Free Four of a Kind by Valerie Frankel

placed them back in the box. She crawled into bed, blind tired. But sleep didn’t come, either.

    The biannual Saturday lunch was a tradition going back years. Bess and Amy—the boys were not invited—would go to Manhattan andmeet Simone at a restaurant of her choosing. Today, they were eating at Michael’s in midtown off Fifth Avenue. It was the kind of place Bess considered stodgy and old-fashioned. Then again, rejecting her mom’s choices was reflexive. Amy, on the other hand, was easily impressed by the snap of attentive waiters and the flutter of maître d’s when Simone made an entrance. A bona fide celebrity, Simone radiated importance with each step. She flaunted her iconic status for all it was worth—in this case, a good table and sycophantically fast service.
    Bess and Amy arrived by cab. They were ten minutes early. Simone was sure to be late. Punctuality wasn’t a priority for her, even though she became enraged when kept waiting. Amy seemed eager to get inside the restaurant. The girl was probably freezing, thought Bess, having insisted on her uniform of skinny jeans, a tank top, and ballet flats—in October. Bess didn’t understand how her daughter could stand to have her shoulders and tops of her feet exposed. Then again, lately, Bess didn’t understand anything about Amy.
    Watching her daughter’s scrawny arm muscle flex as she opened the restaurant door, Bess suppressed a pang of anxiety. Just once, Bess would like Amy to be on her side at this lunch instead of ganging up with Simone to criticize her. Bess used to seek the approval of her mother, and now she sought the approval of her daughter. Meanwhile, neither of them seemed to care at all about Bess’s opinion.
    They walked in and the maître d’ warmly smiled. He brought them to a table where, much to Bess’s surprise, Simone was already seated. When she saw Bess and Amy coming toward her, a smile lightened Simone’s leonine face.
She’s laughing at me
, thought Bess. She felt instantly self-conscious in her Wonder Woman boots—although they might set off a classic Simone screed on the politics of high heels. Bess could recite it from memory. She welcomed a lecture. Amy got bored out of her mind when Simone proselytized.
    Amy sat next to Simone, and gave her grandmother a juicy hug.Jealous, Bess had to sit opposite the two of them, watching their cozy display.
    “You look wonderful,” said Simone to Bess, glancing quickly at Amy. “And you, lucky girl, are the image of your grandfather.”
    Simone’s husband, Bess’s dad, Fred, who Amy absolutely resembled, had been dead for twenty-five years—fluke car accident. He had no life insurance, and left the family with a mountain of debt, a twice-mortgaged house on the brink of foreclosure, and zero savings. His death, and the family’s sudden impoverishment, inspired Simone to find her calling. Simone’s social status suffered a cataclysmic downgrading practically overnight. Her friends dumped her. She felt taken advantage of by (all male) bankers and lawyers who descended on them to take their house. Simone had no work experience (outside the home) to fall back on. Outraged by her situation, she started small, writing op-eds for neighborhood newspapers about the stigma of single motherhood, the perils of being financially dependent on a man, the belief that all women should be self-reliant. Simone expanded these ideas into a memoir called
Hung by the Apron Strings
, which became a bestseller and second-wave feminism movement starter.
    Bess and her two brothers, Fred Jr. and Simon, watched Simone turn the story of her widowed poverty and isolation into fantastic wealth and fame. Simone’s career took over her life. She made herself the living embodiment of her message. When people asked Simone who was caring for her three children while she was on the road promoting her book and doing lectures, she accused them of political baiting, trying to suggest a successful woman couldn’t