Pineapple Street(82)
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After their epic dinner at Colonie, Cy Habib had introduced Malcolm to Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the chairman of Emirates, and the sheikh had created a position for Malcolm: president and chief strategy officer. Malcolm would be based in New York and, among his many responsibilities, he would oversee the IPO of Emirates on the New York Stock Exchange. It was Malcolm’s dream. He was out of banking, he was poised to rise at the most impressive airline in the world, and while he was unlikely to achieve the hat trick of triple secret status on the three big American airlines anytime soon, he’d be home a lot more to watch his kids grow up and obsess about pigeon death. An unforeseen bonus of overseeing the massively lucrative IPO was that Malcolm got to decide which investment banks would be invited to pitch for the business. He invited everyone—except Deutsche Bank. Tilda said it best: the wrong guests could ruin even the best parties.
TWENTY-TWO
Sasha
Chip was turning seventy and everyone was too busy to plan a proper celebration, but if Sasha had learned one thing, it was that you couldn’t take fathers for granted and also, she really needed to make up for calling the limestone “janky.” She told Tilda she would host a dinner party for him at Pineapple Street and the theme would be Sailor’s Delight, a tribute to Chip’s childhood love of sailing. It was her penance. Vara’s girlfriend, Tammie, ran the props department on big film sets, so Sasha brought her in and together they turned the Pineapple Street dining room into a seafaring phantasmagory. They hung fishermen’s nets from the chandelier, creating a canopy over the table that they strung with fairy lights and tiny glittering lures and feathered flies, using the hooks to dangle them from the netting. They melted red candles into wine bottles, wrapped heavy rope in coils on the table, and set a clamshell at each place so that guests might open them up to find their name card. She put Chip and Tilda at the heads of the table. Sasha might have technically been the hostess, but she couldn’t fathom sitting at the head on Pineapple Street.
When Tilda arrived, wearing sailor pants with gold buttons, a white blouse, and a jaunty red scarf, she saw the room and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, it’s beautiful, darling,” she said and hugged her daughter-in-law close, and Sasha was pretty sure Tilda was more emotional over the tablescape than she had been over their pregnancy announcement. The Stocktons all turned up, more or less on time, more or less dressed for the theme, and took in Sasha’s creation. Cord was jittery, wearing a pirate’s hat and button-down, and he kept coming up behind her and patting her bum and whispering, “Good job.” She mixed Dark ’n’ Stormys, though she noticed Georgiana wasn’t drinking. She brought out a silver tray of cold shrimp with cocktail sauce and passed it around, but despite all her efforts at festivity she couldn’t help but feel the tension in the air. There was still so much uncertainty around Georgiana’s decision to give away her inheritance. Chip and Tilda were treading lightly, looking at Georgiana as one might regard a newly housebroken pet. Darley seemed preoccupied, and Sasha felt even more grateful than usual that Poppy and Hatcher had come along. Children had a way of diffusing social discomfort. You could ask them anything and count on their answers being amusing. You could leave the room to cater to any one of their needs. Or, worst-case scenario, you could at least rest assured nobody would scream much profanity in their presence.
When they sat down to eat—miso black cod with seaweed salad—Sasha tried to play the part of a hostess and spark some kind of festive conversation. “So!” she said brightly. “Maybe we could all go around and say something nice that happened this week?” Cord gave her a sort of panicked-looking smile and she realized how deranged she sounded.
“I’ll start,” said Tilda gamely. “I found out they are going to have a Tory Sport trunk show at the Jupiter Island tennis shop! I absolutely love her running skirts!”
“Great!” Sasha said enthusiastically. “Chip?”
“The Knickerbocker changed their lunch buffet and now they have white asparagus,” he said thoughtfully. “But it doesn’t taste all that different from green asparagus.”
“Okay, Georgiana?” Sasha directed, hoping she wasn’t opening the floodgates for a diatribe on the offensive history of sailing culture.
“I had a really amazing morning, actually.” Georgiana smiled. “I met with a woman who provides feminine hygiene products to schools in northwest Pakistan. She told me that less than twenty percent of women in Pakistan have access to pads. Otherwise, they just use a piece of cloth. And women are told not to bathe during their periods because they have been taught that it will make them infertile. I donated ten thousand dollars and that will pay for almost five hundred school-age girls to have pads for a year.”
“That’s amazing,” Sasha said. It was amazing. What an incredible thing to do.
“I’m really not sure that is dinnertime conversation, Georgiana,” Tilda interjected. Chip looked slightly green and was staring at a puddle of cocktail sauce on his plate.
“Mom, I think poverty is a really important dinnertime conversation,” Georgiana countered. “I think that’s a big mistake we’ve been making as a family, only talking about things that make us comfortable. We need to talk about what life is actually like for most people.”