Big Summer(30)
Stuart Lowe wore a dark-gray suit with a subtle chalk stripe, a white shirt, and a blue and orange tie. His cuffs were monogrammed, his cuff links were gold, and his teeth were the same color as the teeth of every reality TV show contestant I’d ever seen, a shade I’d come to think of as Television White. He had one arm draped over Drue’s shoulder, and she was gazing up at him with a look of melting adoration that struck me as showy, a suspicion that was strengthened when she pulled out her phone, stretched out her arm, and snapped a selfie of the two of them.
Stuart pretend-wrestled the phone away from her and turned toward me, smiling.
“So Drue’s been telling me about your artwork.”
“Oh,” I said, surreptitiously wiping my sweaty hands on my skirt again. “That’s generous. It’s just crafts, really.”
“Daphne’s an influencer,” Drue said, her voice full of pride. She put her arm around me and gave me a squeeze.
Stuart introduced me to his sister, Arden, whom I also recognized from the show, where she’d briefly appeared during the hometown visit episode. Arden had her brother’s coloring, the same dark hair and dark eyes, but where he was matinee-idol handsome, she had a kind of rabbity look, with thin lips, big front teeth, a gummy smile, and a pointy chin. Clearly, Stuart had scooped up the best the Lowe gene pool had to offer, and Arden had yet to succumb to the injectables many New York women used to rearranged their faces.
“So how does being an influencer work?” Arden asked.
I couldn’t tell if she was truly interested, or if she was just being polite, but I answered anyhow. “Well, you start off with some kind of online platform, like a YouTube channel or a blog,” I began. Arden nodded along as I explained how I’d started my blog, how I’d found my sponsors, and how I’d started to make money, with companies sending me pieces of clothing, or sometimes just links to their websites so that I could pick something out, along with a code for my followers to use when they clicked through to make a purchase. “How much would you get from each sale?” Arden asked. “Not a lot,” I told her. “Especially not when you factor in the time it takes to style and photograph the clothes, and write about them, and promote them, and send the brand your analytics when the campaign is done.”
As I talked, the Lowe parents wandered over. Mrs. Lowe had brown shoulder-length hair and Arden’s thin-lipped smile; Mr. Lowe had Stuart’s compact build and a line of Frankenstein-y stitches circling his bald spot. “Hair transplant surgery,” he said cheerfully, patting the bristly new growth. “The doctor promised it would all be filled in by the big day.”
That, I decided, was my cue. “Excuse me,” I said, and headed off to take a stroll through the place where Drue and Stu would be building their life together. The apartment was lovely, full of custom millwork and gleaming floors, decorated in tasteful shades of beige and greige and cream, with gold and navy-blue accents. I saw granite and white marble countertops, textured wallpaper and glass-paned cupboards and the framed black-and-white photographs that Drue told me she and Stuart had started to collect. The centerpiece of the dining room was a modern lighting fixture with eight frosted-glass bulbs at the ends of undulating stainless-steel tubes. It looked like an electrified octopus, and I knew that it had cost more than five thousand dollars, because Drue had told me.
As for the guests themselves, I thought, sourly, that they looked like the results of a successful eugenics experiment, filled with members of what Darshi called the Lucky Sperm Club. The women were all slender; the men were all fit; everyone had perfect teeth and gleaming hair and beautiful, expensive clothes. A handful of the men, like Uncle Mel, looked their age, but most of the men and all of the women seemed to have hit the pause button at fifty and spent the next years with their faces getting tauter and rounder instead of sagging and wrinkled. I tugged at the hem of my dress as inferiority and shame settled over me like a familiar cloak. I forced myself to stand up straight as I edged toward the wall to people-watch.
I spotted Drue’s father holding court in the living room with a glass of some amber-colored liquor in his hand. He was still dark-haired and handsome, the picture of the successful executive in a suit that had probably been made to measure, but when he excused himself from the group of people he’d been talking to and made his way to the bar, the droop of his shoulders and the way he seemed to plod across the Brazilian mahogany floors suggested weary resignation instead of father-of-the-bride joy. He looked like a man at a business function that he wasn’t enjoying instead of a man celebrating his daughter’s big day. More than once I saw him glance at the heavy gold watch on his wrist as he waited for his drink, or rock back and forth, from his heels to his toes and back again, as if he couldn’t wait to make a break for the door. And I saw the way Drue’s eyes would follow him, even when she was in a conversation with someone else; the way she seemed to be waiting for him to notice her, praise her, congratulate her, even just acknowledge her.
Lily Cavanaugh was perched on a couch on the opposite side of the room, in a gleaming teal taffeta skirt with a black jersey boat-neck top that put the ridges of her collarbones on display. While Mr. Cavanaugh seemed impatient, she just looked bored, her gaze moving from bookcase to fireplace, from antique bar cart to abstract artwork with an expression that said I’ve seen all of this before. When she caught sight of me, her eyes stopped moving. She trilled my name—“Daphne!”—in her husky voice, crossing the room to take both of my hands in hers. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek twist; her lips were so plump and shiny that they looked like two tiny glossy sausages parked on the lower half of her face. She smelled the same way I remembered from high school, like heavy, musky perfume with undertones of cigarettes, and she had the same aristocratic voice, the same sharp jawline and imperious tilt to her head. Drue told me that in college, Lily Cavanaugh had ridden horses competitively, and Drue’s father, to her sorrow. “Should’ve stuck with horses,” Drue would say.