“I came,” Lauren says. “I come sometimes.”
“You came!” She relinquishes their forearms and claps her hands together, once, twice, three times. “I’m so happy. Oh, you’ve made me so happy, but darling, where’s Dan; Dan’s not here tonight?”
“Dan’s not here tonight,” says Sarah, in a tone that implies she’s already explained this to her mother.
“Never mind, never mind; oh God, Lauren, you’re so beautiful, look at her, Sarah, isn’t she beautiful, it’s preposterous.”
“Preposterous,” Sarah agrees.
“You never come,” says Lulu again. Another squeeze, something between affection and punishment.
Lauren considers the things she might say in response. I find you ridiculous. Your husband is a warmonger. Your daughter is marrying a fat man. I have not lived up to my potential. She smiles. “I always love coming here,” she says, and it is the right thing to say.
“Everyone always loves being at our home,” Lulu says. She sparkles, Lulu does; it’s not makeup and not beauty, it’s some sort of natural incandescence. She nods her head like the matter is settled. “Everyone loves being at our home. Don’t go away. Stay out here with me. Meet our friends. Your fiancé isn’t here but you can still show off that ring. Lauren, have you seen the ring? It was in his family.”
“I think you can see it from space,” Lauren says. She has seen the ring. Sarah sent her a picture, when it came back from being resized—a diamond like an almond.
Lulu laughs loudly. Once again, the right thing to say. “Do not go, stay, stay, drink more, but sit, stay, stay with me,” she commands. It has been forty minutes, surely, it has been forty years, it has been forever, and Lauren is still here. She takes Sarah’s hand. They are here together.
Chapter 3
Lauren’s apartment smells of something—fried oil, a suggestion of an herb—her neighbors have cooked. Sarah is paranoid about smells clinging to her. Once, years ago, dinner with friends, then a party at the home of some guys someone knew from law school, she’d struck up a conversation with a handsome-ish Brian or Ryan. After hellos and how-do-you-knows, Brian or Ryan said, “Thai food?” Not accusatory, but yes: They had gone out for Thai. Sarah had blushed. She had stopped talking. The most insidious thing about smells is how you can be immune to your own. She hopes this fried scent won’t stay with her, though this does remind her that she needs to drop off the dry cleaning.
Sarah strokes the sofa, a chocolate brown corduroy relic of the ’70s that showed up in the store collection one day. It had sat in the unused maid’s room of a Park Avenue apartment for forty-two years until the old lady died and her kids shipped everything to the store to be disposed of—raising some cash for AIDS patients in the bargain. Sarah had known Lauren would love it, in fact, she herself loved it, but Lauren was the one in the market for cheap furniture, had made Sarah promise to be on the lookout for her. Sarah paid for it, held it at the store, and eventually Lauren hired some guy with a van from the Internet to pick it up and deliver it. She can’t remember if Lauren ever paid her back for the sofa. Four hundred dollars. Lauren’s apartment is stylish in a way that is so unforced. Sarah admires that.