by Ruthie Knox
“I think—It’s stupid, probably, but if I own Manitowoc, then I am Manitowoc. And if I am Manitowoc, then I’m a Fredericks. For sure. You know, all these people have to come to me, every month, for rents and improvements. To me. You probably think this is some kind of pathological complex.”
“I think you’re making a place for yourself in the world.”
“Winston?” She touched his arm, looked around the apartment, then at him, directly. “Possession and improvement of where you’ve found yourself probably isn’t a betrayal of where you think you belong.”
“True, I’m certain,” he said. Because she expected him to say something, and it didn’t matter what he said.
She would leave.
He could feel her looking at him, monitoring him. He could have this conversation she was trying to have about home. He simply didn’t want to. He’d rather let the sun and coffee burn the frayed edges off of both of them.
“Holla, queens!” Through the patio doors, at the far end of the flat, Winston spied a swirl of color and movement that could only be his daughter. “If anybody’s naked, take whatever time you need to get things covered up. I’m just going to be in the kitchen, helping myself to a cup of coffee. I’ll even keep my earbuds in, so if you—”
“Bea.” He lifted his arm. “We’re out here.”
She spotted them and changed direction, making a beeline for the patio. “That’s a relief. I have to tell you, I didn’t think it all the way through. I just found myself nearby, and it’s daytime for you guys, and then Jean says he can’t drive me because he’s taking things to your place from the apartment, and I’m like, ‘Whose things?’ Which is how I find out about all this going on in heah.” She twirled her finger around in a circle between him and Allie, then stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Bea. You’re Allie. I’m delighted to meet you.”
“Same here.” His daughter shook hands with his—his—Winston had no word for what Allie was.
Jean appeared in the front hall with luggage. “Where do you want me to leave this?” he called.
“There’s fine,” Bea said.
Allie waved. “Hey, Jean!”
He beamed. Winston had never seen Jean beam. “Any news yet from your mom?”
“She called, but it’s no good, she won’t meet me. I’ve got to figure out where this art thing is happening. I think it’ll be Saturday, the signs and wonders say probably at the Brooklyn Bridge, but keep your ears peeled, all right?”
“Aaaite. I’ve got your digits, you’ve got mine.”
“Peace!” Bea called as Jean left the bags and closed the door behind him. She plopped down opposite Allie. “So, it’s on Saturday, huh? Where’s that intel come from?”
Winston felt as though he’d walked onto the set of a television program and everyone but he had been given their lines.
“My mom said she has something she has to go to on Saturday. I figure it can only be Justice.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Bea said. “So, listen—”
“You called Jean to drive you?” Winston interrupted.
“Huh?”
“This morning. You called Jean to drive you?”
“Sure. You said if I was ever out and I didn’t have cab fare, if I needed a safe ride, so I call him sometimes.”
“I meant in an emergency. Did you have an emergency?”
“Jean doesn’t mind. He said.”
“Jean isn’t self-employed. He’s paid by the company, officially. If they were to find out he’d been driving you all over the city—”
Bea rolled her eyes. “And yet you gave him to her for a whole day. Listen, when’s Uncle Nev and Cath going to be here?”
“They’ll land in the early afternoon. I’ve made a reservation for dinner—it’s at seven o’clock, and the restaurant is formal, so you’ll—”
“Need to wear evening dress, I know, you told me already, but listen, did you talk to Nev? Because he was thinking they’re getting off the plane and zoom, going to some three-four-hour dinner when they’re still on London time, that’s not so great, and it’d be better to crash here and shove his face in a pizza.”
“He said this?”
“Cath did, yeah. Listen, I’m going to get that coffee.” She jumped up. “You guys can talk amongst yourselves.”
Her hair hung loose down her back, tangled in ropes that reminded him of the years Rosemary had to coax her into letting her brush it out. Bea wore a sort of one-piece jumpsuit, the shorts exposing coltish legs and shiny shinbones, the top completely lacking in sleeves or straps. He couldn’t imagine where she stored her phone in this outfit. He knew she rarely carried money. She’d been out all night with strangers, doing who knew what.
“So that’s Bea,” Allie said.
“That’s Bea.”
“She’s kind of great.”
“She’s utterly terrifying.”
Allie smiled. “You know she’s a lot like you, right?”
“She looks nothing like me.”
“I didn’t say she looks like you, I said she is like you.”
He just shook his head.
Bea pranced in, her hair now piled on her head and her face obscured by the soup-bowl-sized coffee cup she stored in his cupboard.
“I should get dressed.” Allie stood up. Winston suddenly felt unaccountably annoyed that their morning on the patio had been spoiled by it no longer being last night, the sun, the terrible hedges, and his daughter.
Bea put her mug down on the glass-topped table too sharply, and Winston started to feel feral. Rosemary had been getting after this child to set her cups and mugs down on the table since she was in primary school.
“I’ll come with. Girl talk.”
He expected Allie to protest being joined in her chamber by a stranger, and was horrified by Bea’s manners, but Allie just shrugged and let Bea trail after her like a street mutt.
He dressed himself, and they were still in the spare bedroom. He could hear their voices.
He got out a yogurt, ate it at the counter. They were still in there.
He watered the plants, following the directions left by the estate agent.
He called and canceled the dinner reservation. Called Jean to ask him to bring pizzas around eight, helping himself to the same mental lecture he’d just given his daughter about Jean’s time.
How long did it take to get dressed? He’d had an entire day already. In London, his habit was to get up at five, go for a long run, shower and kit up, and use the car mobile to set up all his tasks for the day on the way to the office. It was soothing. Efficient. He even had a very expensive no-spill tea mug that kept his tea hot all the way to his desk.
“Cool. I’m on it like a pigeon on a french fry.”
“Thanks, Bea.”
They came into the kitchen with more clamor than two people should have been able to produce.
“Dad, I have to go, could you think about canceling those—”
“I’ve already. What are you wearing? Did Allie give you clothes? Did you accept clothes from Allie?”
“Look at this, Dad. It’s fucking amazing. It’s from the forties. Allie said it suited me much better than it ever suited her.”
Bea twirled. She was wearing sort of puffy tweed shorts with a button-up schoolgirl top, or like the uniform top she’d had to wear when she was a Girl Guide. With a tie. A men’s tie, nicer than any Winston owned, in a perfect trinity knot. It was ridiculous. It did suit her.
“Hm.”
“I always overpack. She’s welcome to the clothes.” Allie was tilting her head, smiling at Bea, putting in an earring that dangled to her shoulder.
She wore…
There was a skirt. Long and flowing, with several layers, decorated with gold and jewels in paisley shapes. There were a lot of jewels. The waistband, and then her bare stomach, and some sort of bra top like a stage performer would wear, sparkling with gold and crystals, fake roses at each breast, beaded fringe. She wore a necklace, bracelet
s, and bands around her upper arms.
Looking at the two women, beaming at each other, side by side, he felt boring, old, and old. Also, he didn’t even know how to tie a trinity knot.
“Well. I think perhaps I’ll be going to work. Allie, do you need Jean?”
Allie took his elbow and pulled him out to the patio, tossing over her shoulder to Bea to “give us a minute.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ever since coffee, you’ve been kind of withdrawn and crabby.”
“Crabby?”
She closed her eyes, reached down to his hand and held it. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair. We’ve both been kind of weird this morning. There’s a lot…well. There’s just a lot. And we haven’t even had a chance to talk about what happened last night. Maybe I’m just the teeniest, weeniest bit insecure that you’re…having second thoughts. About the list. And all of this going on, with my mom and everything, and now introducing me to your kid.”
She put her head on his shoulder, not completely, just her forehead, and she held her body away from his. Her hair was slicked tight into a bun, covered in a sparkly hair net of some kind that poked at his neck.
At first he let her hold herself away. It was a lot. All of it, as she said. The list, how it made them feel, how it made him feel, what had happened last night, what was going on with her mother. Even her tête-à-tête with Bea, their using the spare bedroom as some kind of shared dressing room, creating an intimate space together, was…a lot. He had never seen Bea at so much ease with Rosemary, for example. He couldn’t decide if he liked it, liked all the drama and distress, even as he liked Allie.
But he couldn’t help putting his hand at her back, feeling it bare under the beaded fringe.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Last night was some of the most fun I’ve had in my life. I’m glad I had last night with you.”
She nodded against his shoulder, then looked up at him. She looked mournful, which made him feel quite terrible.
“Me, too. I’m glad, and it was fun. Intense and fun. Winston?”
“Yes?”
“Take the car today. Take Jean. I think you guys miss each other, for one. Plus, I want to walk around New York and see more of it on the way to see my sister. Maybe it would feel a little less…crazy and intense if you just had your normal routines and stuff this morning.”
He felt himself stiffen at her presumptions, but…well. Jean and work and routines sounded fucking good, really. He must have smiled, a little, at her, because she beamed back, all crinkles and freckles.
“Today, you call me. I’d like to see you again, but if we need to part as friends now, if I need to get a hotel—”
“No. Stay. I want to see you, and I want to help. I’d like you to meet Nev and Cath later, if you’d like, but I understand if you may have engagements with May and Ben.”
“I’d like that. I’ll keep you posted.”
He had wanted to kiss her but couldn’t manage it before she swished out, the light from his great view catching every gem and spangle.
He stood in the empty apartment for a long time before he called Jean.
It felt less right than usual.
Chapter 13
Allie guessed that May’s strategy would be to arrive at breakfast early, angry, and prewound to strike.
Allie’s countertactic was to materialize sparkling in jewels, head to toe, and showing a lot of skin in order to baffle and overcome May’s senses, mesmerizing the predator with a show of feathers and misdirection.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Allie.”
Allie twirled.
May had once, in a better mood, called this move her “love-me twirl.” It couldn’t be counted on to please most people, but it usually made May smile.
Today, she only frowned at her handbag, tucking her phone away, and asked the hostess, “Is the table ready?”
They sat in a corner. The restaurant was all corners, tiny tables shoved into a tinier space. Allie remembered hearing from her mother that Ben had been fortunate to be able to open a restaurant at all. His ex, also a chef, had made him sign a noncompete agreement that was supposed to have tied his hands for nearly another year. But she’d opened a Manhattan lunch-counter branch of the restaurant she and Ben used to own together, Sardo, and when she couldn’t make it work, she’d offered Ben the space as a goodwill gesture and released him from their agreement.
He was incredibly lucky to have it, May had told their mother, but to Allie, the restaurant seemed incredibly small, incredibly crowded, and incredibly loud. Surely he could have done better.
The shape of May’s mouth suggested this wasn’t the right moment to say so.
“You look really nice today,” she tried instead. It was true, but not unusual. May had flawless skin, beautiful eyes, and the kind of T&A that meant she’d looked bangable in everything, at every weight, since she hit puberty. Today she looked casually New York cool in a belted floral circle skirt, a strappy cotton tank, and a scarf. May dressed more adventurously since she’d hooked up with Ben.
“You look like you belong in a whorehouse a hundred years ago.”
“It’s my Mata Hari outfit,” Allie said. “You know Mata Hari? She was this exotic dancer who was a spy in France during the First World War. She got executed and everything.”
“Charming.”
“She was a courtesan, too, although before that she had a husband. He was this rich Dutch dude who beat her.”
“Allie.”
“And he gave her syphilis, which eventually killed her kids.”
She needed to stop. Whenever May frowned at her, Allie got caught up in the verbal equivalent of the love-me twirl, a compulsive urge to present her sister with all the shiniest and most interesting things she could think of to say, in the hope that May would be excited, stunned, and somehow filled with love again.
“There’s a rug at a museum in Europe that someone embroidered with all the steps of her fan dance. I want to buy a rug like that. A dancing rug.”
May sighed.
Allie made herself drink half her water and look around the restaurant again. It was packed, and the service was glacial. Ben wasn’t having any trouble filling tables with diners willing to shell out twenty bucks for eggs and chorizo drizzled with rooftop-bee honey, but the vibe wasn’t exactly happy and satisfied. There were a lot of empty water glasses and a long wait at the hostess station to pay the bill.
She could imagine the tension Ben must feel whenever he looked out at this dining room. She knew what it was to have a vision and watch it become a reality, all the while knowing it might not survive its own birth.
The dazzle-and-twirl only ever got her so far, and never far enough with the people who loved her most. Sisters, for example, were largely immune to dazzle. They asked for harder stuff, like honesty, integrity, trust.
“Thanks for coming,” Allie said.
“Yeah, well, we couldn’t leave things like we did.”
“Are you really mad at me?”
“Yes.” May refolded her hands on the table. She wouldn’t look at Allie. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
The waitress took their order. In tribute to Ben, Allie settled on the eggs Benedict that contained the largest number of foods she couldn’t identify. May ordered lemon ricotta pancakes that Allie was pretty sure weren’t on the menu.
It seemed unlikely she’d be able to eat. She was so jacked up over sitting across from her sister that her extremities felt buzzy and light. She reached for her water glass slowly in order to keep from knocking it over in a flail of limbs. “It would be so great if we could skip this whole breakfast and fast-forward to the part where everything is fixed.”
The lines on either side of May’s mouth deepened. “Unfortunately, that’s not a real thing.”
“I know it’s not.”
“Do you?”
This May always insisted that she do the most impossible things.
Like explain.
Apologize.
Tell the truth.
There was no actual way around her sister when she was in this mood, and Allie knew it, had known it all along, which was exactly, exactly, why she’d been avoiding having this conversation with May for almost a decade.
But in just four days her mom and Justice would be together at some big event, somewhere in the city, possibly involving a Harry Winston engagement ring, and Allie needed to be there with her sister by her side. She needed to ask May to help her figure out what to do about their dad, to ask both of them to be with her, to stand with her, to be a family and talk through things and face the future together. She couldn’t have that—not any of that—unless she got through this conversation.
She took a deep breath. “Listen. I need to tell you some things.”
—
“She hung up on me after that,” Allie said. She poked her fork into the yolk of her egg, releasing a blob of sticky gold. “So…yeah. That’s when I texted you.”
May’s pancakes sat untouched on the table. She hadn’t said anything, not one word the whole time Allie talked. She’d just sat there with her head down and her hands knotted in her lap, and whenever Allie faltered, she’d hoped May would look up, react, give her courage to go on. But her sister was utterly silent and utterly still.
Allie put a bite of egg and some kind of greens in her mouth and chewed it, but it refused to break down into smaller pieces or become swallowable. She chewed and chewed, thought about spitting it into her napkin, couldn’t face that. Finally she held it in her cheek and filled her mouth with cold water and got it down that way.
Her body felt like cold water. Like lead spiked with adrenaline. Like doom.
She wished she’d worn something normal. People kept looking, and she didn’t have any twirl left inside her anywhere.