Great (20 page)

As the cab rolled away from the house, I looked back to see if I could catch a glimpse of Jacinta. But she was somewhere inside the house, waiting for Delilah.

My second helicopter ride was actually a lot more anxiety-filled than my first. It wasn't the height or the loudness that bothered me. No, what I found was that I couldn't focus on anything but Jacinta—not on the beauty of the changing landscape below me, not on the dumb magazine I'd brought with me, not even on texting back and forth with Skags, who was trying to tell me some story Jenny Carpenter had told her about how the other Beasts were all really into doing cocaine and how she'd never been comfortable with it and how they always made fun of her for it. I really wasn't in the mood to think about the Beasts.

When the helicopter landed, I walked away from the heliport for a few minutes to clear my head. I decided I just ought to call Skags, since the texting thing clearly wasn't helping me out.

“Wow, another phone call!” was how Skags answered the phone. “I must be really special.”

“Look, Skags, I'm sorry I haven't been in touch that much this summer,” I said all in a rush. “But I have to tell you what happened, and I need you to listen and to promise not to tell
anybody
, okay?”

“Okay,” Skags said, immediately getting serious. “Go.”

I wandered around the neighborhood, walking past fancy office buildings and fancier residential palaces, spilling my guts to my best friend. She listened for something like ten minutes, and when I paused to take a breath, she said, “Naomi.”

“Yes?”

“You know how serious this is. And you're involved. If you don't tell the police what you know, you could be an accessory to the crime somehow.”

“I know,” I said.

“You need to call the police and tell them exactly what you told me,” Skags said firmly. “This isn't just some dumb drama. A girl died. She had a family. They need to know the truth.”

I was quiet for a little while.

“You're not actually thinking about keeping this a secret, are you, Naomi?” Skags asked incredulously.

“No, of course not,” I said slowly. “I'm just thinking. Maybe I should give the others a chance to tell before I tell.”

“You really think Delilah is going to confess?” Skags said skeptically. “I mean, if Jacinta or Adriana or whoever was even telling the truth about who was driving.”

“Maybe she will,” I said. “I don't know what she's thinking. I haven't even heard from her since we were at dinner last night.”

“And why do you think that is?” Skags asked pointedly. “She's going to distance herself from you and Jacinta and anybody who might know the truth about what happened. Because even if she was just a passenger in that car—and I kind of think she
wasn't
—it's going to look bad for her family.”

“What if I gave them a day?” I said. “Another twenty-four hours. And if no one has said anything by then, I promise I'll go to the cops myself.”

“I think you should do it right now, but I guess another day won't hurt,” Skags said. “But you know, if this were last summer, you wouldn't have even gotten in that car with Jeff and Teddy at the restaurant. You would've
walked
home if you had to.”

“I know.” She was right. She's usually right about everything.

After we said our goodbyes, I took a cab from the Financial District to my mother's apartment on the Upper East Side. We raced up the FDR and past the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, and 59th Street bridges. It was a really gorgeous day, and Brooklyn looked like a postcard from across the river. Queens looked like, well, Queens.

I rode the elevator up to my mother's apartment and knocked on her door. Her assistant, Lilly, opened it. Lilly had an identical twin sister named Tilly, who was Rachael Ray's assistant. Their family had cornered the business on making coffee and dental appointments for cooking show stars.

“Is it bad?” I asked Lilly in a low voice. Lilly and I have a kind of understanding. She stays in the city, so I don't see her often during the summer. But when I visit at Thanksgiving or call the apartment because my father forces me to, Lilly gives me a heads-up on my mother's mood.

“It's awful,” she whispered, and led me into the living room. I recognized my mother's lawyer and one of her business partners, but I hardly recognized my mother, who had been crying for what looked like hours. She wasn't wearing any makeup, and I could see the fine lines and wrinkles she had yet to Botox away. I had never seen her looking this ragged.

“Hello, Naomi,” said the lawyer, who looked gravely concerned.

“Hi, Naomi,” said the business partner, who looked to be on the verge of exploding.

“Oh, thank God you're here,” said my mother.

“Hi . . . everybody,” I said. My mother rushed to me, grabbed my hand, and led me into her immaculately appointed bedroom. I handed her the bag, and she quickly unzipped it and took out some lavender oil, rubbing it on her wrists. Then she threw down two Xanax without water.

“What's going on?” I asked. “What happened?”

She looked at me, tearstained and worn. “They just—the story just broke on CNN—there's a problem with the manufacturing facility,” she said through gulps of air as she fought back sobs.

“What manufacturing facility?”

“The one”—gulp—“in Ch-Ch-China”—gulp—“with the fr-frosting.”

“The Secret Special Whatever Frosting?”

“Yes,” said my mother, and she began crying again in earnest.

“Anne!” her lawyer called. “You'd better come look at this.”

I put my arm around my mother, something I couldn't ever remember doing, and walked her back into the living room. CNN was showing the footage I'd seen earlier that morning, but with a different narration.

“. . . Bake Like Anne Rye!, Inc. is under federal investigation for knowingly allowing a banned carcinogenic chemical additive to be used in the production of its frosting at a plant outside Beijing. . . .”

I looked at my mother, then at her lawyer, then at her business partner, then at Lilly, then at my mother again.

Everyone avoided my gaze.

“. . . CNN has obtained copies of phone recordings that clearly indicate Anne Rye knew the chemical would be included in the first shipment, which is already being removed from the shelves at Target stores across the country. Target issued a statement, saying . . .”

“Why are they saying that?” I asked, looking around at everyone once again.

No one said anything.

“What's going on?” I asked again.

Nothing. Not a word, not a glance.

“Mom?” I looked at her.

“Anne,” her lawyer said in a warning tone, but it didn't work.

“Well, it's not illegal in China!” she burst out. “They told me there was one study—one
little
study—that said it was dangerous. There are studies that say
Tylenol
is dangerous. Everyone said not to worry, so I didn't worry!”

I felt this freeze go through me, from my gut down to my toes and then up to the top of my head. Like all the liquid inside me suddenly solidified into one cold block of Naomi.

“It's not illegal in China,” she repeated, this time in a whisper.

I took my arm off her back and let it hang limply by my side.

“Those bastards sat on this till today,” the business partner muttered, slamming his fist into his hand. “They sat on this so they could ruin our big day. Goddammit!”

My mother sank down into an overstuffed chair and buried her head in her hands. “This is going to
destroy
the magazine launch,” she moaned. “And forget my next cookbook. I'm surprised they haven't called to cancel it already.” As if on cue, Lilly's cell rang.

“I'm sure it's not them,” Lilly said reassuringly before picking up the call. “Hello? You're with whom?
Us Weekly
? No, Ms. Rye is not interested in making a statement at this time.” She hung up the phone.

“Oh, just say ‘no comment!'” my mother snapped, stamping her foot like a child.

“Okay,” Lilly said quickly. “I'll do that next time.” The phone rang again, and she headed into the kitchen to pick it up. But we could all still hear her say, “Hello? With the
Times
? No comment. Goodbye.”

“It'll be like this all day,” the lawyer said evenly.

“I got a buddy, worked at BP during the spill,” said the business partner. “He knows the guys who did PR for them. They're specialists at this kind of thing. We should look into it.”

“All right,” my mother said faintly. “I don't care how much they cost—let's get them.”

I was almost out the door before she noticed me leaving.

“Naomi?” she called after me. “Naomi, where are you going? Naomi, I need you!”

I didn't say anything. I just let the door slam behind me. I got into the elevator and rode it down.

There's a bus that runs to the Hamptons. It's called the Jitney, and you can catch it at a few places in Manhattan. I looked up the schedule on my phone and found the nearest pickup location, about twenty blocks away. It would depart in forty minutes. I started walking.

My mind was kind of numb. It was full, I guess, with the equivalent of white noise. I systematically deleted each of my mother's texts as they came in—they were plaintive, then angry, then cold, then angry again, and finally whiny. I didn't pick up when she called. I deleted all four voice mails before listening to them.

Maybe it was coldhearted of me to leave her in her time of distress, even if the distress was of her own making. But I couldn't take it. I couldn't stand there and be supportive when I knew, just as well as I knew my own name, that she absolutely didn't give a damn about the people who might've eaten the frosting and gotten sick from it. What she cared about was her reputation, and her income, and whether this would affect her getting invited to Alec Baldwin's wife's charity auction.

I went into a corner bodega and grabbed some napkins from the coffee counter. When I was back on the street, I wiped off the mascara and lip gloss and threw the napkins in the trash. I had to spit in the napkin to really get the mascara off, and I didn't care how gross I must've looked to passersby. I just wanted that stuff off my face.

I got to the Jitney stop early and sat down on a bench and called Skags.

“You okay?” she asked as soon as she picked up.

“So you heard.”

“Of course I heard. It's all anyone's talking about on the cable news shows.” Skags loved cable news shows so much, especially Chris Matthews, whose animated freak-outs always cracked her up. Not until Skags told me she knew about my mother's scandal did it hit me that everybody would soon know—my other friends at school, my teachers, and even people I didn't know. As if hearing my thoughts, Skags said, “This'll all die down soon. It's the twenty-four-hour news cycle. They
have
to find stuff to talk about. Tomorrow it'll be some hot blond chick who got kidnapped, or some celebrity in rehab, or something goofy the vice president said.”

“I don't know, Skags,” I said. “It's a federal investigation. This could, like, affect everything she does.”

“Not to be a bitch,” Skags said, which is exactly what someone says before they're about to be a bitch, “but your mom isn't Madonna. She's Anne Rye. You think anybody cares that Martha Stewart went to prison for a little while?”

“Oh my God,” I said, so loudly that two little girls walking down the street turned and stared at me. “Do you think they'll send her to prison?”

“No idea,” Skags said. “I'll ask Diana at dinner tonight.”

“Who is Diana?”

“Jenny's mother. She's a lawyer.”

“You're on a first-name basis with Jenny's
mother
?”

“She asked me to call her Diana,” Skags said. “I'm amazing with parents. It's really quite impressive.”

“I feel like nothing is normal anymore,” I said.

“Normal is overrated,” Skags said.

“Well, I could use more of it in my life,” I said. “I'm coming home.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. The day after. I don't know. As soon as I can get a flight.”

“You need to go to the cops before you leave,” Skags said sternly. “Your mom will handle whatever she has to handle. You've got your own stuff to worry about. You have to tell the police.”

“I know,” I said. “I will. Tomorrow. I just—I can't handle it today. And Delilah might do the right thing.”

“Yeah, right,” Skags said. “This one's all on you, Naomi.”

After we got off the phone, I tried to do some people watching from that bench on Fifth Avenue. Skags loves people watching. She can go to the park, sit down under a tree, and people-watch all day without getting bored. I'm not like that. I try to imagine what different strangers are like at work, at home, in the bedroom, but I just get distracted by my own thoughts. And my thoughts kept wandering back to Jacinta Trimalchio, or Adriana Whatever. It was like I didn't have room to think about my mom. Maybe I actually respected Jacinta more than my mother.

Just as I knew I “should” be on my mother's side no matter what, I knew I “should” despise Jacinta, or at least look down on her. But I didn't. I still liked her and I still respected her. Why?

I was noodling on this idea when my phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Jeff Byron.

Please pick up,
it read. And then the phone rang.

I considered letting it go to voice mail, but instead I picked up.

“Thank you,” Jeff said as soon as he heard the din of city noise.

“What's up?” I asked.

“I thought you would want to know that Delilah told her parents what happened,” he said. “They're going down to the police station today to talk.”