“Maybe?”
Penelope perks up. “Oh? Are you quitting? I think you should quit. You’re trapped there. They don’t deserve you. It’s a dead-end job. Quit. Quit.”
“I can’t quit. I need the money.”
Penelope’s face flattens. Money, that old thing. “I hear ya.”
Penelope has a full-time nanny, a cook, a housekeeper, and a “lifestyle manager” who has worked for her family for so long that she lives in the Connecticut home where Penelope was born. We met in Nolita because Penelope had to drop Tate off at the Chapter One Preschool in Gramercy. Chapter One is the top nursery school in the city, implementing the Reggio Emilia philosophy, an Italian teaching theory that says children should express their own personalities through self-guided curricula.
I try to delicately pivot to why I really asked Penelope to get lunch. “So, I’ve kind of got this side hustle, or hobby. I don’t know,” I tell Penelope, thinking about how to explain that I’ve been spending every spare second trying to track down Daisy. How I should’ve tried to find her earlier, but life just sort of happened.
And yet, as soon as I got pregnant, Daisy started to occupy more and more of my thoughts, like a vanishing twin. I’d stand on the scale to weigh in at doctor’s appointments and not even hear Dr. Weatherstone, too busy thinking, Hm, what would Daisy say about me becoming a mother? Was she a mother? We’d talked about everything those nights in our dorm room, but we’d never talked about this very big thing. Maybe one day our babies would be best friends and share a dorm room and wear butterfly wings.
I started to have dreams about Daisy. Images of her, of our time together, came over me like nausea and then would pass. But as soon as I became a mother, I started to learn about this new type of love—the kind of love that means always being there, just keeping a person alive even if they scream and yell and never say thank you and continuously do things that could kill them. I’d rock Holden in the quiet dark, kissing his head, feeling his hand in mine, and I’d think, This is the kind of love Daisy needed. The kind of love she deserved. Stubborn. Selfless. I hadn’t been strong enough then, but could I make it up to her now? Was it too late? I’d lie awake all night, replaying our falling-out. Thinking about how I could have saved Daisy. How maybe I could have shown her this other kind of love—the worst and the best—had I only known about it.
Penelope has a million questions as she flags a waiter for another mezcal margarita. “What kind of porn? Anal? Animals?”
“Unclear. But we had all these big plans. We were going to move to New York, be artists, get our noses pierced. Be broke and happy.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“And then she just disappeared after freshman year. Poof. Gone.”
“State school seems wild.”
Every time I explain my maternity-leave project aloud, it sounds unhinged. My neighbor Brit taught herself to needlepoint. I procured back issues of a British lad mag calledMuff. But whereas Roman was concerned about me, Penelope is loving it, popping a thirty-two-dollar split pea tlacoyo as if it were popcorn. She tells me a guy on the rowing team at Groton hired a local to rough up his girlfriend after he caught her cheating, but no one she knows ever became a sex worker. This is all so “fascinating.”
Holden is asleep with a bamboo straw in his tiny hand and we probably have another twenty minutes, half an hour max, before he will wake up and need to be changed at a multitasking eatery that almost certainly does not have a changing table. I look down at my fish taco. No more amateur sleuthing. I need a pro.
“The guilt of watching your closest friend spiral like that, knowing you can’t save her…” I look up. I need to phrase this just right. Penelope will recoil if she thinks I’m using her. “I met this guy in Atlantic City. I think he was a pimp?” Penelope’s eyes set on me, serious. “He said I need to hire a PI.”
Penelope slurps her margarita. “You should, honestly.”
“Like, how do you even do that? Are they on Yelp? Five stars, discreet, tracked down my ex for child support in twenty-four hours?”
“My lawyer has a guy. Ex-CIA. He can find anyone. Want his info?”
“I can hardly afford a babysitter.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.” I let the quiet hang there.
“We’ve got the firm on retainer—ever since that thing with my mom, until they can rewrite the trust. Just put it on my tab?” Penelope says, taking a business card out of a Goyard case.August Levin, Managing Partner of Sutter, Lang & Weintraub LLP.“Tell August I sent you.”
“Are you sure? Yeah. I mean, if it’s not a problem? That would actually…mean a lot. Thanks.” I take the card. A lifeline…and a leash.
The check arrives. Penelope dusts off her Celine sunglasses. The check sits there for an uncomfortable amount of time. I finally put my Visa down. This is another thing I’ve learned about the über-rich: They’re cheap as shit.
We walk outside, me pushing Holden toward a bus stop and Penelope trying to find her car. Impulsively, I hug her. I hang on for a long time. Gratitude tipping into neediness. The expensive fabric feels so soft and cool on my face. Penelope pulls away.
“Want to get coffee?” I ask, trying to sound casual and not like an emergency flare shot over Lafayette Street.
“I’ve got to be uptown,” Penelope says, eyes on her phone.
“Oh yeah. Okay.”
Penelope’s driver calls. She answers. “What? No. I’m across the street.”
