7:19 P.M.
Roan gets to me before Lola does. “Grrrrllll! Give. It. A. Whirl!” He gives me two sharp snaps and puts his hand out to me and I grab hold for a slowtake it all in, babythree-sixty. The heavy orange satinfeels buttery on my skin as it lifts just a hair to let in a slight breeze and show off my cocoa-buttered legs. My locks are swept up in a bun to highlight my long neck that’s framed by gold hoop earrings. The highlight of this outfit is my purple suede heels that have only known concrete twice. Once on my first “official” date with Michael and tonight. These are not everyday shoes, these areI’ve got something to proveshoes. And tonight, once I saw Aunt Viv in her emerald green and Etta (who is one of five people in the whole world who can crush a canary yellow strapless jumpsuit) I knew this was the night that the Bordelon women came to slay.
Lola saunters over carrying two flutes of champagne. As she’s about to enter our circle she does her own twirl making sure our group gets a full view of every inch of her glory. Ty chokes on an ice cube. The plunging V at the back of Lola’s dress, which is a mere couple of inches from playing peek-a-boo with the icing on her cakes, takes him by surprise.
“Ooooooo la la, Lola! Look at you!” Roan gushes all over Lola. Lola has known Roan for all the years he’s worked for me and she can speak Roan fluently.
“Look at me? Look at you?!?! Top to toe, toe to top, Tom Ford is weeping with joy right now. Slap you on a billboard, it couldn’t be any better if you tried—FAB-U-LUSH!” Lola fans herself like she’s overheating. The love affair between Roan and Lola is strong and it is real. I’ve been the third wheel since I introduced the two.
“Roan, Lola, you remember Ty Golden?” I ask, shifting the conversation off our vain selves to avoid seeming vapid in the midst of someone who, you know, massages hearts with his bare hands.
“I do remember you,” Roan says, placing a hand on Ty’s chest and looking right into his eyes challenging him to a game of who will blink first. We are now officially playing with the admissions gods. If Nan knew Ty was a potential parent, not invited specifically by her, Roan and I would be updating our LinkedIn profiles. For once, I givethanks to Nan’s indifference to the admissions process of the middle-class applicant. “You’re San Francisco’s very own gay Hermès with inexhaustible stamina and an ungodly metabolism.” I forgot Roan was a classics major at Santa Clara.
I duck under Roan’s arm to step between the two men before this whole scene turns into one big Greek tragedy.
“Nice suit.” Roan brushes the lapel and then winks at Ty before taking two steps back. Thankfully he picked up thedown boysignal I was vibin’ his way, but the pause comes with a curious lift of his left eyebrow. Roan is either shooting Ty some shade or he now recognizes him from someplace other than the vegan food truck and admissions. Oh dear God, infidelity is not necessary information for a director of admissions to know about an applying family. I choose to pretend I didn’t see their subtle exchange, but my stomach lurches nonetheless.
Lola heads off to chat up a Fairchild parent whose son is on her oldest’s soccer team. Roan spies a relatively famous alumnus who is a fairly important human rights attorney at the fresh age of thirty. And since Roan believes human rights in San Francisco means gay rights and gay rights means potential boyfriend material he heads over to fancy himself a flirt. Roan likes to do right in the world through association.
Ty and I are left standing together, Aunt Viv already lost to a crowd of admirers. “So, do you, Daniel, and Gracie have any fun plans coming up? I remember Daniel saying in your parent interview that he loves to head to Washington in April for the tulip festival and then somewhere to taste Washington wines.” This seems like very safe conversation given that having Ty here is playing outside the admissions rulebook. Plus, it proves that I listen and pay attention in the parent interviews. Usually.
“Yeah, about that.”
“About tulips?”
“No, no not tulips.”
“Wine?”
“Well, yes, kind of about wine. Liquid courage and all. I need to...”
“You need to get yourself a refill and get me one, too, please. I think I’m going to stick to red tonight, no more champagne. No, white, I’ll stick to white wine; don’t want to potentially stain my dress. If you don’t mind grabbing us two glasses, I’m going to check in on your date.”
“Okay, sure, but then I have to talk to you about this whole kindergarten thing, Josie.”
“Probably best if Daniel’s part of the conversation, don’t you think? E-mail me tomorrow and we’ll set up a time for you and Daniel to come in when I get back from New York.” I’m used to people wanting to talk shop with me when I’m trying to be a regular person and have some fun. It used to annoy me, but now I just tell them to make an appointment and walk away.
“I need to talk to you tonight, Josie. Daniel doesn’t know.”
And ugh, there it is. Dr. Golden is no different than Meredith Lawton pretending to be my friend; Vanessa Grimaldi offering me free facials; or the myriad of other parents who want to give me Giants tickets, symphony tickets, backstage passes, or a weekend in Sonoma to butter me up so I will admit their child. Often in a couple there is one parent who plays outside the rules, and Dr. Golden willingly being Aunt Viv’s date must be his version of transferred airline miles. Pricey tit for costly tat. How did I not see it? Did his good looks and care for Aunt Viv really throw me that far off my game? I needed something from him and he most definitely needs something from me. I’m sure he sees this evening as a fair trade.
I’m not going to ruin tonight for Aunt Viv, so I will have to effortlessly avoid getting locked into a one-on-one conversation with Ty. I see him walking toward me with our wine and I quickly scan theroom for Aunt Viv. She’s by the grand piano being showered with compliments from a couple of boys, now young men, who I remember hanging out in the kitchen between school and basketball practice begging Aunt Viv for scraps, they were such hungry, growing food receptacles. Actually, they were more like stray dogs—the more Aunt Viv fed them, the more they showed up before practice. And now here they are, filled out and tuxedoed. I don’t want to bust up their lovefest, but I need someplace to hide.
“How are you doing, Aunt Viv? Enjoying yourself?” I ask, awkwardly inserting myself into the middle of the conversation.
“I’m having a lovely time chatting with Eric, Ben, and Riley, who I haven’t seen in ages. Did you know Eric wrote one of his college essays about workin’ with me in the kitchen? Imagine. But you I get to sit next to on a six-hour flight tomorrow, so if you could just let the four of us continue our delightful conversation that would be wonderful.” With a pat on my shoulder, Aunt Viv waves me off and turns her back, closing off the circle. Damn, who knew Aunt Viv could be such a mean girl. New plan. Find a corner to practice my fifty-nine-seconds scholarship speech one last time. Crap, Golden Boy is heading right for me doubling down with two wineglasses.
“Ty, I’d love for you to get to know Etta a little better. She can tell you all about being a lifer student at Fairchild. Let’s go find her.” I grab my glass of wine out of his hand and redirect him through the crowd to look for Etta.
“Sure, sounds good, but we do need to talk at some point, Josie. It’s pretty important.”
Then it hits me; maybe it’s not about admissions for Gracie, maybe something came back on Aunt Viv’s last round of tests and that something is not good. Really, really not good. And he wants to tell me, so we can figure out how best, together, to break the news to Aunt Viv after her big night. Oh my God I’m sure that’s it. When are we going to tell her? Tomorrow morning before we fly out to NewYork? We can’t do that. It will destroy Etta’s focus for her audition and ruin our first big Bordelon vacation. But if we wait until we get back and Aunt Viv finds out I have known for days without telling her she will disown me. I knew that heart attack was worse than Aunt Viv and Dr. Golden were letting on. My eyes start to heat up and tear.Don’t cry, Josie. Not here, not now, don’t cry.I fan my eyes a few times to dry them out.
“There she is, Josie.” Ty guides my elbow over toward the band where Etta, Poppy, and a few girls who graduated last year are talking.
“Ty, this is Etta’s good friend Poppy, who she dances with, and these two extraordinary Fairchild graduates are Simone and Freya. Actually, Freya is at Cornell. Go Big Red!” I weakly cheer as I introduce Ty to the group. Or maybe that’s it; maybe what he wants to talk about is Etta and her application to Cornell. I told him back in January that she submitted all her materials on time. Perhaps the school has contacted him to do her alumni interview. Does he have second thoughts about interviewing her because now he knows us a little too well between applying his daughter to Fairchild and being Aunt Viv’s doctor? If he doesn’t interview Etta I’m not sure I want to be seeing his face around campus next year and all the years after that.You aren’t the only who can dance this dance, Dr. Golden.
“Umm, Mama, I think Headmistress Gooding is trying to get your attention. She’s over near the bar.” I pull myself out of my thoughts on Ty, Etta, Cornell, and his screwing up her collegiate chances. I look toward the bar and see Nan beckoning me to come over. Elsamyassistant is standing at attention nearby ready to serve, but not close enough that anyone can detect Nan’s need for a social crutch.
