“I’ll do that!” said Ellie. Daisy thanked her and moved on to the next group, realizing, as she listened in, that everyone had already made summer plans for their children. She’d heard about Mimi Simonton’s Shakespeare camp and Marta Wells’s lacrosse camp. She found out that Everly Broadnax would be playing tennis in Florida and Charlie O’Day would be doing a language-immersion program in Seville. She sipped her drink and smiled, drifting away before any of the Main Line mommies in their cocktail dresses or the dads in ties could ask how Beatrice was planning to spend her summer, before she’d be forced to say the words “taxidermied mice” out loud. “Beatrice goes to sailing camp near our home in Cape Cod,” was the line she planned on using. It sounded fancy as long as she didn’t mention that “sailing camp” wasn’t even a proper sleepaway camp, but instead just a day camp run out of a single cramped boathouse on Commercial Street, the same place Hal had gone when he’d been Bea’s age. She also left out the fact that Beatrice had only consented to go three days a week.
In spite of her best efforts, she found herself at Hal’s side, drawn into a conversation with the Byrnes. Mr. Byrne was compact and fit-looking, with silvery hair and a matching goatee. Mrs. Byrne’s short, sleeveless, shift-style silk dress revealed a body that suggested many hours spent in the spinning studio. They matched, Daisy thought, and looked at her husband, his body still trim, his hair still mostly dark, his face, with a few more lines and wrinkles and sunspots, still the same handsome, strong-looking face she’d fallen in love with. Did she match him? Probably not. Even in the same kind of dress that they wore (albeit in a larger size), even with her best grooming efforts, she knew she lacked the grace and confidence of these women. She looked, she thought, like she belonged somewhere else, with someone different.
She made herself pay attention to the conversation. The older Byrne boy, Daisy learned, had been accepted to Duke, “ED,” which, Daisy had learned, meant “early decision” and not “erectile dysfunction.” “So, thank goodness, our spring was pretty tranquil. Now we’re gearing up to go it again with Samantha.” Mrs. Byrne smiled charmingly at Hal and said, “You did your undergrad at Dartmouth, right?” When Hal acknowledged that this was so, she asked, “Did you like it? Did you feel like Hanover was too small-town?”
“I loved it,” Hal said, his voice hearty. “Best four years of my life, aside from prep school.”
“But I can’t imagine our daughter ending up there. Not unless she has a personality transplant between now and senior year!” Daisy could see her joke landing with a thud. Mr. Byrne chuckled politely. Mrs. Byrne tilted her head. Hal’s hand tightened on her arm. She could imagine what he was thinking: Why are you telling people our daughter’s not Dartmouth material? Which wasn’t what she meant, of course. It wasn’t that Beatrice wasn’t smart enough to get in somewhere good; it was that she wouldn’t be happy, a fact that Hal must have realized by now. At least, Daisy hoped that was the case.
“How about you, Daisy? Where did you go to college?”
“I was at Rutgers,” said Daisy, feeling her smile tighten her face. It was absolutely, undeniably true. She had been at Rutgers. She’d just never finished.
“That’s a great school,” said Mr. Byrne, as Hal said, “I think our little artiste is probably going to want someplace smaller.”
Daisy smiled and nodded. At the first opportunity, she murmured something about needing to check the punch bowl and escaped to the kitchen. She knew that she shouldn’t feel the need to apologize to this roomful of terrifyingly ambitious moms and dads because all her daughter wanted to do was make needle-felted gnomes and elves and miniature replicas of pets, but she did. You know the summer before junior year is critical, some mom would say, with the dad beside her nodding his agreement. It’s their last chance to do something big. As if their lives ended at eighteen if they didn’t get into the right kind of school. Which, Daisy realized, these people probably believed.
Daisy replenished the punch bowl. She visited the porch, to see if anyone else had bid on her services (no one had), then went back to the kitchen to check the food. She’d just tied on an apron when she felt Hal come up behind her. “Daisy, come meet the new dean!” In a low voice, he added, “And take off the apron. I don’t want you looking like the help.”
Then you shouldn’t have volunteered me to host, Daisy thought. She untied her apron, wondering, with an unpleasant prickly sensation, if Hal’s real problem was not her apron, but the fact that she wasn’t like Everly’s mother, who was slender and gorgeous and, like Hal, a lawyer, or like Charlie’s mom, who had on a pair of red-soled Louboutins and did something important at Comcast. Daisy could never have been one of those women, not even if she’d gotten her college degree and a high-powered job, she thought as she trailed after Hal. She just wasn’t that kind of woman. She lacked that level of ambition. She was perfectly happy with her home, her daughter, the business that gave her what Hal referred to, charmingly, as “pin money.” She’d been happy, and she thought that Hal had been happy with her—his little bird, with her little job, who made their house a home. Only now, as she saw the appreciative way he looked at the new head of Melville’s Upper School, a woman named Krista Dietrich, who was all of thirty-six years old and had degrees from Stanford and Wharton, Daisy wondered if he’d changed his mind, if he wasn’t reaching the conclusion that Daisy would never blossom, would never become any more than what she was, and if what he felt was resentment, not satisfaction, with their marriage and with her.
When Ms. Dietrich went off to glad-hand the next couple, Hal took Daisy’s arm and leaned in close. “Have you seen our daughter?”
Daisy looked around. Beatrice had clomped down the stairs at the start of the night in a floor-length black crepe dress, Doc Marten boots, and a brooch in the shape of an owl, with ruby-chip eyes, pinned to her chest. “What do you think?” she’d asked, giving them a spin.
“Adorable,” said Daisy, just as Hal said, “You look like you’re auditioning for a dinner theater production of Arsenic and Old Lace.”
Beatrice had glared at him.
“Go upstairs and change,” Hal had told her, which Beatrice seemed to have interpreted as “go to your room and don’t come back.”
Daisy excused herself, went upstairs, slipped off her shoes as soon as she’d rounded the corner that put her out of her guests’ view, and knocked on Beatrice’s door.
“What?” her daughter snarled.
Daisy eased the door open. Beatrice was flopped down on her bed, still in her dress and her boots. Her eyes were puffy and pink, and there were tear tracks running through her makeup. “Why is Dad always such a jerk to me?” she asked.
“Oh, honey.” Daisy sat on the bed and stroked her daughter’s back. “He isn’t always a jerk. And I think he wants things to go well for you at your new school. He wants to make a good impression.”
“He wants me to pretend to be someone I’m not.” Her daughter’s voice was bitter. “Like Everly and her stupid tennis. Or Mimi and her stupid Shakespeare.”
“Stupid Shakespeare,” Daisy repeated, in her most teenage-girl tone. “He’s totes the worst, right?”
Beatrice sat up, regarding her severely. “Mom,” she said, “please don’t ever try to talk like a young person.”
Daisy stood up and attempted a very bad version of the Backpack. Beatrice groaned, but Daisy thought she detected the very early stages of a smile.
“Okay, but you have to come downstairs.”
Beatrice buried her head in her pillows, until only a few tufts of silvery-blue hair were visible.
“Do it,” said Daisy, “or I’ll get a TikTok.”
Beatrice didn’t move.
“Okay, how about this? Come downstairs, say hello to three people, get something to eat, let your father see you, and then you can come back and hide.”
“Whatever,” Beatrice grumbled, but it got her off the bed.
Downstairs, Daisy replenished the tray of deviled eggs (an old-scho
ol, dowdy kind of party food, but like the pigs in a blanket, they always got eaten). She picked up a platter and did a quick round, collecting empty cups and discarded plates and crumpled paper napkins, pausing to touch the leaves of her poor schefflera, pushed into a corner of the terra-cotta-floored sunroom along with another half-dozen houseplants because Hal didn’t want the place looking like a jungle.
She told the musicians to take a break and brought them glasses of water and lemonade, plus a plate of desserts she’d set aside. That task completed, she checked the time, refilled her drink, and stood in the corner, watching women in six-hundred-dollar shoes and men in thousand-dollar suits talk about which thirty-thousand-dollar summer camp their kids would be attending for the critical summer before junior year.
When she noticed the punch bowl getting low again, she went back to the kitchen. She saw the piles of plates by the sink, the empty crates in which the glasses had arrived stacked in the corner, and Mireille standing with her back against the oven, with Hal in front of her, just inches away. For a moment, Daisy wasn’t sure what she’d interrupted. A proposition? A kiss? Then she saw Mireille wasn’t just standing, she was cringing; that Hal was too close, his posture menacing.
Daisy hurried closer, in time to see Mireille shake her head. “Non—I mean, no, Mr. Shoemaker, I promise, I didn’t let anyone into your office.”
“Well, then we have a problem,” Hal said, biting off each syllable. “I have—or, I should say that I had, five hundred dollars in cash in my desk drawer, and it seems to have grown legs and wandered off.”
“Hal.” When she touched his back he turned around with such an angry look on his face that Daisy stumbled backward, hitting the counter with the small of her back. Oh, that’s going to leave a mark, she thought. Immediately, Hal’s hands were on her shoulders, and he was the one steadying her, pulling her upright.
“Honey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, ignoring her throbbing back. “I was in your office. I took the money out of the drawer and brought it upstairs. The kids left their instrument cases in there, and I just thought it’d all be safer somewhere else.”
For what felt like a long time, Hal said nothing. His face was pale; his hands were fisted; he looked like a man who wanted to hit someone, and Daisy smelled something so incongruous that at first she didn’t recognize it. Scotch, she realized. For the first time since she’d met him, Hal had been drinking. She could feel his anger, could almost see it, like something tightly leashed that was a few frayed strands from breaking free and doing terrible things. Then he relaxed, and she could glimpse her husband again, her kind, thoughtful Hal, who swore he’d remembered her as a girl, who’d left a credit card on her pillow the morning after he’d proposed and said I want to be your family.
“Mireille,” he said, his voice formal. “I owe you an apology.”
“Ce n’est rien,” Mireille said faintly.
“No, it’s not nothing.” He reached into his wallet, and pulled out a bill large enough to make Mireille’s eyes widen, and pressed it into her hand. “I’m very sorry.”
“It’s fine,” said Mireille. She gave him a weak smile and went back to the sink, where she was washing wineglasses by hand. When Daisy joined her, holding a dish towel, Mireille bent forward, a sheaf of her hair obscuring her face, and repeated what she’d said to Daisy’s husband. “It’s fine.”
* * *
Later, when the party was over, the dishes washed, the punch bowl packed up, and Daisy’s plants and potted palms restored to their previous positions, she said, “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” Hal asked, as if there could be any doubt about what she meant.
“What happened with Mireille?”
“Oh,” Hal said, without meeting her eyes. “I guess I overreacted.” His hair was tousled, and he was wearing pajamas, the top buttoned and the bottoms ironed. Daisy watched as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, flossing his teeth. Hal always wore pajamas to bed, he always used the bathroom sink closest to the door, and he always flossed before bedtime. A creature of routine was her husband, which made her wonder what he was like before she met him, if his life had been as messy and chaotic then as it was tidy and regulated now.
“Are you drinking?” she asked, very gently.
He froze, the floss halfway to his mouth. “I had a drink,” he said, precisely. “Just one. It’s fine.”
Daisy didn’t answer. She didn’t know what to say. She climbed into bed, and, after a moment, Hal got under the duvet and put his arms around her. She could smell his familiar scent: laundry detergent, Colgate toothpaste, dandruff-fighting shampoo. Her familiar husband; everything the same. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been under the gun at work, and then, with Bubs dying, and Beatrice getting kicked out of Emlen. It’s all been…” He gave a scoffing laugh. “A lot.”
“It’s been hard,” said Daisy. “I know.”
“I just want Beatrice to get off on the right foot. It matters, you know?” He gave her a look, part imploring, part imperious. “But you’re right. I shouldn’t have raised my voice.”
“You scared her,” said Daisy. You scared me, she thought.
“I know,” said Hal. His voice was tight. “I feel terrible about it. I gave her a tip—”
“I know,” Daisy said. “I saw.”
“But I’ll send her a note tomorrow.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
He gave her a perfunctory kiss, said, “Sleep tight, birdie.” Then he rolled onto his side and was instantly asleep. Daisy lay awake beside him, knowing she wouldn’t sleep. As the hours ticked by, she thought of the cleaning she’d have to do in the morning; about the silent auction bids to tally and the clipboards to return, about being the only woman in the room without either a college degree or a notable job; trying not to think about what Hannah, or Diana, would have made of the night’s events, if Hannah had been alive or if Diana had been invited, or about a saying she’d heard more and more these days: When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
20
Beatrice
Beatrice was walking toward the school’s front door when she heard a car’s horn beep behind her. She jumped, turned around, and saw Cade Langley behind the wheel of a sporty black sedan.
“Hey, Beebee!”
That was what Cade had started calling her, him and his friends. Beatrice still wasn’t sure if she liked it, if Beebee was the kind of cutesy nickname you’d give a little girl, or if, instead, it called to mind a BB gun.
She waved. Cade rolled up alongside her, keeping pace with her as she walked.
“You’re going to be late,” she told him.
“I’ve got a free.” Cade was a junior, and upperclassmen at Melville were allowed to spend two periods each week off campus, with their parents’ permission. Most of them, as far as Beatrice could tell, only went to the Starbucks directly across the street from campus. The really daring ones made it all the way to the burrito place next door.
“Hey,” said Cade, “I like your outfit.”
Beatrice smiled. She was especially proud of her day’s look. She’d found an honest-to-God 1950s housedress at a thrift store in Philadelphia. It was blue cotton, with shiny black buttons and a round Peter Pan collar and a tie at the waist. She’d hand-washed the dress, stitched up a rip under the armpit, and ironed it before confirming the perfect fit that she’d seen in the dressing-room mirror, twirling around to make the skirt swish, thinking that she looked like Lucille Ball. She’d tied a pink-and-white polka-dotted kerchief over her hair, and instead of her Doc Martens she’d found a pair of black canvas Chuck Taylors that she thought looked just fine.
“I like your car.”
Cade grinned and patted the dashboard. His hair had gotten longer in the few weeks Beatrice had been at Melville. It stuck up from his head in a way that reminded her of a poodle. His cheeks wore their usual flush, and his teeth looked very white beneath them. “My
sixteenth birthday present.”
“Lucky you. Happy birthday.”
“It was in December. Don’t worry. I didn’t not invite you to my party.”
“I wasn’t concerned.”
“Just in case you were.”
This was how it went with Cade. He’d banter and tease her, always, it seemed, finding ways to let her know that she was the new girl, that he knew more than she did—more people, more teachers, more about Melville, more about everything.
“You want to go for a ride?”
She stared at him. “I’ve got Latin.”
“Amo, amas, amat,” Cade recited. “Come on. It’s only five demerits if it’s your first cut.”
Beatrice bit her lip. “Yeah, but I’ve already gotten three demerits for dress code violations.” Evidently wearing Doc Martens in gym class was demerit-worthy, which, in her opinion, was ridiculous. The girl who sat beside her in Earth Sciences spent most of her time making TikToks; the boy next to her in Advisory wore a T-shirt with the Confederate flag on it, completely visible through his button-down; and she was the one getting in trouble.
“Come on,” Cade said. “Don’t be like the rest of the sheep!” His baaa-ing noise made Beatrice giggle. She looked up at the door. The bell was ringing, and unless she sprinted and risked disarranging her hair, she’d be tardy. If she was already in trouble, she decided, it might as well be for something fun.
That Summer Page 24