“Well, she gets points for consistency, I’ll give her that,” Dorothy murmured as she continued thumbing her phone. “She’s really thinking about her palette.”
“Her pallet?” That was how he heard it, pallet, like where Joan of Arc would have slept.
“On her Instagram. It’s pink. Her palette is a mix of light pink and hot pink.”
He still didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“With the occasional salmon accent thrown in.”
He blinked angrily. Dorothy had downloaded the app only a week ago.
“What about the picture of Michelle Obama?” he asked. “She’s not pink.”
“Her dress is.” His wife smiled at him.
At this point the hostess looked up from her station and signaled for them to approach. The noise of the restaurant rose up around them, and for a moment he felt enfolded by the warm lighting and the voices and the smell of food being thoughtfully prepared. But none of it gave him any pleasure.
As soon as they were seated, he ordered wine for them both and in a little bout of resentment told Dorothy that a pink palette struck him as depressingly clichéd. Ivy was just imitating what she saw other girls doing online. Carefully styled shots of doughnuts and videos of dissolving bath bombs. Groupthink, he said. She kept talking about her personal “style” and her “vibe” and her “aesthetic,” but nothing about it was actually hers. The photo of her hand holding the pink drink from Starbucks? He’d seen practically the same image posted a hundred times before.
His wife reached out and touched the arm of a passing server. “Can we get a new fork, please?” Accidentally he had knocked his off the table.
“I know you don’t like it when I talk about YouTubers, but can I tell you just this one thing? What makes Ashleigh Janine different from a lot of other YouTubers is that she’s really honest with her fans. She’ll come right out and say who’s sponsoring her. She doesn’t try to hide it or make it seem like it’s just a coincidence that she uses Simple and Clinique. She’ll say, ‘I’m so excited to be working with these brands.’ And also? She’s grateful. She says all the time how blessed she is. Because she knows it’s not usual for a twenty-three-year-old to be buying her first house. And have it be so big.”
“She’s buying a house?”
“With a pool.”
“Wow,” he said. “Her own pool.”
“She’s already moved in. Tomorrow she’s going to Lowe’s to buy houseplants.”
“What’s Simple?” He knew what Clinique was.
“It’s a makeup remover. Like, cleansing facial wipes. They don’t use artificial perfumes or harsh chemicals, so it won’t upset your skin.”
“She bought a house by using cleansing wipes?”
“She has a lot of other sponsors, not just Simple. Plus she’s writing a YA novel, so she gets money from that, too.”
He didn’t know how to continue the conversation. Accelerating, he made it through a yellow light.
“Dad?” his daughter said, after a minute or two. “When Ashleigh’s book comes out, can I get it?”
He must have looked ill-disposed—or maybe he just looked ill—because then she said jovially, “Come on! It’s reading.”
But could it really be called reading? Did it actually count as a book? Or was it just something AMAZING. Something to be SO EXCITED about. To be SO GRATEFUL for. I hope you guys enjoyed it! I had so much fun doing it and if you want me to do more things like this, make sure to give it a big thumbs-up and comment down below. And don’t forget to subscribe to my vlog channel—which just got, I can’t believe it, two million subscribers!—because there you can see all the behind-the-scenes! So, yeah, thank you for watching and I love you guys so so so much—
In fact, would it be going too far to call it TREMENDOUS? Something INCREDIBLE. A massive story. And very complex. Made by some really incredible people. Of such incredible talent. It will be a big win, there’s no question about it. And I can tell you why, because, number one, the enthusiasm. The enthusiasm for this, it is really tremendous—
Right before the impact, he heard his daughter gasp.
And, in the silence afterward, he felt her chest rising and falling rapidly against his outstretched arm.
New post: a bared collarbone with a seat-belt burn running diagonally across it. The welt shiny with ointment, and pink.
During the intermission of The Nutcracker, he was startled to see the physical therapist standing in line for the ladies’ room. She was holding a potted orchid from Trader Joe’s and wearing a velvet blazer. “You came!” he said, a little too loudly. He glanced around to see if maybe she had brought a date. She asked him, “Is this Ivy’s mom?” and he remembered to introduce Dorothy, who promptly apologized for the length and overall tedium of the production. “But I’m enjoying it,” the therapist protested. She complimented the girl who had danced Arabian Coffee and also the Chinese dragon dancers, who had succeeded, the dad admitted, in bringing a sort of unruly street energy to the show. “Ivy was wonderful,” she said, and together he and Dorothy smiled. “Like you could really tell,” he said.
She looked at him seriously. “I would know those legs anywhere. Overpronation of the feet, well-developed gastrocnemius. She was third from the back.” The confidence with which she said it moved him. He wished he could say he knew anything that well. He thought of all the time she had spent working with his daughter deep in the forest of equipment: two times a week, for nearly three months. Not only a licensed professional but an expert in her field. And here she was, on her day off—
It was the therapist who was smiling now. “Don’t look like that, Dave,” she said. “It’s not magic or anything. It’s just my job.” He began smiling, too, to show that he of course understood, but judging from the expression on her face,
