Page 34 of Sweet Ruin

“Delilah, is it alright if I smoke a cigarette in here?”

I hand plates around. I direct traffic toward the various bathrooms. I kindly ask my cousin Lucy’s ragamuffin boyfriend to smoke in the yard, please.

Not one person asks me how I’m doing.

Not one person asks me how I’m holding up on the first Christmas without Dad.

Which is fine. Tonight, for once, being invisible is exactly what I want.

I need one thing out of these people, and it is not their well wishes.

Vivian arrives at ten after seven.

As always, you hear her before you see her. The front hall goes up in cooed greetings like a gate opened at a racetrack.

Then it’s “There she is!” and “Oh, look at you, you’re glowing!” and “Vivian, honey, you’re skin and bones,” said in a tone that makes it clear that it’s the highest of compliments.

She wades through an ocean of cheek kisses and fawning glances. Half a dozen cousins and creepy uncles immediately rush to help unload her car. They came in carrying towering boxes of my baked goods, and every one of them gushes to Vivian about how delicious they look.

Connor is a few minutes behind her. He finds me by the sideboard, where I’m moving a tray of stuffed mushrooms two inches to the left for reasons known only to my mother.

“Hiya.” He kisses the top of my head. “Merry Christmas, babe.”

“Merry Christmas,” I say back, brushing sweaty bangs out of my face.

His hand rests on my back for exactly as long as his dad is watching, then leaves.

“Look at that,” my father-in-law says. “Ten years and he still can’t keep his hands off you.”

“He’s a real romantic,” I agree.

“Gets it from his old man,” he says, and then brays laughter at his own joke.

Finally, by seven-thirty, I’ve gotten everything where it needs to go and found time to duck into a guest bedroom and slip into my attire for the evening.

It’s a riff on the Delilah Classic. Black dress with long sleeves and a hem below the knee. Black tights underneath, plus shapewear, obviously.

Over it all goes the cardigan. It’s black like the rest of it, but not clingy.

The overall effect, when I check my reflection in the mirror, is anonymity. I’m a shapeless black frame, vaguely woman-shaped, but not super particular about the fine details. This shape mostly exists—for now, at least—to refill drinks and pass out party favors.

It’s a stark contrast against Viv’s gold-sequined bodycon dress with a hem that falls just below her sculpted ass.

I pat down the wrinkles in the cardigan and think about the jeans that make me look massive, and Andre the Giant at the charity gala, and every joke they wrote about the body I’m currently zipping into a girdle in my dead father’s house.

Then I turn off the light and go back downstairs.

I’m handing a plate to my aunt Bab when my father-in-law taps a spoon on his glass and takes the floor. He does this every year. He thinks being the loudest guy in the room automatically makes him in charge of it.

“Here’s the plan,” he announces. “We eat. We do dessert. Then we get the little ones bedded down, so we can relax and watch the slideshow without them screaming and running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”

I put down the serving spoon. “Wait, what?”

“That’s a good idea,” somebody chimes in.

“They’re feral when they’re up too late and cracked out on sugar,” says somebody else. “I agree. Bed first.”

Four or five people nod along, and it’s clear that I’m losing the crowd.