Chapter 22
I go downstairs and eat breakfast at the hotel restaurant in a state of total misery. The worst thing about meeting someone at a hotel? Everything reminds you of them. Every single place in this entire building holds potent memories of Charlie. While I’m eating, I stare at the table where we had dinner that first night. The couple currently sitting there keep glancing over their shoulders at me like I’m with the FBI.
The prearranged ladies’ spa day is at one, and I don’t feel at all like treating myself. I’ve got a pit in my stomach the size of a jet liner. I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been. I looked at Charlie’s work profile again, and considered dialing his office number and then dismissed it outright. I wonder if he’s going to be in the office today. I miss him. It’s been less than twenty-four hours, and I miss him so much it feels like I’ve been flayed.
I stare at my phone, willing it to ring, like Charlie might somehow develop sudden psychic powers and know my number, and that he should pick up the phone and call me.
But what if he doesn’t want to call me? What if he watched me shut him down and decided that I’ve got more issues than he can deal with, and that it’s just not worth it?
I open my Instagram app and make my account public, and I turn off the privacy settings on my long-abandoned Facebook page.
Please find me, I will him. Please just message me, and I’ll come to you.
I linger at the table for far too long. The lunch rush is starting in earnest, and the annoyance of the exceptionally polite wait staff starts to break through, and their smiles begin to look a little bit crazed. It’s twelve-fifteen and I have absolutely nothing to do with my day, so I finally admit defeat and accept the fact that I’m going to the spa.
***
The space is beautiful, and because this seems to be the one place in this hotel that I haven’t been with Charlie, I don’t have the urge to daydream or weep when I walk in. Calming Zen music plays over concealed speakers, and the walls are covered in white, textured stones set at irregular depths so that they bounce light and cast shadows in every direction.
“Hello,” says a woman with a name tag that reads Adelaide when I approach reception, “welcome to Lotus Spa.” She speaks in a hushed, soft voice. An ultra-calm monotone as if any auditory variation might launch her delicate clients, who have come to be de-stressed, past their tether’s breaking point.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m, um, here for the ladies’ spa day? My mom is Diane Thomas, or, um, Diane Nielsen?” Everything is coming out like a question.
“Ah, yes, the Nielsen party,” she says and taps lightly on her keyboard. “May I please have your name, Miss?”
“Daisy? Thomas?” I say as though I’m not sure.
“Our attendant will bring you back, Miss Thomas,” she says.
A small dark-haired woman in all black appears by my side from nowhere, and I actually jump a little when she says, “Right this way.”
I’m ushered to a locker room, where I change out of my street clothes and wrap myself in a robe that’s waiting for me. I slide my feet into terry cloth slippers and am then led to a private room where I find my mother and her friends lounging in reclining seats. My mother’s face lights up when she sees me, and I’m all at once glad that I came. My despair over the Charlie situation has been so profound that I’ve barely reflected on the conversation Mom and I had last night. But it was an enormous milestone. I don’t feel any judgement radiating from her now, and I’m not sure if she’s different or if I’m different, or if it’s just that now I understand her in a way that I didn’t before.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are genuinely happy to see each other. She’s surrounded by friends, so I squeeze in just quickly enough to give her a kiss and tell her how happy I am to see her, and then wander off to find myself a spot.
Astrid is sipping a glass of champagne and motions for me to join her in the empty lounger by her side.
“How’s Tyler doing?” I ask when I sit down. Another woman dressed in all black steps out from behind a curtain and proffers a tray of petit fours and a glass of champagne, and again, I startle a little.
“Oh, he’s almost back to himself. I made him do yoga with me this morning, down by the water! The hotel set it up for us.”
“Oh, that sounds nice,” I say, though my mind wanders back to Charlie telling Walter that he’s a yogi. Nowhere, it seems, is truly safe.
“Tyler tried to refuse to go, but I told him I would take the kids and leave him if he didn’t.”
I stare at her with a carefully controlled, blank expression.
She breaks into a smile. “I’m just kidding, Daisy! I told him he owed me one for me wiping his forehead with a damp washcloth while he puked.”
“Oh,” I say, relaxing into a laugh. We should have spent more time with Astrid at the wedding. Charlie would love her.
The spa treatments are a dream of hot oil and lavender fragrance and hands all over every tender spot on my body, rubbing out knots and lulling me into a trance. I’d like to say I enjoyed it. I feel guilty for not enjoying it, when I know Michael and my mother must have spent an absolutely nauseating sum to make this happen.
My mind wanders as my body is pampered and rubbed. I think about money, and what it means to people, and what it does, or doesn’t do, for people. A big part of who Mom is hinges on her impoverished beginnings. It’s not something I’ve ever had to experience because of decisions my mom made long before I was born—when she was a child with an iron will and the determination to make a better future for herself, against tremendous odds—and because of the twists and turns in her life, tragedy and heartbreak, my life has been a comfortable one.
It’s very easy for me to say that money isn’t important, but that’s coming from a person who has never had to think about money. Even when I’m laying out my monthly budget, there’s always the knowledge that, should I fall, there’s a safety net to catch me. And that knowledge has always been unconditional—not just because of the trust fund—but because I always knew that, despite everything, my mom would be there. I have no idea what it’s like not to have security. Not even close. Charlie doesn’t do what he worries is bad for the world because he’s a bad guy. He does it because his childhood taught him that money is important. At least in our society it is. Money buys more than nice things. It buys a trip to the doctor’s office, and to the dentist. It buys cancer treatment. It buys security. It buys safety.
There is an element of indignity in poverty, not because being poor is undignified, but because desperation is an insult to a person’s dignity. It hurts. And that damage is so visible in my mother, I can’t believe I didn’t see this clearly until right now.
The decision that Charlie made to become an attorney was born of the same essential driving factors that have led my mom through such a strange and rootless life. The fear of poverty lies within them both. It’s an essential ingredient to what makes Charlie who he is. And maybe the work he does isn’t noble, but it protects him. It’s his armor, just like my fancy dresses and makeup were armor for me this weekend. Just like Charlie himself was my armor. He did that for me. And, moreover, the experience of poverty might be why Charlie is one of the most thoughtful, empathetic people that I have ever met.
The memory comes back to me of Charlie slipping a bill under the boot of a man sleeping on the street, and even though I’m lying on a massage table being pampered in one of the finest spas on the East Coast, I groan at my own stupidity. My brain is hysterical with glee at the fact that it can show me this many ways in which I’ve fucked up. It’s a record-breaker. The massage therapist takes my sounds of agony for pleasure, and the pressure increases. I wince, but I don’t say anything, deciding that wearing a hair shirt might be precisely what I deserve.
My own invisible privilege has completely blinded me, and I’m only fully comprehending it now. I’ll need to explain my revelations to Cara and enlist her help. Maybe we know someone who knows someone who knows Charlie Bond. And if that fails, I’ll call his office. I dread crossing that line. I don’t want to bring his personal life into his professional life, and I need to respect his boundaries. But I don’t just owe him the time to explain himself for failing to tell me the whole truth. I owe him an apology as well.