“Have a drink and leave,” March agrees.
March reaches into her coat pocket for an old lipstick, then peers into the rearview mirror so she can apply some color to her face. They walk through the snow, and go in through Susie’s unlocked front door. It’s hot in this little house, and noisy. There’s the scent of cider and beer and pizza. As soon as Susie spies March, she runs over and hugs her.
“How come you didn’t invite me?” March teases.
Susie is wearing a violet sweater decorated with rhinestones and a short purple skirt. She looks beautiful tonight, flushed and breathless and a little drunk.
“I sent you an invitation,” Susie says. “I went out to see you last week, and Hollis told me you were sleeping, you couldn’t see me. I thought he was lying, but what could I do?”
“Well, I’m here now,” March says.
“Yes, you are.” Susie smiles. “You know Ed,” she adds when a good-looking man comes over to loop his arm around her waist. Susie’s two Labrador retrievers are following him, eyeing the platter of mini-knishes Ed’s been circulating.
“Sure, I remember,” March says. “Thanksgiving.”
“This guy must be starving.” Ed nods at Hank. “He’s started to drool.”
They all laugh when they see how Hank is staring at the platters of food, as rapt as the retrievers.
“Come on.” Ed guides Hank toward a buffet table which spans the width of Susie’s tiny living room.
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Susie says to March.
March nods and follows. She knows Susie’s been checking her out; her clothes, after all, aren’t nice enough for a party, and she didn’t think to do anything about her hair, not even tie it away from her face. People seem to be staring at her as they head for the kitchen. She lives with the richest man in the county, and look at what she’s wearing-worn corduroy slacks and a red sweater from the old-clothes bin at the Harvest Fair.
“You’ve got to try the pizza,” Susie tells March. “It’s made with pesto and feta cheese.”
It’s broiling in the kitchen-Ed and Susie spent all afternoon cooking pizzas with the oven turned on high-but March is shivering and she can’t get rid of her damned cough.
“Have you seen a doctor?” Susie says as she pours March a glass of wine. “Because you should.”
“You think I’m sick because I’m living out there with him,” March says.
Susie puts down the plate she’s already heaped with pizza and a salad Miranda Henderson brought over. “You told me not to judge,” she says.
March smiles, and suddenly starving, she reaches for the plate of food. As she does, Susie sees a circle of purple bruises on her arm, leftovers of a disagreement they had last Saturday night when Hollis came home after midnight and refused to say where he’d been. I’m not your servant, he’d snapped at March, as though she were some harping wife.
“Are you going to tell me it’s anemia?” Susie asks.
“It was nothing.”
Susie laughs; she can’t help herself. “March. That’s what they all say.”
“No, it really was nothing,” March insists. “We were arguing and he grabbed me. Believe me, if he ever hit me, I’d be gone.”
“Eat,” Susie suggests, and she stands there and watches March devour the pizza.
Someone in the living room has switched on the radio; there’s already a countdown to midnight. Hank has made himself comfortable on the couch, so he can concentrate on eating. There’s smoked salmon on crackers, bluefish pate, marinated mushrooms, French Brie. He’s eating so fast and so much that Susie’s dogs have switched their allegiance from Ed and are now stationed by Hank’s feet.
“If you slow down,” Bud Horace, the animal control officer, advises when he sits beside Hank, “you can fit more food in. The salmon is good, but you should try the pizza.”
Hank is directed toward the kitchen, but it’s hard to get through the crowd. He’s doing his best to elbow his way past the bar set up in a comer near the front window when he sees Hollis’s truck pull up.
“Fuck it,” Hank says under his breath. He’s the one who’s going to be held accountable for this and he knows it.
Hollis comes in through the front door, wearing a black overcoat made of soft Italian wool, bringing in cold air and suspicion. He stops to greet two members of the town council, to whom he made sizable contributions, but his eyes flicker over the room. Before he can spy Hank, Hank makes his way into the kitchen.
“Hollis is here,” he tells March.
March looks at him; then, without saying a word, she goes to the back door and wrenches it open. She’s so panicked she doesn’t even think to retrieve her coat. Hollis is probably walking through the living room right now.
“Wait a second,” Susie says, grabbing March’s arm and holding her back. “The man you’re living with is here and you’re running out the back door. Think about it, March.”
“You don’t understand,” March says. She has said this so often it probably sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. “He’ll see my being here as a betrayal. He’ll see me as one of you.”
“Gwen left a plane ticket here. You could use it. You could leave-even for a little while. Take some time and think.”
March has to laugh at that. You do not think about such matters; you fall into them, head over heels, without a safety net, without a rope.
That’s what Hollis sees when he comes into the kitchen-March laughing at the back door-and that doesn’t please him one bit. Earlier tonight, Hollis met Alison Hartwig at the Lyon; then they went over to her place-she had managed to get rid of the kids and her mother-but he let Alison know he had to be home before midnight. And then, after all that, when he got back to Guardian Farm, no one was there. Since that time, it’s taken close to an hour for him to track March down. This doesn’t please him either.
“Hey, Susie,” he says, as though he isn’t annoyed in the least. “Great party.”
“Yeah, too bad you weren’t invited,” Susie says.
Hollis grins at that. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll hurt my feelings?”
“Nope,” Susie says.
Hollis leans closer to March and kisses her. His lips are cold, and there’s snow in the folds of his coat. “You’re the most beautiful woman here,” he says. “As usual.” He notices Hank now, and wonders if perhaps the boy hasn’t taken it too much on himself to think over matters that are none of his business. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he tells Hank. “You’d better head out.”
Hank looks at March, uncertain as to what he should do.
“Go on,” March insists. You can’t even tell that she’s nervous. She laughs, then has a sip of wine. “Find some folks your own age. Just don’t freeze in that car of yours.”
“Sure,” Hank mumbles.
“Hey.” As Hank is about to pass him by, Hollis puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking.”
“Just a beer,” Hank says. “One.”
“You don’t want to go in that direction,” Hollis says. “Considering your background and all.”
It is the worst possible thing Hollis could say to Hank and he knows it-the threat that he might take after his father. March can’t quite believe she has actually heard right.
“He had one beer,” March says. “I bought it for him. That doesn’t mean he’s an alcoholic.”
“Maybe I’ll stick to Coke.” Hank grabs a can from the counter. “It’s probably not a bad idea.”
“We’d better head out too,” Hollis tells March after Hank has left.
He says it easily, but he doesn’t mean it that way. Nothing is easy with Hollis. March looks at him closely. The evidence is in his eyes. That’s where the anger is.
“You could spend the night,” Susie says to March. She’s not fooled by Hollis’s pleasant manner, and she never will be.
Hollis laughs. “Aren’t you girls a little too old for pajama parties?”
March hugs Susie. “Thanks,” she says. “Another time.”
“You can come back whenever you want to,” Susie tells her, low so that Hollis has to strain to hear. “You know that.”
