I don’t want you to suffer a shred of guilt—you have been perfect in every way, have always always taken care of me—I am so grateful for every moment we shared.
I must admit that the prospect of going to New York, of not having to lie to you every single day, of not feeling like a coward each time I look at you, is an enormous relief.
Yes, Ursula knew, but believe me, I did not tell her. She snooped in my drawer while putting away that ridiculous lingerie she bought me and found the manual. Of course she read it. In a way, it was a blessing, because, lickety-split, she got the plane ticket, booked the appointment with the cancer guru (a friend of hers; no surprise there), arranged everything. So, I owe her this—and the fact that neither of us has to be sorry about not covering all the bases.
Now the hard part: why I lied to you. Or, rather, why I didn’t tell you the truth about my illness right away. I tried once. You probably don’t remember. In the kitchen, right after I’d seen Dr. Buckley. But you kept deflecting me. And I was so conflicted anyway, I gave up. Maybe you sensed I had bad news you didn’t want to hear. I thought about trying again later. But I realized I didn’t want to spoil whatever time we had left together; I know how easily you fall apart when someone you love is sick. I can’t forget the week you spent in the hospital after we lost our baby—the chance that it might happen again with even worse consequences seems too much of a risk. I couldn’t bear causing you such sadness. I knew you’d demand we travel all over the country at great expense, seeking a futile cure. I knew you would insist on any treatment, no matter the short painful weeks we might gain. I didn’t want us to live under a cloud of sorrow. I worried you might develop symptoms of your own in response to my diagnosis. I wanted to spare you that. I hoped for our usual routine to continue, for us to continue as we were, as long as possible, for us to live our lives in the most ordinary but most precious way. And of course, as soon as I received a real diagnosis—I had an appointment in Portland that I canceled to see Ursula’s expert—I planned to tell you everything.
It meant the world that we made love last night. Sometimes the body can say what words cannot. This part of our life together has always been a comfort and a joy.
I asked Rachel to check up on you while I was gone, in the hopes—I admit it!—that you might grow fond of her not just as a dear friend. Do stuff with her—movies, dinner, skating. She’s great to talk to, not just in a shrinky way. I would be so happy if she and Megan, after the grieving has passed (and it will), became your family. It gives me solace to think that there will be another person in your future, someone you will love and who can love you as much as I have. Well, almost as much as I have.
Please forgive me—and Ursula and Dr. Buckley, whom I made swear not to tell you and is bound by the Hippocratic oath and HIPAA privacy rules—and know that whatever I did, whatever I kept from you, however misguided my actions might seem in retrospect, I did out of my profound love. I have no regrets. And want only that you have no regrets, too.
I hope you will follow the instructions, even if you find some of them annoying and even though they may reflect my bossy, less endearing side. My intention, however presumptuous, was to offer you help after I am no longer there to carry my share of our partnership. I wish you a full and happy life (as I have had with you—just not long enough, alas) and hope you keep me in your heart forever. In one way or another, you will always be with me. xoxo Me
Chapter Sixteen
Once on the airplane, Annie finds her row and settles into the aisle seat. The middle seat is empty, and the man at the window falls asleep before takeoff, the brim of his Red Sox cap pulled low over his eyes. Ursula sits up front in first class, of course. She already had her ticket, and the difference in price was so huge and the trip so short; would Annie really mind flying steerage? Annie doesn’t mind at all. She’s happy to have a respite from Ursula, to sit suspended between her past and yet-undetermined future. How comforting to be in the air when you feel so up in the air about everything, to have somebody else pilot you when you have no map, no radar, no signals to point you in the right direction. Now her only task is to nibble the seven packaged peanuts (she counted them) and drink the dwarf-sized can of Diet Coke.
From somewhere behind her, Annie detects the distinct aroma of Paul Bunyans. When she turns around, she spots the telltale bags tucked under two adjacent seats three rows back. She was tempted to join the expat exportation of Passamaquoddy’s best-loved resource, carting her own sandwiches to New York, all the better to stuff Ursula’s refrigerator—inhabited solely by Perrier and shriveled limes. But she’s sure her mother has had her fill of Paul Bunyans. And maybe, Annie decides traitorously, so has she.
* * *
At the luggage carousel, a woman buttonholes Ursula. “You are the spitting image of the actress Ursula Marichal,” she declares. “Has anybody else ever told you that?”
Ursula smiles, motioning a skycap to her side and pointing out her bags. “Many people make the exact comparison,” she concedes, “which I take as a compliment, as I too am quite the fan.”
“Though she’s a bit taller,” the woman elaborates. “I wonder—is she still alive?”
Ursula’s smile drops like a popped balloon. “I very much doubt it,” she grumbles. Then she brightens when she spies the black-suited chauffeur brandishing a card with her very-much-alive name on it.
In minutes, the luggage is loaded and they’re whisked away in leather-upholstered, piped-in-Brahms comfort to the Upper East Side. In front of the topiaried, awninged entrance to Ursula’s apartment building, the doorman greets them, gathers the baggage, and presses the elevator button for the thirty-fourth floor.
Annie is amazed at the way privilege melts obstacles. Ursula’s minions include not only skycaps but also chauffeurs and doormen, housecleaners and plant waterers, hairdressers and manicurists, eyebrow waxers, personal shoppers and personal trainers, plastic surgeons and therapists and cosmetic dentists and masseuses. She’s heard there are Jamaican women who specialize in removing lice from hair and Polish women who can vanquish excess hair and Japanese women who will thicken thinning hair. Even better, celebrity and wealth can free up the calendar of a medical superstar booked a year in advance and schedule you for the next day right before lunch.
Though—alas—all the advantages in the world can’t necessarily save your life.
Now the elevator opens directly into Ursula’s foyer, where a gilded table holds a Chinese bowl filled with peonies and, next to it, a silver tray piled high with Ursula’s mail, newspapers, and magazines. Annie gazes around Ursula’s perfect apartment, once photographed for Architectural Digest and the Home section of the New York Times. Her mother acquired these high-ceilinged rooms in the divorce from the husband who followed Henry Stevens and preceded the one she’d “rather not talk about.” It’s not much of a consolation, Annie concludes, when marriage to the right wrong man can secure you a Park Avenue classic six but can’t guarantee a loving mate like Sam.
Already she’s received two texts from him. Miss U, one reads. The other, Do you remember where I put my navy wool turtleneck?
Miss you too, she texts back. Second drawer from the bottom, on the right.
Ursula excuses herself to telephone her agent and her business manager, to check restaurant reservations, to buy theater tickets, and to confirm tomorrow’s doctor’s appointment. “I really should hire a social secretary,” she confides, “but certain things I prefer to do myself.” She places her hand on her heart. “I guess it’s the Maine in me.”
Annie refrains from arguing that the only Maine in her mother is Annie herself and Ursula’s Passamaquoddy award, now positioned front and center on the mantel. Where its reflection in the mirror doubles its size and quadruples its significance.
* * *
In the guest room—Frette sheets, fresh flowers in Lalique vases, a chaise longue covered in pillows with slogans embroidered on them—A Star Is Born, Broadway Baby, Love in Bloom, Happily Ev
er After—Annie unpacks her meager wardrobe; she hangs a dress and two blouses on pink satin-padded hangers. She tucks her utilitarian underwear into toile-lined, cedar-scented drawers. She plops onto the chaise longue and picks up the latest issue of Vogue. She decides she doesn’t want to read about a socialite’s divorce or a model’s weight gain or a couturier’s labor woes or an artist’s architect-designed studio on Long Island Sound. How is she going to get through the next hours until her consultation tomorrow morning?
Not that hard, as it turns out. Leave it to Ursula.
“Are you ready, darling?” Ursula calls. “I’ve ordered a car.” Ursula is already slipping on her floor-length mink.
“Now?” Annie asks.
“It’s only two. We have the whole afternoon and evening.”
“But I thought …”
“Thought what? That we’d sit around and anticipate your doctor’s appointment and act gloomy and miserable? Never worry about something you can’t do anything about. Always expect the best. Take one day at a time. Enjoy the present. Live in the moment. Let’s have fun.”
Mottos to stitch on a pillow, Annie thinks. “You sound like a self-help book,” she tells her mother.
“And what is wrong with that? Ha, maybe I will write a book. My philosophy of life and how it made me who I am.”
“A definite best seller.”
“Have you got a grudge against being happy?”
“Of course not. It’s just …”
Ursula eyes her daughter. “Arabella, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” She sighs. “Perhaps, darling, you’d consider changing into a dress and some halfway decent shoes more suitable for Manhattan.”
Annie puts on the dress she wore to the award ceremony. She steps into plain black pumps with medium heels. She grabs her down coat.
Ursula shudders. “Not that.” She flings open the hall closet and pulls out a second mink, shorter, lighter brown, only slightly more discreet than the fur now swathing her from ankle to chin. “This.”
“I couldn’t,” Annie says.
“Nonsense. Nothing feels more luxurious against the skin.” She scowls at Annie’s puffy parka, shapeless and an unflattering shade of green. “You’re not one of those PETA people, are you?” Ursula asks. “One night, on my way to the theater, they squirted mustard on me. Can you imagine such rudeness?”
Annie nods in sympathy, though she can’t even look at a Davy Crockett hat without picturing the creature that sacrificed its tail. “Not my style,” she apologizes.
“You have no style, Arabella,” Ursula says, “but we’re going to change that.” Once again, she reaches inside the closet, this time producing a black wool coat. “Try this.”
Annie tries it. The coat is softer and warmer than anything she’s ever worn.
“Cashmere,” Ursula pronounces. “It’s yours.”
“I can’t possibly accept …”
“Indeed you can. It’s my everyday coat. Second tier. One I wear to—well, to take out the garbage …”
As if Ursula ever took out the garbage.
“… which otherwise I will give to the maid, who has already inherited several of my castoffs.”
Annie sinks her hands into the deep pockets lined with silk; she nestles her neck against the wide collar. The coat is cut to accentuate the waist and flares out at the knees in a series of ingenious pleats. She inspects her Michelin Man polyester, now discarded on the floor like some hulking green animal. “Okay,” she agrees.
At the entrance to Ursula’s building, the car is waiting, double parked, blinkers flashing.
“I’m going to spoil you,” Ursula says.
And so she does.
* * *
It’s the kind of whirlwind tour that deserves its own description in the Sunday Travel section of the New York Times. Instead of the usual Thirty-Six Hours in ____________ (London, Paris, Beijing, pick one), the headline would read: Eight hours in Manhattan (With Ursula). Annie opens her laptop and Googles the New York Times font; she switches to Georgia and starts to type.
Eight Hours in Manhattan (With Ursula)
By Annie Stevens-Strauss
Ursula’s Manhattan is a rarified place, catering to the glitterati who expect red carpets, first-rate service, and head-of-the-line placement. During these eight Manhattan hours, no urban woes dare to be visible. If there are signs of blight, trash blowing along the sidewalks, graffiti on the walls, Ursula refuses to see them—“Let’s not spoil this trip with such unpleasantness,” she says, and rolls up the window. The one thing Ursula cannot control, however, is the stop-and-go traffic, but from the padded back seat of a town car with newspapers, a split of champagne, and a single rose in a bud vase, it’s easy enough to ignore honking and fumes. For any country bumpkin taken into her silken bosom, the volcanic force of her personality wills troubles away.
2:30 P.M.
1) GET YOUR MAKEOVER AT BERGDORF’S
The country mouse is dragged to the makeup counter, plopped onto a high stool, wrapped in a paper bib, and attended to by a patchouli-scented woman whose forehead is so bronze, whose lips are so red, whose lashes are so thick, whose eyelids sparkle with so much gold that in Passamaquoddy, Maine, she would be scorned as a lady of the street or—equally bad—a foreigner. Fortunately, her hand is lighter on somebody else’s face. Even better, Ursula perches on the next stool offering up a constant stream of directions: “a little less there”; “a little more here”; “wow, she has cheekbones!” All is not disastrous, as the woman pronounces the mouse’s hairdo “very flattering.” (Kudos to Dee Dee at Cutting Edge.) She assembles tubes and pencils and wands and multicolored unguents with a how-to chart. Despite increasingly vociferous protests, Ursula hands over her platinum credit card. The daughter, now sprouting cheekbones, has been transformed from provincial dustbin to urban icon who can’t pass a mirror without checking her reflection. Narcissus, anyone? The cost? Priceless. Astronomical.
4:00 P.M.
2) FASHIONISTA
Onto the elevator and up to Designer Clothes. A hushed and sacred space with plush carpets, subdued lighting, and vast sofas. Skinny salespeople (do they ever eat?) in black are primed to indulge every whim. Ursula’s personal shopper—Aurelie, five stars—brings them each a flute of Prosecco. She orders Annie to stand up, all the while inspecting her like a prize hog at a 4-H club. But Aurelie is discreet. “Not hopeless. Pas du tout,” she whispers to Ursula.
By the time they have finished the Prosecco, Aurelie is back with a handful of frocks. She leads Annie to a dressing room mirrored on all walls. Since Ursula insists on coming with her, Annie regrets the safety pin holding up the bra strap that she meant to sew. One look and Aurelie knows what fits, what flatters, what dazzles. Annie pirouettes. “A metamorphosis,” Ursula marvels. “We’ll buy them all.”
Aurelie arranges to have the dresses delivered so that such special customers (clients, she calls them) won’t strain their delicate arms carrying the packages to the waiting town car.
5:00 P.M.
3) TEA FOR TWO
Ursula ushers Annie across the street to the Peninsula Hotel. Suggestion: ask for a banquette by the window overlooking Fifth Avenue and view the stylish natives along with the sneaker-wearing, tracksuited tourists. Perhaps, however, you have to be Ursula to warrant such prime real estate, with its banquette for six offered to just the two of you. Thus cossetted, you might deem all of Manhattan this lush and decide that the grim reaper, like the ragged, the dowdy, the rustic, could never reach you here. From a three-tiered silver-fluted tray, mother and daughter nibble on cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches minus the crusts and Scottish smoked salmon dotted with caviar. They sip Darjeeling from translucent cups. It’s impossible to contemplate darkness when in front of you towers a platter of scones, Devon cream, tartlets, and lemon curd. “This is the life,” sighs Annie. “This is life,” corrects Ursula.
7:30 P.M.
4) BROADWAY: THE BOOK OF MORMON
The perfect choice
for someone whose usual theatrical experience consists of high school productions of Our Town and an annual Pirates of Penzance put on by the out-of-tune Passamaquoddy Savoyards. Have a glass of wine in the lobby first, surrounded by patrons who saw your mother as Blanche DuBois back in—well, no need to state the exact year. Third row center—house seats, of course. Annie swears that the actor who plays Elder Cunningham looks down from stage right and winks at Ursula. The musical is hilarious, irreverent, joyful. How can you contemplate illness amid such entertaining affirmation of the human spirit? At intermission, Ursula buys Annie the CD and an outrageously expensive box of mints. A piece of advice: bring your own mints.
10:00 P.M.
5) APRÈS-THEATER DINNER: DANIEL’S
You could be in Paris at this top-rated, best-of-Manhattan restaurant. Sheer beauty, sheer luxury, sheer gourmet ecstasy. Ursula and her daughter are greeted by the chef himself, who plants kisses on each of their cheeks, then personally leads them to the premier table. Spoiler alert: one can easily get spoiled in the company of Ursula.
Where to begin? To start, Annie has the wild-mushroom fricassee topped by quail eggs and white asparagus tempura. Ursula chooses frog legs—a bit too anthropomorphic for Annie, though Ursula gobbles them up. This is followed, for Annie, by the Dover sole and, for Ursula, by the veal with braised cheeks and crispy sweetbreads. For dessert, they share the floating island, surrounded by passion fruit confit and garnished by a black sesame praline.
Has a meal ever been more celestial? Though Annie protests—where could she find the ingredients? how would she have the time, or the skill, or the stamina?—Ursula buys her Daniel Boulud’s cookbook. Chef Boulud presents Ursula with his memoir, Letters to a Young Chef, which he inscribes to her with many references to amour and bisous. “If only Sam were here to experience this meal,” Annie says. “Next time,” Ursula replies, and Annie doesn’t have the heart to argue.
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