“I want you to meet my boyfriend,” Alexie chirped. “This is Jon-Michel. He’s from France.”
Alexie said the word “France” the way the French did, without fully pronouncing the final part of the word.
“Oh. Bonjour,” Mallory greeted, immediately regretting it. She sounded like a silly American.
“This is my older sister, Mallory,” Alexie said to Jon-Michel.
“Older by only a year,” Mallory countered as she stuck out her hand to shake his. Jon-Michel glanced down at it for a long moment before accepting the handshake, as though the concept was foreign to him.
“What do you think of the art?” Jon-Michel asked without saying a full hello. Everything in New York seemed like some kind of test.
“Oh.” Mallory thought about what the girl had said outside, about it being derivative. Mallory wasn’t fully sure what that meant, but she knew not to say it now. “It has such a unique perspective.”
Alexie leaned toward Mallory, her eyes slits. “Go on.”
Mallory’s heart pumped nervously.My baby has a fever, and I’m worried about how to describe my sister’s stupid art?
Mallory forced herself to analyze the collage that hung to the left of Jon-Michel. In it, a massive insect crawled up the Eiffel Tower. Where the head of the insect was supposed to go, Alexie had placed the head of Marilyn Monroe. Mallory had absolutely no idea what it meant.
“It both champions women and forces you to, um, imagine the terrors that exist for us every single day,” Mallory tried, imitating the voice she’d heard Alexie use earlier with the gallery worker.
“Oh my gosh, Mall.” Alexie’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Another art student approached and stole Alexie from Jon-Michel and Mallory. Mallory sucked down one-half of her champagne too quickly and asked Jon-Michel, “So. What do you think of the exhibition?”
Jon-Michel clucked his tongue, scanned the crowd as though praying anyone else would approach to talk to him, then said, “I think Alexie is on the road to something she hasn’t fully comprehended yet.”
Mallory had the sudden urge to smack this guy across the face. No, she didn’t completely understand her sister’s art. But wasn’t this guy supposed to support her in all things? Didn’t he know what Alexie, Mallory, Cole, and Elsa had been through? Did he even know about their father’s death?
Alexie had dug herself deeper into this world as a way to escape the one she left behind on the Vineyard.
I must let her do that.
It’s her way forward.
“Well, I think she’s brilliant,” Mallory shot out, sounding a tiny bit more arrogant than she’d meant to.
Jon-Michel gave her a very French roll of his eyes, refilled his glass of champagne, and walked back outside. Within a minute, he’d fallen into a very animated conversation with a beautiful woman. Mallory seethed with jealousy for her sister’s sake.
“Don’t worry.” Alexie appeared beside her; her eyes rimmed as pink as her hair. “We’re mostly open. I don’t want to ascribe to the prison-like nature of monogamy.”
Mallory arched her brow. Although this version of her sister was a different one than the Vineyard version, she knew Alexie— the real Alexie who wasn’t so keen on her boyfriend flirting with another woman outside her art exhibition. You couldn’t change your heart as quickly as you could your hairstyle.
Mallory forced herself through the next hour, chatting with strangers about the “ever-changing New York art scene,” which she pretended to know about, and frequently running into the back to text her mother. After the fourth glass of champagne and no news from Elsa, she collapsed, quivering and teary-eyed, against the back wall of the exhibition. Several people glanced at her curiously, as though prepared for a sudden performance art piece.
Outside, the horrible Jon-Michel had begun to flirt with yet another beautiful art student. Alexie eyed him from the corner of the exhibition, her elbows glinting sharply as she crossed them. Someone gestured toward Mallory, whose knees clacked together and threatened to give out.
Alexie stepped toward her, full-on seething. Mallory half-expected her to demand that Mallory leave the exhibition, saying that she’d ruined it. Instead, Alexie muttered, “That’s it. I’m closing for the night.”
Over the next five minutes, Alexie flung into action: smacking her palms together and asking that everyone depart for the night. People were confused, saying that normally, exhibition openings went on till eleven at the earliest. Alexie told them she had a pressing engagement the following morning with a potential client. This was a lie; both Mallory and Alexie knew it.
“Ma Chérie, what have you done?” Jon-Michel hurried through the gallery to demand answers.
“Darling, didn’t I tell you about tomorrow? I’m slated to assist with the redesign of a top client’s living room on the Upper West Side,” Alexie continued to lie. “Mallory and I will close here for the night. I’ll call you tomorrow?”
Jon-Michel kissed Alexie delicately on both cheeks, grabbed his expensive jacket, then hurried through the door, abandoning them. After just a few minutes, only Mallory and Alexie and the gallery worker with the earrings remained. When she came up to Alexie, she reported that Alexie had made “three thousand five-hundred and seventeen dollars” in sales. Mallory could hardly believe that anyone had purchased that crap but kept the sentiment to herself.
“Come on, babe.” Alexie sniffed, gathering her bags and her coat and stuffing her feet into tennis shoes. “Stupid French artists. Stupid NYU art students! Stupid world.” After a long moment of silence, she turned and said, “And what about Mom and Zachery?”