Pineapple Street(19)
“Ooooh, that’s exciting. Anyone I know?”
“Nah, a guy I work with.”
“That’s tricky. Do people at the office know about it?”
“No way. We’re keeping it quiet.”
“That’s smart. I slept with my boss once and now it’s all anyone at work talks about.”
“Cord, your boss is Dad.”
Cord cackled and grabbed one of the big, gross calamari pieces with all the frilly legs and shoved it in his mouth. He really was the best brother, happy to give her valuable life advice and eat all the scary bits of squid.
* * *
—
Without Brady at work, Georgiana was actually incredibly productive. She cranked out new copy for the annual report, she sorted through photos, she ate lunch in record time, proofreading her own work at the table while her colleagues talked animatedly and unappetizingly about digging new latrines in Mali.
On the Sunday of Brady’s second week away, Georgiana was hungover (Lena’s boyfriend had hosted a single-malt tasting), but she dragged herself out of bed to meet her mother at their racket club, the Casino. They had an eleven o’clock court time and they would retreat to the apartment for lunch afterward. As they began to hit, Georgiana could feel the difference all her extra playing had made. Not only had she doubled her weekly tennis, but she’d started running a bit more often, wanting to keep herself fast on the court.
“Georgiana, you’ve lost weight,” her mother said approvingly. She was always the first to notice even the most infinitesimal of fluctuations in Georgiana’s figure. “Do you have a new beau?”
Georgiana was startled by her mother’s guess. They rarely spoke about her love life, and when they did her mother usually referred to men as Georgiana’s “friends” with barely a wink.
“Well, there is a guy I’ve been playing tennis with,” she admitted, her cheeks, already pink with exertion, growing ever pinker.
“That’s nice. Don’t forget to let him win sometimes, dear.”
Classic mom, Georgiana laughed to herself. Georgiana would never let anyone win on purpose, not even if they had a broken leg. When Cord was getting ready to hike Kilimanjaro he had received six inoculations in one arm and could barely swing his racket, and Georgiana still played her heart out and spanked him royally. He would have fallen over with shock if she’d done anything less. Competition was their family love language.
At noon they walked back to Orange Street, where Georgiana’s father was at his desk with a stack of newspapers and Cord and Sasha were unpacking a bag of bagels and smoked salmon on the kitchen table.
“Oh my God, bagels from Russ and Daughters!” Georgiana exclaimed, making a dive for the bag to grab a poppyseed.
“Put it on a plate, dear, you’ll enjoy it more,” her mother admonished as Cord laughed. Sasha was carefully arranging silverware and napkins on the table as though Kate Middleton or the cast of Queer Eye were coming by shortly to judge her. Georgiana just wished Sasha wasn’t there. It was exhausting being around someone who tried so hard all the time.
As they ate, Sasha broached her favorite topic: what of their family memories she might throw in the garbage. “Georgiana, I know you really don’t have a lot of storage in your apartment, but I was wondering if you might want to take your tennis trophies? And there is that wooden animal I think maybe you made? The tail goes up and down? Do you want that?” she asked in a hopeful voice, carefully spreading the thinnest layer of cream cheese on a plain bagel.
The “animal” was a beaver and a great source of private shame for Georgiana. When she was in the sixth grade they had taken a woodworking class at school and been instructed to choose different projects. One girl made a small game where a seesaw launched a ball on a string through a hoop. Another made the base for a lamp that would flick on and off using a system of pulleys. Georgiana found instructions for making a ten-inch beaver that rolled on four uneven wheels, causing its wide, flat tail to thump up and down. She spent weeks on it, sanding the wheels and covering it with varnish, making a pretty crosshatch pattern on the tail. It wasn’t until they shared their final projects that someone realized what she had done.
“You made a beaver, Georgiana? You know what that means, right? You literally made a beaver!” The laughter was endless. She was a nice girl—Georgiana had never spoken about her vagina, never mind learned slang for it. Somehow everyone else seemed to get the joke, though, and it was the highlight of the year for most of the class, cementing Georgiana’s reputation as utterly asexual. Every time she looked at the beaver she felt a pang of humiliation. She knew she shouldn’t care anymore, but over time it had come to symbolize her romantic failures and deep lack of maturity.
“I’ll come take a look, but I really don’t have much space,” Georgiana hedged. She wasn’t sure why, but she couldn’t bear to imagine Sasha throwing the stupid beaver away. She had spent weeks making it and putting it in the garbage just felt wrong. And she was secretly proud of the tennis trophies even if they were from high school and college.
After they finished lunch, after Georgiana went and kissed her father hello and goodbye, after she agreed to go with her mother to a philanthropy-themed luncheon the following week at the University Club, she followed Cord and Sasha back to their house. Sasha gave her an empty Fresh Direct bag for her to pack her things, and she made her way up to her childhood bedroom. She admired the trophies lining the shelves, but then realized there was actually a lot more stuff still there. She had books and photo albums, a crystal Tiffany dish that once held her earrings, a tin of dried rose petals she had brought home from her grandmother’s funeral, a drawer full of old glue sticks and gummy bottles of nail polish. She sorted through it, leaving the junk and piling the things she felt nervous about Sasha throwing away into the bag. Someone had swapped Georgiana’s favorite marigold coverlet for a plain white quilt, making the room look like a sterile hotel. She found the marigold one folded in the bottom drawer of the dresser and, just to make a point, spread it back on the bed where it belonged. When she finished, she realized the beaver was still sitting on her desk. She didn’t actually want it in her apartment. She poked her head out her door and looked around. Cord and Sasha were in the kitchen making coffee, so she buried the thing in the back of her closet.