As I approached the car, I tried to arrange my face in an unsurprised expression. I had never ridden in a limousine. Inside, seats of gray leather lined the sides and rear of the car; a darkened window divided the back from where the driver sat in front. Conchita, I saw, was wearing a purple T-shirt, a denim jumper with oversized orange buttons, white tights, and high-heeled, open-toed straw sandals; she looked less like a member of a theater troupe than like a four-year-old permitted for the first time to dress herself. Martha was dressed normally and wasn’t, to my relief, wearing a skirt.
“We’re trying to decide what music to listen to,” Conchita said. “The only stations that come in very well are reggae and-what did you call it, Martha?”
“Gentle jazz,” Martha said.
“I vote for reggae,” I said.
“We thought that’s what you’d say, but we wanted to make sure.” Conchita pushed a button, and the window between us and the driver came down a few inches. “Will you set it to the first station?” she said. “Thanks.” Without waiting for a response, she pressed the button, and the window rose. Then I knew, I finally understood, that Conchita was rich. And understanding this confused everything else I knew about her. Why did she need to act weird? Why did she mention her Mexicanness so often, why did she talk about feeling like an outsider? If she was rich, she belonged at Ault. The equation was that simple. Being rich, in the end, counted for the most-for more, even, than being pretty. And yet, as I thought about it, it wasn’t that Conchita had ever hidden anything from me. Her elaborately decorated room, even her wardrobe, which was peculiar but not cheap-looking-these had been signs to which I’d turned a blind eye. My assumption that she was a scholarship student was, I realized, offensive; it was embarrassing. (It was embarrassing and yet-and yet now, knowing I’d been wrong, I was free to room with her. I could give in, it would be okay. Thinking this felt the way peeing in your pants does when you’re five or six: a complicated relief, one best ignored in the present moment.)
“Okay, listen to this,” she was saying. “I’ve been waiting to tell you guys until I was with both of you at the same time-I heard that Mr. Byden used to date Madame Broussard.”
“No way,” Martha said.
“Mr. Byden the headmaster?” I said. “But he’s married.”
“It was a long time ago,” Conchita said, “but what if he still carries a torch for Madame?”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“Aspeth told me. Her dad and Mr. Byden went to Harvard together in the sixties, and I guess Madame was living in Boston then.”
“Imagine kissing Mr. Byden,” I said. “He’d make you keep three feet on the floor.” This was the rule for visitation; also, the couple was supposed to leave the door open. “And what’s really gross,” I added, “is think about Mr. Byden having a boner.”
“Lee,” Conchita said, and it occurred to me that I might have genuinely offended her.
“An erection,” I said. “Whatever.”
“Stop it.” She covered her ears with her hands.
“They probably had pet names for each other,” Martha said.
“Shnookums,” I suggested.
“Apple dumpling,” Martha replied.
“Cheese pie,” I said, and for no real reason, both of us convulsed with laughter.
“What?” Conchita said. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard-by then she’d uncovered her ears.
“It’s not-” I began, and then I made eye contact with Martha and started laughing again.
“What?” Conchita was looking between us. “What does cheese pie mean?”
Martha wiped a tear from her eye. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “Lee just made it up.”
“Then why is it so funny?”
“Well-” Martha struggled to remain composed. “It’s just like, cheese pie?”
“Apple dumpling,” I repeated, and both of us began snorting.
“Martha let a boy touch her boobs,” Conchita said.
“Thanks, Conchita.” Martha appeared unperturbed.
“I would never do that,” Conchita said. “At least not before I’m married and then I’m only having sex in the dark.”
“Yeah, right,” Martha said, and her tone was affectionate.
“Have you had sex?” I asked her, and as soon as I’d said it, I felt myself clutch. Really, I hardly knew her; I had forgotten how little I knew her.
“God, no,” Martha said. “My mom would kill me.” She didn’t seem to have found the question intrusive. “Conchita, when a guy goes up your shirt, it’s just skin,” Martha said. “It feels kind of good.”
“Would you let a guy touch your boobs, Lee?” Conchita asked.
“It would depend on the guy.” I thought of the song “Lay, Lady, Lay,” the man in dirty clothes.
“I’m really surprised,” Conchita said. “I didn’t realize that you were promiscuous, too.”
For the third time, Martha and I burst out laughing.
“I wish I was promiscuous,” I said.
“Don’t say that.” Conchita looked stricken.
“I’m kidding,” I said, and she looked relieved, and then I couldn’t resist saying, “Sort of,” and she looked stricken again. “Oh, Conchita,” I said, and I moved over to her seat and put one arm around her shoulders and rocked her back and forth a little. She seemed young to me in this moment, and very charming. We’d gotten onto Route 128 by then, and there was something about the speed of the car, something about the car being a limousine, something about the sunshine and the conversation-I was happy for real. The sense I always had at Ault that what I had to offer was inadequate, that I needed to be on guard, was drifting away, rushing out the open sunroof.
The hotel was near the Boston Common; it was the fanciest hotel I’d ever been inside, but by then, this fact did not surprise me. Corinthian columns flanked the lobby, and green marble lined the floor and ceilings. Conchita approached the concierge’s desk to ask where the restaurant was, and Martha and I followed her, all of us still giddy from the ride, and I could feel that the hotel staff and other guests in the lobby were looking at us and that we were three girls to them, we were ordinary, and in this moment, our ordinariness was not a bad thing. On the contrary-in being underdressed and a little loud, in traveling in a pack, we were fulfilling their idea of teenagers, and I felt proud of us.
In the dining room, Conchita cried out, “Mama!” and hurled herself into the arms of a woman who was both very pretty and very fat. Mrs. Maxwell kissed Conchita all over her cheeks and chin, and then they both were crying and speaking to each other in Spanish and turning to us to apologize for crying. Mrs. Maxwell was seated and did not rise to greet us, though she did extend her arm. It was tan, and many gold bracelets hung from her wrist. “I am delighted to meet my daughter’s friends,” she said. When Conchita introduced me, Mrs. Maxwell said, “Ah, the Bob Dylan fan.” She wore loose pale green silk pants and a shirt of the same fabric, with a plain neck and wide sleeves; even from several feet away, I could smell her perfume. Her skin was smooth and brown, darker than Conchita’s, and her dark hair was pulled into a loose bun.
“Thank you for having us to lunch,” Martha said, and I said, “Yeah, it’s really nice of you.”
In the whole dining room, only a few tables besides ours were occupied; near us, a beefy man sat by himself. A waiter brought us menus, tall leather rectangles with the descriptions of the food written in calligraphy. Only one of the entrées was under twenty dollars and it was grilled vegetables. It was oddly liberating to realize I had only fifteen dollars in my pocket-I wouldn’t be paying, I wouldn’t even try, because I couldn’t. The bottom of the menu featured the date, and when I realized they must have printed a new menu daily, the idea seemed remarkable. I had suspected before, and the whole day only reinforced the suspicion, that money could make your life nice, that you could want it not for reasons of greed but for reasons of comfort, because it allowed you to send for your daughter and her friends in a limousine, to eat food that tasted good in a pretty setting, to be heavy and still wear nice clothes. One of my mother’s friends was about as fat as Mrs. Maxwell, but she wore sweatpants and flowered smocks.