The Daughters

by Joanna Philbin

  But he likes me, a small voice inside of her said. He likes ME.

  And then another voice spoke up and drowned that first voice out.

  Not as much as you thought he did.

  Lizzie held it together until lunch, when she and Carina and Hudson slid into a booth at the diner around the corner on Madison.

  “So he’s about to kiss you, you leave, and then he hooks up with Ava the same night?” Hudson asked, her fork poised over her cottage cheese and melon. “It just doesn’t add up.”

  Lizzie glumly plunged her straw up and down in her iced tea. “Maybe he wasn’t about to kiss me,” she said.

  “It’s my fault,” Carina said quietly over a gigantic platter of fries. “I should never have sent you that text.”

  The diner was so packed with kids that it was hard even hearing herself think. In the next booth over Lizzie could see the Icks, sharing a plate of fries and giving them steely cold stares.

  “It’s not your fault, C,” Lizzie said, trying to sound positive. “I’d already freaked out. He probably thought I was grossed out by him or something.”

  “You could tell him you weren’t,” Carina suggested, dragging a fry through her ketchup.

  “Now?” Lizzie asked. “You know how it is when a guy starts going out with Ava—they’re lost forever. She’s like the Bermuda Triangle.” She poked at a floating lemon slice with her straw. “And maybe he wasn’t that into me in the first place.”

  “Well then, that’s his loss,” Carina concluded, placing both elbows bossily on the table. “He’s the idiot here, not you. You are hot and smart and completely unforgettable. Ava was probably throwing herself at him. Just because he was dumb and unoriginal enough to take her up on it doesn’t say anything about you.”

  “I know, but it still feels awful,” Lizzie said quietly, swallowing back the tears.

  “Hey.” Carina’s trademark smile of mischief appeared as she leaned back against the vinyl booth. “Call that photographer. It’s the perfect reason to do it.”

  “Now?” Lizzie gave Carina an are-you-totally-insane scowl.

  “Yeah. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “I think I still have that card…,” Hudson said, diving into her bag.

  “Wait! I can’t just decide I’m going to be a model because some guy turned out to be a jerk.”

  “You’re not gonna turn into a model,” Carina moaned, dramatically rolling her eyes. “We’re talking about getting some pictures taken. To boost your self-esteem. And to put up on your Facebook page and make him insanely jealous.”

  “Oh, and another thing,” Hudson added, still digging in her bag. “Jupiter’s in your tenth house right now, which is huge for your career.”

  “But I don’t have a career.”

  “Here it is.” Hudson produced the card from her bag. She handed it to Lizzie. “See? It’s not even wrinkled.”

  Lizzie ran her fingers once again over the bumpy type that spelled out Andrea’s name.

  “I still don’t get it,” Carina said, shaking her head. “What were your reasons for saying no again?”

  Lizzie put the card back down on the table. “Natasha said not to.”

  “Do you really think it’d hurt your mom to get a few shots taken?” Hudson asked sweetly. “You haven’t even spoken to her since the fight.”

  Lizzie mulled this over. Carina was right. There was no reason for her to be worried about embarrassing her mom anymore. But then there was the reason Carina and Hudson didn’t know, and the one that she didn’t want to mention to them: what her mother really thought of her. That she was weird-looking. That she was someone to feel sorry for. And she trusted her mom’s opinion more than she trusted Andrea’s.

  But maybe that was even more reason to do this, she thought. Maybe she needed to prove her mother wrong. To prove herself wrong. To prove that someone out there thought she was pretty, at least in kind of a twisted way. And doing this sure beat analyzing the Todd Piedmont Fiasco until the end of time.

  Lizzie shrugged. “Fine.”

  Carina handed Lizzie her phone. Her friends didn’t take their eyes off her face as she dialed. It rang three times, and then someone picked up.

  “Hello?”

  Lizzie recognized Andrea’s friendly voice. She thought of the best way to put this.

  “Hi, this is Lizzie Summers,” she said.

  “Lizzie!” Andrea said warmly. “What’s up?”

  Her friends were staring at her, waiting, daring her to chicken out. She knew, finally, that she didn’t want to.

  “I think I want to do it.”

  chapter 11

  “I hope she doesn’t think I’m a pro at this because of my mom, you guys. Or that I even know what I’m doing.”

  Flanked by Carina and Hudson, Lizzie turned off Fifth Avenue and entered Central Park. It was a beautiful Indian summer day, with clouds that looked like pieces of torn cotton candy and a light, mild breeze that made the tree branches sway in slow motion. It was a perfect day to get pictures taken, Lizzie knew, even though, five days after the call to Andrea, she suddenly wasn’t sure if she wanted to do this.

  “You’re gonna rock this,” Carina assured her as they walked by a harpist sitting on one of the benches near the Seventy-Second Street entrance. “You have the genes. You could catwalk Naomi Campbell under the table, for God’s sakes.”

  “Um, I’ve never even tried to catwalk,” Lizzie replied.

  “You’re doing this for you,” Hudson reminded her, retying a vintage Hermès scarf around her head. “Think of it as a self-affirmation exercise.”

  “Oh God,” Carina sighed as they waited for some speeding bicyclists to pass. “You’re going to have to stop reading your mom’s New Age-y books, okay?”

  “Thanks for coming with me, you guys,” Lizzie said.

  Hudson took her by the wrist. “And miss history in the making?” she asked, winking. “No way.”

  They walked the shaded, winding path that ran along the Boat Pond until it bottomed out into the redbrick-paved plaza in front of Bethesda Fountain. “There she is,” Carina said as they walked into the open plaza.

  Andrea sat perched on the edge of the fountain, an ice cream sandwich in one hand and her BlackBerry in the other. A square-shaped camera bag lay at her feet. When she saw them she stood up and waved her sandwich in the air.

  “Okay, I didn’t know what all of you wanted, so I got a Drumstick, a Fudgsicle, and a King Cone,” Andrea said as they walked up, and she pointed to the ice creams she’d laid out on top of her bag. “Who wants what?”

  Carina went right for the Drumstick—she loved anything with nuts—and Hudson took the Fudgsicle. Lizzie grabbed the King Cone. It was the first time Lizzie had ever seen a photographer actually encourage a model to eat.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous out?” Andrea gushed, looking up at the sky. “It’s the perfect day to take some shots.” She tossed her wrapper into the trash, unzipped her camera bag, and hefted a weighty Mamiya camera the size of a volleyball into her hands. Looking at it, Lizzie could see why Andrea’s arms were so toned.

  “All right, where do you want to get started?” Andrea asked, pulling off the lens cap. She squinted in the sun. “Maybe we’ll start in front of the fountain and then just move around?”

  “Just so you know,” Lizzie said, swallowing her ice cream, “I’m not like a pro at this or anything.”

  “Good!” Andrea exclaimed, smiling. “That’s what I like to hear!”

  Lizzie finished her cone, handed her bookbag to Hudson, and sat down on the rim of the fountain. She could feel the coolness of the water behind her. The floor of the fountain glittered with what looked like a thousand drowned pennies.

  “Oh, Lizzie? Can I ask you to let your hair down?” Andrea gestured with her camera. “I want to be able to see it.”

  Lizzie reached up and pulled out her elastic, releasing her Brillo curls. Out here in the heat it was only a matter of time before they swelled into a hel
met.

  “Great,” Andrea urged, holding the camera to her face. “Your hair is so beautiful!”

  Are you nuts? Lizzie thought as she settled into the Pose: back straight, chin tucked in, shoulders down. It was the very first rule of modeling, and one that Katia had taught her years ago, even though she’d never really used it.

  “Wait, wait,” Andrea said, lowering her camera. She bounced over to Lizzie on her Chuck Taylors. “Don’t worry about sitting straight up like that. Just sit the way you normally would. Like, the way you would if your friend was taking a picture of you.”

  “So, you mean, just kind of…” Lizzie let herself slump a little and relaxed her chin. “Like this?”

  “Perfect.” She leaned closer. “I want you to forget anything you ever may have learned about doing this. You and I are gonna make our own rules—cool?” She turned to Hudson and Carina and yelled, “Okay, who wants to get things started for me?”

  “Me!” Carina happily trudged over.

  Lizzie watched in disbelief as Andrea handed her camera over to Carina. This woman was going to let one of her friends take her picture? With her fancy camera that probably cost thousands of dollars? Andrea wasn’t crazy, Lizzie decided. She was totally cool.

  “You just press that button there,” she instructed, handing the camera over to Carina. “It’ll do everything else.”

  Carina positioned herself in front of Lizzie as if she’d been taking pictures with a five thousand–dollar camera her entire life. “You ready, sexy thing?” she asked, hoisting it up to her face. “Make loooove to ze cam-e-ra.”

  Lizzie laughed. Before she could stop, Carina pressed the button. Click.

  “Great!” Andrea urged. “Keep going!”

  “Work it, own it, work it,” Carina sang. Lizzie laughed again. Click. Carina pressed the button just at the right time.

  “Perfect!” Andrea crowed.

  “You are fabulous, darling,” Carina crooned, coming up close to her. “You’re a natural.”

  “Carina, stop!” Lizzie said, still laughing.

  Then it was Hudson’s turn. “To the left! To the right! You are so beautiful it hurts!” she yelled.

  Click-click-click went the camera, as Lizzie smiled and laughed so hard her sides ached.

  Finally Andrea stepped in and assumed control. “That was great, Lizzie,” she said, suddenly the cool, calm professional. “Now look straight at me and smile.”

  Still giddy from laughing, Lizzie didn’t have time to get nervous. She smiled broadly into the camera.

  Andrea pressed the button. Click. “That’s great!” Andrea called out.

  Lizzie tilted her head just slightly to the right, smiled even bigger this time, and Andrea clicked.

  “Yes!”

  She tilted her head to the left.

  “Perfect!”

  Before she knew it, Lizzie had eased into a rhythm. She had a vague idea that her hair was starting to climb toward the sky but she didn’t really care. A tiny voice told her to stiffen up, but she let it go. All that mattered was that she was getting her picture taken, and it didn’t just feel okay—it felt natural. Fun. This wasn’t anything like the onslaught of paparazzi at Fashion Week. This didn’t feel invasive. It felt easy. Even exhilarating.

  Meanwhile Andrea bobbed and weaved on her Chucks, coming closer, backing up, teetering to the side, capturing Lizzie from all angles. “That’s great, Lizzie! Perfect!”

  With every click, she actually felt something inside of her soar. This woman is taking pictures of me. And this is actually fun.

  “Okay, let’s try some serious ones,” Andrea said, lifting her camera. “Let’s have fierce Lizzie.”

  “Fierce Lizzie?” she said.

  “Brave Lizzie,” Andrea called out. “Says-her-mind Lizzie. The Lizzie from the clip.”

  The clip. The clip had started this all. Maybe, she thought, it hadn’t been the worst thing in the world. For the first time, she remembered what it felt like just before she opened her mouth to speak to that reporter. That delicious feeling of letting go, of taking her hand off the wheel, of just being herself—with no filters, no voice in her head telling her no. She put her hands on her hips and leveled her gaze at the camera. She let her smile fade away.

  “Yes!” Andrea moved closer as she pressed the shutter. “That’s amazing! Keep going!”

  It was almost like acting a part, and it was working. Behind Andrea, a crowd of tourists began to form. A little girl in the group caught her eye. She was a little chubby, ghostly pale, and her T-shirt said I HEART NY. She stared at Lizzie with wide, fascinated eyes, as if she were a unicorn or some other kind of mythical creature.

  Finally, after Lizzie had taken a few more solo shots, Andrea lowered her camera. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a glistening layer of sweat at her hairline. “That was amazing! Did you have fun?”

  “That was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” Lizzie said. “Thank you.”

  “No, Lizzie, thank you,” Andrea said, giving her a hug. “You’re a natural. I knew you would be.”

  “Oh my God!!” Hudson yelled, running over. She grabbed Lizzie and shook her arm. “You were amazing! You can do this, you know that? You’re good at it!”

  “You crushed it, Lizbutt,” Carina announced.

  “I felt so comfortable,” Lizzie whispered.

  “And you have it in you,” Hudson assured her. “I could see it as you were posing. This other side of you just came out. You could really do this.”

  “For reals,” Carina added.

  “You do,” Andrea seconded. “You really do. I’d be interested to hear what you think of the shots. I’ll send you some, okay? I bet you’ll love them.”

  They said their goodbyes to Andrea, and Carina and Hudson kept up their excited banter as the three walked toward Sheep Meadow and the west side.

  “Well, you guys, let’s not get carried away yet,” Lizzie cautioned.

  “No, I think I want to get carried away,” Hudson said. She turned toward the Meadow on their left, filled with sunbathers and kite-flyers and people sitting on blankets in their work clothes, soaking in the last rays of the sun. “Hey, everyone!” she yelled. “This girl’s gonna be a star!”

  Needless to say, nobody turned around, but Lizzie beamed anyway. She looked past the Meadow, up at the crowded skyline of midtown just beyond the park and the hotels along Central Park South hovering above the trees. You couldn’t hear the traffic this far into the park, and for a moment, the city didn’t look real. New York was always changing like that. One moment you were overwhelmed by the in-your-face hustle of it—the traffic, the garbage, the noise, and the people scrambling down the streets—and then you entered the park, or looked out the window of Carina’s penthouse, or stood on the roof of Todd’s building, and the city could look as insubstantial as a dream. Inside Lizzie, something stirred. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe she could do this. Maybe Hudson’s words might prove true.

  “You have to do that again, okay?” Carina asked as they walked past the hansom cabs lined up in front of Tavern on the Green. “If you don’t, I might not be able to be your friend anymore.”

  “Well, I will say this, I’m exhausted,” Lizzie said. “I don’t know how my mom does this.”

  “Get used to it,” Carina said, her chocolate eyes twinkling.

  She said goodbye to her friends on Central Park West and turned down her block, feeling the wind caress her face. At the corner of Columbus she looked across the street and saw paparazzi gathered in front of her building. They’d been gone for a while, ever since her parents left for Paris, but now they were back, and something had them excited, pressing their cameras to their faces. A black stretch limo with the trunk still popped open idled at the curb.

  Her parents had just come home.

  She rushed past the photographers calling their editors, and took the elevator upstairs. She opened the front door and almost tripped over her mother’s gargantuan Louis Vui
tton suitcase in the foyer. They were definitely home. Lizzie felt jittery. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to see her mom yet. Or tell her about what she’d just been doing. But she knew that she would probably have to apologize for her dramatic outburst the night before they left.

  “Mom?” she called out.

  There was the terse clip-clip of spike heels approaching from down the hall, and then her mother appeared in the hallway. “Hi, honey,” she said. Even after a nine-hour flight, she looked stunning in full-legged tweed trousers and a sleeveless silk chiffon blouse. Not one blond hair had escaped the updo she always wore on planes.

  “How are you, honey?” Katia asked, coming toward her. She leaned down and tentatively wrapped her delicate arms around Lizzie’s shoulders. Lizzie breathed in her mom’s trademark scent—a tuberose and lily perfume blended exclusively for her by a perfumery in Paris—and realized how much she’d missed her.

  “I’m good,” Lizzie said. “How was the trip?”

  “Productive.” Katia straightened up and pushed some of Lizzie’s hair off her forehead. Her mother was still at least three inches taller than her. “I got Katia Coquette into Bon Marché and Galeries Lafayette. And the L’Ete shoot went well. I missed you, though.” Lizzie looked up at her, waiting. Even though she wanted nothing more than to apologize and put the fight away forever, she had no idea what to say.

  “Look, honey,” Katia said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I spoke to Natasha. I know you went down to see her. And I’ve thought about the fight we had, and, well, maybe you’re right.” Her greenish-blue eyes were steady and sincere. “Maybe I haven’t thought of how difficult it must be for you. The attention, the cameras. Sometimes I forget that I chose this life for myself and you didn’t.” Katia touched Lizzie’s hair tenderly. “And I’m sorry about what I said. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said quietly. “Really.”

  “So from now on, you don’t have to be a part of those events anymore if you don’t want to be. That’s my life. Not yours.”