Life and Other Inconveniences Read online

  I took a deep breath. “Hi, honey,” I said, practicing. Smiled. “Hey, baby. No, not baby. Hey, sweetheart, how are you? Did you have a good day?”

  My grandfather wasn’t home; though he’d retired last year from his job as an elevator mechanic, he still did electrical work on the side. My other grandmother—the nice one—had died when I was seventeen, just a year and change before I came out to live with Pop.

  Riley’s shoes, the kelly-green Converse high-tops, were in the middle of the living room, and there was a glass next to the sink that hadn’t been there this morning when I left for the city. “Hi, honey!” I called. “I’m home!”

  No answer. I listened and heard nothing but quiet.

  I went upstairs, trying hard not to run, wondering if I should run, and if I had run that day so long ago, if everything would have been different.

  I knocked once, harder than I meant to, and threw open Riley’s door.

  My daughter lay on her bed, earbuds in, looking at her laptop, and the relief made my knees wobble. You never realize it until you’re pregnant, or holding your baby in your arms, but your heart, soul and peace of mind will never be yours again. The tiny hijackers take over before they draw their first breaths, and you would do anything to keep them safe. Anything.

  “What?” she said, taking out one earbud.

  “Hi! How was your day?” My voice was too loud, too bright.

  “Fine.” Her tone indicated otherwise.

  It was okay. She was here, and she was safe and alive, even if it was one of those days, then. The dark days. Normal teenage behavior, hormones, etc. She was due to get her period in about three days (yes, I kept track), so it was probably just that.

  She was so beautiful, my girl—blazing red hair down to her shoulders, thick and curly, milk-white skin with freckles, and her eyes. Her blue, blue eyes, clear as a September sky.

  Telling her about the Genevieve London store right now didn’t seem like a good idea (or I was a coward, or both). I sat on the edge of Riley’s bed and put my hand on her shin, unable to resist touching her. “How was lunch today?” I asked.

  “Gross.” She flicked her gaze at me, then resumed watching whatever was on her screen. “Hamburgers, not French toast sticks like they said. The meat was gray.”

  “That is gross. How about if I make French toast for supper?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  She shrugged.

  “Are you going to Mikayla’s tonight?”

  Another shrug. That wasn’t good.

  “Okay. Well, French toast for supper, extra syrup for my girl.” I kissed her head, and she gave me a half smile, and I felt the painful rush of love I always did for my only child. Thank you. Thank you for that smile, for still talking to me, for being my favorite person, my greatest love.

  Feeling fairly stupid, completely reactionary and tentatively happy, I went back downstairs.

  My daughter was safe. She almost smiled. She wanted my French toast. I thought she was okay.

  This uncertainty was new for me. Until this past year, Riley had been a sweet, happy person. As a tot, she’d played for hours in cardboard boxes, or pretended to be a waitress or a hairdresser. It wasn’t so long ago she’d still been playing with Josefina, her American Girl doll. She loved books and babysitting. While the statistics said most of her peers were having sex and trying out drugs and alcohol, Riley still read the warrior cats series and slept with Blue Bunny, her first stuffed animal. I was grateful . . . no tweeny fuming, not for my girl. Jason, her father, had been a happy teenager. Me, not so much, but I liked to think my daughter’s sunniness was at least in part due to my good parenting.

  Physically, she’d been a late bloomer—athletic like her dad, thin, getting her period just before she turned fifteen, only recently needing a bra. At first, it had been okay; a little weepiness every twenty-nine days, cured by a girls’ night with just the two of us watching obscure shows on the National Geographic channel, eating brie and apricot jam on crackers.

  When I myself was sixteen, I’d been so aware of my odd status in Stoningham—the ward of an important, wealthy woman but abandoned by my parents, desperate to be normal, whatever that was. Riley had always seemed better, more confident, happier than I’d ever been, thank God. She’d been content to avoid romantic drama, had the same friends since she was eight, wanted to put off learning to drive till she was older. Her social life, such as it was, consisted of sleepovers with her longtime friends. She was a happy, happy kid.

  And then came winter, and everything seemed to change.

  The brie and shows about life in Alaska weren’t enough. The long-suppressed terror buried deep in my gut showed its teeth, even as I used every tool and resource I had to convince myself over and over that Riley was . . . well . . . normal. Not clinically depressed. That the gods of genetics had not cursed her with the same thing that had haunted my mother.

  Somehow, the things that had always seemed so good and wholesome took on a darker cast after this past winter. Why didn’t she want to go to a dance? All her friends were going, weren’t they? Was she clinging to her childhood in an unhealthy way, and if so, why? Was she afraid of growing up? Had something happened to her . . . rape, or bullying, or drugs? Was I missing something? Was it boy troubles? Girl troubles? Both? Was she gender fluid, or gay, or trans? None of those would change my love for her, but maybe she wanted to tell me. Should I just ask? Or would that be intrusive?

  I analyzed her moods, trying to slip her some therapist questions without making her suspicious. Her pediatrician had pronounced her “completely normal with a side of awesome” at her annual physical, but still. When you know depression can be genetic, and when your own mother committed suicide, you watch like a hawk.

  Genevieve London’s overpriced, elitist store might throw my daughter in any number of unpredictable ways. And after seventeen years of feeling free from my grandmother, seeing the new store was just too much Genevieve London for one day.

  A tremor of danger hummed in my gut, warning me there was more to come.

  I ate one of the oatmeal cookies I’d baked the day before. I had an online appointment—this client liked messaging rather than video conference, and that was fine with me. His problems were chunky—PTSD from a wretched childhood—and it was easier to be wise if I had time to think.

  Then the landline blared, and I jumped, because who ever used landlines? The harsh ring of Pop’s 1970s phone was horribly loud, and I snatched it up immediately. Probably a telemarketer. Since it was a phone from the days of yore, we had no caller ID or even an answering machine.

  “Hello?”

  There was a pause, and just as I was about to hang up, someone spoke.

  “Is that you, Emma?”

  Her voice punched me in the stomach, the unmistakable, blue-blooded tone of the Gorgon Genevieve herself, immediately recognizable even after seventeen years.

  I hung up.

  Almost immediately, the phone rang again. I let it, and the sound brayed through the quiet house. Two times. Three. Four.

  “Mom? You gonna answer that?” Riley called from upstairs.

  “Sure thing, honey!” I said, snatching it up again.

  “Don’t be childish, Emma,” Genevieve said. That voice, so elegant and frosty, always with that tinge of disappointment.

  The store. She was probably calling to tell me about the store. “What do you want?”

  “I see we’ve lost all social graces,” she said.

  “Why would I waste them on you?”

  She sighed. “Very well, I’ll get right to it. I have cancer. I’m dying, so you have to come home and do your familial duty. Bring your child.”

  My mouth opened and closed noiselessly. A) Cancer wouldn’t kill her, because she was just too mean. B) I wouldn’t go “home” i
f I had a gun to the back of my head. And C) she’d kicked me out seventeen years ago. Her final words hadn’t exactly been a blessing.

  “Funny,” I said, “you talking now about family and duty. Oh, gosh, look at the time. I have to run. Have a nice death!”

  “Don’t hang up, Emma, for heaven’s sake. It’s so like you to fly into hysterics.”

  I clenched my teeth. “I’m not hysterical, and I’m not coming home. I am home, as a matter of fact.”

  “Fine. Come back to Connecticut, Emma, and say goodbye to me as I live out the last of my days.”

  “You haven’t called me since I left, Genevieve. Why would I care about the last of your days?”

  There was a pause. “We’ve had our differences, it’s true.”

  “You kicked me out when I needed you most. Why should I care if you need me now?”

  The frost of her voice turned to sleet. “You were irresponsible.”

  “And pregnant, and eighteen.”

  “As I said, irresponsible. At any rate, it’s just for a couple of months.”

  I snorted.

  “Must you make that unladylike noise?”

  “Genevieve, I’m sorry. I don’t care enough about you to uproot my child—it’s a girl, by the way—so I can change your diapers in your dotage.”

  “Nor am I asking you to, Emma. I’m simply asking you to come home so I can see my granddaughter and great-granddaughter before I die.”

  “You blew your chance on us a long time ago. Besides, don’t you have a son? Ask him.” Not that my father had ever taken care of anyone very well.

  “This is not work for a man,” Genevieve said.

  “It’s not work for me, either.”

  “Emma, it’s not my fault that you were a floozy who couldn’t keep her legs crossed and threw away her future.”

  “Sweet talk will get you nowhere, Gigi,” I said, using the only nickname she’d allowed back then. God forbid I’d just called her Gram. “Besides, do you really want a floozy taking care of you?”

  “I’ll pay for your travel expenses and give you some money in the meantime.”

  “No, thanks. Hanging up now.”

  “Jason is separated from his wife, you know. Oh, but I forgot, you and he are still so close. Of course he’s already told you.”

  My stomach dropped. The Gorgon had me there. Jason had not told me. And given that he was the father of my child, my one experience with being in love and my closest male friend, that stung.

  Then again, Genevieve was the master of stinging. She was a wasp in every sense of the word.

  I curled the cord around my finger. “The answer is still no. Please don’t call again.”

  “Very well,” she said. “Would you accept a bribe? Come home, and I’ll make your child my heir.” There was a pause. “My only heir. Even if she doesn’t have a real name.”

  Riley was my grandfather’s last name, my mother’s maiden name. Another sting from the queen of wasps. “What about Hope?” I asked. “You’re cutting her out of the will?” Hope was my much younger half sister, the child of my father’s brief second marriage, and she lived not too far from Genevieve at a home for children whose medical needs were too complex for their families to handle alone.

  “Hope has a trust fund for her care that will last all her life.”

  “Good. Make me her guardian. Otherwise, we have nothing to talk about. Bye, Genevieve,” I said.

  “Think about it. We’ll speak soon.”

  “No, we won’t.” But she had already hung up.

  I went to the kitchen table and sat down, my mind both racing and empty at the same moment.

  Genevieve was dying. I waited for some emotion—rage, satisfaction, grief—to hit me. Nothing did. My stomach growled, so I ate another cookie.

  Once, I had loved my grandmother and wanted desperately for her to love me. That hadn’t happened. Try getting someone to love you for ten years and failing . . . It leaves a mark.

  So she was dying. I told myself I didn’t care. What about Hope? Would my sister care? Would she miss Genevieve, who, from what the staff at her facility told me, visited at least several times a month? It was hard to tell; my sister was nonverbal. She was a sweet girl, full of smiles and snuggles when her seizures weren’t stealing away her days, or her rages weren’t taking over. She had a severe case of tuberous sclerosis, and every complication that went with it.

  At least Genevieve had done right by my sister.

  An image of my grandmother and her housekeeper/companion Donelle on the terrace in the summer flashed through my head. Cocktail hour observed religiously, their laughter, the breeze coming off Long Island Sound. My room, painted the faintest blush pink, my giant bed and fluffy white comforter, the tasteful throw pillows, the window seat that overlooked the wide expanse of grass, the rock walls that bordered the yard, the giant maple tree. The bathtub I could fill so deep I could float in it.

  I also remembered how I wasn’t allowed to have posters in my room, or funny signs, or the tie-dyed pillow I made with Beth, my best friend in high school, or the goldfish I won at the Ledyard Fair. I wasn’t allowed anything Genevieve deemed “tacky.” I wasn’t allowed a bulletin board on which to pin mementos or souvenirs. I had to make my bed and replace the pillows exactly as Genevieve wanted, and the second I took off my shoes, they had to go into the closet. It wasn’t a prison by any means, but it wasn’t really my room, either . . . it was a catalog page from Genevieve London Home Designs, and my personality was not welcome.

  I remembered Genevieve’s rage when I told her I was pregnant. How she’d told me to abort my baby or give her up for adoption. Five minutes ago, she’d offered to leave that same child millions.

  Like that could undo everything. I’d made a life with my baby, got through college an inch at a time, working nights at a grocery store, leaving Riley with Pop, fighting to stay awake in class.

  Money wouldn’t undo the past.

  And yet . . . Riley was almost done with her junior year, since she’d started kindergarten a year early, being a smarty-pants. We’d already looked at some colleges online and visited the University of Chicago in April. I didn’t have a lot saved for her college, but I had some. A little bit of every single paycheck had gone into a savings account since before she was even born . . . but when I said little, I meant it. A drop in the bucket. I was hoping Jason would help—counting on it, really—though, legally, he wasn’t obliged to pay anything. He had another family back east, and while he’d never missed a child support payment, he’d never given any extra, either. He worked in construction; his wife did tech part-time.

  Genevieve, however, was frickin’ loaded. Her company was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Sheerwater, her house in Stoningham, Connecticut, had to be worth at least $15 million alone.

  It didn’t matter. Riley would be fine; I’d take out more loans even though my own were still choking me and would be for a long time; she’d take out loans, too. Maybe she’d get one of those full scholarships at the Ivy League colleges for incredibly bright kids. Maybe do a couple of years at a community college. Maybe Jason would take care of everything.

  I wasn’t going to sell my soul, not even for my daughter.

  It wasn’t worth it. We couldn’t go. We shouldn’t go.

  We weren’t going to go.

  CHAPTER 2

  Genevieve

  Here are some facts about getting older.

  You hate young people because their manners, clothes and speech, as well as their taste in books, music, film and television, are all inferior.

  You leak when you laugh, cough, hiccup, sneeze.

  Putting on a bra becomes nearly impossible. Your arms don’t bend that way anymore. Nylons are even worse, because you can lose your balance and fall.

  You go through a second puberty, sprouting ha
ir from your ears and nose while your eyebrows and lashes thin and your upper lip grows hairs as thick and sharp as wire.

  You wait all day to have a drink.

  You nap when you don’t want to and can’t sleep when you do.

  You have regrets. Once you dismissed them as a waste of time, but as you get older, they creep back.

  * * *

  * * *

  I was always an attractive woman. A great beauty, to tell the truth. Grace Kelly and I could’ve been sisters, people used to say. It was true. My parents had been quite attractive . . . I always thought like marries like in most cases. Of course, you see the aberrant couple—Beyoncé and her rather homely husband (yes, of course I know who Beyoncé is, I do live on this planet). But more or less, beautiful people marry beautiful people. And if one is extremely wealthy but also homely or plain . . . Prince William, for example . . . one can marry a great beauty like Kate Middleton and create attractive children.

  I was beautiful and wealthy and went to a fine school. I took care with my appearance and wardrobe, watched how I spoke and was well aware that I projected an image. Garrison said he knew the first moment he saw me that I would be his wife, and that was exactly what I’d hoped for—that the best-looking young man from the best family with the best prospects and, of course, the best heart would see me and know in an instant I was the one.

  I didn’t let him down.

  After he died, I most certainly did not fall apart and start leaving the house in a bathrobe or letting my hair get long and stringy. Did Jacqueline Kennedy? Did Coretta Scott King? Joan Didion? I think not.

  Not only did I keep up appearances, I exceeded them. I became a style icon and an industry leader. Well into my forties, heads still turned when I walked down Madison Avenue. I was sleek, chic, tall and slender, and I wore three-inch heels every day. Though I didn’t date publicly, I eventually had a few gentlemen friends . . . lovers, if you must know. My financial adviser. An art appraiser from Christie’s. I would never marry again, nor did I want to, but I enjoyed the occasional dinner in the city, a night in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental or the Baccarat (never the Plaza . . . their rooms were so tacky).