I snuck to the edge of the living room and sat on the floor in the shadows of the hallway, like I had so many times as a child, sneaking around in my nightgown to watch everyone after I’d been sent to bed. Happy chatter. Ice cubes clinking in the good rocks glasses. Dean Martin on the record player. The warm yellow glow of the dimmed lights creating a barrier against the night. I’d watched Nan and her friends to learn how to be a person, trying to absorb all of it: the way to hold a martini glass, how to touch someone’s arm when they said something funny. It made me an anachronism. Manners and gestures from another era, figures of speech that didn’t make sense to other kids, who spent their free time playing soccer or going to Girl Scout meetings. I don’t know if I would have been a wallflower anyway; if I watched because that’s who I already was, or if watching made it so.
I spotted Nan’s next-door neighbor Ruth as she handed a drink to her behind-the-fence neighbor, Marta. They were both wearing the same hot pink t-shirt as Nan. In the hallway, I’d only noticed the front of Nan’s shirt, but now I could see that on the back was the silhouette of a mermaid posed like the figure on a trucker’s mud flap. There were at least a dozen women wearing the same shirt. They all looked so fit and fabulous that I wondered if some of the ladies who weren’t familiar were actually old friends in new shape, but I didn’t want to stare and risk someone noticing me. I felt like all the words I’d ever learned were stuck in a small dark place in my chest. The idea of polite conversation was painful.
Marta chatted up Althea, who lived one street over, and taught me how to change the oil in my car before I left for college, “because there are things a woman needs to know, Kay, and it’s our job to teach each other!” Althea was the director of the Port St. Lucie library, and everyone always teased her about being young. She was sixty-four.
The men, as always, were few and far between. Lester would probably stay on the lawn smoking his cigar for most of the night. Jack “Call me Uncle Jackie” Mitchell, in his half-buttoned Hawaiian shirt, was laughing too loud at one of Ruth’s jokes, slapping her on the back hard enough to throw her off balance.
Isaac Birnbaum sat in the blue wing chair at the far corner of the living room, scotch in hand, bewildered. He was still wearing his blue windbreaker and it was close enough to the color of the chair to look like an attempt at camouflage. Isaac showed up to all of Nan’s parties, but his wife had been such a talker that he’d never had to get comfortable with party chatter. In high school, I worked for him at his tailor shop during summers and after school. I loved the comfortable silence he allowed. Once, we spent an entire Saturday sewing hems without ever exchanging more than a smile.
The ottoman next to Isaac was open. If I cut through the kitchen and went in the other entrance to the living room, I might be able to sit next to him without fanfare. We could be invisible together, and later, when Nan nagged me about being antisocial, I could honestly say, “I was there the whole time!”
I started to make my move. A shriek came from the crowd.
“Oh my god!” A tiny woman charged at me, her shock of dyed auburn hair was short and spiky. The sea of pink shirts parted to make way. “I thought I saw a pretty little face over there!”
It wasn’t until she leaned in to kiss my cheek that I realized it was Bitsie. It was the scent of Bitsie I recognized. Jean Nate and baby powder. Her flabby underarm “angel wings,” as she called them, were gone. She was sleek and toned, except for a charming little pouch under her chin.
“You look amazing!” I said.
“Billy!” she said breathlessly. “But I’m not having an affair with him either.” Bitsie laughed and her face sunk into the folds of her neck like a turtle. I’d always loved the way she didn’t care how laughter made her look. She laughed with her whole self in a way I wished I could. She’d been a pediatric intensive care nurse until she retired at sixty-five, and she’d seen so many sad things that when there was joy to be had, she was all in.
I wondered if it was Nan or Billy who told her about my grand entrance.
“I never seem to get used to you all grown up,” Bitsie said, reaching up to mess my hair. “I still can’t believe you didn’t invite me to your wedding!”
Eric and I were married at city hall on a Wednesday.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “No one was invited.” I’d assumed Nan told her friends why I was back. I didn’t want to have to say the words: I am divorced.
“I’m going to be at your next one,” Bitsie said, like it was fact. “With bells on. No excuses. And if you pick a dud, I will shout my objections.” She winked at me.
“Where were you last time?” I asked, slipping into the old rhythm of our banter. “I could have used a warning.”
“You only get warnings the second time. You have to make mistakes on your own first.” Bitsie leaned in close. “I was married once before, you know. To a man,” she whispered. “Us divorcées have to stick together.” She looped her arm into mine and called out, “Somebody get this girl a martooni!”
Suddenly, I felt settled. I could handle a party if Bitsie was my wingman. I watched her pour gin and vermouth into Nan’s old silver shaker.
“Dirty?”
I nodded, and she added a dash of olive juice to the mix, before giving it the briefest of jiggles. Her freckled hands were steady when she poured. She passed me a too-full glass and ushered me to the loveseat for a chat.
“Seriously, how are ya, kiddo?” she asked. “I barely saw you last time you were here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I should have spent more time—”
“It meant a lot that you came home for the funeral.” Bitsie patted my back the way you might comfort a baby. “I know how hard that was for you.”
“How are you?” I asked, embarrassed I’d made any of it about me. She was the one mourning the most. I came home for her wife’s funeral with every intention of being a person she could lean on, the kind who sets out platters of cold cuts and does the dishes at the end of the night. But the smell of embalming fluid at the wake got to me in the worst way, and I never even made it to the funeral. I never made it past the lobby of the funeral home. I told Nan it was a stomach flu, but she knew it wasn’t that kind of sick. I walked six miles home in stiff, sweaty ballet flats to get away from that smell. The blister holes in my heels took weeks to mend and left scars.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry she’s gone.”
“I still wake up every day thinking Bunny is going to be there.” Bitsie’s smile was sad and sweet. “I’m scared someday I’ll wake up and already know she isn’t, and that’s when she’ll really be gone.”
I set my martini on the coffee table and grabbed her hand. She squeezed mine back.
“If that happens,” I said, “I’ll come over early and bang pans in the kitchen and sing the ‘Good Morning’ song so you can lie in bed and pretend.”
Bitsie laughed. “She loved you so much, you know.”
The tears happened fast, splashing on my shirt. Bitsie pressed her forehead to mine.
“I loved her,” I whispered. I couldn’t even find words for the extent. Bitsie was Nan’s best friend from all the way back when they were teenagers. Bunny always made me feel like I was her friend, like Nan was over to visit Bitsie and I was there to visit her. She kept me from being a kid in tow. She made me feel important.
“Bun always wanted you to have her sewing machine.”
“I couldn’t . . .”
“Why don’t you take her whole sewing room? You still have a key, right? Come over tomorrow. I have a project for you.”
“What are you old biddies carrying on about?” Nan called from across the room, dancing over to us. “Get up! Get up! It’s a party, for Christ’s sake!” I used my leg muscles to stand while Nan went through the motions of pulling me to my feet. She gave a little shimmy and bumped her hip to mine. She was at least two drinks in. “Isn’t my granddaughter gorgeous?” she said to Bitsie as she squeezed my cheeks, forcing a fish face.
“Gorgeous!” Bitsie said. “You know, Billy is single!”
“I do know!” Nan said.
“Oh, what a beautiful couple!” Bitsie shouted, giving me an exaggerated wink.
“You’re both the worst!” I said, smiling. “The absolute worst. And I love you.” My glass was almost empty, and it had been a long time since I’d had anything stiffer than chardonnay. I kissed them both and went to the kitchen for a glass of water before anyone could hand me another martooni.