I picture her now, sitting cross-legged on the big round chair in the living room, facing away from the view of Laurel Canyon. Apparently, Dad was the one who cared about views. Georgia complained that he picked out the house, a bungalow in the hills, like he’d made music in the 1970s instead of the 1990s.
Georgia always called ityour father’s house. Once, when I told her I liked the house, she said,You’re your father’s daughter.I wasn’t sure—I still don’t know—whether she meant it as a compliment or an insult.
In my mind’s eye, Georgia’s wearing one of her cotton nightgowns, the sort that looks like it belongs on a five-year-old. The skirt is hiked up so you can see the scar on her knee from the time she fell down the stairs rolling on E, too high to feel pain. Her hair is bleached blond but her roots areshowing, mouse brown and streaked with gray. She’s waiting for her phone to ring, waiting for some expert to call and say her daughter was misdiagnosed all those years ago.
Here’s what’sreallywrong with Amelia Blue.
Now, as Dr. Mackenzie continues to tour from one room to the next, the delicate cookie crumbles in my hands. Surely they don’t expect me to eatcrumbs. I leave the remains of the cookie on a bathroom counter.
“Would you like us to provide you with a coat?” the doctor asks.
“What?” I say dumbly.
Dr. Mackenzie smiles patiently, a teacher explaining arithmetic to a child. “I noticed you arrived wearing only a sweater. Perhaps you didn’t think you’d need anything warmer, since our work together can be done indoors. But I’d be happy to walk the property with you. Some people prefer to practice therapy while walking through nature. Do you think you might like that?”
I imagine myself wearing a puffy black coat with the wordsRush’s Recovery(perhaps simplyRR) embroidered across my chest like a scar.
The truth is, I would like a coat. It’s freezing out, and I’m not planning on spending all my time here within the walls of the cottage. But I’m also not planning on being outside with a doctor by my side.
“No thanks,” I answer. “I don’t need a coat.”
When I return to use the toilet a few minutes later, the cookie crumbs are gone, no doubt silently and secretly removed by Izabela, as if she were a mouse rather than a human being, like I’m Cinderella at the start of her story—birds and mice her only companions before the prince comes to rescue her.
But Cinderella wasso good. She wanted to be rescued.
Shedeservedto be rescued.
10Lord Edward
My care manager, Dr. Rush, does that thing most people do when they meet me: a slight tilt of the head, peering at his shoes as though there might be a scuff on them, not quite a bow, but not the complete absence of one, either. (I realize, belatedly, that Amelia Blue did no such thing.) When Dr. Rush bends his neck, I can see the beginning of a bald spot on the top of his head; his remaining dark hair is peppered ever so slightly with gray. Anne and my father seem to know what to do when faced with such a greeting—that is, they take it in as though it isn’t the least bit absurd but perfectly appropriate. Now, I find myself mirroring the gesture slightly, trying to pass the movement off as a nod.
Dr. Rush at least calls me Edward, notLordEdward. The chef and housekeeper do the same. Anne must’ve told them to use my first name. Or maybe it’s a rehab thing—tearing one down before they build one back up again. That’s what happens in the movies. Though none of the places in the movies look like this.
The doctor leads me around the cottage as if he’s giving a museum tour. The fridge is stocked with my favorite flavored water, and there’s organic crunchy peanut butter in the cabinets. Dr. Rush name-drops brands the way some people drop the names of celebrities they slept with: Sub-Zero, Miele, Viking, deVOL.
“A British brand,” Dr. Rush adds enthusiastically about the last, as if it might make me feel more at home, though he must know that, excepting the past few months, I haven’t lived full-time in England since I was fifteen. Still, I smile and thank him, like they picked out the kitchen cabinets with me in mind. The doctor beams.
In my apartment in Tribeca, I have similar appliances. My mattress is a Vispring; my sheets are organic cotton; the furniture is high-endbut not custom, selected from catalogs. The first time she set foot inside, Harper pointed out that everything was brown or navy blue: brown leather couch, navy-blue bedspread, brown wooden furniture, navy-blue dining chairs. The color scheme was the result of a lack of imagination, not intention.
Spend too much time in this apartment alone and you might forget there’s a world of color out there,Harper said. She left her pink underwear on the bedroom floor, shiny tubes of coral lipstick on my bedside table. She’d come home with travel magazines, ripping out pictures of the most colorful destinations, taping them to the refrigerator door. I promised to take her to each and every one.
We’ll take each other,she said.With our own money. Not your family’s.
I don’t have my own money,I pointed out. Financial support from one’s family isn’t exactly unusual in New York City, though I don’t imagine most people were receiving quite as much support as I was.
That makes you just like every other twentysomething I know,Harper replied.We’ll rough it.She laughed at the idea of me staying in hostels, nothing but a backpack to my name. She was going to wend her way through the cities of Europe and the beaches of Fiji with her light, loping gait, as graceful as a cat.
Someday, when my father dies, my sister will be in charge of every cent I’m given to live on—an allowance, like a child—as well as which public events I can officially attend, in which of our properties I can reside and when, for which privilege I will pay rent from the allowance Anne determines. The concept of my own money, my own property, has never entered into the equation.
So get a job,Harper said, as if it were easy.Go back to school.
I suppose it was easy, in as much as most people did it. But to tell my family—impossible. They would laugh at the idea of my continuing my education when I barely made it through high school. My father’s voice would drip with sarcasm as he asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, as though my hoping to be anything other than what they’d already decided was the punchline to a terrible joke.We let him live in America too long, Anne would say,he’s getting ideas.
Of course, I will have a job eventually—sons and daughters like me areexpected to—but it will be one the family selects, secured not by my résumé but by their connections. One doesn’t talk about what onewantsto do in my family; one does what one is told to do. It’s been that way, literally, for centuries. Who am I to change matters?
Dr. Rush leads the way with a slow sort of amble as though he hasn’t a care in the world. I try to match his stride, but it’s impossible for me to step with that sort of ease. He’s slightly taller than I am (six-one; you can look it up), his legs longer. He points to the Nest thermostat in the corridor, mine to control while I’m here.
“What if I like it really hot or really cold?”
