by Lola Swain
“Are you pregnant?” Katt said after I told her of our marriage plans.
“Not unless it’s an immaculate conception. I’m still a virgin.”
“Is that why you’re getting married so fast, because you want to dump your virginity?”
“No, not at all. From the first time we met, Brandt wanted to marry me. Again, you know this.”
“But I didn’t think you’d actually go through with it, Sophia. And your parents! My God, they are going to fucking shit a house when you tell them!”
“Well, I’m not going to. Tell my parents, that is. We are eloping,” I said and smiled.
I finally had a secret. I finally had something going on in my life that would cause me to have a secret. I was terribly proud.
“Oh, Sophia,” Katt said and shook her head.
“What?” I said as I paced the room. “I am really surprised at your reaction. I mean, is this not exactly something you would do?”
“Of course,” Katt said and chewed on her fingernail. “But it is certainly not something that you would do, Sophia.”
“Well, maybe that’s a problem. Maybe I am different now and maybe I should be. All my life I’ve been the good girl, Katt. Maybe it’s time I changed that.”
The ringing of the telephone interrupted our conversation. I looked at Katt and her shoulders slumped.
“Fine, I’ll get it. We definitely know who it is,” she said as she picked up the telephone.
“I’m sorry, Nellie, but Sophia is not home. I don’t know where she is, but I’ll be sure to tell her you called. Again. Bye-bye,” Katt said and slammed down the receiver and looked at me. “You really must do something about this creature.”
“I know. Brandt keeps telling me he’ll take care of it, but never does.”
“Well, then you must. Come on, you barely know her and you are going to be married to Brandt next week for fuck’s sake!”
“I know, Katt. I’ll take care of it if he doesn’t. Soon.”
“The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone’s life and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.”
Iris Murdoch
The ten days before my wedding was a rush of excitement and an endless swamp of errands.
Brandt and I went to City Hall and applied for the marriage license and made sure there was a Justice of the Peace available. He also handled the honeymoon plans at the Battleroy Hotel all on his own. Brandt said he used his Harvard connections to secure the honeymoon suite for the week.
Katt helped me pick out a beautiful, but appropriate, dress to match the regrettably casual affair. I avoided my parents and attempted to further avoid Nellie. And yet, as excited as I was, something got under my skin and gnawed at me like a tick.
I had an uneasiness…this underlying anxiety. I was a nervous person in general, but I worked very hard to hide that part of myself from others. So hard I worked to convince you I was no different than you, I was wound tighter than the thread I looped round and round my finger until it turned purple and went numb.
I already put the Revere Beach scene out of my head and refused to remember his strange behavior that day, but I still spent much of my time scanning my brain to figure out why I felt so panicked. But would I have done anything different if I knew that those last ten days would be the last ten of my life? I woke with questions, I lunched with questions and I went to sleep with questions. I needed to find the reason for my fear.
Was there a bill due? Did I have a pimple? Is that a lump? Did Brandt really love me? Ah…
Did Brandt really love me? Could that be it?
Now I know how Brandt really felt about me, but at the time, I was encased in an impenetrable bubble of indefinable fear. Back then, I didn’t speak of intuition. Things were simply black or white; shades of gray were for socks or dingy undershirts. However, these days I see they’re also for books.
At any rate, as much as I wish I gave my fear the respect it deserved and honored it for the warning it was, I would not have believed it. I mean, if closing his hands around my neck in the front seat of his car while he called me a whore was not a warning, what was? But the only thought I dared to make my truth was that Brandt was in love with me. He told me all the time we had the perfect life and it would only get better. Why would he lie?
And on the ninth day, the day before my marriage to Brandt, I decided the time had come to confront Nellie Daniels about my chronic avoidance.
The day was humid and Katt and I were busy packing my bag for the honeymoon. I spoke to Brandt at exactly three o’clock that afternoon and he instructed me to meet him at the Clerk’s office at nine o’clock the next morning. After the brief ceremony, we were off to Cape Cod for a blissful week at the Battleroy Hotel.
“What if he doesn’t show up?” I said to Katt as I folded the new negligee I purchased for our wedding night. “What if I get there and he is not?”
“So much the better,” Katt said and folded my emerald silk blouse and placed it in my suitcase.
“That’s a terrible thing to say. You don’t understand, if Brandt snubbed me, if he doesn’t show up, I promise, I will just die.”
Katt cocked her head and glared at me.
“Sophia Pearson, if I ever hear you say that again, if you ever mention again that you will die if that man does or does not do something, I will kill him myself!” Katt said and walked out of my room.
I ran after Katt and she flopped onto the couch and put her face in her hands and started to cry. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulder.
“Katt, I’m sorry. It was a terrible thing for me to say.”
“Too much importance,” Katt said, “you place too much importance on Brandt Therrault. You are an amazing girl, absolutely beautiful, smart and funny. I’ve held my tongue, more or less this whole time, but goddammit, I cannot do it anymore!”
“Exactly what don’t you like about him?” I said and pulled some strands of damp hair away from her face.
“I don’t know what it is, but there’s something,” Katt said and grabbed my leg. “Sophia, I know you will go forward with this and I do not want to scare you, but promise me that if you feel the least bit of danger, at any fucking time, you will leave him and not look back.”
I can still feel the chill that crept from my scalp down to my toes after Katt said that. She trembled outwardly while my insides rocked and rolled, sloshing around like an oil drum loose in the cargo hold of a tanker. She felt it, whatever it was, too.
“Katt, I promise you that if I feel the least bit of fear, I will run,” I said.
Katt smiled and hugged me.
“You’re like my sister, Sophia. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“And you’re more my sister than my actual sister. I promise, I will heed your advice,” I said.
At four o’clock that afternoon, after Katt and I had a nice cry and we finished packing my suitcase, the phone rang. And after Katt was on the receiving end of no less than ten calls from Nellie begging to know where I was, I decided it was time.
Katt and I left the apartment and headed toward the coffee shop to confront Nellie Daniels.
“Please, Katt,” I said as I grabbed her arm as we neared the coffee shop, “I know it’s been super annoying for you to take all these calls from Nellie and I’ve not painted the nicest picture of the girl, but I beg you not to say anything mean to her. There is something about her that is very fragile. She has this weird obsession with people. It’s going to crush her to find out that Brandt and I are marrying.”
“I won’t say a word,” Katt said as we approached the coffee shop.
The bell attached to the front door of the coffee shop rang as I opened the door and we walked in. I spotted Nellie behind the counter rolling silverware into paper napkins.
“There she is,” I said to Katt and gestured in Nellie’s direction.
“Sit anywhere you like,” Nellie said as she
kept her eyes focused on the silverware.
“Oh my God,” Katt said and grabbed my arm. “That is the infamous Nellie?”
Nellie looked up from her duties and stared right at me. She threw one of the napkin-wrapped silverware packages into a bus tub and took her apron off.
“Yep,” I said and sighed as Nellie walked from behind the counter and came toward us.
“Lord, Sophia,” Katt said, “she’s simply vile.”
Nellie stopped short and lifted her glasses off her face.
“I don’t believe my eyes! You must have a twin, ma’am,” Nellie said and grabbed my arm. “I used to have a best friend who looked exactly like you.”
I chuckled and looked down at my feet.
“Yes, I’m sorry, Nellie,” I said.
“Nellie?” she said and looked around the room. “Did you call me Nellie?”
“Of course I did. It is your name, right?”
“Well, yes it is. I’m just surprised you remember after all these months!”
Nellie’s voice was loud and shrill and a few of the customers at the counter swiveled around in their stools and stared at us.
“Nellie, please lower your voice. You’re making a bit of a scene.”
“Oh, am I? Am I making a scene? Am I embarrassing the beautiful, famous model Sophia Pearson?”
“Daniels!” one of the cooks said from behind the grill.
Nellie didn’t seem concerned that she was attracting attention from the customers and now her co-workers.
“You know, I thought you were my friend,” Nellie said as her already red-rimmed eyes got teary. “I just don’t understand how you can justify playing with someone’s emotions the way you do.”
“Sophia?” Katt said through clenched teeth.
Katt was angry, Nellie was positively hysterical and I turned and looked over my shoulder and judged how far I was from the front door.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Nellie said.
“Sophia?” Katt said.
“I’m sorry,” Nellie said and turned to Katt, “but who the fuck are you?”
“Nellie,” I said and grabbed Katt’s arm, “Katt is my roommate.”
“And her best friend,” Katt said.
“Oh, so you think you’re Sophia’s best friend?” Nellie said. “That shows you how much you know. I heard about you and I think you are pathetic!”
Katt ripped her arm from my grip and I threw myself between the two of them.
“Nellie, this is not about Katt,” I said and pushed my back into Katt’s body. “This is about us. Look, I’m sorry I’ve not been very responsive toward you.”
“Not very responsive?” Nellie said and broke out into high-pitched giggles. “You’ve completely fucking avoided me since we went to the movies. You sat here for hours the day we met talking to me. You pretended to like me!”
“I do like you,” I said. “Look, the reason I came here, the reason I wanted to speak to you was to apologize for not being available.”
Nellie’s opened her mouth as if she was ready to lay into me and then her eyes softened and she lessened the gap between her lips.
“Well, I appreciate that, Sophia,” Nellie said. “I know I get very attached to people. But I like you very much and my feelings are hurt.”
“And for hurting your feelings, I am sorry,” I said and took Nellie’s scaly hand into mine. “I really am. But there is something else I need to talk to you about. Perhaps we could sit down?”
“What else is there?” Nellie asked.
Katt nudged me.
“Well, it concerns Brandt,” I said and sighed. “Actually, it concerns me and Brandt.”
Nellie ripped her hand, as dry as paper and rough as rock salt, out of mine. Her eyes shifted back and forth, volleying between me and Katt.
Finally, her thin lips pursed together and disappeared as if her face caved into her mouth. She looked like she was sucking on a ball of tin foil.
“Brandt and you?” Nellie said. “What do you mean? There’s a Brandt and you, now?”
“Y-yes,” I said and cleared my throat. “Yes, there is.”
“And that’s why you’ve avoided me? Because you didn’t want me to find out?” Nellie said and looked down at her feet.
“Nellie, I am so sorry,” I said and put my hand on her arm. “I, we, never meant to hurt you.”
“We?” Nellie said and yanked her arm away from my hand and rubbed it as if I burned her. “We, as you say, did not hurt me. You did. Brandt hasn’t disappeared from my life, he’s as there for me as he ever was. More so, actually.”
Nellie’s voice amped up to full-blast again and the patrons resumed their interest in our scene.
“Nellie, please, let’s sit down.”
“I should have known that you would do this to me. You knew how I felt about Brandt when we went to the movies! You were jealous of us and you tried to do everything you could so I would not be happy. You are a petty, jealous bitch who deserves to be alone for the rest of your life!”
“Nellie, I understand you’re angry, but you knew, you know, Brandt was never interested in you,” I said.
“Really? And how do I know that?”
“Well, he said as much,” I said.
“Did he? What did he say?”
“He said you’re just friends.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because Brandt wouldn’t lie.”
“He’s a man, isn’t he? Grow up Sophia, all men lie.”
“Well, I believe him.”
“Well, you’re an idiot and as much of a liar as he is. The only reason you believe that Brandt and I are just friends is because you think he’d never choose me over you, that I’m too ugly for him. Isn’t that right?”
“Enough!” Katt said.
“Answer me,” Nellie said.
“You do not have to answer her,” Katt said.
“Answer me!”
“That is e-fucking-nough, you vile little troglodyte!” Katt said. “Sophia didn’t want to tell you because Sophia is a nice person, but I am not. Brandt was never interested in you and he was always interested in Sophia. He would never choose you over Sophia. Brandt loves Sophia and they are getting married!”
I gasped and turned my back to Nellie and stared at Katt.
“It’s okay,” Katt said and grabbed my arm. “She knows now. Let’s go.”
I turned around and looked at Nellie. She peeled dead skin from her hands. I watched a sheet of her skin drift down to the ground like a snowflake and when I looked up, Nellie’s eyes burned into mine.
Katt dragged me toward the front door and hitched her arm into mine so we could blend into the traffic on Newbury Street.
“Fucking hell, Sophia!” Katt said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“She was really angry,” I said and shook my head. “Really angry.”
“Whatever,” Katt said. “You know, I’m really—”
“Hey, Sophia!” Nellie said from behind us.
“Don’t turn around,” Katt said and gripped my arm.
“I have to,” I said and tore my arm from Katt’s grasp.
I turned and Nellie stood in front of the door to the coffee shop.
“Yes?” I said.
“You think you know him? You think he loves you? Well, let me tell you something: you don’t know Brandt Therrault and he certainly does not love you. You know why? Because he loves me. That’s right, Brandt Therrault loves me!”
Nellie erupted in high-pitched, hysterical laughter.
“You are fucking insane,” Katt said. “We do not have to stand here listening to this fat, disgusting nutter’s ranting.”
Katt grabbed my arm and dragged me up the street backwards. I never took my eyes away from Nellie, not even after my myopia long blurred her face. And she never took her eyes away from me and never stopped laughing.
I got little sleep th
at evening. I couldn’t get Nellie’s voice out of my head and it completely ruined any excitement I had for the day to come. I woke several times and stared in the mirror and fret about my puffy, red-rimmed eyes.
“They look like hers,” I said to myself as I looked at my eyes and thought of Nellie.
I finally fell asleep, but my dreams that evening brought me no rest or peace. I dreamt of horror; of splintering bones and buckets of blood. I dreamt that Brandt did not show up to the Clerk’s office and Nellie arrived in his place. I dreamt of an interstitial that was certainly not heaven and quite possibly hell.
I dreamt of the rafters.
“A bride received into the home is like a horse that you have just bought; you break her in by constantly mounting her and continually beating her.”
Chinese Proverb
I awoke with swollen eyes and a battered brain. I jumped out of bed and ran to wake Katt so we could get ready. But she was already awake. She sat on the couch holding a mug of coffee and stared out our large window at the rising dawn over the rooftops of the city.
“Good morning,” I said.
Katt looked at me and frowned.
“I remember when you and I met,” Katt said and took a sip of her coffee. “Do you remember?”
“Yes, of course I do. In the bathroom at Ford. It was my first time ever in Manhattan and I just signed my first big contract.”
Katt smiled at me and turned her head back toward the window.
“I came straight from London and I was so damn frightened,” she said and lit a cigarette. “I just had an argument with my agent and an absolutely horrorshow fight with that boy. God, what was his name?”
Katt blew smoke rings as she tried to remember the boy she travelled with from London to New York. The plane ride lasted longer than their relationship.
“Percy,” I said and giggled. “Percy Posselwaite from Perth.”
“Yes,” Katt said. “Percy Posselwaite from Perth. Anyway, I abhorred Manhattan and felt so alone and I ran into the lobby bathroom to have a quick cry and there you were.”
“Having a cry too,” I said.
“Yes, you were,” Katt said. “And I looked at you and you looked at me. And you were the first person in this horrid business who smiled at me. Really smiled.”
“And you smiled at me too,” I said.
