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“What did you think of?”
“An elephant.”
“Good choice!”
“I love you, Mama,” she says, and buries her face in my neck.
Mama. That’s me. Mommy, on the other hand, lives in Italy with her fiancé, the famous plastic surgeon, in a villa on Lake Como, three doors down from George Clooney. I bet Mommy waves at George from the pontoon of her villa. I bet she thinks George would ditch Amal in a heartbeat if he thought he stood a chance with Mommy. I bet he would, too.
There’s a photograph of Mommy on Charlie’s bedside table. It’s me who put it there. After she left, Charlie, who was five at the time, couldn’t even sayMommywithout having an asthma attack. I absolutely believe they were panic attacks and said so, but I got told off, so now everyone pretends Charlie used to have really bad asthma, then made a full recovery. She also used to bite people and everyone pretended that was completely normal too, and she used to steal—sorry, take things without permission—and that too got swept under the rug along with everything else, so that by then the rug had started to look like the Sierra Nevada.
I spent the best part of two years nursing this sweet child back to happiness, with the help of her lovely teacher Jenny Lee. It was me who had the photo printed, because as I often said to Charlie,Mommy loves you,which isn’t remotely true. Mommy doesn’t love anyone except Mommy, but I believe the illusion ofMommy loves youis better thanMommy couldn’t care less, sweetie. Charlie and I chose the photo frame together—bleached wood with starfish and seashells—and the picture is of the two of them on a beach. Mommy sitting on the sand with the dunes behind her. She’s in a polka dot bikini and a wide brim hat and enormous sunglasses. She looks surprisingly happy. Charlie is sitting in front of her, also facing the camera with Mommy’s arms wrapped around her waist. She’s wearing a matching one-piece polka dot swimsuit and cute sunglasses and she’s laughing too. She’s missing a front tooth and her hair is bleached by the sun and so frizzy it looks like wild cotton candy. My favorite part of the picture is that she’s pushing against Mommy’s forearms and clearly trying to get away. Sure, she’s obviously having a ton of fun and wants to play in the sand and run into the sea. But still.
I put another two photos of Mommy on the pin board above her desk. The pin board is a jumble, mostly pictures of animals. Charlie isobsessedwith animals. She wants to be a vet when she grows up, or run an animal sanctuary. Her walls are covered with animal posters—dolphins, cats, chimpanzees, giraffes, dogs, meerkats, and an enormous one of a young Jane Goodall sitting with a chimp eating a banana while she checks for parasites in its fur. On the board there are also pictures of Charlie and her best friends at a birthday party; pictures of her with Jack and I camping at Curly Creek Canyon; a picture of me carrying Charlie, aged six, on my shoulders on a vacation in Yellowstone valley. We even share a pin, Mommy and I. One corner each bonded by a single tack.
In the two years I have been with Charlie’s father, I have spent many a night consoling a sobbing Charlie who still doesn’t understand what she did wrong, why her mother moved to the other side of the world for a new man with a red Ferrari and didn’t take her along.
But we learned to cope, together. Charlie doesn’t have asthma attacks anymore. She doesn’t bite, or so I thought, and honestly, if biting is all she does, it’s not so bad. She used to ram her head against the wall—and people—literally dropping her head down like a goat and running into things, brick walls, whatever. We don’t do that anymore. We don’t ram anything, thank God.
Mommy FaceTimes once every couple of months. When Jack and I first got together, it was once a week, then slowly the calls became further apart and now they happen whenever Mommy gets around to it.
And that is what’s eating at Charlie right now; it’s her birthday in just over two weeks, and she wants her mother to be here and celebrate with her, the way she has in the past. Last year she and Leon flew over, first class, stayed at the Four Seasons, took Charlie out shopping at Barney’s in Pine Street and out to lunch at Shiro’s for sea urchin, and then they flew back. I didn’t see Bronwyn on that trip. Jack thought it was best and I agreed wholeheartedly. When Charlie came home, I got her out of her frilly dress and into her favorite jeans and tee, and we went out with Daddy for hot chocolate and marshmallows at the Cat Café in Capitol Hill, which is Charlie’s favorite place in the world.
But this time, Mommy has been vague about her plans. She hasn’t FaceTimed either, and every day Charlie asks if we’ve heard anything, and every day we say,No, sorry sweetie, not yet.
Until this morning.
“I have an idea,” I say, caressing her hair.
“What?” she asks, her sad brown eyes looking up at me.
“I think it’s time for the freezer.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s an old trick my mother taught me. Tried and true. Works every time.” While the story is kind of true, I embellish it a little and turn it into a full ritual. I tell her that for it to work she must write down Valerie’s name on a small piece of paper, fold it once then once more, blow on it and put it deep in the freezer.
“Then when you see her again, no matter what she says or does, it won’t affect you. In fact, you’ll barely notice she’s there. All you’ll think is,do I know you? Oh, wait, that’s right. You’re in the freezer. You can’t touch me.”
Charlie opens her eyes wide. “Really?”
I shrug. “If they’re in the freezer, they don’t matter anymore. They’re frozen out. If she talks to you, you raise your hand, like this.” I dislodge myself from our embrace and raise her hand, palm out facing me. “And you say, don’t talk to me. You’re in the freezer.”
She pulls her hand away, rolls her eyes. “It’s not true!”
“Yes! It is! Whatever she says to you does not matter. It does not count as long as she’s in the freezer. You don’t have to actually tell her if you don’t want to. Just raise your hand. Or do it in your head. Trust me, if they’re in the freezer? They may as well be on Mars.”
She pouts and shakes her head. I throw in a hot chocolate and in the end, she gives in and we walk downstairs to the kitchen. She writes down Valerie’s name on a square of paper, scrunches it up, blows hard on it, then pushes it to the corner of the freezer between the fillets of bass and a packet of frozen peas. She looks up at me and smiles. She’s so content after that, so pleased with herself, it makes me think maybeIshould putMommyin the freezer. After I dismember her. So she’ll fit.
Once that’s done and we’ve flicked the door of the freezer closed and bumped fists, I decide it’s time to bring up the elephant she loves so much in the room.
“So…guess what,” I say, twirling my spoon in the hot chocolate I’ve just made us.
“What?”
“Daddy told me something this morning. I was going to wait until he was here, but I don’t know where he is so he’ll just have to miss out.”
“What?” she cries.
