The Party by Robyn Harding
For Margaret Lilleyman
(1936–2012)
The most voracious reader I have known and the perfect mother-in-law for a writer.
kim
THAT NIGHT
Kim should have heard it, would have heard it if she hadn’t installed earplugs and taken half an Ambien. The girls were two floors below, but she’d anticipated giggling, music, a few late-night trips to raid the fridge. . . . To ensure a sound sleep, she’d nibbled a bit of the sedative, despite having had two glasses of white wine after dinner. She’d done it plenty of times without incident. She’d always been a light sleeper, and, lately, adequate rest had become imperative for Kim. There were too many hormones wreaking havoc with her humor. And there was far too much tension in her marriage to handle without a good night’s sleep.
“Mom! Dad!” Kim dragged herself up from under the warm, wet blanket of sedation. It was Hannah’s voice, tearful, close. . . . Kim opened heavy lids and saw her daughter at the end of the bed. Tall, pretty Hannah wearing a nightie that looked like a football jersey, the number 28 across her chest. It was Hannah’s birthday today—sweet sixteen—she was having a slumber party. So why was she here, in the small hours of the morning? Why was she crying? As Kim struggled for lucidity, she realized something was terribly wrong. Tears streamed down Hannah’s face and there was something on her hands . . . something dark and wet, glistening in the faint glow of the LED clock radio . . .
Blood.
kim
THAT DAY
“Should we wake the princess?” The words hovered in the chill morning air, unanswered. Kim leaned her elbows on the custom butcher-block breakfast bar, took a sip of black coffee, and waited. When he finally responded, Jeff’s eyes never left his laptop screen.
“It’s her birthday. Let her sleep. . . .”
Kim glanced at the digital clock on the Miele gas range: 8:37 A.M., an unreasonable hour to ask a girl to rise on any Saturday, let alone her sixteenth birthday. Sixteen . . . God, where had the time gone? Kim allowed herself a brief moment of nostalgia, her mind slipping back to that dreary March day when Hannah was born. It seemed like yesterday and an eternity at the same time. That pink, squalling creature she had birthed with such effort was now tall, beautiful, undeniably womanly. . . . Kim was different now, too. Her physical transformation was less dramatic (at forty-six, she prided herself on being able to pass for forty, maybe even thirty-nine—thanks to a strict regimen of Pilates, cold-pressed juices, and the judicious use of fillers), but she was not the same naive, hopeful woman she’d been that day. She had grown up, as surely as Hannah had.
Jeff’s relentless tap-tap-tapping drew her out of her reverie: Silicon Valley keyboard torture. “Still working on that presentation?” A tinge of annoyance had crept into her tone, but it wasn’t like Jeff noticed. He didn’t seem to notice anything about his wife lately. Kim could have been doing a naked handstand on the back of a unicorn and Jeff would have kept pecking away at his keyboard like a chicken on Ritalin.
“Yep.” He remained focused on his work, as if he was locked in his Palo Alto office on a Tuesday, not drinking coffee in his open-plan kitchen with his spouse on a Saturday morning. Jeff seemed to have forgotten that this was a day traditionally designated for leisure pursuits and family bonding. Not that Kim had any real desire to bond with her husband of eighteen years. After the incident last year, she found civility challenging, let alone quality time. But she couldn’t help but feel neglected. And she envied her husband’s single-minded obsession with providing financial software solutions to corporations, his unblinking belief that his job as VP of global strategy at Fin-Tech Solutions really meant something. In Jeff’s mind, the infrastructure of the entire US economy would come crashing down without his constant attention.
“I’m going to do some work, too,” she said, rising from the barstool.
The typing paused as Jeff headed for the coffeepot. “More coffee?”
“I’m fine. Call me when Aidan gets up. I’ll make him some eggs.”
“If he gets up. That kid could sleep for days.”
“He’s thirteen. He’s growing.”
Half a lukewarm cup of coffee in hand, Kim padded in slippered feet past the sunken living room, its expanse of windows affording spectacular views of the San Francisco Bay. Her office was at the back of the designer home, tucked between the laundry room and the wine cellar, a tidy, compact space allocated for her freelance copywriting job. “It’s just to keep my foot in the door,” she’d explained when Jeff told her his salary negated the need for her to work. “I might want to go back when the kids are older.” At sixteen and thirteen, the kids officially qualified as older, and still, Kim made no move to return to her life in advertising. It was a young person’s career, custom-designed for twentysomethings who had the freedom to work late, then go for after-work drinks that usually led to dark nightclubs and ultimately, some uninhibited but regrettable sex with a colleague. It was fun while it lasted, but those days were over for Kim. She’d replaced them with a hardworking husband; two tall, academically successful children; and a three-thousand-square-foot, mid-century modern remodeled home on Potrero Hill (the coveted North Slope, with panoramic views that raised property values by about a million bucks). She’d traded that stressful, stimulating, slightly debauched life for one of staid, domestic perfection. Most days, she had no regrets.
She sat in her ergonomic rolling chair and booted up the computer. As the screen magically illuminated, her stomach twisted with a mixture of guilt and excitement. It was phenomenal, this box of technology that allowed her to sit less than twenty feet from her husband, in her robe and slippers, her hair unkempt and face free of makeup, and reach out to Tony on the other side of town. She opened Messenger and typed.
U working?
The juvenile shorthand made her feel young, giddy, like an eighth grader sending a note to a boy she was crushing on.
Pretending. U?
Her heart fluttered at his blatant admission.
Finishing some stuff.
It was a lie. Her “foot in the door” had dwindled to an ongoing contract with San Francisco’s third largest outdoor clothing retailer, to provide copy for their biweekly flyer. The two-line descriptions of waterproof jackets and hiking boots consumed roughly seven hours a week, for which she was able to bill fifteen. But she wasn’t ready to admit that the sole reason she was in her office on a Saturday morning was to flirt with her designer, Tony. His message popped up on the screen.
What r u doing today?
Hannah’s b-day. Sweet 16