This Time Tomorrow(59)

Mary-Catherine-Elizabeth had excellent hamstrings and could high-step over anything. She had crossed the room in a minute flat, and picked up a tiny lobster roll on the way. Alice watched as Mary-Catherine-Elizabeth folded the whole thing into her mouth, stretching her lips wide enough that her fingers wouldn’t muss her lipstick.

“Excuse me,” Alice said when Mary-Catherine-Elizabeth was in close range. She was still chewing and stuck a finger in the air, telling Alice to wait, but Alice was already ducking around the skinny side of the couch, and snaked her way down the line of legs in front of the couch, the feathers of her skirt tickling everyone’s ankles.

There was a short line for the bathroom. Alice smiled at all the women who were smiling at her, which was everyone. The men stood in a solid clump in the foyer—dressed uniformly in button-down shirts, half of them tucked and half of them not. The untucked dads were the wild ones, who didn’t work in finance and were instead lawyers, or came from families with enough generational wealth that they didn’t need to work at all, a group that further divided into a pool of documentarians who made movies about human trafficking and a pool of greedy, power-hungry drug addicts who just wanted to make their daddies proud. Alice got a few nods and one wave. They didn’t seem to want to talk to her any more than she wanted to talk to them. Tommy was in a small group of men standing by the bar, his hand clamped on another man’s shoulder. Was that how this worked, couples just looked at each other from across the room, and then maybe had sex later, knowing that they’d each probably had a moment’s excitement talking to other people? Alice looked at her phone, willing Sam to call her back. Was Sam coming? She felt too embarrassed to ask Tommy.

Alice bumped into one of the cater waiters, nearly sending a whole tray of tiny quiches to the rug. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Emily.”

Emily straightened up, blushing. “No, I’m so sorry, I absolutely just walked into you.”

“No, I walked into you! What are you doing here?” Alice and Emily flattened themselves against the wall of the hallway to let other waiters get by.

“I’m surprised you remember my name, um, wow, I don’t know, you know, the catering is just a side-hustle kind of thing. I’m still at Belvedere.” Emily’s cheeks were magenta.

“Totally,” Alice said. “I didn’t mean to make it weird. I’m just happy to see you! How’s Melinda?”

Emily drew her chin back. “Melinda? Fine, I assume? She’s been retired for, like, two years, I think? You interviewed with Patricia when you came in with Dorothy, I remember.”

“Of course,” Alice said. “Must have slipped my mind. And how are you? How’s Ray?” Alice felt high—it was obvious that in this life, in this timeline, in this reality, she shouldn’t know anything about Emily’s private life. She would barely know Emily at all! But Alice was desperate for a real conversation.

It wasn’t possible for Emily’s face to contort or purple any more, or she would have burst into flames. “I’m fine. Ray’s fine? Did we talk about Ray for some reason? Anyway, I need to get these quiches to all your guests.” Emily skidded her back along the wall to get around Alice, who had to move out of the way of the large silver tray. The Talking Heads were playing on the invisible speakers—This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife. The bathroom door opened, finally, and Sam stepped out.

Alice gasped, so relieved. She threw her arms around Sam’s neck and pulled her close for a hug before being stopped by the beach-ball-sized bump in between them. Alice looked down at Sam’s belly.

“Oh, wow, sorry,” she said.

Sam rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be sorry,” she said. “It was a planned pregnancy.”

Alice grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled her down the hall into her bedroom, leaving stray flamingo feathers in their wake.





41



Sam sat down on the bed without waiting to be asked and kicked off her shoes.

“My feet are so swollen, it’s like trying to walk on two meatballs.” Sam hoisted one of her feet on top of the opposite knee and began to rub.

“How many children do you have?” Alice asked. “Your husband is Josh, right? Who you met in college? At Harvard?”

“Jesus, Alice.” Sam let her heavy foot fall back to the floor. “Are you having a stroke?”

“No, I’m fine—” Alice stopped. “I’m not fine. I mean, I might be fine, eventually, but right now I seem to be in a slightly . . . weird place?” She paced back and forth at the foot of her bed, the feathers waving. Alice stopped in front of the window and looked out at the park. Some of the trees were already yellow and orange. It had been almost a whole day. Time was going to keep going, churning away. Alice had to make a decision. “Do you remember my sixteenth birthday?”

Alice watched in the window’s reflection as Sam swiveled her body toward her. Sam’s belly was the shape of a perfectly taut basketball. Like a three-dimensional clock. This time, Alice knew what it felt like, to have someone swimming around inside your body. She felt a little ghost flicker near her belly button, a reminder.

“I do,” Sam said. “Do you?” Samantha Rothman-Wood, she wasn’t going to give anything up, Alice thought, her gratitude boundless. There was no friend like a teenage girl, even if that teenage girl grew up. She turned around and walked back to the bed, where she and her feathers perched next to Sam. “I have two children, and this is my third. I am married to Josh, and we met at Harvard. What about you, Alice? Where’d you come from? Where’d you go?” Her voice was gentle—Sam was a good mom. She cooked, she played, she let the kids watch television, she loved their dad, she went to therapy. If Alice could have chosen a mother, she would have chosen Sam.