“We aren’t multimillionaires, okay?” Mary said. Her house was lovely enough, with a well-tended garden that reminded Anna of her mother’s. A charming sunroom, laden with antiques, wasthe kind of room that Anna could imagine spending a family Christmas in as the snow fell in the backyard. She coveted the blue Murano glass paperweight, the rolltop desk with its inkwell and stained-tip pens, and even the old wingback chair, the leather of which had split in the center.
In the backyard, a lattice archway was thick with tea rose vines, now crossing into their third bloom of the season, tiny white flowers, honeybees buzzing around them. The last week of August, they agreed, would be perfect, right before the school year started, in the late afternoon, after the heat of the day had died down. They could serve cucumber sandwiches and iced tea and lemonade, put the girls in pretty floral dresses and set out tiny crystal bud vases with roses and pansies and other cuttings from the garden and string Edison bulbs along the white picket fence for when the sun sank a little low in the sky and maybe the Hamilton mommies would find themselves temporarily enchanted by a garden full of gnomes and flowers and pixie elementary schoolers, with their pigtails and wide-eyed dreams, and maybe they could all agree that all kids should have that same ability: to dream about a world where they could do anything anywhere, boundless, up to the sky, out to the fuzzy edges of the earth, limited by no person, by no president of the PTO, appointed either by God or by man.
Even though Anna wanted a low-key event, once she got wind of the party, Di insisted on calling hervery favoriteplanner over at Special Events of New England for help with high-tops, linens, and glassware. Anna drew the line at a tent, which was not to say that Di hadn’t tried.
“They do have these beautiful sail tents, rescued from old ships that are no longer in use,” Di pleaded.
“There’s not room, and this isn’t a wedding,” she told Di.
“Everyone wants a tent when it’s hot,” Di told her. “Half thePTO’s going to be marching around fanning their precious, sweaty faces. Just watch. And anyway, isn’t it pretty to stand under a tent in the afternoon?”
“They can drink lemonade, just like everyone else.”
And they left it at that.
Anna had to admit, though, that her two friends did make a fiery and commendable team. Mary’s house was modest, but in August its garden was bountiful, pulsing with black-eyed Susan, purple ironweed, panicled hydrangea, bee balm, Russian sage, and phlox. It had been weeded and tended to, but it lacked the particular manicured look of the estates along the winding roads of Hamilton. You could get lost in these flowers, and that was exactly the mood that Anna wanted to set.
With Di’s help, too, high-top tables had arrived, cloaked in a tidy gingham print, a pale light blue to match the coneflowers and globe thistles.
“Alice’s Tea Party, but for adults,” Anna said, standing back to admire the work, her friends by her side. It was the hottest part of the day, but she could feel the sun fading. Soon the women would arrive, and Denny would be there to drop off Louisa, for whom she had selected an eyelet sundress and leather sandals.
“Calling some of these women adults may be taking things a little far,” Di quipped. She hooked her arm into Anna’s and, on the other side, Mary did the same, and the unlikely trio stood looking at the tables, now topped with their little bud vases and mason jars filled with rental silverware. Looking around the garden, Anna felt a surge of optimism, that she could do this, that this party was going to create the kind of forward momentum that she needed.
“Okay,” she said, inhaling the August air, the flowers, the heat, the slow smoke coming from some neighbor’s grill. “Into the lion’s den we go, though this time I suppose the den is ours.”
The women of Hamilton always arrived fashionably late. Mary’s friends came first, their joyous kids crashing into the lawn with glee.
“Away from the tables!” Mary shouted, as little girls rolled and bounced underfoot, threatening to tip over the very bud vases they had spent so many hours artfully arranging. Eventually, a group of girls found their way to a small hollow in the back of the yard, where a tree that bent down toward the earth created a natural nook, perfect for shade and for secrets.
Anna stood near the front gate holding a glass of tea and wearing a long, sweeping skirt, hoping to make small talk with the new arrivals. Mary had been generous in introducing her friends, but she had gone off to tend to the rest of the party, so Anna now stood on her own, watching women she didn’t really know show up, some of them spectacularly coiffed: beaded sundresses, gladiator sandals that wove halfway up the calf, layers of chunky jewelry that made it look like they had casually run out of the house in a dash (Anna knew the truth). The women who knew one another leaned in for reciprocal air-kisses and offered quick updates on their summer lives. Anna, from her post of relative invisibility, could hear it all, the trips to Amalfi, the swim lessons from the handsome new guard at Life Time, the restaurant that had just opened in Rockport (divine,one woman declared).
One by one, they filtered toward her, tilting sunglasses down, offering their hands for a shake, nodding as she explained who she was, considering the air, taking her temperature, surveying the garden, clicking a little—was that actual approval Anna sensed?—and then thanking her and saying they’d be back.
A few lingered to ask questions. Why was she running? some wanted to know. What did she plan to do differently? She and Mary had rehearsed this beforehand, an answer that was both canned and produced to sound as if it were spontaneous.It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the current path or leadership! Ijust think it’s always nice to change things up and give someone else a chance at improving our community. I believe that we can and should include more of Hamilton’s best and brightest in all of our events, and that’s what I’m here to do in my bid for president.
It was vague, it was optimistic, and it left Mimi Mar out of the conversation, three things that no one could reasonably argue with. Each time she repeated it, Anna felt emboldened, and she could see, on the faces of the women on the receiving end of her mini polemic, that it was working. The idea—that a little bit of fresh blood could improve the community—wasn’t necessarily a revolutionary one. Here and there, Anna added in fragments of political commentary. One woman, wearing a long linen sundress, wanted to hear more about events hosted by the PTO, which gave Anna the perfect segue.
“What Idon’twant is for this to be an uneven playing field, the way it is now, with parents having to fight over who gets to take their kid to a pasta dance. I don’t want you to have to pay more to have the same access to these services. Everyone should get the same things out of these schools,” she said.
The woman in linen considered. Was it all that bad right now, her face seemed to say. “Will it just . . . make it more difficult for some of us, though?”
“I don’t want it to be difficult foranyone,” Anna emphasized. “There’s space for everyone in this town, isn’t there?”
Linen Lady seemed satisfied with the answer, or with the lemonade, at least. She lifted her glass. “Well, cheers to that,” she said, chirping like a bird.
The conversation gave Anna ballast, just an added scoop of confidence. When the next woman came around—black slip dress, awfully dressy for the occasion—Anna felt sufficiently armed. She launched into her messaging, talked about how much she wanted equality for the kids, about how unfair it had been, about how maybesome peopledidn’t really want things to be all that differentin the end. Even if Mimi wasn’t standing behind her—and she wasn’t—Anna could just about feel her, eyes like lasers, a confounding vision for the PTO that did not comport with her own ideas about what was and what was not equitable or decent.
“It has been the same for a while,” Black Slip Dress said, in a way that made Anna think thatthe samewas a synonym forjust fine.
“I don’t know any other PTO that keeps the same president around for over a decade, the way Hamilton did with Laura Cox,” Anna said.
The woman stepped back, a little surprised. “It’s true, she did have an unusually long run,” she said.
“Every president here has had an unusually long run,” Anna said.
Mary came over just then, carrying drinks. “How is everyone enjoying the party?” she asked, the consummate host. “Has Anna talked to you about her ideas for extending the PTO’s scholarship program next year?”
“I was actually just talking about tenure,” Anna said, leaning back on her heels. The sun was still full and ripe. Her clothing stuck to her, but she felt strong. Magical, even. The party felt rich with possibility.
