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“Can you shut the door, Daphne?” Gabrielle asked insolently, her eyes challenging me. I nodded and resisted the urge to slam the door on my way out.
We weren’t off to a great start.
Things didn’t improve in the following days. I’d always had a favorite child but now, at last, I had a least favorite one as well.
Gabrielle was sullen and had a habit of not responding to things I said, even when it was a direct question, which is a simple but incredibly effective way to infuriate someone. She’d glare at me as if to signal ‘I don’t want a new mother’ even though I had no interest in applying for the job.
Even worse was the way she would glom onto Robert, like a barnacle on a ship, or a flesh-eating disease. There was something unsettling about the way she’d climb into his lap on the couch, wrapping her lanky adolescent arms around him like a much younger child. Her eyes would glint acquisitively as she cooed at him in a babyish voice. One time, I remember the twins studying her intently while we watched TV, as she whispered into Robert’s ear, and then averting their eyes in disgust. Even my ten-year-olds thought she was laying it on a bit thick.
My children tried to be welcoming. James took on the role of the benevolent older brother, asking her about school and offering her trips to the movies, but she largely ignored him. The twins, who were only two years younger than her, should have been the perfect friends for Gabrielle. But it was clear Gabrielle saw them as competition. She’d come to her long-lost father’s home only to find two attractive blonde girls already living there. There were problems between the girls almost immediately.
“Mom, our riding ribbons are missing,” Diane reported to me on Day Two.
I found them crammed into the cistern of the guest toilet.
“Mom, my school skirt has been cut into two.”
I spotted the scissors from the sewing box in Gabrielle’s room.
“Mom, our pillows are wet.”
I didn’t even want to solve that mystery.
It could have been bearable if I could have laughed it off with Robert, but he was totally besotted with Gabrielle. Typical man. They spend decades declaring they don’t want children, wasting a lot of women’s time and ovarian reserves, only to announce later in life that fatherhood was the most fulfilling thing they’ve ever done.
In Robert’s eyes, Gabrielle could do no wrong. It didn’t matter how much she tortured the twins or disobeyed me, the kid with his face was perfect. And people say parenting isn’t about narcissism.
And then one day Robert announced that he wanted us to move upstate to the country.
“Absolutely not,” I said flatly. It was nighttime and we were in bed. Robert folded his hands over his blue cotton pajamas, doing his best Father Knows Best impression.
“Daphne, it would be much better for the kids. They don’t have enough space in this apartment and Gabrielle is used to a more rural life.”
“You thought the city was perfectly fine when it was just my kids living here,” I retorted. Robert was born and raised in New York. People like him always had a hard-on for country life, which was something I found incredibly irritating. What did they think happened out there? Birds brought you your morning coffee while a milkmaid gave you a hand job?
“I realize now that I was being selfish. Having Gabrielle here has taught me that the kids’ needs must come first,” Robert said.
I rolled my eyes. The man had been a parent for a second and suddenly he was Father Teresa. He had managed to skip the years of sleepless nights and stinking diapers and was now patting himself on the back for spending a couple of hours with a grateful twelve-year-old after work.
“But why? They’re only going to move out in a couple of years!” I burst out, as flashbacks to Leosville danced through my head. “Besides, it’s the Seventies, they need to know how to live in a city! What do you think they’re going to do for jobs someday? Goat herding?” And that was when Robert, my lovely, pliant Robert, decided to grow a backbone and pull rank.
“I make the money and if you want to keep enjoying the lifestyle I’ve given you then you’ll be moving to the country,” Robert snapped.
I sighed.
Men will claim you’re equal partners but at the end of the day, he who holds the checkbook has the power. I wanted to shout ‘enjoy the smell of cow shit’ and storm out, but I wasn’t quite ready to quit on Robert. He was just so very rich. Maybe I needed to bide my time and hope that he would hate rural life and realize that we didn’t belong in a place where you couldn’t get Chinese food at 2a.m. Or at any time for that matter.
Chapter Thirty-Two
DAPHNE:When the school year ended, we packed up and moved to Abrams, a wealthy commuter town in the middle of nowhere. It was just close enough to the city that it was possible to commute but far enough away that only men going in for work ever bothered. On weekdays, the town was eerily empty of men, the streets filled only with mothers and children.
RUTH:You seem to dislike everywhere that isn’t New York City.
DAPHNE:Well, only because people keep dragging me to the back-ass of nowhere. I would have been open to Los Angeles, London or Paris. But Abrams? I’d spent my childhood busting my ass on a farm, what did I care about nature? And don’t even get me started on small-town values!
RUTH:Were the kids happy?
DAPHNE:The twins were happy because we lived near a famous stable. They’d been riding for years but only once a week; now they could go all the time. It was a bit tedious, listening to them yammer away about dressage and quarter horses all day, but I liked seeing them compete in their fancy velvet coats and tall boots. Geoffrey had loved reminding me that I was trash, but no one would ever do that to my girls.