Rumaan Alam - Rich and Pretty

She lost interest, of course. Kids lose interest, and Bellatrix was sold three years later. Later, at fifteen, she’d realize how weirdly sexual it is, this thing with girls and horses, and she’d feel strange. That year: Cartier watch. Again, much desired; she wears it even now. She had wept viciously the day she’d misplaced it in the locker room before swim class, but one of the custodians had seen it on the bench, taken it to the main office for safekeeping, and her anguish had lasted only an hour or so. Then at seventeen: the car, the compact BMW she’d wanted, but in blue, which Huck had deemed more sensible than red, and not a convertible, because Lulu was convinced that in an accident you’d be decapitated.

This year, Sarah had prevailed on Fiona to accompany her to Barneys, and they came up with an asymmetrical necklace, something between a collar and a bird’s nest, set with gems in an array of pastel shades. Lulu loved it. Huck was harder, but also somehow easier: A book would suffice, the rarer and odder the better, but this year, she’d wanted something to communicate her as-yet-unspoken thanks for shouldering the expense of the wedding and the attendant hassle as well. She’d been mindful of this for months and had poked around online to see what was at auction, had almost splurged on some first editions (Updike, signed; Shaw, pristine) but had then done one better by purchasing, from a small auction house based in Dallas, a handwritten letter from Winston Churchill to his brother.

For Ruth, Dan’s mother, retired after years in private practice as a psychiatrist, from her and Dan together, a set of illustrated volumes surveying the work of John Singer Sargent. Ruth was going to devote her retirement to painting. She did watercolors and was very good. She had the sort of precise eye and steady hand required by the medium. For Andrew, Dan’s father, a pair of leather gloves: truly beautiful, horribly expensive. This came after much discussion with Dan, who seemed as puzzled by his father as she was. Fathers are a mystery. Anyway, it gets cold in Michigan.

They spent the day at Huck and Lulu’s, the whole new family together. Lulu did the cooking, feeling too guilty to employ temporary help. She spent hours on hallacas, wrapped lovingly in banana leaves. They sat in the dining room, set with the best china, and Huck told stories while Ruth, conscientious Emily’s List donor, gritted her teeth. Sarah hadn’t bothered to implore Huck to keep it nonpartisan; it was worse if you admonished him like that. Ruth took two very healthy whiskies after dinner and hurried out, after dessert, claiming a nascent headache. It had been, overall, a success.

Willa’s office is in a strange corner of the citywith no particular character: a small hotel, a kitchen supply showroom open to the trade only, a shuttered Turkish restaurant, heavy maroon curtains still draped across its doors. The office is on the second floor, with big windows looking out over the quiet street and lots of potted orchids that are miraculously thriving despite the dry winter air.

“How are you holding up?” Willa has a bemused, I-told-you-so demeanor. Wedding planning is her calling; her business depends on making it seem an impossibility.

Sarah sees Willa not as a mechanic or plumber, an expert called in to address something she couldn’t possibly do herself, but rather as one of the caterers Lulu trusts: someone to do a job she’s capable of but can’t spare time for. “I’m holding up,” she tells her. It’s not a lie. She feels fine.

“Things are going wonderfully on this end,” Willa says. They’re at a small, round table, set with a teapot and little cups, like girls playing at tea party. The place is full of this kind of frippery: slipper chairs, coffee-table books, doilies under the orchids’ terra-cotta pots, stuff chosen to appeal to the average bride, the Willa bride.

“That’s great,” says Sarah. There’s a pad of paper and a cup of sharpened pencils on the table, in case she needs to take notes. She doesn’t feel any particular need to take notes.

“Why don’t I get the cakes and we’ll get started then?”

“That’s great,” Sarah says again. She was expecting the table would be laid already. She’s impatient. She doesn’t enjoy being around Willa: She thinks her forceful empathy conceals something — condescension, bitterness, it’s not clear what. But she is efficient. She disappears into the backroom to retrieve the samples of cake.

There’s vanilla, with a thin band of raspberry between its layers; there’s chocolate, with a coating of crushed, salty nuts; there’s coconut, with a suggestion of banana, somehow; there’s another chocolate with mint that tastes like a Girl Scout cookie. They’re all good. Sarah likes dessert but getting through Christmas while being mindful of her regimen, her plan— diet is such a disgusting word — was so hard. It seems crazy to be sitting in this strange room on Twenty-Fifth Street eating seven pieces of cake in the middle of the afternoon, but you make concessions. She ate the papaya dulce that Lulu made for Christmas dinner, even though it wasn’t all that good, and she had one accidentally fattening meal with Lauren, their own holiday celebration.

It’s a ritual with precedent: just the two of them, the chance to swap gifts and get drunk and talk shit before disappearing into family and obligation. She texted Lauren a couple of weeks after coming back from the island, banter, though Sarah was still— mad wasn’t the word, but there was a word for the feeling, somewhere. Still, tradition is tradition. Lauren must have felt the same way, because a plan was made, and kept, a bar in Tribeca: subway tile, mustachioed bartenders, one-dollar oyster specials.

“I’m not sure I understand the appeal of oysters.” Lauren fiddled on her stool, the puffy coat hanging on its back taking up too much space.

“They’re erotic, right?” Sarah made a face. “I think people just pretend to like them because it seems sophisticated.”

“How’s the wedding coming along?”

Sarah shrugged. “It’s coming.”

“I had the best idea. I’m actually so excited to tell you. I wanted to tell you face-to-face. Are you ready?”

Sarah nodded.

“Here it is: rehearsal dinner. I was thinking we should do something totally different, basically the opposite of the wedding. Like you don’t want a fancy meal, you don’t want place cards and tablecloths and all that, you want fun, light, festive, delicious. You want Mexican!” She paused, triumphant.

“I already called Ventaja,” Lauren went on. “They’ve got a private room, holds up to forty very comfortably, and we’ve already done a menu. Tacos, guacamole, that sort of thing. And I was thinking, because we don’t want to go too crazy the night before, we could do churros for dessert. Anyway.” She reached into the pocket of the coat perched behind her and handed Sarah a piece of paper. “Here’s the menu we did. You can nix anything you don’t like obviously. Or the whole idea. I don’t know. I put down a deposit, but it’s refundable. So be honest, like, if you hate the idea.”

Sarah was surprised. She took the piece of paper, didn’t read it. She looked up at Lauren. She still had a trace of the tan she’d replenished on their trip. “You know, technically, the rehearsal dinner is the groom’s family’s deal. Ruth had some idea, I can’t remember the details. But obviously your plan is going to be a million times cooler than whatever she’s cooking up.”

“Who cares about technicalities?” Lauren shrugged. “Don’t worry about your mother-in-law. I’ll talk to Dan. I’ll take care of everything. If. I mean, if you’re into it.”