within hours. Minus any verifiable source, the residue was worrisome to her. It felt like a physical manifestation of the city’s decay, all the teeming masses being worn down to grimy, gray window dust.
She caught sight of another woman across the room holding a wineglass, and it took a moment for her to recognize her own reflection. Her hair was blonder than usual—she’d chosen a lighter shade at the drugstore and hoped the color would soften the elongated nose and strong chin both she and her sister, Beatrice, had inherited from their father’s New England ancestors. Somehow, the strong features that worked in Bea’s favor (Madam X, Leo used to call Bea, after the Sargent portrait) just made Melody look unintentionally dour. She particularly resented her face around Halloween. One year when the girls were little and they were out shopping for costumes, Nora had pointed to an advertisement featuring a witch—not an excessively ugly one, no warts or green face or rotten teeth but still, a witch—standing over a boiling cauldron and had said, “Look! It’s Mommy!”
Melody picked her bar bill up from the table and handed it to the waiter with a credit card. He’s never paying you back, Walt had said. Oh yes he is, thought Melody. There was no way that one night of Leo’s stupidity, his debauchery, was going to ruin her daughters’ future, not when they’d worked so hard, not when she’d pushed them to dream big. They were not going to community college.
Melody looked at the map on her phone again. There was another private reason she loved the blue dots with their animated ripples so much; they reminded her of the very first ultrasound where she and Walt had seen twin heartbeats, two misshapen grayish shadows thumping arrhythmically deep inside her pelvis.
Two for the price of one, the cheerful technician had told them as Walt gripped her hand and they both stared at the screen and then at each other and grinned like the starry naifs they were. She remembered thinking in that moment: It won’t ever get better than this. And in some ways she’d been right, had known even then she would never feel so capable, so stalwart a protector once she pushed those vulnerable, beating hearts out into the world.
The waiter was coming toward her now with a worried look on his face. She sighed and opened her wallet again. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, handing her the Visa she’d hoped had a little more juice on it, “but this was declined.”
“It’s okay,” Melody said, digging out the secret card she’d activated without telling Walt; he would kill her if he knew. Just as he’d kill her if he found out that even though the SAT place in the city was cheaper than the suburban private tutor she’d wanted to hire, it was still twice as much as she’d admitted, which was why she needed the extra card. “I meant to give you this one.” She watched the waiter back at his station as he swiped, both of them holding perfectly still and only exhaling when the machine started spitting out a receipt.
I like our life, Walt had said to her that morning, pulling her close. I like you. Can’t you pretend—just a little—to like me, too? He smiled as he said it, but she knew he sometimes worried. She had relaxed then into his reassuring girth, breathed in his comforting scent—soap and freshly laundered shirt and spearmint gum. She’d closed her eyes and pictured Nora and Louisa, lovely and lithe, clothed in satiny caps and gowns on a leafy quad in a quaint New England town, the morning sun illuminating their eager faces, the future unfurling ahead of them like an undulating bolt of silk. They were so smart and beautiful and honest and kind. She wanted them to have everything—the chances she’d never had, the opportunities she’d promised. I do like you, Walter, she’d mumbled into his shoulder. I like you so much. It’s me I hate.
AT THE OPPOSITE END OF GRAND CENTRAL, up a carpeted flight of stairs and through the glass doors that said CAMPBELL APARTMENT, Jack Plumb was sending his drink back because he believed the mint hadn’t really been muddled. “It was just dumped in there as if it were a garnish, not an ingredient,” he told the waitress.
Jack was sitting with his partner of two decades and legal husband of nearly seven weeks. He was confident the other Plumbs wouldn’t know about this place, which was the former office of a 1920s tycoon, restored and reimagined as a high-end cocktail bar. Beatrice might, but it wasn’t her kind of spot. Too staid. Too expensive. There was a dress code. At times the bar could be annoyingly full of commuters who were in mercifully short supply on this Saturday afternoon.
“Version 2.0,” Walker said as the waitress placed the remade drink in front of Jack.
Jack took a sip. “It’s fine,” he said.
“Sorry for your trouble,” Walker said to the waitress.
“Yes,” Jack said as the waitress walked away, under his breath but loud enough for Walker to hear, “terribly sorry for making you do your job.”
“She’s just delivering the drinks. She’s not making them.” Walker kept his voice amiable. Jack was in a mood. “Why don’t you take a nice generous sip of that and try to relax.”
Jack picked a piece of mint from his glass and chewed on it for a second. “I’m curious,” he said, “is telling someone to relax ever helpful? It’s like saying ‘breathe’ to someone who is hyperventilating or ‘swallow’ to a person who’s choking. It’s a completely useless admonition.”
“I wasn’t admonishing, I was suggesting.”
“It’s like saying, ‘Whatever you do, don’t think about a pink elephant.’”
“I get it,” Walker said. “How about I relax and you do what you want.”
“Thank you.”
“I am happy to go to this lunch with you if it helps.”
“So you’ve said. About a thousand times.” Trying to provoke Walker was mean and pointless, but Jack was trying anyway because he knew that snapping at Walker would briefly loosen the spiraling knot of fury at his core. And he had considered inviting Walker to lunch. His family preferred Walker’s company anyway; who didn’t? Walker with his rumbling laugh and kind face and bottomless bonhomie. He was like a clean-shaven, slightly trimmer, gay Santa Claus.
But Jack couldn’t invite Walker because he hadn’t told the other Plumbs yet about his early September wedding to Walker, the wedding to which they hadn’t been invited because Jack wanted the day to be perfect and perfect for Jack meant Plumb-free. He did not want to listen to Bea’s worries about Leo’s accident or hear Melody’s lumbering husband telling everyone who might listen that his name was Walter-not-Walker. (That Jack and Melody had chosen partners with almost the exact same name was something that still rankled both of them, decades on.)
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Jack finally said.
Walker shrugged. “It’s fine, love.”
“I’m sorry I’m being an asshole.” Jack rotated his neck, listening for the alarming but satisfying little pop that had recently appeared. God, he was getting old. Six years until fifty and who knew what fresh horrors that decade had in store for his slender-but-softening physique, his already-fraying memory, his alarmingly thinning hair. He gave Walker a feeble smile. “I’ll be better after lunch.”
“Whatever happens at lunch, we’ll be fine. It will all be fine.”
Jack slumped deeper into the leather club chair and proceeded to crack the knuckles on each hand, a sound he knew Walker loathed. Of course Walker thought everything would be fine. Walker didn’t know anything about Jack’s financial straits (another
