DOE STOPPED FOR sandwiches for dinner. They would pack tonight, and take the early ferry tomorrow. They would drive through Connecticut, they would drive through New York, they would cross the Hudson, they would find New Jersey. They would drive through states they’d never been to, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, unfashionable states where a farmhouse with a porch didn’t cost a million dollars. She would have to hear Shari cry with joy at every charming town, every vista, “Maybe we should live here!”
A miracle, people were saying about her landing. Who would have thought you’d land in a pool, on top of an oversized inflatable pool toy?
Unlike some other unlucky person, a kid, for example, who wanted to show his sister that he could swim, and didn’t have an inflatable mutant to land on. Why would one drown, and not the other? There was no answer to that question, and yet you still had to go on living.
When she pulled up there was a Porsche in her driveway and Daniel was sitting on her lawn, cross-legged. His hoodie was up.
She got out slowly. It saved time if you were willing for a scene to play out. She sat next to him, grunting with pain as she lowered herself down. He didn’t even open his eyes. What an arrogant bastard. She tried not to wonder what Daniel wanted, because what was the good of that.
At last she heard him exhale, and he swept off the hood. She expected him to ask how she was, but of course he didn’t.
“I’ve been on the phone with lawyers all morning,” he said. “Lark is dealing with the Belfry board. Dodge is threatening to sue us for negligence and for harming his reputation.”
“And then there’s me,” Doe said.
“I’m prepared to make you an offer,” he said.
Well, of course. How could it be that she had gone through almost an entire day without realizing this moment would happen? How could it be that the girl who looked for the big chance had missed the one staring her in the face and blowing a horn?
“It’s predicated on a couple of things,” he said. “First, our friendship. That’s why I’m here, talking to you—you’re hard to find, by the way—instead of my lawyers.”
“Yeah, thanks for all the feels,” Doe said. “I’m doing fine. Contusions, a ligament tear, every muscle hurts. No worries.”
“Second, you were present at the studio visit in which Dodge explained the weather parameters of the sculptures—”
“I was there as a friend only,” Doe said.
“—and witnesses report that instead of trying to secure the castle or locate the crew you climbed inside it. Lastly, Lark, before leaving for the night, told you, as an employee of the museum, to alert the crew to take down the sculptures immediately.”
“She didn’t!”
“The settlement is one point five million,” Daniel said. “Considering that your MRI was clear and you have a couple of bruised ribs, I find that generous.”
Doe said nothing.
“You did not graduate nor attend Reed College,” Daniel said. “That’s about the extent of my investigation into your background, but I’m sure there’s more. You, Doe, are a girl on the make, and girls on the make always have things to hide.”
Was that what she was, a girl on the make? Quite the little operator?
In the movies, the girl walks away from the money. The decent girl.
“All medical expenses will be covered in addition, of course,” Daniel said.
The question pressed against her teeth, it came from someplace that was almost like a howl. Is Lark a part of this?
Shari popped out of the house, the wind whipping her hair. She held up a plastic bin full of toiletries. All those shampoos and conditioners and body oils and shower gels she had brought into the house, crowding the bathtub ledges. Fortune favors the moisturized! In another life, Shari and Lark would have bonded over lemongrass.
Shari didn’t recognize Daniel, sitting in his hoodie, looking like a neighbor. You couldn’t spot summer-weight cashmere from that far away.
“What should I do with these?” she shouted.
“Toss them!”
“Are you crazy? It’s L’Oréal! We should start packing the car!”
Daniel gave her a sharp glance. “You’re moving?”
Shari laughed as the breeze blew back her hair. She leaned forward against the wind, frozen in position.
“Look at me, I’m a mime!” she yelled.
Doe laughed.
It felt strange.
It didn’t mean that anything lightened—not leaving, not being trapped in a car for two days with her mother, not heading to odious Belinda—but it was good to remember that Shari could make her laugh occasionally.
The screen door banged behind Shari. The sound drove her crazy. Doe was used to the door, she always stopped and caught it with the sole of her foot and eased it closed, an action that was by now involuntary. Shari let it bang. It was one of a thousand irritants that made up her mother.
One of the thousand irritants that made up love.
“How’s Lark?” she asked.
“She’s fine. She’ll deal with this and move on.”
“She’s a mess,” Doe said. “Her first big curatorial gig, her first big event at the museum, and it goes so far wrong you can’t even imagine. I was just at the market, everyone is talking about her. A hyena ended up on Sally Jameson’s roof. A wolf in the electrical wires. Someone almost died. That would be me. Criminal negligence, I think you’d call it.”
Doe stood—she tried not to grunt, but she did, the movement catching her breath—and continued, “So I’m supposed to say that I’m the one who was negligent, and I guess I can’t sue myself, so, good solution. This is what you do, right? You goad her and push her, she fails, you cover it up.”
“Your point?”
“I don’t have one, really. I’m just sad about it.”
“Take the deal, Doe.”
Doe hesitated.
“Well? It goes off the table as soon as I get in the car.”
The Porsche door opened. Lark got out. How had Doe missed her? The sight of her made her weak in the knees. No internal injuries. What a laugh.
“Get back in the car!” Daniel roared as she walked up.
“Oh, Daddy, be quiet.” Lark stood in front of Doe. She looked at her a long time, and reached to touch the bruise on her chin. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay,” Doe said.
“They said nothing was broken—”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“You really hurt me,” Lark said.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s the first time you said that, you know? It shouldn’t have been so hard to say.”
“Whole songs have been written about how hard that is to say.”
“Shut up,” Lark said, crying. “You look so awful.”
Behind Lark, Doe could see Shari on the lawn, holding a suitcase, standing still, as though by not moving she could make it happen.
Or Doe could make it happen, maybe.
She carefully put her arms around Lark. She leaned in. She smelled…nothing. No lavender, no grapefruit, no essential oil of anything except Lark’s real scent, the scent she had come to know in the dark, in the places she’d been the most real with another person. Lark had not perfumed herself this morning. By the smell of her hair, she hadn’t even showered.
She felt Lark’s arms encircle her. She touched a sore place, and Doe tried not to wince.
“Did I ruin it?” Doe asked, whispering.
“Do I really fall for everything? Because it kind of devalues what I’m falling for, here. If you follow it to its logical concl—”
“Shut up,” Doe said, and kissed her.
“Okay, I think we need to reevaluate our next step,” Daniel said, and Shari clapped her hands in applause while Daniel winced, and so, a new dysfunctional family was born.