Mullin was staring intently across the yard, and Sasha saw how much it cost him to say this, to say it to someone who had hurt him so badly. She could stop hurting him now. She could be kinder to Mullin than the Stocktons were to her. She could be open even if the Stocktons were closed.
“Did you know that the pineapple symbolizes welcome and hospitality?”
“Yeah.” Mullin gave her an amused frown. “Sailors would bring them home and put them in front of their houses back in the day.”
“Exactly. But it’s actually kind of messed up. Columbus first saw them in Brazil and brought one back to Europe for the king of Spain. They were a prestige fruit for the uberelites. A status symbol that only the wealthy could have. We think of pineapples as this whimsical fruit, but they’re actually a symbol of colonialism and imperialism.”
“Good to know.” Mullin nodded, smiling.
“I’ll take a penny for that one.”
“Come here.” Mullin reached out. Sasha stepped in and let him hug her. She wasn’t sure she’d felt his arms around her since she was nineteen; it was strange. The way he smelled was both familiar and not, the way his beard scratched her cheek, the broadness of his chest. Mullin pulled away and together they sat down on the bottom step of the deck, facing the maple tree and listening to the neighborhood.
Sasha’s mother and brothers came home an hour later. The treatment had gone well. His lungs had been filling with blood clots, so the doctors injected him with a medicine they use for stroke patients. It had restored blood flow and then after a few hours they put him on heparin. He’d be on blood thinners for six months, but he was already breathing better. It was a reprieve, but a reprieve from a fate Sasha hadn’t even known to fear, as abstract as the truck that barrels through an intersection an hour after you’re safely home making a sandwich, scaffolding that collapses onto an empty sidewalk while you’re snug in bed. How could Sasha know what to even worry about when the world was so random? It left her further unnerved, imagining how easy it would have been for her to be working, poring over three different shades of cream, eating tea sandwiches in a flowered crown, eavesdropping on her husband outside her own bedroom door while hours away her family was on the brink of sorrow and loss. She composed a text to Cord, telling him the good news, and let her finger hover over the button before sending it, wondering for a moment why he wasn’t there by her side.
SEVENTEEN
Georgiana
When Georgiana woke on Monday morning, her head aching with a potent mix of Klonopin, Blue Arrows, and remorse, she couldn’t remember anything from the night before. She knew she had embarrassed herself, she was awash in shame, but she wasn’t sure why.
She showered and dressed and went to work, sat in the maid’s room where she tried to focus on writing an article, but she couldn’t. Georgiana was tired of herself. She was tired of being drunk and hungover. She was tired of dressing up for parties. She was tired of tennis at private clubs. She was tired of waitstaff asking still or sparkling. She was tired of Berta cooking her meals and mopping her floors. She was tired of clicking away in the smallest room of an enormous mansion pretending to be doing something—anything—that mattered when, in her entire life outside her job, she was yet another cog in the machine that kept everything moving away from fairness and justice and humanity. She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t be this person. She needed to change. But she had no idea how, and it made her so sad she could barely stop herself from crying into her hands.
She had an email on her work account from Curtis McCoy.
Hi Georgiana, It was great seeing you at the event. Would you like to get together this weekend? I hear the Whitney has an exhibit of nudes we can go and feel awkward in front of? You can wear your sunglasses?
Georgiana wouldn’t let herself drag anyone else down with her. She tapped out a quick reply.
Hi Curtis, I have a lot on my plate at the moment so it’s not a great time. Thanks.
She pressed Send and heard the electronic whoosh of her note flying off into cyberspace. She stared out the window, trying to make sense of the night before. Why did she have such a bad feeling? What had happened at the party? When her phone buzzed with a text from Lena, the penny dropped.
Hey George why didn’t you tell me Brady had DIED? I am so sorry. I love you so much and I am here for you. Tell me how I can help.
Fuck. Lena knew about Brady? Georgiana didn’t reply. An hour later Darley sent a text.
Hey, Sasha told us about Brady. Why didn’t you say anything? We need to talk.
Sasha told them? She told everyone? Georgiana’s stomach roiled and she felt she might be sick. Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother.
I’ve booked us for tennis on Wednesday at 6. We can order from Jack the Horse Tavern after.
Humiliation coursed through Georgiana’s body. She had made a scene, something about the stupid binary theme. Her friends and family knew about Brady, they knew what she had done. Suddenly her stomach lurched. She was going to throw up. She stood from her desk and stumbled down the hall into the bathroom with the big map of Cambodia, locking the door behind her. She was spinning, and a darkness was spreading in from the sides, making it so that she could barely see the pinpricks of light before her. It was panic. She was falling, falling, falling, but the floor wasn’t rising up to meet her.
She leaned her body against the door and slid to the bathroom floor, the panic attack taking over. It was like she had been thrown by a powerful wave and her body was being tossed, forced further and further under. As she pressed her eyes closed, she remembered a time when she was in high school and the Henry Street School was scrimmaging a basketball team from the Bronx. As Henry Street scored, her classmates taunted the other team chanting, “Flip our burgers! Flip our burgers!” She was nine, and Berta took her to drop off a classmate who had missed the bus, and when Georgiana saw the girl’s peeling yellow house she said, “When are you going to get your house painted?” and the girl shrugged and got out. She was twelve at summer camp, and when a counselor told her to clear her dinner plate she sneered and told the older teenager that was someone else’s job. Georgiana had been horrible. She had been so horrible for so long, and she was trying so hard to stop and she couldn’t. Because it hadn’t just started with Brady. Sleeping with Brady wasn’t what made her a bad person—she had always been one, and she couldn’t even be good when she tried. She sat in the dark bathroom, shivering, Brady’s name pounding through her head.
It was the money that made her so horrible. It had made her coddled and spoiled and ruined, and she had no idea what to do about it. Then, with a jolt, she remembered something from the night before. She had taken off her shoes and crawled into her parents’ bed. She had been so upset. So mad at everyone. So frustrated and lost, and she felt there was just nothing she could do to stop being herself and start being someone else. But there, on the nightstand, she saw a newspaper clipping. It was the profile of Curtis, of course.
Georgiana opened her eyes and saw the map of Cambodia. The floor wasn’t moving, she wasn’t slipping sideways anymore. She stood, still slightly dizzy, and looked in the mirror. She was red and hot and she felt like she’d run up twelve flights of stairs, but she was okay.