envisions a married couple will die together? Emmie was single by choice. It must have been a great shock to her when she had to take delivery of a tiny eight-year-old too smart for her own good.
I didn’t tell Declan right then, but I found out years after my parents died that there was a custody battle for me. A few, actually. My mother’s sister, Donna, who lived in my mother’s hometown of Plano, Texas, lobbied the courts with her husband to take me into their home with their four boys. My father’s parents made a plea, too. They lived in New Jersey. But my parents’ wills had stipulated that Emmie be my guardian, and Emmie spent about a year’s salary making sure she got to keep me. As I said, I never knew this at the time, but I wish I had. It would have been nice to know, in that weird, confusing time after my parents died, that I was wanted so desperately.
My father’s parents died within a few years of his death, so it’s a good thing I didn’t live with them. I’ve visited my aunt Donna and her family a number of times. She is an unnaturally thin woman who grinds her teeth whenever her husband, a bearish man who owns a chain of gas stations, speaks in his loud drawl. Her sons seem to scare her. I can see now that she probably didn’t want me for the sake of taking care of her sister’s child, for my well-being. I think she just wanted a friend, some kind of buffer in that house full of testosterone.
Whenever I visit Aunt Donna, I take her old Ford Escort (her husband drives a Mercedes) and drive around her town, wondering what I would be like if I had been raised by her. Would I still be a designer? Would I be living in Manhattan? Or would I be working in the home office of my uncle Larry’s gas stations? Would I still be creative and sarcastic and melancholy at times, or would I have adopted a nonstop sunny, albeit fake, personality to offset Aunt Donna?
Anyway, by the end of my explanation about Emmie, Declan and I had reached her building, a place called Hortense Court on East 92nd, right by the park. Through the glass pane of the front door, you could see the lobby. The marble was chipping, and the paint on the ceiling peeled in thin strips, giving nothing away about what the apartments inside were really like.
“She’s like your mum, then?” Declan said. He had one foot on the stoop, but it seemed as if the other might be ready to run.
I almost laughed at his wary face. I could see him thinking that he’d only just got here and already he was forced to meet my de facto parent.
“Not exactly,” I said. “She fed and clothed me. She got me into school and signed me up for ballet classes. You know what I mean?”
“I understand food,” Declan said, “but not the ballet.”
“Well, she’s not really the mothering type, and believe me, she’s someone you should meet. She is the grande dame of New York.”
“I thought that was you.”
“I’m the second one.”
“Ah,” Declan said. “So I might fall for Emmie.”
I stood above him on the stoop so that I was a little taller than he. “I’ll fight her for you.”
His eyes widened in mock delight. “It’s what I’ve always dreamed of,” he said.
“C’mon.” I used my key and opened the lobby door.
He still didn’t move. “A little kiss for strength?”
I looked him up and down. “Why do I get the feeling you’ll want a grope next for good luck?”
“That’ll work.”
“I better just hold your hand for now,” I said coyly. I took his hand and pulled him inside.
“Emmie, it’s me!” I yelled as I stepped into her place.
“Kyra, sweetie!” I heard her call from the bedroom. “I’ll be there in a minute.” I hadn’t phoned Emmie to let her know we were coming, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. She was used to people stopping by all the time. She thrived on it.
“Come in,” I said to Declan.
He took a step in, glancing around the place.
Emmie has owned her apartment since the sixties. Sometime before I came along, she bought the apartment next to hers, knocked out the center wall and created a large, eclectic space where nothing matched, but everything had its place. One half of her living room, her original living room before she bought the other side, was lined with dark wood bookshelves from floor to ceiling. But even with all those shelves, books were stacked everywhere—under end tables, at the sides of the maroon velvet couches, on the wide round coffee table. This was Emmie’s side of the apartment. Her bedroom and kitchen lay behind the living-room wall.
On the other side of the living room, the books continued their dominance, but there the decor was more functional. Groupings of chairs and coffee tables took up most of the space, and the kitchen had been decked out with restaurant appliances for entertaining purposes. This side was where Emmie had her “salons,” as she called them, the gatherings of the crème de la crème of the New York publishing world. Famous authors, editors and fellow agents from work—they all came here to talk books, to gossip.
When I moved in as a child, Emmie gave me the tiny bedroom on the salon side of the apartment. That room was my own, papered with clippings from Vogue and my own childish sketches, but the rest of the place was decidedly Emmie’s. I knew how quickly people could be wrenched from your life, and I didn’t want to lose Emmie, too. So I learned fast to tiptoe around the Dresden figures on the end table and to always make sure there was scotch in the crystal decanters, ice in the silver bucket. There was no official bedtime at Emmie’s. If one of her salons was in full swing, I could slip through the apartment and stay up as late as I wanted. I liked it better when there was no one there with us, but that wasn’t often.
“Kyra, Kyra.” Emmie’s voice trilled from the hallway.
She stepped into the living room, wearing gray wool slacks pressed to a fine point and a black cashmere turtleneck. At that time, Emmie only worked two days a week, acting more as a figurehead at the literary agency than anything else, but she always dressed for the day like a professional. No bathrobes or sweats for Emmie. She has very short auburn-red hair (“I dye it, sweetie, so that I’ll die a redhead” is what she’s always said), and her eyes are still the most striking teal blue.
“Oh, and you’ve brought a friend! Delightful!” She wafted into the room and kissed me on the cheek, then Declan. “Welcome,” she said. “I’ll get tea.” And then she was gone just as quickly, puttering away in her service kitchen.
“Nice to meet…” Declan said to her retreating back. He turned to me quizzically.
“She has a lot of visitors,” I said.
Soon Emmie was back, carrying a tea tray. Declan jumped off the couch to take it from her.
“Gallantry,” she said. “It’s so rare these days.”
She sat on a maroon velvet chair, “the queen’s chair” I used to call it as a kid, and began pouring tea. Her signature ring, a sapphire set in a gold braided band, glinted in the afternoon light that streamed in the windows. “I detected an accent,” she said to Declan. “Tell, tell.”
“Oh,” Declan said. He looked at me, then back at her. I nodded in encouragement.
