I’m sickened watching her, an old frump in a dress the color of a bruise, giggling like a schoolgirl over whatever you’ve just said. The husky burr of your laugh drifting down the table. Your unconscious habit of raking your hair off your forehead. So familiar now. Yet you’ve barely managed a smile for me since you arrived. It’s as if we’re truly the strangers we’re pretending to be. I long for dinner to be over so I can finally peel you away from the rest of them and find some pretext to have you to myself. Instead, after the dessert has been consumed and the coffee drunk, my father suggests the men split off from the ladies and remove to his study for cigars. I’m more than a little surprised when he specifically includes you in the invitation, but as the men push back from the table, I see a look pass between Cee-Cee and my father and realize she approves, and may even have been the one to suggest including you.
The ladies linger at the table with dainty glasses of sherry, clucking about how hard it is to keep a decent cook and their utter disappointment in this year’s theatrical season. I nod vacantly, pretending to follow along, but all I can think of is you, sitting in one of the leather club chairs in my father’s study, smoking and talking with his oily friends. I feel churlish for thinking it, petulant and resentful, but I didn’t ask you here to smoke cigars and rub elbows with a clutch of odious old men.
But as I dispatch a second glass of sherry with one deep swallow, I realize those old men are precisely why you came tonight. For their wealth and connections and whatever they might be able to do for you. I shouldn’t be surprised. You introduced yourself as an adventurer the first time I met you. And now here you are under my father’s roof, invited into his inner sanctum. How neatly you’ve managed it. And how quickly. Thanks to me.
I refill my glass, suddenly on the verge of tears. Cee-Cee slants me a silent warning. I pretend not to notice, but I can’t help wondering what she sees when she looks at me. Am I as transparent as I fear?
I feel an utter fool.
I wanted you here for your sake. For how I feel when I’m with you—like my heart is too big for my chest. Like I finally belong to someone unconnected to this wretched house and my wretched family. But you obviously had different reasons for coming. Reasons that appear to have nothing to do with me. The women are still clucking about hats and hem lengths and suddenly I can’t bear another empty word or another sip of sherry. I push to my feet and excuse myself, blurting something about a headache.
My sister shoots me another of her scathing looks as I head for the door. I don’t care; I’ve grown used to her disapproval over the years. And part of me blames her for tonight, for whisking you away and parading you about.
I was always invisible to her, too young to be of any interest. I didn’t mind—my mother loved me enough for everyone—but when she died, the loss was like a hole in my chest. And so I latched on to Cee-Cee, following her from room to room, peering in when she was reading or writing letters, asking her to play a game or tell me a story. I needed someone to talk to, someone who remembered Maman and how things were before she got sick. But my sister had no patience for my neediness.
I remember creeping into her bedroom one night and crawling in beside her, desperate for comfort after a horrible dream. Instead of comfort, I received an elbow to the ribs and was sent back to my room. She eventually accepted her role as surrogate mother, though only at my father’s request. She never could deny him anything. Including marriage to the stuffy son of one of his business cronies. But then, Cee-Cee was as ambitious as he was, and eager to help the family regain its footing after the Crash. In my father’s world, everything comes with a price tag.
A dozen years, one dead husband, and four children later, she has become the matriarch of our family, the arbiter of good taste and good behavior—and a kind of jailer where I’m concerned. She sees it as her duty to keep me properly aligned with my father’s wishes, and I generally do what’s expected of me. Because it’s easier. But not tonight.
I slip out into the hallway and head for the stairs. I have no idea how long my father will be entertaining in his study or what you’ll think when you’re set free and find I’ve gone up for the night and left you to fend for yourself. You’ve made plenty of new friends. Let one of them show you out. Or perhaps Cee-Cee will do the honors. She seems quite taken with you.
I’ve nearly reached the staircase when I hear muffled footsteps behind me. I turn and find you coming toward me, but you stop abruptly, maintaining an awkward distance.
“I’m going,” you say flatly.
“Going? But why?”
“I’ve had a bellyful of this night. Let’s just leave it at that.”
You’re so cool. So angry. “Has something happened? Has there been a quarrel?”
You smile one of your flinty smiles. “Quite the opposite. I’ve been welcomed into the fold with open arms. A few weeks more and I’ll have been taught the secret handshake.”
I frown, trying to make sense of your words, your tone. It’s our second argument in the space of a day and it frightens me. “I don’t understand. Isn’t that why you came?”
“I came for you, Belle. Because you asked me to, remember? You said . . . Did you ever think I might just want you there? So I came.”
“And the instant you got your foot in the door, I became invisible.”
You study me for what feels like a very long time, your mouth drawn down at the corners. Finally, you come a step closer. I expect you to touch me, to kiss me, since there’s no one around. Instead, you shake your head. “You parade me in front of your father and sister like some bloody trophy, pretending to barely know me, then get angry because I haven’t spent the entire evening pining for you from across the room.”
“I didn’t expect—”
You hold up a hand, cutting me off. “You seem to think this is some sort of game, Belle. You leave me hanging for days at a time, then tug my chain. And I’m supposed to jump when you call. I was happy to play along—for a while. But things are different now. I can’t play anymore.”
Your words are like little stones. They sting when they land. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that in the future, you should be more careful with your invitations.”
You turn then and retreat down the hall. I watch you walk away, your shoulders stiff as you pass through the parlor and slip from sight. Your heels echo against the marble tiles in the foyer, and then I hear the thud of the front door, firm and final.
Much too final.
The next morning, I try to phone you at Goldie’s apartment. A man answers—I don’t know who—but when I ask to speak to you, he tells me you’re no longer in residence, that you moved your things out just this morning. The news catches me off guard and sets off an irrational panic in me. I ask if he knows why you’ve left so abruptly and then if he knows where you’ve gone, but he’s of no help.
My hands feel shaky as I dial the number for the Review. We’ve agreed that I won’t call you at work, just as we’ve agreed that you won’t call me here. The woman who answers is brusque and efficient. She tells me over the background thrum of office activity that you haven’t shown up for work yet and that no one’s heard from you. She suggests I try again after lunch, then, as an afterthought, asks if I want to leave a message.
For a moment, I’m tempted to dictate some petulant remark about your brusque departure last night, to lash out at you in the only way currently available to me. But once you’ve read it, what then? I’ll only wind up apologizing for my petulance.
“No,” I say. “No message.” I’m about to hang up when I blurt out that I’d like to speak with Goldie.