Amanda closed all the drawers and, with her pinkie finger, wrote her initials in the mist on their chilly surfaces. Then she leaned forward and breathed, letting the heat overwhelm the evidence.
She shut the fridge and turned to the kitchen counters. In a side drawer, near the phone: the high school phone directory, a map of Rhode Island, a pack of Gauloises cigarettes that were surely the last lingering affectation left over from her junior year in Avignon, or some equally tragic backstory. She probably had them in her purse and parceled out artful glimpses of them when she rifled through it, looking for her tinted, La Roche-Posay SPF 50 concealer or a business card for whatever home décor business she’d once made a pseudo-effort to launch a few years ago. She probably kept them in a convenient pocket in the purse, hoping that Isabel D’Amico might see them once, casually. That they might bond.
Unfortunately for Suzanne Welsh, Isabel had spent her junior year in Tuscany, and she was rarely if ever looking for an extra window to open, for anything that might let one of these women further in. People always talked about Isabel like she was so icy, so remote, but she wasn’t at all. She’s always been warm to me, Amanda thought. She just doesn’t devote her energy to putting people at ease when she has no respect for them. We should all be a little more like her, actually. It would cost us so much less if we could all agree to do it.
And whether Isabel cooked or not, at least her kitchen didn’t feel like this place: a gaudy, well-lit rehearsal for a life.
For a moment, before she went back to the living room, Amanda thought of her father, of the proud way he’d practically puffed out his chest when he’d said that: “speaking truth to power.” She knew, though, what he’d really been saying. It was, in the end, his answer for everything. How seductive this approach could be. Surrounding yourself with all the people you know you’re better than. Then sinking into the contempt the way you’d sink into a bubble bath, just on the edge of too hot, after a grueling game of tennis.
It wasn’t fair that in Bob D’Amico she saw it as evidence of his essential mettle, his intrinsic worth, where in her own father she just saw it as preening. She knew it wasn’t fair.
WHEN SHE CAME BACK into the living room, Zo? was holding Madison’s wrist high in the air, waving it around and calling back toward the boys’ corner. A door slammed in some other part of the house.
“You guys,” she said, “doesn’t Madison have the world’s tiniest wrists? Like a baby’s! Look!”
Wyatt came back in, and then Chip was shambling into the room.
“Who’s got tiny wrists?” He bent down to kiss both Zo? and Allie, each on the cheek, and nodded toward Amanda.
“I do,” Madison said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“I guess I’m not usually paying attention to your wrists,” he said, already looking over toward Callan and the other two. “That isn’t where guys are looking. Just a pro tip for you ladies.”
He crossed the room then, to high-five Callan. He was wearing a suit jacket two sizes too small for him, the sleeves stretched across his upper forearms, and beneath it a T-shirt with the Superman logo peeking out.
“Fuck you, Abbott,” Wyatt said, and Chip pulled him into a headlock.
“No thank you, Wyatt, but I’m happy to just be friends.”
“Wyatt, kiddo, can we perhaps get you something to chill you the fuck out?” Zo? called over her shoulder. “Does anyone have a joint for our gracious host?”
“Try does anyone have six Xanax,” Callan snorted.
Amanda saw Madison’s spine straighten, as though someone had jerked it on a string.
“Oh,” Madison said in response to some gesture, some clue from Zo?. Amanda had missed it, whatever it was. “How long has that been going on?”
“Just sometimes,” Allie clarified. “Like, really not often. Every few weeks. If she’s bored. Right?”
“If I’m bored,” Zo? said. “Yeah, we hook up. I mean that’s Wyatt’s best use, to be honest. I’m not going to tell him my hopes and dreams. Not a candidate for best friend.”
“Or romance, I would imagine,” Amanda contributed.
“I like those shoes,” Zo? said, done with Wyatt as a topic. “What are those, Prada? I think I almost bought those. But not that color.”
“Probably not,” Madison said. “These aren’t recent. They’re my mother’s.”
“That’s sweet,” Allie said.
“What, is she cleaning out her closet?” Zo? said.
“No,” Madison said.
They all sipped their drinks.
“Here’s the thing,” Zo? said, sliding lower on the couch so that her head tilted toward Allie’s. “We could use a little something stronger, couldn’t we? I’m already bored.”
“Oh,” Allie said, slouching down alongside her. “I’ve already taken care of it. Jared said he could get some. He said he’d get extra and we could buy it off him.”
“For what? Fifty?”
“He said seventy-five, which I think is bullshit, but I’m just going to leave it alone.”
“That seems like a lot.”
Allie’s hand danced in the air for a moment, then touched her hair, gently, as if to make sure it was still there. “I can get it this time,” she said. “Whatever. He shouldn’t even be making us pay.”
“Madison,” Zo? said, sitting up straight again. “You’re going to love this. This is going to be dynamite.”
The doorbell rang.
“Perfect. What do you want to bet that’s Jared?”
“It had better be,” Wyatt said, loping past them to head back out to the foyer.
“I think it’s hilarious,” Madison said, “that he’s actually dressed as the guy from Wall Street. I think that’s so—it’s just so, so Wyatt.”
She sounded, Amanda thought, exactly like Zo?.
“I thought it was supposed to be American Psycho, that movie from when we were kids,” Allie said.
Zo? raised her eyebrows and grinned at Madison. “What’s the difference? Right, Madison?”
WHEN THE OTHER GIRLS both left the room to follow Wyatt, Amanda knew that this might be the one time, all night, when she and Madison spoke only to each other. That certainty rushed to fill the empty, expectant places that had foreseen an evening that would end the way it was supposed to, with Madison needing Amanda.
“You’re kidding, right?” she said. Somehow it came out hostile. “You’re going to do that with them?”
“Amanda,” Madison said, “I don’t even know why you came.”
“I came to see you,” Amanda said, but all these thoughts were sliding from her brain, unruly, they were wrinkled and in the wrong order by the time she said them out loud. She sounded sad, when she said that, but all she wanted was for Madison to get it, to get how much more egregious any single person in this room was than anything Amanda had ever done.
Madison crossed her arms, pulling her knees in toward her chest.