Sometimes, I drove by neighborhood parties I hadn’t been invited to. Not on purpose! I just happened to be going for a swim at Barton Springs, or grabbing a bottle of Sauv Blanc at the Barton Hills Food Mart. On the way home, I’d swing past a friend’s house to see the street jammed with cars, the yard filled with people I would have thought would have included me.
Would have included us—me and Charlie. If Charlie was with me, we wouldn’t mention the fête. If I was alone, I would swallow my sadness. I told myself, as I lay awake in my queen-sized bed littered with cookbooks and recipe notes, that I was glad I could toss and turn without bothering anyone, could eat a bowl of cereal at three in the morning if I wanted to. Or a sandwich. At three in the morning. Hooray!
But on this night, I wasn’t alone. I was cozy in the circle of my two best friends, Whitney and Annette, celebrating the end of the school year. The boys would start their first full days as summer lifeguards in the morning.
We had been through so much together in the fifteen years since our children’s births. Annette and Whitney both really did seem to love me, which meant everything. I was so scared of losing their warmth.
I watched TV shows and movies about “BFFs,” puzzled over women seeming utterly relaxed with each other. Around my best friends, I was very careful. I needed them too much, I knew. I made gift bags for them “just because.” I was on high alert, the ultimate people pleaser, shape-shifting into whatever Whitney and Annette wanted: a good listener, someone to praise their choices, free at the spur of the moment for a glass or three of wine. I ignored what I needed to be the perfect friend, terrified they would ditch me.
Among them, I was safe inside the “rich mom” circle. If I messed up and was cast out, I’d just be a woman who couldn’t quite afford the neighborhood, and Charlie would feel like I had as a kid: miserable, desperate to escape. He would leave me if the world I made for him wasn’t good enough to want to stay. I knew on some level that this chain of causation was overly dramatic, but on the other hand, the securities of wealth were absolutely real. Our rental home fed to schools with resources and college counselors. We had a Neighborhood Watch.
“The boys are fine, Lizey,” said Whitney, using her affectionate nickname for me. She was five-two with thick black hair that always fell in a shining curtain as if she’d just left a salon chair.
Whitney knew I was a worrier; she passed me the bottle of Chardonnay. We were sipping out of Whitney and Jules’s stemless glasses. The glasses were expensive and fashionable, but I liked a stem, myself. Not that I’d ever say so. “You’re fine, Lizey,” said Whitney. My best friend knew me well: her words made my stomach ease.
I’d met Whitney sixteen years before, when I’d been pregnant with Charlie. I’d arrived in Austin with a few hundred dollars in my wallet, and Whitney had been on floor duty when I’d walked into Zilker Park Realty. She had a friend （Whitney always had a friend） whose elderly mother had just moved into a nursing home and was considering renting out her Barton Hills bungalow. As soon as I walked into the twelve-hundred-square-foot house （the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator a perfect 1970s avocado green）， I knew that 1308 Oak Glen was where my new life would begin.
The bungalow was probably worth three quarters of a million now, a “teardown.” Whitney and Jules had bought it awhile back, becoming my landlords. It was a bit odd how it went down, to be honest: One day Whitney just mentioned that I should write the rent check to her from now on. They hadn’t raised my rent—not yet—and I was hardly in a position to negotiate, but I’d been a bit confused, even upset, at first. Why hadn’t they told me they were buying my home? I never could have bought it myself, but it would have been nice to have been asked, to have been given a chance to bid.
Although I told everyone I was a food writer, I had myriad side hustles to keep us afloat. I was careful, lest any Barton Hills neighbors see me working a menial job. I walked dogs in Round Rock and took on “Tasks” for TaskRabbit. A folder on my desk labeled “Recipe Ideas” was actually a checklist of odd jobs to follow up on each day. Every minute Charlie wasn’t home, I was trying to make some money.
It was possible people thought I had “family money” keeping us afloat.
It was possible I allowed—even encouraged—people to make this assumption.
I did not have “family money.”
I didn’t even have a family.
（Except Charlie. My shining, wonderful Charlie.）
In the end, I’d decided to write the monthly check to Whitney and stop thinking about the whole situation. I wanted to believe Whitney had my best interests at heart. So I made myself believe it.
I adored every inch of our bungalow, even the wall-to-wall shag and vintage appliances. Sometimes, I woke in the middle of the night worrying about Whitney selling and evicting us. But she’d never do that, I told myself, and I usually fell back asleep. At her birthday party the month before, Whitney had drunk a lot of champagne and cornered me by her peonies. “How would you feel,” she asked me, slurring a bit, “about a five—or ten—year lease on Oak Glen? How about rent-to-own?” I had shrieked and hugged her, telling her it was my absolute dream come true.
It was my absolute dream come true.
But she hadn’t mentioned it since.
Our neighborhood, which had been middle-class when I’d moved here, was no longer a place a food writer （or an artist of any kind） could possibly afford. It was built on the edge of the Barton Creek Greenbelt, an eight-mile swath of almost eight hundred acres. From various streets and the land behind the Episcopal church we went to on holidays （joining Whitney and her family—I wanted Charlie to have some organized religion and I had none of my own）， we could access the trails of sheer limestone cliff walls, dense lush vegetation, and popular swimming holes. You never knew who you’d find on the greenbelt—we’d coined the acronym “WDA” to mean “Weird Dude Alert,” so when we were hiking or swimming, we could let the kids know to steer clear without offending anyone. There were so many weird dudes, from stoner University of Texas students, to men walking pit bulls on chains and carrying boom boxes, to homeless campers. There were secret waterfalls and rumored caves. It was a wonderland.
By the time Charlie was born, I had become the sort of mother I’d fervently wished for. （A 180-degree opposite of my actual mom, an aging Cape Cod party girl.） I loved being Liza Bailey, a writer with a bold bob haircut, my bangs cut straight across. I wore Revlon All Night Fuchsia lipstick from the South Lamar Walgreens.
Whitney was generous, hilarious, rich but not spoiled. She’d been a ballet dancer until a hip injury forced her into retirement; her posture was a marvel. She told me where to shop, where to get my hair cut; she introduced me to a chef who needed help writing his first cookbook. As Whitney’s star rose, so did mine.
I’d thought I would need a rich husband to pave my path, but a rich best friend was even better.
I wondered sometimes why Whitney had chosen me. I wanted to believe it was because I was authentic, an honest person and a real friend. Sometimes, I feared it was because I was malleable, more loyal than someone who didn’t need her so desperately. But Whitney, too, was vulnerable. Like me, she’d had a sad childhood, and was trying in real time to figure out how happiness was supposed to look.