“Mom! Is New York really Wonderland?”
“Yes love it is wonderland. Every adventure you take here is colorful and exciting and full of the most splendid kind of wonder. Cherish it all sweetheart and enjoy all the sights you see.”
No one loved New York more than her. NYC enchanted her from the very first moment she stepped off the bus from Little Rock. Her wonder had started when she saw a Christmas special of Radio City Music Hall and dreamed of being a Rockette. Lithe, leggy, and graceful, she paid my uncle a whopping five dollars in 1987 to sneak her in to see Dirty Dancing. Watching Cynthia Rhode—a former Rockette—and Jennifer Grey dance cemented her desire to become a dancer. I remember her always laughing that she was too tall to find a partner who could lift her like the famous finale scene. She left Little Rock at nineteen to pursue her dream of dancing. But as she oft said, it was a cruel summer. She loved ‘80s music; she said it was the soundtrack to her introduction to life. Coming from a firmly blue-collar family, the expectation was to marry, birth and raise kids, attend Mass, and be satisfied. Mom was deeply attached to her family, but she also dared to dream. You don’t always get to dream when the expectations for you are so staunch. I asked her when she knew she had to leave.
“I just woke up one day, and I wanted to live the dreams I was dreaming. I didn’t feel selfish. I felt free. I loved my parents and your Uncle Dan, but I needed my own identity. I couldn’t see me beyond their expectations. I packed my bag, took my pitiful savings, and went into the dining room. Bacon and eggs on the table, Mimi serving coffee, Dad talking shop with Dan. I grabbed a few pieces of bacon, hoisted my bag on my shoulder, and just waved. No drama. I went without any conflict. They knew I was different. I think they equally loved and resented my lackadaisical attitude. I walked three miles to the bus station. I never felt more terrified and excited. Freedom is terrifying, Ainslee. The future was blank. I had nothing. But I had me. I wasn’t insecure. I knew exactly who I was when I woke up that morning, and I smiled at myself in the mirror. I don’t know that even the most gifted and blessed ever see a glimpse of that in themselves. Be self-assured and love yourself; no greater gift will ever come your way, my love.”
I swell up with tears even though I swore I would not cry while here. Tears are melting my resolve every time I shed them. My time is to be bold and unabashed.
“Sir?"
The cab driver turns to look at me, and I immediately think, put your damn eyes on the road!
“I need to be dropped off a block before our stop, please.”
He eyes me curiously. “You have many bags. I can help, I don’t mind.”
“I appreciate it, I really do but drop me off one block from Adams Industries. I can manage from there, thank you.”
I can visibly see his hackles rise. I immediately realized my mistake. Fuck. How could I be so careless? No one dares to breathe the name Adams Industries in this town. Cambridge was a crap roll at best, but this is New York. Everyone here knows because they remember.
“What did you say?” the cab driver asks, eyeing me like he may pull over and pitch me out.
Shit, Dad wasn’t Bernie Madoff for heaven’s sake. I remember my resolve to make things different this time around. Don’t be ashamed by actions that were not yours. The market fell, but my family didn’t make it fall. I came to understand that fault is not the one you see it initially coming from. The devil is in the details. A name alone doesn’t earn scorn. Well, if we were Madoffs, I get it. But we weren’t. Yet we kind of are. My family was wrong. Wrong for trusting too much. Wrong for making decisions with the heart and not the head. Trust is a valued commodity when you’re working with hundreds of millions of dollars. Especially when you’re blind to deceit under your own leadership. My father was blind; he still is. I, however, am not. I trust no one. I can assign blame: the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and their merry offspring as I have come to dub them. However, I need to win this battle for myself. This cab driver could ruin everything, so happy-go-lucky me needs to make a resurgence.
“Sir, I am so sorry. How heartless to bring up the name of the man who killed NYC. I am just a tourist, and I want to take pictures for my family. Damn the man, right? Adams Enterprises is defunct and praise Jesus, right? Oh, I hate those assholes, excuse my language.”
However, he doesn’t bend. He only scrutinizes me more. I sink lower in my seat and push my sunglasses up while rearranging my hair around my face.
“You! You’re the one from the paper! You’re his daughter! I see it now! My brother lost everything and must move back to Ecuador. His home is gone because of your greedy dad!”
I adjust my sunglasses and sit up straighter. I expected this, right? Maybe just not from a cab driver. I must face the music at some point, so why not now?
“Sir, I am indeed Ainslee Adams. I am very sorry about your brother’s misfortune. But my father was not made aware . . .” The brakes screeching interrupts me.
“You have no idea what your family did, do you? They tell us to invest, invest in so many homes that we can build businesses on the rent payments! Take our family and move them into one of the homes. Your father’s company said, buy more! Buy more always! Abdul and I listened. We took all of our savings and bought three houses. We used the money we made from rent to buy a bodega. Everything was great until the market fell, and then we lost it all! Abdul’s wife is pregnant with their second child. She lost the baby from the stress. Bashir must tell his family that they can’t come here; we lost everything after they give up our home in Pakistan. My wife has medical issues, and she’s sick all the time now, but we don’t have any money for medicine. It’s all gone, houses and bodega within in months. Your father’s company knew all along that we cannot afford all these homes. But you and your greedy family still live well, right? We see the Statue of Liberty saying bring your tired, your poor. But American dream only means Americans like you! We have lost everything, and you lose nothing.”
He spits at the partition, but for a moment, I wish there wasn’t one. Yes, he lost everything along with his family. And maybe if Dad had been smarter, then his family wouldn’t be in this predicament. But we were smarter, I remind myself. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. How awful is it to feel equally responsible and equally wronged?
“Sir, I am so sorry for your plight. The subprime mortgage collapse was astronomical and took out many good people in its path.”
He snorts. “But not you, right? You didn’t lose your home or anything? You lost nothing.”
“You are wrong, sir, I lost everything as well.”
“Get out! You'll walk! I will not give you a ride! And I want full fare; you are a-a-a . . .” He stumbles, trying to find the right expletive or slang for me.
“Bitch? Whore? Twat burrito?”
His hackles rise high enough that I expect him to shift any moment.
“Get out!”
I slowly rise, and as dignified as possible, reach to open the door. I go for the trunk to retrieve my meager belongings, and he accelerates.
“Wait! I need my suitcases! Yes, I’m a bitch, but I need those! Come back! I have money! I get it, no soup for me! Please! You won’t find anything in there even worth pawning!”
His distancing cab is nothing but a mirage. I am home in my beloved NYC. And again, I own nothing. Yet, I hold my head up and walk the four blocks home. Home. What an empty word. I kick myself again for doing this. Why didn’t I just take the adjunct professor job Mrs. Oberson offered?
Yet I remember why I came here, and hope seems to rut me out of my dreary panties. I am here for a reason: to make them pay. I am here for nothing else but to know I did everything to take them down. Smiling, I compose myself for the saccharin fest I’m about to deliver. My “aunt” Colleen is the biggest and phoniest socialite that still bothers to grace us with her presence. She wouldn’t, I imagine, if she hadn’t been so close to my mom before she died. I secretly think she is just doing this so she can ring TMZ that the notorious heir
to the Adams Enterprises debacle is housed with her. Little does she realize my plan to dye and cut my hair tomorrow. I may even take advantage of her hospitality and try to pack on fifteen or so pounds before my big debut next week.
I climb the brownstone steps, clutching my ragged knapsack and pinch my cheeks Scarlett O’Hara style. Showtime.
CHAPTER THREE
AUNT COLLEEN IS EVEN MORE plastic than I remember. She has always looked like an aging Barbie Doll. When she goes to envelop me in a hug, I cringe. Mom loved her, for some unknown reason, and I knew it bothered her how she would introduce her.
She would say, “We met at Sarah Lawrence, and she pledged Delta Gamma with me. Gracious, you can imagine our alarm when we realized we both wouldn’t make it! Well, I just marched right up to Sissy Holloway and told her it was us both or neither. We’ve been a team ever since.” She would say the last bit with a pronounced southern accent, one she had practiced from hearing mom. Funny how no one thought to ask why a Scarsdale Donnelly sounded like Blanche Deveraux?
I once asked Mom why she never said anything when Aunt Colleen introduced her like that. She said, “She’s insecure, Ainslee. We both are. She’s used to this world, and she holds me up when I feel myself falling. I give her strength when she feels herself breaking down. Yes, I agree that it is about the oddest combo ever, but I am grateful for Colleen in many ways. She won’t ever let me down. You feel true friends in your bones, you know? Your grandmother used to say, ‘A friend doesn’t ask if you’re okay, she tells you why you’re not. And then brings you enough food to feed an army while spoon-feeding you if you’re too silly to refuse to eat. You can eat love, sugar, and you can feel it in all of you too.’”
True to Mom’s belief, Colleen had stuck by us through it all. When Mom passed away a year after the fall of Adams Enterprises, she had cracked so much I thought she would actually let go of her need to impress and grieve properly. She was the perfect grieving best friend. Couture Calvin Klein, weeping into her handkerchief.
I still remember her on the day of Mom’s funeral when she decided I was to be her protégé.
AUNT COLLEEN LAID out a variety of dresses for me, but I wanted to wear Mom’s favorite. A dress I had made in the fall when I was obsessed with fashion. My fashion was outdated even back then, but I preferred to say it was retro. It was a simple A-line dress with piping on the sides and collar, modest but tight bust line, falling one inch below my knees.
“Ainslee, you look like some sort of urchin! Pick out a dress from the bed, honey.”
“Aunt Colleen, Mom loved this dress. I even let it out some so I could fit, see?” I had Marcella hand-pin me into it. I wanted nostalgia. I needed nostalgia.
Aunt Colleen threw her hands up and made her way to me. She spotted a pin and removed it; the dress fell.
“Stop! This is what Mom would have wanted! She loved me for making this dress!”
She slowly but surely removed all the pins until the dress was crumpled around my ankles. Tears brimmed in my eyes; this was what Mom would have told me to wear if she was here. But she’s not.
“Trash! Honestly, Melody let you get away with murder. Probably because between you and Drake, her poor body was just exhausted. Wear the Halston and do not argue! Today is about appearances, and how does it look for Melody if her only child is too defiant to dress accordingly!” She smacked my cheek with more force than necessary. I turned toward the bed and started to pull on the dress she picked out. Immediately I thought of telling Dad, but he was in no shape for my tattling on Aunt Colleen.
DAD and I both looked uncomfortable and devastated in the Times the next morning. Aunt Colleen looked radiant and forlorn in some sort of weird mashup.
Once again, I was let down. She had started Mom’s foundation a month after the funeral and now devoted her charitable efforts exclusively to The Melody Adams Stroke Foundation. Dad and I had sat through so many events clutching each other’s hands while Colleen droned about the loss of a life far too young. Until this day, I cannot afford her my forgiveness for making Mom her cause and champion.
“Oh, my sweet Ainslee, you poor, dear girl! How are you holding up? Have you eaten? You look like a raccoon with those circles under your eyes. Come in! Where is your luggage?”
Aunt Colleen never speaks in a single sentence; it’s always three or four or five questions or comments at a time. I’m always relieved to have a photographic memory because one must be prepared to answer all questions and respond to retorts quickly, or she will go into another tangent.
“I’m fine. I had McDonald’s last night. I look like a raccoon because I just graduated from Harvard, and I was up most nights studying for four years so as not to lose my scholarship. My luggage was stolen by an enraged cab driver who recognized me,” I say as I push past her to avoid another death grip. As I enter into the foyer, my heart sinks. The smell of Shalimar lingers, and the mid-century modern furniture brings me back. Once upon a time, I had lived very much like this. Dad had insisted on Aunt Colleen taking the furniture pieces Mom loved best before everything was sold at auction.
Running my hand over the settee, my memory can see Mom now in our den, lounging against the brocade fabric, a book by Judith Krantz in her hands, mindlessly twirling a lock of her ash-colored hair. She was the queen back then, when NYC was our empire. Shaking my head, I put my brave face back on and leave the memories behind. I can’t look back right now. If I do, I will never be brave enough to get this done.
Aunt Colleen is watching me like she expects me to crumble onto her marble floor and weep for days. Nope, no matinee performances here. She won’t get the pleasure of my tears. Those are reserved for when I am alone. No one used to love a good cry more than me. I was a sensitive child. I wasn’t ashamed to cry at movies or when I would scrape my knee on the sidewalk.
“Ainslee is quite an emotional child. Have you looked into it?” Mrs. Dunning my first-grade teacher had asked Mom once.
“Looked into it? She is a child. I will investigate it when she ceases having emotions because then I know I am raising a sociopath. Or is that what we were looking to do? I’m sorry I should have asked exactly what this was a Preparatory Academy for? I thought young minds but what kind of young minds did you have in mind?” My mom didn’t believe in the bullshit that came with social standings. Yes, she was beautiful and graceful, but she was a southern belle, and that meant she knew when using the phrase bless your heart really meant plain old fuck you. She withdrew me from Mrs. Dunning’s class and placed me with Ms. Delaney, who coddled me. I still look back on that decision and wonder if I would have grown up differently had she not. My shell didn’t take shape until later after our downfall. I doubted that even my beloved mother would now recognize me.
“What do you mean, a disgruntled cab driver? Why on Earth would you take a taxicab?” Aunt Colleen visibly recoils as she realizes she had touched my undoubtedly infected body.
“Because I can’t afford a car service, you know this.”
“I would have sent Wilford for you if you had bothered to let me know the exact time of your arrival. Tardiness will not stand in this house, and I assure you it will not stand at Monroe either. Chelsea will see to it that you ride with them in the mornings to ensure your timely arrival. Now, seeing as you have brought filth in with your crazy notion, please go upstairs and wash. I’m sure Chelsea can lend you a few things until you go shopping.”
I seethe. Chelsea freaking Manning. The self-proclaimed Princess of the Upper West Side and one of the biggest "see you next Tuesdays" I’ve ever met. Graduate of NYU with a phantom degree—technically, she majored in something, but even she couldn’t tell you exactly what without looking at her diploma. We’ve had a strained relationship for as long as I could remember.
Preening in the preschool playground, she had started a rumor I was still breastfeeding and wore diapers underneath my skirt. This had started the great debate of Ms. Bower’s class, which ended when Trace Tanner and Mark Flanniga
n got expelled for cornering me in the girl’s bathroom and lifting my skirt to check for a diaper. Third grade was when she “accidentally” forgot to invite me to the One Direction concert that our entire class flew to Boston for in her family’s private plane. I still remember her gifting me a T-shirt two sizes too big with a note apologizing.
Chelsea was a note fiend; she had her own personal engraved stationery at seven years old. She touted her amazing letter writing abilities constantly, though her last-place finish in every spelling bee highlighted her not-so-bright editing skills. I remember when she had spelled "sincerely" and "friend" wrong. I tucked that into my memory bank.
Sixth grade had us both competing for the same boy, Russell Granger. Nasty writings on Myspace labeled me everything from a slut to a prude, from a lesbian to a stoner—you name it, they wrote it. The accounts were started and quickly deleted as soon as the wildfire of the rumor mill spread. That was the end of my sparring with Chelsea, though, because in October, everything I knew was gone anyway. My will to fight the petty soon became nonexistent as I fought just to hold my head up against the rage thrown my way. 2008 was the hardest year I’ve ever had, and I am ninety-nine percent sure it was one of her finest. She reigned supreme from then on. I became an outcast and adopted the persona to go with it, so I was no longer a worthy adversary.
Smiling, I wonder what Chelsea fucking Manning would think of me now. She was on my agenda but in a much less substantial way. I haul my tote bag and single possession over my shoulder and make my way to the princess’s boudoir. Opening the door, I’m struck by a plethora of country French and opulence seriously rivaling the Palace of Versailles. Happily, I swing my grubby tote onto her massive canopied bed and recline myself onto the Patric 1500 thread count sheets. Surveying her closet, I realize after my unfortunate loss of clothing, I will be forced to ask her for her Junior League castoffs. More humiliation but I’m too tired to care. My body aches as I make my way to her en suite bathroom. Grabbing all the Crabtree and Evelyn bath products I once adored and used daily, I smile wickedly and lock the door.
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