Six
When are you going to grow up? I drive straight home from the office, my appetite now gone. When are you going to grow up? He has been saying this to me since I was five years old. Every time I do something of which he disapproves, his reaction
is the same: When are you going to grow up?
At least Lucy will be home, and I can vent. She will listen with the appropriate expression of horror, will probably tell
me that I am overreacting and should not be so upset over such an innocuous comment about sushi, of all things, before pouring
me a glass of wine. I will start to feel better, even though I will be slightly pissed at her accusations of me overreacting,
but even that, she will laugh, is me overreacting. I will feel better, and by the time I wake up in the morning, I will be
fine, because alcohol plus time is the cure-all for everything.
I climb up the stairs, and open the door to our apartment, shouting a hello, but I already sense Lucy is not there. Her car
is outside, which means nothing. She has any one of a myriad of friends who might have dropped round to claim her for the
night.
I put my bag down and flop onto the sofa, scrolling through my phone. Emails, texts, Instagram, Facebook; this could keep me busy for hours, but it isn’t communication I am craving, it is human connection, and the thought of being alone with social media is not one I can handle tonight.
I see a missed Skype call from Nasreen. She may be living back in her home country of India now, but she is still part of
the fabric of my life, still someone I speak to as regularly as I can. I Skype her back, but there is no response.
Jumping up, I grab my bag. Maybe I’ll go to The Escape, or The Vesper, sit at the bar, have a few drinks, a burger. I throw
a book in my bag, unsure of whether I will want to engage in conversation or not. But I do need human contact; I need to not
feel quite so alone.
I’m walking down the stairs when Keith pops his head out the front door.
“I need you.” He beckons me inside, where the smell of garlic and butter reawakens my taste buds.
“Something smells incredible.” I lean down and pet Cressie, who demands to be picked up and cuddled.
“That’s why I need you. Gus is about to come home, and he asked me to cook dinner tonight. I’ve had so many tastes I can’t
tell anymore. I think it needs more salt. I need you to taste and tell me.”
I follow him into the kitchen, Cressie tucked under my arm like a soft, cuddly football. Chicken Marsala is bubbling away
in a large gray Le Creuset, as Keith holds a spoonful of sauce up to my mouth.
It’s velvety, creamy, and perfectly seasoned. Keith physically puffs up with happiness when I tell him. I notice the table
is set with woven placemats and linen tablecloths folded and placed into crystal glasses.
I start to laugh. “Do you set the table like this every night? I thought you only did it when people came for dinner.”
“Of course we do it every night. Speaking of people coming for dinner—” he gestures toward the chicken “—where are you off to? Because we have more than enough and would love you to stay.”
I think of the people crowding around the bar, of myself with a book folded in front of me, and think that would be so much
lonelier than staying here with people I love. And the chicken was delicious.
“I would love to.” I put my bag down. “Shall I grab a bottle of wine from upstairs?”
“No need. Here.” He slides over a chopping board and a head of lettuce. “I’ll pour you a drink. You get the salad started.”
It is a wonderful evening. Comfortable and cozy, filled with laughter.
“It’s so weird that we have never met your father,” Keith says at one point, as my heart sinks. I had managed to get through
the evening without thinking about the sushi, and this instantly reminds me. I long ago learned people’s fascination with
my father, and there is rarely a conversation in which his name does not emerge.
Because he is notoriously private, people long for snippets of information about him, long to claim a personal connection,
no matter how tenuous it may be. I am not my father, I want to say. Knowing me does not mean anything. I am no more special
than anyone else you know. I feel as if I have been bestowed with something I do not deserve; I am exactly the same as everyone
else, and yet so often feel more is expected of me because I am not everyone else—I am Marty Cooke’s daughter.
When his name comes up, as it does now, I feel myself go on high alert. Will people ask me about him? What do they want to
know? Are they only interested in me because I am his daughter?
When I was eleven, I was invited to Emily Joffrey’s birthday party.
We weren’t good friends, but we were in the same class, and all the girls in the class were invited.
Lucy and I talked for ages about whether we should go, Emily being one of those pretty and perfect girls with whom we felt we had nothing in common.
In the end, we decided to go. Lucy’s mother bought her a gift from both Lucy and me, a Harry Potter puzzle, and she drove us there, to a large stucco mansion with clipped hedges and a cavernous hallway that I found instantly intimidating.
More intimidating were her parents. I wasn’t used to being around groups of adults. It wasn’t just Emily’s party but seemed
to be her parents’ party as well; there were more adults than girls, and while we changed into bathing suits (Lucy and I both
had one-pieces, but most of the other girls were in bikinis that were too sophisticated for their not-yet-blossoming bodies),
the adults milled around the pool with tall glasses of pink cocktails, their conversation and laughter growing louder and
louder.
I didn’t understand why adults were at Emily’s party, and stayed in the hot tub that was raised above the pool, a waterfall
cascading from the spa. Lucy was with me at the beginning, but when they suggested water polo, she was gone.
I was contemplating getting out of the hot tub, unsure of what I would do now that I had been abandoned, when three parents
came over, placing their cocktails and beer carefully on the stone edge as they inched into the hot tub, grinning at me as
if this were completely normal.
My mother didn’t have a swimming pool, or a hot tub, and whilst my father did, the only person who ever used it was me. I
had no idea what hot tub etiquette was, only that I no longer belonged, and was desperate to get out, when the parents started
talking to me.
“Hi. We’re Lauri’s parents,” said the man, smiling and gesturing to his wife. “Mike and Rena.”
“And I’m Anna, Emily’s mom,” said the other woman.
“I’m Missy,” I said, embarrassed to be the only girl sharing a hot tub with adults. I wanted to get out, but I didn’t want to seem rude.
“Missy Cooke, right?” said Anna, and I watched the other two perk up, knowing this routine well. I nodded.
“Missy Cooke? Any relation to Marty Cooke?” said Mike, in a voice that was pretending not to have known, but I know he knew. I can always tell. I nodded again.
“Wow! That’s such a small world! I know your father!” I leaned my head to one side curiously, cautiously. The thing is, everyone knows my father. When I met someone who said they knew Marty, I used to light up, thinking I was meeting one of his close
friends, gaining insight perhaps into a side of his life I hadn’t known anything about.
The next time I would see my father, I would excitedly tell him I had met one of his friends, and invariably he would have
no idea who I was referring to. This had happened so many times, I had stopped telling my father when I met people who said
they knew him.
My father met thousands of people. He could be impossibly charming, making everyone feel as if they had made the same kind
of impression on him as he had made on them. They would leave feeling they had made a connection, that they would now be able
to refer to him as “Marty,” as in, “sure, I know Marty,” or “my friend, Marty.”
Mike shook his head. “Well, I don’t really know him. I met him at a charity event a few months ago. We shared a table. What a great guy. So down-to-earth. He was the winner
of the private auction, which was spectacular.”
“Oh my God, the mega-yacht?” said Anna. “The one that sold for a fortune?”
“That’s the one.” Turning to me, he asked. “Did he ever go on that yacht? I’d love to hear what that was like.”
“I don’t know.” I wanted to say that I live with my mother, that I see my father on some weekends, that he loves me, but I am not involved in his day-to-day life, nor the vacations he takes, but I said nothing.
“That’s so interesting that your father is Marty Cooke.” Emily’s mother paused, thinking. “I’m putting together a luncheon
for one of my charities,” Anna interjected. “I know we would love your father to be involved. Maybe I can give you a leaflet
to give to him.”
“Sure,” I said, as I stood up awkwardly. “I think I’m going to try water polo. Nice to meet you all.”
I could hear them whispering as I walked off. Half of me wanted to hear what they were saying, half of me didn’t. The only
thing I knew for certain was that they were talking about me. Were they surprised I was Marty Cooke’s daughter? Was I pretty
enough? Clever enough? Special enough? I didn’t think so. After all, they hadn’t asked anything about me, only shared their
connection to my father, as if I were completely irrelevant.
I didn’t try water polo. I got out of that hot tub and headed straight back to the house where I peeled off my wet swimsuit
and put my jeans back on. I killed some time in the kitchen. No one was there, and there were juice boxes piled on the table.
I helped myself and wandered around, looking at their notice board, the invitations pinned there, the photographs.
The kitchen was huge, and white, a counter that was almost as big as my mother’s entire kitchen. The notice board was filled
with photographs of a happy family, and I felt a pang as I wished we had something like this. But ours wouldn’t be filled
with a mother and father, happy smiling children, two golden retrievers. Ours would be my mother and me, no pets, and less
smiling.
My mother was still so resentful at my father leaving, too depressed to build a proper life for herself. It was easier for her to stay in a place of anger and victimhood, refusing to work properly, so she could continue blaming my father for our relative poverty.
“He has so much,” she’d mutter. “He wouldn’t miss a goddamned penny, but he’d rather his own daughter live in squalor than
let us have any money. Goddamned control freak.”
I wanted to leave.
I walked back outside to the pool where Lucy was shrieking with victory as she scored a goal. I sat on the grass, my arms
around my knees, my eyes boring into Lucy until she felt me staring and turned to look at me.
I made big eyes at her, the kind of big eyes that say, “I need you.” She clambered straight out of the swimming pool and dripped
her way over to me, her red bathing suit showing off the curves she had started to develop well before me. She sank onto the
grass, her golden legs covered in bruises and old scabs, the signs of a misspent youth, or a tomboy.
“What’s going on?”
“Didn’t you see the horror of the hot tub?” I hissed. “You left me alone and I had to deal with grown-ups.” The word grown-ups came out of my mouth sounding horrified, as if I had been left with monsters rather than the parents of girls I went to school
with.
Lucy shrugged. “That’s not terrible. You got out, right?”
“Yes, but they all wanted to know about my dad. Emily’s mom wants to give me something to give to him so he can get involved
in her charity thing.”
“Ew.” Lucy scrunched up her face. I scrunched up mine in a mirror image. She knew how much I hated people claiming to know
my father, or using me to get to my father, or—the worst of all—pretending to be interested in me when it was my father they
were interested in.
“I know, right?”
“Do you think they got in the hot tub because they know who you are?”
I shrugged, but I know they did. They knew exactly who I was. Why else would they leave the rest of the adults to climb into
a hot tub with a child?
I remember this as I look at Keith and Gus, both looking at me expectantly. Is this a beautiful friendship about to go down
the tubes? Please don’t ask me for anything, I think. Please don’t ask me to tell you about my father, or ask if I can forward
an email to him asking to donate a tour of the famous ipryy offices for your silent auction. Please pretend you don’t want
to know anything about my father. Let us all move on.
“I don’t think we’ve even met your mother,” says Gus. “Didn’t you say she was a writer? What kind of writing does she do?”
My shoulders instantly relax. I sink back into the chair, no longer on high alert, and tell them about my mother.
At ten thirty, Gus starts to yawn.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he apologizes. “It’s the curse of middle-age. Long past my bedtime.”
“We’re not throwing you out,” Keith says. “It’s just that Gus will turn into a pumpkin if I don’t get him into bed soon.”
“No pumpkin jokes, please,” says Gus, rubbing his round stomach with emphasis as he rolls his eyes and laughs, removing his
napkin as he gets ready to show me out.
“I can take a hint,” I say, picking up the plates and taking them to the sink.
“Do not help clean up,” Keith orders. “You are a guest and it’s a house rule. Guests aren’t allowed to help clean up.”
I blow kisses to Keith from the front door, now open, and start to walk upstairs to my apartment before I pause and bring
out my phone.
Where are you? I text Lucy, gratified that the three dots appear instantly.
At Labyrinth! Come! Will tell bouncers!
Coming!
The rest of us have to wait in line for around an hour at places like Labyrinth, but not when Lucy is involved. Thanks to
her job, her personality, her beauty, she knows everyone, everywhere, and we sail past lines straight to the big men at the
front, each of whom greets Lucy with hugs and kisses like a long-lost sister. They don’t even look for her name on the list,
merely unhook the rope and let her in.
Labyrinth is not a quiet drink and bed by midnight. Labyrinth is noise, and crush, and cocktails, and strangers, and dancing,
and flirting, and, and, and . . .
I pick up my phone and order an Uber, my father’s voice echoing in my mind.
When are you going to grow up?
Not tonight.