When I was in kindergarten — before I knew about birth charts and death dates, when I still had a mom, a dad, and a big sister — I learned a vital life lesson: you get what you get and you don’t get upset.
Anyone willing to pay my rates for a night at the Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat has probably never heard that pithy rhyme. This weekend’s group, in particular, were likely taught the opposite lesson.
In the study of the main house, I spread out manila legal folders for each of the guests across the desk and light my vanilla-ginger candle for integration, inviting my studies about these eight men and women to become part of my recall knowledge for the weekend.
Adam and his sister, Margot, attended Horace Mann, then Yale, then Columbia grad school — law for her, journalism for him. I imagine their teachers jauntily lecturing that you do not have to accept what the world gives you. That they can — nay, they must — keep strategizing and negotiating until they receive exactly what they want. Carpe diem.
They have no idea what a privilege it is to live like that. Adam’s wife, Aimee, and Margot’s husband, Ted, have similar pedigrees. Aimee is Manhattan born and bred, while Ted abandoned his working-class roots twenty-one years ago when he enrolled at Yale and never looked back, marrying higher than he could climb alone.
Ted works at Goldman Sachs with another guest, Rick. Rick’s wife, Eden, is a wellness influencer to the rich and famous, blue-check verified and followed by every actress who has ever won an Oscar, as if green juice leads to gold statues.
The next guest is a woman named Farah, an obstetrician of some fame, which I had no idea was a thing. She has a lower profile than Eden, but research has revealed she’s delivered babies born with more net worth than 99 percent of the country’s working adults. The next generation of privilege starts inside the womb, and Farah is the first to get her hands on them. Her husband, Joe, is a local politician with his sights set on the White House. As charismatic as he is ruthless, according to the news.
This might be the single most influential group I’ve ever hosted, and yet none of that alters my plans for this weekend.
My phone pings with a message and I reach for it too quickly, knocking my pen to the floor. It rolls six inches to the east. If my older sister, Andi, were here, she would ask me why I still haven’t called Eric to take a look at the floor. A slope could indicate a rotted joist, I know that. Andi would point out that knowing the issue isn’t the same as fixing it. Eric’s status as my ex-boyfriend makes it complicated to call in favors from my contractor.
Flustered, I grab the pen and look at the preview of a text from Margot, the designated organizer for this weekend.
Confirming foam (or preferably latex) pillows, my brother is allergic to feathers.
If Margot and her crew had learned the correct lessons at those fancy schools, they’d have thought about their obligation to leave the world a better place than they’d found it. Instead they learned they sleep better with hypoallergenic pillows. I leave her text unread. We’ll deal with it when she arrives.
No matter who my guests are, I always maintain a pleasant smile and an even tone. That’s the unspoken code between guest and host. They demand things, I nod, and we call it “vacation,” not “entitlement.” Most guests are content to figure out their minor inconveniences themselves, but I can tell I’m going to have to enforce the rule with Margot: the limit is three requests a day.
I don’t think I’ve made three requests of anyone else in my entire life, never mind three in a single day. I started working odd jobs at the age of sixteen, using Andi’s ID, and it wasn’t long before I dropped out of school to help pay the bills. Two years later, on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, my mother handed me a deed for three acres of waterfront property on the North Fork of Long Island. The property had been placed in trust for Andi and me from our absentee father, set up in his grandest gesture of guilt.
That day, I called in sick at the diner, and Andi and I drove out to survey the property. It didn’t take a building inspector to see that the 7,500-square-foot house was uninhabitable. The windows were broken, the roof sloped, and most of the shingles and siding were missing.
You get what you get and you don’t get upset.
I never heard from my father again. His youngest daughter was legally an adult. His support obligations, as tenuous as they’d ever been, were over. Happy birthday to me.
I didn’t sell the house as land per the suggestion of my father’s hack lawyer who handled the transfer. I didn’t even consider it, because in the ruins I saw a ticket to a better life for Andi and me. I withdrew all the money I’d earned and hadn’t given to my mother, and spent it on moving to Greenport and the renovations needed to turn the crumbling beauty into a rental vacation home.
Quickly, I learned that my savings weren’t enough, so I relied on an old personality trait in a new town — I hustled. I got a job waitressing at Claudio’s Seafood Restaurant while Andi consumed YouTube tutorials on plumbing and drywall. We survived on twenty different shapes of pasta, and in our spare time, scrolled through Pinterest for painting and decorating ideas.
With grit and favors, many mistakes, and one contractor-turned boyfriend, we restored the home to its original Victorian design. Over three years we added modern, practical touches, like central air and floor-to ceiling windows to show off the water view. Once again, it wasn’t enough.
I put so much planning, hard work, and heart into the renovation that I was deflated when my bucolic pictures resulted in nothing more than weekend bookings. We never made it out of the red during that first summer we were operational, and by the Fourth of July I had to beg for my shifts back at Claudio’s. And it got worse.
That winter, a pipe burst in the house, gushing and threatening to flood the basement. It was a bigger job than we could handle, and money was tight. I called the kindest plumber and proposed an astrological reading — a discipline I’d been studying since I was fourteen — in exchange for the work. He scoffed and hung up, but called back an hour later. He said that if I could scrape up the money for parts, he’d kick in the labor if I impressed his wife. After a ninety-minute session, she declared me a witch (apparently a good one) and promptly sent all her friends to me.
For the rest of the winter, I was a part-time waitress, an astrologer to the locals, and a room renter to tourists. On a lark, I combined my roles into one. I included an astrological dinner party for any stay of three nights or longer, with an option to purchase chart readings for shorter stays at $250 a head. The house was booked every single day that summer. With one celebrity sighting a few years later, the Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat was an official success.
I have built a prosperous career using this once run-down house, along with my study of astrology and experience in the service industry. I have learned to persevere in a way none of my guests would when faced with my challenges. I’ve ignored messages from the Universe that I should curl up in a ball and surrender my dreams. But even with that fortitude, this weekend will test the limits of my belief in the cosmic interplay of fate and free will. What will happen, and what can I do about it?
The front gate chimes, alerting me that the first guests have arrived.
I cannot afford to be a coward. ...
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