Page 9 of The Stolen Queen

Joyce ran into the room and clutched it to her chest like it was a crying baby. “I needed makeup.”

“The medicine cabinet is practically exploding with makeup. We won’t have rent if you keep on buying things you don’t need.”

“It’s an investment in our future. Once Brad and I are married, we’ll never have to worry about this again. And don’t tell me what to do. I’m the mother here.”

“Then act like one.”

She’d pushed it too far. Joyce’s eyes welled up, and she plopped on the bed, letting the bag fall onto the floor. “Fine. Take it all back. I thought, after the week I’ve had, that I deserved a little treat. A pick-me-up.”

A few days earlier, Joyce had announced that her agency had dumped her. Not that she worked much at all anymore, only catalogads for JCPenney and Sears. But now Joyce was too old even for that type of job, and Annie knew her mother was gutted. The only bright spot was this burgeoning relationship with Brad. Annie had seen her mother cycle through a number of Brad types after her father died when she was five, precipitating the move to the garden flat. But Joyce’s eyes lit up whenever she mentioned Brad’s name, which was often. They’d met at the local watering hole on Lexington a few weeks ago, Joyce brimming with excitement after he’d bought her a daiquiri and they’d talked for hours.

“Maybe you’d be better off without me.” Joyce eyed the bedside table that sat between their twin beds. Annie knew a bottle of sleeping pills lay in the top drawer. It wasn’t an idle threat.

Annie sat beside her. “Go put on your face while I play with your outfit.”

Joyce hugged her close, smelling like Anaïs Anaïs. Annie breathed in deeply. She loved her mother, even when she was a mess. Joyce needed Annie to maneuver in the world, and most of the time it was lovely to be needed.

Forty-five minutes later, Joyce had a new outfit that she twirled around in with delight. Annie began cleaning up the scattered clothes. Her fingers were sore, her eyes hurt, and her stomach growled.

“No, there’s no time,” said Joyce. “Just stick them under the bed or something.”

“Then they’ll need to be ironed.” A task that would surely fall to Annie.

“No, it’s time.”

A silence fell between them.

“But it was starting to rain when I walked in,” said Annie.

“Then you should take an umbrella. Annie. Please.”

Annie eyed the darkness outside the windows and sighed. Hermother needed this to work out so badly, and Annie most definitely didn’t want to be blamed if—or when—it went wrong. There was no point in putting up a fuss.

The fact was that Joyce wasn’t ready for Brad to meet Annie. And it wasn’t just that Brad didn’t know Joyce had a nineteen-year-old daughter. It was a matter of aesthetics.

Whenever Joyce was forced to introduce Annie as her daughter, Annie steeled herself for the expected look of confusion. The person would stare at Annie a beat too long, taking in her round face and lackluster light brown hair, then look over at Joyce, with her blonde updo and perfect bow lips. Their gaze would travel back to Annie, noting the way she towered over her mother, her shoulders and arms muscular from carrying trays of food at the diner and scrubbing floors, before taking in Joyce’s cinched, twenty-three-inch waist.

“How nice,” they’d say as Annie slowly faded into the background.

Joyce loved to compare their hands, her lacquered nails and long fingers a stark contrast to Annie’s substantial grip and ragged cuticles. “You have your father’s build,” she would say. “He was a big guy, but so graceful on the dance floor.”

Annie didn’t remember much about her father, but she’d been so young when he died. She still remembered the smell of his aftershave and the feel of his rough cheek on her own, as well as the fact that he’d take her to the Met Museum on Saturdays while Joyce slept in, where she’d scamper around the Egyptian Art collection, pointing out the blue hippo, which was her favorite object. Before they left to return home, he’d pick her up so she could get a good look at the Cerulean Queen, which was his favorite.

Joyce marched to the coatrack near the front door and grabbed Annie’s red coat and an umbrella. “It won’t be that long. Brad and I will be on our way in no time. Two loops around the block and theplace is all yours. Hey, maybe before long, we’ll be living in luxury. Brad’s in sales, you know.”

Whatever that meant.

Annie didn’t have much choice. She put on her coat and headed out into the cold November air.

Annie wandered the familiar streets of the Upper East Side in a hungry, exhausted daze. She wanted more than anything to settle in for the night with her macaroni and cheese and a long, hot bath, which would take the chill from her bones. She passed her old high school, which looked uglier than ever in the gloom of the evening, the Brutalist architecture slightly improved by colorful graffiti. Five years ago, she’d been a freshman, eager to move on from the impenetrable cliques of middle school. Nothing much had changed for her, though.

That year her geography teacher, Mr. Williams, asked the class to write an essay about where they would travel if they each had $1,000. The boy sitting next to her immediately chose Rome, for the Colosseum and the pizza, while it took Annie a while to wrap her head around the very idea of making such a huge decision, especially one that didn’t involve her mother. She finally settled on Paris, for the fashion. She worked hard on her essay and got an A.

Annie brought it home to show Joyce, but her mother had been harshly rejected during a bathing suit go-see that day and was in no mood to read it. When Annie gently suggested they each get part-time jobs to lessen their dependency on the income from the modeling gigs, Joyce surprised her by considering the idea. Joyce looked through the classifieds and, right then and there, called to answer an ad for a receptionist position in a midtown law firm. The very next day, she went to the interview and, to Annie’s delight, was offered thejob. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hollingsworth had just inquired about Annie taking over for her maid, and Annie had accepted, hoping to do her part.

As Mrs. H’s cleaner, Annie was paid $170 a week, along with a discount on rent. To Annie’s surprise, Mrs. H added that, every week, she’d put ten dollars into a cookie jar that sat on the kitchen counter. “That money is yours, not your mother’s,” said Mrs. H. “Do you understand? I suggest you forget it exists entirely.”

Annie had nodded, embarrassed that Mrs. H was aware of the upside-down mother-daughter dynamic in the basement apartment.

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