It often struck her as unfortunate and the irony of fate that the two children who liked her the most lived so far away. And the one who disapproved of her and didn’t enjoy her company was the only one in New York. It was the luck of the draw but she made the best of it, and she loved living in New York. She wouldn’t have liked living in San Francisco, and even less the wild, dreary isolation of Mendocino. She loved the people and the pace in New York, the wide variety of cultural options, and having her studio in the city.
She would have felt like a poacher encroaching on Ben’s life, or Milagra’s, and she knew her daughter-in-law wouldn’t have liked it either. Laura’s mother was the perfect suburban, country club wife, and Laura had always been ill at ease with her famous mother-in-law. Ben never thought of his mother in that light. She was just his mother. But he knew Laura was fully aware of how important Maddie was and it made her feel as though, by comparison, she fell short in some way. Laura’s greatest accomplishment had been marrying Ben, with his very considerable success, and she was content to share in his glory, rather than create her own.
Maddie had never planned her own success. She had discovered her talent, and developed it, through need and force of circumstance, trying to support her children. It had turned out well for her and developed into a life of freedom and creativity that she thoroughly enjoyed. She had earned every ounce of her success. It was precisely that freedom and individuality that irked her oldest daughter so much. Even Deanna’s disapproval and criticism didn’t daunt her. Maddie was always unabashedly herself.
There was still a remarkable natural beauty to her, and an unstudied sexiness she was totally unaware of, with her hair piled on her head to get it out of her way, and a pen or pencil stuck through it, until she removed it to write something down and her long blond hair tumbled down her back. The men who had loved her had been drawn to her modesty and simplicity. Deanna’s strict, uptight, meticulous, and measured style was chic, but much less attractive than her mother’s ease and warmth. One of Maddie’s men had said about Deanna even as a teenager, “I always feel like she’s going to spank me,” which had made Maddie laugh. Her daughter made her feel that way sometimes too. Deanna set the bar high for herself and everyone else. Maddie was much more likely to be their partner in crime, and was always nurturing. It had drawn men to her like bees to honey for a long time, although she had never taken undue advantage of it. There was an innate femininity to her, no matter what she did or wore. She had been beautiful at every age, with a luminous softness, and she was still very striking, although she insisted that she was past all that now. Fifty-eight was far from old, particularly the way she looked, although Deanna wouldn’t have agreed.
Deanna only called her mother when she wanted something, when she had a mission of some kind, never just to chat for the pleasure of it. Ben didn’t call her often either, but he enjoyed their conversations when he did. He meant to call her more often, but something always distracted him and got in the way. No one made him laugh like his mother, and she was genuinely interested in his life, and proud of what he had accomplished. She consoled him in his losses and celebrated his victories. Deanna felt that Maddie had been an inadequate mother, but Ben never agreed with her. Although Deanna had done well as a designer, she had resented her mother’s career, while Ben admired it. Deanna was far less attentive to her own children than Maddie had been to hers. Maddie could do no right in Deanna’s eyes, no wrong in Ben’s, and Milagra had distanced herself from all of them to live in the fantasy world she created in her books.
There was no man in Maddie’s life now. She said it gave her more time to concentrate on her assignments, and she didn’t seem to miss having a partner. She insisted to her assistant, Penny, that it was too late for love, and she was good-humored about it. Penny was sure she would meet someone if she was more open to it, but clearly she wasn’t. Maddie insisted she was too old to find a man now.
It upset Penny too, on Maddie’s behalf, that her children paid so little attention to her. Penny thought they should call her more often just to see how she was. It never seemed to occur to them, judging by how infrequently they called. She was fine now, but what if one day, she wasn’t? Then what would they do? Maddie never let herself think about it. There was plenty of time for that.
Penny was all she needed, to help her with her work. She set up all Maddie’s appointments, kept her life in order, and organized her travel plans. Maddie had freelance photography assistants who came in to assist her during the shoots. They all considered it an honor to work for her. They learned so much from watching her, and from her clear, precise instructions and explanations. She had taught a photography class at NYU for two semesters, and loved it, but said she no longer had time to do that and her own work. She had loved being with the young people and teaching them what she knew, and was generous with her advice and encouragement, helping them grow, not crushing them with an inflated ego as so many professors in the arts did. She had nothing to prove. She had done it all and had a string of awards to her credit.
Penny had started working for her six months after Maddie had bought the firehouse, and had helped Maddie keep things on track when she renovated it. She loved everything about her job and Maddie, except having to deal with Deanna when she called. Deanna always wanted something from her mother, and was rude and dismissive to anyone in her path. Penny could easily guess that she must be a monster to work for, and hated the hostile, condescending way Deanna treated her mother. Penny was impressed by how little Maddie complained about her, only when she was excessively exasperated or upset by something cutting Deanna had just said to her, which happened often. Most of the time, Maddie said nothing and told Penny it was just Deanna’s style, which didn’t mitigate it for Penny. She thought Deanna would have benefitted from a good slap in her life at some point, which, knowing Maddie, had never happened.
Penny was forty-two, had never married, was crazy about her white Persian cat, and after a string of bad boyfriends, she had given up on men for the last few years. She worked hard for Maddie and loved her job. She hated leaving on Friday nights to go home to her own dull weekends, puttering around her apartment and doing laundry, waiting to come back to work on Mondays. Maddie was the excitement and inspiration in her life. Penny had a big, noisy Irish family in Boston and kept in close touch with her siblings and nephews and nieces. But on most weekends she stayed home in case Maddie needed her, even though Maddie almost never called on weekends and respected Penny’s time off. She loved living in Maddie’s shadow and enjoyed making life better for her.
Maddie kept encouraging Penny to try to meet a new man, even on the internet if she had to, but Penny was terrified of internet dating, and had had bad luck with it the few times she’d tried. She was one of those diamonds in the rough that few people had seen the value of, except Maddie, who recognized her for the gem she was. She was unfailingly loyal to Maddie as a result.
“Anything I can do for you before I go?” Penny asked her on a rainy Friday night before she left to take the subway to an unchic part of Brooklyn. She had lived there since she’d come to New York. Penny had red hair and green eyes and a nice face. She was about twenty-five pounds overweight, which she kept meaning to do something about, and said she would, but never did. She had no motivation to do so, and sitting at home in front of the TV all weekend, watching her favorite reality shows and eating ice cream, didn’t help. As hard as she was willing to work for Maddie, she did very little for herself.