SIXTEEN
Sasha
Sasha told them. They sat in the living room and Sasha explained what Georgiana had confessed the day she found her sobbing in the closet. She had fallen in love; she didn’t know Brady was married. After she had found out, she did the unthinkable and kept sleeping with him. They were having an affair. Then the plane crashed, Brady died, and Georgiana couldn’t stop the grief.
“The secret has been tearing her apart,” whispered Lena. “She told me she broke it off with him.”
“The plane crash was more than two months ago.” Darley winced. “She said she didn’t know the people who died.”
“Brady died. And her friend Meg,” Sasha said quietly.
“You’ve known this the whole time?” Cord asked, and the look on his face was one of such betrayal Sasha could barely stand it.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha whispered. “She told me in confidence.”
“She’s twenty-six,” Darley spat. “She’s a baby. She was dealing with something incredibly traumatic. She needed help.”
“I tried to help her, but guess what? She shut me out, just like everyone in your family!” Sasha shot back defensively. “I called her and called her, but she didn’t want help from a gold digger.”
“Why do people keep saying that?” Tilda interrupted.
“Because that’s Georgiana and Darley’s nickname for me: the Gold Digger. They think I married up. They think I give two shits about what clubs you belong to or how to set a fucking table. They think I actually wanted to move into your family museum of antique crap.”
“Hey, Sasha, simmer down,” Cord said and frowned.
“No, I won’t simmer down. Georgiana is spoiled and selfish and has been rude and snide to me since the moment I met her. And you,” Sasha turned to Darley. “It’s almost worse because you pretended to be my friend while joking about me behind my back.”
“This isn’t about you, Sasha,” Darley snapped.
“It never is, is it? I’m over all of you. I am sick and tired of everyone acting like I should be kissing the flea-bitten Oriental rugs in gratitude just so I can keep living in a janky Grey Gardens full of old toothbrushes and moldy baskets. And guess what?” She glared right at Tilda. “The governor’s couch gave me a rash!” Cord looked at her and shook his head, too far, but Sasha was done anyway, spent. Her face was sweaty and with her wilting flower crown she looked like some kind of demented Medusa. She turned and, with as much dignity as one can muster while surrounded by a family in weird hats, stomped out the door.
In the wake of the party the Stockton family closed ranks. Cord would take phone calls from Darley and walk into the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him. He went to Orange Street so that he could huddle with his mother and discuss the Georgiana problem, presumably while rubbing her feet pornographically.
Cord thought Sasha had overreacted. So they called her a name, so what? Georgiana had loved someone who died. Sasha’s problems paled in comparison. He couldn’t see that it was about so much more than that, couldn’t see she’d been ostracized all along. With each passing day after the party she felt the curtain being drawn between them, making it clear as day that she was not and would never be a Stockton.
To Sasha’s surprise, Darley didn’t text or call. Sasha knew she and Cord were mad about her house comments, they were mad she had kept Georgiana’s secret, but didn’t Darley feel any shame for calling her a gold digger? Maybe Sasha should have told them about Georgiana, but at the same time she couldn’t fathom how they would have reacted if she had sounded the alarm two months ago. Georgiana already treated her with such disdain, what if she’d broken her trust? She felt she had seen something the Stocktons wouldn’t have liked her to see. They were all so private. They were secretive. They were desperate to keep up appearances and make sure no cracks showed in their facade. Well, Sasha had seen the cracks and now they hated her for it.
The more Sasha thought about it, the angrier she felt. She was stuck in a lose-lose situation, a member of a family in which she had no voice, she had no vote, where doors were closed and envelopes remained sealed and money was a string that tied them all together and kept them bound and gagged. To Sasha it suddenly made sense that the Stockton family had settled in the fruit street neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights all those years ago, that they wanted to live in homes protected by a historical preservation society: they didn’t actually want to change, they wanted to stay exactly as they were.
It was a Monday afternoon and Sasha was working, trying to choose which shade of cream to use in an advertisement for bed linens. She had narrowed it down to coconut cream, double cream, and cannoli cream—the whole thing was making her hungry—when her mother called her from her pantry.
“They are going to keep your father overnight for observation,” she said, her voice muffled by bags of rice and pasta.
“Why? Did they find something at his appointment?” This was his third doctor’s visit in six weeks and he was still short of breath, his inhaler doing nothing to help. Sasha stood and closed her book of printer samples so she could think clearly.
“No, they didn’t find anything. I’m sure it’s just the last of a chest cold. Your father is pretty cranky about it. He wanted to come home tonight, but I convinced him that he should stay until they release him.”
“How did you do that?” Sasha asked incredulously.
“I told him that if he dared step outside the hospital before he had express permission from a physician, I would sink his boat.”
Sasha laughed in spite of herself. Her mother had once thrown a pair of paddles off the dock when her brothers were three hours late coming back from fishing, so they all took her threats seriously. “I’m going to come up,” Sasha said.
“Oh, don’t. There’s nothing to do here. You’d keep me up tonight worrying about you on the road after dark and then he’ll be home tomorrow.”
“Why are you in the pantry if Dad’s not even home?”
“The boys said I shouldn’t worry you,” her mother said guiltily.
Annoying. Another family trying to keep her out of their business. “Okay,” Sasha sighed, and they hung up, her mother promising to call her from the hospital in the morning. But he wasn’t released the next day either, or the day after that. Sasha felt stupid. If only she’d just left on Monday, she could have been with her parents all week. On Friday she was dithering about whether to drive up when Olly texted her. Hey, they found blood clots in Dad’s lungs.
She threw a change of clothes, a bottle of prenatal vitamins, and her laptop in a bag and got in the car. She berated herself the entire drive up to Providence. She hadn’t seen her parents in months—she had been too busy with work, with her house, with Cord and Darley and all the stupid Stockton family celebrations and housewarmings and bewilderingly themed dinners. She had been trying so hard to fit in with a family that didn’t want her that she’d forgotten all about her own.
Driving into town, Sasha experienced the funny sensation of seeing her old home as an outsider might. It had started happening her freshman year of college, when after living in New York, a place of towering glass and endless discovery, everything at home looked smaller and somehow shabbier. The Dollar Store, the empty building that used to be a Blockbuster but had never filled back in, the paint store that somehow always needed a fresh coat—she could barely remember the time when this town represented the entirety of her world.
Her father was only allowed three visitors at a time and her mother and brothers were there, so Sasha drove to her parents’ house, and when she pulled up she saw Mullin’s truck in the driveway. The front door was locked and the lights were off, so she fished the spare key from beneath the rock and let herself in. She dropped her bag on the floor, walked to the refrigerator, and got a can of Coke. She was tilting her head back to drink when she saw Mullin in the backyard. He was the last person she felt like talking to, so she ignored him, leafing through the unopened mail on the counter, unloading the clean dishwasher, and helping herself to a box of Girl Scout cookies in the cupboard.
When Mullin tapped on the sliding-glass door she startled.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He looked tired. He had grown a beard and his jeans were covered in dirt.
She eyed him warily across the kitchen. “What’s going on?”
“Just trying to keep busy until we hear about the blood clots.” Mullin shrugged. He walked over to the refrigerator, pulled out a can of Narragansett, and popped the beer open.
“Help yourself,” Sasha said sarcastically.
“I bought them.”
“Then keep them in your own house.”
“Why do you have to be like that?” Mullin asked, scowling.
“Like what?”
“Like such a bitch all the time.”
“Because I don’t want you here. And yet,” she paused, “you’re always here.”
“And you’re not. So why do you care?”
“Because it just seems like you should have moved on by now. We broke up more than fifteen years ago, but I still have to see you all the time. I just don’t understand why.”
“Well, it’s certainly not to try and win you back, charming as you are,” he said bitterly.
“Obviously.” Sasha scowled. It enraged her that he was here at the house, playing the doting son when he wasn’t even part of her family. When he had elbowed her out of the way. She stalked out the sliding-glass door, down the steps of the deck, and into the yard. There was a new Japanese maple planted in the back corner of the lot, about five feet tall, with dark red, shiny leaves. All around it were bluestars, the leaves a brilliant yellow, a swath of plumelike astilbes, and a row of small boxwoods. “Wow,” Sasha murmured. It looked like a spread from Cottages & Gardens, a far cry from the cinderblock beds where they had dug for worms and made mudpies when she was a kid. She walked over to the maple tree and looked at it more closely. She peered at the careful strings someone had tied around the base to keep animals away. She looked at the neat grass now covering what had once been a bald and lumpy pitch. She closed her eyes and listened for a while, the noises of her childhood so different from the noises on Pineapple Street. Here she heard the distant sound of a dog barking, the creak of a neighbor’s screen door opening, the rattle of the leaves in the breeze. In Brooklyn Heights she was surrounded by the rhythmic purr of a refrigerated truck parked outside her window as groceries were delivered, the sirens of police cars and fire trucks along Henry Street, and sometimes, on Sunday mornings, the clang of the knife truck, a charming neighborhood feature, a guy who drove around Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and the Heights ringing a bell so that you could run down your kitchen knives and have them sharpened for twenty bucks. Sasha let her mind wander. Was it possible she’d never live here again? Would she spend the rest of her life in Brooklyn, raising her baby hours away from her parents? She wanted so desperately for her father to be okay, for him to be able to teach her son to fish and flip a pancake, to wade around in the river looking for the mooring, to whistle with a blade of grass, to spend hours picking through the hand-tied flies they sold behind the bar at Morgan’s.
Why was she so mad at Mullin? Why did it make her so angry to see him in her home? Yes, he’d been a horrible boyfriend, but that was ages ago. She was still punishing him. Was she just as bad as the Stocktons? Desperate to keep her family of origin sheltered from outsiders? The irony crashed down on her. She was such a hypocrite. She’d moved into Pineapple Street and felt furious at Georgiana for the very thing she had been doing to Mullin for the past decade and a half. Fuck.
“Hey, Mullin?” she called, and he ambled to the door. “Did you help with these plantings?”
“Yep,” he said, taking a swig from the can.
“They look really good.”
“I know. People pay me a lotta money for it.”
“Well, it’s worth it,” Sasha said contritely. “I’m sure Mom and Dad appreciate it.”
Mullin sauntered down the steps and surveyed the garden. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“They cost more these days,” Sasha deadpanned, and Mullin smiled. “I feel guilty I didn’t realize things were so bad with my dad.”
“I think it surprised everyone,” he offered.
“I know. But I’ve had my head up my ass. I’ve been a terrible daughter. I hope my mom will forgive me,” she confessed quietly.
Mullin thought for a minute. “Do you remember the dances we’d have in middle school? The ones in the gym?”
Of course Sasha did. They were her favorite thing. She and her friends would pick out their outfits weeks in advance, they would get together ahead of time and spray themselves with drugstore perfume, would wear dangly earrings they bought at Claire’s Boutique, would spend ages with curling irons and hair spray getting their bangs just right.
“There was one dance in seventh grade where you danced with Andrew Bowalski, do you remember that?” Mullin asked and Sasha shook her head. Sure, she remembered Andrew Bowalski. He was in her classes from kindergarten through high school. He was in their gifted and talented program. He had a dark buzz cut, wire-rimmed glasses, he was lanky and nerdy and had just the biggest crush on Sasha for years. She found it mildly embarrassing, but he was a nice enough guy. She never went out with him, and sometime in high school he moved on. He was in the chess club and got into Rutgers and ended up dating a girl from Boston. Sasha thought they were married now.
“Andrew liked you so much, and he told everyone that night that he was going to ask you to slow dance to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ because it was the longest song.” Mullin laughed remembering it. “And you did. Everyone knew you didn’t like him that way, but I remember you being so nice about it and letting him put his hands on your waist and rock back and forth for all seven minutes. That was when I fell in love with you.”
“Mullin—” Sasha tried to interrupt him. Whatever he was about to say, she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t love Mullin and wasn’t going to change her mind.
“But here’s the thing,” Mullin pressed on. “I loved you, but what I really saw was how loved you were. How you had this amazing family, parents who would do anything for you, a mom who took you to buy the clothes you wanted for a dance, a dad who coached your softball team. You had friends, you had so much love surrounding you that it was easy for you to share it. You could dance with Andrew Bowalski and make his night. You were just so open and light, and I saw how closed and dark I was. I was like twelve years old and I knew I didn’t want to live like that. I wanted to have that kind of love. So I fell for you. And no, it didn’t work out between us, and that was my fault. I acted like an idiot. And who knows? Maybe even if I hadn’t it wouldn’t have worked out anyway, we were kids. But being with you and being with your family saved me. I know that. I knew it then too. Your mom will forgive you because that’s how she is.”
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.
