“Why aren’t we staying at the apartment?”
She knew that they probably didn’t even remember the new place; they were used to being taken in and out of large, fancy rooms, places they were told they’d be coming back to, places to remember. Very often, they didn’t actually need to remember them. Someone, usually Lily, would prep them on the particulars if they ever needed to return.
“We just don’t feel like it,” Madison said.
“Yes,” Isabel said. “We don’t feel like it. Thank you, Madison.”
Outside the window, all the other cars were headed in the same direction, speeding toward the city’s tall ziggurat skyline.
TWENTY-TWO
It was a bit embarrassing, Mina thought, to be shopping at Whole Foods on the morning after Thanksgiving. It seemed to indicate some sort of girlish unpreparedness, something charming in a twenty-three-year-old but not so much in a forty-six-year-old. That either she hadn’t thought to buy groceries for the entire weekend when she made the big trip on Tuesday, or else hadn’t cooked enough food for leftovers. Nothing to set out in aluminum containers at big buffet brunches in the kitchen, for the guests who slept late and straggled downstairs in shifts.
Of course she had no houseguests that weekend—two of Tom’s younger associates had brought their wives for dinner, but they’d been speeding back to the city by nine o’clock the previous evening. But still, the leftovers in the kitchen was the image she always had in her mind, of what it would mean to host Thanksgiving out here “in the country.” That was how one of the women last night, Pamela, kept referring to it. “The country.” Like they were drinking milk fresh from the cow out back, or something.
Her phone danced as she walked into the store. She hadn’t realized she was clutching it in her palm, and she was doubly startled to see Isabel’s name on the screen. Having been called in for reinforcement on Wednesday, Mina had expected not to hear from Isabel for the remainder of the holiday weekend, at least.
“Well hello there,” she said, keeping her voice sugary and light from the start. She didn’t want to assume this was a distress call until she knew.
“Hi,” Isabel said.
“How are you? How was your Thanksgiving? Tom’s partner brought a new girlfriend, I swear to you Isabel, she looked twelve.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Isabel replied, getting into the spirit of things immediately. She sounded distracted, if game. “Did he want you to all let him tell you what he’s thankful for?”
“She kept making these sweeping statements about—you know, what a shame it is that New York is so dominated by two industries, finance and fashion. How she finds it so tiresome that a new restaurant can put the word ‘artisanal’ in front of every vegetable or cocktail and claim to be doing something new. I mean, every single aspect of life in the city seems to have exhausted this girl, and I’m telling you she couldn’t be more than three years out of school.”
“Oh my,” Isabel said.
“At first I thought she was trying to make me feel bad for not knowing the restaurants she kept mentioning, in Brooklyn, but I think maybe she was just nervous,” Mina said.
“Well, of course. You remember what it was like, when you were that age. Spending time around them in groups, with the older wives, being the date on the arm.”
Yes, Mina thought. Yes I do remember, but because I’m the one who did it. Not you. Isabel had never walked into a room and felt unwelcome, not once in her entire life. Not until this year, Mina reminded herself. You don’t begrudge her that past simplicity. You bring her closer, because you understand how she feels now. Don’t be so petty.
“How’s the hotel?” she tried. “Where did you end up choosing?”
“The Pierre,” Isabel said. “Madison’s been great. She’s so on top of things. You should have her come over to run your Thanksgiving.”
“Did something happen?”
“Oh, no, not really. Well, I just felt bad. When we got to the hotel, yesterday, I snapped at her. I just didn’t want her standing there when I checked in. I didn’t want her to know, it’s just, I used—I checked in under another name.”
“Whose name?” Mina said, alarmed.
“No, no one’s name. It was silly. April Wheeler. It’s a character from my mother’s favorite book. I just didn’t want to use my maiden name or anything, any name some underemployed and overenergized young hack from the Post or the Observer could trace—I didn’t want anything that really has to do with us,” Isabel said, leaving the thought to its logical, unpleasant conclusion.
“No,” Mina said. “No, that was smart.”
“I didn’t mean to keep it a secret, but at the last minute I just didn’t want her to know it was happening? I don’t know. I suppose I could have trusted her with it, but I just asked—I mean, I snapped at her, to go keep an eye on her brothers. And then by the time I got the room keys and turned around, they were talking to Suzanne Welsh.”
“Oh,” Mina said, still lurking just inside the store’s entrance, her eyes scanning the checkout counters and the produce aisle for familiar faces. “Fantastic. Did she hear you use the name?”
“No,” Isabel said. “It’s funny you should ask that. My first thought was, thank God Madison distracted her.”
“Wait, why are they at a hotel? Did they get rid of that place on Fifth?”
“So, I walked over, and Madison’s just chatting with her, Suzanne keeps looking over at me. And she starts telling me, you know, Bill’s sister is in town, the sister refuses to stay out in Greenwich, doesn’t want to ‘impose’ by using the apartment, Bill has to put them up at the Pierre—”
“Well, sure,” Mina said. “If your in-laws were Suzanne, you’d pick the hotel over their house, too.”
Isabel paused for a moment and Mina was afraid they weren’t allowed to insult these women today, that it was meant to be one of their more allusive, unmentioned conversations. Then Isabel laughed.
“Right,” she said, “she kept saying, ‘I can’t imagine why they won’t just stay with us, we have all these extra rooms!’”
“What else?”
“She kept asking why we were there. She kept referring to the kids as my ‘gang.’”
“I actually really like that. They’re your street toughs.”
“Right,” Isabel said. “Right, right, right.” For a moment, it seemed as if that would be all.
“Is something wrong?” Mina said.
“She implied that we wouldn’t be able to come to the museum party,” Isabel said. “The spring benefit, and we’re only in November now, and she was acting like our RSVPs were late coming back to her and so it must be that we couldn’t make it this year.”
“Classy.”
“She used the phrase ‘not up for it this year,’” Isabel said, her voice lowered.
“Just forget it,” Mina said. “Just put it right out of your mind.”