When they arrived at the apartment, Cord’s sisters were already there, Georgiana looking beautifully bohemian, her long brown hair cascading down her back, a floaty dress skimming her ankles, freckles dotting her nose, and Darley wearing a belted jumpsuit that had surely been featured in Vogue Italia. Darley’s husband, Malcolm, was standing at her elbow, and Sasha breathed a sigh of relief. Early on she had identified Malcolm as an ally in the strange world that was siblings by marriage, and they even had a code they muttered when things got really weird: NMF. It stood for “not my family,” and it exonerated them from any situation where they felt like outside witnesses to bizarre WASP rituals, like the time in July when the Stocktons had insisted on taking a professional family photo for their Christmas card and made them all wear shades of blue and white and stand in a semicircle around Chip and Tilda, who were seated in two chairs. The photographer directed them for nearly an hour, the sun baking down upon them as Berta, their housekeeper, bustled in and out setting up the grill, and the gardening staff watered the plants, carefully avoiding eye contact. Sasha had felt like part of the Romney family and was completely mortified by the whole thing, but at least she’d been able to exchange pained glances with Malcolm. Together they were foreign-exchange students, united in their understanding that they had arrived in a deeply strange land.
Berta had been preparing all day for the housewarming party, and the dining-room table was groaning under the weight of silver platters of shrimp on ice, roast beef on crusty round melba, smoked salmon on toast points, and tiny one-bite crab cakes. She had poured glasses of white wine and arranged them on a tray that she would hold near the entrance, so that guests might begin drinking immediately upon arrival. Red wine was forbidden, obviously, mainly for the sake of the new rugs, but also because red wine teeth made everyone look terrible. Tilda was obsessed with teeth.
The guests began to arrive, and Sasha recognized many of them from her wedding. The Stocktons had so many friends at the wedding that Sasha had spent the entire reception shaking hands and trying to remember names, pausing only when her cousins pulled her out on the dance floor to shake it to “Baby Got Back.” It was an elegant affair.
Cord knew everyone and was soon swept off to the study to show a bald gentleman his father’s collection of watches. Some were rare military watches, some vintage Patek, some Rolex with matte and gilt dials, and they had been passed down from Cord’s grandfather. They were so valuable that Chip had been approached by various auction houses with offers to buy them, but he declined. He never touched them or even looked at them, but Cord said Chip liked knowing he always had money in his apartment, like wads of cash hidden under a mattress. （Sasha privately thought it might have more to do with the family aversion to decluttering.）
Georgiana was sitting on the sofa whispering with her godmother, while Darley and Malcolm were holding court with a small group from their racket club on Montague Street, showing them iPhone pictures of their children. Georgiana often looked prettily disheveled, her jacket slung over her shoulders and her wrists stacked with mismatched beaded bracelets, but Darley looked clean and expensive, her brown hair cut to shoulder length, her makeup barely there, a small gold watch and her wedding rings her only jewelry. Sasha stood awkwardly at the periphery, unsure how she might insert herself into a conversation. She was relieved when a woman with a helmet of blond hair made a beeline toward her and smiled broadly.
“Hi, I’d love another chardonnay, thanks so much,” the woman said and handed her a glass smudged with greasy fingerprints.
“Oh, I’m Sasha,” she laughed, putting her hand to her chest.
“Thank you, Sasha,” the woman replied cheerfully.
“Oh, sure,” Sasha recovered. She took the glass into the kitchen and refilled it from one of the bottles in the refrigerator and brought it back out to the dining room, where the woman took it with a whispered thanks and retreated to the table, where her husband was eating roast beef. Sasha made her way into the living room to look for Cord but was intercepted by a rotund man in a bow tie who handed her his dirty plate, nodding briefly before continuing his conversation. Confused, Sasha walked his plate to the kitchen and set it on the counter. This happened another four times before Sasha finally made it to Cord and glued herself to his side, nursing her own glass of wine and counting the minutes until she could go home. Could they smell that she wasn’t a blue blood? Did her public school education waft from her hair as though she had spent a long day cooking on a spattering griddle? She let her eyes roam around the room, studying the women around her. They were a pack of fancy poodles, and she felt like a guinea pig shivering with nerves.
Finally, the guests departed, and Chip dragged Cord into his office to give him an article he’d clipped from the Journal. （Chip and Tilda still clipped articles, refusing to forward links like everyone else.）
“Did you have fun?” Darley asked, tucking a shiny lock of hair behind her ear.
“Yeah, it was really nice,” Sasha tried.
“Such a cool way to spend a night out,” Darley said wryly, “hanging out with old people you don’t know.”
“There was one sort of funny thing,” Sasha confessed. “People kept handing me their dirty plates. I mean, it was fine, but did they give you their plates too?”
“Oh!” Darley laughed. “That’s so ridiculous! I hadn’t noticed but you’re wearing the same thing as Berta! They must have thought you were a caterer—shit! Malcolm!” She called her husband over to tell him.
Everyone laughed, Cord walking up to rub her shoulders to make sure she thought it was funny too, and Sasha played along, knowing deep in her heart that she would never wear a white blouse to a Stockton family party again as long as she lived.
TWO
Georgiana
Georgiana had a problem, and it was mostly her traitorous cheeks. She had always blushed easily, but lately it felt like she had become some sort of character out of science fiction who wore their emotions entirely on their skin. She would feel the heat rising in her face, a slight prickle on her neck, and then—poof—scarlet.
What had for years been a mostly adorable trait had turned into a professional liability now that Georgiana had a real job and, problematically, an enormous, goofy, childlike, and mortifying crush. His name was Brady and she couldn’t even look at him in meetings. They had hardly ever spoken—he was older than her, maybe early thirties, and a project manager who had no reason ever to even think of the small pink person frantically glaring at the floor—but whenever Georgiana passed him in the halls, sat in the same conference room, or ran into him at the copier, she had to avert her eyes like he was a solar eclipse and she needed those dorky paper glasses.
They worked for a not-for-profit and the offices were in an old mansion on Columbia Place that was still set up like a home. To get to her desk, Georgiana walked through a beautiful foyer where their receptionist, Denise, sat behind a heavy mahogany desk, up a spiral staircase, through a grand room that they used alternately as their conference room and cafeteria, then through a large bedroom where four desks were arranged for the grant-writing department, and into a tiny space that must have originally been for a maid or a wet nurse. They were all crammed in like sardines, but it was wonderfully charming. Georgiana’s little two-person office had a big window that looked west over the Promenade out across the East River. The mansion’s bathrooms were scattered throughout the house and decorated with maps of the various regions where they worked, and hanging over the printer, along with instructions on refilling toner, was a gilded portrait of a duchess taking a harp lesson.