“I’m going to change,” I said, and everyone begged me not to.
“Wait,” Tina said, “hold on.” She ran upstairs and Frances, Irene, and I waited without speaking, as though we were playing freeze tag and she’d thumped us on our backs. When Tina came back downstairs, she’d changed out of her minidress and knee-high boots and into a silver satin floor-length gown. She looked like she was going to a Hollywood awards ceremony and like she was poised to win. “After all,” she said regally, “we are the hostesses.”
“You both look divine,” Frances said.
I relaxed a little as the other girls trickled in. They had all gotten dressed up too. They couldn’t get over my feather sleeves, the shade of blue on my skin, my skin. Fingers grazed my cheek, I heard the word porcelain, and I could not believe this was at last my life.
We took our drinks to the living room, where I’d set out a platter of hors d’oeuvres. Toasted ovals of bread with olive spread, raw salmon on cucumbers, dates wrapped in bacon. My mother would have gagged if I’d served any of this to her.
“Don’t fill up,” Tina said, her smile proud. “Ruth’s roast chicken is the best you’ve ever tasted.”
“It smells heavenly!”
“I should go check,” I said, standing.
* * *
I ran a knife between the bird’s body and thigh and tilted the roasting pan, watching the juices run pink. When the doorbell rang, I knew it was Rebecca. I’d counted the guests in the living room before I’d come into the kitchen. We were short one.
“I’ve got it!” Tina called. I could hear her satin dress sweeping the tiles of the floor. The groan of the medieval wooden door. Tina’s hello, my sister-in-law’s apology, Tina telling her it was nothing to apologize for. We could make room. For a panicked moment, I thought she’d come with my brother. But then they walked into the kitchen, and I saw it was just the baby barnacled to her hip. That piece of hair got all tangled up in her tongue as she greeted me.
“I kept trying to leave, but she wouldn’t stop screaming unless I held her,” Rebecca said.
“Can I try?” Tina opened her arms.
Rebecca looked her over critically. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your nice dress.”
“Oh, that’s okay.” Tina was speaking baby. “Who cares about a stupid-woopid dress?”
The baby stared at Tina with an aloof expression, sucking two of her fingers. Reluctantly, Rebecca handed her over. No one screamed. Rebecca was at a loss for what to do with her arms now that they were free.
Tina burrowed her face into the baby’s neck and inhaled. “We should put you on a platter and serve you up for dinner.” The baby frowned, as if considering the idea, and put her pink little hands on Tina’s lips. No, thank you.
Rebecca peered over the counter to see me basting the chicken. “Did you get the chicken from Nature’s Mart?”
“Pascale’s,” I answered a little haughtily. Pascale’s was the Italian butcher on Third. The chicken had cost six dollars more than the one at the grocery store.
“The chicken from Nature’s Mart gets fed a corn diet,” Rebecca said. “It’s healthier for them than wheat pellets.”
Briefly, I wished for my mother, who would have met the look I cast at her. Motherhood had made Rebecca an insufferable know-it-all.
“In Italy the chickens are fed wheat, and it’s the best chicken I’ve ever had,” Tina said. She’d gotten the baby to coo and laugh by pretending to eat her nose.
“Well, of course, in Italy.” Rebecca laughed, her snobbery bested for once. I felt her eyes roving all over me. My dress. My hair. My face. I sensed outrage at what she saw, and maybe a little bit of betrayal. I’d told her the attire was festive, and she was wearing the black wool dress she’d worn to my father’s funeral.
“Come meet everyone,” I said to Rebecca, and showed her the way to the living room.
* * *
Rebecca seemed to relax next to the fire with some gin. The other women were empathetic to her situation, full of advice about how they’d gotten their babies to stop being so clingy. Rebecca listened to them and didn’t interject with any of her success stories about Allen. She didn’t mention Allen at all. Everyone assumed the baby was her first, and she allowed it. She finally tucked her hair behind her ears and even laughed at a joke Frances told, though I saw the way she looked at Irene sitting so close to Frances on the couch. Her disapproval was radiating off her in waves.
We moved to the dining room for dinner. Before we sat down, Frances insisted on taking a picture of Tina and me, holding my prized roast chicken. The other women piled behind her in the doorway, exclaiming over what a great picture we took together. Frances promised to send us a copy as soon as she had the chance to get the film developed.
Everyone raved about the meal. They wanted to know how I got my potatoes so crisp, whether I stuffed the cavity of the chicken with butter. The women took turns passing the baby so that Rebecca had a chance to enjoy her meal. The bones on her plate were picked clean by the time my niece made it back around the table.
“You could do this professionally, Ruth,” one of the women said. Down the formal stretch of the burlwood table, Tina and I met eyes. We’d been talking about my goal to enroll in culinary school, but first I had to complete my GED.
Tina raised her glass with an impish smile. “Actually,” she said, “Ruth is going to culinary school to do just that.”
I realized Frances was grinning too. “That’s the plan eventually,” I said before the women got too excited for me. “But I have to go back and get my GED first.”
Tina gave a small shake of her head. “I spoke to the school. They’re willing to waive the requirement in exchange for a summer of work in a restaurant kitchen.”
Frances said, “And we have a friend who could use the help.” Irene nodded, and Rebecca’s jaw clenched at the use of we.
The women asked a million questions. How many years was culinary school? Did I want to work in a restaurant, or catering, maybe? Someone’s cousin had found success in catering weddings. Maybe I could even open a restaurant of my own one day!
The final course was a lemon tart with a thin layer of chocolate between the pastry and the filling. The women moaned in ecstasy, but I noticed that the baby was drifting off in Rebecca’s arms and that she hadn’t been able to touch her piece.
“You can put her in our room,” Tina said to Rebecca. I registered the seriousness of the words our room, but it didn’t seem as though anyone else did. Everyone was too full, too tipsy, too happy for me.
“It’s a big house,” I said as humbly as I could. “I’ll show you.”
* * *
Rebecca and I removed the cushions from the love seat, the one by the bay windows that seemed to cut Mount Rainier off at its snowy head, and constructed an infant-sized nook on the floor. Rebecca rocked back on her heels and took in her surroundings. In the bedroom she shared with my brother, there was not even space for a bureau, and they stored their clothes in a linen closet in the hallway.
Rebecca’s eyes dipped over an indent in a pillow. The bed was made, but Tina had jumped on top of the covers and put her hands behind her head to watch me try on clothes for the party. Remembering her like that—watching—I wished everyone would go that very second.
“Do you sleep in here too?”