At some point, she called the pediatrician.
“Dr. Bloom is on the phone,” her mother said. “She’s asking if you ate anything funny.”
“Not that I can think of.”
“She says no,” her mother said into the phone. “Hold on. Any changes to your routine? New medications? No, right?”
“I started taking the pill about a month ago,” Sam said.
She hadn’t thought this would come as a shock. But her mother’s expression told her otherwise. She left the room and slammed the door, and didn’t come back until the last guest had gone home.
The following days, before she returned to campus, were hard. Sam kept bumping up against her parents, like they didn’t know how to be in one another’s presence anymore. She missed Clive. She couldn’t believe she had lived with him, talked about marriage, and yet here she was, sleeping in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by dolls and snow globes. She wondered if her mother was thinking of how she had encouraged Sam’s original trip to London, the one during which she met Clive, and wishing she hadn’t.
To cheer her up, Sam’s father pressed all the paintings she’d sent home to him into an album.
Your memories, he said.
Sam had cried, flipping through. Each picture of her former life was like a dead butterfly, wings pinned to the page.
* * *
—
On Tuesday night, Sam set her alarm so that she was up early the next day, an hour before the morning rush in the bathroom. She spent a long time in the shower, shaving her legs and underarms, an activity she skipped most of the time. She used something called a ten-minute hair mask that Isabella said was the best product money could buy and exfoliated her entire body with a cocoa-butter scrub she had spotted in someone’s shower caddy a week ago and determined to borrow for Clive’s arrival.
Afterward, Sam put on makeup for the first time since she returned from London last month. She blew out her hair. She wore a dress he liked, black, printed with purple and orange flowers. It pulled her in at the waist and landed just above her knee.
Once she was ready, she went downstairs. There were only a few students in the dining hall. In half an hour, the room would be packed, voices echoing against the high ceiling. But now there was a hush. The ones who ate this early ate alone, reading thick textbooks or staring at their phones.
Sam passed the buffet. The scrambled eggs hadn’t been touched. The tower of shiny green apples was as yet undisturbed.
She pushed the swinging door into the kitchen, where Maria, Delmi, and Gaby were at work.
Maria opened her eyes wide.
“Check out the movie star,” she said.
She spun Sam around in a circle.
The others oohed approvingly.
“Good dress,” Gaby said.
“Thanks,” Sam said.
She went to the pantry where the coffee maker lived. She poured herself a cup.
Maria followed her. She licked the palm of her hand and rubbed it against Sam’s hair.
“There,” she said. “A piece was sticking up. Listen, we got a request for workers for a big alumnae dinner, the Thursday before graduation. Pays time and a half. Gaby’s doing it. Should I sign you up?”
“Sure,” Sam said. “Thanks.”
After sophomore year, she stuck around when the spring semester ended to earn extra money. She waited tables at reunion dinners each night and helped make sandwiches and snickerdoodles for the senior brown-bag picnic out on the soccer field. The recently vacated dorm rooms were occupied by old ladies in flannel nightgowns who wanted to chat with her while they applied eye cream in front of the bathroom mirror. This was supposed to be a perk of the reunion experience, getting to stay in your former dorm. Sam had witnessed two women in Eileen Fisher, fighting over who got the single on the fourth floor that both of them had once occupied.
The women’s presence in the rooms where she was so used to seeing her fellow dorm mates had creeped her out. It was as if all her friends had aged fifty years and only she remained young.
“Sam,” Maria said now. “The dinner? It’s at President Washington’s house.”
Sam gasped. “I love her.”
“I know you do. That’s why I thought of you.”
“I’ve always wanted to go inside her house.”
By then, Sam thought, the school paper would have published her letter. Maybe President Washington would know who she was.
Sam and Maria went back out to the kitchen and joined the others.
“What time does his flight get in?” Gaby said.
“Nine.”
“And where will the Princess go while he’s here? Did she get a room at the Ritz?”
“She goes across the hall, to our friends’ room,” Sam said. “It’s actually so nice of her.”
Sam wished Gaby and Isabella could like each other. Maybe they just needed to get to know one another. She should make a plan to hang out with both of them some night soon, after Clive was gone.
“Sam,” Delmi said. “Are you still pretending you have a boyfriend?”
It was a joke she’d started back in October, after Clive visited the first time and Sam didn’t introduce them. After he left, they teased her—Is there even a Clive, really? Is he your imaginary Clive?
Sam sipped her coffee as Gaby showed her a video on her phone of Josie dancing to Taylor Swift.
“We have to introduce her to Gil soon,” Sam said. “I have a feeling they’ll hit it off. Who knows? Maybe they’ll get married.”
“Maybe so,” Gaby said.
“Gil better look out,” Maria said. “Josie’s a fireball. She’s got a temper like her mama.”
“It’s true,” Gaby said. She sounded proud.
She had only once mentioned Josie’s father to Sam. He was a guy she met working in a restaurant. They dated casually for a few months, and then Gaby realized she was pregnant.
“I didn’t tell him,” she said. “He was about to move to Michigan. He would have been a shitty dad. Fun guy to party with, but to have a kid with? No thanks.”
Sam wondered about this sometimes. She wondered if and when Josie would ask about him, and what Gaby would say. She wondered if Gaby had ever considered having an abortion, but didn’t think it was her place to ask. Like Maria, Gaby wore a small gold cross on a chain around her neck. Sam never asked about that either.
At five to eight, she rinsed her cup and put it in the dishwasher, the first of hundreds to be washed that day.
“You’d better bring him here as soon as you get back from the airport,” Delmi said. “Otherwise, I might have to tell everyone at dinner the sad story of your invisible friend.”
Sam grinned.
“All right,” she said. “Okay.”
There were muffins cooling in tins on the countertop. Sam pulled two of them out by their paper liners, using the tips of her fingers.
“See you later,” she said.
She was waiting inside the front door of Foss-Lanford when George pulled up to take her to the airport, five minutes ahead of schedule.
“You clean up nice,” he said as she got into the passenger seat.
“Thanks.”
“Ol’ ’55” played on the car radio, one of her father’s favorite songs.
Sam handed George a muffin.
“Fresh from the oven,” she said.
“I didn’t realize dorm rooms had ovens,” he said.
“Ha ha. Courtesy of my friends in the dining hall.”
George took a bite.
“Now, that is delicious,” he said. “How are your friends doing, anyway? They’ve been on my mind. Are you still wanting to do something on their behalf?”
“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t elaborate. Sam planned to surprise George with a copy of her l
etter when it ran in the paper. She would include a note, telling him how much he had inspired her.
“There’s something I’d like to bring up at our next discussion group,” George said. “Don’t let me forget. I was talking to a man at church on Sunday. This poor bastard lost his job and his insurance along with it. Then his wife got diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The bills have just about sunk them.”
“That’s awful,” she said.
“In general, I think it’s better for our group to talk big picture as opposed to individual stories,” George said. “But in this case, maybe we can help.”
“Are you thinking crowdfunding?” Sam said.
“Yes,” George said. “Crowdfunding. Exactly.”
He turned toward her and nodded.
She nodded back.
“Okay. What’s crowdfunding?” he said.
Sam smiled. “There are websites where you can upload pictures, a sad story. A need of some kind. People donate.”
“Is that right? What kind of people?”
“All kinds. A girl I went to elementary school with got honored by the governor of Massachusetts at the State of the Commonwealth address because she crowdfunded so much. She had cancer, and she raised enough to pay her own medical bills and then crowdfunded for two or three other cancer patients she met while getting treatment.”
George hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “That right there is the Hollow Tree,” he said. “Government officials taking credit for someone who is a victim of their policies. That poor girl shouldn’t have had to raise that money in the first place.”
Sam had never thought of it that way. She supposed he was right.
“Sorry for the strong reaction,” George said.
“That’s okay.”
“I do like the idea. Crowdfunding. That’s a new one. Thank you for keeping me in the loop.”
“Thank you for never asking what I’m going to do after graduation,” she said.
George’s cheeks went red. He thought she was being sarcastic.
“I’m serious,” Sam added.
“Are you worried?” George asked.
“I feel like I’m behind everyone else.”
“Andrew had the same fears, and he landed on his feet. You should talk to him.”
“He did? I mean, have these fears?”
“Sure. You two have a lot in common.”
“How so?”
“Middle-class overachievers in a sea of rich kids.”
He said it like it was obvious. Like two plus two equals four.
“On Elisabeth and Andrew’s third date, know where she took him?” George said. “The ceremony for the Pulitzers. Her godfather won that year for his reporting in the New York Times. Andrew swears to this day that the guy had absolutely nothing to do with Elisabeth getting hired there, but come on.”
“Elisabeth is really talented,” Sam said.
“I don’t disagree,” he said. “But it never hurts to be born on third base.”
“Her godfather, is he related to her?” Sam said.
“No. He was her father’s roommate at prep school. Or maybe Harvard,” George said. “You’ve probably heard Elisabeth’s father is a big financial muckety-muck. He made his millions the old-fashioned way: inheriting wealth and screwing the little guy.”
His millions.
Sam thought of Elisabeth’s stories about being young and broke in the city. Four roommates in a two-bedroom apartment, waiting tables to get by. She never gave the impression that she came from money.
When Sam told her about her student loan debt, Elisabeth said, “Don’t worry about that. Everyone I know has student loan debt. We all manage, one way or the other.”
That we. She had included herself.
“I’m confused,” Sam said, before she could think better of it. “I thought Elisabeth was a waitress after college.”
George shrugged. “Was she? If so, I would assume it was just to piss off her parents. Or maybe she did think she needed to waitress. Elisabeth prides herself on not taking money from her father, but that’s not the same as having a father who doesn’t have money. She has a safety net most people don’t. I love her, but that’s her blind spot. Always has been.”
Sam felt like some missing piece of the story had just been revealed to her, making everything else look different. Elisabeth wasn’t the person she claimed to be. And here was Sam, taking her lies as proof that anyone could manage and pursue their art and somehow still end up with the beautiful house and the perfect baby.
George cleared his throat. “I love Lizzy, you know that. I hit the jackpot when I got her as a daughter-in-law. Maybe I’m just being bitter. Her parents rubbed me the wrong way at Christmas. They’re clueless snobs, the both of them.”
“I heard about the big fight,” Sam said.
He looked surprised. “You did? Well, then. I don’t have to tell you that, on some level, Lizzy knows she has a backup plan. Otherwise she never would have been so careless and gotten into that situation with her sister.”
“What situation?” Sam said.
“Oh.” He looked flustered, alarmed, like he’d said too much. “All I’m saying is that’s how people like that operate. It’s about who you know. If you don’t know anyone, it might take longer.”
Sam thought this over. George was right.
Isabella had only gotten her internship because a friend of her father’s arranged it. When Lexi told them about her job offers and they congratulated her, she said, “My aunt is a big-deal literary agent. She called in a favor, that’s all.” So many of Sam’s classmates had done unpaid internships during the summer months, when Sam was working to afford her tuition.
Still, somehow Sam hadn’t made the connection until now that wealth wasn’t only about money, but opportunity. She had thought her friends were being humble. There was no one she could call to find her a job, unless she wanted to be a nurse or a cop or a teacher. Except for Elisabeth. Elisabeth had offered, but Sam hadn’t even considered taking her up on it. The offer hadn’t seemed real. It seemed like too much to ask. Maybe that was how these things were done and Sam was the only one who didn’t know it.
“The other day, Faye and I heard this story on the radio,” George said. “The children of baby boomers will inherit more wealth than any previous generation. Faye said to me, ‘So they’re sitting around, waiting for their parents to die. Isn’t that nice?’ And I said, ‘We’re lucky we have nothing—Andrew has no incentive to wish us dead.’ ”
He grinned, but it wasn’t convincing.
“I had mixed feelings after he went off to the city and got a big important job. Proud. But for a while, I swear, he was pissed at us. He started hanging around with all these rich kids, he met Elisabeth, and it was like he resented us for not being rich, as if it was our choice and we had decided against it on principle. We were only ever able to have one kid. That killed Faye. We put everything into him. Then, there he was, looking down on us. He used to go by Andy. Then all of a sudden, he’s Andrew. Faye said to give him time, and she was right. Now he’s back. Away from that city, away from that job, I see the old him coming through. Little things. Like he helped me switch out the screens for the storm windows. We had a few laughs, and a few beers, while we did it. I thought he’d tell me to just hire someone, but no. We went fishing together sometimes, when the weather was nice. I can even talk him into bowling on a really good day.”
“I think I kind of know how Andrew felt,” she said. “When I was in high school, everyone I knew was the same as me. Just, normal. But now, you wouldn’t believe it. There’s a Saudi princess in one of my art classes. My first year, this girl in my dorm invited a bunch of us home with her to Boston to celebrate her birthday. I grew up like ten minutes from her, but in the suburbs. Her family lives in a penthouse apartment in
the city, overlooking the Charles River. An elevator opens right into their living room. Even Isabella. Her parents own three houses! I’ve had to learn how to be comfortable around rich people. The main thing is you’re supposed to act like they’re no different than you are. Even though they don’t act normal. They always want to give you a tour of their house, like it’s a museum.”
George laughed.
“You can pretend you’re the same when you all have rooms in the same dorm and eat the same food and go to the same classes,” she said. “But then you see the way other people live, and—”
“Diego gave a very interesting presentation about first jobs after college at discussion group once,” George said. “His oldest graduated in 1990. There were just no jobs to be had. Same thing happened six years ago, when the economy tanked. The economic climate you graduate into defines so much about your prospects, and yet if you happen to graduate at the wrong time, you end up feeling like a failure because you did everything right, you went to this elite school, and you couldn’t get a job after. The fact is we’re not as in control of our personal destinies as we imagine ourselves to be.”
Sam nodded.
A lot of the people she knew from high school and college were planning on the Peace Corps or Teach For America or law school next year. She wondered now how many of them had a passion for it, and how many just needed a plan.
They were silent through the end of Tom Petty singing “Refugee,” and “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones.
A song she particularly liked came on next.
“Who sings this again?” she said.
“Chuck Berry.”
“I think Andrew was playing this song when I was over there for dinner recently.”
“Probably. Kid left for college and made off with half my CDs. This here is a playlist of my favorite songs. I’ve decided life’s too short for music that’s just okay.”
“I like that,” she said.
A sign for the airport came into view. George hit the blinker.
Suddenly Sam felt embarrassed, remembering where they were headed.
Friends and Strangers Page 30