The seating chart has twenty-three names and I've moved Gerald three times because he can't sit next to Anne (the affair) or Mitchell (the lawsuit) or his own wife (obvious reasons). I solve this with place cards in cream cardstock, hand-lettered in my mother's italic script, the one she made me practice summers while other girls were at swim camp learning to breathe underwater.

I am extremely good at holding my breath.

The butcher says the lamb will be perfect, asks if I need anything else, and I almost tell him I need someone to drive my car into the Pacific with me still in it, but instead I say no thank you, the lamb will be fine, and he smiles because I am always very polite when discussing meat.

At home I arrange thirty-seven peonies in the Waterford vase my mother-in-law gave us, the one that cost more than my first car. The peonies are the exact shade of pink she specified: not salmon, not blush, not rose—peony pink, as if the flower has trademarked its own color. I am cutting stems at forty-five-degree angles under running water because this helps them drink, this keeps them alive longer. I am thinking about how flowers drink through their wounds and I have been cutting myself at forty-five-degree angles for years.

David will be home at six. I have four hours.

I make the aioli from scratch—garlic, egg yolk, lemon, olive oil drizzled so slowly my wrist aches. Julia Child says you can't rush an emulsion or it breaks, separates into its component parts, becomes something that can't be fixed. I am thinking about emulsions. I am thinking about breaking.

The guest list is alphabetized in my leather planner: Anne and Robert, Christine solo since the divorce, David's colleagues whose names I've memorized along with their wives' dietary restrictions (Mitchell's wife is gluten-free, Gerald's is vegan, Thomas's doesn't eat nightshades which I've learned means tomatoes, peppers, eggplant—all the foods with any joy in them). I've made three menus to accommodate everyone's needs and my own need to be the kind of woman who thinks of everything.

I think of everything.

I think: the Coast Highway has seventeen turns before the guardrail ends.

I think: I've counted them twice.

Instead, I polish the silver, each fork individually, counting the tines. Four per fork, eight forks, thirty-two tines total. I was good at math in college before I became good at seating arrangements and knowing which wines pair with lamb (Bordeaux, left bank, nothing after 2015 because David says the vintages have become "obvious").

My mother calls. She asks if I need help with anything. I tell her no, I have it under control, and she says that's my girl, you always do, and I think about the year I stopped eating, how she never noticed because I was still getting A's, still setting the table correctly, still saying please and thank you with that good posture she'd taught me.

I make the dessert—individual pavlovas with macerated strawberries and fresh cream. The meringues have to be perfect: crisp shell, marshmallow center, no weeping (the technical term for when meringue releases moisture, which feels like something Freud would have invented if he'd baked). I am making twelve pavlovas that will not weep, that will hold their shape, that will look beautiful on the table while people eat them and say how lovely, how talented you are, how lucky David is.

At the grocery store last week, the clerk asked if I was okay and I said yes of course why do you ask, and she said you just seem far away, and I wanted to tell her I am far away, I am so far away I can barely see myself anymore, but instead I smiled and said just tired, party planning, you know how it is.

I iron the tablecloth. I fold the napkins into swans. I create a Spotify playlist that's sophisticated but not pretentious, upbeat but not manic: Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, that French singer David likes whose name I can pronounce correctly after practicing in the car alone.

I practice everything alone.

The lamb goes in at 4:15. Internal temperature 135 degrees for medium-rare, which is how David likes it, how everyone will like it because I've learned that if you're confident enough people will believe you about anything, including the correct doneness of meat, including your own happiness.

While the lamb is roasting, I go to the bathroom and cut off some of my hair with the kitchen scissors.

Not all of it. Just the pieces at the nape of my neck that no one sees anyway.

Just enough that something has changed.

I flush the hair down the toilet and watch it spiral in the water, dark against white porcelain.

Then I go back to check the pavlovas.

I set the table: china, crystal, silver, everything gleaming. I light the candles. I check my face in the hall mirror and reapply lipstick (Rose Petal, not Rose Hip, not Rosewood—there are fifty shades of pink and I've learned to distinguish them all).

I look like I'm not thinking about driving off the Coast Highway with my foot pressed all the way down on the accelerator.

I look like I'm not thinking about how easy it would be to simply not show up to my own party, to let David come home to an empty house, perfect table, no wife.

David arrives at six. He kisses my cheek. He says something smells wonderful. He doesn't say I look beautiful but he doesn't have to because I've made sure everything else is beautiful enough that no one will notice I've disappeared somewhere behind my own smile.

The guests arrive at seven. Everyone compliments the flowers (thank you), the table (oh, it was nothing), the food (just something simple). Gerald doesn't sit next to Anne or Mitchell or his wife. The lamb is medium-rare. The pavlovas don't weep.

Anne leaves a perfect lipstick print on her wine glass—the same shade I'm wearing, Rose Petal—and I watch the imprint like it's evidence of something, proof that we were both here, both performing our mouths into the right shape.

The party is perfect.

I am standing at the head of my own table serving dessert to people who will go home and sleep peacefully and never know that their hostess spent the entire evening doing math in her head: seventeen turns before the guardrail ends, the water is cold this time of year, the fall is 220 feet, the impact is four seconds.

Four seconds of free fall.

Four seconds of not having to hold my breath anymore.

But the party is perfect, and I am serving pavlovas that didn't weep, and everyone is laughing at something Gerald said, and David is refilling wine glasses.

Tomorrow I will drive to the flower shop.

Tomorrow I will buy peonies.

Tomorrow I will cut the stems at forty-five-degree angles under running water.

This is how you help them drink.

This is how you keep them alive longer.