“It was way too hot in there. I thought I was going to faint.” Noele opened the refrigerator.
“The more you do it, the stronger you’ll get,” Sarah said. Her hands went to her own taut waist. She had maintained a lithe figure into her midfifties through daily exercise, a habit only Elise adopted. They sometimes worked out together. Elise hoped to look as good as her mother did when she reached her age. At thirty-one, people said Elise looked twenty-two and glowed like she was made from fairy dust. She went for a glass of water and took her vitamins, watching Noele remove the cake stand topper.
“Cake after your workout?” Sarah exclaimed.
“My body’s already in calorie-burning mode; seems like the best time to me.” Noele chopped a thick slice and palmed the icing side.
Sarah’s eyes stretched, watching as Noele pranced to the counter.
“Why are all those vans outside? I thought Kitty’s memorial was at her house,” Elise said.
“It is,” Sarah said.
“How much food did you order?”
“Sushi can be light, so we’ll have teriyaki stations too.” Sarah winced at the screech of the barstool legs across the floor as Giovanni pulled herself in toward the counter and reached over Noele for a banana in the fruit bowl. Noele’s first bite of cake sent a waterfall of crumbles onto the gray marble countertop.
“People will never leave,” Noele said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Sarah handed her a paper towel.
“How many people confirmed?” Elise asked. “I didn’t sign up to make a videotaped speech.”
Sarah put her hands in the air, cracking at last under her daughters’ pressure. “They’re setting up for my party, okay?” She pointed to Noele. “I’ll make you some eggs with that. Anybody else?” She didn’t wait for answers before extracting the egg carton from the refrigerator.
Her daughters negotiated behind her back about who was going to confront her. They decided it was Elise. “With the news about the inheritance out, the party is going to be a circus.”
“How fitting! The theme is ‘Mystic Circus.’” Sarah started juggling three eggs.
Elise had little patience for her mother’s joking. Sarah was a masterful illusionist: she understood how it would look to have the party under the circumstances but didn’t care. She didn’t want anything to ruin her fun. “It’ll look like we’re celebrating Kitty’s death, or worse, the inheritance. Not to mention at the memorial tonight—all the tents going up on the other side of the hedges? Mom, come on.”
“I told her to cancel it.” Their father came from the hallway, rubbing his eyes. He was always the last to rise, having spent part of most nights in his studio. He shuffled barefoot to the stove, tightening the belt of the dark-blue bathrobe Sarah had made for one of their early anniversaries. He wore it for a few hours every morning, despite the holes in the chest area that put his sparse, graying sprout of chest hair and the thin gold chain he never removed on display. He stooped to rest his chin on his wife’s shoulder. “Can I have my eggs fried hard?”
“Celebrating my birthday looks bad?” Sarah kissed him before pointing at Elise. “You’re both still working. Everyone else took off.”
“I’ve been off for a week, but you know I can’t change my promotional obligations.”
“And somebody has to keep these bills paid,” James said. Everyone groaned. No matter how rich he’d become, James still had alerts set on his financial accounts for transactions over a hundred dollars and wore his gold Rolex every day, even with his sweats. Elise looked at his wrist then to see it there, knowing he’d slept in it.
Elise raised her voice to compete with her mother’s clanking an eggshell against the aluminum bowl. “And no one else took off. Giovanni’s show is on hiatus, and Noele doesn’t have a job.”
“I do too!”
“Maybe,” Elise said, referencing their conversation from the previous day.
“Noele should be in the studio with me.” James flicked her in the head. He was coming to his wife’s rescue, Elise knew, trying to change the subject.
“Dad, for real. Stop.” Noele jabbed their father’s side. “You and Mom are wearing me out.”
“How many people have RSVP’d?” Elise walked past her mother at the stove for another glass of water from the filtered spout.
“Everyone. The party is on, and that’s just that.”
“Well, I’m not going.” Elise leaned over the sink to open the window, gagging on the smell of her mother’s overcooked eggs. Sarah only cooked three things well: lasagna, spaghetti, and tacos. Being the busy working actress, Sarah had relied on first her mother and then Julia, their cook, to feed her family. “It’s just another opportunity for us to be questioned and gossiped about.”
Sarah shoveled the eggs onto Noele’s plate and, in another swoop, removed the last of the cake. “You know how to not answer.”
“Perhaps, but it’s hypocritical, don’t you think?” Feeling her mother’s glare on her back, Elise walked out of the kitchen and up twenty stairs to the south wing. Elise and her sisters had learned of the contents of their mother’s semirecent book in its New York Times review, which hailed it as “an honest testament to the perils of motherhood and marriage despite the celebrity slant.” Sarah had spent two years writing about her ambivalence toward marriage and motherhood—a feeling, she wrote, that never went away, even after three children. It had been a year since its release, but her words were impossible to forget.
* * *
Elise hurried past the family photographs lining the wall and into the den, collapsing at the arm of the couch, where the floor vent allowed for the best eavesdropping on the kitchen.
“I have a right to celebrate my birthday,” Sarah was saying. She sounded unsure.
“A less elaborate night would be more appropriate,” James replied. “Or a postponement.”
“I can’t cancel now; I’ll lose the money.”
“I’d like to see them try to keep my money.” Her father sounded like he had food in his mouth—probably also cake. “Just scale back.”
Her mother sighed. “I’d hoped it would do your sister some good.”
“Your birthday party is to cheer up Elise?” Noele asked with obvious uncertainty.
“She needs some fun. She’s taken Kitty’s death so hard, and she’s been so busy, I fear she’s going to exhaust herself.”
“She’s not eating,” Noele said. “You should see that class she does—I’m worried she’s developing some kind of eating disorder.”
“It’s nervous energy, and there are worse habits,” Sarah said. “I need you girls to help your sister. She never left Kitty’s side these last few weeks.”
“She slept there,” James said, cosigning his wife’s concern.
“You told us,” Giovanni said.
“Why do you think we went with her this morning?” Noele said.
It was nice to hear everyone rallying in solidarity on her behalf, but Elise resented her mother deflecting the attention onto her.
Sarah sucked her teeth. “I can’t believe Kitty would put all of this on her. Selfish to the core, until the end.” She began to detail Kitty’s cataloging system. “Dozens of audio recordings: instruction for how her belts should be folded, how to preserve clothes, her old letters and photographs, how to clean certain pieces of her jewelry—it’s insane.”
Giovanni laughed, so Sarah elaborated, happy someone else thought it was as ridiculous as she did. “And this auction, my God…” The coffee grinder came on, drowning out everything but her mother’s contempt for Kitty.