It turned out that Cord’s cousin was an avid art collector, that he knew one of her professors at Cooper Union, and that he was actually really fascinated to hear about the way she took her classical training and used it to create brand identities. They talked about their favorite photographers, their favorite Chelsea galleries, and he so completely charmed her that the entire dinner passed in a happy blur of easy conversation.
After dinner there was dancing, and Sasha found herself gamely following Cord out to the floor. It seemed to her that all the men in his family were so scarred by the ballroom dance classes they had been forced into as adolescents that none of them ever learned to dance like normal people, and just hid by the bar drinking at all the weddings. Cord was the exception to the rule: never one to miss the opportunity to look like a jackass, he dragged her around, dipping her theatrically and pretending to bury his face in her breasts while she laughed and acted like she was using his tie as a leash. Out of the corner of her eye Sasha saw Darley dancing with Malcolm and even Chip and Tilda making a brief appearance for a song by the Beatles.
When the cake was cut the older guests began to make their exits in a flurry of kisses and drunken embraces. The band finished and the younger cousins drifted out of the tent and into the club, where the bar was still open, and the caterers brought out trays of small hamburgers and cones of fries. Georgiana was curled up on a leather couch, her shoes long abandoned, with her cousin Bubbles splayed out inelegantly next to her. Darley and Malcolm joined them, looking flushed and happy. Malcolm had taken off his tie and stuffed it into the pocket of his suit jacket.
Archie and his new wife came in to cheers and hollers, and soon he started telling everyone his favorite story about the house on Spyglass Lane. Sasha had heard the story half a dozen times, but it never got old. Archie and his wife had been on vacation in Telluride and after a long day skiing they had some wine and decided to watch a porn in the hotel room. Five minutes into the thing, Archie realized why everything looked so familiar: the actors were having sex on the chaise longue on Spyglass Lane. It was unmistakably the Stockton home—you could see the hedge maze and the tennis courts in the background. Archie highly doubted Uncle Chip and Auntie Tilda had been so short on cash that they had started renting the place out to filmmakers, so he called up Cord to tell him. This put Cord in the wildly awkward position of having to tell his parents that their country house was featured in a porn and no, he hadn’t seen it, but he knew someone who had, and they probably needed to call their lawyer.
It turned out the weekday landscapers had been using various vacation homes for years without getting caught, but you had to wonder how many people had seen the movies and been too embarrassed to ever try to solve the mystery. Tilda had the caretaker chuck the chaise longues at the transfer station, bought new ones with nicer cushions, had the place deep cleaned, and dumped enough chemicals in the pool to kill chlamydia and any neighboring wildlife.
As Archie and Cord fell all over each other laughing, Sasha excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, peeing and then quickly fixing her makeup. When she emerged, she didn’t see Cord anywhere, and Darley was caught up in conversation, so she let herself quietly collapse into an armchair, hidden from view so she could check her phone. As she scrolled through her emails, she half listened as Bubbles told them about a trip she was planning to the Caymans. Darley suddenly interrupted, confused. “George, weren’t you wearing a purple dress before?”
“Oh, yeah,” Georgiana said sleepily. “I’ve been wearing this dress since cocktail hour.”
“Wait, you had a different dress?” Bubbles asked. She was drunk and talking more loudly than any sober person might.
“I was wearing a lavender dress, but I spilled crab and cocktail sauce all over it so Sasha traded dresses with me.”
“Sasha gave you her dress?” Darley repeated, confused about what Sasha was then wearing.
“Wait, who?” Bubbles sounded genuinely lost.
“Sasha took off her own dress and gave it to me,” Georgiana tried to explain.
“Oh, that’s so funny! Sasha! I had no idea who you meant! You two always call her the Gold Digger!” Bubbles cackled. Georgiana laughed for what seemed like the first time all night and Sasha felt her skin grow cold. She quietly got up and walked out to the parking lot.
* * *
Sasha never told Cord what happened at the Greenwich wedding, pleading a migraine and wearing sunglasses on the drive back to Brooklyn the next day. After that she decided that she was done trying with Cord’s sisters. She was done inviting the family for dinner at the limestone, she was done bringing bagels to Orange Street for brunch, she was done joining for weekends at Spyglass or weekday lunch at Darley’s apartment. Certain events would be unavoidable, like birthdays or holidays, but otherwise she would keep her distance. Yes, Georgiana was in pain. She had slept with a married man and he died. That was terrible. Yes, Darley was worried for Malcolm, scared his career had been permanently derailed. But it was now clear to Sasha that they had only confided their secrets in her because of how little it mattered to them what Sasha thought. She wasn’t really their family; she wasn’t someone who could pass any kind of meaningful judgment. She was a receptacle for an emotional outburst, the human equivalent of screaming into a pillow.
FOURTEEN
Georgiana
After Archie’s wedding Georgiana didn’t leave her apartment all week. She took personal days from work; when Cord called she sent it to voice mail and texted back the words “stomach virus.” She sent the same text to Lena. She slept and slept, and her dreams were strange and alarming. She was in an airport and Brady was there, somewhere, and she ran down long hallways searching for him, stopped by security, stuck in throngs of people who wouldn’t move and let her through in time. She woke covered in sweat, and it came to feel like she really did have a stomach virus. She ate dry cereal and tried to watch mindless television, but all around her house she kept finding Brady’s love letters. With the teacups a note that read, “Your backhand is great—but your backside is even better.” Under a pillow on the couch, “Let’s make babies with breasts.”
On Monday Georgiana went back to work, partially because she knew that if she continued to call in sick she would be fired, but also because she wanted to hear more about Brady, more about what happened. There was a pall cast over everything at the office. People wore dark colors, and from her chair in the maid’s room Georgiana could see Meg’s desk, and she watched as the others from grant writing packed her personal things in a box: a cardigan, a silver dish that held paper clips, a small stuffed bulldog wearing a shirt that said georgetown, the bottle of Advil. To think of all the ambition Meg had, to think of everything she would have done in her life made Georgiana ache with loss. Because they had lunch together on occasion, people in the office understood they were friends, and as she watched them pack Meg’s desk, tears rolled down her face and the team in grant writing tutted sympathetically and handed her a Kleenex. They had been crying all week themselves.
Amina came to the office to pack up Brady’s desk and see their friends. When Georgiana heard she was on the first floor she knew to stay in the maid’s room. If she saw Amina she would break apart, her outrageous grief would expose her, and she would in turn double this woman’s own heartbreak. She hated to think of Amina boxing up Brady’s apartment, his bicycle, his blue bedspread, his maps, his stack of biographies. She would surely sell the place, and any evidence that Brady had ever even lived in Brooklyn would be gone.