You Should Have Known (5 page)

“He has a daughter in third grade and one in Daphne's class,” she explained to Sylvia.

Sylvia frowned. “He's called the toe guy?”

“He's famous for making the second toe shorter than the big toe. So I waited till I saw his wife at pickup and I asked if he'd donate a toe shortening.”

Just one?
Grace thought.
What about the other foot?

“I mean, I'll ask anybody anything. Why not? What can they say except yes or no? But they almost never say no. Why should they, this is their kid's school! They should be happy to donate their services. And what's the difference if it's a plumber or a doctor, right?”

“Well, but…,” Grace couldn't stop herself interjecting, “you're talking about elective things. Most doctors aren't dealing with—” She nearly said
human vanity
but caught herself. “With…things people actually want to be seeing a doctor about.”

Amanda sat back in her chair and looked frankly at Grace. She did not seem angry, just perplexed.

“That's not true,” she said. “I mean, we all want to safeguard our health. Even if it's…I don't know…a tummy doctor or a heart doctor, it's all about taking care of ourselves, and you always want to go to the best person, whether it's a financial adviser or a doctor. How many wives would buy a consultation with a famous heart doctor for their husbands?”

“Grace's husband is a doctor,” Sylvia said. She said it matter-of-factly, and Grace knew exactly why she'd done it. Now they both watched its inevitable effect.

“Oh right, I forgot that,” Amanda said. “What kind of doctor is he again?”

“Jonathan's a pediatric oncologist.”

Amanda frowned for a baffled moment, then sighed. She had concluded, appropriately, that no one wanted the services of a pediatric oncologist, no matter how famous.

Sally was shaking her head. “I keep forgetting. He's always so upbeat when I see him. I mean, how does he do that?”

Grace turned to her. “Do what?”

“Work with those sick kids, and their parents. I could never do it.”

“Me neither,” said Amanda. “I can barely deal with it when one of my kids has a headache.”

“It's different when it's your kid,” Grace said. She was sympathetic to this, because she had always found it unbearable when Henry got sick, which he hadn't even done very much. He had been a very healthy child. “When it's a patient, and you're bringing your expertise to their illness, it's just a whole different thing. You're there to help. You're trying to make their lives better.”

“Yeah,” Amanda said disagreeably. “But then they die.”

“You still tried,” Grace insisted. “No matter what doctors do, people still get sick and die, and some of them are kids. That's never not going to be true. But I'd much rather have a kid with cancer now than twenty years ago. And I'd much rather have a kid with cancer in New York than anyplace else.”

Amanda, impervious to this argument, only shook her head. “I couldn't deal with it. I hate hospitals. I hate the way they smell.” She shuddered, as if assailed—there, amid the expensive squalor of Sally Morrison-Golden's town house—by a puddle of Lysol.

“I just wish we had more, you know, artists and writers,” said Sylvia, who—having raised this particular topic, was now obviously attempting to move on. “Lunch with an opera singer or a visit to the painter's studio. Why don't we have more artists?”

Because they don't send their children to Rearden
, Grace thought irritably. In the topography of New York private schools, Rearden was located in a mountain pass between the Wall Street Range and the Peaks of Corporate Law. Other schools—Fieldston, Dalton, Saint Ann's—got the children of creative parents, theater people, and novelists. It hadn't been delineated quite so clearly when Grace had been a student there. One of her friends had been the daughter of a poet who taught at Columbia, another was the unmusical son of two members of the New York Philharmonic. But Henry's classmates were growing up in the homes of personal wealth managers and hedge fund warriors. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but it couldn't be helped.

“Well, I think we're in pretty good shape,” Sally announced. “Forty lots—something for everyone, right? Unless I've missed something. There's still time to get it in if anyone has something?”

“I was thinking…,” Grace said, alarmed by a wave of shyness. “I mean, if you want. I have my book. Just galleys at the moment, but you know I could promise one. I mean, a signed copy.”

All three of them looked at her.

“Oh, that's right,” Amanda said. “I forgot you wrote a book. What kind of book is it? Is it a mystery? I'm always looking for a good book for the beach.”

Grace felt herself frown. It was the best way she knew of not laughing.

“No, no. I'm not that kind of writer. I'm a therapist, you know. This is a book about marriages. It's my first book,” she said, noting—and disapproving—the distinct whiff of pride in her voice. “It's called
You Should Have Known
.”

“What?” Amanda said.

“You Should Have Known,”
she repeated, louder this time.

“No, I heard you. I mean, I should have known what?”

“Oh. It's…you always know people better at the beginning of a relationship.”

In the very long and very silent moment that ensued, Grace had ample time to reevaluate her title, her thesis, and pretty much everything she held dear. Professionally, at least.

“Could you maybe do a therapy session?” Sally said eagerly. “You know, ‘Authority on marriage will do couples therapy for you'?”

Shocked, Grace could barely keep it together enough to shake her head. “I don't think it would be appropriate.”

“Yeah, but people might really go for that.”

“I'm sorry. No.”

Amanda gave the tersest, tiniest frown of disapproval. Then, from the front of the house, they all heard the doorbell sound, a low and lazy chime. Grace, with immense gratitude, felt the tension drain from their little group. “Hilda?” Sally called. “Will you get that?”

There was movement in the kitchen.

“Was someone else supposed to come?” Amanda asked.

“Well, no,” Sally said. “Not really.”

“Not really?” Sylvia said, laughing a bit.

“No. I mean, someone said they might, but they didn't follow up with me, so I thought…”

There were voices now, muffled and indistinguishable. And something else: a squeaking sound, like something on springs. Then Hilda reappeared. “She's leaving the carriage in the hallway. Okay?” she asked Sally.

“Oh.” Sally looked mildly stunned. “Okay.” She shook her head. “Okay.” When she looked up again, she had affixed a bright and toothy smile to her face. “Hello!” she said, getting to her feet.

A woman had arrived, stepping around from behind Hilda. She was a person of medium height with dark hair curling to her shoulders and skin the color of caramel. She had very black eyes and above them very dark and full eyebrows that arched in a manner that made her look vaguely flirtatious. She was wearing a tan skirt and a white shirt open far enough to reveal two items of note: a gold crucifix and a substantial cleavage. She seemed somewhat cowed by her surroundings, the large but messy home, the baffled women, the evidence of a meeting already in progress, if not—as indicated by the note pages and printouts on the table—nearing its end. She gave them all a furtive sort of nod and stood awkwardly in the doorway.

“Please. Sit.” Sally pointed to the chair beside Grace. “Everyone, this is Mrs. Alves. She's the mother of Miguel Alves in fourth grade. I'm so sorry, you're going to have to help me pronounce your first name.”

“Malaga,” the woman said. Her voice was light, nearly musical. “Malaga,” she said again, more slowly and with the emphasis clear on the first syllable.

“Malaga,” Grace repeated. She extended her hand. “Hello. I'm Grace.”

Sylvia and Amanda followed suit. “Hi, hi,” the woman said. “I sorry. I late. The baby, she fussy.”

“Oh, that's okay,” Sally said. “But you know, we've gotten a great deal done. Please,” she said again. “Sit.”

The woman sat in a chair next to Grace and angled herself away from the heavy wooden table, crossing one leg over the other, and Grace couldn't help noticing her legs, which were fleshy but rather graceful. She leaned slightly forward, nearly touching the wood of the table: more flesh, visible through the silk of her shirt, but somehow, again, not unattractive. She had mentioned a baby? Grace thought. She looked like someone who might have given birth in the not too distant past. Still convex, still producing. Her hands were folded together on the tabletop. On the left hand, fourth finger, was a thin gold band.

“We've been talking about auction items,” said Sally, speaking—Grace could not help but feel—inordinately slowly. “Things to auction off at our benefit, to raise money for the school. For scholarships,” she added, now looking pointedly down at her notes. “Generally, we ask the parents to come up with ideas. If someone can offer something related to their work. Like an artist or a doctor. If you have any ideas, please let me know.”

The woman—Malaga—nodded. She looked thoroughly sober, as if she had just been given terrible news.

“So…let's move on,” said Sally, and she did. The newcomer's arrival had the effect of a starting pistol, and suddenly everyone sped up. They barreled through everyone's schedule for the next few days, and who would be manning the table downstairs in the lobby (not a desirable position), and who would be greeting guests upstairs in the Spensers' grand marble foyer, and whether Sylvia had the software she needed in order to cash everyone out at the end of the evening. There was to be a pre-party— “Cocktails with the Headmaster”—technically not their responsibility but necessitating some coordination, and an after-party in the Boom Boom Room at the Standard, which Amanda was more or less in charge of (her friends being the core group of attendees, in other words). But they tore through it all.

Malaga said nothing, nor did her expression seem to change, though she turned her head with the others as conversation moved among the other three. But then, just as they were raising the thorny issue of how to leave the benefit en masse when it was time for the after-party, but without creating an air of exclusivity (because, after all, the final numbers had now been given to the Standard and there could really be no tagalongs), the talk was cut by a sharp, gulping infant cry, and the silent woman jolted to her feet and left the room. She returned a moment later with a tiny, dusky infant wrapped in a green striped cloth. Nodding in acknowledgment of the women's cooing, Malaga took her seat again, shrugged her arm out of her long-sleeved silk shirt, and roughly pulled down a white bra, exposing the entire side of her body. This was done so quickly that Grace barely had time to be uncomfortable, but looking furtively across the table, she saw that Amanda seemed scandalized. With eyes widened, she gave a minuscule shake of her little head, sufficient only to convey this to herself and anyone else who might have chosen that nanosecond to glance in her direction.

The issue, of course, was not the breast-feeding, which Grace assumed they had all (with the exception of Sylvia) happily done, and out of a combination of principle, pride, convenience, and concern for the health of their babies. The issue was the blunt and thoroughly nonchalant nakedness on display: one breast descending freely into the sucking mouth of the baby, the thick flesh of the belly, even the full upper arm warmly positioning the infant's head. There was no designated nursing garment like the one Grace had worn, with its discreet slit for the nipple and artful drape to shield her from, for example, prurient teenage eyes incapable of differentiating between the sexual and the maternal. Malaga Alves, having seen to the baby, continued to look around the table, waiting for the conversation to continue; so, in an act of collaborative theater, with a set of cooperative stage directions, the other four women proceeded to pretend she wasn't there. The baby sucked loudly and made little sounds of frustration. After a few minutes, just as Grace had reached a state of relative imperviousness about the situation, Malaga extracted the nipple, which flopped wetly against the infant's cheek, after which, instead of covering it up, the woman beside Grace simply exposed the other breast by the same method and positioned the baby anew.

By now, the level of anxiety in the room was palpable. The women spoke in rapid, frill-free sentences, barreling as quickly as possible toward the end of the meeting's agenda. Absolutely no one looked at Malaga, except—Grace saw—for Hilda, who had arrived in the doorway and was staring balefully at the half-naked woman. Malaga herself sat imperviously, her silk shirt flung back over her shoulders like a cape, her bra wedged below her unfurled breasts. It occurred to Grace that if this woman were of an even remotely venal disposition, her behavior could be seen as exquisitely hostile, but on balance she thought this was probably not the case. For all the resentments a New Yorker named Malaga Alves might hold toward a New Yorker named Sally Morrison-Golden, she had emitted not even a whiff of anything like ill temper. There was, to the contrary, an absence of reaction, a retreat into negative energy; her actions were those of a woman who did not consider herself visible, let alone inflammatory. Glancing furtively at her, Grace suddenly found herself remembering a person she had once seen in the locker room of her gym on Third Avenue. She had been changing after an aerobics class when she noticed a woman standing in front of the mirror near the entrance to the showers, quite naked, without even the usual gym-issued towel knotted around the hips or over the breasts. She was in her thirties or forties—in that ill-defined middle place where how old you look depends so much more on how well you're taking care of yourself than how many years you've been alive—and in that equally ill-defined terrain between heavy and thin. As Grace went through the usual motions of extracting herself from her sweaty leotard, stepping into and out of the shower, drying her hair, and opening her locker, she had gradually noted that the woman was still standing in precisely the same place and that same position: before the full-length mirror, combing her hair. Her stance and behavior added up to far more than the sum of their parts, a fact equally obvious to everyone else in the locker room, fifteen or twenty other women who studiously avoided this person, stepping carefully around her, averting their eyes. Nakedness in a locker room, of course, is far from unusual, and hair combing and looking into mirrors are also quite common. But the woman had emanated a visceral wrongness as she stood, so still, a little too close to the mirror, staring with a little too much concentration at herself, her legs a little too far apart, her left arm motionless at the hip while her right hand dragged the comb carefully, rhythmically, through her wet brown hair. That woman had had just this expression on her face, thought Grace, testing the insight by looking briefly back at Malaga Alves, then turning again to Sally in an effort to seem nonplussed. They were racing now, crossing t's and dotting i's, removing any possible impediment to finishing the meeting and getting the hell out. Sally, perhaps recalling the days of her “big career,” ran what remained of the session like a merciless managing partner, thoroughly indifferent to the private lives of her subordinates. Tasks were assigned and a pre-event rendezvous scheduled for Saturday afternoon at the Spensers'. (“Does that work for you, Malaga?” Sally paused to ask. “Oh, good.”) The baby continued to suck throughout, and it seemed to Grace almost bizarre that such a tiny thing could sustain hunger for such a long time. Then, without warning or comment, she turned her head away from her mother's heavy breast and looked avidly around the room.