and stay in a little room in the Village with a kitchenette and an unworking fireplace. Peach had made Troy describe the whole itinerary to her in full detail after taking a tumble with him at the Rubberneck one late night on a floral-print sofa with yellowed antimacassars, on the stage set for the theater troupe’s reworking of Streetcar Named Desire, updated to post—Hurricane Katrina.
“Thanks for the wine,” Peach said, setting the glass on the table without having taken even a taste of it. “I’ve got to get back to the bookstore.” The sad fact was, Ashley was lovely in anything, even in her old T-shirt with her nerdy horned-rims hanging from a chain around her neck librarian-style and her jeans with the ’70s-era patch on its knee of a cartoon souped-up VW bug. Peach had always been jealous of the quirky girls, the charming nut jobs who could dress off the floor and be absolutely eye-catching.
“Peach,” Ashley said. Peach stopped in the doorway. “I’m kind of, I guess, uncomfortable bringing this up . . .”
Peach couldn’t breathe.
“. . . but did I say anything in class that upset you last week? When we were discussing your story? Because if I didn’t say so before, I really do think it has a lot going for it. The characters are so tragic in a way that’s really very heartbreaking. . . .”
“Thanks, thanks,” Peach said. “Really, thanks, no need to . . .”
“You feel for them because their situation seems so hopeless, and there’s this vulnerability, that’s, well, it’s tragic, in a way. . . .”
“Yeah, you said ‘tragic’ already.”
Ashley paused for a moment or two, biting the tip of the paring knife. “Here’s the thing. The reason I bring it up, and this is kind of embarrassing, but I saw my book in the bargain bin at Mermaids Singing. One dollar. And I guess, maybe, I might have . . . kind of . . . taken it personally.”
Peach had indeed, personally, put Ashley’s novel in the “Last Ditch” box. Its jacket was an obnoxiously distinctive shade of Pepto-Bismol that snagged her sight every time she walked down that aisle.
“We have a new part-timer,” Peach said. “This very cute unwashed dope addict boy-poet. We put him in charge of ‘Last Ditch,’ and he probably didn’t realize . . .”
“Oh, no, of course, stop, stop, yes. Don’t explain. I figured it was something like that. How dumb of me to even say anything.”
“Don’t worry,” Peach said. “I would’ve taken it personally too.” She waved good-bye, grabbed her coat, and rushed from the apartment.
Peach fully recognized her enrolling in the class as a mite psychotic. But it wasn’t nearly as psychotic as the fact that she’d been workshopping some stories that were based on her affair with Ashley’s husband. She’d read sections of them aloud to the class, including a slightly fictionalized description of the night before last Thanksgiving, when Ashley and Lee and Peyton had all been out of town and Troy had brought her back to the apartment. They’d had sex on the very divan upon which she’d sat that afternoon. She had described the sofa in detail: the purple plush of the cushions worn shiny in spots, the one leg replaced with a couple of crumbling bricks, the sofa probably paid too much for at some trendy vintage shop. Peach had written about how the whole room looked like it had been furnished by precocious newlywed college students: a cinderblock for an end table, books stacked on the mantel, and old albums in the hearth.
As Todd (who was Troy) made love to Peony (who was Peach), Peony imagined herself having successfully wrecked that home, saw herself barefoot in its rooms, sipping Gibsons, tripping out a little soft shoe on its Persian rugs. In Peach’s story, Peony pictured herself tipsy and deeply in love.
Deedee
Do you think your father ever cheated on me?” Deedee whispered, sketching at her easel, and the moment the question left her lips, she regretted having uttered it. All the togetherness of the Bahamas trip had emboldened her, those hours rained in with Naomi, both of them falling contemplative while playing Scrabble by the window in the cocktail lounge, talking and talking, watching the downpour and the wind whipping the fronds from the trees.
“Way, way inappropriate, that question,” Naomi said just above her breath. “How would I know?”
Deedee had driven to Viv’s drawing class directly from the airport, against Naomi’s objections: they were both still mostly dressed for the Bahamas, in Capri pants and flimsy Ts beneath their coats, their hair crushed and cowlicked from naps on the airplane.
They sat at the back of the art class, having come in late, the live model clear at the other end of the long loft studio. Deedee knew she should be home, preparing for that night’s Sugar Shop party, but she hated to miss Viv’s class. More specifically, she hated to miss the chance, if the chance presented itself, to spar playfully with her ex-husband, Zeke. But Zeke now sat on a stool several rows in front of them, near the breeze of a tall window with a broken pane, still in his parka, wearing woolen mittens as he drew.
“He probably didn’t have an affair, right?” Deedee said. The class had only recently graduated from apples and pears to a jittery nude itchy from a case of eczema down her back. “But if he had, and I’d known about it, then I could at least have focused my hatred on a home-wrecker. I could have paid her a visit. ‘Stay away from my family, or I’ll kill you,’ I could have said. And I could have felt better than I’d ever felt in my life. Remember Fatal Attraction?”
“Of course not. It came out before I was born.”
“God, Naomi, you act like I’m so frickin’ out of touch. You watch old movies all the time. I’m talking about Fatal Attraction; it was a phenomenon. And it’s not that old. I’ll have you know that the movies they made when I was growing up were far more provocative than the movies they make now. You kids think you’re so frickin’ sophisticated, so adult.”
“Please don’t say ‘frickin’.’ It sounds so gross. I don’t know why people think that’s so much better than just saying ‘fuck.’ It sounds far more vulgar than ‘fuck.’”
“. . . wash your mouth out with soap,” Deedee muttered. She licked her thumb to rub at pizza sauce still at the corner of Naomi’s mouth, and Naomi pulled away, her face screwed up in disgust.
“And I’m not lying to you,” Naomi said. “I’ve never seen the movie. You always forget that I didn’t fucking hang out with you in college, Mom.”
“Whatever happened to my sweet little girl who would never dream of saying ‘fuck’ in front of her mother? Hm? Really, where’d that darling thing go? I swear she was right here, not five minutes ago.”
But Deedee did still see much of the little girl in her daughter. Naomi’s cheeks had a dull sparkle from the glittery pink blush she’d had brushed on at the resort’s salon the day before, and she’d already chewed off three of the midnight-blue fingernails the manicurist had applied.
Naomi was physically awkward, tall, thin, most likely a virgin, Deedee suspected, maybe even never-been-kissed. She had a mild case of scoliosis that made her self-conscious about the almost unnoticeable limp it produced. Deedee had longed for at least one of the many cherub-cheeked, bee-stung-lipped boys that Naomi worked alongside on the yearbook committee, and in the drama club, and in the flute ensemble of the concert band, to turn out to be straight.
“Have
