Jule thought about Immie every day. Every hour. She remembered the way Immie covered her face with her hands or her hoodie when she felt vulnerable. The high, bubblegum sound of her voice. Imogen rolled her rings around her fingers. She had those two cigarette burns on her upper arm and a scar on one hand from a hot pan of cream-cheese brownies. She chopped onions fast and hard with an outsize heavy knife, something she had learned to do from a cooking video. She smelled like jasmine and sometimes like coffee with cream and sugar. There was a lemony spray she put on her hair.
Imogen Sokoloff was the type of girl teachers never thought worked to her full potential. The type of girl who blew off studying and yet filled her favorite books with sticky notes. Immie refused to strive for greatness or to work toward other people’s definitions of success. She struggled to wrest herself from men who wanted to dominate her and women who wanted her exclusive attention. She refused, over and over, to give any single person her devotion, preferring instead to make a home for herself that she defined on her own terms, and of which she was master. She had accepted her parents’ money but not their control of her identity, and had taken advantage of her good fortune to reinvent herself, to find a different way of living. It was a particular kind of bravery, one that often got mistaken for selfishness or laziness. She was the type of girl you might think was nothing more than a private-school blonde, but you’d be very wrong if you went no deeper than that.
—
Today, when the hostel woke up and the backpackers began staggering to the bathroom, Jule went out. She spent the day as she often did, on self-improvement. She walked through the halls of the British Museum for a couple of hours, learning the names of paintings and drinking a series of Diet Cokes from small bottles. She stood in a bookshop for an hour and committed a map of Mexico to memory, then learned by heart a chapter of a book called Wealth Management: Eight Core Principles.
She wanted to call Paolo, but she could not.
She wouldn’t answer any calls except the one she was waiting for.
The phone rang as Jule came out of the tube near the hostel. It was Patti Sokoloff. Jule saw the cell number and used her general American accent.
Patti was in London, it turned out.
Jule was not expecting that.
Could Jule meet for lunch at the Ivy tomorrow?
Of course. Jule said how surprised she was to hear from Patti. They had spoken a number of times directly after Immie’s death, when Jule had talked to police officers and shipped back items from Immie’s London flat while Patti nursed Gil in New York City, but all those difficult conversations had finished some weeks ago.
Patti normally had a busy, chatty way about her, but today she sounded low and her voice didn’t have its usual animation. “I should tell you,” she said, “that I lost Gil.”
That was a shock. Jule thought of Gil Sokoloff’s swollen gray face and the funny little dogs he doted on. She had liked him very much. She hadn’t known he was dead.
Patti explained that Gil had died two weeks ago of heart failure. All those years of kidney dialysis, and his heart had killed him. Or maybe, Patti said, because of Immie’s suicide, he had not wanted to continue living any longer.
They talked about Gil’s illness for a while, and about how wonderful he was, and about Immie. Patti said what a help Jule had been, handling things in London when the Sokoloffs couldn’t leave New York. “I know it seems strange for me to be traveling,” Patti said, “but after all those years of looking after Gil, I can’t bear to be in the apartment alone. It’s filled with his things, Immie’s things. I was going to…” Her voice trailed off, and when she started talking again it was forced and bright. “Anyway, my friend Rebecca lives in Hampshire and she offered me use of her guest cottage to rest up and heal. She told me I had to come. Some friends are just like that. I hadn’t talked to Rebecca in ages, but the moment she called—after hearing about Immie and Gil—we started up again right away. No small talk. It was all honesty. We went to Greenbriar together. School friends have these memories, these shared histories that bind them together, I think. Look at you and Immie. You picked up again so brilliantly after being apart.”
“I’m very, very sorry about Gil,” Jule said. She meant it completely.
“He was sick forever. So many pills.” Patti paused, and when she went on she sounded choked. “I think after what happened to Immie, he just had no fight left in his body. He and Immie, they were my sweetie potatoes.” Then she pushed her voice again into busy brightness: “Now, back to the reason I called. You’ll come to lunch, right?”
“I said I’d come. Of course.”
“The Ivy, tomorrow at one. I want to thank you for all you did for me, and for Gil, after Immie died. And I even have a surprise for you,” said Patti. “Something that might actually cheer us both up. So don’t be late.”
When the conversation was over, Jule held the phone to her chest for a while.
The Ivy inhabited its narrow corner of London perfectly. It seemed custom-fit to its plot of land. Inside, the walls were lined with portraits and stained glass. It smelled like money: roasted lamb and hothouse flowers. Jule wore a fitted dress and ballet flats. She had added red lipstick to her college-girl makeup.
She found Patti waiting for her at a table, drinking water from a wineglass. When Jule had last seen her eleven months ago, Immie’s mother had been a glossy woman. She was a dermatologist, midfifties, trim except for a potbelly. Her skin had had a moist pinkish sheen, and her hair had been long, dyed deep brown and ironed into loose curls. Now the hair was gray at the roots and chopped into a bob. Her mouth looked swollen and manly without lipstick. She wore, as women of the Upper East Side do, narrow black pants and a long cashmere cardigan—but instead of heels, she had on a pair of bright blue running shoes. Jule almost didn’t recognize her. Patti stood and smiled as Jule came across the room. “I look different, I know.”
“No you don’t,” Jule lied. She kissed Patti’s cheek.
“I can’t do it any longer,” said Patti. “All that time in front of the mirror in the morning, the uncomfortable shoes. Putting on the face.”
Jule sat down.
“I used to put on my face for Gil,” Patti went on. “And for Immie, when she was little. She used to say, ‘Mommy, curl your hair! Go put on sparkles!’ Now there’s no reason. I’m taking time off work. One day I thought, I don’t have to bother. I walked out the door without doing anything and it was such a relief, I can’t say. But I do know it disturbs people. My friends worry. But I think, meh. I lost Imogen. I lost Gil. This is me now.”
Jule was anxious to say the right thing, but she didn’t know if sympathy or distraction was required. “I read a book about that in college,” she said.
“About what?”
“The presentation of self in everyday life. This guy Goffman had the idea that in different situations, you perform yourself differently. Your character isn’t static. It’s an adaptation.”
“I have stopped performing myself, you mean?”
“Or you’re doing it another way now. There are different versions of the self.”
Patti picked up the menu, then reached over and touched Jule’s hand. “You need to go back to college, sweetie potato. You’re so smart.”
“Thank you.”
Patti looked Jule in the eye. “I’m very intuitive about people, you know,” she said, “and you have so much potential. You’re hungry and adventurous. I hope you know you could be anything in the world you want.”
The waiter arrived and took a drink order. Someone else set down a bread basket.
“I brought you Imogen’s rings,” said Jule, when the bustle was over. “I should have mailed them back before, but I—”
“I get it,” said Patti. “It was hard to let them go.”
Jule nodded. She handed over a package of tissue paper. Patti pulled the sticky tape off. Inside lay eight antique rings, all carved or shaped like animals. Immie had collected them. They were funny and unusual, carefully crafted, all different styles. The ninth one, Jule still wore. Immie had given it to her. It was a jade snake on her right ring finger.