They’d gone around and around, and Hal, as usual, had prevailed. He’d gotten Bea to write an essay through some combination of cajolery and outright bribery, and Daisy suspected that he’d upped his annual gift to the school to an amount that could have ensured the acceptance of a hunk of rock. Beatrice had gotten into the car willingly, had been chatty and even excited on the drive to New Hampshire. But after she’d arrived, her phone calls consisted of one-word answers （“How are your classes?” “Fine.” “Do you like your roommate?” “Sure.”）。 On her first-semester report card, she’d gotten straight Cs and a dozen unexcused absences.
Hal continued up the stairs, muttering about how that was the last donation he’d ever be giving Emlen. Daisy waited for the sound of the bedroom door closing before calling her daughter, who finally deigned to pick up. “What happened?” Daisy asked. She wasn’t sure if Beatrice would be angry, or sad, or ashamed. Given the vagaries of fourteen-year-old emotions, any of those, singularly or in combination, wouldn’t have surprised her. But Beatrice sounded calm, even—could it be?—happy.
“They’ll probably kick me out. You and Dad have to come up here.” She lowered her voice. “The dean wants to talk to you.”
Daisy said, “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll let you stay?”
“Probably not!” Beatrice didn’t just sound pleasant, Daisy realized. She actually sounded cheerful. “It’s fine, though. Now I can tell Dad that I tried, but that this isn’t for me.”
Daisy’s mind sped backward to a memory of her daughter at two and a half, in a tiny pair of denim OshKosh overalls, with a striped pink-and-white T-shirt underneath, determinedly trying to climb the garden stairs, falling on her diapered bottom each time. No, Mumma, I want to do it my OWN self. They’d called her Trixie back then, and Daisy could still see her, on her first day at kindergarten, posing proudly with a backpack that looked as big as she was. She could remember the powdery, milky smell of Bea’s skin when Daisy would kiss her good night; the weight of her as an infant, like a warm, breathing loaf of bread, when she’d finally fall asleep in Daisy’s arms. She could remember, too, getting teary at some Disney movie or another when Beatrice was four or five, and her daughter staring at her curiously, asking why she was crying. “Because it’s sad,” Daisy had said, gesturing toward the screen. Beatrice had patted her mother’s forearm with her plump starfish hand. “Mumma,” she’d said kindly, “those are not real people.”
Timidly, Beatrice asked, “Is Dad really mad?”
“He’s just worried about you, honey,” Daisy said. “He wants you to be happy.”
There’d been a pause. Then Beatrice, sounding cynical and older than her years, had said, “We both know that’s not true.”
Picture each worry like a gift.
Daisy began with the biggest one, her daughter. Hal had already decreed that, if they expelled her, Beatrice would attend the Melville School, a private, co-ed institution on the Main Line that had already told Hal they’d be more than happy to take her for the remainder of the year （they’d also been happy, Daisy had noted, to charge them for an entire year’s tuition）。 Beatrice would probably complain about not going to Lower Merion High, with her middle-school friends, but she’d survive.
Of course, Beatrice back home meant another three and a half years living with a daughter who behaved as if she despised her. Daisy hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten until Beatrice was at Emlen, and there’d been a lovely calm spell, stretches of nights without fights, without wall-rattling slammed doors or screamed “I hate yous!” She and Hal had enjoyed a few quiet dinners, a few peaceful hours together on the sofa. Several of those evenings had even concluded with a pleasant interlude on the king-sized bed. Hal had commented, frequently, on how pleasant things were, how enjoyable, with Beatrice gone, but to Daisy, the silences seemed to echo more loudly than the shouting ever had. The house felt like a museum, and she felt like a trespasser, sneaking around and trying not to trip the alarms.
Daisy worried about her daughter. She worried about her mom, who’d had two small “cerebral events” the previous year, and had spent six weeks in a rehab facility. Even though her mother’s gentleman friend Arnold Mishkin had promised he’d take care of her, Daisy still had fantasies of opening her front door one morning to find Judy Rosen standing in her driveway, surrounded by suitcases and the Lladró figurines she’d recently started collecting. Of course, her brother Danny would help. Danny lived sixty miles away, in Lambertville, with his husband, in a three-bedroom ranch house with plenty of room, but Judy would insist on staying with Daisy. Daisy was the youngest, and the only girl, which, in Judy’s world order, made Daisy the one responsible for her care.