going to dress like Ray Charles again, aren’t you?” I love my brother’s classic suit and tie, of course – but he always wears the same thing. I want to see my brother wearing a sequined cape or a star-spangled-banner leisure suit with beads hanging off the arms. I want him to shake things up for once.
“Yes,” says Sam. “But I’ll be enjoying the gift of sight. May he rest in peace, Brother Ray.” He pauses, and then says, “Please promise me you didn’t invite KK.”
“I promise,” I say.
I totally invited KK!
My guest list:
Kirby Kingsley: heiress, party girl, my non-sibling BFF. No one likes her besides me. But it’s not a party without Kirby. She lives in the Stanwyck’s penthouse apartment, with panoramic views of Central Park to the East River, and midtown and uptown to the Hudson River, and probably God too, if you point their telescope straight up through the glass dome in the ceiling of the atelier room.
Li Zhang: my chem-lab partner. Great at board games. Great conversationalist. Never shows up to a party without a gift of beautiful boxes of sweets from Taiwan for the hostess. Should be invited to every party.
Frederyk Podhalanski, aka Freddie: the wild card. He’s an exchange student from Poland, living with a family on the Upper East Side. I met him when I was with KK, watching hot guys play basketball in Central Park. Tall, blond, muscled, deep-blue eyes, uncomplicated. I’m pretty sure Freddie’s the guy I’ve been looking for – the one who will break my brother’s heart.
My brother still hasn’t recovered from not getting into Juilliard. He goes to Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, only a few blocks away from Czarina’s Palais de Rent Control. Sam should have been thrilled not to get into Juilliard. Too fucking close for comfort! He did get into Berklee College of Music, in Boston. A whole new city, new adventure and a prestigious music school too! But no. My brother opted to go to Hunter College next year, to stay close to home, to play it safe.
Even though I think he should have opted for Berklee, Sam really, truly wants Juilliard, so I want it for him too. Next year, he’ll reapply. Sam should have gotten in. The solution: Sam needs to drop out of his safety zone and go wild for the wrong guy. He needs a recess from the humdrum stream of predictable boys he dates. My brother’s heart needs the distraction of infatuation with someone out of his league. To be clear, Freddie’s not in a better league than Sam (no one’s in a better league than my brother). It’s just a different one. I’ll call it the League of Ridiculously Beautiful Guys Who Aren’t That Bright and Who Will Give My Brother Exactly the Fun Distraction He Needs Before Dumping My Brother When They Realize My Brother Is Too Smart and Good for Them. My brother needs a pointless, pleasurable fling with someone gorgeous and easy.
When Freddie inevitably dumps Sam, the pain will be sharp, but quick. Pain is what makes all the greats great. Known fact. So if pain is what it takes to bring Sam to that pantheon, then I have just the dinner party to give him that necessary shock to the system. It will be a welcome pain compared to the kind Sam inflicts on himself from over-thinking and overstressing. And Sam will have loads of fun along the way. You’re welcome, brother.
Like Sam, I also experienced the pain of not getting into my first-choice school, or any of my top-tier choices! I applied to the Sorbonne, the University of Tokyo, and that fancy one in Scotland where Prince William met Princess Kate. But I had no real shot at them. No matter; I don’t speak French or Japanese, and let’s be real, who even understands Scottish people when they speak? I also didn’t get into my second-tier schools – NYU, Skidmore, Fordham. And that’s awesome. Because now I can hoard all that money I saved babysitting the many little critters who live in the Stanwyck, and not waste it at Quinnipiac University, which is somewhere in Connecticut, I’m told. (I visited but have since tried to forget the experience, because I was basically forced by my parents to go.) It’s the only school I got into, and my parents were so relieved, they enrolled me for the fall. I can’t even pronounce the school’s name. Please.
“Are you sure Czarina hasn’t taken a lover?” Sam says. I’ve got to set him free from attachment to her apron strings too. When she finds out I broke the leaf on her dining-room table when I was setting it, she’ll lose it at him. At me too of course. But I’m used to it. Sam the Saint is not. It will be healthy. For both of them. Maybe in my future travels I will check out old Freud or Jung’s universities in Austria or wherever, because I obviously have huge potential as a psychoanalytic genius.
“Of course I’m not sure!” I say. “She could be bonking every Frenchman with a croissant for all I know!”
“Because every Frenchman has a croissant, right?”
“Oui! Don’t you know that’s what the French Revolution was all about? Life, liberty, le perfect flaky croissant.”
“Tongs,” says Sam.
“Frenchman torture method?”
“No. Hand me the tongs so I can pull out the strips of lasagna from the boiling water.”
I hand him the tongs. “That’s a whisk, Ilsa.” He reaches over me to grab the contraption known as tongs. “And I’m telling you, Czarina has taken a lover in Paris.”
“You just want to say ‘taken a lover’.”
“Guilty. You know me too well.”
Maybe Czarina has taken a lover in Paris, but that’s not the reason for her trip. She thinks we don’t know, but I know. Czarina likes to be secretive, but she has no idea what a browser history is, and that she should clear it regularly. Our grandmother is in Paris because she bought a small apartment and plans to retire there, in a little studio with no bedrooms for me or Sam. (Unfortunately, this knowledge came at the cost of also learning that Czarina really likes browsing photos of Sean Connery as James Bond wearing barely there swimmer briefs. And she loves porny fan fiction devoted to that most hirsute of the Bond men.) (I’m going to throw up just thinking about what I’ve seen in her browser history.)
Sam will survive the Paris news. What better place to visit a grandmother? What’s really going to finally push Sam out of his comfort zone is when he finds out I am moving into his bedroom at Czarina’s, with the new owners, who have invited me to be their family’s nanny after Czarina moves out. Sam has too much talent and potential to be stuck in the same old place; I’m fine there.
Tonight is our chance to celebrate our last twin dinner party here. Lasagna, booze, chocolates, with our friends and some strangers. Tonight we can swing from the chandeliers like we’re Liberace.
Tomorrow we can deal with the heartbreak and the humdrum.
Dinner parties always seem like a good idea until you have an hour until the guests arrive and you realize you have about four hours’ worth of things left to do. Life becomes a whirl of counter-space choreography, stovetop stress and table-setting trauma. I want everything to be perfect, and I also know this is an impossible and even cruel thing to want. Still, there’s something deep inside me that won’t let go. If things are imperfect, it won’t – can’t – be my fault.
Ilsa, bless her, is trying to aid
