by Darcey Bell
She loves how old-school Ted is. His office looks like a therapist’s office from Freud’s time, with its tribal weavings and statues, its Persian rugs—really, it could have been interior-decorated by Freud! She likes the fact that he keeps his records and patient files in a separate room, out of sight, so that she doesn’t have to think about all the unhappy people who have passed through this space.
“I worry about Rocco,” she says. “You know that. Better than anyone. He’s had so many crazy women. I worry he’s found another one.”
Ted says, “Do you expect that at some point you’ll realize he’s an adult, so you no longer have to be his big sister? Protecting him? Taking care of him like you did when your mother left you in charge?”
“I’ll always be his big sister. But okay. Sure. Yes. Whatever. Look . . . this girlfriend scares me a little. More than a little. I have this feeling she’s not telling us things. That she’s got some awful secret . . .”
Ted’s silent for a long time.
“What are you thinking?” asks Charlotte.
“I’m a little hesitant—”
“Say it,” Charlotte tells him. “Go ahead.”
“What I want to say is . . . Do you think you might suspect her of having secrets because of the secrets you have? The things you haven’t told anyone, that you’ve kept from Eli—”
“Me?” says Charlotte. “Secrets? What secrets?”
She’s joking.
“You know, Charlotte,” says Ted. “You know.”
8
Ruth
Every day I spend at the start-up feels like being hazed by frat boys at the world’s most horrendous fraternity initiation. When my coworkers crazy-glued my mouse to my desk, I had to pry it loose with a crowbar I borrowed from the janitor. It left a hole in the laminate, and I had to install a new mouse with everyone watching. I felt like punching someone. Okay, think: What was the very worst day of my job with the baroness? There were so many bad days. Whatever happens at the start-up is better.
For about a half minute, working for the baroness was fun. Her idea of entertainment was to rent high-end sports cars and floor them on the Palisades after she’d had a few drinks. No one but me would go with her. No one had told me that risking my life was part of my job description. It was a good thing I’d had practice, riding with Grandpa Frank.
I’m not scared of much. Spiders. The basement at my grandparents’ house. And being abandoned by men.
It was cool when the baroness and I went to clubs and they chased hot young A-list types away from prime tables for us. They wanted their club to appear on the Baroness Frieda’s show. Once, I made a move to refill our glasses and she slapped my hand. Let the waiter do it. She’d had a lot to drink.
Sometimes she would ask me to be her on the phone and say the first thing that came into my head, even to a reporter, as long as I did my Norwegian accent. She was all right with whatever craziness appeared in the press. She knew a lot of famous people. Every time a famous person died, she’d make me post an archival photo of her with that person. She has over a million Twitter followers. Her photo archive had its own closet in the rambling Upper East Side apartment she’d inherited from her Dutch grandfather who sold scrap metal to the Nazis.
Her TV show was all about her eating what she wanted—half of what she wanted—and staying skinny. Wicked self-denial. She’d cook (or pretend to cook) small portions of exquisite food while the audience watched, and then she’d eat half of it. Very, very slowly. High-end portion control.
Off camera she drank like crazy, so she had to go on these awful fasts and cleanses. Sometimes drugs killed her appetite, which helped. When she did eat, her routine (or so she told the magazines) was to fast all day, then eat half of whatever she cooked. Then a glass of lemon water at bedtime. She left out the marshmallow peanuts in bed, then the puke. She left out the eat, puke, repeat.
So what was the low point? The night she sent me, in a cab, to deepest Brownsville because someone told her a dealer there had the best coke in the city. Why couldn’t she pay him to make a house call? Maybe part of the fun was having me step over passed-out crackheads. Or maybe it was when she made me call Jimmy Choo and ask them to deliver their entire fall line in sizes 9, 9½, and 10. When they asked where to send the invoice, Frieda—listening in on the landline—started screaming. Didn’t they know who she was?
I knew who she was. I knew how much of her story was true.
I found a letter from Princeton saying they couldn’t find the baroness in their alumni records, but being a Princeton graduate stayed part of her story. She could hardly spell! What did she learn at Princeton?
One afternoon she made me come with her and her kids, Angus and Marlene, to a celebrity’s kid’s super-crunchy birthday party in Tribeca. All around the loft were trestle tables groaning with nutritious nut-free snacks, raw vegetables, candy for those lucky kids whose moms allowed it.
A bouncy castle had been blown up in the great room, and the Baroness Frieda’s kids were flopping around, unaware that Mom had gone out for a smoke and not returned. It was my job to smile and stay chill as the other moms jumped ship, my job to reassure the hostess until Frieda finally answered my texts and left the young man she’d been chatting with at the bar on the corner.
On the sidewalk outside the birthday boy’s high-rise, she screamed at me. She made me go back upstairs to get the swag bags that her children had left behind. Angus and Marlene were sobbing! Those poor kids were right to fear and distrust her—she had cameras and monitors and nanny cams all over the apartment.
She fired me when scandal finally drove the stake through the vampire corpse of her name-only marriage to the gay Norwegian baron. You couldn’t go to the supermarket without seeing fuzzy shots of her in St. Barts, belly to belly with the hunky personal trainer. As the phone calls flew between New York and Oslo, the baroness—while talking to the Norwegian queen mother—mouthed the words “Handle this, Ruth! Make it go the fuck away!”
My mistake was asking her what I should say. She shouted, “That’s what I pay you to know!”
After that, she was pure meanness. She accused me of being a fraud, of lying about my past. In fact I’m the most truthful person ever. She was talking about herself.
I don’t know why I kept quiet. Maybe I hoped for a reference, which she refused to write. She swore that if I ever disclosed any personal information about her or tried to sell an unauthorized photo, she would personally make sure I never worked in this town—this universe—again. It wasn’t until I met Rocco that I could begin to hold up my head and quit apologizing to everyone I bumped into on the sidewalk.
If I still have credit issues, I can thank the baroness, who was always forgetting her purse and borrowing my card. At first she was careful to pay me back. But she started forgetting that I’d paid the terrifying bill at the restaurant or at the clothing store that refused to comp her, no matter what level tantrum she threw.
By the time I canceled my card, she’d run up $6,000 of debt. She accused me of piling up the charges myself. She said, “Call my lawyer if you’re confused.”
Rocco and I had been dating for a while before I told him. I must have trusted him. You are always taking a risk with a story about bad luck. Some people will feel sorry for you. Other people will blame you for what happened, though they might not know it.
And there’s nothing you can do to change their minds.
9
Charlotte
When Charlotte was pregnant with Daisy, the doctors made her spend the last two months in bed. The anxiety and boredom were torments. The only way she could cope was by imagining the summer day when she would bring her daughter (by then they knew it would be a girl) to Love in a Mist, the farm that provides most of the flowers for Charlotte’s business.
In Charlotte’s fantasy, Daisy was around five or six, the age she is now. She imagined her little girl running through the flower farm, her bare feet hardly touching the earth as she race
d past the rows of zinnias and snapdragons. She imagined her stopping in front of a gorgeous pink dahlia.
Often, at that moment, Daisy kicked hard, as if she couldn’t wait to be born and see for herself.
She arrived three weeks early, underweight and frail.
Maybe those kicks meant something else: Not yet. Please. Not yet.
The birth was more painful than Charlotte expected, but painless compared to the agonizing intensity of her love for Daisy. And even that pales beside Charlotte’s burning need to protect her.
Daisy was three the first time Charlotte took her to the farm. It was mid-August, Charlotte’s favorite time, when the garden goes crazy after its midsummer nap.
Charlotte had been so excited, she didn’t sleep for days. Eli warned her not to expect too much. Charlotte hates it when he warns her about something she’s worried about already. Anyway, what could go wrong? Daisy could walk long distances. She enjoyed walking. And when she got tired, she was still light enough to carry. She would like Matt and Holly, who ran the farm—and whom Charlotte adored. She could play with the cake-baking app on Charlotte’s phone while the grown-ups had lunch.
Each time they passed the blazing red poppies and blue cornflowers massed on the median strips along the Palisades, Daisy asked if they were there yet.
The first time Charlotte heard Daisy cough was on the highway. The air was thick with pollen. A light green film coated the windshield during the few minutes it took to buy water at the rest stop. Charlotte rolled up the windows. Daisy looked content, spaced out, napping in her car seat.
Unless Charlotte drives miles out of her way, it’s impossible to reach the flower farm without passing the farm where she and Rocco grew up. Long after Andrew John knocked down the charred ruin that used to be their house and built his extraordinary modern home farther up the hill, Charlotte would still avert her eyes when she passed.
Too many memories. Too much grief.
It hurt her that she couldn’t tell Daisy: Look, there’s the place where Mommy and Uncle Rocco lived when they were your age!
And yet . . . and yet . . . if you didn’t know, you’d be amazed by the extraordinary beauty of Andrew John’s land, by the way in which he’d consolidated and transformed a few barely sustainable farms into a valley that was protected, magnificently landscaped, fertile—and completely organic.
Walking from the road to Matt and Holly’s house, they passed banks of hydrangeas and butterfly bushes, rows of lipstick-colored dahlias with deep burgundy leaves, velvety spires of the snapdragons for which the farm was known.
Matt and Holly squatted to greet Daisy.
Holly said, “Great to meet you, Daisy. Your mom says such wonderful things about you.”
Already extremely—worryingly—polite, Daisy said, “Nice to meet you too.”
Matt said, “Got a little cold?”
Daisy shook her head.
Already the trip seemed like a big success. Charlotte chose to ignore Matt’s question about Daisy having a cold.
Matt got a phone call he had to take. Holly was almost done preparing lunch. Maybe Daisy and Charlotte would like to take a walk in the garden.
Holly said, “Check out the cleomes. Kids either love them, or they’re terrified, I guess because the plants are bigger than they are.”
Charlotte decided to say nothing and just let Daisy experience the garden, to wander where she wanted and see what she wanted to see.
Charlotte heard her cough. One cough, then another. Charlotte told Daisy to drink from her water bottle, but the dry little cough continued.
Daisy looked up at the cleome plants. Some were twice her size. She and Charlotte had watched Alice in Wonderland. Did Daisy think she’d fallen down the rabbit hole—and shrunk?
Daisy began to wheeze. The soft crackle in her breathing got louder and harsher until it shrilled like a police whistle. That was how it sounded to Charlotte. Daisy stared at her mother. Gagging, frightened, she began to cry. Her little face turned pink, then red, then a horrifying purple.
Charlotte thought she was going to faint. She was useless, totally useless. Then some instinct kicked in. She scooped up Daisy and ran to get Holly. They piled into Holly’s car and drove to the hospital in Albany. Holly felt responsible because her garden display included ragweed, to which many people are allergic but which looked lovely with the dahlias. She’d been thinking of pulling out the ragweed, and now she definitely would. She told Charlotte she was sorry.
“It’s not your fault,” said Charlotte. Charlotte couldn’t help thinking that it was her fault. Her punishment.
The ER doctor gave Daisy some sort of steroid, and she recovered quickly.
But it’s taken Charlotte longer to recoup, if she ever has. Well, it’s hardly the worst that could happen. Asthma can be managed. Inhalers, doctors’ visits, nebulizers, better vacuum cleaners. Caution. It was good to be cautious. Charlotte hates the idea of her daughter suffering. But if she can draw a lesson from this, it’s a warning about watchfulness, about not letting down your guard.
There’s a shower in the back of the shop, and Charlotte changes clothes before she picks Daisy up after school. At home, purifiers ensure that the air they breathe is as clean as the water they buy in gigantic bottles. It’s another expensive option of privilege. But how would they feel if they cut corners and something happened? It’s why Charlotte is often happy to get out into the dirty city air. She’s like a dog sniffing everything, even the car exhaust and whatever rots under the sidewalk in the summer.
Once, Eli asked Charlotte if she thought Daisy might be exaggerating her symptoms to get attention. It started the ugliest argument they ever had. He accused her of having lost her sense of humor, and Charlotte said hurtful, possibly unforgivable things about his work in the theater.
CHARLOTTE WOULD LIKE to have a rescue inhaler in every room. But Daisy’s pulmonologist, the ironically named Dr. Ash, is a Puritan about prescribing them. He says it’s wasteful. They expire. Also, he says, having just one, or even two, helps the child grow up into an adult who will take responsibility for her own health. Five seems early to start training a future adult to be in charge of her breathing. But Charlotte and Eli still hope that Daisy will grow out of it.
Early one morning, Eli calls Charlotte at work. “Don’t push the panic button. But Daisy’s starting to wheeze, and I cannot find the fucking inhaler.”
Charlotte says, “Look for it. You have to find it.”
“I know what I have to do, Charlotte. And I already looked. Do you think I would be calling you otherwise? You’ve got the app on your phone.”
How could Charlotte forget? She finds her phone and opens the app and presses LOCATE.
“Wait a second,” Eli says. “Listen. Hang on.”
Charlotte hears footsteps. Then a noise. As Eli walks through the loft, the beeping gets louder. Charlotte’s phone shows a cartoon man approaching a cartoon bunny under a sign that says: 30 seconds!!
Thirty seconds later, Eli says, “Gotcha!”
Charlotte’s phone says: Device located. The bunny icon is bouncing.
“Where was it?”
“Under the plastic hippo in that pail she plays with in the tub. Let me get Daisy off to school. Then I’ll call you back.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” says Eli. “I love you. Isn’t it weird that crazy Ruth is saving our asses?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte says. “The last girlfriend stole things, and this one finds lost things. I’d say things are looking up. Or, anyway, leveling out.”
CHARLOTTE HASN’T SEEN Rocco for weeks when he walks into her shop. He looks happy, relaxed.
Rocco says, “I come in peace, with flowers.” He’s holding two large pails packed with long-stemmed sunflowers in a range of colors. “Hydroponically grown. Andrew John’s latest science experiment. Say what you will, the guy’s amazing.”
Charlotte flinches every time she hears Andrew John’s name. She tries no
t to think about him. Rocco is okay with working for the guy who bought their farm; she should be fine with the fact of his existence. She herself doesn’t want all that land, all that responsibility. But still . . . why does he have all that money? Why not them?
Rocco says, “Alma, can you give me a hand with these? I’m double-parked.”
Charlotte keeps watch at the door while Alma and Rocco carry in four more pails of sunflowers. Charlotte’s already imagining what she can do with them.
“The MacCrae wedding,” says Charlotte. “How hard will it be to talk the bride out of pink roses and blue delphiniums into something brighter and bolder and . . . yellow?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” says Alma.
Rocco says, “I have a favor to ask.”
Charlotte should have known.
“Ruth’s birthday is coming up.”
“Let’s do something fun.” Charlotte instantly reverts to the welcoming-older-sister mode.
Rocco says, “The weird thing is, her birthday is right around Daisy’s.”
“That never came up,” Charlotte says coldly. But why would it? She can’t remember telling Ruth when Daisy’s birthday was.
“Ruth wants the three of us to celebrate together. She wants me to get tickets to the Moon Circus for her and me and my little niece.”
It takes Charlotte a beat to figure out that little niece means Daisy. Then her heart starts to pound. A series of disasters plays out in front of her, a shuddering loop of horror. They will lose Daisy in the crowd. A stranger will take her. Car crashes, mass shootings. Children screaming, blood everywhere. They won’t know what to watch out for.
Charlotte falls into a chair. She can hardly breathe. Come on! The city is full of lucky kids being taken to the circus by their uncles. It’s called family. That’s how the childless play at parenthood. The survival of the species depends on couples practicing on their relatives’ kids.
Charlotte trusts Rocco. Daisy loves Rocco; she seems to like Ruth. They’re capable of taking Daisy to the circus and having fun and bringing her safely home. Still, Charlotte wishes that everyone would just forget about it and the whole thing would go away.