Chapter Seventeen
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We spent the rest of the day in the playroom. We didn’t see a single other baby or parent or nanny or human, other than Bianca, the head of the condo’s staff.
We started to kick around ideas for how to recruit the Juju Bean moms. No idea was too ridiculous. “Art history classes? Sculpture?” Daisy says.
“Mommy we should get some of those.”
“So many questions. Why did you need a lawyer to find me? What did they find on me? Why did a law office have diapers?”
“Top law firm in the city. They were very helpful. They said you aren’t dead, but you aren’t alive. Just add Coterie diapers to our list?”
Holden drops Sophie on the ground. I pick her up and hand her back to Holden, who puts Sophie right back into his mouth. I am not even worried about germs outside. It’s like we aren’t even in New York, but in some sanitized Epcot version of the city.
I’d resisted the urge to ask Daisy about her work, but I did wonder if all of this could implode. “What do we do if the Greek comes back, or somebody finds out?”
“Finds out what?”
“That we invited people over.”
“Look around, Em. This place could use a little life. Besides, it’s sort of my job?” Daisy explains that the Greek told her to “make it look lived-in, fix it up.”
“Because it is so shabby?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Daisy then tells me about the leaks, the stalled elevator cars, the swaying in a heavy wind, the crappy plumbing, the rushed, shoddy electrical installation that has rendered sixty-five units and a common area unusable.
A Potemkin pied-à-terre. “It looks posh, but I swear, Em, it’s held together with Scotch tape.
But who cares? New York real estate is a way more solid investment than the S and P.
” Daisy leans down and, noticing Holden’s eyes are open, taps the tip of his nose.
“The Greek just bought it as a place to hide his money. Isn’t that right, cutie-pie?
Yes. Yes, it is, all the billionaires are doing it.
Yes, they are.” She is baby talking about the proliferation of foreign money laundered through high-end New York real estate to my baby.
Daisy hides her face—“Anonymity”—and peekaboo—“Liquidity.” It’s like Dr. Seuss swallowed The Wall Street Journal. I do not like oligarchs, Sam-I-am.
I look up, my neck craned all the way back, the full force of aggressive architecture and the security cameras staring down on me. “Who lives in the penthouse?”
I notice Daisy’s eyes flinch a bit, like I’ve crossed a line.
She holds her cup with both hands and takes a long sip of matcha.
When she comes up for air, she’s forgotten that I ever asked.
“Anyway, the Greek gave me all this shit, about how I’m always reading and how I don’t have any female friends, like there’s something wrong with me. ”
“What a dick.”
“Eh. He is actually a decent guy, you know, as far as they go.” I do not know, but I also don’t ask.
I don’t ever ask. “He’s not like these men who just want me to invite other professionals, escorts or whatever, over,” she says.
“He wants me to have, like, ‘normal’ friends, and where am I supposed to find those? I mean, you’re the closest thing I’ve got, and you are definitely not normal.
” She winks. “The apartment needs to feel homey, in case the feds show up or whatever.”
Daisy explains that since the Hu scandal, federal officials had been cracking down on condos bought under LLCs, particularly the ones purchased with foreign money.
The Greek needed some laundry around, so the place would look less laundered.
Daisy was under strict instructions to really use the place, mess it up a little.
What better way to do that than to invite over a bunch of babies?
After the Malaysian fled, Daisy’s name started to circulate in certain very specific, very high-net-worth circles.
For a tiny cadre of obscenely rich men, Daisy provided an essential service beyond sex.
She was a kind of house manager, available, for the right price, to be trapped in a Rapunzel tower for the über-rich.
“Is it legal?” I regret the question immediately.
Daisy takes a sip of matcha. “Oh, Em. Everything is legal if you’re rich enough.”
She squeezes Holden’s thigh. “This, you, being together, it makes me feel a sense of home. Besides, operating a whole day care is cheaper than those Wolf appliances that no one ever uses. Money means nothing to these people. But it means a lot to you.”
Did money mean a lot to me? I’d never thought of myself as someone who cared much about money.
You don’t move to New York to be a poet if money is your thing.
But hearing Daisy say it aloud makes me realize that I do care.
Money would mean that I could spend time with Holden.
Money would mean Roman wouldn’t have to worry about getting laid off.
We wouldn’t have to worry about filing for bankruptcy if we lost our health insurance.
I wouldn’t have to stress about paying my co-pay next week at physical therapy.
We wouldn’t have to bust our asses to afford a nine-hundred-square-foot apartment with a scaffolding exoskeleton.
I have a baby, and money means a lot to me.
I still don’t really get why Daisy wants to invite the Juju Bean moms. I mean, most of them are pretty irritating. “It’s so perfect here. Just us. Quiet. Alone.”
“Em, this idea that you have to be broke and miserable and lonely to be a good mom? It’s kinda fucked-up.”
“I never said that.”
This is when Daisy gives me her sales pitch—the excuse that we’ll use to try to rationalize what went down in 527 Park.
The excuse that I will try to recite verbatim to Roman, and the lawyers and the press and the cops, when people start asking questions.
Daisy explains that even though her work involves men, she’s been around every kind of woman, every kind of mother.
Every mother she’s ever known, my mother, her mother, felt like they were failing a thousand different ways. “But what if it wasn’t their fault?”
“Oh, it was definitely my mom’s fault.”
“What if it was, like, society?” Daisy defends her thesis with such eloquence that I begin to believe that this is why we reunited.
This is why she found me on a Wednesday afternoon.
This is why she reappeared now, right after I had a baby.
We have a purpose. I listen to her talk and begin to ask myself so many questions: What if our moms had been overwhelmed?
Bored? Put down? What if they’d been in pain?
What if they couldn’t even walk ten feet to the bed?
What if they didn’t want to leave their babies to go back to dead-end office jobs but couldn’t afford to stay home?
What if they’d been shamed for buying a highly rated battery-operated STEM toy when all they wanted to do was bolster their baby’s early brain activity?
What if they had nowhere to go on weekdays, which lasted approximately seven thousand hours?
“Look, those moms you hate? Exhausted. Crying in the laundry room. Up to their tits in debt.” She flags down a passing concierge—“Can we please get a gluten-free bread basket out here? Put it on eight-seven-eight-nine?” She turns back to me.
“Let them come here. Let them breathe. Feel human. You don’t have to lead them. Just…open the door.”
I sip my matcha latte, teasing—“Ohh, what happens when the door swings open? Matching sashes? ESP?” Daisy doesn’t laugh, but she doesn’t deny it.
“You’ll feel less alone. And maybe I won’t feel like a ghost in this obscene glass box.
” She looks over at me, the same look she gave me before we cut class, ignored the power plant’s no-trespassing sign, hoisted each other over a chain-link fence, and dove into the reservoir.
“I’ve thought about this ever since I made you read Atwood in college.
I’ve thought about my mom, the moms I met at clubs, at jobs.
I’ve thought about you, Em, and I just wonder, what if things could be different?
What if we could make things different? Stir shit up?
Spread the wealth? Otherwise, what’s the fucking point? ”
I stare at Daisy when she says this part, and I know that she means it.
This isn’t some manic episode. This is her brilliance.
I’ve just forgotten what it feels like to witness it.
I do not ask about all the pain and disappointment and darkness that Daisy has been through, but she tells me that maybe it was all leading her here?
To me. To Holden. To a luxury apartment tower and a Black AmEx with no limit.
To home.
For the first time since I became a mother, I am not checking the time. Not counting down until Roman gets off work. Until I can tell somebody who is not a nursery appliance or an anonymous handle on Juju Bean about my day. I am content. For now.