That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (read more books .txt) 📕

told you, just get regular burgers, and regular hot dogs, and make regular onion dip from the Lipton soup mix, like everyone else does…”

“I don’t want to be like everyone else!” Daisy hated her warbling voice; hated that she was practically crying. Her party had been a failure, and she suspected that all the couples were talking about it on their way home—how desperately hard she’d tried, how pathetically eager to please she’d been. “This is what I do, Hal. I cook. I’m not a lawyer, or a psychologist, or an art therapist, I don’t do global outreach for Penn. I don’t even have a college degree!” The other women had been polite about it; nobody had gone out of their way to make her feel bad. Daisy had been perfectly capable of doing that all on her own.

“It’s fine,” Hal had said, his voice remote. “You’ll learn.”

She had. “They’re stupid white people,” Hannah would tell her, usually through a mouthful of whatever dish Daisy was cooking.

“You’re a white person,” Daisy would tell her, and Hannah would say, “But, hopefully, not a stupid one.” Hannah, like Hal, had grown up in a household where salt and pepper were the only seasonings, but she loved all kinds of food, the spicier, the better. “Fuck ’em if they can’t appreciate you.”

Daisy looked around her kitchen, at Beatrice, gobbling peanut butter, and the sunlight, streaming through the window over the sink. She’d gotten the kitchen of her dreams: a six-burner stove, imported from England, with navy-blue trim and gold-toned hardware. A deep, expansive farmhouse sink; new cherrywood cabinets, a new backsplash, tiled in shades of cream and gold and celery green. She’d ripped up the old granite counters and replaced them with limestone, with an inset made of butcher block, for chopping, and another made of marble, which stayed cool when she was rolling out pastry. In one corner was a dining nook, with built-in benches on two sides, and in the middle of the room was Daisy’s very favorite thing: an enormous fieldstone fireplace that opened to the kitchen on one side and the den on the other.

Hal had been away a lot the year of renovations, overseeing a trial in Virginia and another in Florida. Daisy sometimes suspected that the kitchen was a kind of apology–cum–consolation prize, a way for Hal to say sorry for his absence, and how she’d been the only one at school concerts and parent-teacher conferences and at Bea’s soccer games, where the girls would run up and down the field in a cluster, kicking each other more often than the ball and hardly ever scoring. Sometimes, she suspected that maybe there was something else Hal was apologizing for—something that might have happened when he’d been out of town. But she’d never asked, and he’d never volunteered. On such silences are marriages built, she’d told herself at the time. Certainly she’d never seen her own mother evince any interest in her dad’s business trips. And the kitchen was undeniably gorgeous. She kept her eyes on the skylight and tried not to sigh as Beatrice clomped over to the freezer and started rummaging around.

“Have you seen my mice?” she asked.

Daisy was certain she’d misheard. “What?”

“My mice,” Beatrice said impatiently. “They were right here, on the top shelf, behind the pie crust.”

Daisy looked at her daughter, who stared back at her calmly, as if she’d asked her mom for a glass of milk or a ride to the mall. “Beatrice,” Daisy said, her voice faint. “Please tell me you haven’t been keeping dead mice in the freezer.”

“Why not?” Beatrice asked, shrugging. “They’re, like, double-bagged. They’re not touching anything.”

“I don’t care!” Daisy said. Or, rather, screamed. “I don’t want dead rodents in my freezer, near food that you and I and your father are eating! Food that I’m feeding other people, who are paying me to learn how to cook! Jesus, Beatrice, what if someone got sick?”

“How are dead mice any different than dead chickens? Or dead lambs, or dead cow?” Beatrice yelled back. “You’re a hypocrite.”

“Well, I’m also the adult. This is my house.”

“Like you paid for it,” Beatrice sneered. “Like either one of you did.”

Daisy made herself ignore the jab, choosing instead to be grateful that Beatrice said it to her. God knows how Hal would have reacted to the idea that there was something in his life he hadn’t earned—and, even if he had given his brother money amounting to what Jeremy might have realized from the sale, paying for half of this house had been significantly easier than paying for all of it. “When I tell you that you cannot keep your mice in my freezer, I expect you to have the courtesy to respect my wishes.”

“So where am I supposed to keep them?” Beatrice asked, eyebrows lifted. “Do you want me to buy a completely separate freezer for a few mice?”

“Well, ideally,” Daisy snapped, “I would like for you to have a hobby that doesn’t involve dead rodents. But seeing as how you’re not going to do something normal, like join the school paper or the choir, I would like for you to find somewhere other than my freezer for your mice.”

Beatrice’s lower lip trembled, her eyes welled with tears. “Well, jeez. I’m sorry that I’m not the normal daughter you wanted,” she said.

Instantly, Daisy went from feeling furious to feeling sad, and deeply ashamed for making her daughter doubt herself, for making her cry. Beatrice turned and stormed out of the kitchen. “Wait,” Daisy called. “Wait, Bea, you know that’s not what I meant!”

“Yes, it is,” said Beatrice. “I’m not the kind of daughter you ever wanted.”

Daisy swallowed down the bitter taste of guilt, because hadn’t she said something very close to that, in New York, when she’d been with Diana? “Trixie…”

“Don’t call me that!” Beatrice shouted. Before Daisy could apologize, she said, “I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment,” and ran up the stairs to her room.

Daisy’s shoulders slumped, and the pleasant anticipation she’d