Something She's Not Telling Us - Darcey Bell Page 0,31

By now, she’s looked at them so often, it’s as if they’re people—faces—she knows.

“Something’s off about her,” says Charlotte.

Ted says, “Do you realize this is the third session you’ve started off by talking about your brother’s girlfriend?”

Charlotte knows and she doesn’t know. She thinks: I don’t have time for Ted to tell me what I already know. She doesn’t have time for therapy.

But she needs this as much as she needs anything. More. Ted helps her make sense of the world. He helps her deal with her anxieties about Daisy’s health, with her worries about not being a good-enough mother. He helps her deal with her guilt about what happened in the past—and what she can’t change. He helps her cope with her feeling that Eli isn’t doing as much as she is, with her suspicion that just because he pays most of the bills, he can leave the heavy lifting to her. Or maybe it’s a man thing, a half-Latino-man thing. The woman is the one who has to take on the burden of caring for their home and their child.

She loves how old-school Ted is. His office looks like a therapist’s office from Freud’s time, with its tribal weavings and statues, its Persian rugs—really, it could have been interior-decorated by Freud! She likes the fact that he keeps his records and patient files in a separate room, out of sight, so that she doesn’t have to think about all the unhappy people who have passed through this space.

“I worry about Rocco,” she says. “You know that. Better than anyone. He’s had so many crazy women. I worry he’s found another one.”

Ted says, “Do you expect that at some point you’ll realize he’s an adult, so you no longer have to be his big sister? Protecting him? Taking care of him like you did when your mother left you in charge?”

“I’ll always be his big sister. But okay. Sure. Yes. Whatever. Look . . . this girlfriend scares me a little. More than a little. I have this feeling she’s not telling us things. That she’s got some awful secret . . .”

Ted’s silent for a long time.

“What are you thinking?” asks Charlotte.

“I’m a little hesitant—”

“Say it,” Charlotte tells him. “Go ahead.”

“What I want to say is . . . Do you think you might suspect her of having secrets because of the secrets you have? The things you haven’t told anyone, that you’ve kept from Eli—”

“Me?” says Charlotte. “Secrets? What secrets?”

She’s joking.

“You know, Charlotte,” says Ted. “You know.”

8

Ruth

Every day I spend at the start-up feels like being hazed by frat boys at the world’s most horrendous fraternity initiation. When my coworkers crazy-glued my mouse to my desk, I had to pry it loose with a crowbar I borrowed from the janitor. It left a hole in the laminate, and I had to install a new mouse with everyone watching. I felt like punching someone. Okay, think: What was the very worst day of my job with the baroness? There were so many bad days. Whatever happens at the start-up is better.

For about a half minute, working for the baroness was fun. Her idea of entertainment was to rent high-end sports cars and floor them on the Palisades after she’d had a few drinks. No one but me would go with her. No one had told me that risking my life was part of my job description. It was a good thing I’d had practice, riding with Grandpa Frank.

I’m not scared of much. Spiders. The basement at my grandparents’ house. And being abandoned by men.

It was cool when the baroness and I went to clubs and they chased hot young A-list types away from prime tables for us. They wanted their club to appear on the Baroness Frieda’s show. Once, I made a move to refill our glasses and she slapped my hand. Let the waiter do it. She’d had a lot to drink.

Sometimes she would ask me to be her on the phone and say the first thing that came into my head, even to a reporter, as long as I did my Norwegian accent. She was all right with whatever craziness appeared in the press. She knew a lot of famous people. Every time a famous person died, she’d make me post an archival photo of her with that person. She has over a million Twitter followers. Her photo archive had its own closet in the rambling Upper East Side apartment she’d inherited from her Dutch grandfather