Swimming With the One Percent

We met in Greenwich the other day, me and my daughter Eliza, in long puffy winter coats and sneakers. We are not of Greenwich. Our hair is dark and not resistant to moisture. We comport ourselves with south central Connecticut awkwardness, i.e. the Outback and all that laughing, trying to figure out the parking app, big-eyed rainbow trout in a sleek shark tank.

Every store, one look, they point us to Clearance. We are offended and they are right. In Sephora a young woman helps me find mascara. Checking out, asked if anyone helped me, I can tell you my mascara is named Perversion but this person’s name, a mystery. What does she look like? the cashier asks, and I say big full lips because medium and pleasant could be anyone and her mouth was cosmetically smeared across the entire lower quadrant of her face, like she’d been beaten. Finally I spot her, yellow lanyard! I drop Eliza at the train station to go back to the city, to her job and husband and full life. My throat sticks for a minute, all those mall trips back when she was mine. I’m stuck in traffic on 95, on speaker phone with my dear friend, in no place particular, and she’s telling me a funny story. Yes, I think. This feels like home .