“I’m sorry, I’m trying to think of the right way to have this conversation,” Mary said. She was quiet again. This time, she began to chew on the inside of her cheek, meditatively, in the same way that Denny sometimes did, former tobacco chewer that he was.
“Denny does that.”
“Does what?”
“Chews his cheek when he can’t think of what to say.”
“You know, I’ve still never met him,” Mary said, and then proceeded: “Here’s the thing. I wanted to meet here because I wanted to talk to you about Di.”
Her newest friend coming here, to her hometown, to talk about her oldest one. A competition for her affection, maybe. Anna couldn’t yet tell. She studied the face looking back at her: earnest, kind. Still that gentle spray of gray hair at the temples. Large chandelier earrings, down nearly as far as her shoulders. So out of style they were nearly in style. She should have known that Mary and Di could never really be friends. Foolish of her to imagine a world where all three of them belonged together.
“What about her? I do know she can be difficult and demanding, but, you know, she’s basically my family,” Anna said.
“That’s the thing,” Mary said. She reached a hand, searching. For Anna’s hand. Anna pulled back. “Is she? Your family?”
“I guess I don’t really know what you’re getting at.” Anna could hear her own voice turn cool. She didn’t care for the implication. To feel jealousy was one thing, but Anna had no patience for women who initiated grievances among women.
“I think—and this is hard to say to you—but I think that she may be friendly with Mimi,” Mary said.
“Oh, that’s what you’re worried about?” Anna leaned back andsipped from the wine. She had never spent much time thinking about the wine, but it wasn’t very good. Slippery, a little rust on the palate, a hiccup of acid and then gone. A short burst on earth, grapes that turned to dust. Wasn’t it all like that, really? Just a moment and then life extinguished. All those winemakers, making a fuss, battling the sun and the rain and the snow and the hail, out in the field picking their grapes by hand, and for what? An average bottle of wine. A bad bottle of wine. A good bottle of wine. Whichever one you ended up with, it was gone at the end of the night. Finished. Forgotten.
“Di, well, she’s friends with everyone. It’s her thing. I wouldn’t put it past her to work extra hard to get Mimi on her side just so that she doesn’t lose her social status at Life Time,” Anna said.
“I ran into her,” Mary said. “She was having dinner. Not just her. She was with Mimi and Ellen. Two weeks ago.”
“She didn’t tell me about that,” Anna said.
“It was in Beverly. Some new place. I’m sure she was counting on the fact that practically no one we know eats out in Beverly.”
“Or maybe she was counting on the fact that she was just going out to dinner with a few women from Hamilton and that it was no big deal,” Anna countered.
“Also possible.” Mary drained another glass of wine and turned to get the attention of the server. Anna put her hand on her friend’s arm.
“Don’t,” she said. “I think you’ve had enough.”
“I’m just trying to make myself a little nicer,” Mary said. “The mediocre wine helps.”
The Beverly restaurant, Mary told her, was formal. Dark. The women were at a table in the back, and when Mary excused herself to use the bathroom—she was at a dinner for work—she walked past, and they averted their eyes. They did not want to be seen.
Anna listened. Di hadn’t mentioned anything about the dinner, it was true. But then, it was just as possible that her friend hadn’twanted to upset her. Di had a tendency to keep close to the vest information that she felt might be prone to rocking the boat. As much as she was invested in Anna’s success when it came to the PTO, she was also a society woman in town, and Anna had no doubt that Di was still working the rounds, ensuring her own value in Hamilton.
“Look, when it comes to Di, she may just be trying to smooth things over so that things are easier for her and the kids,” Anna said. “I don’t exactly blame her, given the kind of shit I’ve put up with.” Hadn’t it been Di, after all, who had dragged her over to the police station to file the report in the first place? Di who had backed her decision to run for PTO president, no questions asked? All these years, Di had calmed her down and walked her off the precarious cliffs and also had been there when Anna needed her most. She couldn’t quite entertain what it was that Mary was implying—that Di was somehow on the other side of all of this, the side that was perpetuating text messages and emails, the side that had pushed her own daughter into the pool. That wasn’t Di.
“I am only telling you what I saw. That’s all,” Mary said.
“I appreciate that, I do. Maybe we should just leave it at that,” Anna said.
Mary didn’t seem offended, just quiet. She picked up a piece of pizza and devoted her full attention to it. Anna watched her friend, the way she folded the little triangle before biting, the way her nose nearly touched the end of her food and how she didn’t even care. The truth was that they hadn’t known each other for very long, and if you had to put one friendship up against the other, she was always going to take the lasting, resounding one, the friend who had been there for every twist and rumble of her life. Those childhood days when she was stuck in her attic bedroom, grounded for one reason or another, sneaking onto the extension landline, coiling a telephone cord around her index finger, talking in whispers into the night so that her mother wouldn’t catch her.
When she met Denny, Di was the one she had called first. “I don’t know if it will last,” she said. “It’s probably just a summer thing.” But Di told her to trust the sweet summer breeze and to drive out to Gin Beach in Montauk and to believe that love could last for longer than just the summer. She believed Di when she told her that you could build a life and a love and a marriage from the scaffolding of those pink and hazy summer days. Just kids, she had been thinking. But it’s only ever just kids, Di told her. And Anna believed that because Anna wanted to have something to believe in.
“Do you think that maybe you’re just jealous of Di?” Anna said. She could feel bile rising in her throat. It was the wrong thing to say, or it was the right thing to say, or it was just athingto say.
“If you have a question for me, just come out and ask it,” Mary said.
“I thought I just did.”
“I’m not jealous of you and Di.” Mary sighed and put her hands in her lap. “You know, if anything, I’m . . . as worried for myself as I am for you.”
