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“I thought I might have heard something promising in your voice.”
“I did, too,” said Marisa.
“And,” Betsy went on, “it would make me happy if you had someone in your life.”
“I have plenty of people in my life.”
“A boyfriend.”
“I don’t need a boyfriend.”
Crissy sliced a bite-size piece from her veggie burger with her tinny knife and fork, and pushed it around the plate.
“Mom always thought you and Terrance might become a thing,” said Betsy, referring to Crissy’s agent. In truth, their mother had worried that Crissy and Terrance might become a thing. She didn’t distrust the man, but she felt there was something insidious about the way he saw her daughter’s eating disorder as an opportunity and not an ailment. “Or you and Nigel, after she met him,” Betsy added.
“Wouldn’t that be meta?” Crissy said, her tone growing lighter.
“I like Nigel. Mom did, too.”
“He’s rather like a brother to me.”
“He’s cute.”
“He is.”
“But—how would you say it?—he’s not your cup of tea?”
“He’s my Charles. That’s a terrible foundation for any relationship. Also? I shudder to think what would happen to the show if we started a romance and then it all went to hell.”
“Fair.”
Marisa looked back and forth between the two sisters, her gaze in the end resting on Crissy. “Do you want me to call you Crissy or Aunt Crissy?”
“Crissy will suffice.”
“Cool.” Then Marisa went on, “When Diana was a teenager, she called Prince Charles ‘Pris Chos.’ You probably knew that.”
“I did. How did you learn that?”
“The Internet.”
“Marisa is very good at using the Internet to learn anything,” Betsy said, and immediately felt stupid after speaking. It was as if she had managed both to patronize her daughter and say something that suggested she herself was of a generation that was still impressed by computers.
But Marisa hadn’t noticed. The child sat up very straight in her chair and said in a British accent that Betsy thought was pretty good but was sure Crissy would view as amateurish, “Yah, we sat inside the hice, before a fire, and the folks were boring as all get-out.”
But Crissy smiled at her and replied in her Diana voice, “They were all right Horlicks.”
For a split second, Betsy feared that her sister had just said whore licks, as if Crissy had suggested to her niece that someone or something was as tedious as lackluster fellatio. Fortunately, the girl was envisioning something very different: “A Horlicks sounds like a creature from Harry Potter,” she said. “Is it? Like a troll or a ghoul? Maybe a person who’s been hexed into something gross?”
“A brilliant guess. Jolly well done. But incorrect.”
“Oh.”
“You couldn’t possibly have known the answer, so don’t beat yourself up. Horlicks is an English drink that’s been around forever and some people say helps you sleep. So, a person who’s a Horlicks is a right proper bore.”
Marisa nodded and repeated the word, and Betsy knew that she would hear it a lot in the coming days—and she did.
* * *
