Life and Other Inconveniences(5)

“Think about it. We’ll speak soon.”

“No, we won’t.” But she had already hung up.

I went to the kitchen table and sat down, my mind both racing and empty at the same moment.

Genevieve was dying. I waited for some emotion—rage, satisfaction, grief—to hit me. Nothing did. My stomach growled, so I ate another cookie.

Once, I had loved my grandmother and wanted desperately for her to love me. That hadn’t happened. Try getting someone to love you for ten years and failing . . . It leaves a mark.

So she was dying. I told myself I didn’t care. What about Hope? Would my sister care? Would she miss Genevieve, who, from what the staff at her facility told me, visited at least several times a month? It was hard to tell; my sister was nonverbal. She was a sweet girl, full of smiles and snuggles when her seizures weren’t stealing away her days, or her rages weren’t taking over. She had a severe case of tuberous sclerosis, and every complication that went with it.

At least Genevieve had done right by my sister.

An image of my grandmother and her housekeeper/companion Donelle on the terrace in the summer flashed through my head. Cocktail hour observed religiously, their laughter, the breeze coming off Long Island Sound. My room, painted the faintest blush pink, my giant bed and fluffy white comforter, the tasteful throw pillows, the window seat that overlooked the wide expanse of grass, the rock walls that bordered the yard, the giant maple tree. The bathtub I could fill so deep I could float in it.

I also remembered how I wasn’t allowed to have posters in my room, or funny signs, or the tie-dyed pillow I made with Beth, my best friend in high school, or the goldfish I won at the Ledyard Fair. I wasn’t allowed anything Genevieve deemed “tacky.” I wasn’t allowed a bulletin board on which to pin mementos or souvenirs. I had to make my bed and replace the pillows exactly as Genevieve wanted, and the second I took off my shoes, they had to go into the closet. It wasn’t a prison by any means, but it wasn’t really my room, either . . . it was a catalog page from Genevieve London Home Designs, and my personality was not welcome.

I remembered Genevieve’s rage when I told her I was pregnant. How she’d told me to abort my baby or give her up for adoption. Five minutes ago, she’d offered to leave that same child millions.

Like that could undo everything. I’d made a life with my baby, got through college an inch at a time, working nights at a grocery store, leaving Riley with Pop, fighting to stay awake in class.

Money wouldn’t undo the past.

And yet . . . Riley was almost done with her junior year, since she’d started kindergarten a year early, being a smarty-pants. We’d already looked at some colleges online and visited the University of Chicago in April. I didn’t have a lot saved for her college, but I had some. A little bit of every single paycheck had gone into a savings account since before she was even born . . . but when I said little, I meant it. A drop in the bucket. I was hoping Jason would help—counting on it, really—though, legally, he wasn’t obliged to pay anything. He had another family back east, and while he’d never missed a child support payment, he’d never given any extra, either. He worked in construction; his wife did tech part-time.

Genevieve, however, was frickin’ loaded. Her company was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Sheerwater, her house in Stoningham, Connecticut, had to be worth at least $15 million alone.

It didn’t matter. Riley would be fine; I’d take out more loans even though my own were still choking me and would be for a long time; she’d take out loans, too. Maybe she’d get one of those full scholarships at the Ivy League colleges for incredibly bright kids. Maybe do a couple of years at a community college. Maybe Jason would take care of everything.

I wasn’t going to sell my soul, not even for my daughter.

It wasn’t worth it. We couldn’t go. We shouldn’t go.

We weren’t going to go.





CHAPTER 2


    Genevieve


Here are some facts about getting older.

You hate young people because their manners, clothes and speech, as well as their taste in books, music, film and television, are all inferior.

You leak when you laugh, cough, hiccup, sneeze.

Putting on a bra becomes nearly impossible. Your arms don’t bend that way anymore. Nylons are even worse, because you can lose your balance and fall.

You go through a second puberty, sprouting hair from your ears and nose while your eyebrows and lashes thin and your upper lip grows hairs as thick and sharp as wire.

You wait all day to have a drink.

You nap when you don’t want to and can’t sleep when you do.

You have regrets. Once you dismissed them as a waste of time, but as you get older, they creep back.



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I was always an attractive woman. A great beauty, to tell the truth. Grace Kelly and I could’ve been sisters, people used to say. It was true. My parents had been quite attractive . . . I always thought like marries like in most cases. Of course, you see the aberrant couple—Beyoncé and her rather homely husband (yes, of course I know who Beyoncé is, I do live on this planet). But more or less, beautiful people marry beautiful people. And if one is extremely wealthy but also homely or plain . . . Prince William, for example . . . one can marry a great beauty like Kate Middleton and create attractive children.