“That is not the point, Mom.” Georgiana rolled her eyes. “Can we please play tennis?”
They always played doubles the same way, Georgiana and Darley against Cord and their mother. It was annoying, but Cord was stronger and faster than either of his sisters and so he made up for the fact that Tilda was not quite as nimble as she once was. Darley was strong if slightly erratic, and alongside Georgiana the teams worked out evenly. Although their father was a decent player himself, he and Tilda never played together—they always ended up fighting and so had decided at some point in the nineties to preserve their marriage and keep their tennis lives separate.
Georgiana was often amazed by the variety of experiences the word “marriage” encompassed. Her parents lived together, they slept in the same room, but for all their physical proximity they seemed to live separate existences. They had completely different interests, different friends, they read different books and watched different movies. While they went on vacation together, they spent their days apart, Tilda shopping, getting manicures, and exercising, Chip reading the paper, golfing, and drinking with his friends. Darley and Malcolm were the exact opposite. They were apart more than they were together, but they talked all day, they agreed on nearly everything, they sometimes sat in bed on entirely different continents and ate identical takeout and watched movies together. It almost irked Georgiana how loyal Darley was to Malcolm. She sometimes wished that Darley would just find fault with her husband, would hate the way he brushed his teeth, the way he pursed his lips when he read. But their marriage was an egg, a yolk and a white, all surrounded by shell. Darley may have played family tennis as a Stockton, but Georgiana was beginning to suspect that in her heart of hearts Darley was becoming a Kim, leaving Georgiana all alone.
* * *
The benefit was held on the first floor of the Brooklyn Museum. A stage was erected where the tickets were usually sold, and a DJ set up for after-dinner dancing. Georgiana had helped work on the table arrangements, so she knew that Curtis had bought an entire ten-top for twenty thousand dollars. The hope, of course, was that he would be so moved by the evening’s proceedings that he would leave a pledge in the small envelope set under his dinner plate. Georgiana hadn’t recognized any of the names he had submitted as his guests, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. It wasn’t like she expected him to bring a crew of high school friends to a presentation on international health care masquerading as a fancy dinner.
The night of the benefit, Georgiana considered wearing her mother’s Chanel earrings with two giant Cs hanging to her shoulders, but she wasn’t convinced Curtis would get the joke, and it was probably in poor taste to wear something like that when talking about children without access to clean drinking water. She opted instead to wear her mother’s Missoni dress and a pair of heels that made her absurdly tall.
She got there early and set herself up by the door to greet guests but was helping one of their big donors find the coat check when Curtis arrived. He was with a beautiful woman who was clearly his mother, which made Georgiana feel strangely happy. She had somehow assumed that his public statements about Taconic would have put him at odds with his parents. She spent the entire cocktail hour watching him out of the corner of her eye, unable to make her way over as various crises emerged and resolved—a last-minute addition was required for table 3, the photographer needed to know who to shoot, the iPad that Gabrielle was using for registration had frozen.
As cocktail hour ended and servers encouraged guests to find their tables, Georgiana dashed back behind the stage to make sure Peter was mic’d for his remarks. When ten minutes later Georgiana took her seat close to the edge of the stage, she saw that the rest of Curtis’s guests had arrived, and the woman she had seen with him outside the Casino, the one walking her dog, was seated to his left. Curtis caught her looking and smiled, nodding his head briefly in greeting. Georgiana felt her cheeks warm, and she waved back then promptly felt like an idiot.
She hadn’t seen the video about their recent work, and once it started she realized what a terrible mistake that had been. There, before the entire room, was Brady’s face. He stood alongside Meg and Divya at a small airport, a backpack slung over his shoulder, sunglasses on his head. The photo must have been taken the day before he died. There were pictures of him leading a meeting in a hospital boardroom, wearing a blue lanyard and holding three vaccine boxes with orange stickers, pictures of him alongside the rest of the team in Pakistan leaning over a laptop. Georgiana felt tears spilling down her cheeks. Someone should have told her there would be pictures of Brady in the video. She pulled her eyes from the screen and tried to gather herself, tried to slow her breathing, and when she looked out across the crowd she saw Curtis’s eyes on her. She quietly slipped away from her seat and stumbled to the bathroom, unspooling a sheaf of toilet paper to press against her face. Once she regained her breath, she wet her hands and patted her fingers under her eyes to try to blend the stain from her mascara. She smoothed her dress and tucked her hair behind her ears, broke a Klonopin in half, and let it dissolve under her tongue. She was fine. She could hold herself together.
She busied herself along the periphery of the party through the salads, the main speaker, and the entrées. When coffee was served, she emerged from backstage to see people starting to drift from the tables, a line forming at the coat check for those not interested in dancing. When Curtis tapped her shoulder, she jumped.
“Hey, great event, congrats,” he said.
“Thanks so much for coming. I’m sure your calendar is full of these things.” The old nervous blush tickled her cheeks, and she felt strangely aware of the space he had touched on her shoulder.
“It is, but these evenings are my job right now. I want to learn as much as I can about different organizations.” He was wearing a slim navy suit that made his eyes look bluer than usual, his blond hair was combed neatly, his face freshly shaven, and he smelled slightly of coffee.
“Who were the other people at your table?” Georgiana peeked over and saw empty chairs, dessert plates untouched.
“I’m working with a team now. A group of people with experience in corporate giving.”
“That makes sense.” Georgiana smiled, the blush finally cooling from her face. “How’d we do?”
“Really well. I love the focus on teaching health-care providers in-country. You have to create a meaningful structure that will work after the money is gone.”
She nodded. “I think that’s part of why the work in Pakistan is so important. So many women are hesitant about seeing male doctors. Their husbands or mothers-in-law won’t allow it. So we train the female health volunteers to work in their communities with family planning and immunizations.”
“That makes so much sense.” Curtis took a breath uncertainly. “You looked really upset during the video. Were you friends with the people who died in the plane crash?” He looked at her intently, and his eyes were so full of light she suddenly felt flustered. He was uncomfortably handsome.
“Yes,” Georgiana stammered. “My friend Meg was one of the three people who died.” She couldn’t talk to Curtis McCoy about Brady. She’d start crying all over again.