And maybe it’s stupid to trust my dad’s last girlfriend, who has been hiding in the bowels of the house, but I don’t care. The universe or my higher power or whoever it is that’s running things heard my cry and sent rescue. I’ll take it.
When she comes back, she’s carrying the promised pajamas, turquoise with splashes of flowers, and a brush, and a blanket, and a couple of pillows. “I’m going to camp out with you if that’s okay. I don’t think you should be alone.”
I put my discomfort aside as she helps me shed my insanely uncomfortable jeans and slide on the pajamas. She’s matter-of-fact and works from behind so I’m not too exposed, which strikes me as a huge kindness. When I’m changed, she helps me settle on the couch comfortably, my arm lifted higher than my heart on banks of Ziploc bags of ice. Pillows are tucked around me. “This is a good nest,” I say.
“Good.” She holds up the brush. “How about if I brush your hair?”
“Oh my God.” I let go of a soft sigh. “I would love that, but you can’t use that brush. It will turn my head into a Brillo pad.”
“Oh.” She looks at the brush. “Is there a better one somewhere?”
“The wire one on the sink in the main bedroom. I assume you know the way.”
“I do.”
When she comes back she’s carrying the wide-toothed brush I use. She stands behind the couch and starts to gently comb out the tangles I’ve acquired this eventful afternoon, working from the bottom up, pressing down on my scalp with a palm to keep from pulling my hair. I close my eyes. “Oh my God, that’s so good.”
“I love getting my hair brushed.”
“Did my dad brush it for you?”
A soft pause. “Yeah.”
“It’s kind of his thing. He would sit behind us when we watched movies and brush our hair for ages, me and Rory and Meadow.” I have a flash of Meadow’s hair in my hands, flowing over a brush, glittering red gold in the sunlight. “I loved brushing their hair, too. I was jealous I didn’t have the same hair as them.”
“I’ve always wanted curly hair like yours,” she says, and uses long, smooth strokes over my scalp, forehead to nape, temple to nape, over and over and over. It’s hypnotic and soothing. My arm starts to ease. I close my eyes, give myself up to it.
“Do you want to watch some TV?”
The idea of extra noise ricocheting around my brain sounds awful. “Not really, but I don’t mind if you do.”
“Not at all. This is all about you, you know. Being comfortable and feeling better. How’s the arm now?”
“It hurts, but it’s not like broken glass anymore.”
Music plays, something mellow and instrumental I don’t recognize, and it’s soothing, like a spa. “How did you meet Augustus? What was all of that about Meadow?”
“That.” I hear her take a breath. “I’ve had a girl crush on Meadow for years. Her book, the first one, about Peaches and Pork and falling in love with your dad, and you”—she gestures toward me and I have to nod; the way Meadow wrote about me, and about Rory and our sisterhood, our connections to each other as a family in that book, is one of the more healing things that ever happened to me in my life—“really changed things for me. I felt like she reached right into my soul and saw me. And if she could do all of this, then maybe I had something I could do, too.”
“Wow,” I say. “She would probably love to know this.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” For a moment, she looks at her tea, moves the cup so the liquid swirls. “The thing is, I decided I wanted to write something amazing about her. I could see that she was the brains and the force behind all of it, while Augustus got most of the attention, and it irked me. I wanted her to get more, to be the guest judge on Top Chef, to capture all the attention.”
“It’s so true,” I say with some sourness. “He has always been a big attention hog.” The present tense shreds me and I correct it. “Was.”
“Right. So I kind of hit this turning point in my life, and I was in this bookstore where I lived and saw the book, and I thought, I should write a really brilliant article about this really brilliant woman. Show how dazzling she is, bring her into the spotlight more.”
I sip my tea. “She would love this stuff. Are you kidding me?”
“Yeah, except for that pesky little problem of my getting tangled up with Augustus before I even had a chance to meet her. By the time he introduced me to her, she didn’t really have much respect for me, or interest in anything I had to say.”