The afternoon sun beamed from high overhead. Fiona strolled uptown, buzzing softly from the mimosas. Her phone vibrated with an incoming call. She picked it up this time.
“Ona?” Her mother sounded a little out of breath. “Why didn’t you call me back yesterday?”
“Sorry, Mom,” Fiona said. She reached for a lie. “I was just about to—”
“I need your help.” Fiona tensed. “I need to borrow five thousand dollars.”
“What?”
“Vitamins,” her mother said. “Business opportunity. I have a chance to get in at this level, but only this week—”
“What vitamins?” Fiona said. “I don’t have the money,” she added. She shook a cigarette out of her soft pack.
“It’s a good investment, Ona. Guaranteed return. I have five thousand saved, I need the other half. Vitamin supplements, everything organic. Collagen, fish oil, top-of-the-line best. A big Chinese investor is backing, and there’s only a limited chance for smaller angels. And we get free samples to try, every month.” Her mother went on, describing the starter kit of discounted products that she could use herself or sell at a profit, how she planned to host living room parties to recruit more investors to her team.
“Ona?” her mother said. “I was thinking, maybe it’s a good time for you to move back. We can be partners. You and Mommy.”
“It sounds like a scam,” Fiona said. “Who told you about this?”
“They have a website, you can go look at the videos. Very professional!” her mother insisted. “I researched everything already. No scam.”
“Mom, it’s a pyramid scheme,” Fiona said. “The people at the top get all the money, and they keep adding more and more people at the bottom. Don’t do it, okay? Promise me you won’t do it.”
“How much do you have in savings?”
Fiona stayed silent. She could hear her mother breathing into the receiver, waiting for an answer.
“How is Willy?” her mother said finally.
“Willy? He’s fine.” Fiona tossed her cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. “I have to go, Mom. I’m catching the bus.”
“Are you still smoking?”
“Mom,” she said, exasperated. “I’ll look at the website when I get home.”
“You promised you were going to quit. Why do you lie?”
“I really have to go, Mom.”
“Tell me before Wednesday night, or else I lose my place in line. I’ll FedEx some samples for you to try this week.” Her mother cleared her throat, and it led into a phlegmy cough. Fiona held the phone away from her ear while her mother hacked. When the spell ended, her mother said, “You’re still young, you can make a change, just like that. Think about it. We’ll call it Lin and Daughter!”
More often lately, her mother needled her about moving back to Los Angeles. Conrad had left home when he turned eighteen, two years ago. His dad, Fiona’s stepfather, long gone. Maybe her mother was feeling lonely. Fiona was turning thirty this year, but she knew her mother didn’t see a problem with her grown daughter moving back in. Did the vitamin capsules home business stand in her mother’s mind as a real proposal? Or was it a farfetched tactic to get Fiona packing her bags, shabbily disguised as a cry for help?
Her mother cut a supremely unlikely figure for pushing healthy dietary supplements. She was overweight and prediabetic; last year, an episode of gout forced her into a wheelchair for two months. After she got her legs back, Mom switched from Newports to Mild Seven menthols. She cut down to three cigarettes a day, the best she could manage, despite her doctor’s warnings. Still, her mother nagged Fiona all the time about quitting herself.
She kept walking, drifting east toward Gramercy. Eight years in New York City. Her mother had never visited, not even once. And what did she want to show her mother, anyway? Fiona imagined her life through her mother’s eyes, wreathed in disappointment. The law degree left unfinished, though she was still paying down the loans; a string of attorney-adjacent jobs that didn’t add up to a career. Unmarried, childless. The mess with her ex, Willy. At least her mother didn’t know about that.
Last Christmas, she’d brought Willy home to meet her family. Her mother had read Willy’s face and declared him blessed, five seconds into the introductions. Oh, just look at that intelligent forehead, she’d said, and such big, beautiful earlobes. Fiona translated loosely: Mom likes your face. Willy was fourth-generation and didn’t speak a syllable of Mandarin, Cantonese, Toisan, nothing. Her mother added, in English, “Lucky. Rich!” Fiona had snorted out a laugh, then recovered by hiding it as a cough. Willy’s business cards, which he had designed himself and printed up at Kinko’s, said he was a documentary filmmaker. He was twenty-eight, a year out of Tisch. He scraped together a living on thin royalty checks from downloads of his MFA thesis, a short doc on Coney Island sideshow performers; the occasional DP gig on shoots that paid in IMDb credits, MetroCards, and catered food. Willy’s only consistent cash flow came from delivering laundry bundles for his uncle’s fluff-n-fold on Henry Street. She had laughed at her mother’s read on Willy’s face, but Fiona also wanted to believe that her mother knew something she didn’t, some greater future for Willy, and for herself. Willy was a hustler, one of the things she had liked most about him. She’d just never imagined that she could be one of his marks. And after all these years in New York, where she’d learned how to live as if always on guard.