In which the heroine takes a Breather
I didn’t realize how badly I needed to recharge until Saturday morning when I came up for some country air. After the two-hour drive to our summer house in Connecticut, my mom and I were lounging around in our bathrobes on the loveseat in the kitchen. We’d picked up our traditional latte and croissant combo from Tartine and had the whole spread laid out on a silver tray.
“You know, darling,” my mom said, dipping a tiny edge of a buttery croissant into her coffee, “at first I was disappointed that your father forgot to mention his golf tournament in Maui this weekend. But now that we’re here together, I’m so glad to have a girls’ weekend with you.”
I squeezed her hand and watched an owl roosting in one of the giant pine trees on our property. It felt like it had been a long time since I’d been up here, since I’d seen any bird besides a Central Park pigeon. I’d forgotten how good it felt to get away from the rush of city life and just chill out.
“I’m glad to have a girls’ weekend, too.” I said.
“I wish February had been able to join us.” My mom furrowed her brow, which I knew was against her dermatologist’s orders. “I worry about her, all of her undertakings. She’s so passionate, but she over-extends herself.” Then her face smoothed out, and she turned to look at me. “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about the same thing with you, Flan. You’ve always known how to take it easy. Sometimes I think the rest of us should take a lesson from you.”
For a second, I almost took my mom’s words seriously—I almost said something like “I think I could squeeze you in for a lesson.” It was ridiculous, but I’d been so hung up on saying “yes” to everything anyone asked me to do this week that at this point it felt instinctual.
I started to laugh. “Oh, Mom, I think I might have left that Flan somewhere on the front steps of Thoney. Recently, I’ve been feeling a lot more like Feb.”
“What do you mean?” my mom said. “Are you falling under the spell of that Jade Moodswing, too?”
“Well,” I said, “maybe. She is pretty great. In fact, I might have made Ramsey’s whole season when I told her that Jade agreed to design our field hockey uniforms. And when I told the girls that they all could come see the fashion show, everyone was ecstatic.”
“It’s fantastic,” my mom said. “Your father and I really can’t wait for this fashion show. The idea of our two girls working on it together….” She looked at her watch. “Which reminds me, I’ve scheduled a little surprise in honor of your first catwalk appearance.”
Just then, the doorbell rang, and when I answered it, two blond women in white uniforms walked in without a word. Behind them, two blond men wheeled in contraptions that I soon realized were folding massage beds.
“Right on time!” my mom exclaimed. “How about setting those up here in the living room where we get the soft morning light?” She monitored the progress of our living room’s transformation as the Swedish foursome arranged the beds, drew the blinds, and lit aromatherapy candles. “How’s this for R&R?” she asked me.
“Redefined,” I said, shaking my head at the masseuse’s silent diligence. “This is amazing, Mom.”
When everything was set up, the two men filed out the front door, and the women motioned us toward the side-by-side beds.
“Here,” one of them said brusquely. “You will lie down.”
I didn’t argue, just arranged myself facedown on the table and let the relaxation begin.
“So,” my mom said, her voice slightly muffled by the headrest she was lying on. “How do you rate your first week at Thoney? Are you feeling settled yet?”
“I guess so,” I said as the verbally-challenged masseuse began working on a knot in my neck that I didn’t even know I had. “But I think my calendar is booked for the rest of the semester.”
“You’re a Flood—you make friends easily,” my mom said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I guess. It’s just getting hard to keep track,” I said. “Yesterday, I accidentally double-booked myself. I was tutoring some Thoney girls and forgot that I’d told SBB I’d go over some costuming options for Jake Riverdale’s movie premiere.”
“I’m sure SBB understands,” my mom said. “She certainly knows what it’s like to keep up with a busy calendar. And she’ll be all right at the premiere—she’s always had a good eye for fashion.”
“I know,” I said. “But it was more than that. SBB was also supposed to tutor me on some Shakespeare stuff for my English class. Instead, I was the one doing the tutoring for Dara and Veronica. I wanted to help them, but—”
My mom clucked her tongue. “Flan, you have such a big heart, but you can’t be accountable for everyone else to the point where you forget to be accountable for yourself. I’m glad you’re here, so I can be accountable for you just relaxing.”
“I know,” I said, finally feeling myself sink deep into the massage table. “I’m glad, too.”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: You’re my most responsible child. But I know we’re not around much to keep an eye on you, and I want you to promise me that you’ll take care of yourself.”
“Okay,” I said, letting out a slow yawn. “I promise. It’s just this Virgil thing. I think that’s why I keep saying ‘yes’ to everything anyone asks me to do. I feel like the nicer I am, the closer I get to having it in the bag.”
“I know I’ve told you about when I was Virgil Host,” my mom said, and I prepared myself to hear, for the hundredth time, about the shell-pink Chanel pantsuit she wore when she was Host, about the debate she practiced for a week—back when Virgil was more than just a party—and about the date she’d had flown in from Andover a few months before she’d met my dad.
Then my mom surprised me when she said, “But I haven’t told you how I won the election.”
I popped my head up from the massage table. “No,” I said, “you haven’t.”
Just then I felt a strong pressure on my head and realized the masseuse was practically wrestling my neck back down on the table. “You will relax,” she said roughly, like it was an order.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said meekly, lowering my head again. “So how’d you win, Mom?”
My mom sighed. “It’s not something I’m proud of.” She cleared her throat. “There was this girl. Her name was Harriet Dawson. I still remember—she had these press-on fake red nails, sharp as daggers. I guess you could say she was the Kennedy of my high school years. As you can imagine,” my mom said, “the competition between us was stiff.”
I thought about Willa and the look on her face when she’d told me not to run for Host. “Yeah, I can see that,” I said.
“Well, two days before the election, I’d heard a rumor that Harriet might edge me out. I knew she had a big crush on Uncle Owen—you know he used to have that enormous ’fro.”
I laughed, thinking of the pictures I’d seen of my mom with her older brother, who looked a lot like Patch might look if he let his hair grow about a foot straight out in every direction.
“Well, fortunately,” my mom continued, “Owen had a bad case of laryngitis that week. And I got him to agree to take Harriet out. They went to Sardi’s for dinner, and that poor girl was so into him that she overlooked how contagious the laryngitis was when he went to kiss her goodnight. You can probably guess the rest.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“I wish I were,” my mom said. “Two days later, she’d completely lost her voice and couldn’t make her oration. And that, my dear, is how I won Virgil Host.”
Then both of us busted out laughing, so hard that our masseuses didn’t know what to do with us. They tried to chide us with forceful shushes, and my mom’s masseuse even whopped her on the head with a towel. But when none of that worked, they just threw up their hands and let us crack up until we could pull ourselves together.
“How could I have lived for fourteen years and not have known that story?” I asked my mom when we finally calmed down.
She looked at me seriously and said, “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Maybe I had to wait to tell you until I knew you wouldn’t get any ideas. But listening to you today, darling, and hearing how nice—how utterly opposite—your campaign to win has been, I know that I have nothing to worry about. Besides,” she said, winking at me, “Patch is in Caracas this week.”
“And I don’t think he has laryngitis,” I said, laughing.
By then, our masseuses had literally thrown in their towels and given up on creating any sense of serenity in the room. But to me, it didn’t matter. I felt more relaxed than I had all week.