched as he walked past the bartender, past the people sitting at the bar, all the way to the hostess stand. I watched as he walked past the hostess. I watched as he walked out the door.
For a minute, I just sat there, stunned, numb, sad, ashamed. Angry, too. I imagined getting up and giving chase, running him down on the sidewalk, demanding to know what the fuck his problem was. Big I might be, but I was also in good shape. I didn’t think I’d have trouble catching up. Only I knew what had happened. He thought h
e’d known what I looked like, and that he’d be okay with it, but I’d been worse in person, worse than he’d even imagined. Besides, I couldn’t make a habit of telling guys off in bars, in a world where any random stranger could record it and put it online. Once was a novelty. Twice was a pattern. I wouldn’t be able to write about this for my blog or my Instagram stories. Not anytime soon, at least. Not while it was still so raw. It hurt. And nobody wanted unvarnished pain on their feed, unless it was served up with a side dish of uplift, or some kind of lesson—and that’s when I learned that superficial, small-minded men don’t matter, or and that’s when I realized that, if I loved myself, it didn’t matter if some jerk from Tinder didn’t want me. Maybe I’d get there in a few days, I thought, as I peeled off my fake eyelashes and began the slow trudge home.
In Drue’s living room, I looked over my shoulder to make sure Brett was still occupied and that he hadn’t seen me. Drue was staring at me. I realized I’d never answered her question. “No,” I said. “I thought I knew that guy, but he just reminded me of someone else. Bad first date.”
She made sympathetic noises and patted my arm, until her mother called for her imperiously. I carried my water to the window, where I stood, breathing slowly, trying to collect myself, wondering what it was about this apartment, this party, these people, that had me so on edge. Even before Brett’s arrival, I’d felt unhappy and off-balance. Was it Drue, and being back in her presence after all these years? Was it that she was getting married and I was still single? Or that she was so beautiful, and I… was beautiful in a different way, I made myself say in my head. I took another sip of water, another deep breath. I looked out the window, down at the street, and finally, it clicked. I could forgive myself for not seeing it immediately. The block had changed. Once, there’d been a Catholic church, a gloomy pile of foreboding brownstone. There’d been a bodega on the corner, with a wig shop and a nail salon next door. The church hosted Weight Watchers meetings in its basement, and I’d been here before, almost twenty years ago, the summer of Nana.
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