“What about your brothers?” Diana asked. “They were adults, right? Couldn’t they have helped?”
Daisy felt herself squirming under the other woman’s gaze. She forced herself to sit still. “David was married and living in Kentucky, and Danny was in New York City, but he was in graduate school, so he hardly ever made it home. I was the only one left. And—well, I was the girl. It just felt like the household stuff naturally landed on my shoulders.” With her forefinger, she wiped a bead of condensation off her glass. “The thing is, it wouldn’t have even been for very long. Six months after I got married, my mom met Arnold Mishkin, the guy who lived in the penthouse in her apartment building. He was a retired doctor, so he had plenty of money. A romance for the ages,” Daisy said, trying to smile and not think about how it had hurt to see her mom smiling again, and know that it was this new man, this stranger, who’d done what Daisy couldn’t. “My brother Danny calls them the lovebirds.” She drew herself up straight in her seat, which seemed to be trying to coax her into a slouch, and said, “What’s the best city you’ve ever visited?”
They talked about Paris, where Diana had spent a whole summer when she was in her twenties, about chocolate croissants and macarons and the best patisseries. Diana mentioned stints in Los Angeles （“terrible traffic”） and Phoenix （“incredible shopping”） and Cleveland （“better than you’d think”）。 Her hands moved gracefully as she spoke, her voice rising and falling in a way that Daisy found extremely soothing… although, again, that might have been the vodka.
Diana talked about visits to Tokyo and Rome. Daisy listened, wistfully recalling her own grand plans. When Beatrice no longer needed bottles or sippie cups or an endless supply of chicken nuggets, Daisy had wanted to travel, and Hal had been perfectly amenable. The problem was that his idea of a perfect vacation was not Europe but, instead, a resort with a golf course that could be reached by a direct flight from Philadelphia International Airport, while Daisy wanted to eat hand-pulled noodles in Singapore and margherita pizza in Rome and warm pain au chocolat in Paris; she wanted to sit in a sushi bar in Tokyo and a trattoria in Tuscany; to eat paella in Madrid and green papaya salad in Thailand; shaved ice in Hawaii and French toast in Hong Kong; she wanted to encourage, in Beatrice, a love of food, of taste, of all the good things in the world. And she’d ended up married to a man who’d once told her that his idea of hell was a nine-course tasting menu.
“Are you close to your brothers?” Diana was asking.
“Well, David’s still in Kentucky. I only see him once or twice a year. But Danny’s nearby. He and his husband live about an hour away from Philadelphia, and they’re terrific.” Daisy studied Diana’s face for any signs of surprise or distaste at the mention of Danny having a husband, but all she saw was the way Diana’s head was cocked as she listened closely. Of course she’s not a homophobe, Daisy told herself. She’s educated and sophisticated. She lives in New York City and she travels the world. If anything, a gay brother would probably give Daisy cachet instead of being counted against her.
“Jesse teaches dance, and works in an art gallery, and Danny’s a counselor at a high school in Trenton.” Daisy rummaged around with her toes, searching for her boot, which was now completely free of her foot and had escaped somewhere underneath the table. “And they live in Lambertville, which has this lovely downtown, with all kinds of shops and galleries.” She couldn’t stop herself from sighing.
“You prefer city living?” Diana asked.
“If it had just been me, I think I would have loved to live in a city. But Hal had strong feelings about raising kids in a place where they could ride their bikes and have backyards. And I got pregnant a year after we got married.” Daisy sighed again, and Diana looked sympathetic.
“Was that hard?” she asked.
“Oh, it was about what I should have expected. Colic. Screaming all night long. Feeling like a failure, because I’d wanted to breast-feed for a year, and Beatrice wouldn’t cooperate. Even when she was six weeks old, she wanted nothing to do with me.” Daisy tried to smile, to make it sound like a joke and not something that had wounded her deeply, something that pained her still. “My mom came for a week, right after Beatrice was born, but she wasn’t a lot of help. And then…” Daisy looked down into her empty glass. “Well, after my mom went home, it hit me.”