I’m rinsing plates when he joins me in loading the dishwasher. “How can you ask that question after today?” And when he thinks about this, I say, “You can’t blame what she did on the hotel. It’s not that simple.” We’re standing shoulder to shoulder, but it feels farther. “Actually”—I stop and face him—“sometimes it is very simple, but it’s not the hotel’s fault. It’s no one’s fault.”
He tugs at his shirt collar. “Why are you so quick to defend her? What if she starts doing this all the time? What if she’s . . . what if . . .”
“What, Bobby? You’re worried your daughter may have a reputation? Is that it? You’re worried she may actually like fooling around with boys?”
“It’s different.”
“How convenient. The old double standard again.”
“Whatever. Maybe it’s best I’m leaving. I’m too irritated to be around her.”
His disregard frightens me. My secret unravels, spreading through my body. “You’re ashamed of Zoe. Is it so bad you have to leave?”
“It’s business, Em.”
“You’ve always been able to shift things around for us.”
“I can’t this time,” he says.
“Does this have something to do with Jonny’s phone call?”
“No.”
It’s a flimsy response, and I let it go.
The dishes are done, and an awkward quiet settles between us. We stand on either side of the island facing each other.
“It went well today,” he says. “It should be a nice piece.”
My fingers grab the countertop, and I lean into them for support. The piece. As long as the piece is okay. As long as it paints the perfect picture. June, Ward, Wally, and Beaver, shiny and spotless like our great hotel. Agreeing with him is continuing the charade.
His eyes narrow in question. “What’s wrong with you?”
I push off the counter, grab a dishcloth, and wipe imaginary grime from the table.
An eruption builds. It burns the nerves up and down my body. There’s no stopping what comes out of my mouth. “Everything’s wrong.”
He comes toward me, and I fling him away. I’m wiping the table down, long, hurried strokes that make no difference in the porcelain white. Zoe’s face tacked to the bulletin board stares down at me. It’s her school photo, taken a few weeks ago. Her smile is pure, her eyes cheerful. Summer had come to an end, and her skin was more olive than pale. This is about her. Not you. I wipe and wipe as though my hands can erase the last forty-eight hours. But Zoe still would’ve done what she did; we just wouldn’t have known about it.
By now I’m crying, cold drops that stream down my face and land on the table I’m trying to clean.
“Everything’s wrong,” I repeat. “And you, you’re worried about a magazine article that is so chock full of cracks that anyone looking close can see?”
He stands over me, and I can tell he wants to touch me, but it’s too painful, and he turns away. Eventually, I drop the rag and collapse in a chair. “What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Stop fighting her. Listen to her. Don’t push her away. I feel it every time you look at her. She feels it, too.”
“Why aren’t I entitled to have an opinion about this? Why can’t I be angry? Should I be like, ‘Hey, Zoe, great job. Let’s go shoot some pool downstairs’?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
I drop my head. I hate arguing with him. “I don’t know.”
But I do know. I’m scared he’s going to look at me the way he looks at Zoe.
CHAPTER 10
Bobby sleeps soundlessly by my side. I toss and turn, staring at the clock, watching the hours tick past. I roll over again and face the stars that dot the black sky. They used to bring me back to earth. As my nerves begin to settle, I replay the day. Faking happiness is grueling work. We’ve erected facades and walls, and what’s beneath it all tugs on old memories. The Ross holds that history—the girls touching the Atlantic for the first time, Bobby and I vowing to love each other forever, the miles that separated us, the lonely hours apart. Yet she’s as imperfect as the rest of us. How easily we can deceive ourselves and each other.
I was told that first love was as fleeting as its powerful pull. That wasn’t how it was for Bobby and me. Each passing year, our minds became a little more enrapt, our bodies intrinsically bound. There was so much more than what I’d shared with Lana and the magazine.
During our high school years, when I was in Chicago and he was in Miami, I daydreamed about returning to the Ross. While performing in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet, I used my acting skills as a coping mechanism. No matter who played my Romeo or Lysander or Demetrius, when I closed my eyes, I saw only one man: Bobby Ross.
Friends tried to set me up, but the prospects never evoked in me what Bobby could. My sisters loved him. And with each visit down south, a stretch of summer, winter break, a long weekend in May, our growing relationship became the ideal for all future relationships.
When our family ventured to the palm-tree-lined streets of Miami, I immersed myself in Bobby’s world. As quickly as I could shed my winter coat and boots, I was following him around the city that he loved. For Valentine’s Day, he took me to Joe’s Stone Crabs and introduced me to their famous claws and buttery sauce. We spent afternoons biking along Lincoln Road and walking the beach, hand in hand, sharing the minutiae of our respective lives. He knew all about my girlfriends back home, and I knew all about his world within the hotel walls. He taught me Spanish. Flaca, he called me, when I appeared too thin after exams. Bonita, because he said I was pretty. Te extraño y te amo, because he said he loved me and missed me more than the English language could convey. To which I learned to reply, No puedo vivir sin ti. His response, I can’t live without you either. Solo tú. Only you.
Nothing about Bobby was cursory. And as we aged, we were no longer young kids with a crush. When he’d play with my hair, he was fingering the blueprint of my internal history; when he ran his fingers up and down my arms, he was tapping into my tender spots, the ones that said I love him and only him.
Lana’s presumption was correct: Bobby had a jealous streak that ran the length of the Atlantic. As kids skipping along the beach playing a game of two-hand touch, he staked his claim. I was his. It was me and my sisters, Jonny, and Stuart and Jeff, two brothers who visited often from Long Island. It was winter break, and I was clad in a purple bikini that I had bought with Bobby in mind. The style was small and stringy, and he had already taken it off me once before. The weather in Chicago had been unusually cold that December. I was anxious to be back at the Ross beside Bobby, though I was a senior, and I knew college was nearing.
So when Stuart chased me into the end zone and grabbed the thin string, part of my top became exposed. My left breast, to be exact. His eyes popped open, and he lunged closer.
“Hey, asshole!” Bobby yelled, loud enough for them to hear in Islamorada. His nostrils flared, and he shoved Stuart aside and covered me with his arms. His ownership of my body excited me. It excited him, too. He kissed me long and hard on the lips while his hands expertly retied the strings. Stuart never bothered me again.
Zoe doesn’t get it, and most kids don’t. We were teenagers once. Beneath the bickering and brattiness, feelings were unearthed and comingled. Instead of rushing into the sexual pull, we relished being close. Bobby never pressured me. When we kissed, I took those lips home to Chicago, closing my eyes and imagining them somewhere else, somewhere I’d never let a boy go before. The years that followed were bottled up in the scent of sunscreen and salt. Back home, I would smell Bobby in the faint breeze of the Coppertone I’d leave by my bed. The sensations would sustain me when we were apart.
At seventeen, we stayed out all night on the beach with an oversize blanket Bobby had swiped from the laundry room. We told each other we were going to watch the sun rise, and around midnight, we covered the sand with the blanke
t and our bodies.
As if sensing where my mind has gone, Bobby moves beside me. He’s turned on his side away from me, and I think about curling around him and drawing him close, but I don’t.
It’s still dark when Zoe crawls in bed alongside me. The alarm isn’t set to go off for another hour.
“Why are you up?” I ask, rounding my body to make room for her. She is warm from sleep.
“I don’t know what to do.” She presses into me. “I don’t want to go.”
I brush the tangled hair off her face. “Whatever you decide, honey, we’ll support you. There’s no wrong answer.”
“What would you do?” she asks, her voice prodding me for answers.
“I can’t answer that, Zoe.” I want to, but there’s a distinct difference between what’s right and what’s easy.
“Please, Mom. I want to know.”
I sigh and consider the circumstances. “I guess I’d go. I’d think of it as a performance. Like acting.” Bobby shuffles next to me, and I lower my voice. Our bodies soften each other. “Imagine you’re at a debate. It’s a type of performance. Don’t let them get to you. If they see you upset, it’ll give them something to talk about. Don’t give them anything more to talk about.” A memory flashes. It’s quick. Snap. I’m walking into class, and the girls stop talking. One laughs. Another mouths a dirty word. I channel Rosalind Russell in Gypsy and lift my chin. “Pretend.”
I spoon-feed Zoe the same lines over her untouched breakfast. The girls are dressed in their school uniforms, polos and khaki shorts. Thatcher is generous with variety, and they wear different colors to prevent confusion, though their temperament sets them apart. Lily nibbles on a croissant, animated and talking fast about Thursday’s lacrosse match. She wears her hair pulled back in a messy swirl of brown and appears well rested. Zoe is silent and motionless. Her hair spreads down her shoulders and hides some of her face. Her expression is blank, leaving us guessing whether she’s actually going to make it out the front door.
“I’m scared,” she says, her voice a heavy whisper.
I grip her eyes in mine. “I know.”
Bobby pours himself coffee and takes a seat at the table. He’s dressed in a dark suit and the red tie we bought last year when we visited my sisters up north. He’s stuck in his head and far from his animated self. I wonder if he remembers turning away from me last night. “How long do you think this meeting with Dr. Mason will go?” he asks, as though he’s doing me a favor by joining us. He cuts into a bagel and slathers it with cream cheese, avoiding eye contact. Zoe’s mouth opens to say something, but she changes her mind.
I don’t press her about going to school. I focus on things we can try to control. “Dr. Mason’s confident the video’s contained. No one wants to make this worse. We’re behind you, Zoe. Whatever you need.”
Her head rests in her hands, and we wait for some indication of her decision. I don’t want to push her. She needs to be comfortable with her choice. She surprises us by standing up and grabbing her backpack from the floor. “Let’s get this over with. Maybe he’ll excuse me from taking the biology test.”
Lily surprises me, too. Always the one armed with a quick comeback about the unfairness of things, instead she’s mum.
We pass through the hotel lobby, and the stares and laughs of guests who are merely being friendly feel like something else. No one in our sphere seems to know, and it’s nothing like what Zoe will soon face. Her wound is raw, and the phony smiles and callous whispers of her peers are sure to hurt. There’s no way I can shield her from what’s to come.
Lily listens to music through her headphones, and Zoe sulks. Bobby’s by my side, though we don’t touch. He’s focused on his building, and I imagine he’s studying the white marble floors that need to be replaced and how the demolition will affect the gold mosaic columns that stretch toward the high ceilings. Their tiles reflect the surrounding candlelight. Most days, when I enter the vast space, the possibilities envelop me. Today, the giant white pots overflowing with plants greet me, the pale leather couches and soft lights graze my skin, but that is all. There’s an emptiness in my belly I don’t know how to fill.
The staff at the ivory modular desk smile at us like they do each morning. Lily waves, and Zoe stares ahead. Heather, one of the welcome staff, comes out from behind the desk and approaches Bobby. Her expression means it’s important.
“Go ahead,” he says. “I’ll meet you out front.”
Guests mill around, some feeling the joy of checking in, others feeling melancholy over checking out. The Beckers’ little boy approaches and thanks me for a super time. His parents smile and wave. We won’t see them for another year, and the nostalgia twists inside.
Alberto greets us like he does each morning, though today is different. He’s holding the door for us to pass through. “Today’s the day! Driving permits, yes?”
Lily appears beaten. “Not quite, Poppy Berto.”
Zoe’s lips are pressed together. I manage a smile for the two of them, and we touch briefly on the cooler weather moving through South Florida as we descend the stairs.
We wait for the car to be brought around the circular drive, and Alberto remarks on how grown-up the girls are. “Do you see the resemblance? They look very much like their abuela. Same eyes,” he says, and he focuses on Zoe when he adds, “and very serious.”
When the car arrives, I turn from Alberto, and greet the valet as he holds the door. The forced smile hurts, quickly sliding off my face.
“Señora Ross,” Alberto says, joining me by the passenger’s side, “I’ve upset you . . .”
“No, Alberto.” He squeezes my fingers. My eyes well up again. How I miss Laura and Zane Ross. With everything falling apart around us, Bobby could use his father’s common sense and his mother’s intense adoration. I have to believe they’re near. That’s when I see Bobby approaching.
“Thank you, Alberto. We’ll be fine.” But when I steal a glance at my girls in the back seat, I’m really not so sure.
The Thatcher campus is lush and green—unheard of in Miami. Perched on a generous piece of land, the property houses state-of-the-art classrooms, a three-hundred-seat theater, a television studio, a sports complex, a farm-to-table food hall, an aquatics center, and numerous other amenities that make it one of the most desirable private schools in Dade County.
Bobby drops us off at the front of the two-story high school before heading to the covered parking garage. “I’ll meet you in Dr. Mason’s office,” I say to him over my shoulder. Lily runs ahead while Zoe takes her time. My arm wants to pull her close, but I know she won’t allow it. Every step of the way, I worry. Is someone looking at her? Are they pointing? Are they saying unkind things?
School offices are always unnerving. Zoe glumly sits with her hands in her lap while Dr. Mason politely asks how she’s doing. She shrugs; embarrassment creeps up her face. Bobby takes an empty seat and we begin.
“Let me start by saying we’ve prepared a letter to parents and students outlining the risks of filming, uploading, viewing, and distributing inappropriate videos and photos.” He hands us a copy, and we read it together. “Zoe and Price are unnamed. Anyone found partaking in the listed offenses will be reported to the authorities and receive an immediate expulsion from Thatcher,” he warns.
Bobby nods. “Has the school heard anything else? We’d like to find out who’s behind the filming.”
“I have not,” he says, dropping his hands to the desk. “But I can assure you if we hear anything you’ll be the first to know.”
I study the middle-aged man with wavy brown hair and an angular face. “Do you think maybe Zoe can talk to Dr. Rubin today?” I turn to Zoe. “Do you want to talk to the school’s counselor? Maybe it would help.”
“Zoe,” Dr. Mason says, clasping his hands. “We’re taking every step to ease this transition for you. We’re here to help. Whatever you need. Talking to Dr. Rubin might be a good first step. I’ll schedule something that won’t inte
rfere with your classes.”
“Can you make it during biology? I have it third period. There’s a test I have to make up . . .” She struggles to finish.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” he says, swiveling his chair to the computer. “I’ll send a message to Mr. Musso about a different makeup day, and Dr. Rubin will see you third period.”
When he finishes, he turns around and faces us. “Zoe, I’m impressed to see you here today, though not surprised. The kids look up to you. Your teachers have nothing but glowing reports. In my experience, the best thing you can do is walk out there and do what you’ve always done. We’ll take care of the rest.”
Loud voices suddenly infiltrate the office—a boy’s voice, something I can’t make out, a slapping sound, and then “Shut your mouth!” Lily.
My heart thuds, and I dart a look at Bobby, who is doing a wonderful job, by his blank expression, of being blissfully unaware. I’m on my feet before any of them acknowledge the commotion, and dash out the doorway. Zoe is not far behind.
There, in the hallway, surrounded by a group of teenagers, Lily’s waging her own war. “Bobby!” I call out.
“You’re in big trouble,” she says to a scrawny boy with frightened eyes. She has him cornered by a row of lockers. He backs up, the tight navy-blue Thatcher polo squeezing his skinny arms. The brown of his eyes matches his Justin Bieber haircut.
“You’re not being fair!” he cries out, a shot of injustice pouring from a mouth full of braces. “You agreed to do it.”
I am frozen, face-to-face with Price Hudson. My heart pounds in my ears. Bobby’s about to move in closer. I stop him with my arm. “Don’t.”
“You’re such an idiot.” Lily pounces, her hands on her hips. “You don’t even know I’m not Zoe.”
“Lily!” I shout. I want to punish this kid, but it gets lost in my wish for my daughter to be a lady.
Dr. Mason is directing students and demands they get to class. “Lily, Price, that means you, too.” Price’s face is stricken with fresh panic. Everyone knows Zoe is compliant and sweet. Her sister is the firecracker.
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