by Darcey Bell
That stress must have been too much for him. He died two years later, of a heart attack.
Mom survived, more or less. After Dad left, she evicted their tenant, who taught at a college nearby and lived in the attic rental apartment in their family home—on the farm they’d inherited from Mom’s parents and rented out to local farmers.
Mom moved into the apartment and left the house—and Rocco—to Charlotte. When that failed to bring Dad back, Mom really went off the rails. After she burned down the house, a fire that almost killed Rocco, she had a choice: either jail or a stay at a hospital, the latter of which she agreed to because its inmates included movie stars. After a while she was released, more or less cured. For a short time she lived with Rocco in an apartment in Hudson while Charlotte went to college. Neither Mom nor Rocco did well, and Rocco got into trouble, drinking and doing stuff that Charlotte doesn’t like to think about now.
Not long after Rocco left home, Mom moved to Mexico. Now she’s living in Oaxaca, still partly on the money from the family farm, which they sold to Andrew John, the Argentine billionaire hobby farmer for whom Rocco works now, trucking perfect vegetables to the Greenmarket in the city.
When Rocco first went to work for Andrew John, he had been drinking heavily. He’d been twice in and out of rehab, for which Charlotte and Eli paid. At the beginning Charlotte feared that her brother might resent working for the owner of the farm they used to own, but Rocco seems to like it.
He’s been sober ever since.
Eli has asked a question that Charlotte is supposed to have heard.
“What’s this woman’s name?”
“We shouldn’t think of her as ‘this one.’ It’s Ruby. No, wait. Ruth. Rachel. Robin—”
“Don’t worry, he’ll introduce us. Hush. Daisy’s awake.”
Their daughter stands in the doorway, clutching the battered, pouchy giraffe she hasn’t let out of her sight since Klepto Kathy returned it. Daisy took it to kindergarten and over the summer took it to day camp in her backpack. Five seems borderline old for that, but Eli and Charlotte let it go. They feel guilty for exposing her to an adult who would steal a toy.
Inch by inch, Daisy materializes in a white nightgown and a silver headband with two glittery kitty-cat ears.
“Have you guys been smoking?”
“Of course not,” says Charlotte. “You know Daddy and I don’t smoke. You know who it is.” She points down at the floor—at Ariane’s loft, beneath theirs—then puts her finger to her lips, as if Ariane and Drew could hear them talking.
“Right,” says Daisy. “It’s the bad people downstairs.”
Without looking at Eli, Charlotte can feel him looking at her. He’s asked her not to make Daisy so frightened of their downstairs neighbors, who so far haven’t actually done anything wrong—except smoke. Charlotte has told Daisy to never ever let Drew get her alone, no matter what he offers her, no matter what he says. All right, Eli’s said. It’s probably a good thing to warn Daisy about. But Charlotte doesn’t have to remind Daisy every few days.
“They’re not bad,” says Eli. “They’re just . . . unhappy.”
Daisy looks from her father to her mother and back. Whom should she believe? Charlotte notices, as she often does, that Daisy looks nothing like her. She takes after Eli’s Panamanian mother. When Charlotte and Daisy are alone, strangers assume she’s adopted, but when Eli’s there, they remark on how much she resembles her father.
As always, Charlotte wonders: Who is that beautiful child? Then comes the rush of feeling, the pressure in her chest, the shock of a love for which she has no words. She loves Daisy more than anyone. Even Eli, Charlotte secretly thinks, a secret even from herself.
“Climb on board, little. Cuddle up.”
“Pasa, amor,” says Eli.
Daisy approaches cautiously, as if she hardly knows them, as if her real parents have been replaced by actors. She lies down on Charlotte’s side of the bed, stiffly, on the far edge. Charlotte pulls her closer, and Daisy leans into her mother.
Should Charlotte tell her that Rocco is coming? Daisy adores her uncle, but when she finds out he’s bringing someone, she might worry all day. Like Charlotte, she’s a worrier. Both hate surprises. It’s possible that when Rocco and Rachel or Ruby or Ruth arrives, Daisy won’t leave her room, which will cast an awkward pall on the new-girlfriend welcome dinner.
The asthma is the most serious but only one of the things Charlotte frets about. Daisy is too formal, too polite for a little girl. And Klepto Kathy did nothing to lessen Daisy’s distrust of strangers.
This week, in therapy, Charlotte will tell Ted how anxious she was about how Daisy was going to react to Rocco’s new girlfriend.
“Your Uncle Rocco’s coming for dinner.”
Silence. “Just him?”
“No,” Eli says. “He’s got a new girlfriend.”
“What’s her name?” says Daisy.
“Something with an R. Definitely not Kathy.”
Charlotte can feel her daughter’s relief.
Even better news, for Daisy, is that she won’t have to clean up her toys. Charlotte fears that Rocco’s women will be intimidated by the tasteful perfection of their loft. But she doesn’t like feeling apologetic. So she lets Daisy make more of a mess than usual, to humanize things a little.
Still holding on to her giraffe’s hoof, Daisy half surrenders Raffi to Charlotte.
“Hide him,” Daisy says. “Please. Lock him up somewhere safe.”
“It’s not the same girlfriend,” Charlotte says.
“I know that. You just told me. But I don’t care,” Daisy says. “Lock Raffi up, or I’ll have to stay in my room and guard him.”
“Fine,” Eli weighs in. Finally! “I’ll put Raffi in the safe.”
“He’s changed his name,” says Daisy. “To Moses.”
“Why ‘Moses’?” Charlotte says.
“Because,” Daisy says.
“Because he was found in the bulrushes?”
Daisy looks up at her mother: coolly, dead-eyed, appraising.
“Moses it is.” Eli breaks their mini-standoff. “Moses is going to jail.”
“Not jail,” Daisy says. “We’re protecting him, Daddy.”
“He’ll be safe in the safe,” Eli says. “That’s why they call it that.”
WHEN THE INTERCOM buzzes, Daisy runs to push the button. She likes to be in control. Eli and Charlotte converge at the door.
Rocco has never gone out with a woman who wasn’t pretty, which may be part of the problem. This one (Ruth? Ruby?) has stylishly streaked red-blond hair and the startled expression of someone who has cultivated a perpetual air of surprise: intelligent, but still girlishly sweet and attentive. She’s graceful, and looks even more slight beside Charlotte’s tall, solid brother. But there’s a tensile strength about her; she could defend herself if she had to. There’s something doll-like about how her eyes blink: too fast and then too slowly—Charlotte finds it unsettling. Please, she prays. Not another lunatic. What exactly is she praying to? The god of her brother’s love life?
There’s no reason to think this one’s crazy just because the others were. And her smile is friendly and (even Charlotte has to admit) genuine.
She wears a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, cropped white cotton pants. A large straw tote bag completes the look of an early-autumn weekend guest.
“This is Ruth,” says Rocco. “My friend Ruth Seagram. My sister, Charlotte; my brother-in-law, mi hermano, Eli. Where’s Daisy?” Rocco pretends not to see Daisy pressed against the back of Eli’s legs.
“I don’t know,” says Eli. “She was here a second ago. Daisy?”
Silence. Silence. A braver child would have giggled, would have wanted to give herself away. It’s likely that Daisy won’t say a word to Ruth all evening. Charlotte hopes that Rocco has warned her: It’s not personal.
When Charlotte hugs Rocco, he pats her back, a little too hard, but he means it as love. She hopes. Then she leans over
to give Ruth the full-on big-sister open-hearted, open-armed welcome.
Ruth’s embrace is light and relaxed. She neither freezes nor hangs on as if to keep from drowning, like some of Rocco’s girlfriends had. Charlotte finds that reassuring.
For some reason no one seems capable of moving out of the doorway. Either Charlotte or Eli should step back and make some welcoming gesture, but neither does.
Ruth reaches into her tote bag and thrusts a package at Charlotte. Thinking of Mae-Lynn and her organic broccoli crowns, Charlotte flinches, even as she reminds herself that it’s normal—polite!—to bring a hostess gift.
“Sticky buns,” Ruth says. “Caramel butter walnut. My grandma baked them this afternoon. They’re practically warm from the oven. They’re delicious. Try one.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte says. “I will. We can have them with dessert—”
“I mean . . . try one now.” Ruth means now.
Charlotte waves vaguely back into the loft, toward the kitchen, as if calling as her witness the delicious smell of frying potatoes. Potato pasta—pasta with tiny, deliciously browned potato cubes—is her fallback dish when someone (let’s say her brother) is bringing a guest and doesn’t tell her, or doesn’t know, if the person is vegetarian.
“Smells delish,” Ruth says.
Charlotte dislikes that word, delish—it sets her teeth on edge. And now she gets to dislike herself: her petty snobbishness about language.
“Potato pasta?” says Rocco.
“Duh.” Charlotte regrets her impatience. Her poor brother! He was only trying to show . . . what? Belonging, familiarity. He knows what foods they eat. Around him, Charlotte often wants a do-over. It’s not her fault if her life seems—is—easier than his. Maybe she has better luck.
Growing up in the country with a crazy mother, they were in a class of their own. But after Charlotte married Eli, it got harder to pretend that the differences between her life and Rocco’s life don’t matter. Charlotte wants to hug Rocco again, but doesn’t want Ruth to think she’s being possessive.
“Go ahead. Try them.” Ruth brandishes the paper bag at Charlotte.
Insisting? Imploring? Both.
Charlotte can’t help feeling annoyed. Extremely annoyed. Day after day, she struggles to keep her daughter from eating excessive amounts of sugar, and now their guest has brought a sugary dessert.
Charlotte looks at Rocco. From the corner of her eye she sees Eli silently asking his brother-in-law, hermano, Who have you brought us now?
Rocco smiles a dopey grin that Charlotte can’t remember seeing before. A new expression. That must mean something, or maybe not. Maybe it’s just new.
Eli says, “Why are we standing in the doorway? Please, come in.” But he can’t move without pushing Daisy, who’s still behind him, clinging to his legs, taking baby steps backwards when he does.
Charlotte can’t move, either. It’s as if Ruth’s parcel is casting a spell. Doing the wrong thing could ruin the entire evening. Their whole relationship with Ruth.
Ruth says, “I know this is crazy, but I really want you guys to try these.” Crazy? Now she has their attention. She sets the bag down on the bare wooden floor.
There will be a grease spot! How can Ruth not know? How can Rocco not say anything? Charlotte almost moans. Rocco is watching Ruth. His gaze is approving, or at least not disapproving. In the past Charlotte and Eli noticed he hardly looked at his girlfriends. He didn’t seem to see them. Okay, Charlotte can live with Ruth bullying them into trying her grandma’s sticky buns if Rocco looks at her. If making them eat sweets before dinner is the worst thing she ever does. If Daisy tries a tiny piece and no more.
Ruth repeats, “I know this is crazy.” She’s talking to Charlotte now, the judgmental sister she needs to win over. Maybe she also intuits that Charlotte distrusts women who are overly friendly to Eli, her handsome husband.
“You know how they say that when you pick fresh corn, even if you bring it straight to the table, the sugar starts converting to starch? Well, that’s how it is with my grandma’s baking. They’re best right out of the oven, and then they’re still great but . . . less. Taste them. Every minute that passes, they’re less perfect. Though they’re still pretty good.”
“Fine,” Charlotte says, if only to make Ruth pick the bag up off the floor.
It would never occur to Charlotte to eat a sticky bun standing in the front hall. But Ruth makes it seem as if it would be hostile to refuse or even insist they wait for later. Ruth pries the gooey pastry from a corrugated plastic tray.
“Here. Take a whole one,” says Ruth. “You need to see how my grandma does the icing. It takes her hours and a lifetime of practice to get it right. She says she puts the sun on each one because she wants to bring light and warmth to everyone who eats them. She has this mystical spiritual thing about suns having eight rays. It’s the number of infinity, or balance. I never remember. She knows magical stuff like that.”
The buns are elaborately iced, each with a sugar starburst. It’s the sort of thing that people did before they were working two jobs and raising kids. Charlotte is always touched by home skills passed through generations.
“It’s great your grandma can do this,” she says.
“Taste it,” Ruth urges. “Come on. Just a little.”
Daisy emerges from behind her father, unable to resist the spectacle of her mom and her uncle’s girlfriend facing off about sugar.
“I want some too,” Daisy says.
“That decides it,” says Ruth, giving Daisy a double thumbs-up, as if to say: Let’s stand up to your mom.
Ruth doesn’t know that Daisy isn’t so easily won over. Charlotte feels badly for enjoying the fact that Ruth has made a mistake with Daisy.
“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” Ruth says.
Charlotte thinks: She’s not your sweetheart.
“Please,” says Daisy. “I really want some.” This can only go one way. Daisy rarely throws tantrums anymore, but there’s no point pushing their luck.
Ruth tears off a feathery chunk and gives one to Eli. Then she pries off an even bigger piece and hands it to Daisy.
No, thinks Charlotte. No. Absolutely no!
Daisy tastes the pastry and breaks into an enormous grin. It’s only a sticky bun, Charlotte knows, but she will never forgive Ruth for this.
She hears her voice shake with rage as she asks Rocco if he wants a sticky bun too.
Rocco says, “I ate one on the way over.”
The older sister in Charlotte thinks a warning about ruining his dinner, even as the grown-up hostess eats the buttery pastry.
“Wow,” says Eli. “This is excellent.”
Charlotte savors the burnt sugar, licks icing off her fingers.
“It really is,” she says.
The prickly moment is over. Sugar has beveled down the edges.
Sometimes Charlotte worries that she and Eli care too much about food, another aspect of privilege. Lots of people care about food. Rocco does too, and so, it seems, does Ruth.
“My grandmother is a genius cook.”
“Obviously.” She’s nice, Charlotte thinks. She’s open. She’s just a little . . . jittery.
“Ruth can be bossy,” Rocco says.
Ruth doesn’t miss a beat. “You could call it bossy. Or you could say: Ruth knows when something is good and wants to share it.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Charlotte says, at the same moment Rocco mumbles, “Touché.” It’s hard to tell if he’s being glum or flirtatious. His girlfriends never challenge him. Maybe he’ll like being with someone who shows a little spirit.
Ruth is the first who’s ever brought something good to eat. That alone is endearing. Even if she’s bullied them into eating it before dinner. Even if she’s given Daisy more sugar than Charlotte normally lets her eat in a week.
Eli says, “Ruth, would you like a drink? White wine, red wine, beer, something stronger? Rocco, club soda?”
Charlotte holds
her breath, even though Rocco has been sober since before Daisy was born.
“Sure,” Rocco says. “Club soda would be great. Got any lemon?”
“You know we do. You got it,” says Eli. “Ruth?”
“I’ll take club soda too. With lemon.”
“I’m hungry,” Daisy says.
The ease with which Ruth glides onto her knees in front of Daisy reminds Charlotte that Ruth must be at least ten years younger than she is. Daisy shrinks back, as if from a scary dog, but Ruth keeps her in focus.
Ruth says, “Look.” She puts her straw bag aside. Then she puts her hands up, palms out, as if she’s being arrested and waiting to be cuffed.
“I’m not going to take anything,” she says. Rocco must have told her about Klepto Kathy. Maybe this relationship is more serious than Charlotte thought.
Charlotte sees Daisy wondering how this stranger can read her mind. Daisy relaxes, a little. Anyway, Moses the giraffe is safely locked away.
“Watch,” says Ruth. Charlotte has to bend down to see that Ruth is crossing her eyes and jiggling them in their sockets.
“Yuck,” says Daisy.
Ruth bursts out laughing, and Daisy laughs too.
The sound of Daisy laughing with a stranger is as shocking as a scream.
“I bet you’re starving, honey,” says Ruth. “Your Uncle Rocco and his friend Ruth were almost an hour late. For which we’re so sorry. The traffic, the—”
“Are you Uncle Rocco’s friend?” The subject of friendship has been newly important since preschool, when Daisy noticed that some girls got more birthday invitations than she did. Daisy was mostly bewildered, but it had caused Charlotte pain, probably more than Daisy. Is there something she should be doing to help her daughter make friends? And what will she do when Daisy does have friends—and she asks to spend the night at a friend’s house?
“I am,” says Ruth. “Your uncle and I are friends.”
“Are you his best friend?”
“I don’t know about that.”