The Stocktons decided to let Sasha and Cord move into their vacant house and live there as long as they would like. Then, when they sold the place one day, they would split the money between Cord and his two sisters. There were some other pieces of the agreement designed to evade unnecessary inheritance taxes, but Sasha looked the other way for that bit of paperwork. The Stocktons may have let her marry their son, but she understood on a bone-deep level that they would rather let her walk in on them in the middle of an aerobic threesome with Tilda’s bridge partner than have her studying their tax returns.
After dinner, Sasha and Cord cleared the table while his parents headed into the parlor for an after-dinner drink. There was a bar cart in the corner of the room with old bottles of cognac that they liked to pour into tiny, gold-rimmed glasses. The glasses, like everything else in the house, were ancient and came with a history. The parlor had long blue velvet drapes, a piano, and an itchy ball-and-claw foot sofa that had once belonged in the governor’s mansion. Sasha made the mistake of sitting on it once and got such a bad rash on the backs of her legs that she had to use calamine lotion before bed. There was a chandelier in the foyer, a grandfather clock in the dining room that chimed so loudly Sasha screamed a little the first time she heard it, and an enormous painting of a ship on a menacingly dark ocean in the study. The whole place had a vaguely nautical vibe, which was funny since they were in Brooklyn, not Gloucester or Nantucket, and though Chip and Tilda had certainly spent summers sailing, they mostly chartered boats with crew. The glassware had ship’s wheels etched in them, the place mats had oil paintings of sailboats, the bathroom had a framed seafaring chart, and even their beach towels had diagrams for tying various knots. Sometimes Sasha found herself wandering the house in the evenings, running her hand along the ancient frames and candlesticks, whispering, “Batten down the hatches!” and “Swab the deck!” and making herself laugh.
Sasha and Cord finished moving the plates to the kitchen and joined Cord’s parents in the parlor, where he poured them each a small glass of cognac. It tasted sticky and medicinal and made Sasha weirdly aware of the small hairs inside her nostrils, but she drank it anyway, just to be companionable.
“So how do you kids like the place?” Tilda asked, folding one long leg over the other. She had dressed for dinner and was wearing a colorful blouse, a pencil skirt, sheer stockings, and three-inch heels. The Stocktons were all quite tall, and with the heels her mother-in-law positively towered over Sasha, and if anyone said that wasn’t a power move, they were lying through their teeth.
“We love it.” Sasha smiled. “I feel so lucky to have such a beautiful and spacious home.”
“But Mom,” Cord started, “we were thinking we’d like to make some changes here and there.”
“Of course, sweetheart. The house is yours.”
“It really is,” Chip agreed. “We’re all settled at Orange Street.”
“That’s so kind,” Sasha jumped in. “I was just thinking that the bedroom closet was a little tight, but if we took out those built-in cubbies in the back—”
“Oh no, sweetie,” Tilda interrupted. “You shouldn’t take those out. They are just the perfect thing for all kinds of bits and bobs—off-season footwear, hats, anything with a brim that you don’t want crushed. You’d really be doing yourself a disservice if you took those out.”
“Oh, right, okay.” Sasha nodded. “That makes sense.”
“What about this parlor furniture, though,” Cord tried again. “We could get a really comfy couch, and if we changed out the velvet curtains we could have a lot more light.”
“But those drapes were custom made for the room. Those windows are absolutely enormous, and I think if you took the drapes down you’d just be so shocked to realize how hard it is to get the right kind of thing there.” Tilda shook her head sadly, her blond hair shining in the chandelier’s light. “Why don’t you just live here for a little bit and really get to know the place and put some thought to what might make you the most comfortable. We really want you to feel at home here.” She patted Sasha’s leg firmly and stood, nodding at her husband and teetering her way to the door. “Well, we’d best be off—thanks for dinner. I’m just going to leave the Le Creuset here and you can run it in the dishwasher. No problem at all there—they don’t need to be handwashed—and I’ll take them home next time we come for dinner. Or you can just drop them at ours. And you can keep the vases—I noticed your tablescape was a bit spare.” She slipped on her jacket, ivory and pink with a hint of lavender, looped her handbag over her arm, and led her husband out the door, down the stairs, and back to their newly furnished, totally not-nautical apartment.
* * *
Whenever people asked Sasha how she and Cord met she would answer, “Oh, I was his therapist.” （A joke—WASPs don’t go to therapy.） In a world of Match and Tinder, their courtship seemed quainter than a square dance. Sasha was sitting at the counter at Bar Tabac drinking a glass of wine. Her phone had died, so she had picked up an abandoned New York Times crossword puzzle. It was nearly finished—something she’d never come close to accomplishing—and as Sasha studied the answers, Cord walked up to place an order and started chatting, marveling at the beautiful woman who also happened to be an ace at crosswords.
They’d gotten together for cocktails a week later, and despite the fact that “their whole relationship was based on a lie,” a phrase Cord liked to use regularly once he discovered Sasha couldn’t actually complete even the Monday crossword, it was pretty much the perfect romance.
Well, it was the perfect romance for a real, functional pair of adults with a normal amount of baggage, independence, alcohol use, and sexual appetite. They spent their first year together doing all the things New York couples in their early thirties do: whispering earnestly in the corner of the bar at birthday parties, expending outrageous effort getting reservations at restaurants that served eggs on ramen, sneaking bodega snacks into movie theaters, and dressing up and meeting people for brunch while secretly looking forward to the time when they would feel comfortable enough together to spend Sundays just lying on the couch eating bacon sandwiches from the deli downstairs and reading the Sunday Times. Of course, they got in fights too. Cord took Sasha camping and the tent flooded, and he made fun of her for being scared to pee alone at night, and she swore at him and told him she would never set foot in Maine ever again. Sasha’s best friend, Vara, invited them to opening night of her gallery show, and Cord missed it, stuck at work, and didn’t understand the magnitude of his transgression. Cord got pink eye and had to walk around looking like a half-rabid bunny, and Sasha teased him until he sulked. But overall, their love was storybook stuff.
It did take Sasha a long time to figure out that Cord was rich—embarrassingly long, considering that his name was Cord. His apartment was nice enough, but normal. His car was an absolute beater. His clothing was nondescript, and he was a total freak about taking good care of his stuff. He used a wallet until the leather cracked, his belts were the same ones his grandmother bought him in high school, and he treated his iPhone like it was some kind of nuclear code that needed to be carried in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, or at least wrapped in both a screen protector and a case thicker than a slice of bread. Sasha must have watched The Wolf of Wall Street too many times, because she always thought rich New York guys would have slicked back hair and constantly be paying for bottle service at clubs. Instead, they apparently wore sweaters until they had holes in the elbows and had unhealthily close relationships with their mothers.