Rich and Pretty(60)
Lauren climbs the steps, balancing the plate carefully. There’s a general air of hubbub in the house. On the stairs, she passes the cleaning lady and her minions—giving the powder room the once-over, aligning picture frames, straightening the rugs, which were beaten and then vacuumed only hours before. On the landing, where the staircase makes its turn, a place that’s no particular place, Lulu has set a rattan plant stand, topped with two battered coffee-table volumes (Berthe Morisot, Kenneth Noland), on top of those, a clay bowl, bought in India, within that, a beaded necklace, from Haiti, the beads made of old paper, wound around itself in a complicated process by the women at a crafts cooperative supported by a nonprofit she and Huck have long given money to. In this tiny space, so much life, and that doesn’t include the pictures on the wall, of Sarah, mostly, though you’ll spot Huck arm in arm with Reagan, and a picture of Lulu with Mimi Fari?a and Bob Dylan. The disordered detritus of their very well ordered lives. As a girl, Lauren found all this stuff enchanting; part of her still does. Her parents had stuff, but not nearly so much, not nearly so interesting: a couple of brass elephants you might be able to persuade someone were souvenirs from India but which were almost certainly found at T.J. Maxx, stacks of thick military thrillers, piled here and there throughout the house, family photographs, those awkward tableaux—fresh haircuts and best sweaters, the photo studio’s logo embossed tastefully in one corner.
She wonders if it were her wedding, at her mother’s house, would her mother have paid for a cleaning lady—visions of sensible Bella Brooks, running the rented shampooer over the mauve nap of the living room, warning them all to stay out of there until it dried. It feels cruel to think of this now. Were Bella a different sort of person, she might have forged a friendship with Lulu (as Amina’s mother had, years ago, an early playdate). She might have been invited herself, today, though who knows what she would have worn, who knows what she would have made of the wedding registry.
Lauren suddenly feels ill. She’s noticed this more lately: the delayed onset hangover. Her stomach tightens, churns: Why Mexican? What had she been thinking? She nudges the door all the way open with her shoulder, goes back into the room, sets the plate on the desk, which had been meant as a place where Sarah could do her homework, though it was almost never used as such.
“Who’s hungry?”
“Ugh,” Sarah says.
“You’re welcome,” she says.
“Trust me, eat,” Danielle says. “You will be glad you did.”
Sarah picks up the egg and takes a tentative bite. Lauren sits back down on the bed. Still not hungry, she does, though, have a very specific craving and is glad she’s come prepared. She picks her tote bag up from its slump on the floor. “I bought these. Don’t shame me.” She reaches in the bag, produces a pack of cigarettes.
“Camels,” Sarah says.
“Ultra Lights,” Lauren says. “They’re practically healthy. A drag won’t kill you.”
Danielle laughs. “I’m looking the other way, okay?”
“Finish your breakfast,” Lauren says. “We’ll sneak away for ten minutes and then you can brush your teeth and Danielle can work her magic.”
At some point when they were in the tenth grade, Lulu had become concerned with property values. Huck was on the short list to lead the minority party’s government in exile, a foundation situated in a handsome Washington, D.C., town house. Lulu made lists: National Cathedral School versus Madeira, where she discovered Brooke Astor herself had been a student, Bethesda versus Georgetown, selling the house versus renting the house. The agent had been dismayed to see that the occupants hadn’t fully taken advantage of one of the house’s frontiers: the roof. Lulu was sensible about these things, and the roof deck was built, completed not long after Huck had withdrawn his name from contention for the directorship of the foundation. Anyway, President Gore never came to pass, so it would have been an unexciting time to be at that foundation. In politics, in Huck’s politics, it’s better to be an enemy than a friend. They forgot all about the roof deck.
At least, Huck and Lulu did. By tenth grade, new privileges had accrued: Huck and Lulu decamping to Connecticut Friday morning, allowing Sarah to join them by train, Saturday morning, or skip the thing altogether. Lauren remembers Lulu, looking askance even behind her dark glasses, once, poolside at the Connecticut house, where the distinguished guest couldn’t take his eyes off the dollops of Lauren’s breasts, new enough then that she marveled at it; her nipples grew firmer just from the good professor’s gaze landing on them. The country was for relaxation, and it had to have been more relaxing without Sarah and Lauren in tow.
Lauren hasn’t been up to the roof deck in years. The last time: another party, a celebration of their graduation from college, or Sarah’s graduation, anyway. Lauren had come by, a formality. At that point, their relationship had entered some never discussed cooling-off period. Anyway, they were going to be roommates in the city; they were going to live together, which changed altogether Lauren’s relationship to the house on East Thirty-Sixth Street. Beautiful as it was, much as she loved it, that house was about Sunday dinners and little kid sleepovers and that first time sucking Ryan Harmon’s dick in the upstairs bathroom while Sarah and Amy and Tyler and Jake and Sasha and Rachel sat one floor above, under the Manhattan sky, smoking Camels and dropping the butts into empty Rolling Rock bottles where they died with a quick little hiss. That was childhood, and it was over.