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Mr. Clarke and Peter laughed. Scotty sat back in her chair a little farther, and stared into her wineglass. I focused on keeping my expression pleasantly neutral, like the mannequins at Neiman Marcus. When Peter and Mr. Clarke went on to talk about clients at the firm and which classes Peter should take, Scotty looked at me and rolled her eyes at them. I smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Why don’t we sit down to dinner,” she said. She took Mr. Clarke’s glass from him as she walked past.

Dinner was Cornish hens in some sort of wine sauce. I didn’t know how I was supposed to approach it, and none of the Clarkes gave any clues. Mr. Clarke and Peter were so busy talking that they barely picked at their hens, and Scotty spent her time cutting her asparagus into tiny, tiny pieces. That explained the hips at least. She didn’t look at me or make any effort to start a conversation. I pulled the loose meat at the legs off with my fork, and then went to work on my asparagus like Scotty.

“So what line of work is your old man in?” Mr. Clarke cut his asparagus in half with the side of his fork.

“I don’t know,” I blurted out without thinking.

“What?”

“My dad left when I was little,” I said, softly. “I don’t know what he does for a living.”

“What about your mother?”

I tried to brainstorm a way to recover, but came up empty. “She’s a housekeeper,” I said, finally, wishing I had the nerve to say she was the head of a Fortune 500, or ran her own PR firm.

All three of them stared at me. They must have thought I flat-out lied about the country club. I mean, obviously I wasn’t a member of the Whippoorwill Club on my single mother’s housekeeper salary.

“The family she worked for-I was best friends with their daughter and . . .” I thought maybe I could explain my bent truth without actually explaining it, but I stopped talking because it wasn’t helping. Mr. Clarke started mauling his Cornish hen, and Scotty stared at Peter, pressing her lips together so hard they turned white.

Peter hooked fingers with me under the table. I looked over at him, but he didn’t look at me. “That must have been hard,” he said, staring back at Scotty.

No one said anything for a really long time. Scotty went back to cutting her food, dabbing her mouth with her napkin periodically, as if she’d actually eaten something. Mr. Clarke downed the rest of his drink and started some chatter with Peter about plans for renovating the law library at the firm. Peter didn’t say much, adding only “ah,” “okay,” or “I see” every so often. I avoided looking at anyone by swirling a small piece of asparagus around in the sauce on my plate, making little circles and stars that disappeared quickly. I felt like I’d gone from being a guest to a ghost in a few simple words. It was painfully obvious that I didn’t belong there.

Finally, Scotty pulled her napkin off of her lap, folded it, and placed it at the side of her plate. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said softly, smiling weakly, with her eyes lowered. “I have a terrible headache.” She pushed her chair back without making a noise and left the room quickly.

Mr. Clarke smiled at me. “You’ll have to excuse her. She gets these all the time.” He pushed his chair out. “I’m going to get more potatoes.”

Peter said, “ ’ Scuse me for a sec, Van,” and followed his dad into the kitchen.

I heard snippets of conversation-the first parts of the sentences but not the ends, or the ends but not the beginnings.

“Come on, Dad- ”

There was a big window behind Mr. Clarke’s chair. It was dark out, and the curtains weren’t drawn, so I could see my own reflection clearly. My sweater was too tight.

“What you do at your dorm is your business-but this-it’s upsetting your mother.”

I buttoned my sweater all the way up to the top button at my neck.

“-amazing-really smart.”

“Bring her back when she wins the Nobel Prize.”

Mr. Clarke came back out with another martini, but no potatoes.

“Hey, Vannie,” he said, “sure I can’t offer you a drink?”

“I’m sure,” I said softly, looking at his plate. He’d eaten his hen down to its tiny pigeon bones.

Peter came out red-faced. He picked at his hen with his fork, but didn’t eat anything.

“So, Van,” Mr. Clarke said, “as in automobile?”

“Dad.”

“I’m taking an interest in your guest, Peter.” His eyes narrowed. “The origin of a name is acceptable conversation in polite company.” He looked at me, and smiled like a game show host.

“Savannah,” I said. My voice was barely there.

“Well, that’s a pretty name, Savannah.” Mr. Clarke wiped his mouth on his napkin and leaned back in his chair.

Peter turned to me. “Is it okay if we go?” His voice was shaking.

Mr. Clarke made a big production of saying good- bye to me. “Well, Miss Savannah,” he said, shaking my hand and then holding it, “don’t be a stranger.” His palms were sweaty. Peter was halfway out the door before Mr. Clarke set me free.

In the car, Peter made himself busy fiddling with the CD player and the stack of CDs he had in the console.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I hadn’t meant to- ”

“Van, don’t- ” He sounded so angry. I wanted to open my car door and tuck and roll myself into a ditch.

“No, I mean I wasn’t lying. I did, we did play tennis, sort of, and Janie-but I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t . . . I know what it implied, Pete, and I’m sorry.”

“Fuck ’em,” Peter said. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “They’re fucking snobs. It’s embarrassing.”

He drove me right up to the door of my dorm. “I’m really sorry,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.

We didn’t talk all weekend and I worried we never would again. I spent the weekend moping in my dorm room, listening to my Boston mix tape, rewinding to listen to “My Destination” over and over again, getting choked up, because I’d honestly felt that my destination was right by Peter’s side.

On Monday, Peter bought me coffee after class and we went for a walk again like nothing had happened. We didn’t make it all the way to the park, though. Once it got too cold for our walks, he started taking me to dinner on Fridays instead of going home. He stopped talking about the car he was going to get when he graduated, and he avoided all mention of his parents. I waited for something more to happen between us, but it never did.

I deleted Scotty’s message, sat down at the table with my third cup of coffee, and went back to thumbing through the L.L.Bean catalog. The back cover had information on Christmas tree orders. Since I wasn’t going to get to go tree shopping with Alex, I called and ordered one, a blue spruce, six feet tall. The phone associate’s name was Susan. I know it was her job, but she sounded like she was honestly happy to be talking with me. I wanted to tell her everything-how I was supposed to be drinking hot cider and feeding chickens with Mr. Perfect tomorrow instead of throwing a horrible party for my best friend and the man I’d been stupidly in love with for almost seven years. I wanted to tell her how hurt I was, and how much I missed my mom, and how tired I was of being the stage manager for
The Janie Show
and how I worried that made me a bad friend and a bad person. Instead, I ordered a stand, two dozen globe ornaments, aluminum icicles, six strands of white twinkle lights, a headband with reindeer antlers for Joe, a red wool blanket, and a men’s flannel shirt in mariner plaid. Then I called and left Alex a message to tell him I couldn’t go Christmas tree shopping with him. I said I had a stomach bug. It was easier than explaining.

I
knew I was supposed to be getting ready for the party, washing all my dishes and preordering bagels, but I just didn’t want to. First I needed more coffee; then I thought I should shower. By the time I showered and got dressed, it was almost time for lunch, and everyone knows you’re not supposed to shop hungry, so I shared a turkey sandwich with Joe and flipped through the channels while we ate. I got hooked on a PBS mystery and kept watching long after we’d eaten the sandwich down to the crumbs and moved on to ice cream. I didn’t want to miss the end of Miss Marple to go get streamers and preorder bagels for a party I didn’t want to have, celebrating something I didn’t feel like celebrating, so I left it all to the very last minute.

I ended up at Walmart at three AM. The huge parking lot was completely empty except for a row of cars toward the back and someone sitting in his car in the far corner.

I grabbed a cart and wandered through the party goods section for at least a half an hour, trying to find decorations that didn’t make me want to go home and stick my head in the oven. One paper plate set spelled out
Happily Ever After
in swirly letters on pale pink hearts and had matching
Once Upon a Time
streamers. The Blessed Union set had doves and was scattered with roses like chicken pox.

I briefly considered going with a dinosaur set from the kids’ section, but then I noticed the discounted Thanksgiving decorations at the end of the aisle. Since the wedding had been at Thanksgiving, I figured I could get away with half-priced pilgrims and giant crepe-paper turkeys. I got the fancy plastic champagne glasses-the ones where the bottoms don’t fall off-to assuage my guilt.

I grabbed three packages of frozen bagels, and was happily surprised to learn that Walmart was stocked with smoked salmon.

Walmart was almost empty, and there was something hypnotic about walking around under the fluorescent lights staring at produce.

Peter and Janie were probably expecting mimosas, but it was too late to go get champagne. They would have to settle for spumante with a screw cap, and maybe some wine coolers. I grabbed a few cartons of OJ and some cans of frozen limeade concentrate, with thoughts of making punch. I dumped a mesh bag of Key limes into the cart. I figured if I threw a few lime slices in with the punch, people might not realize it was juice from a can. Diane and Scotty would never serve juice from a can.

I had a choice between a real live checker and an automated checkout system. The checker gave me a big smile that revealed a full mouth of braces. She was young, but way too old for braces. She had stringy hair and thick oversize glasses. She looked like she wanted to make conversation. I flashed her a quick smile and went with the automated checkout, but then the damn turkeys wouldn’t scan. I tried three times before the machine started beeping. I tried to just leave the turkeys and cut my losses, but the checker came running over. Her name tag bobbed up and down on her breast even after she stopped running. It was one of the temporary tags, and her name, Tanya, was scribbled in blue ink across it in bubbly letters. If she’d had an
i
in her name, I was sure it would have been dotted with a heart.

“Ooh, what do we have here,” Tanya squealed. Her vowels were hard and sharp. She picked up the paper turkey and ran the bar code under the scanner. It beeped again. “Stocking up for next year, huh?” She waved the turkey at the scanner furiously, and it beeped back at her with the same intensity. “Aren’t you a smart shopper?” She had alternating pink and green rubber bands in her braces.

“Thanks,” I said, wondering why it didn’t seem odd to her that I was in Walmart at almost four AM buying paper turkeys. What were other people buying in the middle of the night?

“I always buy holiday stuff on sale,” Tanya said. She wasn’t even trying to get it to go through; she was just leaning up against the machine. “But then when the holiday comes around, I can’t even find it.” She sighed, and rested her hand over her heart like it was a major crisis. “You know, they have those bins.” She gestured over to one of the aisles. “Those Rubbermaid bins. They have orange and black for Halloween, and red and green for Christmas.” She hit a button on the machine and tried waving the turkey under the sensor again. “I don’t know if they have one for Thanksgiving, but maybe you could get an extra Halloween one. Or use a green top from Christmas with an orange bin from Halloween.”

“Yeah,” I said. I was ready to just leave it all and run for the door, but then the turkey finally registered. The automated voice asked for the next item.

“Anything else?” Tanya asked, holding her hand out.

I was going to tell her I could do it myself, but it was quicker to comply, so I handed her the first package of bagels.

“Oh, these are good,” she said, looking at the label before she scanned them.

I pulled my credit card out while she finished scanning, and had it ready to go before the automated voice even asked for it.

“Well, it looks like I’m all set here,” I said. “Thank you.”

I grabbed my bags and made a beeline for the door.

When I got to the car, I was embarrassed. Tanya was just trying to be nice. We were two lonely people in Walmart at four in the morning. At least she was capable of making polite conversation. I thought about going back in to get some butter or something. I could go straight for Tanya’s register, and make small talk and ask her if Rubbermaid made storage containers in Easter colors. But I had to go home and clean for the party, and I just didn’t have it in me.