Her Perfect Life

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Other women in the Emmy audience—the ones not captivated by Lily—sneaked a moment to check their own reflections in fancy compacts, comparing the lift of their eyebrows to Lily’s carefully natural ones, the color of Lily’s lipstick to their own, wishing their hair were better or different or more like Lily’s; wondering how long their faces would last and how Lily, at only thirty-three, an age she’ll reveal instantly if asked, can look so young and so chic and so wise at the same time. So Lily, as I have actually heard people say. Now they’ve clicked their compacts shut, given themselves a personal score that only counts in the mathematics of fame.

  I was seriously not jealous of her, that’s what people didn’t understand. I honestly admired her. I wanted her to succeed. If she succeeds, I succeed, and the station succeeds, and everyone is happy. Especially me, since as long as she has a job, I have a job. Television only works if the hierarchy is respected, each person does their designated job to the best of their ability and understands no matter what, it’s the “talent” who gets the credit.

  Lily was the definition of talent. And it’s not that she doesn’t work hard, and it’s not that she isn’t sincere, and she’s definitely not a diva.

  Just ask her, ha ha.

  No, truly, she’s terrific.

  She’s so super-terrific that last year she turned down a New York network job—a job they’d offered us as a team—so she could stay in Boston and not have to make her daughter, Rowen, change schools. “I’m so sorry,” she’d told me, tears in her eyes.

  “Forget it,” I’d assured her. And it was true, I was perfectly fine staying here. It was just me, no family, no life. No pets, because how could you be fair to an animal when work is 24–7? The way I looked at it, and really there’s no other way to look at it, I was married to television. I didn’t need to be a bigger fish in a bigger pond. I didn’t need friends.

  In the tumult of the and-the-winner-is applause, Lily had urged me to join her onstage, even though she knew it was against the rules, because Lily doesn’t care about rules. Plus she knew I’d refuse, as I have for the past almost-two years we’ve worked together and the past two times she’s—we’ve—won Emmys. We’re a good team, she’s told me, Lily-and-Greer, and she’s right. She has the fame, and all that comes with it. I don’t need that. I have other skills.

  CHAPTER 3

  LILY

  “Did you win, Mumma?”

  Rowen’s sleep-thickened little voice came from under the white down comforter. Her daughter, somehow, always sensed when Lily had come to her bedroom door to check on her, even if only to watch her sleep. Petra had been dozing on the living room couch when Lily got home, head on one of the fringed butterscotch suede pillows. Valentina, fidgeting in some cocker spaniel dream, curled on the carpet beside her. Val opened her eyes as Lily came in, then closed them again.

  “Did you?” Rowe persisted. “I’m not going to sleep ’til you tell me.”

  “I did, sweetie,” Lily whispered. “I just came to make sure you’re still perfect. And you are. Go back to sleep. It’s very late.”

  “Yay. Told you. I knew you would win.” One thin arm flopped the comforter away. Rowen, head still on her penguin pillowcase and clutching her plush black-and-white Penny to her chest, opened one eye, then the other, then abruptly sat up in the top bunk, her penguin night-light glowing on the wall beside her, and spread her arms wide, entreating. “Did you bring it? Can I have it?”

  “Yes and yes, honey,” Lily said, holding up the statue. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Night-night, love and penguins.”

  “Night-night, love and penguins, Mumma. But I’m not one bit sleepy,” Rowen insisted, but her eyes fluttered, struggling to stay open. “And we get to be on TV still, right? Me and you?”

  “We’ll see, honey. We’re not quite sure yet, okay?” Lily put her Emmy on Rowen’s lace-topped dresser, the figure’s raised globe and pointed wings reflected in the mirror. She’d hoped Rowen would forget about Monday’s TV taping. Lily had tried to get out of it, and, so far, failed. “I’ll leave Emmy for you, though. And she can keep you company.”

  Lily crossed to Rowen, the hem of her white dress dragging on the carpeted floor, too long now after she’d yanked off her strappy high-heeled silver sandals. “And Emmy will make sure you have sweet dreams. Kisses?”

  But Rowen had slung her legs over the side of her bed, her bare feet dangling into the airspace over the bunk below. “You’re so pretty, Mumma. Can I have that dress someday?”

  “Sure, honey. You can have everything you want. Someday.” She swung her daughter’s legs back under the covers and tucked the puffy comforter around her thin shoulders, making sure the raggedy stuffed penguin, one eye missing and once-black wings thinning, was in place in the crook of Rowen’s arm. “Is it maybe about time for your dear old Penny to get a gentle ride in the washing machine?”

  “You’re so pretty, Mumma…” Rowen’s voice trailed off, and her long eyelashes fluttered gently, then closed against her soft cheeks. Lily watched her little chest rise and fall, memorizing her, absorbing the fragile innocence of her seven-year-old. The time seemed to go by so quickly, every day so fleetingly precious, with Lily constantly battling to prevent her own celebrity from coloring Rowe’s view of the world. And increasing her vulnerability.

  They’d gone through a rough patch, two years ago, when Rowe had started asking about her father. Lily hadn’t been ready to discuss it, and, stalling, had successfully skirted the issue. But an insistently curious woman in the produce section of the grocery store had stolen Lily’s control over that.

  “And this must be Rowen,” the woman had said, reaching out to the little girl, almost touching her, until Lily had inched the shopping cart between them.

  The woman—black yoga pants and a shabby-chic leather jacket, stylish crimped hair, and careful lip gloss—had looked Rowen up and down, assessing. “I’ve heard all about you on Facebook, Rowen,” she said. She’d started digging into a black leather tote bag, and Lily had felt her own heart constrict when the woman pulled out a cell phone. “I love penguins, too. Do you and your mother visit them at the aquarium? Can I take a selfie with you two? Right here by all these beautiful apples?”

  No, no, no, Lily thought. She never put Rowe’s photo on social media, not a recognizable one at least, but once used a shot from behind showing Rowe’s sandy hair in a penguin-ribboned ponytail. BG loves penguins, Lily had captioned. She called Rowen BG online, for baby girl, and never used her name. How did this woman know it? Easy enough, Lily supposed. It was impossible to keep anything secret.

  Lily had wanted to yank the penguin ribbon out of Rowe’s hair, right there in front of the Granny Smiths and the Honeycrisps, and spin her cart away. But the public Lily had to be approachable, relatable, engaging. One wrong word in the Star Market and the internet could turn Lily from beloved icon to full-of-herself bitch. Social media loved a falling star.

  “Oh, I’m so flattered, thank you, but how about you and me? Just the two of us?” Lily had stopped the selfie train in its tracks. “But not my—”

  “Of course,” the woman said, the warmth leaving her voice in just those two words. She stashed her phone away with an unnecessarily dramatic gesture. “Far be it from me to intrude on your precious—”

  “So kind of you, I so appreciate it,” Lily had said, as sincerely as she could, then turned her cart deliberately, telegraphing her intention to continue down the aisle. “Happy shopping!”

  “Why do we never hear about Rowen’s father, Lily?”

  In the beat of silence that followed, Rowen had curled a finger into a belt loop of Lily’s jeans and tucked herself in behind her mother. Rowen, then not even four feet tall, had left no space between the two of them.

  “Oh, gosh, I beg your pardon?” Lily tried not to react, tried not to grab a Winesap and lob it at the woman’s smug face. “I’m not sure why you’d ask me that.”

  “You media,” the woman had sneered, suddenly a viper.
“You think you’re above it all.” She pivoted her cart, then pivoted it back. “Better ask your mother about him, Rowen,” she’d said. And then, the wheels of her cart rattling, had bustled away.

  “Attention shoppers,” a fuzzy voice on the public address system had boomed through the store. “In our famous cheese section right now, a demonstration of all the different kinds of Parmesan…”

  Rowen had not budged. Around them, shoppers pushed their rackety metal carts, a display of Meyer lemons tumbled to the ground as a toddler wailed, the fragrance of fresh cilantro and parsley, of ripening cantaloupes and pungent spring onions surrounding them, just another Saturday in the grocery. Except for Rowen and Lily, now side by side at a moment in their lives that Lily had planned for. She had. But not now, not today. Not in the grocery store.

  Rowen had asked, of course, since about the time she’d turned four: Why don’t I have a daddy? And Lily had been ready for that. You do have a daddy, she’d assured the little girl, and I love him very much, but he lives far away, and I love you enough for both of us. That had satisfied Rowen; or seemed to. But then the grocery store viper struck.

  “Mumma?” The girl’s almost-green eyes had welled, widening, as they looked into Lily’s matching ones. Lily had stooped, dropping herself to Rowe’s height.

  “What, honey?” Lily knew Rowen would ask—her daughter was whip smart, with a memory like a computer. Lily had learned not to make promises she couldn’t keep. And negotiation was less and less successful.

  “Why did the lady ask about my father?” Rowen whispered.

  Lily felt like bursting into tears. “Why do you think, honey?”

  A shopping cart or two rolled by them, impossible for the shoppers pushing them to know a life-changing moment was occurring in the fruit department.

  “Does she know him?”

  “No, honey, I’m sure she doesn’t.” Which wasn’t quite true. The woman was probably just a toxic gossip-monger. But Lily couldn’t be sure of anything, especially not about Sam Prescott. Not about what he wanted or where he was or why he’d made the decisions he’d made. It was her fault, too, a massive error in judgment for both of them that had resulted in the most adorable child imaginable. Lily would never have decided otherwise. Sam knew that, and had agreed, never tried to stop her, left her to it. And soon after, left both of them entirely.

  She alternately cursed Sam Prescott and longed for him. He’d told her his wife, enraged, had found out about them. Demanded he cut all ties. As a result, he was missing out on his own daughter; either exactly what the bastard deserved, or unendingly sad. Lily had resisted googling him as much as she could. But she knew Sam was still practicing law, and divorced, and then married again, to some Isabel DeSoto, la dee dah, who was rumored to be running for Congress or something in Colorado. Big money, big family, big power. Big boobs. No kids. Ticked all the necessary Sam boxes, apparently.

  But difficult for Lily to be angry when she was as much to blame. And maybe it wasn’t about blame, but more about trust and hope and passion. Glorious ridiculous reality-twisting passion. Twenty-seven days. She’d trusted Sam so much, she’d even told him about Cassie. So much for that idea. So much for trust.

  Rowen’s lower lip began to pooch out, the sign that she was thinking, and not happy thoughts. Poutface, Lily called it. Lily glanced at each shopper who went by, making sure she wasn’t about to be criticized by some meddling busybody.

  “What are you thinking about, kiddo?” Lily asked.

  “Did my daddy not like me?”

  “He loves you, baby girl,” Lily whispered as shoppers steered around them, probably thinking little Rowen was being stubborn or demanding. Lily hoped they weren’t analyzing her parenting, and tried to adopt a pleasant, unworried expression. If Rowen melted down in public, it would instantly magnify, multiply onto social, her personal life as fodder to be dissected and criticized. #badmother, she could picture it. Setting the internet on fire. “We just decided to live far away from each other, honey. And I love you double much.”

  “Double much?” Rowen’s head tilted as they walked, as if calculating.

  “Triple much, super much, the most muchness there could be.” Lily leaned down, kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Now. Your choice. Should we keep talking, or should we look for peaches?”

  “Peaches!”

  Two years had gone by, Lily thought now, looking at her daughter’s sleeping face. Rowen had accepted, Lily hoped, that her father lived far away, and had “issues,” a word Lily used to explain reality while glossing over specifics. Rowen didn’t need to know about their first weekend in Aspen, or what happened in the days after, or Sam Prescott’s manipulative first wife, or his ambitious new one, or the single most impetuously bad decision Lily had made in her adult life. Rowen had been the result, and Lily was fine with that. When she was a little older, Lily might tell her more of the story. The rest of the story. A better story.

  A better story. Why did those words remind her of—oh. Her source. Who’d promised to call Monday. Lily’s newest Emmy glowed in the soft night-light as she tiptoed toward the door of her daughter’s bedroom.

  If Rowen didn’t exist, Lily thought, it would be as if she herself didn’t exist. How had her own mother dealt with Cassie’s disappearance? How could she have let it happen? She hadn’t understood the intensity of the connection, not really, not until Rowen appeared in her world. But she’d never let anything happen to her daughter. Never. She touched the wooden doorframe, just to make sure.

  “Night-night, love and penguins,” she whispered. But Rowen was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  GREER

  I knew Lily didn’t want to do this, and I knew she’d freak when she saw me and the camera crew marching up the begonia-lined bluestone front walk of her home at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, but she certainly understands TV news isn’t only about journalism. It’s about the people who watch TV, and the need to keep them watching. And how we do that is by making our TV reporters be endearing, adorable, appealing. Just like you, only luckier, prettier, smarter. With gorgeous homes and designer kitchens and fresh-cut flowers year-round. In sales meetings we called it aspirational, as in “to make viewers aspire to having everything the talent has.”

  If viewers knew what “having everything the talent has” meant, they’d rethink their position.

  Wade and Warren, the photographer and the light guy, had parked the white Channel 6 news van in Lily’s asphalt driveway, and now were arguing over who had to carry what and why they had to shoot a lame feature instead of real run-and-gun news. They’d rather shoot someone getting killed, or already dead, or at least something burning. Today, they had Lily. Lily and her daughter, Rowen, who calls Lily “Mumma.” As if they’re royalty.

  I poked the black doorbell button on the front of Lily’s white Victorian, one of those uniquely quirky Wellesley homes with manicured suburban lawns and ancestral trees. Her mailbox was already full, with white and brown envelopes sticking out the top of the black metal container, so I grabbed them as a good teammate does. The graceful pale green branches of Lily’s ancient weeping willow fluttered in the soft May breeze.

  The bell chimed inside, and I readied myself to win this impending battle. Channel 6’s up-close-and-personal “Summer on Six” series was an annual command performance. Even for Lily Atwood. Especially for Lily.

  “You know how much I hate this, Greer,” she said, even before she got the front door all the way open.

  “Here’s your mail,” I said, handing her the pile of assorted paperwork. “Can we leave the door open for Wade and Warren? They’ve got the gear.”

  “Don’t try to distract me with the mail.” Lily took the envelopes and tossed them on a glossy wooden side table as I followed her into the living room. I knew she neglected her mail, as if the world should magically pay her bills or schedule her appointments. Fan mail came to the station, as well I knew. Since I answered it. Her cell phone was stuck in
to a back pocket of her jeans. “You’re truly going to make us do this?”

  I almost laughed at the fresh pink-and-white lilies cascading from a crystal vase on the coffee table, and nubby green containers of massed paperwhites blooming fragrantly along the front bay window. Equally aspirational—her long white couch, mounded with white and butterscotch pillows, and the pale butterscotch side chairs bringing springtime to Lily’s living room year-round. A white couch, for god’s sake. With a seven-year-old.

  “Is there no way out of it?” Lily, hands on hips, stopped under the white archway leading to her dining room and then to the kitchen. Our destination, if all went the way I’d planned. The backyard was my plan B.

  Her hair was still twisted up on top of her head, and she was still barefoot, a simple white tee tucked into her beltless jeans. But I could tell by the fresh eyeliner that she’d begun to put on makeup, so I figured she understood there was no avoiding the shoot. I simply needed to let her think the decision to proceed was her idea. Even though Wade was already lugging the awkward steel tripod and clanking aluminum light stands into the front hallway, with Warren behind him, trundling the black metal roller case of lights.

  “It’s not me making us do it,” I semi-lied, saying “us” so she’d understand how little influence I had. “It’s the powers that be. You’re Lily Atwood, right? And your viewers can’t get enough of you.”

  “But I hate that I have to—” Lily was shaking her head, crossing her arms in front of the Ralph Lauren logo on her shirt. “What if we just—”