The Lifeguards(24)
The garage door closed. Whitney’s mind spun and she tried to stay still, to scan her body, taming the frightened parts. She climbed from her car and entered the house. A “Welcome” mat fully sanitized the bottoms of her shoes before she stepped inside. Blinding light filled her modern kitchen. Maybe white marble everywhere (except the obsidian countertops) had been a bit much. Whitney smiled weakly at her cleaner, Gilly, who was polishing the freezer drawer of the already gleaming stainless-steel refrigerator.
Jules had texted that he would be home in an hour, and Whitney knew she needed to be calm and collected by then. She went into the master bathroom, torn between playing a Breethe meditation through her bathroom speakers, taking a hot bath in her double-sized Jacuzzi (complete with lights that could be synced by Bluetooth to her favorite songs), or popping a Xanax. She stood before her bathroom mirror, letting the sensors measure her heart rate, BMI, posture, and blood flow. (Their toilet regularly tested their waste for signs of disease.) Whitney opened her medicine cabinet. She couldn’t resist putting her hand on her Kate Spade makeup case. Liza had given her the case the year before “just because.” Whitney had almost cried when she opened it, savoring a friend who thought of her “just because”! Was that love? It felt like love to Whitney.
Whitney started to unzip, just wanting to make sure everything was still in place…
The bathroom door swung open and Roma strode in without knocking. “Mom?” said Roma.
“Honey?” said Whitney, zipping up the case quickly and slamming shut the cabinet.
“What’s going on?” said Roma, sitting on the edge of the Jacuzzi. Roma was deeply tanned, wearing a yellow bikini. Whitney felt a stab of jealousy at her daughter’s youthfulness, followed by a wave of affection for her pinkish, sunburned nose. “Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me anything?” said Roma, looking at herself in Whitney’s bathroom mirror.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” said Whitney.
“You probably think I had something to do with this,” said Roma, standing up, opening Whitney’s cabinet, helping herself to Whitney’s hairbrush and running it through her glossy brown hair. “You always blame me for everything.”
Whitney bit her tongue and sent a quick prayer: Please don’t let her open the Kate Spade case.
Roma met her mother’s eyes in the mirror with a strange expression. Whitney tried to convince herself that maybe…maybe?…her daughter was just looking at her with simple teen disdain. That was normal, right? Teenage girls were supposed to disdain their mothers!
From infancy, Roma had been worrisome. While Xavier latched right on, Roma would not nurse, turning her tiny head disdainfully and wailing. After three days, when Whitney was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Jules came home with formula, a bottle, and twelve kinds of plastic nipples. “Leave her to me,” he said. He took baby Roma (clad in her pink Vuitton pajamas, a gift from Jules’s mother) and left the master bedroom, shutting the door.
“No!” Whitney had cried, a sense of failure descending. “Jules! No!” Whitney desperately missed Roma, but also (her stomach twisted when she admitted it to herself) felt enormous relief.
Jules had opened the door, peered in. “No?” he said.
Whitney felt guilty, but whispered, “Thank you.”
Jules looked at her with tenderness (he had once been tender!) and shut the door.
Xavier nursed easily, gazing at Whitney. “My love,” she said. His eyes fell shut and he nestled closer. Whitney breathed in the smell of milk and skin, leaned her head back against her silk headboard, and smiled.
* * *
—
NOW, WHITNEY TRIED TO hide her annoyance with her fifteen-year-old daughter. “Come on, Roma,” she said. “I would never think—”
“Yeah, right,” said Roma. Whitney gritted her teeth. She hated this expression. But this was normal! she told herself. A normal teen would be annoyed with her mother!
Whitney forced herself to move behind her daughter, put her arms around her. In the bathroom mirror, they looked peaceful, like a painting. Like the painting Jules had commissioned that now hung above one of their fireplaces. “You’re going gray,” said Roma.
“I love you, Roma,” said Whitney evenly.
“Whatever,” said Roma, walking out, taking Whitney’s hairbrush with her.
* * *
—
WHITNEY TOOK A XANAX and a bath, hoping to halt her rising panic. Her shoulders loosened, and her mind slowed down, then fell silent.
She toweled off and put on a silk robe. In the kitchen, she found her husband and daughter. Roma was perched on a Lucite barstool, still barefoot and wearing her skimpy bikini. Jules was making himself a coffee. “If you take me to get a new phone like you said you would, Daddy, I could ask around and see what people know. I never connected my computer to my phone when I upgraded! I’m, like, living in the desert at this point. Like, a desert island. But in my house. In Texas. You know what I’m saying!”
“Coffee, darling?” asked Jules.
“Yes, Daddy,” said Roma.
“He means me, Roma,” said Whitney. “And no, but thank you.”
“Can I have an espresso, Daddy?” said Roma.
Jules looked at Whitney: He wanted her to be the bad guy.