by Tess Little
“That doesn’t mean Richard wanted me to stay.” I had spoken too quickly, each word flint.
“Look, I know that when a marriage has its problems, usually everyone is to blame. But I was there, Elsie, and Rich was a mess. He wanted you to stay. Whatever he had done to make you leave, I know he regretted it. More than anything.”
Richard couldn’t bear the thought of losing me, that was true. But not because he loved me. Not because he felt he’d made a terrible mistake. I said nothing to Jerry.
“You have to understand what it was like when you and Lillie left,” Jerry said. “You know, that’s when Yola started working for Rich. After he got out of rehab that last time. And he was cut up, Elsie—that was the worst I’ve ever seen him. I couldn’t leave him alone. So I was the one who hired Yola to cook and clean, and she was a godsend. She would throw open the curtains every day, push him into the shower. He needed that.
“But that’s what I was trying to say—if anything, it was Rich that was devoted to Yola. He noticed, after she’d been working there for a few months, that she was taking these naps halfway through the day. She was mortified, but then he got it out of her—she’d been working a night shift, cleaning offices downtown. You know what Rich does? He says if it’s not enough pay, he’ll double it. He insists that she can’t do her job if she’s exhausted. Same thing happened again a couple of years later. She got this flu, but she kept working. No insurance, of course. Rich sorts it out, puts Samuel on her insurance too. And, you know, that probably saved Samuel’s life. Leukemia, but the doctors caught it early. Wouldn’t surprise me if Rich left them a nice lump in his will.”
I didn’t doubt this—it sounded exactly like Richard. A grand surge of generosity. It wasn’t just that he wanted to make people happy, improve their lives; it wasn’t even that he wanted to ensure loyalty. He simply liked how it felt: the gratitude. He was a king, extending his arm, permitting paupers to crawl close and kiss each jeweled finger.
Jerry threw back his orange juice with a satisfied grunt, then exhaled loudly. “Anyway. All I’m saying is that I’d understand if Yola still remembers the divorce. She’s not a bad person, she’s just—it was a bad time. For all of us.”
“Jerry.” I frowned. “I never said she was a bad person.”
“You didn’t need to. I could see it in your face.”
Honey was approaching the group. He put his arm around Yola, and they stood there like that, half hugging, listening to Lillie. It looked almost comical—Yola only reached Honey’s elbow. I wondered what she had thought of his public accusations. I wondered what things she had overheard in the hallways of this house. Maybe Jerry was right: Maybe Yola wasn’t devoted to Richard. She certainly hadn’t reserved for Honey any of the malice she felt toward me. Yola’s husband said something, and they all laughed.
I think it was only at that moment, watching the four of them laugh together while I stood alone, that I truly understood: Lillie had another family, and it was one that included neither Richard nor me.
Jerry was looking at me with a strange expression on his face. “You know, sometimes, Elsie, I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. And sometimes I don’t think I ever knew you at all.”
That made two of us.
A group of women nearby brayed with laughter.
“…but Fee and Cressie couldn’t drag him in,” one of them was saying. “Dicky sat there, scowling in the summerhouse, wearing a woolly jumper and trousers in the middle of August.”
Jerry and I exchanged glances.
“I gotta say,” he murmured, “I don’t remember this many of them attending your wedding. Have they multiplied?”
I noticed Judy locking on to us; she began snaking through the crowd.
“Jerry, I’m so sorry, can we continue in a moment? I wouldn’t mind finding a bathroom.”
“Elspeth.” He gave me a look. “I can tell you just saw Judy coming over. You don’t need to make excuses; I hate my wife’s yakking as much as the next person. I swear to god, she’s been eyeing the caterers; keeps saying”—he raised his pitch—“Babe, we need to find out the price. We want something classy for your do, and this is real nice, real nice. She yanked a waiter at one point—literally grabbed him by the collar—and asked, What’s your hourly rate? Imagine, some poor guy working for less than minimum wage, rushed off his feet, and she’s trying to book him for her husband’s funeral. I’m so sorry to hear of his passing, he says. Oh, he’s not passed, babe. Oh, how cute, you’re such a doll. Here’s my hubby, right here.”
There was a flash of the old Jerry in this impression.
“But, no, I jest,” he went on. “She’s been great the past few months. Looking after me, taking me to hospital appointments, the police. Even stopped threatening divorce. What’s the point when she’ll get it all in the— Babe! So lovely of you to join us. But you’ll have to catch Elspeth later, she just said she wants to find a bathroom.”
Judy’s mouth twitched sour.
“Such a shame.” She leaned in close; her perfume clogged my nostrils. “You’ve been avoiding me for years, hon. I’ll have to track you down later.”
* * *
—
I caught myself in the bathroom mirror. The dress stain was smaller in the reflection than it looked from above, but vomit was the least of my problems. Everything else was a mess.
My lipstick had worn away, leaving only a heavy outline, bleeding into my skin. I wouldn’t be able to fix it—I couldn’t remember where I’d left this particular shade. Another bathroom, in another part of the house. Or maybe hidden from the party guests on a bookshelf somewhere, stashed for reapplication. My sober self was too well organized. She knew that Richard would be furious if he saw me in this state.
I sat on the toilet lid and gripped my temples. Richard had disappeared and I needed to find him. Or did I need to find him? The cake. The cake had been eaten. And somebody had thrown up on my dress. Did I need to find Richard to tell him I was going to bed?
My eyes were closing, slowly closing. Somebody rattled the handle. I called out, “Just a minute.”
Richard never complimented me, not anymore. He only mentioned my appearance if there was something to criticize—as if perfection was in the job description for wife and anything less was intolerable. But I couldn’t make too much effort, I couldn’t be too charming or too friendly at social events. If Richard was in a difficult mood, that would tip him over the edge. He would pull me close in a crowd, after I had made someone else laugh. Whisper through his teeth, Who are you trying to impress?
I learned to be a beautiful, forgettable ornament.
It was like high school again. I had always been beautiful—although only adults used that word when I was younger; to other students I was cute or pretty—and at that time it was a liability. Guys in grades above me would follow me home; one of my algebra teachers kept trying to get me to stay behind for “private tutoring.” I hated the attention. With kids my age, I’d learned, envy only led to bullying. I kept my head down, shoulders hunched. Smoothed my conspicuous “Elspeth”—a musty castoff from some Scottish great-aunt—to a quick, unobtrusive “Elle.” Hung around the peripheries of friendship groups, blandly. Desperately avoiding being seen.
If anyone had looked closer, they’d have noticed the clothes I was wearing. The strange assortment of hand-me-downs from a male cousin and my mother. It wasn’t that we were much poorer than other families in the area. Just that my parents seemed to care less about how presentable I was. Other girls had their ears pierced. They had matching socks and moms who did their hair. They smelled of fresh powdered detergent and they shared their flavored Maybelline lip glosses with one another. Sometimes, on days when I’d done the laundry too late and it hadn’t dried on the line, I’d have to go to school in one of my mother’s old uniform shirts from the grocery store. I’d pick off the embroider
ed logo badge. Pray nobody would notice the telltale circle of needle punches.
As soon as I hit sixteen, I started waitressing every evening at a neighborhood pizza place. It was a miracle, having my own money, although I never used it to hang out with my friends or buy cooler clothes. What was the point? A new T-shirt every month would never change my life. My socks still wouldn’t match. Makeup would only make it seem like I wanted to be noticed. So I saved up for luxurious things—beautiful for their own sake. Pearlescent nail polish that I wore only on my toes; a silk eye mask that cost six months’ pay and that I kept hidden from my mother because she would have died if she knew. I took the train into Manhattan on the first Saturday of each month, just to buy Vogue magazines. They sold them at the bodega near my school as well, but that wasn’t the point. Once I even went to Bergdorf Goodman for a jar of face cream aimed at women three times my age. I didn’t care. It smelled like jasmine and came in a ribboned box—even the tiny sample-sized version.
I lingered at the counters, listening to the women with their husbands, their assistants, their daughters. I watched them remove their leather gloves to massage in the tester creams. I copied their vowels, their movements, their stony indifference, as I handed my money to the saleswoman and thanked her.
“Is this for your mom, sweetie?” she had asked, placing the box in a lavender bag. A gorgeous, glamorous lavender bag. I’d have spent a week’s pay on that paper bag alone. It stood proudly on my dresser until I moved out.
To be honest, the money wasn’t the only reason I waitressed. I just liked the routine of shifts. I liked falling into bed exhausted, asleep before I could think. I liked having tasks—even if that meant spending a dead hour scrubbing mold from the back of the freezer because the health-department inspector was making rounds. That job was my escape from my parents’ bickering. From the fact that I was the only teenager in Queens doing nothing on a Friday night.
That’s why, when my mother found out about the job at Douglaston Golf Course, I jumped at the opportunity. Weekends working at reception fit in with my waitressing shifts. Throughout senior year I very happily had no free time at all.
And that’s where I met my best friend, Tanya. It had been her dream, this life of mine. A white minidress and a house full of famous guests, a glass table topped with dancers—this loneliness would have been worth it, for her.
* * *
—
“…was the attention to detail that made him such a genius.” “Idaho?” “Terrible tragedy. But I thought the daughter did well with her speech, didn’t you?”
I was trying to reach the upstairs bathroom without being seen by any mourners I knew, but it was difficult to keep my head down while carrying champagne and navigating the rabble. The band had taken a break—they were drinking beers and chain-smoking outside—and so I caught snippets of chatter, in a plethora of accents, as I went.
“Is that the wife? The ex-wife, I mean?” “I can’t do next Friday. Tuesday?” “Sí, el cineasta llegó a Nueva York, pero…”
“Oh, I thought I recognized her.” “…to Cambridge, but you see, he’s never been much of a scholar.”
“Should we offer our condolences? What’s the etiquette?” “…a massive boost. Miguel was telling me…”
“No, I think it’s more of a ‘congratulations’ situation.”
I kept my head down, walked on. It pained me to swim through the gossip. Not the sly comments about me—I’d had decades of thickening skin—but knowing what Lillie would hear. About her, about Richard, his death, his relationships. I could not spot her figure in the crowds. Wherever she was in Sedgwick, the whispers would be following her too.
“It was all totally fictitious; you know what the media’s…” “February.” “Oh, Dicky always was made of tough stuff, but you would have to be to survive in that family.”
“I know, I know. I just think, come on, how could anyone who’s ever met Richard—”
“Even if he did, it’s…it’s irrelevant, isn’t it?”
I tried to keep my expression neutral, push past groups without drawing attention to myself. There was Charlie, holding out his glass for another refill. Our eyes met. His gaze was as empty as it had been the night of Richard’s death.
If it had not been Persephone stuffing Richard’s throat, of all the guests I could readily imagine Charlie having the requisite ruthlessness. Those eyes. I tried to escape them as quickly as possible.
“Sure, I found the pigment stuff as self-indulgent as the next guy, but now I think, wait, this film was made by an artist in love with his craft.”
“Exactly. It was never about romance between the leads. This is a film about despair.”
“And mistakes and obsession.”
“With perfection. Exactly. Yes.”
I had heard it in the gossip around me all afternoon: Dominus was still in theaters, was being watched more than ever. Even the critical tide was turning, with tastemakers reanalyzing the film they had previously panned as the director’s final manifesto. How fortunate, I kept thinking. How fortunate for those guests who had worked on the film.
“…charming little chalet in Val d’Isère, so we’ll be taking the cousins.”
“Were you there that night? Come on, I won’t tell.” “Unrivaled. He’ll be up there with the greats.”
I slipped by Miguel, who was muttering into a well-known actress’s ear. He flashed me an odd look, perhaps a warning not to approach. The actress smiled. He brushed back her hair and bent down to speak again. But I could not catch his words—they were drowned by surrounding conversation.
“Put it this way: I’m not going to tell you I wasn’t there.”
And then the empty tank. Blurred black silhouettes—through glass, the boundaries between each individual were indistinct, a mass of limbs and bobbing heads.
“Such a fucking Gemini.” “Apparently Lucia told James and Pippa, but there was no response, absolutely none. And I know they haven’t seen each other for a while, but who doesn’t mourn the death of their only child?”
I reached the staircase.
“Ghana?” “…a muted eggshell.”
“Sierra Leone.”
And that was when I heard the voice—an urgent whisper: “Elspeth.”
I began to climb. I might not have heard.
“…still remember that first feature I wrote on him back when I was at Vani—”
“Elspeth,” the whisper called again. I resolved to ignore it.
“What happened to the music anyway?” said a woman sitting on the stairs. I stepped over her legs, tried to avoid looking down.
“Hey, Elspeth,” said my caller.
But I was reaching the mezzanine, and he was still stuck at the bottom. I climbed faster. My heel missed a step. As I fell forward, I glimpsed him through the stairs. Couldn’t he see the attention he was drawing? In what world would we have known each other? In what world would he have wanted to speak to me? Unless, of course, we had both attended Richard’s birthday.
The woman I had climbed over watched for my reaction. I lifted my head. Three more steps.
Reckless, foolish Miguel. First his erratic phone call, now this. Why was he so desperate—to catch me then, there, in a room full of spectators?
* * *
—
“Hello? Hello?”
The thumping on the door was as relentless as the dance music. I wondered whether I could hide in the bathroom all night—wait until the hideous guests had removed themselves from my house and only then slip out. By now I had been in the bathroom too long to leave. Nobody would notice my absence. Not the guests, not Richard. Beloved birthday boy.
My bare feet were cold on the tiles. Where had I left my shoes?
“Anyone in there? Hello?”
I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth. Trie
d to control the waves of nausea. Just one moment more.
I wondered what Tanya would think of me now, hiding from everything she had always wanted. I wondered what she was doing, whether she was happy. Whether knowing my truth she would still envy me.
Tanya was a year older than me; we worked the golf-club reception desk together, two Queens girls, teenagers. That was where she told me about her aunt who lived in L.A. and her plan to move across the country, “make it big.” Tanya used the phrase unironically; she spoke in idioms, tattooed them on her shoulder and lower back. I thought she was the best person I had ever met.
She had ideas and she was clever, but most of all she was magnetic. Confident, but not in the tough way that girls at school were. Tanya was never covering up insecurities; she was totally self-assured. She didn’t care how I looked or that I rarely had anything to say. She would talk for us both. And at one point, I couldn’t say when, her first-person subjects became plurals.
“Step one: We save up for a few more months, for the travel and starting money,” she would say, chewing gum, walking her fingers across the desk. “Step two: We get there, we find retail jobs. That’ll be easy—my aunt knows some stores that always need extra hands. Three: We save money living with her and we take acting classes. Four: We find the best parties. We fake it till we make it.”
We went ahead with the first part of the plan, and by the time I’d finished school we were ready to leave. We never quite reached the third step, though. It was cheap living with Tanya’s aunt—both squashed onto a pullout couch in the front room with no AC—but we paid our share of rent and bills. Living in L.A. was hard on our wallets.
The fourth part of Tanya’s plan, however, was more than cost-effective. Almost every night after closing at Food 4 Less, we would get ready in the staff bathroom, layering our mascara with all the care of interns knotting neckties for their first interviews. Then we’d hang around with Joe, an older guy who stocked shelves, getting just about high enough that we could arrive wherever we were going docile and giggly. Just enough that we could laugh along with the bad jokes. Just enough to quell our nerves.
