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I shake my head.
“You don’t know that one?” one of the women asks.
I shake my head again. No. I don’t know that song.
“Okay, honey, why don’t you sing a song you do know?” the other woman says.
I’m still so cold and it feels like I’ve been quiet for hours. I make fists with my feet in my Mary Janes and I want to throw up because I can’t think of a song.
“Why don’t you just sing the ABCs?” the man says. I can tell he’s annoyed with me. I start to sing and I don’t know how I’m doing it. I know they can barely hear me but I can’t make myself sing any louder. The alphabet feels too long and then it’s finally over. I still don’t smile.
“Okay, thank you, sweetheart,” the man says without even looking at me.
I know I didn’t do a good job because Mother doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the week unless we’re in front of Richard.
•••
MOTHER BREAKS HERsilence at bedtime to read me her favorite book about a bunny and its mother. She tells me she loved it as a child because she always wanted to run away, but I don’t like that book at all. I keep that to myself, but I think somehow she knows and reads it to me anyway. Almost every night. That bunny tells his mother he is going to run away and turn into all sorts of things to stay away from her, but she promises she will find him no matter what. Why does he want to run away from his mother? I don’t think I could ever run away from mine. I can’t imagine running away from Mother,even when she hurts my feelings, but maybe if I run away, I could get all of her attention for once.
But I don’t know where I would go.
And I don’t know if she would come find me.
Her bunny.
•••
RICHARD IS GONEby Father’s Day. The house sells quickly and I’m angry with Mother because I don’t want to leave. She says we have to, but it feels too soon and it feels wrong. I don’t really understand what’s happening. What about Grandma Lois? I tell Mother I will miss her and Richard and my school and the house, and to shut me up Mother scoops me in her arms and jumps right into the swimming pool with me with all of our clothes on. She’s finally in the pool with me.
Mother and I scream and laugh and splash each other. My skirt floats as I move my hips from side to side and it makes me giggle. She reaches out for me and I go to her, arms first. “How can you miss anyone or anything when you’re with me?” she asks, pulling me close. Then she cradles me like a baby. “You’ll always be with me, bunny. Right?”
I tell Mother I can sing like Princess Ariel when I’m under the water. Would she like to hear it? She actually smiles at me and says she does. We hold hands and count to three and jump up and then down under the water. I watch the bubbles come out of her nose as she watches me sing, garbled and giddy that Mother is finally in the pool with me. She lets go of my hands to clap when I finish. We’re almost out of breath and I wish we were actually mermaids so we could stay there longer.
Before popping back up to the surface we smile at each otheragain. With our teeth. When I feel the sun on my face again, I’m still smiling and feel so happy and forget that we have to leave, but Mother’s face has already changed. Her smile is gone. “The next pool will be better,” she says. I’m cold again. Mother hoists herself up out of the pool without looking at me, her jeans soaking wet, and walks back into the house.
When she shuts the door behind her, I fall back under the water andcry.
CHAPTER
3
THE CASE COMPANYwas a huge get for the ad agency, so I was flooded with constant praise by all of my superiors and, begrudgingly, by my peers. I could feel another promotion was imminent as long as I delivered on what we promised the Case Company. The agency wasn’t aware that I was offering my pussy on a platinum platter to the family’s default golden boy, but that was neither here nor there. New business had closed and then Collin asked me out, so I hardly saw the correlation. I knew the office would be shortsighted about our burgeoning relationship, so I would have to keep it under wraps until we were engaged.
Another day, another dollar, and I had to answer my own phone at work since my assistant was late coming back from lunch. Unacceptable, but I rather enjoyed chewing her out because she looked like a distressed amphibian when she was upset and it made me laugh. Cheap thrills. Per the incoming number on the screen, I fullyexpected Collin’s voice on the other end, relatively deep with a dose of that mysterious mid-Atlantic about it. Instead, a timid female voice was on the line.
“Hello, is this Bea?”
“Yes, and who is this?” I raised an eyebrow, suspicious. I never liked an unexpected conversation with a stranger.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I should have said!” the mystery woman replied, shaken, with no confidence to speak of. “My name is Sylvia Austin. Syl, actually. I go by Syl. I’m Collin’s new assistant.”
Hmm. I had a vague recollection of Collin telling me he was in the process of hiring someone, but I had wrongly assumed he would hire an Ivy League bro, some new grad whose father was cashing in a favor from Collin’s father so the nepotism cycle could continue indefinitely. I waited patiently for Syl to say what she wanted, but the silence went on for far too long.
“So does Collin wish to speak to me,Syl?”
“No, no! He’s in a meeting. Actually, I was just making some updates at my desk and I was wondering if you could share a few preferences with me?”
“Preferences?”
