He tries a new tactic. “Have you thought about expanding? Know some of those old mill buildings up in Pawtucket? I can’t promise free, but I could definitely talk with—”
“Let’s be straight, why don’t we.” Fiorelli has come alive. His jowls light up red, his eyes narrow. He places a palm on Alex’s chest. Alex flicks it off. Fiorelli puts it back. “You screwed my wife,” he says.
Alex’s lungs feel like they’re departing his body. Why did he imagine the guy’s anger was about something else? But who told her husband that sort of thing? “I don’t—”
“And if you ask her, she’ll tell you it wasn’t what she wanted.”
One of the girls stops with a tray, imploring, and Alex has the urge to hit her. They are not gorgeous, not up close. This one is pancaked. She had acne as a kid. Alex shakes his head and she is gone. He doesn’t remember Fiorelli’s wife not wanting it. Blond, petite, good nails. Diane. Wasn’t it what she wanted? She wasn’t half as pretty as Vee, wasn’t even nice. But Vee wasn’t around yet. They met at a hotel, he thinks. Doesn’t that mean she wanted it?
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Hey.” Fiorelli’s in his face now, a finger tapping Alex’s nose. “Enough with the bullshit. I never got involved in politics before. My old man didn’t, his old man didn’t. Not our place. Now I’m involved. People wonder what I’m after, what’s my angle. My angle is: I don’t like you.”
* * *
Upstairs, more women have started to dance. One sits on the knee of the saxophonist. Vee lounges on the sofa. More food has been brought up, at her request, and her stomach is happy now, full of cocktail shrimp and cheese puffs. Out one corner of her eye she watches Suitcase Wife’s shoes, but Vee refuses to look up. She has no idea what the woman is so hung up about. Not a gentleman. What did Alex do, stick his fingers up her ass? Choke her a little as she sucked him off? Vee doubts it’s anything he hasn’t done to her. If she isn’t always willing, she usually gets into it. More worrisome is what the whole mess might mean for Alex.
Vee smokes a cigarette, drinks another gin and tonic, and talks about nothing with Congressman Flint’s wife. Only when Alex’s chief of staff kneels on the floor next to her and leans in close does she realize a man has entered the room.
“Mrs. Kent?” His voice is low.
Vee finds herself pinching his cheek. “Yes, Hump?” At thirty, he is her senior, but so cute, she thinks suddenly. A towhead. Freckles. So cute! Hump. Short for Humphrey Sumner III.
“Mrs. Kent, the senator has requested your presence.”
Vee laughs. “So formal!”
“That’s what he told me to say.”
“He wants all of us, I presuuuume?” Her accent is vaguely British. She giggles. “All the madames?”
“Only you, Mrs. Kent.”
She hands him her cigarette. “Well!” she says, and heaves herself up off the couch. She rocks for a moment, lightheaded, then sees Suitcase Wife staring at her and pulls herself straight. “It does make one curious,” she hears herself say. And then, “Well,” and again, “Well,” as her grandmother used to say. Well well well, her grandmother said, as she moved around the house making the beds, or preparing supper, or—as she got older—looking for something she was ashamed of having lost. Well, like a verbal banister. Vee’s mother achieved the same effect by humming: hummm as she bent for carrots from the refrigerator, hummm as she rose, as if to accompany herself through her tasks.
Vee passes her drink to Mrs. Flint. “Well.” She meets Suitcase Wife’s eye, then, emboldened, crosses the room with a swagger. “Here I go!” she calls. “Wish me luck, ladies! If I’m not returned within an hour, promise you’ll come to my rescue!”
BROOKLYN
LILY
A Different Kind of Party
Atop a kitchen island gleams the party’s centerpiece: a massive turquoise sewing machine from the 1960s. The hostess, Kyla, repeats the vintage as each guest arrives, explaining that the old machines are superior, if you treat them right. This one was her grandmother’s, she adds, and all the women ooh and ahh at this, Lily included, though the machine fills her with fear. She imagined this would be a needles-and-thimbles kind of sewing party. She thought she might cut out some pieces of cloth, maybe learn to sew the edges to prevent fraying, then wrap them toga-style around the girls and call it a day. But Kyla has laid out patterns, which as far as Lily can tell—who knew sewing patterns were in code?—appear to be for dresses that entail sleeves, and necklines, and in one case a pocket. Lily wants to whisper: Since when did Esther have a pocket on her dress? But she doesn’t know any of the other women well enough to trust they’ll take to her snarkiness, and she’s realizing, as they begin to pepper her with questions, that they know each other very well. It’s palpable, the togetherness of women who’ve stood around like this on countless other occasions, in other kitchens. They are a group. Lily, too, has a group, but she and her friends have never invited a stranger into their midst, their wine isn’t as good, the atmosphere they create isn’t as cheerful, and they don’t have dedicated playrooms like Kyla. On the other hand, Lily’s group includes women of various shapes, colors, and hair textures. And they are skilled at using all these facts, from the mediocre sauvignon blancs that ostensibly allow them to spend money on more important things to the squished apartments to the au naturel hair, to make them feel superior—more authentic, somehow? more real?—to women like these. These women, a couple of whom appear no older than thirty-three, which would make them thirteen years younger than Lily, ask Lily with near jubilance how long she’s been in the neighborhood, and how old her kids are, and whether she works, and what her husband does, and Lily, overwhelmed and self-conscious, answering as best she can, wonders at how easy it would be, if you mixed up these women and Lily’s women and stood them in a line, to tell which ones belong to which group. It’s a depressing thought, because it suggests that they are all basically in permanent uniform and that their superficial differences—these women’s blown-dry hair and diamond rings, etc., as opposed to Lily and her friends with their chunky bracelets and scuffed boot-clogs like something out of Heidi—actually portend deeper ones, like what they do with their pubic hair, and deeper ones still, like what they think and feel. One of the women, upon hearing that Lily used to teach at the city colleges, says, “That’s so cute!” and Lily, feeling mean and small, excuses herself to go check on the children, half hoping one of them will be sick so that she’ll have to take them home, but she finds them cheerfully rolling and cutting homemade Play-Doh with the other children at a low, large table probably made in Finland. Ro looks up first, then June, both girls with almost absurdly happy expressions on their faces, and Lily feels the kind of deep, unadulterated love for them that she experiences when they are asleep, or when she cups the fat arch of June’s foot in her palm, or when Ro lets her hold her as they read. This feeling, in this moment, feels as if it could be felt eternally, if only she lived in this apartment and had this table and this particular bespoke Play-Doh. Lily smiles and waves until, in unison, like happy Finnish cows, her daughters turn back to their work.