Life and Other Inconveniences(19)

The evidence was there . . . gin, vermouth, lemons. We were having martinis. And I was making them, but though I’d done this hundreds, thousands of times before, I was suddenly . . . blank.

The ice was starting to hurt my hand. Why was I holding an ice cube? And the lemons . . . should I squeeze them? Make lemonade? Should I start cutting them up? Those didn’t sound like the right things to do, but I wasn’t sure what was.

“Allow me,” said a voice, and I startled. Miller, that nice Miller. He took the ice cube from my hand, smacked it with the bar spoon (bar spoon, yes, that was it!) and added the chunks to the pitcher. Repeated the action a few times, then poured some vermouth into the . . . the . . . the little oddly shaped cup. Jug? Trigger? No, jigger. Jigger.

“Four-to-one ratio, if I remember?” he asked.

“That sounds about right,” I answered, though I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. My heart was hammering, and as I smoothed back my hair, I noticed my hand was shaking. “I go by instinct.” My voice, at least, sounded the same.

He smiled a little, and I remembered that he was sad, though I couldn’t remember why. “I’m sure you do,” he said, pouring the gin into the pitcher. Was that how to do it? I couldn’t remember anything. Anything! The skin on my throat began to burn with humiliation.

“Lovely to see a man who knows how to make a good martini,” I said, faking some chatter. “Manners being what they are today. Make sure you teach your child the art of a perfect cocktail.” Did he have a child? Dear God! What if he didn’t? Why couldn’t I remember?

“Well, she’s not quite three, but I’ll add it to the curriculum.”

“One can never start too soon.” My voice shook a little.

He smiled again, stirring the mixture.

Then, suddenly, my hand was reaching for the lemon and the knife, and I sliced off a thick section of peel—a twist, that was it, a generous length, because I liked my martinis with a good spritz of lemon oil.

My brain was back in full control. It was January 10, a Friday, and this was what Donelle and I always did. Cocktails with the neighbors and Miller. In the summertime, the Talwars would be here each weekend, and sometimes I invited the Batemans, but they preferred to winter in their apartment on Park and Eighty-Third. Yes, it was 970 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10028.

If I could recall that address, what had just happened?

Miller poured the drinks from the pitcher, and with a little flourish to cover for my lapse, I twisted the peel over the first glass, rimmed the glass and dropped the lemon peel in, repeating the gesture for each drink.

“Thank you, dear boy,” I said.

“Now I know your secret to the perfect martini.” He took two glasses over to the Smiths. He said the right words, but he was still sad, and I couldn’t remember why.

As the Smiths told us about their lovely children—two at boarding school, two still home, all of them well-spoken and not overly loud—it eventually slid into my head that Miller’s wife had died. Perhaps I’d known that all along. I mean, really. How does one forget such a detail? Of course I hadn’t forgotten.

Lapses happened, of course. Here and there, especially when I was thinking about Sheppard. Entire hours could slide past me like rain down a window when I was thinking of my son. Occasionally, I forgot a name, which was completely normal, given that I’d met thousands of people—Genevieve London employees, people in the fashion industry, townspeople, board members, school friends and all the rest.

But I’d never forgotten quite like that before.

“Gen, could you get me another?” Donelle said, pushing her glass at me.

“Remember the days when you worked for me?” I asked fondly.

“Not really,” she said, and we all laughed, especially Donelle. After all, she was my best friend. Possibly my only true friend, ironically. I’d wanted to fire her a thousand times those first few years—all her questions, her lack of boundaries, the way she took to Clark, magnifying my own neglect.

But Clark needed someone who cared, and at some point over the years, I stopped resisting Donelle’s friendship. If my mother could have seen it—her daughter, having drinks with the help, especially Donelle’s type (white trash, to put it indelicately, a high school dropout with poor grammar)—she would’ve heartily disapproved.

But I’d stopped caring. Donelle hadn’t been the best housekeeper, but she’d been here, and she never quit—well, except that one time—and she never asked for more than the generous compensation package I still gave her, even though we now had a cleaning service and such. Donelle wasn’t a spring chicken anymore, after all. She still lived in the servants’ wing with Helga, our cook, and occasionally did something around the house when she wasn’t busy reading or watching her lurid television shows.

Clark had given her a hideous pink-and-gold crocheted blanket for Christmas. It draped over one’s legs and looked like a mermaid’s tail, and she adored it, exclaiming over the too-bright color, hugging him and kissing him soundly on the cheek.

Clark had given me a box of Crane’s notecards embossed with a tiny pineapple, which made me roll my eyes. After all, my company made stationery. I’d had my own personalized stationery with my trademark lily of the valley sprig against a pale green background for decades. One would think one’s son would know these things, but every year since he’d been a sophomore at Dartmouth, Clark had given me the same gift, indicating a total lack of thought.