by Schow, Ryan
Margaret tailed them to Union Square where she lost them because the parking situation scored a perfect ten on the sucksatonofass scale. Breathless, chastising herself for losing them, hobbling because she was now cramping inside from not peeing, she moved frantic and gracelessly through the crowds.
She hit the first bathroom, pushed some teenage girl out of the way with endless apologies, then took her stall. Pants down, butt cheeks on the seat (sans a seat cover), her vagina was like an exploding water balloon. Piss roared out of her like it hated her.
The deflation of her bladder was almost sexual it felt so good and so painful at the same time. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she said, almost to herself, but not quite.
“You piss like an elephant sounds pissing,” the girl in the stall next to her said.
“I held it about a day too long,” she replied.
For about an hour she wandered the mall, looking for them. Eventually she spotted Abby and Netty heading into Nordstrom’s. With as many people as there were, it was a miracle she hadn’t lost them completely. Margaret followed them for a while, eventually tailing them into Saks Fifth Avenue where, for the first time, hers and Abby’s eyes met.
Abby showed no signs of recognition. She did, however, do a double take. Margaret smiled; Abby smiled back, then looked away.
The two girls were looking at purses. Then they were looking at her.
Her heart an explosive, collapsing mess, her vision pulsing at the edges, she told herself she had to approach the girls. She just had to! But she couldn’t. And right then she realized Margaret v2.0 was just as much of a Class A, blue ribbon chicken shit as Margaret v1.0. If she were a boy, she’d have the smallest nuts on earth, that was how little courage she possessed right then.
Every plan she made fell apart the moment she made it. Opportunities came, then flittered away. When they left Saks, she didn’t follow them. Instead she ventured outside, out into the world-renowned courtyard where she got a seat in the outdoor café, Café Rulli, and sulked.
What a failure she was!
Under the frog green umbrella, with the sun’s heat searing color onto her brand new legs, she donned her big sunglasses and let herself get lost in the hustle and bustle of the courtyard crowd. There was something more satisfying in people-watching than there was in reading books or watching movies. Every stranger’s expression bore a truth. A secret. A mystery or a lie. Sadness and wonder, excitement and peace—they all found homes on the faces in the crowd.
If anyone looked at her face, what they would see would surely disappoint them as much as it disappointed her.
3
Her waiter, a bushy looking guy they called a lumbersexual (which she learned was a metrosexual, but sometimes with an ugly Duck Dynasty beard), came to take her order. All that hair on his face had her thinking he could be cute with some grooming, but there’s no way she’d want that shaggy looking face buried in her lap. Not even once.
Politely, smiling, she said, “I’ll take the club sandwich, and the check.”
“In a hurry today?” he asked, surprisingly pleasant.
“No, I just don’t want to be bothered once I get my food. If you make sure my water doesn’t go empty, I’ll leave a generous tip. Just…I’d like to be left alone.”
“Okay,” he said. He looked like he didn’t know if he should be offended, or if he should thank her for forewarning him that she was straight up bananas.
When he left, she tuned out the voices around her, tuned out the world, let herself really sink into the depression. It was spongy and inviting. The fluffiest, gloomiest blanket ever. Tears gathered in her eyes, but she told herself to stop, to not cry. The failures of her past life, of this current life, they blotted out the skies of her mind like hoards of blowflies heading for fields of the dead.
Her only thought was, now what? Now that she’d alienated Christian, now that she’d blown her chance with Abby, now what? She had no name. No ID. No life. She was a nothing, a no one, wholly inconsequential.
Then someone beside her said hello and that was enough to drag her out of the morass. She was like a baby pulled from the warm tub only to shiver in the cold. When she looked over, she saw Netty and Abby. They were at the table next to her. She was so dumbstruck she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even breathe.
“Are you okay?” Netty said.
It took her a moment to answer. Then: “Yeah. I was…I was in my head. Lost in thought. I’m sorry.”
“We saw you in Nordstrom’s and Saks,” Netty said, “and my friend and I think you’re possibly the most beautiful woman we’ve ever seen.”
This was not the Netty she knew. The Netty she knew was an introvert. Super withdrawn unless you pissed her off, then she could be a firecracker. The thing about Netty was, her Russian heritage had her icy on the outside, and brash with her words. She was more aggressive than American girls when she wasn’t completely frowning on the world. But this version? No, this version of her was polite and complimentary.
“Thank you, but just today I’ve seen five women more attractive than me,” she said, praying the false modesty might keep her from blushing.
She told herself to detach. It was all so completely surreal anyway. Talking to her daughter as a new person. Talking to Netty as a stranger when she felt like she knew so much about her anyway.
“I’m Netty, and this is Abby,” she said, introducing themselves.
Saying her new name for the first time, she said, “I’m Orianna. Orianna Crawford.” It sounded good. Rolled off her tongue perfectly.
She smiled, pleased.
“Name like that, it’s beautiful. Fits you good,” Abby said.
The way she said it, it sounded like something a girl without adequate schooling would say. She sounded, oh God, she sounded…uneducated?
“Are you girls local?” she said, making conversation, while trying to comprehend the full extent of the damage done to Abby’s brain. Is she slow now? Mentally challenged?
“We’re sort of local,” Netty said. “I am, anyway. Abby’s from Palo Alto. We just saw you and wanted to talk to you.”
“Why?” she said, her voice a perfect measure of her curiosity.
“We never saw someone so beautiful,” Abby explained in an arrangement of tones that sounded nothing like her daughter’s usual voice. “Every feature you have is flawless.”
“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” Orianna asked, looking congenial despite how bothered she was by Abby’s demeanor. Now Abby blushed. Her daughter was every bit as beautiful as she was. Maybe more. Unlike Orianna, Abby still had her youth.
“I keep trying to tell her,” Netty said, “but she took a pretty bad knock on her head the other day and since then she’s been a bit coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.”
Abby smacked Netty’s arm, and the girls laughed it off.
Abby said, “We thought that maybe you were someone important, the way you look and carry yourself. Like maybe you were a fashion designer, or the CEO of…an important company. Women like you always have something interesting going on.”
“No, nothing so interesting I’m afraid.” A chunky sort of congealing discomfort was slithering through her stomach. Measuring her words, trying to sound more distinguished than she felt, she said, “I come from money. Which is to say I have done nothing of any significance in my life except look good. As much as I wish I had a more meaningful existence, I’ve become a bit of a one-trick-pony.”
“If looking good is the measure of your life,” Netty said, “I’d say you’re a success.”
Orianna laughed. Who is this girl? This brilliant, witty girl? And why do I want to know more about her than my own daughter?
“There is hardly anything successful about your ancestors being affluent and leaving you their fortune. The most notable thing I ever did was find a proficient money manager. And even then I only found him on good advice.”
“Where are you from, originally?” Abby asked.
The bushy-faced wai
ter came to the girls’ table, looked at them talking to Orianna when he couldn’t, and gave a bit of a frown. “I apologize for interrupting ladies, but are you ready to order?”
Abby ordered, then Netty ordered, then they both looked back at Orianna, who continued where she left off the minute the lumbersexual left.
“My family is from Scotland. The old Barony of Crawford, in the Upper ward of Lanarkshire.”
Last night, as she was deciding on a name for herself, she’d read this bit of history on the name Crawford, loved the sound of it, and memorized it. Her name had a noble quality to it. And the two names together? Orianna Crawford? It had a pleasant ring. Rolled effortlessly off the tongue.
She especially liked Orianna. She chose the Latin-based name because it meant—among other things—sunrise, or dawning. Midnight had fallen on Margaret v1.0. She was gone now. Deceased. And this new life of hers? She thought of herself as the dawning of a new woman, a rebirth. She was indeed, reborn.
As for her “Scottish origin,” if she started out across the globe from her old self, even if her history was a lie, could she become someone she didn’t despise? Could she successfully let Margaret Van Duyn die and be someone better instead?
She would soon find out.
The thing she first realized was she needed a skill, some kind of trade, because the way she just described herself to Abby and Netty, her solitary redeeming quality was her looks. These weren’t even hers. She bought them. No, Christian bought them. Like he bought everything else of value in her life. With an icy stab of pain, this made her wonder if she could ever truly change. If she’d ever really have value beyond her looks.
“You’re from Scotland, that’s cool,” Netty said. “We’re from money, too. At least I was once. Abby still is though.”
“Oh, really?” Orianna said, her thoughts elsewhere.
“Not really,” Abby said, playing modest. Good girl. “My dad invented some website and made a bunch of money and now he’s just sort of, I don’t know, raising me on his own or something.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked Abby. Because this didn’t feel at all like her daughter. The girl felt like an imposter. Then again, what should she expect out of a girl who was dead for days, and then came back to life? She needed to cut the girl some slack.
“I’m fine, I guess. Some things are a bit fuzzy still.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Um, my whole life up until a few days ago, for starters.”
“Some might call that a silver lining,” Orianna said jovially.
“In her case, I’d say so!” Netty chimed in.
“So you knew her…before…whatever it was that happened?” she asked Netty. The nauseating feeling spreading throughout her was getting progressively worse.
“We’ve known each other for years,” Abby said, but not like she was proud. Orianna suspected the less Abby talked the more comfortable Netty felt. She must be thinking the same thing Orianna was thinking, how Abby wasn’t herself.
“What’s the best thing about not remembering your past?” Orianna asked Abby.
“Apparently my mom’s a raging bitch,” she said. “So I guess that’s a good thing to forget.”
Just then the crotch-faced waiter returned with their food, which was good for Orianna because for a second there she couldn’t breathe. Once, before she was Abby, Savannah called her a bitch when Margaret had been wasted and mean. Now for her daughter to tell her—a complete stranger—that her mother was a bitch, somehow that felt so much worse.
When the waiter left, Orianna said, “She couldn’t be that bad, could she?”
Abby dug into her food, shoveling a bite of cold pasta into her mouth. “The woman was a card carrying paparazzi whore by the sound of it.”
“She’s not that bad,” Netty said, her pale white cheeks showing color.
“No one should call their mother a bitch, even if at one point she was one,” Orianna told Abby. “It’s disrespectful, and it’s sad.”
“Why not if it’s the truth?” Abby challenged. “I mean, fuck, where is she even? Is she at home making dinner? Nope. Doing my laundry? Nope. She’s got no job and no bankable skills from what I understand. And my dad? He claims she’s traveling the world, or whatever, which is ten pounds of hot cow shit as far as I’m concerned since she’s got a family and all. I mean, what kind of an asshole does a thing like that? Just up and leaves their family?”
Feeling the familiar squeeze of claustrophobia, shaking deep inside from truths that felt so much worse than insults, and suffering the pain of hearing this first-hand from her foul-mouthed daughter, she was overwhelmed with despair. Blinking back the tears, she turned away from them. She would not let Abby see her cry.
Taking a bite of her own sandwich, she said, “Perhaps she had her reasons.”
“Yeah, she’s a bitch, that’s the reason. My real mom never did that, so why’d this one do it, you know?”
“She is your real mom,” Netty said.
Orianna nearly choked on her sandwich. It stopped mid-swallow, the lump of it catching in her throat, until she chased it down with a big gulp of water.
“Yeah, well, whatever,” Abby said. “All’s I’m saying is family is important, even if they don’t feel like your real family.”
“Where did you go to school?” Orianna said, getting pissed off at how rude and dumb Abby sounded. They paid a ton of money to send her to Astor Academy, and this is how she repaid their generosity? By talking like a…a goddamn hick?
“Here and there,” Abby said with food scraps in her mouth. She chewed like she lived on the farm, not like the civilized girl she and Atticus raised her to be.
“Close your mouth while you chew,” Netty said. “It’s freaking gross. Seeing all that mashed up food.”
“I want to know about this mother of yours,” Orianna said. “Do you remember anything at all about her?”
“No.”
“So I could be your mother and you wouldn’t even know it?”
“Are you?”
She paused, then, with an edge to her voice, said, “No, smart ass.”
“Well there you have it,” she said, flippantly. Orianna got the distinct impression Abby didn’t want to talk to her anymore. Already she could feel Netty getting uncomfortable.
“Just so you know,” Orianna said, leaving a twenty and a ten on the table beside the bill and her uneaten food, “I’m friends with your father.”
“Yeah?” she challenged. The chewing stopped. “What’s his name?”
Standing up, sliding her purse up over her shoulder, she said, “Christian Swann. Or Atticus Van Duyn, depending on your memories.”
Netty’s dropped jaw practically hit the floor. Which was about the time Orianna turned and left. Minutes later, when she was safely in the Bentley, the tears came relentless.
4
When an unspent bitch-fit becomes a monumental crying jag, a girl is officially slayed. The way she was sobbing, how Orianna’s face was a flood of v2.0 tears, we’re talking pre-teen meltdown. Which, for a thirty-something woman, is highly embarrassing. Her eyes weren’t her own, yet in the Bentley’s vanity mirror, the familiar sight of her looking a wreck reminded her not everything had changed.
It took like ten minutes and a big girl pep talk to spirit herself out of that mess. Then she dialed Christian and said, “Whatever’s wrong with Abby, I don’t know how to process it. She’s not herself.”
“You saw her?” he said. “When? How’d it go?”
She told him what she had been doing, how the girls approached her after she gave up tailing them and how Abby behaved. He was like, “Yeah, it’s a little disconcerting.”
“Disconcerting?!” she snapped, her puffy eyes blazed red, her insides shivering with exhaustion. “She’s dumb as hell! She chews with her mouth open and cusses like she works on a goddamn oil rig!”
“Don’t know where she gets her mouth from,” Christian said, his sarcasm barely
veiled.
“She told me her mother’s a bitch. That I’m a bitch! Can you believe that? To me! A perfect stranger she met only minutes before!”
“If you look past that for a second, you will realize we’re lucky to have her,” Christian reminded her, his tone reassuring. Was he talking her off a ledge? Of course. Someone needed to! He said, “She was shot several times, and was dead for days.”
“I know the details,” she replied, her restlessness draining with every dramatic flair. “You don’t have to remind me.”
“So give her a break.”
“I told her you and I know each other,” she confessed. It was going to come out anyway, might as well cop to it. “I think maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”
He was quiet for a long time, then he said, “Would you like to have dinner with us tonight?”
The breath she was holding, she blew it out, then said, “No. Wait. You’re not… are you mad?”
“What good would it do to be mad? Would that undo anything? Make it all better? No. Most certainly not. So no, I’m not mad.”
“Okay,” she said, dragging out the word.
She checked her makeup, especially her eyes and foundation, then started the Bentley and found her way out of the parking garage.
“Being new, it’s about taking chances, and trying new things,” Christian said. “Abby is Abby. She’s different, perhaps a bit unrefined, or even vulgar, but she’s still our daughter. We still made her what she is, to some degree, and we’re still responsible for her care and upbringing.”
“I know.”
“Then quit making this so damn hard and just let me cook you two dinner. I’m a good chef these days. And my company’s not so bad either.”
“You’re good at a lot of things,” she said. In the salad bowl of “feelings,” old spoils of emotion boiled to the surface yet again. “You’re this amazing man now, and I’m still good at nothing but being pretty and destructive.”
When she was in rehab this last time, she admitted to adding no value to the world. The truth, it was a bitter pill she barely managed to swallow. The words were so depressing, the implications. Like how everyone feels so sorry for you when your trauma is fresh, but after the fiftieth admission, everyone smiles that impossible, thousand-pound smile and quietly wishes you’d just shut the hell up already.
