Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect by M. J. Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

paying for evenings like this for the last two years. He is the son of a man who owns a very large media empire. He is the second in command there, appearing on the cover of the annual report next to his dad.
    She knows this because as a bonus last year he gave her stock in this company, and two months ago the report arrived in the mail. Despite a fluctuating market, the stock has performed.
    The least she can do is to stay awhile and have something to eat or drink and show her real appreciation. Because this man likes to show off and brag a little. He likes to tell her about what the company is doing so she will be impressed. So she asks as she works the knot, “How’s business?”
    “We are starting a new magazine,” Clark Kent says as she unties his left hand. This is not his real name, but this is what she has named him. After Superman, after the mild-mannered reporter who is other than he seems.
    “It is aimed at women who aren’t going to stop working no matter how many kids they have.”
    She unties his right ankle.
    “The demographics show that this is the largest part of the workforce.”
    The knot on his left ankle is harder to untangle.
    “We were thinking of putting—” he names a celebrity she has seen often on television “—on the cover. But instead, I had an idea that the cover should be made of Mylar so that the woman who picks up the magazine sees herself.”
    He is free now and he sits up and reaches for the white terry-cloth robe that the hotel provides guests. It is pristine.
    “Would you like a drink?” she asks. He nods. She makes him a dry martini the way she knows he likes it from the tray room service has provided, and then she settles down to talk business with him, helping him to forget that she knows things about his business that he does not want her to know.
    This is how she earned her living last night.

8
     
    I closed the manuscript. Felt the goose bumps on my arms. I had been so deep into what I was reading that for a second I was disoriented. Cleo had transported me to the hotel room. My lips had been on her client’s nipples. I was feeling his muscles stretch. And I was uncomfortable.
    Looking out the window, I saw that we were already at Seventy-eighth Street. The rain had stopped, leaving the sidewalks glistening and giving the air a loamy scent.
    I usually used the time it took to get home to morph from a therapist into Dulcie’s mother. I always came down more slowly than I’d like from my professional role to settle into mother mode. Perhaps because I’d had to learn mothering secondhand.
    Some women became the mother their mother was. I did not have that luxury. Even before mine died, she was not the kind of parent that I wanted to be. There was no road map; I did this one blind. Too many mornings I woke up thinking,I’ll get it right today. I’d been doing it for so long I should have been comfortable with it by now. It will all flow naturally today, I’d tell myself. But it didn’t always.
    Why did you have to go so soon? I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t old enough. Why couldn’t you have stayed with me until…until when? There never was a good time to become motherless
.
    Part of me was always watching from the wings, looking at the woman who I was, interacting with her daughter, judging, questioning, comparing this mother to another who was not as steady on her feet and a daughter who had grown up too fast.
    The cab pulled up to the curb.
    I thrust the manuscript back in its envelope, shoved it under my arm and reached into the side pocket of my bag to get my wallet.
    Fifteen minutes later I was sitting in the kitchen drinking a glass of iced tea, about to begin reading more of the manuscript, when I heard the front door open. I saw the flash of blue jeans and white shirt as Dulcie walked by the kitchen on her way to her room.
    “Hon? I’m in here.”
    She doubled back, came in and dropped her bag on the floor. My eyes flew to the stark white bandage on her