“Mom,” Graham cautions with a disarming smile. If I can give Graham credit for one thing, it’s admitting his mother hates me. It’s the one thing he doesn’t make me feel is all in my head.
“How’s my baby?” She brushes his jawline. “Do you want a cigarette?” Graham smokes only with his mother. In a few days, he will complain about his throat and say, Why did you let me do that? But now she slips one in his mouth, then lights it for him. “So handsome.” She tweaks his chin.
Margo worships Graham like something she created by will alone. She never talks about his father; you would think Graham were the virgin birth. I once asked Graham about him and he explained that his father ran off with the maid. “Do you ever see him?” I asked. He seemed confused: “Of course not. He’s dead.” I didn’t ask if Margo killed him. I just assumed she had.
They talk about his birthday for a while. Margo is determined to find something he wants. She does a big present every year. One year it was a biplane. The next, a yacht. Graham used each once or twice, mostly to please Margo, but they bored him. Everything bores him. He’s too good for this world. Or too bad.
When I told Margo about my plan for the party, she was furious. She said it was a great idea. She said she couldn’t believe I thought of it. “Maybe you’re not as stupid as you look,” she added, so I knew she really liked it. She insisted I hold it at her house: “That will be my gift.”
“But it’s going to be very messy,” I explained. At the time I was planning to rent out an army base or something. It might have been expensive to bribe the US government, but I had a feeling it would cost less than I expected.
“Not a problem! I was planning to redecorate anyway.” This is not a surprise. Every rich person I know is like Sarah Winchester: The ghosts can’t haunt them if they keep on building. “Blow the place apart! It’ll be a blast! It will be much more fun for Graham if the damage is real.” She knows him well.
I had to accept her offer. She was right. Graham would have been disappointed with a piddling old army base. Margo’s house is beautiful, stately, a castle in the clouds. And I’m not too proud to admit, the idea of destroying it thrilled me, too.
“So”—Margo turns to me now, inviting the full force of her regal costume—“you had a little breakdown?”
Black fairy lights flicker over our heads with maddening speed. “I was arrested.”
“And you didn’t think to call?” She rubs Graham’s knee. “Don’t you get one phone call?” She tosses off a laugh. “Isn’t that the thing?”
The waiter arrives with the drinks, thank God. I take a gulp of wine. “I asked for one. Correction officers are not as accommodating as one might think.”
Graham chuckles but Margo frowns. “Why is it always you who has the problems? Everyone else seems to get along just fine.” She spreads her fingers across her chest. “I’ve never been arrested. And Lord knows, I’ve broken the law!”
“You must be so proud,” I say, which she doesn’t like.
“Where are my grandkids?” Margo asks, like they were here earlier. Her eyes bore into me and I want to tell her, You don’t have grandkids and you never will because your son doesn’t like fucking me. Not in a box, not with a fox, thank you very much.
I can’t imagine having kids. I have my hands full with her son.
Graham rustles in his seat, drawing our attention. “You had better tell Margo everything. Every dirty detail.”
I take a fortifying gulp of wine. Bean has stopped barking like even she wants to hear. “I had this idea to set Demi up. . . .”
Margo opens her mouth to interrupt when three waiters appear. “Octopus,” they say, setting the tiny plates in front of us. Two asparagus tips lie over the top in a cross. A white pansy sinks in black ink.
“Thank you,” Margo says. “We’d like the next ten minutes to be undisturbed.”
“Mom,” Graham starts.
“Twenty.” They disappear. Margo listens in stone silence as I tell her everything. Graham smokes. I feel myself shrinking, but I keep talking until I get to the end. Our plates remain untouched.
Margo stretches like this was a long, taxing story. “I was afraid this would happen.”
“This specifically?” I snap. It annoys me how she pretends to know everything. You would think having money made you psychic the way she talks.
“It is her first time,” Graham muses, chain-smoking blithely.
“She’s not one of us,” Margo dismisses his remark. “She never has been.” Her hands drift over my form. “She doesn’t have the killer instinct. It’s only a matter of time before she tries to save someone else.” Margo picks up her knife. “She’s a liability.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “I’ve kept all your secrets. I’ve never said a word.”
Graham clears his throat. My husband the great mediator. “I hate when you two argue,” he says, but that’s not true. He loves it.
Graham loves conflict. That is probably why he married me. Not because I conned him, like Margo seems to think. Or because I keep his secrets. He married me—he just had to—because his mother hated me. His life has been too easy. I watch him stretch back and smoke, the picture of indolence. That is why he gave me a gun and doesn’t fix the gate, why he thought it was sexy that I went to jail. He wants to get his hands dirty.
“We’re not arguing, darling. We’re just chatting,” his mother says. “Girl talk, isn’t it, Lyla?”
“I don’t see how what happened to Elvira is my fault,” I snap, breaking character.
Margo’s metal chair scrapes the stone floor. “You warned her.”
I keep my mouth shut. I remind myself that she doesn’t know. She is just good at guessing. I don’t remind her that she warned me on my wedding day: No one will ever offer you something of more value. But the truth is, I did warn Elvira. It was my fault in a way.
* * *
THE CONVERSATION HAPPENED by the fountain, ironically enough. I caught Elvira sitting there that night alone, staring at her own reflection. I didn’t know exactly what Graham got up to when it was his turn. I knew about the game but I didn’t want to know the details. I prided myself on being sophisticated. Some wives look the other way when their husbands have affairs. I look the other way when my husband crushes people’s lives. But I didn’t want him to crush Elvira. I liked her. She reminded me of myself, the parts that had deadened with time.
She looked up at me, water shadows undulating on her face, and she said, “It’s not that deep, is it? It looks so deep sometimes.”
I was slightly spooked, so I hurried toward the door. “Do you want a glass of Mo?t?”
“No.” She paused. “I get so sick of it, don’t you?”
I laughed. “Of course.”
Then she plunged her arm into the water suddenly, all the way up to her elbow, soaking her jacket. She held her arm up, victoriously, marking the waterline. “This is how deep it is.”
I was frozen by the door. “You’re right. They’re bad people,” I warned her. It was interesting that I said they’re and not we’re. Margo would have found it interesting.
“Who?” she asked, like she found it interesting, too.
“Them. You know, rich people.”
She just laughed. “Good people are boring.” It was something I would say. She was just like me, really. And now she is dead.
At the time, I laughed, too, and I went inside. Graham was standing by the door, listening. I was caught. “What was all that about?”
“I was just making conversation—”
“You were interfering. Do you want me to lose?” Like he could ever lose.
“No.” I just didn’t want her to.
* * *
GRAHAM AND MARGO are both watching me now, awaiting my reaction. An admission of guilt, a plea for mercy, nothing would be enough. They don’t know what they want. They already have everything.