EVENTUALLY SHE WALKED UP THE DRIVE, disabled the alarm system, and entered the house. She slipped off her mother’s shoes in the mud room. She left them where they fell, like evidence to be tagged later by the crime scene investigator.
When she moved into the kitchen, her father was sitting at the breakfast table.
NINETEEN
It was the day before Thanksgiving, and it was the art collection. That was why Mina had been summoned, if you could classify the razor-polite conversation she’d had with Isabel earlier that afternoon as being summoned.
Her morning had begun with promise, when she’d gathered her household staff in the kitchen to explain that two other couples, no children, had been invited for Thanksgiving dinner, and that it was very important everything be finished, or at the very least doing something fragrant in the oven, by the time the guests arrived for cocktails. Everyone had understood right away what needed to be done, and all morning long the ground floor of the house hummed, like choreographed traffic zipping through midtown. But Mina herself sat in the breakfast nook, without much to do. She watched the traffic from a high floor, behind glass.
She’d taken the latest issue of Vanity Fair in there, hoping to hide from Cecia, her head housekeeper. Despite her genuine intentions, to read about the Colombian hostages, she’d been paging through a photo spread on England’s future princess when Isabel’s name showed up on her phone.
“Happy early Thanksgiving.”
“You too,” Mina had said. She’d moved into the den for the call; she didn’t like the way Cecia had looked at her when the phone fizzed on the marble counter. They clearly didn’t want Mina yammering in the kitchen while they all tried to get the house ready, which was laughable and offensive except that Mina took their unspoken point. She darted now back into the kitchen, cradling the phone between her ear and her neck, and avoided Cecia’s eye as she withdrew a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a bowl of grapes from the refrigerator. She returned to the den.
“You’re having people at yours, right?” Isabel said. Mina had the distinct impression they were treading water, but she wasn’t sure why.
“Yes,” Mina said, “and I’ve delegated so well that I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing right now.” She decided to embellish, for Isabel’s benefit. “Everywhere I turn, it seems like I’m underfoot. I think Cecia wants me to go to a movie or something, and just stay out of the way until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Well, that’s how you know you’ve done your prep right,” Isabel said, and though Mina had been trying to portray herself as a buffoon so that Isabel might feel more comfortable confiding in her, of course—as always—they had ended up with Isabel soothing Mina, rather than the alternative.
Eventually, the conversation came to a point: it was the paintings. A woman would be coming by, from Sotheby’s. Beatrice North.
“I’ll come over, Isabel. I’m happy to drop by. She sounds horrendous.”
Of course, Isabel had chided her for that, but then Mina had known she would. Beatrice was just the top in her field, Mina, don’t be catty. But she needed Mina to say it, to dislike Beatrice North, didn’t she? Isabel couldn’t. She didn’t have that capital to squander, not right now.
This was how she kept you near her, Mina thought. This was why you endured the constant reminders that you were dull compared to her, that you didn’t have her depth or her skin or her marriage. That you didn’t sparkle, couldn’t, when you stood beside her. This was how she kept you as her friend, regardless. She let you see the things she couldn’t do, had never been allowed to do in either family, the one she’d inherited or the one she’d chosen, crafted. She let you see that she wanted to say something, but couldn’t, and you got to say it for her, and she let you feel the value of it. She made you essential, in some small way, so that you knew you weren’t as disposable as you felt. Mina knew there must have been other girls who did this for a younger Isabel, at Smith, in the city before she was married. But Mina was the one who did it for her now.
She’d waited for Isabel to say it, to ask. The house continued to buzz. Somewhere above her head, a door closed. The women in the kitchen spoke to one another with effortless urgency, their Spanish clicking and rolling past Mina’s ears. She didn’t speak the language.
“That might be helpful,” Isabel had said finally.
She’d been out by the pool when Mina arrived, wrapped in a teal blue cashmere blanket, the boatneck of her loose-fitting black shirt severe against her pronounced collarbone. She looked even thinner than when Mina had seen her last, in October, but something had clicked back into place. What had been so uncamouflaged in those early weeks was once again monitored, what had been submerged, murky, was once again held at the surface. Watching Isabel by herself on the blustery November afternoon, drying leaves whirling at her ankles like skittish pets, Mina knew why they hadn’t seen each other. She saw that their one icy phone call, right after the congressional hearings three weeks earlier, hadn’t been a momentary lapse in their closeness. They were going to return, now, to their usual distance. Oh, he’s absolutely fine, Isabel had said. Most of the unpleasantness is well behind him, I think. He’s looking like himself again.
Still, she was the one Isabel had called today.
Beatrice North was, it had to be said, just as horrendous as Mina had predicted. Wherever Isabel was graceful in spite of her sharpness, her reserve, Beatrice North was simply hard-edged. Her dark hair was drawn back from her face in a ponytail so smooth and severe it was easy to forget it was her hair, her dress and matching jacket expensive and anonymous so you could imagine fifteen more identical outfits hanging in the walk-in that was surely the pride of her quiet studio in the East Seventies. She held a sleek leather portfolio close to her chest, as if it contained state secrets.
She was a trespasser, but Isabel had invited her in. She’d sanctioned it, as if that mattered. Or was it Bob’s idea, Mina wondered. Was he the one insisting they circle the wagons?
What a funny metaphor; she wondered what could possibly have brought that phrase to mind. Why did people say that? As if even Los Angeles, the edge of everything, had any actual pioneers left. As if any vague chiming of misfortune’s arrival could ever return them to the raw-boned, wind-bitten women who had preceded them, pushed a beleaguered path across all the old landscapes. Circling the wagons. How silly.
They walked from room to room, pausing before each work, and when they returned to the downstairs hallway, Beatrice craned her neck in the direction of Bob’s door.
“That’s my husband’s study,” Isabel said coolly. “There’s nothing of interest there.”
“We’ll have to sit down and go through the listing together in more detail, of course,” Beatrice replied, not losing so much as a blink. “I’d like to say we could have these in the lineup for a March date. If you’re interested in moving that quickly.”