“Sweetheart,” Alexandra said to him, drawing him to her body with one extended arm, not looking at him. She whispered into his ear. As she spoke, the skin just beyond the peaks of her eyebrows rippled, because this was a face whose anger was necessarily displaced and disjointed, playing over its features with the confusing rhythms of a submerged object seen from above water.
And then the child was gone, immediately, just as if she’d slapped him across his face. He and his friend simply vanished. Mina wondered—not for the first time and not for the last—how much it mattered to Tom, still, that they had never had a boy.
Suzanne Welsh was perched on the quilted lavender arm of her love seat. She smiled at Mina, then tapped one long French-manicured nail lightly against her glass.
“Ladies,” she said, “I know we’re all waiting for the main event, but I would just love to take a moment to thank Alexandra”—she paused indulgently for the chorus of assents—“for knowing that this would be something we’d all need so much right now!”
Everyone drank.
Moments later, Celine returned to the room in all her blond efficiency. Several other cocktail-dress-sheathed women followed in her wake, wheeling two stainless steel clothing racks. Everyone quieted; this was clearly the main attraction. Mina saw now that a space had been cleared at one end of the room, leaving only two fainting couches set at angles, as if facing the group of women for an interview.
Bags were unzipped with fanfare; silks and leathers and furs were draped across the couches. One woman seemed to be in charge of shoes, drawing out endless orange and purple boxes and removing a single python sandal, a single jewel-toned stiletto. She placed each shoe atop its own box and lined them up in rows.
“Oh, and I want to remind everyone that fifteen percent is going to the Equus Foundation!” Alexandra called from her place on the floor. She was curled up beside one of the tea tables, drinking what appeared to be a mimosa. Only fair, Mina thought, for the hostess to get a colored drink. “As if you needed any extra push!”
“She said it’s a friend of her sister’s who’s spent several years putting together her own collection,” Suzanne told Mina. “All the personal shoppers at Bergdorf’s hate her. These past few months she’s had a boom in her business. I mean, it’s perfect. I’ve gone into Saks a few times, and last week Bill and I did some shopping in the city, but it feels uncomfortable. This is such a perfect solution. Leave it to Alexandra.”
Everyone else began to gravitate to the women and their wares, asking questions, inquiring after specific pieces Alexandra had gushed about in advance, but Mina remained where she was.
“I can’t decide,” Alexandra said from her spot on the floor, and it was the first time Mina realized that she hadn’t stood and followed the others. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”
Mina nodded, keeping her expression noncommittal, wondering if it was possible she and Alexandra might actually agree on this.
“I just mean, I know it looks bad if we show up at these places in person,” she said. “I understand no one wants to see me ducking into Hermès.”
As if anyone would recognize you, Mina thought, holding it deliciously in her chest as she nodded, her brow sympathetic.
“But I just think if they get wind of this,” Alexandra said, “it might be even worse. And I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone writes up a snarky trend piece in the Times.”
Someone on the other side of the room squealed over a pair of Louboutins. Mina could see the red soles.
“It’s just so silly, really, at bottom, isn’t it?” Alexandra said. She lifted her palm to the ceiling, waving it in a circle, as if to include the entire room, the entire house, in what she would say next. “I know this is a lot. No one is more grateful for it than I am! I certainly don’t come from this, I know how lucky we are. But Brad works his little butt off for everything we have. It’s not like it’s fallen into our laps.”
Mina tried not to choke at Alexandra’s description of her own background. As if aware of this danger, Suzanne floated back over with another woman, her eyes moving with unease between Alexandra and Mina.
“That’s it,” the other woman said. She held a pair of pleated silk pants the color of gold in her hands; she kept turning them as if to catch the light, then tilting her head in mock consideration. Mina tried to remember the husband’s name. He was a senior vice president at Lazard, a mediocrity, someone who had been there for years without much to show for it. The guys from Lazard always looked so miserable. The place was stuck in the Stone Age, or more specifically in Paris circa 1976. Same difference.
“People talk about—well, about us, as if we just won it at the craps table in Vegas,” Lazard Wife continued. “And I think we all know how far that is from the truth.”
“Yes!” Alexandra’s head bobbed. Her neck was strangely thick, Mina noticed, much thicker than you’d expect from the fine blond hair and the delicate fingers. “I just . . . we built this house as a place to spend time with our children, our friends, our grandchildren. We built it to have a place for future memories to happen. I don’t see what’s so worthy of attack, honestly.”
Alexandra trailed off, and Suzanne, wearing a pair of sunglasses and clasping a jeweled cuff around her wrist like a vise, looked up in alarm. Oh, Mina thought. We’ve let too much time go by. We’re supposed to speak up to agree.
“Of course not!” Suzanne said, complying. “And it just seems unfair and, frankly, I don’t know. Shortsighted, I guess. The fact that one man is reckless, not good at his job . . . to act like everyone else, just by virtue of living in the same town, is just as bad as he is. I just don’t get that at all.”
Her eyes darted to Mina every few seconds, and then the final bit of understanding snapped into place. Mina felt it cleanly, like that last moment when you’re baking and you slide the spatula beneath the cake and it comes away from the pan as its whole, uncrumbled self. She wasn’t here because they wanted to know what was going on with Isabel. It wasn’t just another installment of the dress at Saks, the concerned glances in Whole Foods. They no longer cared if she let them in, and they hadn’t learned anything. No woman in the room had reconsidered shit about her own life.
They just wanted Mina to know this: if she didn’t make up her mind the right way, they were going to make sure that she was the next one left out. The grace period had ended. They were coming out of their foxholes.
“Oh, I agree,” Alexandra said, gratified. “I think Bob D’Amico is a fool. But my husband is not Bob D’Amico.”
Mina felt a smothered admiration for the way Alexandra said this without even glancing in her direction, without softening her tone or wincing in apology.