Chapter Thirty-Three
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I pull Jasmine aside. “Did you rob an Alo Yoga?”
“We liberated what we needed,” Jasmine says, an obedient look.
“Nope.” I gather the sports bras and skorts back into bags. “You need to return all of this.”
In the kitchen, Maya and a couple of other moms sit at the island eating turmeric overnight oats and buckwheat flax pancakes. When I walk in, they scramble to roll up what look like blueprints for the top floor of 527 Park. The penthouse. The moms smile at me and then at one another.
I go to make a coffee and hear sobbing in the next room.
Olivia walks into the kitchen, straight to the fridge, crying.
She can’t find something. “Fuck me,” I say, handing her a jar of raw almonds.
Ever since she got laid off, it’s been like this.
The tears. Booze in the day. Edibles in the evening.
Raw snacks throughout. Olivia leaves with the jar, crunching on almonds, still sobbing.
“I thought you’d be, um, busy,” Maya says to me, snickering a bit as she sticks her spoon in a chia pudding parfait. She’s overdone it at the complimentary Botox bar. I can see my reflection in that forehead.
“I’m just so glad Audrey is on the mend,” I say.
“Are you?” Maya says. The moms muzzle odd little looks.
I stare at Maya, luminous, cool Maya. Why are they looking at me like that? What are they planning? What do they know? Did Daisy tell them I had no friends in college? Or maybe she told them what she does for a living? Who really owns the condo? Where all of this comes from?
“You’re right. I don’t have time for you, Maya. Ladies. Enjoy your day. Don’t forget about the tie-dye party in the playroom at noon.”
I give a big hospitable grin and then go straight to find Viktor.
Instead, I see Daisy stepping off the elevator from the penthouse.
She is wearing a men’s gray alpaca cardigan with leather elbow patches and nothing underneath, her chest still wet with sweat, her hair falling in waves over her collarbone, the curves of her breasts exposed.
“Where have you been? I think Jasmine’s shoplifting in the name of ‘liberation.’ And I don’t know what’s up with Maya today, but she was such a bitch to me just now.”
Daisy finds Viktor on his way out of an electrical closet. “Viktor, dear.”
“Yes, ma’am?” He tries to stop his eyes from drifting down.
“Remove Maya and her friends from the premises.”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
I smile at Daisy. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her kick someone out, and definitely not someone as inner circle as Maya. Something about it feels powerful. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Daisy says. “And if anyone else disrespects you, they can fuck right back to Mr. Pete.”
—
Several hours later, the apartment has mostly cleared out. I go to the kitchen for a boxed water. When I flick the lights on, Olivia is there, alone at the island, lit only by a scented candle. She’s been crying. Not a couple of tears—the full-body silent kind.
“Hey,” I say, worried she’ll blow. “It’s late.”
She blows. “JESUS CHRIST. CAN I HAVE ONE FUCKING SECOND ALONE?”
I freeze, then start to back out. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you need.”
She hurls a mason jar across the tile. It explodes—almonds, glass, the whole performance. The sound is too loud. The silence after is worse. We both stare at the mess like there might be a Rorschach in there.
Her shoulders are shaking. Hard. She’s gone somewhere, and I don’t know if I can bring her back.
“Okay,” I say, hands up. “What can I do?”
Olivia bends down and picks up a sliver of glass, as sharp as a razor blade, and holds it to her neck.
“Nothing,” she says. “Nobody can do anything.”
I step forward. Just an inch. “Olivia. Hey. It’s going to be okay.”
She starts crying so hard it barely sounds human—all throat and breath and collapse. The glass presses deeper. Too deep. Blood wells, quick and bright.
“Olivia. No. Don’t—”
“What?” she spits, soaked in sweat and snot. “You gonna say my babies need me? That my prick of a husband loves me? That I’ve got so much to live for?”
I don’t move. I’m running every possible option in my head and every single one feels wrong.
I think of the therapist I hired from that mental health app Tranquil Moments.
She’d started hosting postpartum support groups and DMed all of us a PDF tip sheet for this type of thing.
But I can’t remember a single talking point.
“No,” I say. “I was going to tell you the floor is Italian statuario marble. And you’ll have to pay to replace it if you bleed on it.”
Olivia blinks. Is she going to lunge at me? Then she breaks.
“Fuck you.”
I walk forward slowly. One foot, then the other.
Closer…closer…until I’m close enough to wrap my arms around her.
She drops the shard of glass. Crumples into me, sobbing into my shoulder.
I press the hem of my shirt to her neck.
The gash isn’t that deep, thank God, just enough to scare the shit out of both of us.
We sink to the floor together, legs tangled.
I hold her like she is my own child. Like I should’ve held Daisy. When Daisy threatened to kill herself.
I wipe her bangs and sweat from her forehead, wipe the tears and the blood. “I got you,” I whisper. “You’re gonna be all right. We’re all gonna be all right.”
We sit like that for a long time. Until the candle burns out. Until we start breathing again.
—
I am standing alone on the balcony, watching a storm gather in the distance, when Daisy finally decides to show up. “Damn. That was a lot of drama,” she says.
I shake my head, feeling a scary new clarity.
I can see it now, how na?ve she is. How careless she is, with me, with everyone.
I used to think that she was so resilient, so savvy to have survived in her line of work.
But now I see that Daisy’s survival rests on a healthy layer of delusion.
What if she isn’t Daisy of sunlight and whimsy, like Chloe the nymph seeking shelter in Cot’s painting? What if she is the storm?
—
It wasn’t just Olivia. The condo had started to buckle under its own weight—too much glass, too many emotions, an Ochre drizzle chandelier strung up with dental floss.
First it was the blood that unspooled on a bathroom floor, thick and gooey gobs like strawberry preserves.
Bianca whispering, “Mija’s lucky. Just three weeks.
She can try again.” Daisy told me I was imagining things.
Somebody had cut themselves during microdermabrasion or maybe one of those vampire facials.
It definitely wasn’t another medical emergency. That would be irresponsible.
Daisy, swinging on the mezzanine in one of those absurd teardrop-shaped cocoons, reminded me about liberation theology, how every social movement that wants to enact real change has to never give up. “See? This is why everything falls apart; nobody is committed.”
Then it was June in the bedroom. Two days after the blood in the bathroom, June, who used to play in a punk band out of Detroit and looked like she lived in Bushwick before it was cool, locked herself in one of the bedrooms with Xanax and a bottle of Opus One she’d lifted from the wine cellar on the fourteenth floor.
Viktor knocked the door down and pried the pills out of her hands.
A mom in her fifth year of a medical residency performed violent abdominal thrusts until June vomited.
She let out a gibberish of grunts and moans, a primal dialect we all understood. “ARGH—OHH—UHH.”
Daisy didn’t think we should call 911, so I stayed with June until we could be sure she was okay. I covered her in a cashmere throw and we sat in front of the double-sided fireplace that I’d once heard Daisy refer to as “a curated heat source.”
“I can’t even think anymore,” June told me.
“Years of trying, shots in my ass. I was so plumped up on hormones, like a Costco roast chicken…I became obsessed…Baby, baby, baby. It was all I thought about…It’s why she left me…
” June trailed off. I gave her a tissue.
“I guess I have what I always wanted,” she said, hollowed out, her eyes adrift in the voice-controlled flames.
The next night I found Claire numb, curled up on a corner of the balcony in the freezing rain.
She’d been out there for hours before anyone noticed, her velour sweatsuit so soaked, it formed a heavy second skin.
I kept waiting for Daisy to do something, but she just sipped hot tea and put on a cutesy voice: “Awww. Look at poor wittle Claire Bear.”
I walked outside, touched Claire on the shoulder, and offered her a cup of hibiscus tea. “Come in. Let’s get you dry.” Claire stood and let me drape a towel over her. Daisy watched us through the window, shaking her head. Such a softie, Em.
Looking back, the articles had been right about Daisy.
She’d been our North Star, lavishing the space with her grandiose ideas about a “movement” and a “secret society.” She was the natural leader, but she’d never gone through any of this.
She had no idea how dark new motherhood could get.
No one realized how much the women started to also rely on me.
I gave them emotional support. I trailed behind, sweeping up Daisy’s detritus.
The media coverage that came later made it sound like Daisy had brainwashed all of us.
But it wasn’t like that. She just gave us license, an affirmation of our playful, joyful side.
Daisy told us that we could be whoever we wanted to be at 527 Park.
That when conventional society fails us, we need to create our own.
“It’s about you, so that you can be better for them.
” We were all more than happy to oblige.
We reverted to childhood, danced with every limb, ate what we wanted—unpasteurized cheese, sandwich meat, sushi, a bottomless buffet of listeria.
We yelled and danced and masturbated and talked and compared and pinched one another’s changed bodies.
But what did being selfish mean for the moms who hated themselves? Who had no joy and only wanted to curl into a ball on the balcony and contract pneumonia?
That’s the part that Daisy never really understood.
I made sure that Olivia got stitched up and got home safely with her girls. Then I told Daisy emphatically, “We have to shut it down.”
“Yeah…no.”
“Whatever this is—it’s not working anymore. People are going to get hurt. I’m not waiting until somebody bleeds out in the pantry.”
“Em. Em. Em,” Daisy said, letting out that breathy patronizing calm that makes me want to light something on fire. “You still think this is a wellness club, don’t you? Because let me tell you something, sweet pea—it’s not a wellness club. It’s a war room.”