“How’d it go with the lawyer?”
“Okay. I think Penelope had an affair with him,” I say, still rousing myself.
“Eh. That doesn’t surprise me.” Penelope’s husband, Beau, went to work every day at his dad’s brokerage firm, sat at a big mahogany desk, and playedCandy Crush. I don’t understand the fine print, but I know that Penelope can never—ever—get divorced. Not because she loves Beau or worries about appearances or thinks a two-parent home is better for the children. It’s all about money, “joint assets,” something about the prenup and “property division” and “enforceability” of “inheritance.” I don’t know exactly, but it’s rich-people parlance for being stuck for eternity with the emasculated aristocrat who you happened to go down on at a supper-club party your sophomore year at Princeton.
“Any leads on Daisy?” Roman asks as he tosses his wallet on the TV mantel. I clock it for him.
“She’s not dead,” I say.
“That’s big. What a relief.” Roman stops, genuinely bolstered by this news.
“She’s also not necessarily alive.”
“I’m not sure I’m following…” He opens the fridge. Surveys the void.
“I think I’m starting to lose hope,” I say. “If this Michael Clayton guy couldn’t even find Daisy, what are my chances?”
“So, let it go?” Roman has pulled out a half-eaten plate of friedchicken strips that I don’t even remember him ordering. He sniffs the container and then pops it into the microwave. “She obviously doesn’t want to be found.”
“That’s the thing!” I say, suddenly wide-awake. “The whole Amir thing only makes me more determined. Like, what could’ve happened to her to make a person want to just disappear like that?”
“Bad credit?” Roman says, serious.
He doesn’t get it. Maybe he never did. The connection two girls can have at a certain age, at a certain stage in life, the subversive power of sex work to assert autonomy and challenge social marginalization, entirely lost on my rugby-watching husband, who is currently gnawing on week-old chicken tenders. “What if Daisy ran away because she thought nobody from her old life cared? She thought I didn’t care?”
“It’s too humid in the nursery,” Roman says. He checks the Owlet baby monitor app on his phone. He’s got it set to monitor oxygen levels and sleep trends. He gets push alerts when Holden’s vital health indicators are outside typical range, calling me from work to make sure his oxygen levels aren’t abnormal. Roman monitors the humidity because he can’t control that management decided to combine two units next door right when we had a baby, sending who knows what kind of midcentury toxins into the nursery daily. We won’t asphyxiate on his watch. “Are you using the dehumidifier?”
I don’t want to tell him that I don’t entirely understand the difference between a humidifier and a dehumidifier. All I know is that we live in a giant apartment complex built in the 1940s, have a screw gun drumming next door, and enjoy a comfortable climate maybe three times a year. But this is how Roman shows love, so I just shrug.
“Don’t sleep out here again?” Roman says, taking my hand. I pull away.
I hadn’t planned to spend so many nights on the sofa. I just alwaysseemed to sink into the Crate & Barrel Outlet cushions and then not have the energy to walk the ten steps to the bedroom. I had no intention of moving even an inch of myself until Holden called out for his night feedings, and when that happened, it didn’t even feel like me. I was some sleepwalking woodland creature. I would then go back to the sofa and lie there again, sometimes with Holden in his doughnut cushion, until the sun burst into our windows and the construction crew laid out rosin paper in the hallway and the jackhammers got back to work. But it wasn’t just that I was exhausted. I mean, our apartment was nine hundred square feet. Surely I could’ve motivated myself to walk into the bedroom if I’d really wanted to. The truth is, if I went to bed with Roman, then he might try to touch me, and if he touched me, if even a stray toe rubbed against my leg, then I would think about the pain. I would think about the bright lights of the OR and the doctors standing by for a blood transfusion.
“Yeah, be in a little later,” I say.
I close my eyes, pretending to fall back asleep. My stitches had dissolved, but so had some part of me. I’d forgotten what it felt like to not feel this way. To not feel insufficient, broken. After I hear Roman walk into the bathroom, I open my eyes. I look at the girl on the cover ofBarely Legal, at the grinning excavator on the cover ofGoodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. I think of Daisy. She isn’t dead, but she isn’t alive. She isn’t a criminal, but she isn’t a homeowner. I think back to what she said when she first grabbed the twin bed by the window…
“I have sad.”
Chapter Twelve
• • • • •
On Wednesday mornings, wehave Mr. Pete’s Music & Messy Play Class, a sing-along session with a drum circle and one of those colorful parachutes. Mr. Pete is either a frustrated musical prodigy or a pervert. It could go either way.
His class takes place each week in the Stuy Town community room. The room has fluorescent lights, linoleum floors, and bars on the windows. It’s where every parent who has ever woken up and realized that they stayed in New York entirely too long dumped their unwanted toys before decamping to New Jersey. The remnants of Legos, errant Barbie limbs, a pint-size piano with only sharp keys. When the room isn’t being used as a playroom, seniors use it for a Sit-and-Be-Fit aerobics class. Near the door is a corkboard overflowing with notices:Shivah Will Be Held for Melvin Stein, 9 a.m.–2 p.m. Apt. 209…Narcotics Anonymous, 6 p.m. On Monday…I fixate on a new sign that looks like the Unabomber wrote it:To the Lady That Pulls Off All the Flyers. What Is Your Problem, Lady!!! Are You So Unhappy That You Take Them Off?
Yes, Holden may have picked up and gnawed on a cigarette butt, a corroded AA battery, and the innards of a Teletubby, but whereelse can you do a twenty-dollar drop-in music class without going outside?
I sit next to a nanny snapping at a toddler (“¡No te haces pee-pee aqui!”) and google the Garden Gate preschool.Tuition starts at $62,750 (*not including application fees). Annual giving expected from all families. “You fucking serious?” The other moms from the neighborhood trickle in and spread out on the tattered rug at a safe distance. The mom unpacking an enormous diaper bag with reusable containers of nut-free organic snacks. The mom wiping snot from her son’s nose. The lesbian moms. The pregnant mom. The mom slathering everything in antibacterial hand gel. The forty-something IVF mom.
Audrey kicks the door open and drags Sloane’s stroller in backward, on the phone. (“I’m not going to your mother’s house again. I’m not doing it.”) She lets the door fall on Brit, who hardly notices, breezing in with her UppaBaby. “Quinn slept until seven. Can you believe it?” I cannot. Olivia, a super-fit mom, parks her Baby Jogger City Mini Double Stroller and sits by Audrey. They eye a couple of almond moms (white, dreads, babies in slings). Audrey whispers to Olivia, “I bet those bitches don’t vaccinate,” then flashes a fake smile and waves. “Hi, Willa! Missed you at Baby Beluga.”
A pregnant mom wobbles onto the rug. I want to say her name is Amanda, but I wasn’t really paying attention when Mr. Pete made us all introduce ourselves last week. Amanda, or whoever, has been crying. “Cooper didn’t get into Garden Gate.”
Audrey can hardly hide her horror. “Oh my God, sweetie.”
Olivia shakes her head. “They probably took a donor’s kid.”
