Chapter Twelve
Palisades, New York
2023
Daisy sat cross-legged on her grandmother’s couch with a floppy pillow on her lap and a video game controller in both hands. Grandma sat next to her, kicking her ass in Mario Kart. Daisy tried not to be distracted by the knock on the door, but it didn’t matter anyway. Grandma had just lapped her.
“It’s open!” Grandma called without taking her eyes from the screen.
Daisy’s mother walked into the room and came to stand behind the couch. She leaned over and watched them play. Onscreen, Grandma pitched a squid at Daisy, whose windshield was immediately covered in black ink. Daisy drove off the road.
“Well, what are you two up to?” Mom asked.
It seemed pretty obvious to Daisy what they were up to, but she refrained from saying so because she was only here for two more days before she had to return to San Juan. Half the reason for this trip was to try to patch things up with Mom, which efforts so far had not flourished. The other half was to celebrate her grandfather’s eightieth birthday. Daisy had found him a mint-condition vintage Gamboa panama hat for his gift, and had carried it here on the plane because she didn’t want it to get crushed in her suitcase. She’d wrapped it in tissue paper and placed it carefully into a paper shopping bag, which she held on her lap the entire flight. She didn’t know where Grandpa would have the chance to wear it in Missouri, but maybe that would be all the encouragement he needed to come visit her in San Juan. Grandpa and his second wife, Trisha, were still good travelers, they enjoyed their little getaways. They were flying in from St. Louis this afternoon, and Vic was on his way to the airport to pick them up.
“Oh, just the usual,” Grandma finally answered the question just as she collected her checkered flag at the finish line. She placed her controller on the coffee table. “Just destroying my granddaughter’s dreams of being a winner.”
Daisy was still a full lap from reaching the finish line herself, and had just driven off the road again.
“Oh, give me that.” Grandma reached over and relieved Daisy of the controller.
Daisy was happy to see it go.
“I thought you might like to give me a hand with the cake, Daisy,” Mom said.
“Sure.” Daisy stood up and yawned, stretched her arms overhead. “You making tres leches?”
“Dad’s favorite,” her mother confirmed.
“And then what’s on the docket for the rest of the weekend, Ruth?” Grandma asked.
They both watched Grandma drive the cartoon motorbike while Mom talked. “Vic should be back here with them by five, and we’ll have an early dinner on the back deck before he takes them to the hotel to get settled in. Benny and Pamela and the kids get in super late tonight, so they’re taking a cab straight to the hotel. Then the party tomorrow is at one o’clock. Everybody will be here. Even Vic’s girlfriend is driving down from Boston later tonight.”
“And Peter knows, right?” Grandma said. “This isn’t like a surprise party or anything? Because he’s eighty, Ruth, which is a far cry from the youthful seventy-six of yours truly. I don’t want him having a heart attack before we get him back on the plane.”
“Mama, you know well he’s in great shape. And anyway, until Sunday he’s still seventy-nine.”
“I’m just saying—”
“He knows about the party, Mama.”
“Good.”
“You want to help Daisy and me with the baking?”
Grandma crossed the finish line for the second time, and turned the system off. “What do you think, Ruth? You think I want to help bake?”
Daisy laughed.
“I didn’t like baking his cakes when I was married to him! Why would I do it now?”
“Okay, Mama.”
“Wake me when it’s ready!” Grandma locked the door behind them and waved through the glass.
Daisy was at home in Mom’s kitchen, and as they fell into the familiar choreography of baking prep, the tension between them eased for the first time since Daisy’s arrival two days ago.
“You want a cup of coffee?” Mom asked.
“Sure. Thanks.”
Mom refilled the water carafe and set the thing to brewing while Daisy hauled the pink stand mixer down from its shelf in the pantry. She tied on her favorite apron with the cows all over it, collected their ingredients, and lined everything up on the counter: flour, baking soda, salt, eggs, sugar, milks, cream, vanilla, cinnamon. Apart from the two cans of milk (one evaporated, one condensed), nothing in Mom’s kitchen was still in its original packaging. The dry ingredients had all been transferred to labeled jars or canisters shortly after purchase. The milk, cream, and vanilla were in matching glass jugs of various sizes. Even the cardboard egg carton was long gone, its inhabitants re-nestled into a pale-blue porcelain tray that photographed beautifully against the white countertops. And while grown-up Daisy found this rehoming of products to be slightly ridiculous, even she could admit that the aesthetic result was strangely soothing, probably because it called to mind a time when all these products might have been purchased or procured somewhat closer to their natural state, without all the synthetic packaging, bright colors, artificial sweeteners, and additives. The soothing appearance was an artificial trick, Daisy understood. But it worked.
Mom set Daisy’s coffee mug down and took a sip from her own.
“Thanks,” Daisy said, and joined her.
The coffee was good, and they were ready to bake. Daisy pulled her hair into a ponytail and turned to wash her hands.
“Just. Move your mug over there,” Mom said. “Out of the shot.”
Daisy stood still at the sink, the too-hot water running over her hands. After a moment, she adjusted the temperature and finished her rinse. She dried her hands on the apron, lifted her coffee from the counter, took another sip.
“The shot?” she said.
Her mom looked at her but didn’t say anything. She was rearranging the way Daisy had lined up the ingredients on the counter, so Daisy repeated herself.
“The shot, Mom?”
“Daisy, don’t start.”
“You’re shooting this?”
Still, Mom did not answer.
“Are you serious?” Daisy said.
Mom shook her head and Daisy untied the apron.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking off my apron.”
“Come on, Daisy.”
“Mom, I have no interest in this.”
“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear,” Mom said. “For years now, actually. The good news is that you don’t have to be interested in it. You just have to do it.”
“I have to do it?”
“I mean, you don’t have to. But you’re only here for a few days and we’ve hardly spent any time together.”
“So this is your idea of spending time together?”
“We’re baking! You love to bake!”
It was true that Daisy loved to bake, mostly because the end result was baked goods, which she could then eat.
“I’m not here to be your pretend-daughter, pretend-baking and pretend-smiling for the camera with you.”
Mom switched on one of her wireless ring lights and maneuvered it into various positions, checking for shadows.
“You’re my real daughter, Daisy. And we’re baking real cake.”
Daisy discarded the apron on the counter but then, anticipating her mother’s complaint, moved it out of the shot and stuffed it back into the drawer where she’d found it.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “It’s all fake.”
Mom took in a deep breath and then let it escape noisily between her lips. El Suspiro.
“Daisy, don’t you ever get tired of this argument? Isn’t it exhausting, lugging all that around, being so judgmental of me all the time?”
Daisy did not answer. She leaned back against the farmhouse sink and crossed her arms.
“This is my job, Daisy. This is how I pay the bills, how I have paid the bills since your father died. I know you don’t like it. But the truth is, two things can be true at once: we can spend quality time together, baking your grandpa’s birthday cake. And while we are doing that actual thing, which will be delicious, by the way, I can also take pictures to use later in a blog post that my advertisers will pay me for. So that I can continue to fund your useless, fallow college account.”
“Oh, here we go,” Daisy said.
“And pay for your health insurance, by the way,” Mom said. “And your cell phone.”
“I already told you to cancel the cell phone if you want! I don’t need it.”
Mom shook her head. She walked over to the drawer where Daisy had stuffed her apron, and Daisy thought for a moment that her mom was going to bring it back to her, slip it over her head, put her hands on Daisy’s shoulders, and look her in the eyes. But instead she shook the apron out of the crumpled ball Daisy had left it in, refolded it, and returned it neatly to the drawer. She turned back to Daisy.
“Surely there must be some other way to have this conversation,” Mom said. “We’ve tried it this way a thousand times. It gets a tiny bit worse every time.”
“This we can agree on,” Daisy said.
“I just. I know it’s too late for you to come back here now, I get that the Stony Brook ship has sailed, you have tanked that particular opportunity.”
Daisy snorted.
“I know you’ve signed a lease down there, Daisy, and for whatever reason, you’ve decided to stay. Fine, I won’t even argue that part. But there’s no reason you can’t go to college in San Juan. UPR is a great school, and—”
“Where’s Carlos?” Daisy interrupted.
“What?”
“Your son? Carlos?”
The skin in the middle of Mom’s forehead drew itself into the shape of a cross. Mom didn’t usually abide interruptions, but she was so confused by this one that it threw her off course.
“He’s… at rehearsal. Why?”
“Just.” Daisy shrugged. “He’s nineteen years old. Seems like he should be in college.”
The cross in Mom’s forehead collapsed.
“Oh my God, Daisy, please,” she said, leaning over the counter on her elbows in a posture of utter fatigue. “Daisy, your brother is a totally different scenario.”
“Yes, he’s a Broadway actor and a dancer. He’s in one of the most notoriously unstable professions in the world. Why would he possibly need a college degree?”
“He will go!” Mom said. “But his trajectory is different from yours. He can’t waste his youth, his best dancing years—”
“Mom, my trajectory is different from mine!” Daisy unfolded her arms and held her hands out in front of her as if she could draw her argument in the air between them and finally make her mother see. “It’s a total double standard! And you have this idea that Carlos is a special case because he’s some Broadway big shot, but you’re so busy being impressed by him that you haven’t even noticed that I am killing it in San Juan, that unlike your working actor son, I can actually afford to pay my own rent. If you would come and see, if you would support me for five minutes instead of always criticizing.”
Daisy ran out of steam at the end of her sentence, and Mom stood up, pushed her curls away from her forehead.
“I don’t know, Daisy,” she said. “I worked so hard to give you kids the best chance. It was so hard to do that after your dad died. And now you don’t even want it.”
They were talking in circles, as always.
“You know, when I was your age, I had a fork in the road too.” Mom swiveled one of the stools at the kitchen island and sat on it. She hooked her bare feet around the footrest. “For a while, I went down the wrong road. I ran down it. Almost made the biggest mistake of my life.”
Mom was not looking at her. Her gaze was resting on the porcelain egg tray, but Daisy didn’t think she was really looking at that either. She was somewhere else, and for a moment, Daisy considered going with her. All she had to do was ask. Daisy kept her mouth closed, her arms folded, and after a thick silence, Mom returned.
“I just want you to know it’s never too late to make a course correction,” she said. “To choose a different path.”
Daisy did not help with the cake, but the party was a success anyway, and Grandpa loved the hat. On Sunday, Daisy was under the duvet in her old bed reading a paperback novel when Carlos knocked on her bedroom door.
“Come in.” She tossed the book aside, happy to be briefly back under the same roof with her baby brother, double standard be damned.
Carlos swung the door open, but stayed in the doorway.
“Happy birthday!” he sang out.
“My birthday was two weeks ago.”
“Yes, but you were far away, and now you’re here,” Carlos said. “So it’s your birthday now.”
Daisy smiled. “Okay then. What, no dancing? No fireworks?”
“I have something way better than fireworks.” He grinned, still in the doorway.
Daisy waggled her eyebrows.
“I have to give it to you now, before Ruth gets back from shopping.”
Daisy sat up the rest of the way and gathered some extra pillows behind her. “Okay, I’m ready. Lay it on me.”
He stepped around the doorframe then, dangling the little gift bag from one outstretched arm. He hopscotched across Daisy’s backpack and the pile of dirty clothes she’d left on the floor.
“Oh, the intrigue!” she said, reaching to take the bag from him. It was a reused Christmas bag that Carlos had dug out of the attic because he knew Daisy thought buying new wrapping paper and gift bags was wasteful.
He perched beside her on the bed, bouncing the mattress beneath them. “Open it!”
She peeled back the crumpled paper layers very slowly. “It’s so nice you found the red and green tissue paper to match the bag,” she said, stopping to admire the wrapping.
“Oh my God, would you just open it!” he said.
Daisy laughed, reaching past all the paper layers and drawing out the first of two flat, book-shaped boxes from inside. These were also wrapped in paper and haphazardly taped. She peeled back the tape and slid the first box out of its wrapping. She grinned then, looking from the box to her brother.
“It’s a DNA test!” he said, in case she couldn’t read what it said on the box. He couldn’t wait for her any longer; he reached into the bag, grabbed the second papered box, and ripped it open too. “Actually it’s two DNA tests. One for you, one for me.”
“Wow, no wonder you don’t want Mom to see.” Daisy laughed again.
“Yeah, she would totally hate this,” Carlos said.
“But why’d you get two of them?”
“Vic said that some of the information you can only get if you’re biologically male. You have to have the Y chromosome, I guess. So he said I should do a test too, so we can get the largest amount of genetic information. All the tea!”
“Thank goodness we have such brainiac DNA in the form of our eldest sibling with his chromosome advice,” Daisy said. “Vic didn’t want to do his too?”
“Nah, wasn’t interested, same as always. Said if he wanted to know, he’d just look at ours. It’ll be more or less the same as mine.”
Daisy tore open the box and tipped the contents across the bed while Carlos watched.
“You’re so messy,” he said. “How are we even from the same gene pool?”
There was an accidental moment of pause amid the levity then.
“Come on, no chickening out.” Carlos slapped her arm. “We’re doing this.”
“Wait, just one minute,” she said. “We’re definitely doing it. But come here first.”
She pulled her brother closer, and then swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She wanted to look at the two of them sitting side by side in the full-length mirror.
Carlos’s skin was olive, while Daisy’s was pale and freckled, a difference that was exaggerated every summer when he tanned and she did not. Her hair was lighter and thinner, and there were other things, too, not quite as obvious. Carlos had an elegance about him that Daisy couldn’t even mimic. He was musical; she couldn’t carry a tune. She loved spicy food; he couldn’t tolerate it.
So Daisy wanted the pause to remind herself that those disparities were not acute, especially when compared with the flip side. Because there in the mirror she could plainly see the similarities too. The shapes of their noses, the curves of their eyebrows—Daisy’s wild, Carlos’s meticulously groomed, but the little crook on the outside corner was the same. They each had a stray dimple in their lower left cheek, the same long, slender fingers. They made the same clownish honk on the inhale when they hiccuped, and Vic too. So, okay. It felt safe then, to conjecture what could never in a million years be true.
“Imagine I turn out to be Mom’s love child?” Daisy said.
“Oh, please,” Carlos said. “I’m clearly the love child in this scenario.”
She smacked him lightly in the chest with the back of her hand. “Why do you get to be the love child?”
“Come on,” Carlos said. “Have you seen me? Everything about me screams love child.”
She nodded at him in the mirror. “You do scream love child.”
“ Love child !” he screamed. “See?”
Daisy laughed.
“Besides, I’m the baby,” he reminded her. Then he stage-whispered, “It’s always the baby.”
In the bathroom, they swabbed their cheeks and sealed their samples, and then Carlos smeared a blue clay mask all over his face while Daisy leaned over the counter and filled in the paperwork. On both forms, she checked the little box that said Please send my results by postal mail , and then filled in her own name and the address of her apartment in San Juan.
“Are you kidding me?” Carlos said, peering over her shoulder. “Results by snail mail? That’s extreme even for you, Daisy.”
“I hate email, Carlos, you know that.”
“I mean, you can hate it and still be a member of the twenty-first century, though.”
“I am,” Daisy said defensively, licking the first envelope. “I’m extremely modern. I’m so modern I’m postmodern. Anyway, it’s not like I don’t have email.”
“It’s exactly like you don’t have email. If you never use it, that’s pretty much the same as not having it.”
“I do use it.” Daisy shrugged. “For work and stuff. I use it when I have to. But when I have the option, I prefer to do it the old-fashioned way.”
Carlos pushed his lips all the way to one side of his face and blinked out at her from behind the blue clay.
“Imagine how cool it will be,” she went on, “the day the results arrive in the mailbox and we get to rip open the envelope and read them together!”
“Um, hello, we can’t open the envelope together. You’ll be back in San Juan, and I’ll be all alone here in the burbs with Ruth, waiting impatiently for my DNA results.”
“Oh, please,” she said. “You’ll be at some glamorous rehearsal not even thinking about it.”
“Oh, Daisy.” He shook his head. “You know rehearsals aren’t glamorous. They’re absolutely laborious!” He threw one arm dramatically across his forehead, careful not to actually touch the blue clay. “Unless you’re the star, of course.”
“Well. You’ll be the star soon enough.” She believed this.
“I know.” He grinned.
“ Anyway ,” she said. “We can video chat!”
Carlos shook his head. “You are an enigma,” he said, scanning the paperwork for the fine print. “It already takes six to eight weeks to get the results back, and you can add at least two more weeks for snail mail, Daisy. Maybe three, for it to get all the way to San Juan!”
“Well, lucky for me, it’s my birthday gift, so I can do it however I want.” She folded the second set of forms and slid them into their envelope along with her brother’s sample, double-checking the numbers on the tube and form to make sure she’d kept everything straight. “Good thing you love me.”
“Do I, though?” Carlos leaned into the mirror to inspect his mask, and then washed the leftover clay from his hands, turning his head this way and that, following the eyes of his reflection. “God, I’m so good-looking blue. Maybe I should be blue all the time. Look at my cheekbones!”
Daisy fanned his face with the envelopes. “You’re breathtaking.”
Carlos lifted his phone from where he’d left it on the toilet seat and opened his calendar app. “Okay, today is April twenty-seventh.” He scrolled through the weeks, counting as he went. “So we should have the results before the end of June.”
“Too bad we won’t have them in time for Mother’s Day!” Daisy laughed.
Carlos locked his phone and returned it to his back pocket.
“Is she going with you to the airport?” he asked.
Daisy leaned back against the doorjamb. “I don’t know. Probably not.”
He turned his blue face to look at her. “Don’t worry, Daisy. She can’t stay mad at you forever.”