Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,64
chosen, he would get to present his invention to potential investors.
Elisabeth would be alone with the baby, answering the door, smiling at all the witches and goblins and ghosts. She had been looking forward to it, but now it seemed depressing. Back in Brooklyn, Nomi was taking her kids to the Park Slope parade with friends, and then to a big group dinner at a new restaurant on Fourth Avenue.
“Isabella is picking me up here at five,” Sam said. “We’re going to get our nails done. Or, I should say, she is. I’m tagging along because the place has free kombucha.”
For an instant, Elisabeth felt hurt that they hadn’t invited her.
She told herself to get a grip. She hadn’t slept more than two or three hours at a stretch for the last week. It made her thinking cloudy, her instincts strange.
Just before five, the doorbell rang.
Elisabeth felt a ridiculous surge of delight.
“First customers,” she said.
She went to the door with the candy. Sam followed, holding Gilbert.
Sam’s roommate stood on the other side of the door, wearing flip-flops and jeans and a black peacoat.
“Trick or treat,” she said. She reached into the bowl and pulled out a mini Snickers.
“Isabella,” Sam said. “I told you to wait outside.”
“I know, but I have to pee.”
“Elisabeth, you remember Isabella,” Sam said.
“Hi!” Isabella said. “Hey, do you mind if I use your bathroom real quick?”
She seemed so comfortable in her skin. Elisabeth couldn’t remember ever feeling that way, certainly not at that age.
“So?” Isabella said. “The bathroom?”
Elisabeth hadn’t invited her in.
“Oh!” she said. “Right. It’s down the hall there.”
Isabella went in and closed the door, and Sam whispered, “I’m sorry. She’s just like that. I can’t control her.”
“Why are you sorry?” Elisabeth said. “It’s fine.”
They returned to their spots in the kitchen. Elisabeth pulled her wallet from her purse and handed Sam her week’s pay. Doing so always made her think of how little she’d accomplished, how she didn’t have much to show for those hours of childcare.
They both acted sheepish during the exchange, every time. Sam didn’t feel like an employee. Giving her that thin stack of bills each Friday was the only reminder that she was.
Nomi had asked over text if Sam did Gil’s laundry or made baby food.
It’s part of a nanny’s job, she wrote.
Elisabeth replied, I could never ask Sam to do that kind of stuff.
To which Nomi responded with the eye-roll emoji.
Nomi had a team of people under her at work. She knew how to be the boss. Elisabeth had never had so much as an assistant. She didn’t even like to be home when the cleaning lady came every other Saturday morning. It felt wrong, drinking coffee in her bathrobe while some woman whose last name she didn’t know scrubbed her toilet. She had hated the way her own mother talked to housekeepers and gardeners and nannies, with that air of superiority.
In Brooklyn, for years, Elisabeth watched black nannies care for white children and thought there was something problematic about the whole arrangement. She swore she would never take part in it. Much of parenthood was doing, saying, and being things you once swore you’d never do, say, or be. But what Elisabeth had with Sam made her feel above all that.
Isabella found them in the kitchen. “This neighborhood is adorable,” she said.
“I know, right?” Sam said. “While we spend our night trying not to get roofied by frat boys dressed as pirates, you’ll be here enjoying all the cute trick-or-treaters.”
“You make the party sound like so much fun,” Elisabeth said.
“These things bore me,” Sam said. “And they’re disgusting when you think of it.”
“Please note: they didn’t bore her when she was unattached and allowed to make out at parties,” Isabella said.
“What do you mean they’re disgusting?” Elisabeth said.
Sam sighed. “We follow certain rules—never go to the bathroom without a friend, don’t let your girlfriends leave with anyone if they seem too drunk. Don’t accept a drink that you didn’t see poured.”
“That seems sensible,” Elisabeth said.
“I wish instead of all that we refused to go to parties where it’s pretty likely somewhere in the building a girl with an inferior protection plan is getting raped.”
“Way to suck the fun out of it,” Isabella said.
“So why do you go?” Elisabeth said.
“Because if I don’t, this one will give me hell.”
“She spends most of her free time talking to a boyfriend in a different time zone,” Isabella said. “It’s tragic. This is our senior year.”