Rumaan Alam - Rich and Pretty

Lauren had nothing, at twelve. Her chest as flat as those of the boys who made a big show of stripping out of their shirts during their basketball games — what, it was hot! Her hair, unremarkable; makeup, forbidden — hell, pierced ears were forbidden. Plus she didn’t know any of these kids, didn’t understand the things they talked about: the Hamptons, their big sisters’ drug dealers, their mothers’ plastic surgery, their fathers’ indictment or promotion or book deal. One of her classmates came to school daily with a bodyguard; this was never remarked upon, which drove her insane. Who were these people?

Sarah was an ambassador from this strange world. Lauren could not understand Jonah, the boy whose father was running for mayor, or Kathe, the girl whose stepfather had three Oscars on his mantelpiece, or Bee, the girl whose portrait appeared in W, but she thought she could understand Sarah. Little kids arrive in this country speaking only Vietnamese and after two weeks of Sesame Street they’re telling their parents how to pay the gas bill. You can learn, and Lauren tried to, studying Sarah, listening to her, mistaking the chemistry between them for comprehension.

By seventh grade, they had worked up to regular Friday nights together; eventually, they convinced Lauren’s parents to let her take the train home alone, rather than having her mother trek into the city to fetch her, which often entailed a quiet cup of tea in the kitchen, Bella Brooks’s fingers tightening around Lulu’s white porcelain cups, garishly painted with birds. Lauren listened intently and began to understand: that Barneys was better than Bloomingdale’s; that East Hampton was better than Water Mill; that Daniel was the nice one, William the mean one, with respect to the Jones twins; that the cool cigarette to smoke was a Camel Light, if you were a girl, and a Marlboro Red, if you were a boy, and American Spirit, if you were a hippie.

One night at Sarah’s, after enough of the same had happened that Lauren could think of them as just another fact of her existence, a new development: Sarah, armed with Lulu’s credit card, took them out to dinner. A few caveats pertained — the restaurant had to be nearby, on a preapproved list, so there was the Indian on the corner or the Bangladeshi opposite, the sole difference between the two the presence of meat on the menu of the latter. There was the Chinese place, which had been called Jade Garden, then closed and reopened unchanged save the name, Forbidden City, which they found hilarious for a reason she can’t remember now.

At twelve, Lauren got comfortable. She understood how to get by in conversations, she knew that there were boys who thought she was pretty, and that was one of the more important things. Then one night, around Thanksgiving, that’s why she’s remembering it now, something about this time of year, even here, in the tropics, she found the photograph of Christopher, tucked away, largely forgotten in one of Lulu’s many photo collages, this by the guest bedroom, then occupied by William Li, the Chinese graduate student who had come to stay for three months.

“Who’s that?” Lauren’s curiosity. He was cute, whoever he was.

“Oh.” Sarah matter-of-factly sipping a soda through a straw. “That’s my brother, Christopher.”

Never, in the year plus, a mention of this brother. Lauren wasn’t even sure how to ask the question.

“He’s dead,” Sarah said, still dispassionate.

The story took a long time to learn. Lauren knew by that point that you don’t ask questions, you don’t demand details, you don’t ask for clarification: You dance around, you act, you feign understanding. This tactic worked at school and it worked, over time, with Sarah, and Lauren got to some understanding about Christopher, ghost brother, eleven years Sarah’s senior, dead when she was only seven, and in the second grade.

Lauren played coy and eventually Sarah showed her other pictures beyond that one — Christopher, polo shirt, gap in his teeth; later, safety pin through his septum, unwashed hair. Christopher was, she learned, political, only his way of doing things involved throwing vials of pig’s blood at the feet of the closeted mayor. He was young, but he was a savant. The apple fell near that tree, but on the far side of it. Ironic.

Lauren understood, later, that Lulu was a young mother, and she inferred that Huck was probably an absentee father; surely this explained something. Christopher had existed, there were photographs, but he was out of focus, he was off the page, he was ahead of his time, out of time as well. AIDS, which they blamed on drug addiction, but Lauren had studied those photographs, and divined in those eyes some sparkle, in that body, some softness. She had her doubts.

Sarah had been sent off to a psychiatrist that year, smart enough to understand that what was ostensibly a playdate was in fact an evaluation. She passed with flying colors, as was her wont. If they were stung, Huck and Lulu, by the fact that their friend in the Oval Office couldn’t do anything to spare their son, by the fact that the newspapers carried no mention of his brief tenure on earth, by the fact of a funeral for a child, of all the unthinkable things, they were at least saved by Sarah.

Two-thirds of their lives they’ve known each other, and Sarah’s told her so little of that brother. If Lauren complains about her brothers, Sarah reacts like Lauren is relaying something alien, something wholly unique. She had only been seven. Lauren remembers nothing of being seven: the sticky green vinyl of the bus seats on the backs of her knees, the fleshy gap in her teeth, the powdery smell of her second-grade teacher. Sarah’s recollections, if she has them, must be as vague, as fleeting, as sensory. They’ve never discussed it but Sarah works, now, for AIDS patients. It’s deliberate, but quiet, as she is. As a girl, Lauren almost begrudged Sarah her dead brother; hard to admit, as she was thirteen and old enough to know better. Like a cashmere scarf, a Tiffany key ring, a dead sibling was but another thing Sarah possessed that she did not.

Lauren sits up in the chair.Outdoor chaises aren’t actually all that comfortable, or she’s never sat in one that is, anyway. In the end, what you want is a bed. She’s got a funny knot in her lower back, testament to the fact that she’s just drifted away into sleep, this despite the chatter Fiona and Amina keep up. They’re each flipping through a magazine, stopping every so often to jab at the thin, glossy pages with an accusing, greasy finger. Their talk is of the clothes, their cut, their color, their appropriateness for the occasion being pictured, the connotations and associations of the celebrity caught sporting said clothes by some intrepid shutterbug with a telephoto lens. Lauren’s not opposed to such discussions; she knows quite well the pleasure of sitting, feet immersed in a hot, whirling bath while a penitent Korean woman trims her cuticles, and thinking about whether a certain personage has attained sufficient fame to wear a specific garment, or whether that garment’s appearance on the frame of a reality star hasn’t forever, in her estimation anyway, cheapened their good, Italian name. It’s just she wants to sleep is all. She wants to let her mind drift up into the sky like a kite, bob and dip on the eddying air, go where it will.

Maybe she’s being unfairly uncharitable toward Amina and Fiona. It’s easy to be that. Fiona, in her unexpectedly straightforward bathing suit, reclines like Delacroix’s odalisque on the fringed pink towel, a souvenir from a trip to Kenya. Amina, all those luxurious curves, that expanse of beautiful skin. Their every movement looks choreographed, something Lauren never knows how to do. She’s sure everyone can see it, the strain on her face as she walks through a room, that awareness of being watched. Other people have it so easy.