Page 86 of A Better World

“No. Fuck you, you spoiled brat!” Linda said, only her voice came out shrill and defensive. It was wrong and she knew it even as it was happening. Then she was flying down the stairs, out the door, into the car, her whole body shaking.

She climbed into shotgun. In his rush, Russell didn’t wait for her to buckle up. He was already pulling away. “We’re late,” he said.

“Who cares?”

“They said the doors won’t open,” he answered, confused and distracted as he navigated the snow on their driveway curb. “Invited people have to go or it looks bad. They bring it up at the review.”

The review, the review, the review. She was so tired of worrying about this review, which would lead to another review, and another, and another, and for what? So they could survive long enough to turn into assholes, too?

Linda looked out and glimpsed Josie through her bedroom window. The girl—young woman—stood a foot or two back from the glass. With the expanse of the large room looming over her, she didn’t look angry anymore. She looked alone. Forgotten, even, like a toy.

It all felt so wrong.I should get out, Linda thought. Tell him right now to pull over. “It was a scene in there. I screwed up. I made it worse.”

Russell raised an eyebrow for show. She could tell he wasn’t listening. Possibly hadn’t even heard her words, was reacting only to their tone. His mind was on the party.

“She said something upsetting.”

Russell rolled through a stop sign, gunned the gas. It felt like running in the wrong direction.

“What’d she say?”

“Something bad. And then I said something that made it worse,” Linda answered. “Russell, could you talk to her?”

“What?” Another stop sign. He turned to her with agitation: They were late. They might get in trouble. So why was she talking about Josie?

“Could you talk to her about what’s going on? I screwed up.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure,” he said, gunning it again. Even as he said it, she knew he wouldn’t. When had he ever talked to them about anything important? For years, she’d put forth the appearance he was involved in the rearing of their children. She’d given him credit for things he’d never done, wrapped gifts and put his name on them. For whom? For the kids, so they didn’t feel neglected? For him, in the event he changed his ways, so there was a space for him? Or for herself, so she didn’t have to admit what was happening? The whole pretense was kabuki fucking theater.

They arrived ten minutes late, which seemed within the confines of reasonable, but the valet was gone, and the party was so loud that no one heard them ring the bell. It took another five minutes before the butler, wearing an actual butler’s costume, answered the door. He acted like he didn’t know why they were there, despite the scores of parked cars, the revelry.

“The party started,” the butler announced.

“We’re new here. We didn’t realize,” Russell said. “Next time we’ll be prompt.” His voice wheedled. He smiled wide and phony, made prayer hands. Hip made prayer hands, then a peace sign.

“We got confused about where to go—that’s all. It won’t ever happen again,” Russell added.

The butler smiled indulgent forgiveness, admitted them inside.

A man guided Hip to the back, Linda assumed to the pool house. So focused on getting everything right, on pleasing Cathy, he didn’tlook back or say good-bye, even after Linda called out to him. Russell followed the original butler. She stood there for a while. Considered getting back in the car. Remembered it was his car and wouldn’t drive without his handprint or the keys.

The hall opened to a grand ballroom. A string quartet played. The thirty-foot arched ceiling was blighted with helium balloons, some of which were falling in lazy arcs, their strings curlicued in pigtail fronds. Russell pushed through the crowd to Heinrich and his office crew.

“Hey!” she heard him chirp as he glad-handed Heinrich, then hugged him with a back clap: “You’re looking spiffy!” And then, to someone else: “Oh, I see they let the riffraff in!” Then some comment about his tie being an improvement, but it might get cut anyway, and laughs and laughs and laughs.

The faces here were older and more established. These were the people with golden tickets, or withpotential. Because of ActHollow, she and Russell had been judged as potentials. Greeting everyone up front were the powers that be: Parson Junior, Anouk, Jack, Lloyd, and Daniella. Keith Parson drank red wine on the stairway half landing, looking down. No costume or crown tonight. He looked out of place in his bright yellow Omnium tracksuit. With everyone in black tie, he appeared like a thirty-year-old kid at a grown-up party, his face sweaty and sallow.Sick, she thought. His body was outsized and wrongly proportioned.Steroids, she finally realized.In a town with so many competent doctors, this kid’s got heart failure.

She moved past the gauntlet before they could see her or call out. A black goat was tied with a slipknot to the banister.What a sweetie, someone mumbled, soft and baby-talking.I hope they untie it, so it can hang out, another person added.

She kept going, to another room far from the people she knew. Waiters crossed her path with platters. She ate a lentil bird’s nest, a liver pâté amuse-bouche. She would go home to Josie as soon as the ball dropped, she decided. She would tell her happy New Year.

A waiter passed with a tray of glasses filled with red wine.

“Careful!” he said as she took one. “It’s strong.”

It tasted just the same as usual, only earthier.

By the long sofas, a cluster of beautiful women and men talked animatedly. They were the dayworker housekeepers and drivers of the most elite families, Jack’s nanny among them. They gave Linda the uneasy sense that there was a hidden class structure within the system here. In other words, how often do housekeepers and drivers have surgically enhanced faces and bombshell bodies?

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