Penelope collects herself. “You know what? I don’t even care about this place. It was never going to sell. We’ll make more money with it vacant. Maybe we can even write it off as a charitable donation.”
The police stop asking questions. They thank me for the refreshments and leave. For the first time in months, I feel safe. I feel like I won.
I give Penelope a sly smile on her way out. Direct, my face framed by dark, savage curls. Penelope is paralyzed, a sudden wrench to the gut. She can’t believe it. Surely Emily wasn’t smart enough to have known about the adverse possession squatter laws this entire time. To have known that if you squat in an unoccupied apartment in NewYork City for more than thirty days, you have the same rights as a legal tenant. To have known that it is against real estate law for a property owner to change the locks or remove a squatter’s belongings, or even cut off utilities. You can’t even make them use the poor door.
Surely Emily didn’t plan this whole thing. She couldn’t have shown up in New York, just another girl wanting to be a writer, and intentionally taken a job working for an heiress, and then spent years pretending to be subservient, listening to and waiting on and befriending that heiress. Years of dutifully doing odd jobs and keeping secrets for the heiress and her family, until she gained her trust. Until she became so indispensable, so innocuous, like beige wallpaper, that this heiress would trust her with anything. Ask her to organize tax documents, property reports, credit card statements.
No. Definitely not. Emily wasn’t smart enough. She didn’t even graduate from college. She could’ve never studied the every move of a Malaysian financier, taken notes when he’d talked about how luxury real estate was the next bastion of criminal activity. Followed, over the next several years, as soaring ultra-luxe condo towers, mostly sold to investors and left vacant, popped up, ruining New York’s skyline.
Tame, milquetoast Emily wouldn’t have known any of this. She ran errands. Fetched Pellegrino. And she wasn’t even good at that. Surely she didn’t meticulously track that her heiress friend bought a thirty-seven-million-dollar condo under an LLC. A condo that the heiress wouldn’t be caught dead living in. No. Emily could have never put all of this together and started to see that there might just be a way—a legal way—to make her way back to a luxury condo in the clouds. To bring her baby…Maybe even invite some friends over.
Chapter Forty-Four
• • • • •
We celebrated Holden’s firstbirthday in the playroom at 527 Park, dusting off the indoor snow machine and the kiosk that served hot chocolate and apple cider. I always liked the Winter ONE-derland idea. I bought him a T-shirt that saysOnethat he’s wearing under a plaid wool blazer, with tiny checkered Vans. Marcela set me up with one of the women in her church choir who has a taco stand. I hired Mr. Pete to perform.
Grandma Sue flies back to Melbourne in the morning after a monthlong visit. She and Holden had an instant, visceral connection, as if they lived in the same Australian lullaby. He loves her woodsy scent, the way her entire body shakes when she laughs, his eyes lighting up at every bedtime story about wombats. I look at them together and realize that she gives him something that I cannot, and I am not jealous. I am happy because he needed what Sue gives him. We all did. My mom is even visiting for the big birthday. She is staying at the Pierre with a cosmetic dentist named Lloyd who drives a Porsche and has hair plugs and treats her like a queen. We sold the diamond ring, paid down some of our medical debts, and used the rest for my mom’s mortgage. She downsized to a condo. (You’re welcome.)
Audrey, newly separated and back at work for a venture firm that invests in ghost kitchens, brought Levain cookies. Olivia, in a much healthier place and pregnant with number three, picked up a balloon bouquet featuring the garbage truck and backhoe duo Stinky and Dirty, Holden’s favorites. Olivia landed at a boutique law firm with offices in Dumbo. They made her a partner and offer a year of maternity leave. I splurged on one of those exploding confetti cakes that went viral on Instagram. I don’t have access to the Black AmEx anymore, and Viktor quit, fleeing our crazy, so we are back to riding the M14 bus. But now Holden can stand on his own while I collapse the stroller, and I didn’t have to celebrate his first year in a community room that just hosted a shivah. We figured we could afford to time-share Marcela with the dads who moved in downstairs.
The buzz around 527 Park died down. We still had access to Apartment 8789 but lost the penthouse. August exhausted every legal loophole to help Penelope evict us, but even he couldn’t get us out. Olivia did some pro bono work to help defend us. Out of legal options, August referred Penelope to his fancy crisis PR firm. The plan had been to leak a damaging story about us toThe New York Times. But the move backfired. Instead of talking to a hard-hitting investigative reporter, Penelope ended up giving the story to Molly Gibson, the features writer who gave me her card months earlier.
We invited Molly over and all feigned cooperation, showering her in attention and as much free swag as theTimes’ ethics rules allowed. We didn’t get into the drugs or the sex toys or the suicide attempt or the unauthorized injectables. I’d tightened up the NDAs. Nobody wanted to get banned. What if they had another baby? Try cleaning two butts in a Starbucks bathroom.
In the end, it was Brit who talked. She told Molly that Daisy had indoctrinated all of us. She even agreed to sneak in a recording device, leaking audio of Daisy’s morning affirmations, which, thanks toCourtney Love, sounded nothing like me. Brit told Molly that Daisy had threatened her, gone scorched-earth when she started asking questions about who owned the condo, who bought the art, who employed the full suite of childcare professionals. Last I heard, Brit moved to Hoboken and is expecting. It’s a boy.
Molly’s article, titled “The Privileged Squatters of Park Avenue,” was the type of throwbackTimesStyle section cover that everyone talks about over brunch. Molly took a snarky tone—who could blame her?—calling out our hedonism. Not buying that the condo was actually a “portal” to a more equitable era of motherhood, Molly poked fun at us for sprinkling non-FDA-approved “Brain Dust” in our matchas and for throwing our pain in the fire in the cathartic mind-body workouts. (In retrospect, this did have a faint Rajneeshee flavor, like something out of an Oregon ranch before the feds raided it.)
“Here they were in Vuori bodysuits doing glorified Jazzercise in a thirty-seven-million-dollar apartment on a Tuesday afternoon. How bad could it be?” Point taken.
I emphasized the social-emotional component. “You know how for men, the revolutionary act is beating each other up?” I told Molly, my words tramping all over Daisy’s catchphrase. “Well, for women, it’s just, you know, taking care of ourselves.” I said we were creating a throwback communal space where a village of women could take care of our babies and one another, the way it used to be, only with heated floors and a screening room. But Molly only quoted me talking about “the self-directed play inspired by Scandinavian pedagogy,” pointing out that I am a grant “processor” (she didn’t even use the word “writer”) and not an early childhood development expert. (Thanks for that, Molly.)
We must have looked ridiculous to a twenty-seven-year-old Yale grad on the Style desk who’d never experienced a torn perineum with a side of hemorrhoids.
Molly had asked everyone to put her in touch with Daisy for an interview. We all stayed on message, politely declining. Daisy was, unfortunately, not available. Nobody ratted me out or told her about the whole “two women in one body” thing. Maybe they were afraid I’d enforce the NDA. Or maybe—and I kept this ugly thought quiet—they were afraid of me. Or maybe they just thought it would make them sound even more brainwashed. Whatever the reason, nobody said a word. Molly wrote only of “the enigmatic leader of the quasi cult that has sprung up inside 527 Park. The women all refer to her as ‘Daisy’ and speak of her with utmost reverence and intimidation. Multiple women said Daisy allegedly organized the entire operation, first inviting women to the condo in a post onJuju Bean, an app designed for like-minded mothers to connect. The post has since been deleted. Daisy was not in the apartment the day theTimesvisited. She could not be reached for comment.”
For a while, we were famous. TheNew York Postcouldn’t get enough, saying the billionaire developer behind 527 Park and a bunch of other big buildings had “Serious Mommy Issues.”New Yorkput the “Stylish Squatters of Park Ave.” squarely in the “Lowbrow Brilliant” category of its Approval Matrix.TheToday Showdid a segment on how you could re-create the 527 Park experience in your own suburban home, calling it a “Rich Mom Squatter Kit.”Call Her DaddyandVogueboth reached out, hoping to get an exclusive with Daisy. A think piece inThe Atlanticcalled 527 Park “socialism with skincare” and posited whether our “glossy rebellion” could “lead to an actual rewriting of the rules.” On TikTok, a short-lived #DraftDaisy campaign tried to recruit her to run for mayor. I tried to step up, keep the group going, to balance, as she had, that knife-edge between privilege and protest. But without Daisy, the thrill was gone.
I guess a lot of the moms didn’t realize that the condo didn’t belong to Daisy, and they didn’t want to be associated with illegallyoccupying an apartment—lest squatters get the bright idea to turn up at their brownstones or pitch a tent in the vestibule of their co-op apartments.Juju Beanstarted to advertise knockoff women’s clubs, charging a nominal fee or paid for entirely by sponsored content. Turns out, I didn’t need to steal a Black AmEx. I could’ve gotten BuyBuy Baby and Graco and Carter’s to pick up the tab. Sometimes I feel bad about what I did to Penelope. I never told Beau about her affair, and honestly, I hope August makes her happy. But then I remind myself that it wasn’t really my fault. I don’t blame Penelope either. I blame the way things are. What kind of city has homeless shelters that are full and luxury apartment buildings that are empty? What kind of society lets the world drop doors on new mothers?
Roman finally stopped keeping his head down at work. We spent weeks rehearsing exactly what he would say. He waited until the height of tax season to march into his manager’s office and threaten to quit unless he got a raise and the company’s standard three weeks of family leave. The team was so understaffed by then, with all the layoffs, and the workload so heavy, that his manager had no choice but to agree.
I’m grateful his gambit worked, because shortly after theTimesstory ran, Phil fired me. He got Veronica to tell me. I think she enjoyed it, ending the call with a “You take care now, mkay?” that sounded exactly like “Fuck off forever now, mkay?”
Getting fired was, as I’d expected, the kick in the ass I needed, because I am now working on a book. It started as a poetry collection, but when Leo showed my poems to a literary agent, he said they were “puerile.” He said he read about me in theTimesand wondered if I wanted to write a book, a sort of roman à clef about the elusive cult leader of 527 Park…Daisy.
We sing “Happy Birthday.” (“Bye-bye, baby! Hello, toddler! Your little one is turning one! Where did the time go, you ask? Join theclub of moms everywhere who feel the same way.”) Roman and I stand behind Holden, who is shoveling cake into his mouth and chortling so hard I worry he will choke. His joy fills the space and makes everyone else joyful. Even Bianca, who has warmed to me and offered to help with the party, and June, who thankfully no longer has thoughts of self-harm, are all smiles. I look around at all these faces. The wellness war room is gone, but here they are. My people. The kind of community I never had before, never imagined someone like me could have. Women I now adore and whom I never would’ve been friends with before I had a baby. I could almost burst into tears.
I no longer hurt. I still see Carleigh and Dr. Horowitz regularly. I sleep in bed with Roman. We don’t have to pretend I am somebody else anymore.
When we are finished singing, Marcela comes to clean the cake off Holden’s face with baby wipes that no longer remind me of the stench of the Landing Strip. The balloon twister makes a turtle hat and puts it on Sloane’s head. Holden crawls over to bang on a wooden toddler piano with all its keys. (“Let your one-year-old stop and touch a leaf on a bush, peek behind a mailbox, check out what the dog is sniffing, or see where a path leads.”) My mother (aka “Glammy”) sinks into a beanbag chair, eating cake. Roman leans down and sniffs Holden’s baby jeans. He walks to get a clean diaper out of his own backpack. Good night, good night, Itzy Ritzy Boss Backpack.
The party is winding down. I sneak out. I walk to the elevator and plug floor 87 into the keypad. I feel my ears pop and my stomach sink.
I walk into the condo where it all started. The condo where Penelope almost suffocated the life out of me. The condo where I came back to life. It’s empty. I walk out onto the expansive balcony, and I can almost smell her scent, tuberose and jasmine with a floral undertone. I can almost hear Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” playing, justlike the first time Daisy and I stood on the balcony together. When she told me to invite all my friends over, told me she needed something to pour herself into. I find a battered pack of Camel Lights in my coat pocket. One lucky cigarette left. I light it. Daisy appears beside me, taking the cigarette.
I take in her profile, the delicate outline of her nose. “Why did you leave?”
