My mom is careful and quiet and doesn’t look into my eyes. She takes a sip. “They’re going to take the house,” she says. I squint into the low sun. The wooden swing my grandpa made static in the still, thick air. “It was that financial adviser of Javier’s, a damn snake oil salesman. Take out a second mortgage, he said. Rates are one percent.”
“Why are you telling me this?” My mom looks down at my finger, at the yellow diamond ring. The ring that caused so many fights. My face burns. “I knew it. I knew this whole grandma act was because you wanted something from me.”
“So what? You want me to sleep on the street?”
I stand up. “You’ll find a bed. You always do.”
“My God, Emily. You’re going to talk to me that way? After the things you did? The hell you put me through?”
“Putyouthrough? You were never around.”
“Who does those things?” she whispers, as if this is the worst part of it all. “It’s not normal…” The tears really start to flow now, and I feel my face harden. “I never ask you for anything.”
Something snaps. I can’t wait to walk inside and leave my mom to grovel alone on the patio. “The pizza is burning.”
My mom calls after me. “Your grandma may have had a soft spot for you, Emily Joan, but I know you!”
I walk inside, the smell of a gas oven and burnt crust. I search for oven mitts, sliding the blackened Hill Country Fare Frozen Pizza out and onto the stovetop. I swat the smoke away from the fire alarm so that it won’t go off and wake Holden. My eyes are burning. I can almost see Queenie, beautiful, senile Queenie in the rocking chair in the corner suite at the Royal Robson Ranch. We have an Emily in the family.
Nothing looks like it had even a week earlier. Who knew what was true or pure or real anymore? I take off the ring, leave it on the kitchen nook, and pack up.
—
Early the next morning, I take Holden back to New York. I travel light. One bag, Holden strapped to my chest, stroller broken down into a package the size of a boom box. I stroll right through TSA without having to collapse anything or unpack a portable crib that looks suspiciously like a pipe bomb. I am back to basics. I am my antecedents. I could drum up a tincture to cure diaper rash. I could collect wild berries that sustain us both for weeks. I could weave us a blanket on a loom.
At LaGuardia I ask the taxi driver to take us to 527 Park. The missing piece. My reassurance. I don’t have access to a thirty-seven-million-dollar condo. If it isn’t Daisy’s apartment, then whose is it? When we get through the rotating doors, the security guard greets us, handing me a carton of Camel Lights. “Thought you could use these.”
“Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”
He winks. “Of course you don’t, ma’am.”
I go to the playroom to leave Holden with Marcela. She hasConstruction Site: You’re Just Rightand fresh pupusas waiting. I put my nose right up to his and give him the biggest, warmest smile I’ve beenable to muster in days. He looks at me, his legs kicking like he wants to pedal away on an invisible bicycle. Then he says, “Mama.”
Deep relief. “Yes. Yes. That’s right, little koala cutie. I’m your mama, and you are my favorite person in the whole wide world. I love you so much.” My eyes flood before I even know what is happening.
Marcela thrusts him over her shoulder, and as she carries him away, my shiver of relief turns to confusion. “Marcela,” I say. She turns, rubbing her palm in circles against Holden’s back.
“¿Sí, señora?”
“Back when you started here, you said I hired you away from that Brooklyn Heights family, but we hadn’t spoken in months. Did Daisy hire you?”
Marcela gives me a warm grin. “No entiendo.” She’s headed to the changing room. You could eat off of Holden when he’s with Marcela.
“What do you mean? Who hired you?”
“I just do what I’m told, señora.”
—
Upstairs, everything is as I left it. Claire brings me a matcha, circling the ceramic bowl and extending it toward me with both hands and a deep bow, like it’s an Edo-period tea ceremony. “Welcome back.”
I walk past her to the kitchen, where Audrey loads a banana and cashew butter into a blender. I am staring at flaxseeds, spread out all over the white Carrara marble island, ants serving their queen. “Have you seen Daisy?”
Audrey turns the blender back on. “That’s cute.”
In the living room, half a dozen women I don’t recognize sit in lotus pose, settling in for a purity sound bath. Jasmine, who is most definitely not Indian, wears a sari and brushes the edge of a crystal bowl. I am annoyed. I thought we’d talked about appropriation.
I walk up to her. “Yo. Jas. You seen Daisy?” She stands to her feet with verve, the calm cut short by my arrival.
