JESSICA
Once we’d both calmed down, we got dressed and headed out to dinner at Robert and Amanda’s house. I’d suggested to Em we stay in the hotel and order room service, but she wanted to go.
“I love Amanda’s place. Besides, I haven’t seen Chloe in years.”
I closed the hotel room door and headed down the hall. “I’m not sure Chloe will be there, isn’t she still in school?”
“It’s spring break, remember? She might be there.” Emily was visibly pulling herself together. She reminded me of my mother when she did this. My mom was the queen of the quick recovery. She frequently broke things or attempted something she shouldn’t have (like replumbing the country house on her own, at seventy) and Things Happened. But she would always survey the damage, wipe whatever needed wiping, and shake her feathers back into place.
Onward and upward, she would say. And onward and upward she would go. I suddenly missed her, that sharp sudden inhalation of cold air, the slice of memory lodging in my throat.
“Well,” I said, waiting for the elevator doors to close. “Onward and upward, baby.”
She looked at me and smiled. “I was thinking about Grandma, in the shower. That’s funny.”
“Do you remember her very well?” Emily had been still quite young when my mom had passed away, maybe twelve or so.
Emily nodded. “Of course. She was the best. She had a lathe.”
I laughed out loud, having completely forgotten that. “That’s right.” I frowned suddenly. “She didn’t let you use it, did she?”
Emily stepped through the opening doors into the lobby. “Grandma? Let me play on a deadly high-velocity tool? With blades?” She snorted. “Of course not.” But then she grinned at me over her shoulder. “How do you think I made you that Mother’s Day mug rack?”
I stopped. “You made that?”
Emily shrugged and headed to the street.
Amanda and Robert lived, as I have said, in a brownstone they bought at the end of the nineties. I don’t know what they paid for it, but let’s say they got lucky. Mind you, back then 148th Street between Broadway and Riverside was not a fancy neighborhood. Now it was a stone-cold hipster paradise, and Amanda and Robert would sit on their stoop and tut over how much the neighborhood had gentrified, despite the fact that they were among the first to start the process.
“No, we were here long before it was cool,” they would say, and maybe they were right. Anyway, now the house was looking pretty lived in, which is what happens after three kids make their way through both the place and the parents’ decorating budget. Chloe was their youngest, but she was still a few years older than Emily. We’d visited every couple of years, usually before or after seeing my parents, and Emily and Chloe had always gotten along. Chloe, being the baby of her family, enjoyed the novel sensation of being an older sister, and Emily enjoyed everything about Chloe. Which explained her squeal of delight when it was, in fact, Chloe who opened the door and welcomed us in.
“Em!”
“Chloe!”
Repeat that a few times in a pitch only dogs and dolphins can hear, and you’ll have a perfect re-creation.
Amanda was in the kitchen, as usual, a pen tucked behind her ear, her hair sticking up at the back like always. She looked up as I came in but kept stirring her cooking.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down at the counter and dropping my bag on the floor. As always, it was as if we’d seen each other yesterday. We’d lived together the last two years of college, and that kind of intimacy doesn’t wear away. Amanda’s dog, Harvey, wandered over and blundered into the chair. He was some kind of middle-sized poodle mix, with hair that stuck up like Amanda’s. When he was freshly washed he was like a camel-colored dandelion clock, but the rest of the time he was more . . . clumpy.
“Hey, Harvey,” I said, scratching his head. His milky eyes gazed up at me, and his tail waved gently back and forth. Everything about Harvey was mellow.
“He can’t see a thing anymore,” Amanda said, clunking her wooden spoon on the side of the pot, then licking it and sticking it back in. She reached for the salt. “We try not to move the furniture, but sometimes he still walks into it.”
“Oh no, poor baby,” I said, scratching his head some more.
“I don’t think he cares,” said Amanda. “He pauses, possibly mumbles an apology, and moves on.”
“How old is he now?”
“Fifteen.”
“Jeez.”
“Right? In dog years he’s, like, eighty-three. I found a chart online.”
Harvey walked over to his dog bed and spun around three times before lying down and huffing his head onto his paws.
Amanda looked at him. “Every morning I steel myself to find his dead body, and every morning he’s standing by the refrigerator door, waiting patiently for it to open.” Amanda pretends to be tough, but she isn’t fooling anyone. “I thought he was waiting for Chloe to leave for college, but she’ll graduate next year and he’s still around.”
“Maybe he’s waiting for you to die first, out of politeness,” I suggested, getting up from my stool. “Can I make myself some coffee?”
“Of course, we have one of those pod thingies now, the kids got it for me last Mother’s Day.”
I dug around in the cupboard and made myself some coffee. “Do you want some?”
Amanda shook her head. “I’m getting too old for coffee in the evenings, it’s pathetic.” She frowned at me. “Emily’s here, right? She doesn’t say hello anymore?”
I made a face. “She and Chloe disappeared upstairs immediately. They’re probably high as kites already.”
Amanda smiled. “As long as they smoke their own stuff, I’m good.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You still smoke pot?”
She nodded. “You don’t?”
“I’m a lawyer, remember?”
“Isn’t it legal in California? I would have thought you would be mildly stoned 24-7.”
I shook my head. “Clients like counsel to be fully present and on top of their game. Waving a sheaf of papers at the judge and saying, Dude, whatever works for you works for me, would not cut it.”
“Yawn,” said Amanda, finally stepping away from her cooking and coming over to give me a hug. “Rob will be home soon.”
“Where is he?” Robert usually worked from home; he was a freelance journalist. He had been a less freelance journalist earlier in his career, back when the internet hadn’t disrupted the media landscape. He’d had an actual wooden desk, complete with piles of papers and coffee cups, at the New York Times, when they decided to cut their workforce and modernize. He said that meant anyone with a journalism degree and a reasonable salary was fired, and anyone younger than thirty with more than a passing familiarity with grammar was hired.
“Is he . . . feeling better?” I trod carefully. Every time I’d seen Robert in the last ten years he was a little more bitter than the time before.
“Much better,” Amanda said, pulling a bottle of wine from the fridge. She poured herself a glass and offered one to me. I shook my head. “He’s working on a new thing, but I’ll let him tell you all about it.”
It was so incredibly good to see Chloe. It’s not like we grew up together, but we saw each other quite a bit, and emailed and stuff. She’s like my older sister, or cousin or something. Somehow the kids you’ve known all your life are less anxiety provoking. They’ve already seen you cry, even if only over broken Legos.
We headed up to her room, which had changed a lot since the last time I saw it. Then the walls had been covered with photos of her friends, printouts from Pinterest, postcards from everywhere . . . Now the walls were clear, freshly painted in a pale creamy yellow, and featured actual framed pictures.
“Wow,” I said. “This looks like a regular grown-up’s room.” I was making fun of her, and she got it right away.
“Oh please,” she said, throwing herself on the bed. “My mom did it while I was away. She said she thought it would be nicer for me to bring friends home to, but I think she was dying to get all the Justin Bieber shit off the walls.”
“Who can blame her?” I said. “I think it looks great.”
“Really?” She wrinkled her nose. “I feel like I got erased.”
“That’s heavy,” I said, laughing at her.
She tipped her head to one side. “What’s up with you? Boy trouble?” She paused. “Girl trouble? Nonbinary trouble?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Well, yes, a bit, but mostly the trouble is all mine.” I lay on my tummy on her rug, as I had done so many times before, bending my legs at the knee and putting my head on my folded arms.
“Nice high-tops,” she said. “Spill it.”
I told her about everything. The cheating. The snitching. Mom quitting. The tour. Alice and her mom. Will. Even the aerodrome part.
“Huh,” she said. “For what it’s worth, you totally did the right thing.”
“You think?”
She nodded. “Totally. Trust me, if they’d gotten caught actually cheating, you would have felt like crap you didn’t say something. Nothing lamer than regret.”
“How about social suicide? How lame is that?”
Chloe laughed. “Not super lame. The boy will come around, he’s being a jerk. If he doesn’t get over it, you’re better off without him.” She looked at me. “Why didn’t you agree to help the FBI?”
I shrugged. “It seemed one step too far.”
“Do you think there’s someone on the tour who’s involved?”
“Maybe. Alice’s mom was offering bribes. At least, it seems that way.” I told her what Casper and Will had relayed to me about dinner the night before.
Chloe was thoughtful. “It’s weird, right, how parents get about college? I thought my mom and dad were pretty laid-back, but they turned into complete monsters when college apps rolled around. And I was the third kid, they’d had two before me and they were even worse with them. Poor Jake, I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown checking college websites.”
“Where did he end up?”
“He got into Brown, went for a semester, then transferred to NYU because he missed his mommy.” She laughed. “I’m only semi-joking.”
“And now? Is he here?” I’d always had kind of a crush on her older brother, not that I’d ever let on.
“Please don’t tell me you still have a crush on him, he’s such a loser.” Chloe slapped the bed. “You do!” She rolled back, laughing.
I felt myself blushing.
She stopped laughing. “He’s still here, he’s working at the same start-up as Dad.”
“Your dad works at a start-up?” I wrinkled my nose. “I thought he was a journalist.”
She nodded. “He is, it’s kind of a journalism start-up. I think. He does tell me about it, he’s actually adorably excited about it, but I kind of tune out.” She smiled at me. “So, apart from turning government informant, what else have you been up to?”