“Go ahead. You can say it.”
“But,” she said again, “you intentionally make it look like you do all this alone.”
I’d been waiting for this moment.
Lights,camera—
“I’ve never said that we don’t have help. Really, I don’t think that what I do on the ranch, which is to show the best parts of it, is any different than what anyone else does on social media. It’s a highlight reel, Shannon. I never said it wasn’t.”
Again, she was silent. My sensors flashed green. I continued. “There are millions of women out there who rely on me now, and I take that responsibility very seriously.”
“But you’re lying to them.”
“It’s not a lie. It’s just also not the full truth.”
“And why don’t you give them the full truth?”
“Because they don’t want it. And anyways, I give them other things they need even more.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“A temporary escape.”
The girls Shannon went to school with, the ones who loved me? They would never be able to do what I did. They would never be able to leave the maze. I knew it, and now Shannon did, too. But what I, whatwe,offered them, was the next-best thing: little moments of vicarious living. Brief bursts of imagining.This is what it would be like if you were as rich and beautiful and hardworking as me. This is what it will never be like for you.I knew that this was the true offering, deep in my bones, because it was my relationship to the account, too. Vicarious. Imagined. Unattainable.
Attain it,Online Natalie purred.
We were quiet for several minutes. Shannon didn’t say anything else, but it was obvious she was thinking about what I’d said, deciding if she agreed. Clementine came back with a handful of flowers and plopped down between us, shifting her butt until she was leaning against Shannon’s chest. “I’m going to make you a flower crown, Shannon.”
“That sounds fab,” Shannon said.
“Should we film it?” I said hopefully, but Shannon just shrugged. “We’ve got plenty of footage. This can just be for fun.”
“When are you going to have children, Shannon?” Clementine asked.
“Hm. I don’t know if I’ll have them, but if I do, it probably won’t be for a very long time.”
Clementine and I both frowned. “That’s really silly,” Clementine said. “All women become mothers when they grow up.”
“Actually, Clem, they don’t.”
When had Shannon started calling my daughter Clem? And what was this crap about childless women?
If she noticed my discomfort, she didn’t react to it. “There arejust so many things that I want more, right now. Like travel. I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean. I want to visit California and drive Highway One, maybe live in one of the towns along the coast.”
“Ocean,” Clementine said suddenly, looking at the two of us. “What’s that?”
The conversation stilled to silence.
“Clem,” I said lightly, trying on Shannon’s nickname, “I’m sure Nanny Louise has told you about oceans. They’re big bodies of water.”
“No,” Clementine corrected. “That’s a river.”
“But there’s more than one kind. You know what we’re talking about. Of course you do! Atlantic, Pacific, Indian …” I trailed off. I couldn’t remember the names of the other ones. There were other ones, weren’t there? Seven? Or was that the continents?
My eleven-year-old daughter gave me a look of blank distrust. Then she looked back up at Shannon. “What’s an ocean, Shannon?”
“Well,” Shannon began awkwardly, “I suppose it’s where all this land ends, and the water begins …”
