But, like Stella herself, I could never hope to impress them. I just wanted not to prove them right. So instead of shouting, I smiled.
“How are you?” I couldn’t call him George, Mr. Smith sounded absurd, and I would never call him Poppa.
I’d been asking out of politeness, but he told me exactly how he was. For fifteen minutes. And I listened, nodding and murmuring in appropriate places, as though I cared. I didn’t know half the people he mentioned, but he acted as if he thought I should. He never asked me about myself, which was fine, because then I didn’t have to answer.
Finally, the game of Pictionary got under way. Gretchen’s husband, Peter, begged off, volunteering to take care of Hunter, their three-year-old son. Steve and his vastly pregnant wife, Kelly, played, though, as did my dad and Stella, all the grandparents and Tyler. And me. Jeremy had disappeared. We split into teams, boys against girls.
“I’ll sit out,” I said when we’d counted up the teams to find the girls’ side had an extra player.
“Oh, no, Paige, are you sure?” Stella protested, but not too hard. She liked things even and square.
“Sure. Not a problem. I’ll go check on dinner, if you want.”
Okay, so maybe I’d cast myself in the Cinderella role. Just a little. But it was a relief to get into the kitchen and set out platters of vegetables and dip, cheese and crackers. Decorative breads and soft cheeses with pretty spreaders that matched the platter. Stella loved to have parties.
I found the cold-cut platters in the garage fridge and brought them into the kitchen to put them out on the table, which was serving as a buffet. I startled Jeremy when I came back in, and he whirled, can of soda in hand, from the open fridge.
From the living room, the sound of laughter wafted. I set the platter of meat on the table. Jeremy and I stared each other down.
“You’re not supposed to be drinking that before dinner,” I told him.
“I know.” His chin lifted. He hadn’t yet cracked the top.
“I’m not going to tell you on you, kiddo.” I turned to the table and took off the platter’s plastic lid so I could get rid of the fake greenery around the edges. I knew how to make things pretty.
“Don’t call me kiddo,” he said.
I expected him to slink away with his stolen prize, but he didn’t. When I turned to look at him, he was still playing with the can, shifting it from one hand to the other.
“Something up?” I moved past him to the big, mostly empty pantry, to pull out the fancy plastic plates and plastic-ware, the matching napkins.
“No.” Jeremy shrugged and disappeared up the back stairs.
After that, the party really started.
It was easier for me with more people there. Stella’s friends knew who I was, of course, and avoided talking to me so they didn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of how to address their friend’s husband’s illegitimate daughter. My dad’s friends knew me, too, but had fewer inhibitions for some reason. Maybe because I’d known them longer, or because they had no conflict of loyalty. Some of them didn’t like Stella much, and maybe that was part of it, too.
Of my father’s other kids, I saw very little. Gretchen, Steve and I had never been close, even though it wasn’t my mother who’d finally won our dad away from their mom. Of course, their spouses weren’t sure what to make of me, either, and it was easier for us to be superficially polite without trying to get to know each other. Their children were and would be my nieces and nephews, but I doubted they’d ever think of me as an aunt.
“Paige DeMarco, how the hell are you?” Denny’s one of my dad’s oldest friends. Fishing and drinking buddies, they’d known each other since high school. He’d known my mom, too.
“Hey, Denny. Long time no see.”
“Yeah, and you a big-city girl now, too. How’s it going?” Denny gave me a one-armed hug.
“It’s going great.” It wasn’t an entire lie. Most of my life was going great.
“Yeah?” He tossed back the dregs of his iced tea. I guessed he was hankering for a beer, but Stella wasn’t serving booze. Not that I blamed her. Alcohol always made a different kind of party. “Where you living at? Your dad said someplace along the river?”
“Riverview Manor.”
There was no denying the pride swelling inside me at Denny’s impressed whistle. “Nice digs. And your job? You’re not still working with your mom, are you?”
“I help out once in a while, if she’s got a big job.”
Denny grimaced at his empty cup, but didn’t move to pour more. “What’s she up to? She still with the same guy?”
Questions my dad never asked. I was the only part of my mother my dad needed to know about. He’d never said as much, but I knew it.
“Leo? Yes.”
“And that kid, how old’s he now?”
“Arty’s seven.” I had to laugh for a second. “Wow. Yeah. He just turned seven.”
“You tell her I said hi, okay?”
“Sure.”
We chatted for a while after that. The party got louder. Stella reigned over it like a queen, even if she was claiming to still be only twenty-nine. When it came time to open the gifts, I thought about slipping out, but forced myself to stay.
Stella sat in the big rocking chair in the living room, her presents arranged at her feet and her closest girlfriend beside her getting ready to write down the name of every gift and its giver. Stella opened gift cards, packages of bath salts, certificates for spa treatments. Sweaters. Slippers. A new silk robe someone had brought from a trip to Japan. She oohed and aahed over each gift appropriately.
By the time she got to mine, my stomach had begun to eat itself. The harsh sting of acid rose in my throat, burning. My heart thudded sickly. I had to turn away to pop another couple antacids and sip from a glass of ginger ale, even though I knew the soda would ruin the effects of the medicine.
It’s silly to hold on to the past, but we all do it. I was almost ten the first year I’d been invited to Stella’s birthday party. The paint had been barely dry in their new house. Gretchen and Steven were living one week with their mother and one week with my dad and Stella. I, of course, lived full-time with my mom and saw my dad on an occasional weekend or holiday, a practice he’d only started after leaving his first wife.
I’d picked out Stella’s present myself that year, using my allowance to pay for it. I’d bought her a silky red tank top with a lacy hem. It was the sort of shirt my mom would’ve loved and wore often, and she said nothing when she helped me fold it and wrap it in some pretty paper that had come free in the mail to solicit money for a charity.
I’d been so proud of that present. I’d been sure Stella, who wasn’t nearly as pretty as my mom but who tried hard, anyway, would open it and put it on right away. Then she’d smile at me, and my dad would smile at me, and we’d all be happy.
Instead, she’d opened the box and pulled out the shirt. Her gaze had gone immediately to my father’s, but men don’t know anything about fashion beyond what they like and what they don’t. She didn’t put it on. She fingered the red satiny fabric and peeked at the label, her eyes going a little wider at what she saw. Then she put the shirt back in the box with a thank-you even a nine-year-old could tell was forced. I never saw her wear it, but I did find it in the garage a few years later, in the box of rags my dad used for cleaning his cars.
I wasn’t nine years old any longer. I wasn’t even a teen in too-thick eyeliner and a too-short skirt. I’d learned how to dress and how to speak, but part of me would always be my mother’s daughter, at least