He stepped close to her, so close that their arms were touching, and put the cigarette in her mouth. When he went to light it he hunched his shoulders over the cigarette. He obviously only did it to keep any winds from snuffing it out, but Amanda could see Madison curl into him, shelter herself beneath his shoulders. She could see that Madison wanted to believe he’d done it for her, that he wanted to protect her.
“Madison,” Amanda said, almost comically out of place, standing a few feet away from them. They were practically making out, at this point, and still she couldn’t move.
Madison stepped away from Chip, the cigarette in her hand.
“I told you how you can help me.”
“You can’t just leave,” Amanda said. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Why?”
She had no answer.
“You shouldn’t call him, though.”
“Who’s him?” Chip said. He blew a smoke ring.
“I’m serious,” Amanda said. “Don’t even look at the business card. This isn’t—this isn’t what we were thinking when we talked about it. This is private family stuff.”
Madison laughed, then dipped her head to Chip’s chest and let her hair fall across her cheek.
“Can we leave?” she asked him.
“Do you need to tell someone?”
“Can we please leave,” she repeated. Her voice was frantic, but when they walked away from Amanda, toward the front courtyard, Madison was the one leading the way.
Amanda stood in the garden, waiting for something that had already failed to occur, and then went back to the party to find her father.
FORTY-FIVE
Mina sighed and watched the dark roads outside their tinted windows. She’d closed the divider that separated them from the driver, but still the strains of his music filtered through. Otis Redding, it sounded like. She smiled. Not her father’s music, to be sure, and not her husband’s, either. Why have I always surrounded myself, she thought, with men who don’t listen to good music?
It hadn’t been ideal, having to wait out front in this car until Isabel appeared, but there had been no alternative. And really, it was too late to avoid how things looked. Their table was sitting empty in the middle of the whole fucking party. Tom was waiting at the house’s main entrance, waiting for the second car she’d called for him as a quick fix. Who knew where Bob had gone, how Jim and Erica had made their escape. She wondered if they’d even bought a table.
“It’s not Jim’s fault,” Isabel said, suddenly, from her side of the car. She had her hand to her face, her knuckles pressed to her white mouth. Mina scooted closer to her.
“Well, he shouldn’t have been there to begin with.”
“No, I just mean he’s only saying what he thinks we should all hear. He’s trying to purge. It’s not his fault. He’s being honest.”
“Well, honest doesn’t mean it’s right to say it out loud. And the fact that he thinks he’s being honest doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth.”
Isabel shook her head in frustration. Mina tried again, played every remaining card she had.
“They took risks, Isabel, and they bet wrong. That’s not a crime. No one did anything wrong. Mistakes like theirs happen all the time. It could have happened to anyone.”
“And yet,” Isabel said. “And yet, it didn’t. It could have happened to anyone means exactly shit, Mina. It fixes none of it.”
Mina didn’t know what to say to this; there was no counterargument there. Her own husband had pointed this out many times: it happened to them. They had to have done something wrong, those guys.
“You don’t—you don’t understand how they operate, Mina. You can’t. I know you try, but you can’t. Jim’s just sticking to his own team,” Isabel said. “Everyone’s going to stick with their team from now on. You’ll see it.”
Mina’s skin felt suddenly cool. She felt sure that if she put her fingertips to her forehead, she’d find beads of sweat.
“There are no teams,” she tried, but even she could hear that it sounded more like a question than anything else.
“Well, there should have been. We should have known better,” Isabel said, and Mina knew without asking who she meant by “we.”
“They didn’t want us to. They never go into specifics, you know that.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re our kids. Our daughters. What are we actually teaching them? Every good thing they know is just the absence of actual wrongdoing. We don’t improve any lives, not even theirs. We don’t work off our debt.”
Mina closed her eyes, felt in her stomach the shifts and turns of the vehicle beneath her. It seemed unfair, she felt. What had been asked of her this year seemed unfair. She was constantly being asked to present the most palatable version of reality to everyone around her, all these different, conflicting palates. And then, when she did, she was told she was naive, clueless, on the outside. Her husband slavered over her friend and then told her she was the disrespectful one. Her friend wallowed in her own performed grief, as if she hadn’t signed up for exactly this sort of humiliation. As if it hadn’t been pure luck that Isabel hadn’t experienced this sooner. So he sleeps around, Mina thought. This isn’t actual suffering. It might be, down the line, but this isn’t actual suffering.
And she knew what they’d all say, if she tried to express any of this to any one of them. You’re so off base, Mina. You don’t understand how it works. You weren’t there, you don’t know, you haven’t been through this. You don’t know as well as you think you do. You’re on the outside of this, even if you think you’re here with us.
Well, fine, Mina thought. Fine Tom, fine Isabel, fine Lily and Bob and anyone else who wants to take a potshot. So then who’s on the inside?
Who the fuck is on the inside, now? she thought.
FORTY-SIX
Lily sat at the kitchen table, waiting for whoever would make it home next. Her competing terrors worked in shifts. Every few minutes she’d feel somewhat pleased with herself, pleased that she’d gotten Madison out of harm’s way for a while and kept the secret. Then she’d remember that she didn’t actually know where Madison was. That there was a contradiction: Madison couldn’t possibly be young enough to need to be sheltered, away from whatever was going on in this house tonight, but at the same time old enough to be wise about all the other places that were unsafe for her.
But as her mind wandered these same spirals, again and again, Lily hit up against one idea. That it was still better. Better than Madison being here, seeing her father like this, hearing her mother talk about what had happened at the party. Maybe she’ll leave for good, Lily thought wistfully. She entertained fantastical images of Madison and this kid buying a car together, with cash of course, and hitting the road. Driving out to the other coast, parking on the sand. Leaving all of this behind them.