“I’ll take one, thank you.” She lifted a pink fruity drink off a passing tray and walked by a buffet table filled with platters of deviled eggs, shrimp cocktail, finger sandwiches, toothpicks with cubes of cheese and cucumber sticking out of a half melon. There was a fondue table and a couple of different Jell-O salads that looked too perfect to cut into. White paper lanterns were strung from the trees, and the whole thing was quite lovely—if only she didn’t feel so out of place. There must have been at least fifty guests, some she recognized and some she didn’t. As she cut her way through the crowds, a woman tapped her on the shoulder.
“Oh, hi, Milly,” she said. “I’m Maureen. We met at the club.”
“Of course. Nice to see you, Maureen.”
“And this is my husband Jack.”
“Great name,” Milly said. “I have a Jack.”
“I thought you had a Lloyd.”
“I do. Jack is my son.” She pointed to Jack’s little blond head of hair poking out from behind a deck chair, where he was digging a hole in the sand. “My husband is Lloyd.”
Maureen and her husband seemed to wait for her to say more, to point him out. “He’s not here, unfortunately.”
“Oh, too bad. Is he sick?”
“Yes,” Milly said, thinking that would just be easier—he was just sick, poor guy—but then she remembered she’d just told Sylvia and Walter that he was working. “I mean no,” she quickly corrected. “No, not sick, perfectly healthy, just had to work.”
“On a Sunday?” Maureen’s husband said, and Milly almost rolled her eyes.Yes, she thought,on a goddamned Sunday. Why does anyone care?Don’t they have enough going on in their own lives to worry about where Lloyd is?
“It’s called a weekend for a reason,” Jack went on. Maureen nodded in agreement, and Milly wanted to punch him in the face.
“He works in television,” Milly said. “He has clients in town, big names.”
Maureen’s eyes widened. “Television!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together. “How exciting! What does he do? Hey girls,” she called out to several ladies grouped next to them, “Milly’s husband works in television.”
All heads turned toward her, and Milly had the feeling that she’d gone too far, explained too much, too soon. Drawing attention to herself was exactly what she was trying to avoid. She’d have to work on her delivery, drop snippets of information more slowly.
“Does he work on any shows we might know?” a short, full-figured woman gushed.
Milly racked her brain. All she could think of was that soap opera that consumed him and that horrible, beautiful, Beverly Douglas, but she didn’t want to mention her or the show. She tried to think of another single show that the station produced, but she was coming up blank under pressure. What kind of wife knew nothing about her husband’s career? She began to panic, she was going to blow her cover of being a perfectly normal married wife within minutes of seeing these women. “CBS,” Milly blurted out the minute it came to her. “He works for CBS Television Networks.” It was something at least.
“Oh my gosh, I loveThe Light Withinon CBS!” Maureen said clasping her hands together. “And Kay Grant’s my favorite. What’s she like in real life? The actress Beverly Douglas, I mean. Surely you’ve met her? She’s so gorgeous.”
The mention of the woman her husband might very well be gallivanting around with made Milly want to vomit. She shook her head. “No, unfortunately not.”
“It all sounds so glamorous,” another woman, Joan, chimed in.
“Yes, it’s quite a production. They film the shows live every day, but there are rumors they might be able to prerecord them soon.” Milly smiled, hoping that this new piece of revolutionary information would be what they’d remember about her, not the fact that her husband was strangely absent.
“Do you ever get to be on set?” Joan continued, still fascinated.
Milly tried to recall. It had been so long since she’d been anywhere near Lloyd’s work, certainly before children.
“I had a walk-on role once,” she said. “As a secretary. I walked across the set and handed someone a stack of papers. It was my big break.” She laughed. “My only break.”
She thought back on the day, how Lloyd proudly displayed her around the studio and introduced her to his colleagues, how he’d accompanied her to the makeup and costume departments and even helped pick out her outfit, how someone had said she could be a model or a movie star, and how she’d known they were only being nice to an executive’s wife but she’d hoped Lloyd had heard them anyway.
“You must tell us what happens with Kay and Doug on the show, Milly, please. Surely your husband spills the beans,” Maureen insisted.
“Sorry, I can’t say.” Milly shrugged; she had no idea. “It’s top secret. But I have to check on my little one; so good to see you all.” She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her temple as she walked away.
A couple pushed a baby carriage along the pathway that encircled the entire island and was the only divider between Sylvia’s property and the beach. She let them go by before crossing. Being surrounded by all these people at Sylvia’s party made her feel overcome with loneliness, worse than sitting alone in her kitchen. Here she was reminded of everything she was losing—a companion, a comfort, a crutch—as well as everything she had at stake if people were to find out.
She wouldn’t even be invited to this kind of gathering if they thought her husband only came home to save face on the weekends, and she certainly wouldn’t be invited if they suspected a divorce. Divorce was contagious; divorce was a threat. No one would want their children spendingtime with children of a single mother. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked over at Jack and thought of him and Debbie getting caught up in her heartache. Jack was so deeply immersed in carving out a hole in the sand and was now taking a bucket to the water to fill it, only to have most of the water spill out before he got it back to his trench. She saw Debbie notice his attempts and she expected her to ignore it; she was, after all, deep in conversation with her friend Suzanna, sitting on the edge of the pier, legs swinging in synchrony. But after a moment, Debbie got up and ran to Jack, taking the bucket from his little hands, filling it, and bringing it back for him. She did it three more times before returning to her spot on the pier. Already full of swirling emotions, Milly felt a single tear fall onto her cheek and she quickly wiped it away. She had to get hold of herself.
