What first begins as her unnecessary involvement in selecting the girls you have play dates with to choosing your extracurricular activities, later becomes more involved. From the colleges you will apply to, even the boys you date, she will have an opinion. But if you show at this early age that you can assert some responsibility, she will give you some more latitude. You want that latitude.”
I looked to her sharply.
“Emily?” she asked me. I nodded. “I like your shoes.”
“Thank you. And I’m glad we had this little chat.”
And from this they both, remarkably, retreated from the kitchen quietly.
“You know, Em,” Daphne said to me, apparently using the mini-break from supervising her children to pull her hair into a chignon. “I worry about those college essays. I mean how will Emily and Henry be able to truly distinguish themselves from all the other Ivy applicants? At least I know Emily will have the grades—she’s already showing such progress in class—but Henry? Perhaps I should just stage a high-profile kidnapping, get him on that Amber Alert thing. Is that hard to do? Have his picture on the cover of the Post and then, come college application time, he will be that kid who outwitted his kidnapper. What an essay!”
Daphne searched my eyes for feedback. I became more focused on my drawing.
“So?” she prodded.
“I don’t know. Maybe you should just have him spend a summer on a kibbutz or something.”
She seemed to take this under consideration, then shuddered and waved her hand.
“Or maybe I can have him do one of those wilderness adventures in Alaska. You know, where he has to make his bed out of leaves and such.”
She then gave a ferocious look of worry.
“Or perhaps have him spend a summer on a ranch in Montana. Or an August in France!”
Her face now brightened.
“We have some time, not worth stressing over now.”
As I put my pen down to evaluate what I drew, Daphne peered over my shoulder to assess my progress—memorializing a stickered Henry with Emily pounding her foot to the ground, hands on waist.
“Your talent has always amazed me,” Daphne said, her tone considerably more calm than before.
I had a feeling she wasn’t just smoothing me over. The painting I made for her a few years back of a modern-day take on the Alice in Wonderland tea scene had placement next to the Brice Marden in the living room.
“Have you ever considered changing agents?”
“Sure. I suppose I need to give Joanna the boot now that I am moving away from my illustrating, though it’s a bit tricky. I mean, this is the woman that introduced Henry and me.”
“Oh, stop being so emotional. You know it’s all about management.”
I supposed this wasn’t a good time to share with Daphne my Smythson business planner. She expected a plan, something laser printed with graphs and pie charts.
“In fact, you should meet with Daniel West Galleries.”
“Daniel West Galleries!” I cried.
Daniel West Galleries was perhaps the most prestigious art gallery in the city. He repped all of the great expressionists and nurtured the up-and-coming talent that made cameos in Gwyneth Paltrow movies.
She took a card from a stack of writing paper, wrote a number and slid it in my direction.
“Daniel West. On Fifty-seventh Street,” she said, repeating what she wrote.
“Sure,” I nodded spastically. “Gigi Jones is showing there right now. One of my favorite artists.”
Daphne nodded.
“Okay then. Daniel is the right place to begin, and I have a good feeling about this, especially considering that my acquisitions from his gallery have essentially been subsidizing his Montauk manse. I will give him a call this afternoon and make sure he takes you on.”
I shook my head in vehement protest.
“Daph! You know how I feel about handouts.”
“Oh, please. Don’t pull the self-righteous Emily bit on me. I’m not some furry-chested, gap-toothed, smarmy guy patroning you à la Flashdance—one of the best films ever even though I will never understand the casting of Michael Nouri—so I will get you the meeting, then it’s up to you.”
“But what if I’m not good enough? If he doesn’t like me?”
“You really are getting all Jennifer Beals on me. Emily, sometimes it amazes me how you have no clue as to how fabulous you are. Now, you still have the Polaroids from your first collection?”
I nodded. Daphne had been referring to my first body of work, which included her Alice in Wonderland painting and a series of pictures based on fairy tales in modern settings, which showed at a local gallery in the Hamptons. It had been a success. Every work in the show sold for its asking price, where I had been grateful to just have the show and a really fun party afterward.
“Okay then, you’re right. And hopefully you can mention to Daniel that I’m available on consecutive days after the day after tomorrow.”
A thought wandered into my head from my post-graduate year. Days playing Ultimate Frisbee in the park, coming home to a machine blinking madly from a tape filled with messages, where I would choose the best option and make it home sometime in the dawning hours of the next day, maybe later if I didn’t have brunch plans.
“Oh, just forget it. I’m available whenever.”
The buzzer rang, delivering a pizza for Emily and Henry and signaling Daphne’s need to get ready before the sitter came.
I organized my things while Daphne slid the dish of cookies into the mouth of a Glad plastic bag. Sealing its rim, she handed it to me as a goody bag from my visit, saying there was a hidden surprise.
We walked by the nursery where Emily quietly read to Henry, his head resting on her shoulder. Momentarily suspended from our intended mission, we saw this pair that had transformed from total chaos to tranquility like the motions of a crackling fire to the disintegrated log fuming slithers of smoke.
Daphne attended to the delivery while I made myself useful, collecting Emily and Henry and giving them tasks in the kitchen. They seated themselves when Daphne made her entrance holding the box of pizza at her stomach like a skirt filled with apples. Emily opened the carton, maneuvering the slices onto their plates, giving the piece with the cheese that clung to the rest of the pie to Henry.
Emily asked if they could have ice cream for dessert. Daphne saying they’d have Jell-O, avoiding their imploring eyes. She took out two plastic cups of red Jell-O, adding a third after I made an Emily look, and shot squirts of whipped cream onto the rubbery surface while filling me in on the pertinent details of her evening engagement with “my husband.”
They were invited to a dinner party held by friends they knew
