Grace gives him a tight-lipped smile, swallowing whatever else she wanted to say with the bright, grassy sauvignon blanc. “You can ask her now. She’s in her room.”
Eddie knocks on the door of the little bedroom, which is no bigger than Allegra’s walk-in closet in their old house. “Allegra?” he says. “It’s Dad.” He nearly says, It’s Eddie, because Eddie is what Allegra calls him at the office, and whereas at first, being addressed that way by his child felt like a bucket of cold salt water to the face, now he has grown used to it.
There’s a murmur from the other side of the door that sounds welcoming, but maybe that’s too optimistic a word. At home Allegra still displays flashes of her former self. She can be pouty, bitter, self-absorbed. Eddie eases open the door. Allegra is lying on the bed in shorts and a Nantucket Whalers T-shirt with her laptop open on her chest. She barely looks up when Eddie enters, and he wonders what she’s so absorbed with. It’s probably Facebook, right, or she’s bingeing on one of those Internet series that have no boundaries. Troy Steele, a fellow inmate at MCI–Plymouth, made Eddie watch an episode of something called The Girlfriend Experience, and it was no better than porn. Eddie wishes that Allegra were on Zillow, memorizing the square footage and floor plans of every property for sale on Nantucket. That’s how you get ahead!
“Hi there,” Eddie says. Allegra’s hair is messy and she’s not wearing any makeup. Her eyes are swollen like maybe she’s been crying. But she is still beautiful. “In case you’re wondering, I think Hunter Bloch is an idiot.”
Allegra grants Eddie a patient smile. “That he is,” she says.
“I’d like you to do me a favor,” Eddie says, and he tosses the invitation onto Allegra’s bed. “Go to this party with me?”
Allegra reads the invitation. “Bart Quinn?” she says. “He’s hot. I always thought he was hot, but now that he’s, like, a war hero, he’s really hot.”
“Hot?” Eddie says, and his spirit flags. Why does Allegra have to be so boy crazy? Why can’t she be more like Hope and be obsessed with Emily Dickinson? Why can’t she be more like Hope and act like Emily Dickinson—locked in her garret room, writing poetry by the light of one flickering candle?
“It’s on Halloween,” Allegra says. She hands the invitation back to Eddie. “Okay, I’ll go.”
“You will?” Eddie says. For some reason this answer catches him off guard. He expected a struggle.
Allegra shrugs. “Sure. I was supposed to go to the Chicken Box with Hunter. He was going to sneak me in the back door.”
“Oh,” Eddie says. He’s suddenly relieved Allegra and Hunter broke up. The last thing he wants is for people to see his underage daughter dancing in the front row at the Chicken Box, waving her beer around, making out with Hunter Bloch, or displaying any other inelegant behavior. “Well, this will be much more fun.”
“Doubtful,” Allegra says. “But it’s something to do. Is it a costume party?”
“I assume so?” Eddie says. He searches the invitation for dress code. It says nothing except that it’s a birthday party for Bart Quinn at the VFW at 7:00 p.m. on Halloween. Halloween is a Tuesday night, not a usual night for a party, so it must be a Halloween party, which means costumes. Eddie’s wheels start turning.
“I don’t know about you,” Eddie says, “but I’m dressing up.”
“I have a Japanese geisha costume,” Allegra says. “I’ll wear that.”
Japanese geisha? Eddie thinks. He supposes it could be worse; at least she’ll be fully dressed. “That’s my girl,” he says.
AVA
She’s still struck by the novelty of it: pushing through the turnstiles of the subway and trudging up the stairs, just one of ten million people. She stops by the dry cleaner on the corner of Lexington and Eighty-Second Street and picks up her laundry from Nina Hwang. It’s clean, folded, and bagged for fifteen bucks, an urban miracle as far as Ava is concerned. She ducks into the deli next door and gets a bunch of red Gerber daisies, as it’s Friday and Ava has made a practice of purchasing fresh flowers every Friday, which is the night Potter comes all the way over from the West Side for dinner at Ava’s apartment.
As Ava approaches her building, she fumbles for her keys. Keys, she’s still not used to keys. In her life on Nantucket she had only one key, the key to her Jeep, which she always kept on the passenger seat. She never had a key to the inn. It was an inn and therefore always open. Even when it was closed—January, February—it was unlocked. Does a key even exist? If so, Ava has never seen it.
Now her ring jangles with a key to the front door of her building on Eighty-Second Street; two keys to her apartment—doorknob and dead bolt; a key to her mailbox; and three keys to Potter’s apartment, which he insisted she take at the end of August when she moved, permanently, to Manhattan. Potter had wanted Ava to move in with him on the Upper West Side from the get-go, and Ava’s mother, Margaret, had wanted Ava to either move in with her and Drake on Central Park West or take over Drake’s apartment in the West Village. All these offers were tempting, but Ava, at the age of thirty-two, had never lived alone. She had spent her entire adult life living with her father, Mitzi, her brothers, and sixteen rooms filled with virtual strangers. How had she even considered marrying Nathaniel or Scott? She would have missed out on this seminal experience: a place all her own.
Ava’s one-bedroom apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up, meaning four flights of stairs, but nothing about the climb—even carrying her heavy school bag and a load of laundry—diminishes the joy Ava feels each and every time she walks into her apartment. It is, absolutely, nothing special. The kitchen is the size of a piece of pie, a four-square-foot triangle that features a fridge with a microwave above it on one side and a small stove on the other, a sink in the middle, and enough countertop to either drain dishes or place a cutting board, but not both at the same time. The bathroom floor is made up of tiny hexagonal tiles in black and white, but whole rows of them are missing against the walls. There is exposed brick in the living room, Ava’s sole point of pride, as she knows exposed brick to be valued in Manhattan real estate, although she’s not sure why, since she can’t hang anything on it. The bedroom has two windows, both with bars, and a reasonable closet. Granted, Potter’s apartment has cathedral ceilings and a butler’s pantry off the kitchen and one and a half baths and original crown molding. Both Margaret’s and Drake’s apartments fall into the luxury category. Margaret’s apartment is a three-bedroom overlooking Central Park—meaning that if you tossed a water balloon, that’s where it would land—and Drake’s apartment, though smaller, is sleek and modern and filled with actual art that he buys from a dealer in Chelsea. Both Odell Beckham Jr. and Jimmy Fallon live in Drake’s building, and there’s a pool on the roof and a fondue restaurant on the first floor that is presently the hottest reservation in the city.
But what Ava treasures about her apartment is that everything in it is hers. Her books are lined up on the shelves, her music plays on the wireless speakers—she can play Natalie Merchant whenever she wants, and no one is around to complain—her favorite foods are in the fridge, her twelve pillows dominate the head of the bed. She bought a Persian rug for the living room at the flea market on Columbus Avenue, and she has hung photographs of Nantucket on every available bit of wall space. Set up in the corner is a stepladder that she has decorated with white fairy lights and houseplants. It’s not sophisticated, but Ava doesn’t care. She loves it because it’s hers.
Ava puts the Gerber daisies in her white scallop shell vase and places it in the center of her round white dining table from IKEA (the table is an eyesore; Ava will replace it after she saves up), and she pours herself a glass of white wine. Potter is due at seven. Ava is making tomato soup from scratch, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, and a green salad with creamy lime dressing. Her past Friday-night endeavors have included roast chicken, pork chops braised in milk, and a gluey mushroom pasta that they decided to throw away after the first bite in favor of pizza from Ray’s. Ava takes both her successes and her failures in stride. She isn’t cooking to please Potter as much as she is cooking to please herself.