I opened the bag of California walnuts and bit into one. I couldn’t understand what made them so special. They tasted the way I knew walnuts to taste. Crunchy and bland.
* * *
Tina had this ice-blue silk sheath dress with darker blue feathers at the wrists. I thought I had managed to conceal my admiration for it—it was a gorgeous, silly thing that people wore in magazines, not anywhere near Washington State—but she suggested I wear it to host the dinner party. I reminded her I was roasting a chicken and there would be grease as I pulled it over my head. We stood next to each other before her full-length mirror and stared.
“You look like a snow queen out of a Tolkien story,” Tina said.
On the hanger, the dress didn’t appear half as iridescent as it looked against my white skin and black hair, eyes bluer than they had any right to be. I was tempted to put it back on the hanger. I didn’t trust that I could look that good for longer than five minutes. But then the doorbell rang downstairs, and it was too late to change.
I felt ridiculous when I opened the door to find Frances in tan slacks and a turtleneck sweater, standing alongside the six-foot-tall woman with the waist-length gray hair whom I now knew to be Irene, Frances’s partner.
“I’m going to change,” I said, and everyone begged me not to.
“Wait,” Tina said, “hold on.” She ran upstairs and Frances, Irene, and I waited without speaking, as though we were playing freeze tag and she’d thumped us on our backs. When Tina came back downstairs, she’d changed out of her minidress and knee-high boots and into a silver satin floor-length gown. She looked like she was going to a Hollywood awards ceremony and like she was poised to win. “After all,” she said regally, “we are the hostesses.”
“You both look divine,” Frances said.
I relaxed a little as the other girls trickled in. They had all gotten dressed up too. They couldn’t get over my feather sleeves, the shade of blue on my skin, my skin. Fingers grazed my cheek, I heard the word porcelain, and I could not believe this was at last my life.
We took our drinks to the living room, where I’d set out a platter of hors d’oeuvres. Toasted ovals of bread with olive spread, raw salmon on cucumbers, dates wrapped in bacon. My mother would have gagged if I’d served any of this to her.
“Don’t fill up,” Tina said, her smile proud. “Ruth’s roast chicken is the best you’ve ever tasted.”
“It smells heavenly!”
“I should go check,” I said, standing.
* * *
I ran a knife between the bird’s body and thigh and tilted the roasting pan, watching the juices run pink. When the doorbell rang, I knew it was Rebecca. I’d counted the guests in the living room before I’d come into the kitchen. We were short one.
“I’ve got it!” Tina called. I could hear her satin dress sweeping the tiles of the floor. The groan of the medieval wooden door. Tina’s hello, my sister-in-law’s apology, Tina telling her it was nothing to apologize for. We could make room. For a panicked moment, I thought she’d come with my brother. But then they walked into the kitchen, and I saw it was just the baby barnacled to her hip. That piece of hair got all tangled up in her tongue as she greeted me.
“I kept trying to leave, but she wouldn’t stop screaming unless I held her,” Rebecca said.
“Can I try?” Tina opened her arms.
Rebecca looked her over critically. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your nice dress.”
“Oh, that’s okay.” Tina was speaking baby. “Who cares about a stupid-woopid dress?”
The baby stared at Tina with an aloof expression, sucking two of her fingers. Reluctantly, Rebecca handed her over. No one screamed. Rebecca was at a loss for what to do with her arms now that they were free.
Tina burrowed her face into the baby’s neck and inhaled. “We should put you on a platter and serve you up for dinner.” The baby frowned, as if considering the idea, and put her pink little hands on Tina’s lips. No, thank you.
Rebecca peered over the counter to see me basting the chicken. “Did you get the chicken from Nature’s Mart?”
“Pascale’s,” I answered a little haughtily. Pascale’s was the Italian butcher on Third. The chicken had cost six dollars more than the one at the grocery store.
“The chicken from Nature’s Mart gets fed a corn diet,” Rebecca said. “It’s healthier for them than wheat pellets.”
Briefly, I wished for my mother, who would have met the look I cast at her. Motherhood had made Rebecca an insufferable know-it-all.