Gwen called out, “Please, hurry!”
But Stella reached for Gwen’s hand and squeezed it hard. She wanted to tell Gwen to slow down. She wanted to tell Gwen thatlife was something you had to hold in your hands and really look at, lest it slip away from you too quickly.
“Stay with me, Stella,” Gwen whispered.
Stella smiled up at this beautiful young woman, this woman she was sure loved her so much more than either of her daughters or her son ever could.
“Appetizers or no appetizers,” Stella said, “make sure everyone knows what we’re here for. Make sure everyone knows that we’re here to raise money. We’re not here for Chanel. We’re not here for Dior.” She said each word as if it were a curse. She squeezed Gwen’s hand harder, then listened as sirens screamed closer and closer. Were they coming for her? She couldn’t be sure.
2
It was the end of the spring semester, and Candice and her husband, Nathan, were hosting a party in their Brooklyn brownstone. In just a half hour, their living room and kitchen would be swarming with MFA Creative Writing students from NYU, both the ones who were about to graduate and the ones who would in a year or two, and Candice had been busy prepping all day, baking mini-quiches and brownies and cookies and cheese tarts. Across the kitchen counters were maybe fifteen bottles of wine. However, Candice guessed that her students would bring many more bottles, probably terrible bottles, as nobody had very much money in the cohort. Candice certainly remembered her own MFA days, right here in New York City. She’d refused her mother’s money and any help. She’d lived off crackers and bad wine.
Feeling pre-party jitters, Candice popped a bottle of French wine and poured herself a glass, just as Nathan came into the kitchen, buttoning his shirt. Although they were the same age—forty-five—Nathan looked rugged and handsome against Candice’s exhaustion and pale cheeks. She’d spent the past few weeks grading short stories and novel chapters and talking toher MFA students about their future in a world that was swiftly becoming less and less creative. She was tired of telling them that everything was going to be okay despite the presence of artificial intelligence. She had no idea what was going to happen with that, herself.
Nathan pressed a kiss onto her cheek. “I saw your mother having another one of her functions tonight.”
Candice groaned and filled her mouth with wine. “Thank goodness we don’t go to those anymore.”
Nathan laughed and reached for an empty glass for himself. “I’ve been thinking about her lately. When did we last see her? Thanksgiving?”
“Christmas,” Candice said glumly. It had been a strained dinner at the Harbor Estate in Martha’s Vineyard, where her mother, Stella Vanberg, had insisted on gathering the entire family. Candice couldn’t remember what argument had broken out. She couldn’t remember why she, Nathan, and their kids had left early, her vision swimming with rage. She vaguely remembered Stella in the front window, watching them drive away. Her heart ached.
The doorbell rang, snapping Candice out of her reverie. She swept through the living room, listening hard for signs of her daughter and son upstairs. Sarah, who was about to graduate from high school, and Peter, who was sixteen and very, very tired during a growth spurt that had put him a few inches above his father, had decided to stay in for the night, despite the party, despite having friends who lived all down the street and on all the blocks surrounding them. Candice prayed that her MFA students wouldn’t talk about anything inappropriate, although she supposed, at eighteen and sixteen, her kids probably knew more than she wanted them to.
The first writers to arrive were Marnie and Scott, both Midwesterners who’d been known to bring not only wine butalso dessert. Marnie wrote short stories about sad women who never got out of bed, whereas Scott was dipping his toe into science fiction and already had a book contract. In truth, neither of them was Candice’s favorite, although she liked all her students.
“Come in!” she cried. “There’s an open bottle of wine in the kitchen.”
After that, students began to arrive in waves. One after another, Candice greeted them with hugs and “thanks for coming!” and felt herself putting on her brightest hostess smile. The latest person to arrive was Janie, the Massachusetts-born blonde who wrote novels about South America, about adventurous women who knew too much. Although her prose wasn’t Candice’s favorite, she sensed something about Janie. She sensed she would be famous one day.
Eventually, Candice found herself on the sofa with Scott and Martin, another writer. Although she’d tried to mentally prepare herself for this topic, she found her stomach swirling when they brought up Nathan’s new top-selling book,The Human Agenda.
“I mean, I just finished it,” Scott was saying, his cheeks already red from wine. “I think it might be brilliant?”
“Totally,” Martin said. “What was the process like for you? Did you give him notes throughout?”
Candice wanted to say that she had. She wanted to say that Nathan had told her about the book every step of the way. She wanted to say that he’d asked not only for her advice but also for her permission. After all, the book was as close to “autofiction,” a mirror of Nathan’s life, as could be. It was about a writing professor at NYU who was married to another writing professor at NYU. They had two children, a boy and a girl, both teenagers. In the book, the married couple struggled to communicate. They struggled romantically and fought about everything from bills to what to have for dinner to their opinions of each other’s writing.
It was all true, Candice knew. Everything he’d written about their marriage was a direct reflection of their day-to-day life.
It meant these students knew far more about her marital life than she ever would have liked them to. It meant they knew far more about her body than they ever should have.
But there was one thing about the story that didn’t fully track. In the book, the “Nathan” character, whom Nathan had decided to call Mike, had an affair with one of the NYU writing students. Candice decided that this element of the story was wishful thinking. That her husband had thought some of the students were attractive over the years was no surprise, obviously. These women were in their twenties. They were brilliant and hadn’t yet aged or given birth or yelled at him about something inane, like the trash and when to take it out. But Nathan wouldn’t have an affair, not really.
“Nathan and I have always had a very communicative writing relationship,” she heard herself lie to Scott and Martin. “It’s one of the reasons we got together in our MFA program. We were amazed by one another’s work. We changed one another’s processes and made each other better.” She smiled wider.
Scott and Martin smiled back, although she could see it in their faces that they didn’t believe her. They’d readThe Human Agenda, after all, which meant they thought they knew everything. It meant they definitely thought that Nathan was having some kind of affair.
She wondered who they thought it was with.
“Excuse me,” she said, standing up to fetch another glass of wine. But it seemed that everywhere she went, all she heard wasThe Human Agenda,The Human Agenda. Everyone wanted to talk about autofiction as a concept. They wanted to talk about Nathan’s advance, his upcoming book tour, and what his editor had wanted him to change. Embarrassing her all the more, Nathan approached her with a glass of ice water and urged herto drink it. “You’re drinking too fast,” he whispered into her ear, his smile still firm.
Candice wanted to melt on the spot. She could feel Marnie’s and Janie’s eyes on them, assessing their marriage, assessing Candice’s weakness.
The truth was, Candice had never had a book sell as well asThe Human Agenda. She’d sold a book early on, in her twenties, and she’d had a minor book tour and a write-up inThe New York Times. The publication had secured her a spot on NYU’s staff, which had meant stability. At the time, Nathan hadn’t had anything published yet, and he’d steamed with envy, often asking her if she thought he had any talent at all. “You’re so talented!” she’d gushed to him, over and over. “You’re going to be successful soon. It’s just a matter of time.”
When they turned thirty, they celebrated Nathan’s first publication—a literary fiction novel set in Paris. It sold well and secured Nathan’s position as a professor at Pratt University. Six years after that, after the sale of two additional books, the staff at NYU had practically begged Candice to bring her husband over. Candice had been both thrilled and apprehensive. NYU had been her space. But Nathan was swiftly becoming a celebrity writer. NYU wanted his status. They wanted students to come there in droves, if only to work under Nathan Lerner.
