October 19
The Present
5:30 P.M.
Everything costs money; that’s what her mom always used to say. Nothing was free in this world. Mo’ money mo’ problems; that was what P. Diddy used to say, or was it Biggie Smalls? Who was the one who died? Biggie? Tupac? Both? Ellie couldn’t name a Tupac song to save her life and she didn’t pay attention to rap battles but did try to keep abreast of the culture. You had to, especially if you were in the garment trade. Not that she liked the latest trends. It was annoying how all the hot new labels were these dirt cheap, ugly-as-sin clothes from Korean distributors who sold them through pretty girls’ posts on Instagram. The kids who were buying them didn’t care about labels anymore either; they were wearing twenty-dollar hoodies with nineties show logos (why was the Friends hoodie so popular with thirteen-year-olds? Was it Netflix? She’d have to ask Sam, who would know) and tiny T-shirts with aspirational or ironic quotes on them. It was the end of fashion.
Like every woman of her generation, Ellie would have died and gone to Chanel instead of heaven. She’d spent her first paycheck on a pair of those boots with the double-C clasp. It meant something, to wear Chanel. It meant you’d made it, that you had put your past squarely in the Kmart dustbin where it belonged. She wasn’t sure if the kids who wore those new no-name labels cared about designers in the way that she and her friends used to. If they would kill to buy a Gucci bag like she did. Her own line, Wild & West, was meant for the hipster twenty- and thirtysomething, someone who wanted to look like she did, all flowing blond hair, barefoot and sexy in a sarong, but at their price point—five hundred dollars for a jersey jumpsuit—most of their clients were hot moms in their forties and fifties. She did a lot of business with a certain hard-bodied, suntanned, sun-bleached, second-wife type from the Laguna-Newport-Palm-Beach nexus.
She put away her phone and its disturbing text. She didn’t have time to think about what that meant right now. Was he really coming? To the party? Could she stop him? Did she want to? Dammit! How did he even find out about it? She never posted on Facebook. (Ew, Facebook was for approval-seeking losers.) How did he even have her number? Someone must have given it to him. She shook her head and put those thoughts away.
There were so many things to do before her guests arrived. Make sure there were candles in the bathroom. Make sure they had the right fluffy paper towels out, the ones like they had at Barney’s. Thick. Soft. You didn’t want your guests using the same embroidered for-show-only guest towel, which would get bedraggled and gross by the end of the night. She’d learned that from her time with Archer. His penthouse had been stocked with all the right linens.
Then she had to make sure all the tealight votives were lit, the ones leading up to the driveway and the ones scattered all over the garden and by the pool. Make sure the pool candles were secured and ready to float. Put out the citronellas so they wouldn’t be attacked by a thousand mosquitos when it got dark.
Another text.
I can’t make it I’m so sorry. Happy birthday E xo M
From her oldest friend! They’d known each other forever, since they were kids. Ellie was annoyed. Who cancels a half hour before a party? Maybe she knew he was coming to the party. Maybe that was why Mishon wasn’t showing up all of a sudden. It was weird to have a friend who knew you so well. Ellie wasn’t even sure she liked it, or if she kept her around because she knew all her secrets. Well, almost all of them.
Todd huffed by her; her husband always got anxious before every social gathering, and parties at their house brought out the worst. He was snapping at the caterer, growling at the bartenders, yelling at the kids. She should be used to it by now, but mostly it was irritating. Just take a fucking Xanax and relax already. He wasn’t even dressed—he was still wearing a ratty T-shirt and board shorts.
“Don’t put that there!” he yelled at a hapless waiter who had moved one of the vases from the mantel to make room for a line of shot glasses. “It’ll stain the wood!”
The waiter startled and almost dropped the vase.
“Todd!” Ellie said, hands on hips.
He wheeled toward her, looking positively murderous. “What?”
“STOP IT!”
“STOP WHAT?”
It was her birthday. For one day out of the fucking year, could he not be himself for once? One day. One night. To celebrate herself and her achievements, couldn’t he just let them have a nice party? She promised herself she wouldn’t fall for it, that she would let him rant and rage because when the doorbell rang and the first guest arrived, he always turned into the consummate host, pressing drinks and making small talk and making everyone feel so warm and welcome. He was good at that. But for the hour before the party, he was awful.
So it always happened that Todd was smooth and smiling when the guests arrived, while Ellie would be the one shaken and brittle because they had just had a screaming fight in front of all the help beforehand.
Don’t do it, don’t do it, she told herself.
She did it.
“FUCKING GET OUT OF THE WAY ALREADY AND LET THESE PEOPLE DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS!” she screamed at him.
“FUCK YOU! DON’T FUCKING TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK I CAN DO IN MY OWN FUCKING HOUSE!” he screamed back.
The caterer ignored them; she’d seen it all before.
Todd stomped away, having dumped all his social anxiety on his wife, who was now, predictably, shaken and brittle and full of rage.
Why? Why was she even having this party anyway? It wasn’t for fun. It was to show off. To let everyone gawk at the yards of diamonds dripping down her cleavage in her new straight-from-the-runway Delpozo dress and to wear her new Lucite heels from that tranny boutique downtown. Yeah, she still said tranny; she knew you weren’t supposed to say it anymore, which was why she said it. Tranny. You were supposed to say transgender or genderqueer like Sam’s friends, all those beautiful boy-girls and girl-boys. But what else would you call a store that sold seven-inch heels up to size fifteen, a store that was practically exploding with marabou feathers?
The doorbell rang, and since Ellie was the closest one to it, she opened it, annoyed that someone had arrived early. Didn’t people know it was a faux pas to arrive early to a party? When the invite said six o’clock, it meant please arrive at six thirty. Any earlier was simply irritating and provincial.
But it wasn’t a guest standing at the doorway, it was Sam.
Samantha Alyson Stinson. Her stepdaughter.
“Sam!” she said. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be home till Thanksgiving! And look at your hair!”
Sam had cut her hair. It was very, very short, almost like a crew cut. Did this mean she was also going through a gender-fluid phase?
“I dyed it blond and hated it, so I had to cut it because it was falling out,” said Sam. So no, not a sexual orientation signifier but a hair fail.
Ellie put her arms around her kid. Sam was her kid as much as Giggy and Otis and Eli. Maybe she even loved Sam more because she didn’t want to love her any less. Didn’t want to be pegged as that stepmom. “You’re too skinny!”
“Is the party tonight?” Sam asked, scowling at the flurry of activity around the house. “Oh, fuck.”
“Wait, you didn’t come home for my party? This isn’t a surprise you and Daddy cooked up? And don’t swear; it’s tacky,” she admonished.
Sam sighed. “No, Ellie, it’s not.”
Ellie wished Sam would call her Mom, or Mommy, or Mama, like she used to, when she was a kid. But lately, Sam called her by her first name, which was annoying. She supposed it was because technically Sam already had a mom. Montserrat was invited to the party even. It was a magnanimous gesture on Ellie’s part, given all the toxic history between Montserrat and Todd, Montserrat and Ellie, Montserrat and the three of them, Montserrat who had a habit of calling child services on Ellie and Todd, Montserrat who had made Sam believe that Ellie had stolen her father from them, Montserrat who had overdosed twice and, once when Sam was just twelve, locked her out of the house at three in the morning after throwing a water bottle at Sam’s head (ouch), but of course when the police officers came, they’d questioned Todd. Ellie had been in China, at the factory, haggling with her suppliers in the middle of a big meeting when she got a call from her hysterical child saying Montserrat had freaked out and she was alone, on the street, at three A.M., please come get her.
But of course now Montserrat (stupid name) was Mom, Montserrat was sober, Montserrat was a life coach (of all things!). And Ellie was just Ellie. Not the parent who had flown out that very hour from Shenzhen to deal with the mess. Not Mom. No! Not that. Just Ellie.
Sam put her dusty bags down on the terrazzo. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?”
Sam raised her eyebrow. She looked like a cute baby lesbian, like Jenny Shimizu, Angelina Jolie’s Japanese model girlfriend before she married and divorced Brad Pitt and became Mother Teresa slash Mia Farrow with all those children. Ellie decided it was kind of a good look on Sam. Asian butch girl. Maybe she would put Sam in the latest Wild & West campaign.
“Because there’s nothing to say,” said Sam in a belligerent tone.
Ellie sighed. Todd was supposed to be dealing with Sam, and to be on top of whatever problems she had. Sam’s issues—academic, emotional, and otherwise—were supposed to be more his responsibility than hers, since she was his biological child. At least he was supposed to be on it while Ellie was trying to fix the financial mess they were in. But of course Todd had dropped the ball. Ellie did not have the bandwidth to deal with whatever this was right now. Right now, she was in the middle of selling her company to a wealthy Korean investor (if you can’t beat them, join them, or in her case, sell fifty percent to them) and trying to keep everything afloat and one step ahead of the bill collectors.
Besides, Sam had never been much trouble. The kid had always been a straight-A-plus nerd. She never had any friends, had withdrawn into herself and her studies as a rebellion against her hard-partying cokehead mom and her negligent dad and her too-busy-at-work stepmom. Ellie had done her best. And she considered Sam a fait accompli.
Sam was at Stanford! It was something Ellie dropped into every conversation. We can’t make it to dinner because we’re visiting our eldest at Stanford. Stanford homecoming is next week! Stanford housing is so expensive! We can’t decide whether to fly or drive down to Stanford. Stanford, Stanford, Stanford; it was a mantra to keep bad luck, bad fortune, bad things from happening. It was a sign that they’d done well by their kids, that they were the best parents in the world. Stanford! They’d made it all the way to the top! Take that, child services!
“Did something happen at school?” asked Ellie.
Sam shrugged and took out her phone, started texting someone.
Ellie took a deep, calming breath. “Fine. Have it your way. We’ll talk about this later. Get ready for the party. You look like you just got out of a plane.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Against her better judgment, knowing full well the kid was just manipulating her, trying to get on her good side, Ellie felt herself melt at being called Mom again.
“Okay, go! Hurry! The guests will be here any minute!”
Sam went, and the doorbell rang again.