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But as she’s walking toward the open slider, she overhears the conversation on the deck.
Brooke says, “That cobbler could be on the cover of a magazine!”
And Caroline says, “My mother’s life always looks good from the outside. It’s the only thing that matters to her.”
The table goes quiet. Hollis wants to reverse her steps, go back to the kitchen, go even farther back, to two weeks ago before she sent the invitations, before she thought this weekend would save her.
But then Tatum catches her eye. “Hey, sis,” she says.
Hollis holds the frosted bowl aloft. “Whipped cream,” she says feebly.
Tatum leaves the table, and after a beat, Dru-Ann stands up and follows her down the hall. Tatum disappears into the powder room. Dru-Ann hears the hum of the fan, the roll of the toilet paper, then the toilet flushing and water running in the sink.
The door opens. When Tatum sees Dru-Ann, she rears back. Then she sets her mouth in a grim line and tries to breeze right past her but Dru-Ann grabs her arm. “Do we have a problem?”
“Let go of me, please,” Tatum says. “Everything’s fine.”As long as you stay out of my face,she thinks.
“I can’t believe you’re still bent about a joke I made a million years ago,” Dru-Ann says.
“The thing is,” Tatum says, “it wasn’t a joke.” She sees Gigi coming down the hall toward them and clamps her mouth shut.
“Are you two all right?” Gigi asks.
No,Tatum thinks.
No,Dru-Ann thinks. But she’s not dragging a stranger into this. She cocks an eyebrow at Gigi. “I notice you didn’t answer your own question. Do you fake your orgasms?”
“Well,” Gigi says. She pauses dramatically. “I’d rather be a Tatum than a Brooke.”
Both Tatum and Dru-Ann laugh. Tatum forgets she’s angry for a second; Dru-Ann thinks,All right, score one for Gigi.(Though Dru-Ann notices she didn’t actually answer the question.)
Caroline is a few yards away, filming.That’s a moment,she thinks. Hollis’s fans are in for way more than they can imagine.
Hollis is, somehow, left at the table with only Brooke. Where did everyone else go? Hollis is tempted to start clearing. Would that be rude? Would Brooke feel slighted, feel as though her company wasn’t enough? (Yes.)
Brooke realizes she has Hollis all to herself. Now is the time to tell her that she had drinks with Electra. Because what if Hollis finds out another way? Holliswon’tfind out, how would she—and isn’t it a free country? Can’t Brooke have drinks with whoever she wants?
Brooke won’t mention it. Uttering Electra’s name at all would be dropping a stink bomb on an otherwise flawless evening.
But she can’t just sit in silence. It’s too awkward.
She says, “I’m sure wherever Matthew is, he misses your cooking. He was so proud of you.” Immediately, Brooke chastises herself: What a moronic thing to say.Wherever Matthew is,what doesthatmean? Heaven? Hell? The ether? Buried in the dirt with the worms?
Hollis offers a faint smile of acknowledgment. “This peach cobbler was his favorite.” She stares into the candlelight as her mind wanders. Matthew loved any kind of fruit dessert and always ordered halibut if it was on the menu. He couldn’t abide Joe Buck calling a football game, though he loved Cris Collinsworth. His favorite color was green; his car was a color he called “hunter green.” (Hollis can’t think about his car; she yanks herself back from the topic like she’s pulling her hand from a hot stove.) Matthew preferred blondes over brunettes, or so he always claimed, though all of his old girlfriends were brunettes. He wore Ferragamo loafers to work, driving moccasins on the weekends, Chuck Taylors if he was going to a rock concert. He hated gambling and wouldn’t even throw five bucks into the football pool; he’d had an uncle who had lost everything on a craps table in Vegas. He read Michael Connelly, David McCullough. Did he have any regrets? He used to say he wished he’d coached Caroline’s soccer team when she was little, but who was he kidding, he barely made it to Sprague Fields as a spectator. He had better friends from college than from high school, and he had no friends from medical school unless you counted his professors—like Dr. Schrader, his mentor. Hollis had e-mailed Dr. Schrader only hours after Matthew died to tell him the news right away because Dr. Schrader would have been expecting Matthew’s visit. Dr. Schrader’s wife, Elsa, had written back with her condolences.Our hearts go out to you and Caroline. We had no idea Matthew was planning a visit; how sweet for him to want to surprise us. He was such a good egg on top of being the most brilliant student Manny ever had.
This struck Hollis as odd because Matthew loathed surprises, for himself or anyone else. He was a planner.
Matthew’s favorite city was San Francisco; he and Hollis always stayed at the original Fairmont on Nob Hill and ate, their first night, at Swan Oyster Depot—it was the one place Matthew didn’t mind waiting in line. He preferred an aisle seat to a window seat on an airplane; his guilty pleasure was a root beer float; he loved movie theaters, especially historic ones, and he always got popcorn with lots of butter. He donated a mind-blowing sum every year to the Pine Street Inn in Boston—homelessness was his cause, though he also talked about joining Doctors Without Borders once he retired. Hollis had privately suspected that he would never retire.
“Hollis?” Brooke says. Both Tatum and Dru-Ann call her Holly, but Brooke can’t imagine doing that. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes,” Hollis says. “I’m sorry, I was just remembering things about Matthew.”
“Do you think he’s…watchingus?” Brooke asks.
This makes Hollis laugh. If Matthew were alive and she’d told him she was hosting a weekend for Tatum, Dru-Ann, Brooke, and someone she’d met on the internet named Gigi Ling, he would have run for the hills. Nothing would have interested Matthew less than what’s transpiring here at Hollis’s Five-Star Weekend.
“No,” she says.
