Chapter 14 Cassidy
Chapter 14
Cassidy
Maybe she drank too much last night.
She throws the covers off, then stands, loses her balance, and falls back onto the bed.
Yes, she drank too much.
Mouth parched, she attempts to get up again, dipping her toes inside her furry slippers, wooziness padding her brain. There. She rights herself, pleased that Rosalie isn’t here to witness her indignities. The eyeball rage Rosalie inflicted on her last night was plenty. She should have known to stop after the third glass ... or was it the fourth? They pour wine here like water. That Renée, always with a bottle in each hand, insistent on filling and refilling. Normally, Cassidy doesn’t mind an endless stream of good wine, but she’s been trying to curb her consumption around Rosalie. Rosalie, who kept count. Rosalie, who begged her to slow down, implored her not to make a scene.
Appealing to her daughter’s stubborn, willful personality exhausts her.
Cassidy definitely has a bruise on her right shin from when Rosalie kicked her under the table, but she doesn’t understand the big deal. They’re on vacation! She wasn’t driving. What’s wrong with having a little wine, a little fun? But when she asked Leo Shay for a selfie, you’d think she asked him for his phone number. Rosalie kicked her so hard that her drink flew out of her hand, shattering on the table, a rivulet of red wine staining the white marble.
When Rosalie wasn’t kicking her under the table or inhaling her food with the suction of a Hoover vacuum (“It’s not going anywhere, Rosie, slow down”), it was like pulling teeth to get her to talk. Granted, she brought the median age down, and she had little in common with married couples, but Cassidy’s highly competent daughter knew what she had signed up for, and she had only herself to blame for once. Not her mother.
Cassidy was grateful for that Jean-Paul guy taking pity on Rosalie, inviting her behind the curtain like some culinary wizard. Rosalie was nervous, but she did whatever the chef asked of her. And she smiled, which Cassidy had been encouraging her to do for years.
Mercifully, the Simone girl also had taken a liking to Rosalie, and when dinner ended and the guests scattered to their rooms, Simone invited Rosalie to join her in the library to watch an episode of The Bear . “Our kitchen’s a lot different,” Simone said. Rosalie’s face lit up, and Cassidy sighed with relief before sneaking off to her room with an unattended bottle of red, unloading face creams and astringents, and spending an inordinate amount of time sucking in her cheeks, stretching her neck, and wondering what she’d look like if she succumbed to the facelift her plastic surgeon recommended instead of pumping her cheeks with Restylane and Botox. Which conjured up an image of a younger Rosalie and her plump cheeks.
She was such a sweet baby. She burped on cue, quickly slept through the night, and rarely fussed. Cassidy took her everywhere—the grocery store, Cubs games, the hair salon, even her exercise class, where they had a childcare suite with a one-way mirror for the mothers to spy on their offspring. Maybe this was where Rosalie’s aversion to physical activity took root. Cassidy saw nothing wrong with attending classes seven days a week. Seven days of little Rosalie watching her mother squeeze into Lycra pants and a skimpy sports bra before being carted off to the brightly lit space painted with colorful rainbows and farm animals. As her daughter grew, so did her disdain for the gym, sending Rosalie into a tailspin anytime she saw a woman in Lycra. This made shopping excursions to Lululemon, Cassidy’s favorite store, a real challenge.
The defiance continued. Cassidy would stroll her through Macy’s, and she’d refuse clothes in soft, muted shades, gravitating toward dark, shadowy tones, a contrast to her fair skin. Rosalie would find the most oversize, shapeless pieces in a dark and menacing palette that swallowed her up. At the time, Cassidy reminded herself that at least Rosalie had those eyes. They were effervescent blue, clear as a cerulean ocean, framed by sleek, long lashes. But soon, in her next phase of rebellion, she hid those beautiful eyes beneath globs of thick, black eyeliner.
“Don’t you want to be seen, Rosie?”
Which was the wrong question to ask a girl hiding under a shield of makeup. Rosalie gave her the once-over. “Why would I want to prance around town half-naked?” She might have used the phrase like someone desperate for attention .
Rosalie was ten when Cassidy told her that Gene was her father, and that he’d died. Rosalie, way beyond her years, still had questions. Resourceful as she was, she managed to find Gene’s sister, Robin. Cassidy was minding her own business, trying to get their bills out on time, when she spotted a letter to Buffalo in the mailbox bearing Robin’s name in Rosalie’s scrawly handwriting. Heart pounding, she tore open the envelope.
Aunt Robin,
I am so very sorry about your brother Gene. It must have been very sad all these years without him and your parents. I’m writing because I was hoping maybe we could meet. Or let me just come right out and say it: Can I come live with you? Losing Gene so young, I never had a chance to know him, and my mother and I, I’m sure there was some sort of mix-up. My thesaurus says we’re “incompatible.” I think I must be more like your side of the family. I saw pictures of my mom and dad from high school (the wedding album got ruined in a flood), and even though I don’t see a resemblance, I just know we could be friends. I see you’re a librarian. I love books too.
Please write back. I’d really like to meet.
Sincerely,
Rosalie Banks
The argument they had that night was epic, the two of them hurling insults, neither backing down, a resolution far from reach. Cassidy could not have Rosalie sending Gene’s sister secret letters, nor could she chance that her crafty daughter would end up in Buffalo and learn the truth.
Hence the day arrived when Cassidy was forced to admit that Gene wasn’t Rosalie’s father. Cassidy really had no other choice, and the confession rolled off her tongue. “If you insist on clinging to this ridiculous fantasy of a dad, Rosalie, you should know your father was a one-night stand. Does that compute? I barely knew his name. There’re no pictures of him because we didn’t take any.” She paused to let it sink in. Cassidy may as well have slapped Rosalie. Her pasty cheeks flamed red as her dream of a family evaporated.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come up with a better story. When I told you about Gene, I thought it’d be easier for you to hear that your dad died rather than the truth. But that’s it. Your father meant nothing to me. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him ... other than ... we had a moment.”
Rosalie’s face fell, the crimson dissolving beneath a sheath of thick, dark hair. She composed a response, then quickly stopped. Her fingers knotted together. “That actually makes more sense.”
Another jab at Cassidy’s lack of responsibility, her carelessness.
After that, there was no repairing the damage. The relationship was broken, a dream given and then swiftly taken away. Cassidy, rather than mending the rift, surrendered. Instead of proving to her daughter how badly she wanted her and how her love was enough for two, she fell inside Rosalie’s disdain. She lathered in Rosalie’s scorn. Rosalie wasn’t wrong. Cassidy was selfish at times, and her diet took precedence over everything else in her life. And maybe she popped a pill every now and then to calm her nerves or had too much to drink, but she was lonely. She missed her mother and the closeness she couldn’t replicate with Rosalie. She ached for the thrill that came from her compulsive habits. And in the process, she had become the kind of woman Rosalie believed her to be. Horrid.