Mother May I(20)

The assignment sheet said, “Choose a wholly unfamiliar place in which you feel YOU don’t belong. Invent a self who does. Dress the part and go there. Interact. Feel it, live it, be it.”

Most people in the class made up a new character, but I chose to take Elizabeth and her Visa to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. I’d never even been there on a school field trip. Definitely a place where I did not belong. Not back then. I knew nothing about art history or techniques. I wasn’t even sure what kind of art I liked. I walked the halls, shivering, reminding myself that the Visa in my pocket had no limits. I could buy it all and burn it for firewood if I wanted.

That helped, but I still didn’t want to “interact.” It felt more like lying than theatre. The “audience” would not know that they were inside a performance. But the follow-up paper was a third of my grade. I straightened my shoulders and breezed down a hall, inhabiting Betsy’s confident walk, trying to psych myself up to talk to someone. Trey always claimed he’d fallen for me then and there, watching me saunter past him toward a huge abstract painting at the hallway’s end.

I used that same walk now, confident and unhurried.

One of the men called after me, “Are we going the right way?”

I smiled over my shoulder. “Sure are. Almost there!”

And we were. Another two turns and I saw the broad green courtyard in front of the Orchid Center. The piano was off to one side, the singer a glamorous forty-something with a jet bob and lipstick as red as her sequined dress.

I passed through the crowds, smiling and greeting people, matching up names with faces, saying the right words, always looking ahead to find Spencer. My husband’s coworkers and friends were outlined sharply against the soft light of the paper lanterns strung all across the wide space, as if they’d all been drawn into the scene by CGI. None of them felt real. No realer than I was anyway.

The drugged bourbon in its silver flask, the three extra capsules rattling softly in their bottle—only these things were real. And Spence.

As I circled, I saw the party more clearly than I ever had before. I’d come here at least ten times over the years, but I’d never realized that it had a structure to it. The most important clients and the senior partners were scattered across the courtyard in front of the Orchid Center, this one near the piano, that one by the walk, and the party swirled around them. The more important the person, the less they had to move. Everything they wanted—conversations, little bites of food, drinks, fawning attention—came to them. Lesser beings orbited, looking for an in.

Spence had been right there in the center last year. But of course he’d been married then. The other named partners—and all five were men—each had his wife beside him. Did Spence feel out of place without Charlotte? I felt my heart seize up, cramping in my chest. Surely he hadn’t skipped out early.

But no. If Spence had left or no-showed, the daughter would have told the mother.

I’d tried to put the daughter out of my mind. Once I’d thought of her, it was hard not to look for her, even though the mother had warned against it, and there were hundreds of people here. I knew less than half of them.

Would she stand out? I thought so, at least a little bit. If she could blend, they wouldn’t need me. She would talk like her mother. Her dress would be wrong. A quick scan of the lawn gave me at least three possibilities: A silent thirty-something standing nearly invisible by a shadowed bench. An older, anxious blonde absentmindedly wringing her hands by the closest bar. A thin woman in a cheap blue dress standing silent at the edge of Mr. and Mrs. Aster’s circle.

My gaze slid away as if these women had been coated in Teflon. The compulsion to please the mother was strong, and she’d told me not to look for her daughter. I looked instead for Spencer, but he wasn’t up here.

I took the stairs down to the succulent garden. A huge buffet had been set up under the pavilion. Here were lesser clients, associates, and paralegals, all loading up plates with shrimp and tenderloin. On the stairs three young administrative assistants in recycled bridesmaid’s dresses hovered, whispering. I made my way through the throng, greeting people but never stopping. I could not get caught up in conversation.

My urgency was rising as the minutes flew. It was hard to stay cool and confident, hard not to run and shove, calling for him. My breezy smile felt tight, almost painful to hold. I could feel that ruined woman in Decatur, feel all the things she held, coming for me.

I pushed on, longing for Trey. With him I would be able to breathe. Under stress he got calmer and more focused. It was part of what made him an excellent lawyer. It was the thing I’d found so immediately attractive when he came up to me that day in the High Museum.

I’d put on an expensive floral sundress I’d borrowed from the costume room. My hair was in a sleek chignon to make me look older, and my makeup was subtle. My sandals were the giveaway, although I didn’t know it at the time. They were my own, knockoffs with too many straps. They wouldn’t have fooled Trey’s sister for a second, but Trey wasn’t looking at my shoes.

I stared up thoughtfully at the huge painting of . . . I wasn’t sure. It was a white field with bright blobs of color scattered at random, some overlapping as they reached the left edge. I knew that a man had joined me, but I pretended I didn’t until he spoke.

“You really seem to like this one.”

I glanced over at him. He was tall and thickly built, wearing a beautifully tailored suit. No tie. His sandy hair was freshly cut and gleaming. He was what my mom would call “boyishly handsome,” even though he was at least a decade older than me. He stood in the hall like he belonged there. He stood like a man who believed he belonged anywhere.