I Don't Forgive You

after a quick survey of the table, scowls. “Wait, where are the buns?”
“There might be a problem with the buns.” Karen keeps her eyes fixed on Vicki, as if beaming a message to her in some special PTA language, inaudible to the rest of us.
“What are you talking about? Who was supposed to bring them?”
Karen says nothing, but the woman does not wait for an answer. She whips out her phone. Tap tap tap. “Who the hell is Allie Ross?”
“That’s me.” I hold up my hand, give a little wave.
“Right. So what’s up with the hamburger buns?”
“I didn’t sign up for hamburger buns.”
Vicki thrusts her phone across the table at me in a pointless gesture, since I cannot read it from that far. “Well, this says you were supposed to bring buns.”
Vicki looks to Daisy for backup, but she will not look up from the napkins she is busy arranging into a perfect spiral.
“Look, I’m sorry. There must have been a mix-up. I can run out and get some,” I say. “I’d be happy to.”
“No, it’s not important,” Daisy says. “Don’t be silly. We have plenty of food.”
“Right, it’s not important that Karen took the time to make dozens of sliders, and that I brought the pickles, and that, like, you organize this Eastbrook tradition every year. That’s not important.”
“Vicki, really. It’s fine,” Daisy says.
“This,” Vicki says, sweeping her hand over the table, “only works if everyone contributes.”
“Ignore her,” Daisy says and pulls me back into the foyer. “I swear, ever since she went Paleo, she’s been a total bitch.”
I offer a weak laugh, but my heart thumps wildly in my chest. I step back, as if pushed, my guts clenching. Vicki’s hostility scares me. You don’t belong, screams a little voice inside my head, one that I can usually muffle. But not tonight. Now it is raging. I knew we shouldn’t have come.
All around me, people laugh, but I feel like I’m going to jump out of my own skin. Deep breaths do little to counteract the familiar tide of panic rising within me. I peel away from Daisy and work my way through the crowd toward the kitchen. I need more wine. But as soon as I cross the threshold, Rob, who is still standing by the wine, looks up and locks eyes with me.
He gives me a sly grin, a knowing nod. I pivot out of the room.

 3
I need a quiet place to go. I feel the stirrings of a panic attack. I hadn’t had one since last spring in Chicago, when I couldn’t locate Cole at the grocery store. The walls seemed to close in. I need quiet and space. The powder room door is locked, and a woman directs me to the second floor. I start up the stairs, holding the banister for support.
My mind pings back and forth, hearing Rob call me Lexi, recalling the confrontation over the mini-buns. That awful, sneering woman. I’m certain I did not sign up to bring them. And even if I did forget, did she have to embarrass me like that? People make mistakes.
Inside the bathroom, my face is pink all the way to my hairline, outward proof that I am over my limit.
The past few weeks have been a blur—moving, filling out school papers, getting on the neighborhood’s Facebook page—but I would have remembered signing up to bring mini-buns, wouldn’t I? Maybe Mark did and forgot to tell me.
I wet my hands and tousle my short hair. Chopping it off had seemed like a good idea when we first moved to D.C. over the hot, sticky summer. I thought it might accentuate my small features, and I needed a refresh on my hair, which had been fried from so many years of highlights. But the truth is that my natural mousy brown makes me look washed out, and if I skip lipstick and mascara, I end up looking like an anemic Peter Pan.
I take my time powdering my face, trying to hide some of the shine. I’m in no hurry to return to the party, and this oversize bathroom is as good a place as any to kill some time. It’s larger than the bedroom I shared with my sister growing up, and it’s clearly been recently renovated, with a white porcelain farmhouse sink deep enough to bathe a golden retriever in. A stack of fluffy, white towels sits on a marble table beside a glass pedestal jar, the kind usually filled with candy. Only this one has tiny little soaps in the shape of seashells in pale pinks and creams. It reminds me of a scene from one of my mother’s favorite movies, The Flamingo Kid. In it, a working-class guy goes to dinner at his boss’s fancy house and stuffs the little soaps in his pocket.
I can’t help myself. I take a photo and text it to my sister, Krystle. My mother would love it, but with the way her dementia is progressing, I’m lucky if she knows what year it is these days, forget being able to operate a smartphone.
But Krystle will get it, and that’s almost as good.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Leah: Just got here. Where r u?
Bathroom. I’ll find you in five, I tap back. With Leah here, I may be able to handle the party a little longer. A former corporate lawyer turned stay-at-home mom, Leah glides effortlessly between the different tribes in the neighborhood—career moms, SAHMs, empty nesters—like some kind of goodwill ambassador. I need to find her—not just because she promised to introduce me to the moms who, in her words, “don’t suck,” but also because I want to stay in her good graces. I don’t want to piss off the one friend I’ve made. I reapply lip gloss, ready to make some mommy friends.
I unlock the bathroom door, and it swings inward with such force that I am knocked back. Rob from the kitchen barges in. He kicks the door shut behind him, and in