Pineapple Street(55)
As Archie and Cord fell all over each other laughing, Sasha excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, peeing and then quickly fixing her makeup. When she emerged, she didn’t see Cord anywhere, and Darley was caught up in conversation, so she let herself quietly collapse into an armchair, hidden from view so she could check her phone. As she scrolled through her emails, she half listened as Bubbles told them about a trip she was planning to the Caymans. Darley suddenly interrupted, confused. “George, weren’t you wearing a purple dress before?”
“Oh, yeah,” Georgiana said sleepily. “I’ve been wearing this dress since cocktail hour.”
“Wait, you had a different dress?” Bubbles asked. She was drunk and talking more loudly than any sober person might.
“I was wearing a lavender dress, but I spilled crab and cocktail sauce all over it so Sasha traded dresses with me.”
“Sasha gave you her dress?” Darley repeated, confused about what Sasha was then wearing.
“Wait, who?” Bubbles sounded genuinely lost.
“Sasha took off her own dress and gave it to me,” Georgiana tried to explain.
“Oh, that’s so funny! Sasha! I had no idea who you meant! You two always call her the Gold Digger!” Bubbles cackled. Georgiana laughed for what seemed like the first time all night and Sasha felt her skin grow cold. She quietly got up and walked out to the parking lot.
* * *
Sasha never told Cord what happened at the Greenwich wedding, pleading a migraine and wearing sunglasses on the drive back to Brooklyn the next day. After that she decided that she was done trying with Cord’s sisters. She was done inviting the family for dinner at the limestone, she was done bringing bagels to Orange Street for brunch, she was done joining for weekends at Spyglass or weekday lunch at Darley’s apartment. Certain events would be unavoidable, like birthdays or holidays, but otherwise she would keep her distance. Yes, Georgiana was in pain. She had slept with a married man and he died. That was terrible. Yes, Darley was worried for Malcolm, scared his career had been permanently derailed. But it was now clear to Sasha that they had only confided their secrets in her because of how little it mattered to them what Sasha thought. She wasn’t really their family; she wasn’t someone who could pass any kind of meaningful judgment. She was a receptacle for an emotional outburst, the human equivalent of screaming into a pillow.
FOURTEEN
Georgiana
After Archie’s wedding Georgiana didn’t leave her apartment all week. She took personal days from work; when Cord called she sent it to voice mail and texted back the words “stomach virus.” She sent the same text to Lena. She slept and slept, and her dreams were strange and alarming. She was in an airport and Brady was there, somewhere, and she ran down long hallways searching for him, stopped by security, stuck in throngs of people who wouldn’t move and let her through in time. She woke covered in sweat, and it came to feel like she really did have a stomach virus. She ate dry cereal and tried to watch mindless television, but all around her house she kept finding Brady’s love letters. With the teacups a note that read, “Your backhand is great—but your backside is even better.” Under a pillow on the couch, “Let’s make babies with breasts.”
On Monday Georgiana went back to work, partially because she knew that if she continued to call in sick she would be fired, but also because she wanted to hear more about Brady, more about what happened. There was a pall cast over everything at the office. People wore dark colors, and from her chair in the maid’s room Georgiana could see Meg’s desk, and she watched as the others from grant writing packed her personal things in a box: a cardigan, a silver dish that held paper clips, a small stuffed bulldog wearing a shirt that said georgetown, the bottle of Advil. To think of all the ambition Meg had, to think of everything she would have done in her life made Georgiana ache with loss. Because they had lunch together on occasion, people in the office understood they were friends, and as she watched them pack Meg’s desk, tears rolled down her face and the team in grant writing tutted sympathetically and handed her a Kleenex. They had been crying all week themselves.
Amina came to the office to pack up Brady’s desk and see their friends. When Georgiana heard she was on the first floor she knew to stay in the maid’s room. If she saw Amina she would break apart, her outrageous grief would expose her, and she would in turn double this woman’s own heartbreak. She hated to think of Amina boxing up Brady’s apartment, his bicycle, his blue bedspread, his maps, his stack of biographies. She would surely sell the place, and any evidence that Brady had ever even lived in Brooklyn would be gone.
Georgiana moved through the week like a zombie, taking half a Valium before work in the morning and letting it dull her out. She barely sent or responded to emails; she might miss a newsletter deadline, but nobody cared, the entire office dragging along as though through heavy drifts of snow. She ignored texts from Cord and Lena, Cord asking if she had his spare squash goggles, Lena trying to get Georgiana to come to a party on Saturday. Georgiana regretted confessing to Sasha, couldn’t understand why she had confided in the GD of all people, but Cord hadn’t said a word about Brady so she knew Sasha hadn’t told him. On Friday after work, Georgiana changed into her pajamas at six thirty, ordered tacos to be delivered to her apartment, and watched five hours of Netflix before falling asleep. The Valium made her drowsy, and she slept like the dead, waking ten hours later on Saturday morning with a headache and the sense that she would need to nap again in the afternoon. She was asleep at five when the buzzer woke her. She stumbled to the intercom and pressed the button before realizing that she could have ignored it. “Hello?”