“You aren’t going to believe who invited us to their party on Saturday!”
Is it someone who wants to fund my new real estate venture? “Who?”
“Bull and Leslee Richardson,” Grace says. “They’re throwing a pink and white party at Triple Eight Pocomo. The invitation is gorgeous and it was hand-delivered by their personal concierge.” She pauses. “Why do you think we got invited?”
“They’re networking!” Eddie says.
“So they’re using us?” Grace asks.
“Networking is a two-way street, darling,” Eddie says. Especially in this case, he thinks. He’s so amped up about the invite—it’s like the universe is telling him something—that he hits the gas even harder practically without noticing. But someone else notices.
“I caught Fast Eddie going eighty-one miles an hour on the Milestone Road,” Sergeant Dixon tells the Chief. “That was fast even for him. And get this—his excuse was that he was excited about some party invitation he and Grace received.”
Invitation, the Chief thinks. Must be to the Richardsons’ house on Saturday. Andrea texted a couple of hours earlier instructing the Chief to get a haircut because they had a swanky party to attend. Andrea had sounded pretty giddy and Ed supposed he understood. They didn’t get invited to a lot of parties; having the chief of police in attendance felt like a buzzkill.
Andrea texts Phoebe and Delilah: Did you guys get your invitations to the Richardsons’ party on Saturday?
Phoebe texts back immediately. Yes! Let me know if you want to go shopping. This is a new-dress occasion!
Andrea rolls her eyes. Every occasion for Phoebe requires a new dress. But when Andrea checks her closet, she sees a lot of brown and gray. Her wardrobe could use a summer refresh. She needs pink and white.
She texts back: I’m helping Delilah at the food pantry at noon. I can meet you at Milly and Grace at one p.m. to shop. Immediately, she feels a wave of guilt. How can she volunteer at the Nantucket food pantry and then turn around and drop two hundred dollars (probably more) on a dress she’s going to wear to a glamorous party? She reminds herself that Leslee Richardson expressed interest in donating to the food pantry. Delilah should circle back about that with Leslee at the party. Or is that tacky?
A text comes in from Delilah: Was the invitation sent by email? I don’t see it.
Phoebe responds: It was a paper invite, pink envelope, hand-delivered.
Hand-delivered? Delilah texts back. By a footman with white gloves and fringed epaulets?
Coco delivered them, Andrea texts. Kacy offered to help her.
There’s silence from Delilah.
Oh god, Andrea thinks. Is it possible Delilah isn’t invited to the party? Delilah was thorny with Leslee at their lunch. Andrea and Delilah had been kicking each other under the table because some of the things Leslee said were, quite frankly, hard to take, and there was a little honeymoon moment going on between Leslee and Phoebe that bordered on nauseating. Andrea has always been better than Delilah at dealing with uncomfortable situations; Delilah has a short fuse. Did Leslee sense that Delilah didn’t like her and not include her?
That would be awkward.
Delilah checks her front door, looks under the welcome mat, in the hydrangea bushes. Nothing. As she marches out to the mailbox, a sinkhole opens inside her. Leslee Richardson is throwing a party just like she said she would—and she didn’t deem Delilah worthy of an invitation. At lunch it felt like Leslee was interested only in people who could be of use to her. People like Phoebe, because of the club; Andrea, because of Ed.
Delilah still worries, however, that the fault is somehow hers. She wasn’t very welcoming or gracious to the woman; she’d left the table abruptly because she was angry and jealous and then bad-mouthed Leslee to Blond Sharon, of all people. Sharon might have repeated Delilah’s words to anyone, to everyone.
Well, Delilah hadn’t said anything she didn’t mean. She took an instant dislike to Leslee, and yes, that was wrapped up in her best-friend attachment to Phoebe and to her and Jeffrey’s inability to get admitted to the Field and Oar Club. But didn’t Leslee Richardson have some good qualities? She’d laughed at Delilah’s slutty-vegan comment. She’d asked for information about the food pantry. Didn’t that reveal a generous nature? But from the moment Delilah met Leslee Richardson, she’d gotten a bad feeling. Since that’s the case, shouldn’t Delilah be glad that she hasn’t received an invitation? Would she agree to go even if she were invited?
Yes! Delilah thinks. She wants to buy a new outfit, she wants to see the famous house, she wants to go to the party.
Delilah wonders if maybe Coco couldn’t find her house—it’s off a dirt road and can be tricky to locate, even with GPS. But Kacy was with her, and Kacy has been coming to Delilah’s since she was a little girl.
That’s it! Delilah thinks. Kacy never uses the front door; she uses the family door on the side of the house. Delilah hurries out and, whoa, the relief she feels when she sees the pink envelope gives her a head rush. Of course Leslee invited her; it would have been an egregious oversight not to. Delilah, Phoebe, and Andrea are a package deal. They’re all supposed to play pickleball together.
Delilah reads the invitation: Pink and White Party; cocktails, dinner, and dancing. It sounds like so much fun!
She vows to try harder with Leslee. If she gives the relationship a genuine effort, by the time the summer is over, she and Leslee will be the best of friends.
14. Party Animal
We show up wearing flamingo, blush, salmon, magenta, fuchsia, and rose gold. We wear pearl, blanched almond, alabaster, polar ice cap, and cloud. Fast Eddie is in a pink-and-white seersucker suit—is this too much? Apparently not, because the dentist Andy McMann wears a neon-pink top hat and his wife, Rachel, is in swan feathers. Even Romeo from the Steamship has cleaned up his act: He’s wearing a Bazooka-gum-pink bow tie and has traded in his usual cargo shorts for a pair of pink madras pants.
We park along the Richardsons’ white-shell driveway and note that all the hydrangea bushes are pink.
“Yes,” we overhear Benton Coe say. “Leslee wanted the hydrangeas pink, so I put lime around the bases.”
Whatever Leslee wants, Leslee gets, Blond Sharon thinks.
Sharon picks up her pace, even though she’s in heels, to meet up with Romeo. “You look dashing tonight,” she says.
Romeo notices Sharon teeter as she crunches through the shells in her stilettos. Impractical, he thinks, though they make her legs look a mile long. “Can I offer you my arm?”
“Thank you.” Sharon is grateful to Romeo, not only for his steadying presence but also because now she won’t be entering the party alone. She imagines Walker hearing that she and Romeo from the Steamship were looking cozy together at the Richardsons’ party. Ha! It would serve him right.
On Nantucket, the prevailing aesthetic for everything—even parties—is understatement. The old society matrons pretend to go to no effort when they entertain (and some of them aren’t even pretending). One infamous hostess sends out invitations on index cards that read, simply, Drinks, 6:00 p.m. Another hostess serves only two snacks: ham and butter sandwiches on postage stamps of Wonder bread and spears of pickled asparagus.
We’re elated to find that the Richardsons’ party gives maximum effort. The entrance is a soaring arch of Juliet roses. (Members of the Nantucket Garden Club inform us that Juliets are among the most expensive flowers in the world and to have such a profusion of them is unheard of. We pose for pictures under the arch—this is something our friends on Facebook have to see!) On the far side of the arch, servers hold trays of drinks: flutes of Laurent-Perrier rosé champagne, a cocktail called the pink lady—made with Triple Eight vodka, of course—and pink lemonade for the teetotalers.
We saunter onto the front lawn, where a pink-and-white-striped tent shades a full bar, a huge grazing board, and the guitar player, Sean Lee, who at the moment is playing “Pretty in Pink” by the Psychedelic Furs.
The Richardsons are leaning into the theme, we see.
The entire harbor is spread out before us like a banquet. The water is spangled with golden coins of sunlight; we see the church steeples of town in the distance; and the Richardsons’ yacht, Hedonism, cuts an impressive silhouette against the horizon. In the center of the lawn, halfway between the tent and the beach, Leslee Richardson receives her guests. She’s wearing a vintage Hervé Léger bandage dress in pink ombré stripes and pink metallic platform sandals; her makeup includes pink eye crystals.
