“Oh, I did.” In the rearview mirror, Abby saw Sebastian wink. She looked away, feeling her cheeks get hot again.
Sebastian ended the call and smiled pleasantly at Abby in the rearview mirror. Abby shook her head. She was starting to wonder if maybe she was concussed, if she’d bonked her head at some point, if she was going to wake up, still in bed in Syracuse, and discover that the whole morning had been a dream. Then, with a stab of guilt, she thought about Morgan, and Andy, and bent over her phone to text Kayla and check in. But even as she typed, part of her was still feeling Sebastian’s warm lips against hers, Sebastian gripping her fingers, Sebastian pulling her into his lap and calling her his little lemon drop.
Lily
2:00 p.m.
The morning in Seneca Falls turned out to be one of the nicest times Lily could remember. Jasper had driven them right to their hotel. She and Eileen had checked in, dropped off their luggage, then borrowed umbrellas and walked out into the rain, past the Wesleyan Chapel, where, a plaque informed them, the first women’s rights convention had been held in 1848. A long span of gray stone, covered in trickling water, ran parallel to the sidewalk, inscribed with the words of the Declaration of Sentiments. The rain tapered off just enough to let Lily and Eileen slow down and read them.
“?‘When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course,’?” Lily read. She walked on, to the section that outlined what the convention’s attendees saw as men’s abuses toward women, and read them in her head:
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position.
“Amazing how far we’ve come,” Lily murmured.
“Amazing how far we still have to go,” Eileen replied.
The spa was just around the corner from the sculpture, decorated in shades of taupe and beige, where the piped-in sound of water trickling over rocks competed with the sound of the actual rain outside. The air smelled like lavender and sage, and the attendants and aestheticians all wore white tunics and soft-soled shoes, and spoke in low, hushed voices, like they were nurses at some very posh hospital. Lily had been assigned a female masseuse, which spared her the awkwardness of having to request one, and if the woman thought it was strange that Lily kept her underwear and brassiere on, she didn’t say so.
Lily had never had a massage before. She thought she’d be uncomfortable and self-conscious, and she had been, at first, feeling a stranger touching her body, but when she was finally able to relax, she couldn’t believe how wonderful it felt, to have the woman’s warm, strong hands working at the stiff muscles of her neck and shoulders. “Lots of tension,” the woman murmured.
“Teenage daughter,” Lily replied, and the woman made a humming noise of understanding.
When the massage was over, Lily and Eileen were led down a candlelit corridor and seated in high, padded chairs, with basins of bubbling water for their feet. Lily felt like a queen as she sat, sipping cucumber-infused water while a young dark-haired woman bent over her, clipping her nails, smoothing her calluses. There were six people getting pedicures, and their matching white robes functioned as something like a uniform, erasing the differences that would have been conferred by shoes and handbags and clothing. Eileen wore a glittering bracelet that Lily assumed was made of real diamonds, along with diamond stud earrings that glittered in the lights, and her cheeks were faintly freckled, the same as Abby’s.
Thinking of Eileen’s daughter made her think of her own, and the pleasant sensations of lightness and bonelessness that had suffused her disappeared, replaced by a familiar weight that settled over her shoulders, the worry that her child was becoming a stranger.
“You have two daughters?” she asked Eileen.
“That’s right. Abby’s sister, Marni, is my oldest. Thirty-eight already!” Eileen shook her head. “I can’t understand how I got so old.”
Lily wanted to ask a million things: Did your daughters hate you when they were Morgan’s age? Did they talk to you about their lives? Were they moody, hard to know, aggravating? Did you ever feel like they hated you? Did you ever feel like you hated them; or like they were strangers who’d just shown up in your house one morning?
“And Morgan’s your only one, right?” Eileen asked. “She seems like a sweetheart.”
Lily knitted her fingers together in her lap. At home, if one of her friends had paid her this compliment, Lily would have been happy to take it. Yes, Morgan’s a good girl. But she was far from home, in the company of a woman who didn’t know her, who she’d probably never see again. Maybe this was a chance for her to get some answers. “She’s hard,” Lily finally said, her words rushed, her voice small. “She’s… confusing. Hot and cold. Like, this trip. The plan was for her to bike with her father, and for me to ride in the sag wagon, but when her dad couldn’t make it, she seemed okay about doing it with me. Not just okay, but insistent.” Lily could still remember Morgan telling her that it would be fine, even without her dad, that she didn’t want to reschedule or postpone, that she wanted to do the trip they’d planned on the days they’d planned it. You and I will have fun, she’d told Lily. “I thought she really wanted to spend time with me. And then, as soon as we got here…” Lily made a chopping gesture with her hand, one that, she hoped, communicated how thoroughly Morgan had ignored her.
“Well,” said Eileen. “That sounds pretty normal for teenagers. Sometimes, they don’t even know what they want or it changes from minute to minute. I’d love to tell you that it gets easier, but I’m not sure it’s true.” There was silence for a moment as the women bent over them and began painting their toenails in careful, precise strokes: pale pink for Lily, dark red for Eileen. “I don’t know if you know this, but I didn’t tell Abby I was coming. I just showed up.”
Lily hadn’t known. She looked at the other woman, who was staring down at her own feet.
“If I’d asked, I think she would have turned me down. I think she feels like I’m trespassing on her turf.” Eileen sipped from her own glass of cucumber water. “I’m telling myself, she may not want me here right now. But, someday, she’ll remember that I showed up for her. She’ll know that I tried.” Eileen took another sip. “I think that’s half of parenting, especially when they’re older. You just keep showing up.”
Was that true? Lily had shown up, after Morgan had begged her not to postpone the trip, after Morgan had promised she wanted them to spend time together. She’d shown up, she’d been present for her daughter, and now Morgan was ignoring her.
Lily did her best to inject good cheer into her voice, which came out sounding falsely hearty. “I should remember I’m lucky. Morgan’s a good girl,” she said, half to Eileen, half to herself.