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Lenora isn’t looking at her.
Shiv’s daughter has her arms folded over the yacht’s railing, pitched forward at her hips to lean against it. Over her swimsuit she wears a giant, threadbare Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt that belonged to Tom in college, that Shiv once wore to sleep. Her ponytail is threaded through a back of a Knicks baseball cap, and as her hair is teased by the wind, Shiv can see the auburn highlights that always burst into Len’s hair once it sees the summer sun, as if for one season a year her body remembers the body it grew in.
The not-looking-at-Shiv thing is a constant as of late. Len is all rolling eyes and derisive scoffs and stomping around in her Hermès boots. Tom suggested letting Lenora bring a friend with her on vacation — she gets lonely, Shiv, don’t you think? — and Shiv agreed, but she knew it wouldn’t solve anything, and it hasn’t. Len is angry, these days. She is angry with Shiv most of all, because Shiv’s there. And that’s what matters. Shiv would like to be spending more time at her condo in DC, rather than commuting constantly. Shiv would like to be spending more time at the new house in Konstanz, drinking good coffee and eating good croissants and getting kissed until noon on Sundays. Shiv would very much like to remove herself from the bullseye of her moody teenage daughter’s ire, but she hasn’t. She’s here.
“Len,” she says. There are two moles in the crook of her daughter’s right knee. They’ve been there for a long time, a decade or more. Shiv feels tender about them, ridiculously so. Those moles were there when all Lenora did was look at her, arms latched around Shiv’s leg, eyes bright with adoration, mama muffled snottily into Shiv’s freshly dry-cleaned slacks. “Did you put sunscreen on?”
“The world is literally going to burn to a crisp before I have time to get melanoma,” Len says, flat and bored; god, Mom, you’re so stupid.
Shiv blows out a quick breath, too soft for Len to hear, swept away by the breeze. She adjusts her sunglasses on her nose. “I’ll take that as a no?”
“You decide,” Len says. “You decide how to take everything.”
“Len,” Shiv says, very evenly, so evenly she impresses herself. She wishes Tom wasn’t eating his stupid vacation crêpes so he could hear just how fucking patient she’s being.
Before she can say more, though, Len speaks again.
“Here’s something,” she says, in that maddening adolescent tone, perfectly provoking, “for you to take, actually, Mom.” She’s still not looking at Shiv, eyes on the waves below or the horizon ahead. “Naz is my girlfriend.”
She says it like it’s an ace, a card tossed down onto the deck between them. She says it like she expects to meet resistance. The way she says it is a splinter in the center of Shiv’s chest, a piercing sensation that leaves her breathless.
The first thing she wants to say is oh, Lennie. She wants to say oh, Lennie, do you think I don’t know you at all? That I don’t see you? Len’s blushing, lip-biting adoration of her intermediate ballet teacher. The way she watched and rewatched every episode of Elementary that featured Natalie Dormer, huddled under her covers with her iPad. taylor swift karlie kloss dianna agron Googled on Shiv’s work laptop. At some Gojo-Waystar bullshit party, hand clutching the fabric of Shiv’s dress, nothing, nevermind when Shiv turned to her because Shiv was irritated with her husband and her lover and the party at large, but Len’s eyes lingering on Karolina and her date, two dresses slinking to the floor and hands that brushed when passing champagne flutes. The stars floating through Len’s eyes whenever she came back from her friend Sasha’s house; the abrupt ending of that friendship a couple months later, angsty music blasting out of Len’s bedroom.
Shiv swallows. “Does she make you happy?”
Len’s head tips forward, like she’s trying to shield herself from something. “Yeah,” she says. Her voice is small, at least five years stripped out of it. “Sure.”
Fingers curling around the arm of her chair so that she doesn’t give in to the temptation to get up, Shiv says, “Well — that’s what matters. That you’re happy. It — I’m happy that you’re happy.” Her teeth clench together for a half-second. “I love you, Lenora. That’s all I want for you. Your dad, too.”
Her daughter’s shoulders shift. “Don’t tell him.”
It takes Shiv by surprise — Tom often gets Lenora’s vulnerabilities first, delivered into his waiting arms, the solid expanse of his chest — but she makes sure to keep that out of her voice as she says, “Of course. That’s your choice, Len.” She pauses, then adds with a slight ironic edge, “You decide.”
Len turns around then, and looks at Shiv, really looks at her. Shiv pushes her sunglasses up onto her head so that she can look back at her daughter, and so that she can feel it, the full force of Lenora’s gaze. So that she can remember it later.
“Yeah,” Len agrees. It’s soft, nearly shy. She’s not wearing any makeup, and sleep hasn’t quite cleared itself from her eyes. She looks like Shiv’s little girl, mama into the crook of Shiv’s neck, into Shiv’s belly with the force of a nightmare-fueled hug.
“Thank you for telling me, baby,” she says, her eyes on Len’s, Len’s eyes on hers.
Lenora looks down at her bare feet. “Yeah,” she says again, before peeking back up at her mother through her eyelashes.
Shiv gets up out of her chair and moves in closer to Lenora, her steps slow. “Naz will sleep for a while longer, you think?”
A smile ghosts over Len’s lips. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay.” Shiv loops her arm around her daughter — gentle, casual, not too tight. “So let’s go save the crêpes from your father.”
“Save Dad from the crêpes,” Len corrects, and as they begin to walk, steps synchronizing, she leans into Shiv, just a little. Her temple is warm against Shiv’s shoulder.