That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  But she didn’t want to read, or scroll through Facebook, and see all the other happy families, the other moms and dads and kids posing on their spring-break vacations. When she’d told Hal about her plans, he’d given her a distracted nod, and barely seemed to be listening. He’d been in a mood ever since their return trip from Emlen, and she wasn’t sure whether it had to do with his only child getting kicked out of the prep school he’d attended or if this was lingering sorrow over his classmate’s death.

  Daisy shifted in her seat as the train rounded a curve. The night before she’d asked, one more time, if Beatrice wanted to come with her. She’d found her daughter sitting in the corner, in one of her long, drab dresses, knitting by the light of a candle on her dresser. She looked, Daisy thought, like an eighteenth-century consumptive.

  “You sure you don’t want to come with me?” she’d asked.

  “No, thanks,” Beatrice replied, shaking her head. She was murmuring knit one, purl two under her breath, and Daisy could tell she was annoyed at the interruption. The electric kettle they’d ordered her at school was steaming on her dresser, next to a biscuit tin and a box of PG Tips teabags. A tiny swashbuckling mouse was posed on Beatrice’s desk. It had a little silvery sword in its hand, clever black boots on its feet, and a black mask over its eyes.

  “This is so realistic!” Daisy had marveled, picking it up for a closer look. “Is this real fur?”

  “Well, yeah, it’s real fur. It’s a real mouse.”

  Daisy, who’d assumed she’d been handling something made of wool, had screamed, and dropped the thing. Well, maybe she’d actually (unintentionally!) thrown it a little. And then she’d had to wrestle it away from Lester, who’d tried to eat it.

  “Hey, I made that!” Beatrice said indignantly.

  “Sorry,” Daisy said. Her voice sounded faint. “Are you… did it…”

  “It’s from a pet store.”

  “Was it…” She couldn’t think of how to ask if the mouse was dead or alive when Beatrice obtained it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  “Don’t worry. I’m being very sanitary.” Daisy looked down at her daughter’s desk. Once, there’d been a stack of vintage Nancy Drew books there, a collection Daisy had painstakingly assembled a book or two at a time. There’d been a pair of lamps with pink polka-dotted shades and a jewelry box that had once been Daisy’s, with a ballerina who spun to “The Blue Danube Waltz” when you lifted the lid. Now there were bags of cotton batting and cotton balls, loops of fine-gauge wire, scissors and pliers and scalpels, all lined up neatly in a row, along with a box of rubber gloves, and a small dish of tiny beaded eyes.

  “So you’re doing taxidermy?”

  “Yep.”

  “No more needle-felting?”

  “No, I’m doing that, too. I’ve actually got two commissions to do this week. A goldendoodle and a Great Dane.”

  “Well, I left you and Dad the Indian chicken you both like. You just need to—”

  “Put it in a saucepan, heat it on a low flame for twenty minutes.”

  “Okay, well, have a good day at school.”

  “Bye,” Beatrice said, without looking up from her knitting.

  As the train picked up speed, Daisy turned her head toward the window. She saw her own reflection—brown hair, full cheeks, heart-shaped face, lines, faint but discernible, around her eyes—and watched the backyards of New Jersey flashing past. She was thinking about her father, who’d been on her mind.

  Jack Rosen had been a businessman—or, as he put it, an entrepreneur, forever in search of the next big thing. For the first ten years of her parents’ marriage, money had been scarce. Her father had invested in opportunities that hadn’t panned out—a jewelry store franchise that had been doing fine until a Kay Jewelers opened up in a nearby mini-mall; a fur-storage facility that had gotten picketed every week by animal rights protestors; a fondue restaurant that had given Jack and his wife two good years, until people stopped eating fondue.

  Then, in the 1970s, her dad had gotten lucky with Jazzercise studio franchises, and when the 1980s arrived, her father had presciently invested in movie-rental shops. The next twelve years had been good ones. They’d moved out of their duplex and into a rambling Victorian mansion in Montclair, New Jersey. He’d sent his sons, Daisy’s brothers, to the Emlen Academy, the storied boarding school that had only admitted a handful of Jews until the 1960s.

  Jack Rosen had loved his sons, a love that was tinged with something close to awe as they’d grown into the kind of young men he’d never been, sporty, preppy fellows who’d traveled the world, tagging along with wealthier friends to Nantucket and St. Barths and Banff. His sons skied and sailed; they played tennis and eventually knew how to order wine. David had played baseball at Emlen, and Danny, who was short and slightly built, like their dad, had coxswained the men’s eight for the crew team. Daisy could sense that the sports and the slang, the way her brothers seemed to speak a coded language full of nicknames and casual references to people Jack had never met and places he’d never been, made her slight, asthmatic father proud, and also left him slightly bewildered. She’d been very young when her brothers had been at Emlen, but she could still remember, vividly, her father wearing an Emlen hoodie around the house during the winter months and an Emlen T-shirt in the summer. At graduation, he would dress in a tweed sports jacket, no matter how hot it was on that day, and a tie in Emlen’s colors, and take pictures of everything—the ivy-covered dorms, the dining halls, benches on the quad, with their brass plaques, the crew shells, even the other families, whose dads wore dress shirts with the cuffs rolled up and madras shorts and boat shoes on warm afternoons. There’d be sweat pouring down her father’s bald head and cheeks, and her mother, tottering beside him in high heels, would hiss, Jack, that’s enough as he’d surreptitiously fire off his camera. Daisy always liked visiting Emlen—they set up a tent where other families could drop off their children, so there were other kids to play with, and good things to eat. It wasn’t until she was older that she understood how complicated it must have been for her parents, the way they must have felt both proud and out of place.

  Daisy adored her father. She’d been a late-in-life baby, arriving when her mom was thirty-eight and exhausted and, Daisy suspected, pretty much ready to retire as a mom, but her father had loved her unreservedly. Me and my shadow, her dad used to say. She’d tag along with him whenever she could, when they’d visit his businesses, or his mother, Daisy’s grandmother, who lived in an apartment in Riverdale in the Bronx. Her father did much of the family’s cooking, and all of the baking, and it was from him that Daisy learned to prepare hamantaschen and rugelach and sufganiyot. Princess Diana, he’d called her, and he’d say, “Nothing is too good for my little girl.” Every Saturday they spent together would end with the two of them browsing at a bookstore—sometimes the Waldenbooks in the nearby mall, sometimes the Strand in New York City. Her father would let her buy a stack of books as high as her knee. Daisy had her own bedroom and her own bathroom, a closet full of Girbaud jeans and Benetton sweaters. Every summer she went to Camp Ramah in the Catskills, and for her bat mitzvah she’d had a casino-themed party, which had featured a roulette wheel, blackjack tables, a popcorn stand, a photo booth, and a crew of “party motivators” to coax the awkward preteens out onto the dance floor. For favors, there were customized pairs of socks, pink for the girls, blue for the boys, that had I DANCED MY SOCKS OFF AT DIANA’S BAT MITZVAH embroidered on the soles. Daisy had worn a pink dress with a tulle skirt and silver paillettes stitched into the bodice, and had gotten her hair permed. She’d never felt more pretty, or more grown up.

  Eighteen months later, things had taken a turn. First, her dad had gotten his money out of the movie-rental franchises, convinced that the public’s appetite for at-home movies was waning, and put everything into a local chain of rotisserie restaurants called Cluck It. Then people stopped wanting roast chicken. Or maybe they wanted it from Boston Market. Or may
be Cluck It wasn’t as much of a draw as investors had hoped. Whatever the reason, three of the four restaurants had closed within a year, and the Rosen family had downsized. Instead of fancy vacations, at the beach or in the mountains, there were long weekends at the Jersey Shore, with Judy sulking for most of their stay, crying when she thought the kids couldn’t hear her, and asking, “What do you mean, it’s all gone? How could you not have saved anything? How could you have let this happen to us?” Her dad ended the lease on his Porsche early, her mom went from a Cadillac to a Toyota, and they’d put the Montclair house on the market—“It’s too big for just the three of us,” her father had said, and Judy had nodded woodenly, swiping at her red-rimmed eyes. On their last night there, Daisy’s mother had been the one with the Pentax, taking pictures of the bay window in the living room, the walk-in pantry and the custom tiled floors in the kitchen, and the in-ground pool in the backyard, walking through the house like a ghost, with her fur coat draped over her nightgown’s shoulders.

  Daisy liked to think that if she’d been a bit older, or if her parents had been a little more forthcoming, she would have behaved better. But she’d been fourteen and clueless, and her last conversation with her father had revolved around her insistence that if she didn’t get the pair of cherry-red patent-leather Doc Marten boots, the very ones she’d seen in a Smashing Pumpkins music video, her life would be over. “Sure, Princess,” her dad had said, sounding a little distracted. Later, Daisy would remember the lines around his eyes, the weary slump of his shoulders, but at the time, her only thoughts had been for those red boots. “I’ll be home for dinner, and I’ll bring you those shoes,” were the last words her father had spoken to her as he’d passed through the kitchen on his way out the door on Monday morning. Daisy would have given a lot—years off her life, the use of her right hand—to have told him that she loved him, instead of saying what she had said, which was, “They’re not shoes, Daddy, they’re boots, and if you get the wrong ones you’ll just have to return them.”

  They’d heard the front door closing, the sound of her dad starting his car. Then, an instant later, they’d heard the crash. Her mother ran out of the house. Daisy had gone to the window and seen her father’s car, its rear end crumpled against a car parked across the street, with her father slumped over the wheel. Her mom had screamed “Call 911!” and Daisy had raced across the kitchen for the cordless phone. Too late. Her father had been dead before the ambulance had arrived.

  At the house in Montclair, Daisy’s mother had a quarter-acre patch in the backyard where she grew vegetables and flowers. From spring through summer and into the early fall, that was where she spent most of her free time, tilling the soil, planting and weeding and watering, hand-pollinating eggplants with a tiny paintbrush, or sprinkling ground-up bone meal on her roses and zinnias, to keep the ants away. Daisy would help her to put up the vegetables she’d harvested, turning cucumbers into pickles and tomatoes into marinara sauce.

  After Jack Rosen died, the house was sold—quickly, and, Daisy gleaned, for not as much money as Judy might have hoped. Daisy and her mom had moved out of Montclair and into the two-bedroom apartment in West Orange. There was no garden, no yard, no outdoor space at all, just a little strip of concrete balcony with a waist-high metal railing. Daisy’s mom had filled every inch of it with pots and hanging baskets. She’d grown what she could, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing had been the same. There wasn’t money to send her back to summer camp, and when she’d started at her new high school, she hadn’t let anyone get too close. She’d worked hard to earn good grades, knowing she’d need assistance for college, and once she’d made it to Rutgers, she’d worked two jobs all year long, while maintaining the GPA that her scholarship required. Then, the summer after her junior year, she’d met Hal, and then Beatrice had come along. And then there’d been Hannah, the one friend she’d made, and kept, until Hannah had died.

  Maybe she’d gotten out of the habit of friendship, she thought, as the rhythm of the train’s motion drew her down toward sleep. Maybe this stranger, the other Diana, would be a chance for her to try again.

  4

  Daisy

  On their usual trips to New York City, the Shoemakers stayed at a hotel on Central Park South. One of Hal’s old Emlen classmates was a national manager for the hotel chain that owned it. Usually they got upgraded, and there was always a basket of fruit and a bottle of wine, with a note welcoming them back, waiting in their room when they arrived. Just one of the perks of being an Emlen man, Hal would say, as if Daisy needed to be reminded of how the world’s doors swung open for Emlen men, in ways that were completely legal but still didn’t seem entirely fair. An Emlen man, Hal’s guidance counselor, had written Hal’s letter of recommendation to the Emlen man who ran the admissions department at Dartmouth, and Hal had gotten in. A different Emlen man had recommended Hal to the alumnus who was dean of Yale Law, and Hal had gotten in there, too. While he was at law school, an Emlen man had hired Hal as a summer associate at Lewis, Dommel, and Fenick in Philadelphia. Hal had gone to work there when he’d graduated.

  Daisy had her own thoughts about Emlen, few of which she’d shared with Hal. She wasn’t quite sure how she could begin. She could see all the privileges that Hal enjoyed, and why he would want his daughter to be able to access that aid. She could see, too, some of her own complicity, the way that she benefited from his status by proximity, and how, instead of protesting or pushing back or trying to make it right or share what she’d been handed, she mostly went along with it, quietly enjoying all those unearned benefits. Her single act of rebellion was slyly asking Hal how much he’d donated to Emlen and then writing a check for an equal amount from their joint account to the NAACP, a gesture that seemed to amuse her husband more than it angered him. “Really, Daisy?” he’d asked her, and when she’d said, “It’s the least we can do,” he’d said, “You didn’t have to go behind my back,” before giving her the kind of indulgent look that made her want to throw a pizza stone at his face and then kissing her on the forehead.

  On this trip, Daisy had wanted to be independent. Or, more accurately, she had wanted to enjoy the illusion of independence. When Diana had proposed meeting at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis, Daisy booked a room there, telling herself that, after all of the year’s upheavals—Hannah’s death, Beatrice’s expulsion, the death of Hal’s classmate and Hal’s subsequent funk—she deserved a treat.

  When the train arrived, Daisy escaped the underbelly of Penn Station as fast as she could and walked up the escalator, past the cab line and into the cool spring air. She walked along Broadway, marveling as she headed uptown at how different New York City was from Philadelphia, or, really, from any other big city in the world. Everyone hurried. They swung their arms briskly at their sides; they dodged and wove around their fellow pedestrians, and charged every crossing signal. To what end? Daisy always wondered. What could possibly be so urgent? And had she ever felt such urgency about anything in her whole life? Not since childbirth, she thought, and she smiled thinly, remembering how she’d wanted to go to the hospital as soon as she’d felt the pain of the first contraction, and Hal had made her wait until he’d finished eating his lunch, and made sure that they’d locked the door behind them.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Shoemaker,” said the woman behind the front desk at the St. Regis. She was beautiful, with an oval face, heavy-lidded dark eyes, golden skin, and dark hair pulled back at the nape of her elegant neck. Daisy half-listened to her speech about the butler available to take care of any needs that she might have, and how room service was offered twenty-four hours a day, trying to place the woman’s accent and wondering if she had even considered calling Daisy “Miss” instead of “Ma’am.”

  “Enjoy your stay, Mrs. Shoemaker.” Daisy accepted her key card and took the elevator to the eighth floor, where she found her room, elegant and pristine, with a pale-gray carpet and ivory-colored drapes and a luxurious king-sized bed. She eased off her shoes, lay on her
back, spread her arms and her legs as widely as she could, set an alarm on her phone for an hour, and sank into a deep and satisfying sleep.

  * * *

  At six o’clock, the King Cole Bar was hushed and welcoming, filled with low chatter and soft music and candlelight. The famed Maxfield Parrish mural seemed to glow behind two bartenders who were serving a row of drinkers. In the corner, a piano player was doing a rendition of “Some Enchanted Evening.” Couples made quiet conversation at the tables for two; at a table for four, a quartet of boisterous businessmen were laughing loudly over what sounded like the punch line of a dirty joke. As she looked around, Daisy could feel herself relaxing, and when she spotted a dark-haired woman using her phone’s flashlight to examine a menu, she thought, That’s her It has to be.

  As if she’d heard Daisy’s thoughts, the other woman put down her phone and got to her feet. She wore a gold bangle on her wrist that flashed in the candlelight as she waved.

  “Daisy?” the woman asked. Smiling warmly, she extended her hand. “Diana Starling,” she said. Her voice was low and pleasant, and Daisy thought she heard, very faintly, the hint of a Boston accent.

  “Daisy Shoemaker.” The other woman’s grip was warm and firm, and her smile seemed genuine, as if Daisy’s arrival was the best thing that had happened to her all day. She didn’t look a thing like petite, freckled Hannah Magee. She was taller and darker, her features more severe, but Diana had to be about Hannah’s age, and there was something about her that reminded Daisy irresistibly of her old friend.