You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz Page A

nor did her expression seem to change, though she turned her head with the others as conversation moved among the other three. But then, just as they were raising the thorny issue of how to leave the benefit en masse when it was time for the after-party, but without creating an air of exclusivity (because, after all, the final numbers had now been given to the Standard and there could really be no tagalongs), the talk was cut by a sharp, gulping infant cry, and the silent woman jolted to her feet and left the room. She returned a moment later with a tiny, dusky infant wrapped in a green striped cloth. Nodding in acknowledgment of the women’s cooing, Malaga took her seat again, shrugged her arm out of her long-sleeved silk shirt, and roughly pulled down a white bra, exposing the entire side of her body. This was done so quickly that Grace barely had time to be uncomfortable, but looking furtively across the table, she saw that Amanda seemed scandalized. With eyes widened, she gave a minuscule shake of her little head, sufficient only to convey this to herself and anyone else who might have chosen that nanosecond to glance in her direction.
    The issue, of course, was not the breast-feeding, which Grace assumed they had all (with the exception of Sylvia) happily done, and out of a combination of principle, pride, convenience, and concern for the health of their babies. The issue was the blunt and thoroughly nonchalant nakedness on display: one breast descending freely into the sucking mouth of the baby, the thick flesh of the belly, even the full upper arm warmly positioning the infant’s head. There was no designated nursing garment like the one Grace had worn, with its discreet slit for the nipple and artful drape to shield her from, for example, prurient teenage eyes incapable of differentiating between the sexual and the maternal. Malaga Alves, having seen to the baby, continued to look around the table, waiting for the conversation to continue; so, in an act of collaborative theater, with a set of cooperative stage directions, the other four women proceeded to pretend she wasn’t there. The baby sucked loudly and made little sounds of frustration. After a few minutes, just as Grace had reached a state of relative imperviousness about the situation, Malaga extracted the nipple, which flopped wetly against the infant’s cheek, after which, instead of covering it up, the woman beside Grace simply exposed the other breast by the same method and positioned the baby anew.
    By now, the level of anxiety in the room was palpable. The women spoke in rapid, frill-free sentences, barreling as quickly as possible toward the end of the meeting’s agenda. Absolutely no one looked at Malaga, except—Grace saw—for Hilda, who had arrived in the doorway and was staring balefully at the half-naked woman. Malaga herself sat imperviously, her silk shirt flung back over her shoulders like a cape, her bra wedged below her unfurled breasts. It occurred to Grace that if this woman were of an even remotely venal disposition, her behavior could be seen as exquisitely hostile, but on balance she thought this was probably not the case. For all the resentments a New Yorker named Malaga Alves might hold toward a New Yorker named Sally Morrison-Golden, she had emitted not even a whiff of anything like ill temper. There was, to the contrary, an absence of reaction, a retreat into negative energy; her actions were those of a woman who did not consider herself visible, let alone inflammatory. Glancing furtively at her, Grace suddenly found herself remembering a person she had once seen in the locker room of her gym on Third Avenue. She had been changing after an aerobics class when she noticed a woman standing in front of the mirror near the entrance to the showers, quite naked, without even the usual gym-issued towel knotted around the hips or over the breasts. She was in her thirties or forties—in that ill-defined middle