When JB finally saw me he made a big fuss and apologized for the wait—he’d had to squeeze me in on such short notice, he hoped nothing was wrong? Then before I could answer he called to his secretary to bring us coffee and he had to go out to handle something and I had to sit there in his office, looking at all the silver-framed photographs of JB’s grandkids and his sailboat and the house on Martha’s Vineyard and it all made me want to cry. If Mommy and Daddy hadn’t died on that plane I’d have all this: I could talk to my family about what was happening with Stan, Chloë’s picture would be on Daddy’s desk, and I’d be on the Cape right now instead of in sweltering, dirty Manhattan.
When JB came back he perched on the edge of the desk and gave me a cup of coffee, which I let sit on the table beside me because I was afraid my hands would shake too hard if I picked it up. I told him I wanted to change the terms of the trust to protect Chloë’s interests.
“You want a new trustee? Is there anything wrong between you and Stan? Should I call Arnie in from Matrimonial?” He said all this in his lockjaw patrician drawl. His white hair and tanned skin reminded me of Stan. But then, that was because JB looked like what I imagined my father would look like now and I’d married someone who reminded me of my father.
That thing I said to Daphne, about us wanting to put the world back together, was bullshit. You can’t put together something that’s broken. It’s like trying to glue together a priceless Ming vase. In the end it’s just a piece of broken trash.
“No,” I told him, “I don’t need Arnie—at least not yet. I just want to make sure that Chloë’s money is protected.”
When I told him what I wanted to do, he made a face. He tried to talk me out of it, to get me to at least wait and think about it, but I did what Mommy would do when one of the servants made excuses. I just smiled and repeated what I wanted.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll have the papers drawn up right away and send them to you.” Then there were a lot of details about notaries and witnesses. I started to feel jittery from the coffee and as soon as we were done I went to use the ladies’ room and threw up. When I came out of the stall the receptionist was standing at the sink. She asked if I was okay and I told her I was fine and that she was picking the wrong colors for the tablecloths at her wedding. Salmon would make everyone look sallow. She should go with peach.
I fixed my hair and makeup. I looked awful but I figured it was just the bad lighting. For what JB charges an hour you’d think the firm could afford better lighting.
I didn’t feel like sitting alone in a restaurant or trying on clothes so I took a cab back to Grand Central. I got sick again on the train. Maybe I’ve got the flu. Probably something I picked up from Chloë. Babies are like germ factories.
All I wanted to do was sit quietly on the train and stop thinking about how crappy I felt when of course this woman shoves her face right up in front of me and screeches, “Laurie, is that you?” And would you believe, it’s Esta, with a bunch of Eileen Fisher and Saks bags, wearing one of her tent dresses and big macramé earrings. Last person on Earth I wanted to see. She sits down across from me and starts braying away: why’d I quit the group, I was doing so well, she’d been worried about me, blah, blah, blah. Then she sticks out her waddled neck and peers closer at me and says, “You really don’t look so well.”
“Just a summer cold,” I told her.
“Oh, those are the worst!” Then she sits back with a smug look on her face and says, “Is that what was wrong with Chloë?”
“What?” I asked her.
“Daphne called me to say she was worried about you because you’ve been fretting about Chloë.”
I couldn’t believe it! After all the times we had made fun of Esta together and I defended Daphne when Esta was mean to her, Daphne goes and rats me out to Esta! I was so mad, I could barely pay attention to anything Esta was saying. She was going on about Daphne and how she was afraid she had that postpartum OCD thing where she over-identifies with other women’s stories so I asked her if she wasn’t betraying patient-therapist confidentiality by talking to me about Daphne. That shut her up.
When I got home I was so chilled that I changed into Stan’s sweatpants and crawled onto the couch. Stan mixed up a drink with electrolytes and I was so dehydrated that I drank two big bottles of it. I was just feeling a little better when Daphne showed up, basically to tell me that I looked like shit. Then she started going on about these jobs I could apply for—as if that was the answer to my problems!—and about how I had lost myself. I took a good look at her then and I saw how much she’s copied about me: my hair, my clothes—she’s even got the same fucking Kate Spade bag that Stan gave me—and I realized she’s been making herself into a little mini me. Which is so pathetic it made me feel even sicker.
But the worst thing was Daphne got this saccharine sweet I’m-so-worried-about-you look on her face and asked me if I was thinking about killing myself. She said Stan told
