The Middlesteins: A Novel(65)

We waved our arms at the waiter. We begged for another round immediately. The room recovered, and we were treated to Emily and Josh in the bathtub, Emily and Josh on their first day of school, Emily as a ballerina, Josh in a tennis uniform, thirteen years of Halloween costumes, thirteen years of goofy faces, braces, ice-cream sundaes, summer vacations, chicken pox, school plays, the chubby period, the scrawny period, short hair and long, growing, growing, grown; thirteen years and still so many more to go. Oy, those punims. When the montage was complete, we burst into applause, poked at the corners of our eyes with the ends of our napkins. They weren’t our grandchildren, but they might as well have been.

There was an intermission between the video and the candle-lighting ceremony, and we took the opportunity to drink. We skipped the ice, we drank straight from the bottle. We checked our watches, and thought about the errands we needed to run the next day, the walk we would take in the sunshine, the phone calls we would make to our children, some of whom lived in other states, with grandchildren we missed terribly. We had only been there for two hours, but it was already starting to feel late.

In our dreamlike state, we were unprepared for Carly’s arrival at our table, famous Carly, who now worked in the White House and was friendly with Michelle Obama. (There was not a person in this room who was unaware of their relationship, thanks to a front-page picture in the Tribune months before the election, the two of them at a luncheon, tipping their glasses toward each other, a knowing grin shared between them; we had all stared at it on a Sunday morning, wondering what Carly had done so right and we had done so wrong.) Her skin was glowing and tight (too tight? tighter than our faces anyway), her blowout was impeccable, golden, tidy, and there was no question that her jewelry trumped all other jewels we had seen that night. We could barely look at her. We couldn’t ignore her. She hovered over us and paused, waiting for a seat to be offered, a lifetime of offered seats trailing behind her.

“Ladies,” she said. “And gentlemen.”

Carly.

“We need to talk.”

Do we?

“Are we not concerned about Edie? You see her all the time. Can you please fill me in on what is going on here.”

With what?

“With her health! With her weight! You’re her closest friends. How did she get to this point? And more important, what are we going to do about it?”

How did we tell Carly the truth? That watching Edie eat terrified us, so we had stopped dining with her. That her temper and will were impossible to fight. And that we had our own battles, cancer among us, one pacemaker, not to mention the usual trivialities: high cholesterol, high blood pressure, too-low blood pressure, iron deficiencies, calcium deficiencies, slipped disks, bad knees, gallstones, hormone-replacement therapy, on and on. There was nothing we could do for Edie that we did not already need to do for ourselves.

Talk to that husband of hers, we started to say, and then we stopped ourselves. Talk to Rachelle, we said. Talk to Benny. We’re not in charge of Edie.

We finished our wine. Who did Carly think she was anyway? We raised our eyes to her one last time, her glittering anger.

But, we said. It is terrible, isn’t it?

The candles were lit, various family members and friends traipsing up to the front of the room, but by then we had stopped paying attention. Dessert was served: cream puffs and éclairs on a tray. A chocolate fountain appeared in the distance. We were certain we couldn’t take another bite of anything, but it would be rude not to sample the wares of the hardworking Hilton pastry chef. And those chocolate fountains didn’t come cheap either. We ate and ate, and we looked at no one but ourselves until we were done.

Rachelle, who was lovely in a red silk dress with a sweetheart neckline and diamonds everywhere, clinging to her wrist, dangling from her neck, two big, bright studs planted firmly in her ears—Nice try, we thought, but have you seen Carly?—made her way to our table with a bright smile. No one had anything bad to say about Rachelle; she was just the kind of girl we would want our own son to marry, chatty, attractive, so slender, and put together. Mazel tov, we said. Mazel, mazel.

“It has been a wonderful day,” she said. “Didn’t the kids do a great job?”

They were perfection. But how are you?

She collapsed in an instant, leaning in close to us. “It’s been a little bit hectic, as I’m sure you all understand. Some last-minute table changes. I was up until midnight redoing the place cards.”

Things change before you know it. Don’t blink twice.