She gave herself two hours to find a dress and, when her time was up, emerged with a short-sleeved navy-blue jersey dress, knee length, A-line, with cap sleeves. It also had a square neckline, the single feature that would make the new dress distinguishable from the half-dozen other navy-blue and black dresses she already had in her closet, purchased for events just like this one. With the dress draped over the Range Rover’s back seat, she drove to New Jersey for the liquor, then returned home to spend over an hour on the phone with the exceedingly chirpy Lynne, who had very specific instructions for how the items were to be described or displayed, and even what kinds of clipboards and pens the Melville community preferred. “And let’s make sure we’ve got some nut-free and vegetarian appetizers. Preferably vegan,” she’d said. Daisy had ended the call and had stood in her kitchen, feeling somewhere between infuriated and bemused. She remembered something that Hannah had told her once: people treat you the way you let them. Hannah never let herself be treated poorly. She insisted on respect, from her four-year-old students, from waiters, from her husband and daughter, from, once, a jogger who’d spat on the street too close to her feet. “I’m sorry, am I wearing my Cloak of Invisibility?” she’d demanded, and when the guy tried to run past her, Hannah had shouted, “Yo!” so loudly that everyone on the street had turned, and the jogger had been forced to stop and endure Hannah’s tirade. Daisy could picture her friend, with two fingers stuck in the air and her other hand on her hip, standing like the Statue of Liberty until her kids settled down, and in Daisy’s kitchen, bent over a bubbling cauldron of marinara sauce, asking, “Do you think the steam’s good for my pores?” Oh, how Daisy missed her.
On the appointed Saturday in April, Daisy spent the morning getting her hair blown out and her nails manicured. Mireille arrived at three in the afternoon, the florist came at four, and the musicians, a quartet of students who comprised Melville’s jazz ensemble, arrived at five o’clock.
At six, Daisy slid the stuffed figs and the pastry-wrapped goat cheese purses into the oven, crammed her feet into a pair of navy-blue high heels, and put a giant straw hat with a navy-blue ribbon on her head. The theme of the party was the Kentucky Derby, even though the Derby itself wasn’t until May. At least it had made the menu easy: mint julep punch and bourbon slushies, fried chicken sliders served on biscuits, with hot honey, tea sandwiches with Benedictine spread, bite-sized hot browns, the signature sandwich of Louisville, and miniature Derby pies for dessert.
Mireille fed the jazz kids early and got them set up in the corner, close to a powder room where spit valves could be emptied as needed. “Put on your lipstick,” she told Daisy, who was already wearing lipstick. She went upstairs to put on more and to roust Beatrice from her bedroom, just as the first car pulled into the driveway and one of the valets went to park it. Over the weekend, Hal had bought spotlights, which shone on the front of their house, illuminating the half-circle of the driveway and the path to the front door （and, Daisy privately thought, making the place look especially imposing）。 On Saturday, he’d installed the lights, and he’d spent Sunday pacing around the ground floor, frowning at a spot on the pale-gold and green oriental rug that Lester had scratched, rearranging the ornamental birch logs in the fireplace, and studying the one wall in the kitchen that Daisy had insisted on painting a moody shade of navy blue, a contrast to the rest of the walls, which were tastefully taupe. She’d wanted to hang colorful plates and pieces of pottery over the doors to the pantry, but Hal told her it was “too busy”; she’d wanted to keep her ceramic canisters of flour and sugar and beans on the counter, but he’d said it made the kitchen look cluttered; she’d wanted… God, the truth was that Daisy could barely remember what she’d wanted. Only that she’d liked color and coziness, like her navy-blue wall or her row of canisters, and Hal had not.
“Phil! Ellen!” she heard Hal say from the vicinity of the entryway, where there was a delicate pie-crust table （his choice） and, above it, a towering mirror with an ornate gold frame （hers）。 “Come on in and get comfortable.”
Thank God for name tags, Daisy thought, as her house filled up. She plotted a course from one end of the living room all the way to the staircase, stopping to introduce herself and welcome her guests to her home.
“This punch is delicious!” said a woman in a white hat embellished with pink flowers. Her nametag ID’ed her as Eleanor Crane. Her flushed cheeks suggested she was not on her first cup of punch. “What’s in it?”