Chapter 6
ANNIE
Our living room floor is an archipelago of newsprint, each section a new continent of desperation.
I sit cross-legged in the middle of it, my knee a point of contact with Cori’s as she hunches over her own quadrant.
The scent of sesame oil and fried starch from The Golden Dragon hangs in the air, a greasy perfume over the musty smell of old paper.
An extra container of fried rice sits by the door, a peace offering for Ernie on our way back.
I take a sip of flat, lukewarm Coke and circle an ad for a “Dynamo Executive Assistant to a Media Mogul.” The required qualifications include fluency in Mandarin and “five years in private aviation logistics.” I circle it anyway.
The act of circling is a placebo, a ritual to ward off the panic that’s begun to hum like a bad electrical wire behind my sternum.
Marcus is out with Brett. Friends flickers on the TV, a new show Cori and I have adopted like a shared nervous tic.
We’ve become archivists of its brief history; when she’s at the ballet, I record each new episode on our temperamental VCR, fighting the inevitable tracking lines.
Cori’s allegiance is to Phoebe, the feral mystic who speaks in koans.
My loyalty lies with Rachel, the runaway bride in the Ala?a dress, for obvious reasons.
I don’t just watch her; I study her. Her trajectory is a map I’m trying to read by torchlight.
A bulletin board in my room is now a collage of sartorial commandments ripped from magazines: Julia Roberts’s power shoulders, Naomi Campbell’s liquid grace, Kate Moss’s heroin-chic insouciance, Drew Barrymore’s grunge whimsy.
And presiding over them all, Princess Diana, caught in paparazzi shots leaving a gym, wearing a crewneck and bike shorts—a look I’ve begun to emulate on damp October mornings, hoping the clothes might work a kind of sympathetic magic, transmitting not just style but a backbone.
Cori laughs at a Phoebe-ism on screen as I look down at my newspaper, and the numbers, which have become a silent, screaming refrain in my mind, rise to the surface.
Next month’s rent is a wolf at the door. The specter of Ernie—not as a joke, but as a prophecy—looms larger each day.
I’ve been to five interviews in the past two weeks.
A receptionist position at a law firm where they asked if I knew how to use WordPerfect and I said “of course” even though I had no idea what that was.
I didn’t get it. A retail job at a boutique in SoHo where the manager took one look at me and said I didn’t have enough “sales experience.” A waitressing position at a diner where I lasted exactly one training shift before I dropped an entire tray of plates and got sent home.
An administrative assistant role at an ad agency where the guy interviewing me spent more time staring at my legs and chest than looking at my resume. I left halfway through.
And a bartending position at a pub in the West Village where they hired someone else before I even finished the interview.
“You see anything good?” Cori asks, not looking up from her paper.
“Not yet. You?”
“Nothing you haven’t already said no to.”
“Oh,” Cori says, not looking up. “Your mom called again today.”
I keep my eyes on the newsprint, on the words Must Handle Large Dogs. “I’ll call her back.”
“You said that yesterday. And the day before.”
“I’ve been busy. I’ll get back to her soon.” The lie is thin as tissue.
The truth is more complicated than that.
I don’t know how my parents tracked me down.
Maybe they hired someone, like a private investigator or something.
But the first time I picked up the phone two weeks ago and heard my mother’s voice on the other end—clipped, controlled, furious—I nearly threw up right there on the kitchen floor. I hung up without saying anything.
She’s called six times since then. I haven’t answered once.
I know I need to call my parents back. But even though part of me misses them—misses the version of them that exists when everything is fine and I’m being who they want me to be—the bigger part isn’t ready.
I’m not ready to deal with the aftermath.
The anger, the disappointment, the mess I left behind.
I can only imagine what’s been happening since I left.
Reporters camped outside the house, Daniel’s family threatening lawsuits, my mother having to cancel appearances because of the scandal.
My father probably locked himself in his office and refused to deal with any of it.
That’s what he does when things get messy.
“Daniel called too,” Cori says.
I wince.
“That’s his fifth call in two days.” She’s looking at me fully now, chopsticks paused halfway to her mouth. “What happened there? It seems like he really can’t let you go or something.”
I don’t know what to say. I haven’t told Cori or Marcus the full story—that I was supposed to marry him, that I ran away from my own wedding, that my face was all over the news for weeks.
I’ve been so careful, so vague, and they’ve been kind enough not to push.
But the phone calls are a pressure cooker, and the lid is rattling.
“We were together for a while,” I say, which is technically true. “It didn’t work out. He’s having a hard time accepting that.”
“How long is a while?”
“Two years.”
“Damn. That’s rough.” She takes a bite of lo mein. “Was it bad? The breakup?”
“You could say that.”
“Did he cheat on you or something? Because five calls in two days seems—”
“He didn’t cheat on me.”
“Then what—”
“Cori.” I set my Coke down. “I’ll call them back soon, okay? I just don’t want to talk about it right now.”
She studies me for a second, then nods. “Okay.”
I rub my temples, pen still in hand. “They’re just giving me a headache.”
“Am I included in ‘they’?” She pokes me with her chopstick.
I smile despite myself and elbow her back. “All the time.”
She laughs. “Fair enough.”
The phone rings again just as Cori’s reaching for another egg roll.
I don’t move. On the TV, Chandler’s saying something about his father wearing women’s clothing and the studio audience is losing it, but I’m not really hearing any of it because my whole body just went rigid.
Cori and I both stare at the beige cordless phone sitting in its cradle on the kitchen wall like it might suddenly sprout legs and come after us.
It rings four times, five, six, and then finally stops, leaving this heavy silence that somehow feels worse than the ringing.
Cori picks up her egg roll and takes a bite. She doesn’t bother asking who it is.
We go back to circling ads, and I’m grateful she’s letting it drop. But I can still feel the weight of those phone calls sitting in my chest, the knowledge that I can’t avoid this forever. Eventually, I’m going to have to face it.
The thing is—and this is pathetic, I know it’s pathetic—but some sick, twisted part of me is almost glad they keep calling.
Not that I’m going to answer, because I physically cannot make myself pick up that phone and hear my mother’s voice on the other end, that particular frosty tone she gets when she’s furious but trying to maintain her composure, like she’s performing even her anger.
But I need to know they’re still trying, that they’re angry enough to call six times in two weeks, that I haven’t been completely erased from their lives.
That I still exist to them, even if it’s just as a massive disappointment.
It’s like wiggling a loose tooth with your tongue even though you know it hurts, even though you know you should just leave it alone and let it fall out on its own. But you can’t help it. You need to keep checking to make sure it’s still there, still attached to something real.
My parents were around when I was growing up, technically speaking.
They lived in the same house, appeared at school functions when their schedules permitted, hosted elaborate dinner parties where I’d be trotted out in whatever dress my mother had picked for me to smile and be charming for whatever director or producer or studio executive her and my dad were hosting.
But it was Eileen who actually raised me.
It was Eileen who knew I hated carrots and loved my grilled cheese sandwiches extra buttery and cut diagonally, that I liked my orange juice without pulp and who who sat with me when I had nightmares about forgetting my lines in the school play.
But I didn’t know that was weird at the time because everyone I knew lived like that. All of my friends had wealthy parents who were busy being important. We all went to the same schools, had the same tutors, spent summers at the same houses while our parents did whatever important people do.
Except Valerie Baker.
The memory surfaces, vivid and unbidden, as if conjured by the smell of cheap Chinese food.
My fourth grade best friend. Valerie with her gap-toothed grin.
Her father, a man my parents never bothered to learn the name of, coached her soccer team.
He built her a treehouse with his own hands, a summer-long project of sawdust and sweat.
Her mother braided her hair into intricate coronets every morning and tucked notes into her lunchbox: You are my sunshine!
Remember, you’re amazing! They had a feelings chart on their fridge.
I was so consumed by a jealous, hungry ache that I dropped her.
I exiled myself back to the familiar, chilly landscape of my own world, where parents were elegant portraits on the wall, not people who showed up in your everyday life.
Valerie’s life was a mirror showing me a reflection I couldn’t bear to see: my parents’ absence was a choice.
And now those same parents are calling me six times in two weeks and I can’t pick up the phone, but at least they’re still calling. At least I’m still worth being angry at.