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

our daughter’s not Dartmouth material? Which wasn’t what she meant, of course. It wasn’t that Beatrice wasn’t smart enough to get in somewhere good; it was that she wouldn’t be happy, a fact that Hal must have realized by now. At least, Daisy hoped that was the case.

“How about you, Daisy? Where did you go to college?”

“I was at Rutgers,” said Daisy, feeling her smile tighten her face. It was absolutely, undeniably true. She had been at Rutgers. She’d just never finished.

“That’s a great school,” said Mr. Byrne, as Hal said, “I think our little artiste is probably going to want someplace smaller.”

Daisy smiled and nodded. At the first opportunity, she murmured something about needing to check the punch bowl and escaped to the kitchen. She knew that she shouldn’t feel the need to apologize to this roomful of terrifyingly ambitious moms and dads because all her daughter wanted to do was make needle-felted gnomes and elves and miniature replicas of pets, but she did. You know the summer before junior year is critical, some mom would say, with the dad beside her nodding his agreement. It’s their last chance to do something big. As if their lives ended at eighteen if they didn’t get into the right kind of school. Which, Daisy realized, these people probably believed.

Daisy replenished the punch bowl. She visited the porch, to see if anyone else had bid on her services (no one had), then went back to the kitchen to check the food. She’d just tied on an apron when she felt Hal come up behind her. “Daisy, come meet the new dean!” In a low voice, he added, “And take off the apron. I don’t want you looking like the help.”

Then you shouldn’t have volunteered me to host, Daisy thought. She untied her apron, wondering, with an unpleasant prickly sensation, if Hal’s real problem was not her apron, but the fact that she wasn’t like Everly’s mother, who was slender and gorgeous and, like Hal, a lawyer, or like Charlie’s mom, who had on a pair of red-soled Louboutins and did something important at Comcast. Daisy could never have been one of those women, not even if she’d gotten her college degree and a high-powered job, she thought as she trailed after Hal. She just wasn’t that kind of woman. She lacked that level of ambition. She was perfectly happy with her home, her daughter, the business that gave her what Hal referred to, charmingly, as “pin money.” She’d been happy, and she thought that Hal had been happy with her—his little bird, with her little job, who made their house a home. Only now, as she saw the appreciative way he looked at the new head of Melville’s Upper School, a woman named Krista Dietrich, who was all of thirty-six years old and had degrees from Stanford and Wharton, Daisy wondered if he’d changed his mind, if he wasn’t reaching the conclusion that Daisy would never blossom, would never become any more than what she was, and if what he felt was resentment, not satisfaction, with their marriage and with her.

When Ms. Dietrich went off to glad-hand the next couple, Hal took Daisy’s arm and leaned in close. “Have you seen our daughter?”

Daisy looked around. Beatrice had clomped down the stairs at the start of the night in a floor-length black crepe dress, Doc Marten boots, and a brooch in the shape of an owl, with ruby-chip eyes, pinned to her chest. “What do you think?” she’d asked, giving them a spin.

“Adorable,” said Daisy, just as Hal said, “You look like you’re auditioning for a dinner theater production of Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Beatrice had glared at him.

“Go upstairs and change,” Hal had told her, which Beatrice seemed to have interpreted as “go to your room and don’t come back.”

Daisy excused herself, went upstairs, slipped off her shoes as soon as she’d rounded the corner that put her out of her guests’ view, and knocked on Beatrice’s door.

“What?” her daughter snarled.

Daisy eased the door open. Beatrice was flopped down on her bed, still in her dress and her boots. Her eyes were puffy and pink, and there were tear tracks running through her makeup. “Why is Dad always such a jerk to me?” she asked.

“Oh, honey.” Daisy sat on the bed and stroked her daughter’s back. “He isn’t always a jerk. And I think he wants things to go well for you at your new school. He wants to make a good impression.”

“He wants me to pretend to be someone I’m not.” Her daughter’s voice was bitter. “Like Everly and her stupid tennis. Or Mimi and her stupid Shakespeare.”

“Stupid Shakespeare,” Daisy repeated, in her most teenage-girl tone. “He’s totes the worst, right?”

Beatrice sat up, regarding her severely. “Mom,” she said, “please don’t ever try to talk like a young person.”

Daisy stood up and attempted a very bad version of the Backpack. Beatrice groaned, but Daisy thought she detected the very early stages of a smile.

“Okay, but you have to come downstairs.”

Beatrice buried her head in her pillows, until only a few tufts of silvery-blue hair were visible.

“Do it,” said Daisy, “or I’ll get a TikTok.”

Beatrice didn’t move.

“Okay, how about this? Come downstairs, say hello to three people, get something to eat, let your father see you, and then you can come back and hide.”

“Whatever,” Beatrice grumbled, but it got her off the bed.

Downstairs, Daisy replenished the tray of deviled eggs (an old-school, dowdy kind of party food, but like the pigs in a blanket, they always got eaten). She picked up a platter and did a quick round, collecting empty cups and discarded plates and crumpled paper napkins, pausing to touch the leaves of her poor schefflera, pushed into a corner of the terra-cotta-floored sunroom along with another half-dozen houseplants because Hal didn’t want the place looking like a jungle.

She told the musicians to take a break and brought them glasses of water and lemonade, plus a plate of desserts she’d set aside.