Chapter Forty-One
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One. Two. Skip a few. I couldn’t tell you how long I lay there, paralyzed under the weight of the journals, cut loose from the cadence of whatever was going on in the outside world. But for the first time, my mother had given me what I needed—time.
With Roman in Melbourne for Gigi’s funeral, I had a week to pretend that he didn’t exist. I didn’t sleep for two days, frantically poring over pages upon pages of poetry, daily entries.
Things would begin to come into focus and then fade, a stroke victim learning to speak again.
The stanza of a poem about period blood?
That sounded like something I wrote. The tally of tips earned at what appeared to be some kind of oral-sex game night?
I’d never do that. I don’t even particularly enjoy blowing my own husband.
I examined an image in a German porn rag with a full view of Daisy’s face.
Athletic socks, school uniform skirt. I have brown eyes.
This girl has aquamarine contacts, a bleach-blond job, a different nose, breast implants.
Pretty, with sleepy, sad eyes. We looked nothing alike.
I kept reading, answering the lingering questions I had about Daisy’s past, but still not convinced any of this had anything to do with me, or why I had kept all of these.
The journals I didn’t get through, I’d take home.
When I finally fell asleep, I found myself dreaming about things I’d forgotten.
Escaping in the middle of the night. Climbing into a car on Melrose.
Lights flashing beneath a luxury high-rise.
Spread out on a mattress on the floor of an empty house in the hills.
A man with his hands covering my eyes, directing me into a walk-in closet.
Voices outside in a hallway, like they wanted to ruin each other. It’s not safe. Run.
By the time I woke up, it was afternoon of who knows what day. I had a text from Roman saying he’d be back to JFK late the next day. He missed us.
I heard my mom humming a Loretta Lynn song to Holden downstairs, ice jingling in a crystal tumbler.
She’d invited a neighbor over, a woman who always had a flowering, nosy smile and at least a dozen grandchildren.
She’d spread out all over the living room, a borrowed Pack ’n Play, press-and-go race cars shaped like earthworms, a hungry fish game.
She tossed a burp towel over my mom’s silk shoulder pad, showing her how to feed Holden, how to change him, how to love him.
Even days later, knowing the things I now know, I still can’t see the way things really were. Holden is napping. I sit on the patio with my mom. It smells like citronella and fertilizer. “I put a pizza in the oven,” my mom says. Microwave pizza, my mom’s version of a home-cooked meal.
“Thanks.”
“Daisy. Daisy,” my mom says, a long exhale. “Oh, do I remember her.” She tucks a curl of my hair, matted and dirty, behind my ear. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t.” I pull my head away, more abruptly than I mean to. She’s trying, but I can’t let myself notice any maternal instinct.
“I read everything,” I tell her. “I still think it’s bullshit.”
She scrunches her lips, broadcasting her doubt. “Whatever you say, sweetie.”
I bolt up. “What? You don’t believe me? You think I’m batshit? You know what? Fine. I’ve got a flight to catch.”
She opens a Dr Pepper and hands it to me, a peace offering. She can’t drive us to the airport. “I’ve got Fabiano on Thursdays.”
I know she expects me to protest, but I just say, “Cool, cool. Your roots are a mess.”
My mom picks a weed out of the cement and twirls it around her finger. “I thought you were dead.”
“I guess I just needed to sleep.”
My mom is careful and quiet and doesn’t look into my eyes.
She takes a sip. “They’re going to take the house,” she says.
I squint into the low sun. The wooden swing my grandpa made static in the still, thick air.
“It was that financial adviser of Javier’s, a damn snake oil salesman.
Take out a second mortgage, he said. Rates are one percent. ”
“Why are you telling me this?” My mom looks down at my finger, at the yellow diamond ring. The ring that caused so many fights. My face burns. “I knew it. I knew this whole grandma act was because you wanted something from me.”
“So what? You want me to sleep on the street?”
I stand up. “You’ll find a bed. You always do.”
“My God, Emily. You’re going to talk to me that way? After the things you did? The hell you put me through?”
“Put you through? You were never around.”
“Who does those things?” she whispers, as if this is the worst part of it all. “It’s not normal…” The tears really start to flow now, and I feel my face harden. “I never ask you for anything.”
Something snaps. I can’t wait to walk inside and leave my mom to grovel alone on the patio. “The pizza is burning.”
My mom calls after me. “Your grandma may have had a soft spot for you, Emily Joan, but I know you!”
I walk inside, the smell of a gas oven and burnt crust. I search for oven mitts, sliding the blackened Hill Country Fare Frozen Pizza out and onto the stovetop.
I swat the smoke away from the fire alarm so that it won’t go off and wake Holden.
My eyes are burning. I can almost see Queenie, beautiful, senile Queenie in the rocking chair in the corner suite at the Royal Robson Ranch. We have an Emily in the family.
Nothing looks like it had even a week earlier. Who knew what was true or pure or real anymore? I take off the ring, leave it on the kitchen nook, and pack up.
—
Early the next morning, I take Holden back to New York.
I travel light. One bag, Holden strapped to my chest, stroller broken down into a package the size of a boom box.
I stroll right through TSA without having to collapse anything or unpack a portable crib that looks suspiciously like a pipe bomb.
I am back to basics. I am my antecedents.
I could drum up a tincture to cure diaper rash.
I could collect wild berries that sustain us both for weeks. I could weave us a blanket on a loom.
At LaGuardia I ask the taxi driver to take us to 527 Park.
The missing piece. My reassurance. I don’t have access to a thirty-seven-million-dollar condo.
If it isn’t Daisy’s apartment, then whose is it?
When we get through the rotating doors, the security guard greets us, handing me a carton of Camel Lights. “Thought you could use these.”
“Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”
He winks. “Of course you don’t, ma’am.”
I go to the playroom to leave Holden with Marcela.
She has Construction Site: You’re Just Right and fresh pupusas waiting.
I put my nose right up to his and give him the biggest, warmest smile I’ve been able to muster in days.
He looks at me, his legs kicking like he wants to pedal away on an invisible bicycle. Then he says, “Mama.”
Deep relief. “Yes. Yes. That’s right, little koala cutie. I’m your mama, and you are my favorite person in the whole wide world. I love you so much.” My eyes flood before I even know what is happening.
Marcela thrusts him over her shoulder, and as she carries him away, my shiver of relief turns to confusion. “Marcela,” I say. She turns, rubbing her palm in circles against Holden’s back.
“?Sí, senora?”
“Back when you started here, you said I hired you away from that Brooklyn Heights family, but we hadn’t spoken in months. Did Daisy hire you?”
Marcela gives me a warm grin. “No entiendo.” She’s headed to the changing room. You could eat off of Holden when he’s with Marcela.
“What do you mean? Who hired you?”
“I just do what I’m told, senora.”
—
Upstairs, everything is as I left it. Claire brings me a matcha, circling the ceramic bowl and extending it toward me with both hands and a deep bow, like it’s an Edo-period tea ceremony. “Welcome back.”
I walk past her to the kitchen, where Audrey loads a banana and cashew butter into a blender. I am staring at flaxseeds, spread out all over the white Carrara marble island, ants serving their queen. “Have you seen Daisy?”
Audrey turns the blender back on. “That’s cute.”
In the living room, half a dozen women I don’t recognize sit in lotus pose, settling in for a purity sound bath. Jasmine, who is most definitely not Indian, wears a sari and brushes the edge of a crystal bowl. I am annoyed. I thought we’d talked about appropriation.
I walk up to her. “Yo. Jas. You seen Daisy?” She stands to her feet with verve, the calm cut short by my arrival.
“You’re back. Yay. We weren’t sure—” She stops herself. “We’ve missed you.”
“So Daisy hasn’t been here?”
“She’s always here, and never here, and none of us would be here without her.”
Other moms do vinyasa on the veranda under the heat lamps. I walk outside. Several women stop and look at me. The instructor, I think her name is Madison, bows.
“We’re so blessed that you’re back. We’ve missed you.” All of the women, in their nude bodysuits and sports bras, stop and bow, like I’m a samurai.
“Have you seen Daisy?”
Madison takes a wider stance on her mat, tightens her ponytail. “No, ma’am.”
Ma’am? Why are all these bitches acting crazy?
I find Bianca scrubbing a coffee ring off a marble console. “The office is all set up, exactly as you requested.” Shit. The overdue grants I needed to write for work. Bianca inches closer. “Your matcha and a refill of your medication are in there, too.”
Bianca has never waited on me. “Okay. What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.”
“Everyone is acting bizarre—” I stop myself. “I mean even more bizarre than normal. Did something happen when I was away? Where is Daisy?”
“Ma’am, they’re just doing what you told them to do.”
“And what did I tell them?” She lifts an eyebrow. “Please?”
The other women may have looked at me with reverence, but Bianca looks into my soul…and all she sees is trash.
“You said to treat you like you are two women in one body, ma’am.”
I said what?
—