Pineapple Street(2)
“Sasha,” her mother-in-law trilled, opening the closet to hang her Chanel bouclé jacket. “We can’t wait to hear all about your honeymoon.” She carried the bags into the kitchen and proceeded to pull out a bottle of white Burgundy, two flower arrangements in low vases, a tablecloth with fleurs-de-lis on it, and three scalloped Williams Sonoma baking dishes with lids. She lined them up on the counter and, like a woman at home in her kitchen of forty years, opened up the cabinet to take down a glass for her wine.
“I’ve made mushroom tarts,” Sasha tried, suddenly feeling like the lady at the Costco free sample table, trying to sell warm cubes of processed cheese.
“Oh, I saw in your email, darling. I gathered that meant it was a French-themed dinner. You just let me know when you’re ten minutes away and I’ll pop my coq au vin in the oven. I also have endives Proven?al, and I brought plenty, so we might not need your salad. The candlesticks are in the drawer there, now let’s go take a look at your tabletop arrangement and I’ll see what else we need.”
Out of solidarity, Cord ate the tart and the salad, but when Sasha caught him looking longingly at the endives, she gave him a thin smile that said, “You can eat the damned vegetables, but you might have to sleep on the couch.”
* * *
—
The agreement was new for all of them, and Sasha understood it was going to take some getting used to. Cord’s parents, Chip and Tilda, had been complaining for years that their house was too big for the two of them, that it was too far from their garage, that they were tired of doing their own shoveling and hauling their own recycling out to the curb. They were investors in an apartment building two blocks away—the former Brooklyn Heights movie theater that was now five luxury condos—and they had decided to take the maisonette for themselves, moving in over the course of one week, using only their old Lexus and their housekeeper’s husband, whom they paid three hundred bucks. That seemed like a quick divestment from a house they’d inhabited for four decades, but aside from their clothing, Sasha couldn’t really figure out what they had brought to the new place. They had even left their four-poster, king-size bed in their bedroom, and Sasha felt more than a little weird sleeping there.
The Stocktons decided to let Sasha and Cord move into their vacant house and live there as long as they would like. Then, when they sold the place one day, they would split the money between Cord and his two sisters. There were some other pieces of the agreement designed to evade unnecessary inheritance taxes, but Sasha looked the other way for that bit of paperwork. The Stocktons may have let her marry their son, but she understood on a bone-deep level that they would rather let her walk in on them in the middle of an aerobic threesome with Tilda’s bridge partner than have her studying their tax returns.
After dinner, Sasha and Cord cleared the table while his parents headed into the parlor for an after-dinner drink. There was a bar cart in the corner of the room with old bottles of cognac that they liked to pour into tiny, gold-rimmed glasses. The glasses, like everything else in the house, were ancient and came with a history. The parlor had long blue velvet drapes, a piano, and an itchy ball-and-claw foot sofa that had once belonged in the governor’s mansion. Sasha made the mistake of sitting on it once and got such a bad rash on the backs of her legs that she had to use calamine lotion before bed. There was a chandelier in the foyer, a grandfather clock in the dining room that chimed so loudly Sasha screamed a little the first time she heard it, and an enormous painting of a ship on a menacingly dark ocean in the study. The whole place had a vaguely nautical vibe, which was funny since they were in Brooklyn, not Gloucester or Nantucket, and though Chip and Tilda had certainly spent summers sailing, they mostly chartered boats with crew. The glassware had ship’s wheels etched in them, the place mats had oil paintings of sailboats, the bathroom had a framed seafaring chart, and even their beach towels had diagrams for tying various knots. Sometimes Sasha found herself wandering the house in the evenings, running her hand along the ancient frames and candlesticks, whispering, “Batten down the hatches!” and “Swab the deck!” and making herself laugh.
Sasha and Cord finished moving the plates to the kitchen and joined Cord’s parents in the parlor, where he poured them each a small glass of cognac. It tasted sticky and medicinal and made Sasha weirdly aware of the small hairs inside her nostrils, but she drank it anyway, just to be companionable.
“So how do you kids like the place?” Tilda asked, folding one long leg over the other. She had dressed for dinner and was wearing a colorful blouse, a pencil skirt, sheer stockings, and three-inch heels. The Stocktons were all quite tall, and with the heels her mother-in-law positively towered over Sasha, and if anyone said that wasn’t a power move, they were lying through their teeth.
“We love it.” Sasha smiled. “I feel so lucky to have such a beautiful and spacious home.”
“But Mom,” Cord started, “we were thinking we’d like to make some changes here and there.”
“Of course, sweetheart. The house is yours.”
“It really is,” Chip agreed. “We’re all settled at Orange Street.”
“That’s so kind,” Sasha jumped in. “I was just thinking that the bedroom closet was a little tight, but if we took out those built-in cubbies in the back—”
“Oh no, sweetie,” Tilda interrupted. “You shouldn’t take those out. They are just the perfect thing for all kinds of bits and bobs—off-season footwear, hats, anything with a brim that you don’t want crushed. You’d really be doing yourself a disservice if you took those out.”