“Wait, your mom knew about it?” Dawn squawked. Nora shot her a look and she caught herself, doing a quick sweep of the tables nearest to them. She started again with her voice lowered. “What kind of mother . . . She knew and let it go on?” Dawn looked as if she wanted to smash the mug to the floor, but kept her heated stare on Nora like she was waiting for something.
Confirmation. Nora realized she hadn’t really answered Dawn’s question about her mother knowing. All she would have to do is nod, Nora thought, and they could move on to the next act. But Nora couldn’t bring herself to say that, Yes, my mother knew that I was being molested.
A vision of Nora’s mother, her serene face, appeared just beyond Dawn’s shoulder. It was unexpected and jarring and sent a shudder through Nora’s entire body. Her real mother didn’t know about the abuse. Nora was sure of it. Mona Gittens would never let that sickness stand. And the Bourdains would have certainly met their end by poison cooked into their food before they could harm her girl-child one more day. “Let me just go and sit down in the people’s jail,” Nora could hear her mother saying.
“My mom,” Dawn said, “she would never allow some man to mess with me like that. Never. She’d butcher that rank muhfuckuh in his sleep. No doubt.” Dawn pushed out her chin. “What did your moms do?”
Nora nodded, the image of her mother still hovering. “She sent me away. To Immaculate.” Keeping it basic—using hazy terms like, she, that woman, his wife—made it easier for her to push away her mother’s haunting likeness and continue the story. “And I went along with that wish, her wish for me to be gone. It meant getting away from him. So I went. I never wanted to look back. I didn’t want to be that broken, dirty person anymore. I didn’t want to carry it around with me; I was ashamed.”
Dawn stared at Nora, right into her eyes for a long few seconds. “That’s how this started?” she said. Her tone had mellowed, but there was still a thin layer of suspicion pressing through the surface.
Nora gave her a stiff nod.
“But why a white girl? Why not escape all that sick bullshit at home and just be you when you tried to start fresh?”
“Dawn, when I got there, there was no one there like me”— she gestured at Dawn—“or you. All those girls, they were happy and red cheeks and mascara. They were unbroken. I wanted to be one of them, not this . . . mixed up, other thing. And because I look how I look, people at Immaculate made assumptions about me and I didn’t have the nerve to correct them.”
Dawn sat back in her seat, cocked her head to the side, and held Nora’s gaze. The silence squatted on the table between them for a full minute.
Finally, Dawn pulled herself up and scooted to the edge of her seat. “So this whole thing . . . this”—she fanned her hand around Nora—“all of this is based on, what—some omission?”
“It’s not that simple,” Nora said.
“It never is.”
“Look.” Nora moved to the edge of her chair, too. “My wedding is almost a week away, Dawn. One week. And I really want to marry this man. He’s good and sweet, and he loves me in a way that I didn’t even know existed. I can’t lose that. I don’t want to be broken again.”
“The truth’s not gonna break you. You’ve heard it before: The truth will set you free. If he’s all that, then tell him the truth. Doesn’t he deserve that?”
“It’s too late. That’s the truth. I’m in too deep. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“So, you’re just okay living like this. Just pass—”
“I know it sounds crazy, that I’m living this life,” Nora interrupted. She didn’t want the word to even be uttered. “But it is my life, and I can’t pick it apart. I don’t want to destroy it.”
“Why don’t you say what you really want to say?” Dawn peeled off a new smirk. “You don’t want me to destroy your life.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yet here we are.”
“Dawn, I meant what I said: I want to start on a clean slate with you, as friends. And I’m asking you, pleading with you as a friend to let this go. Let it go. They, him, his wife—they don’t matter anymore.”
“What, ’cause you’ve forgiven them?”
“No, just forgot them. They don’t have a hold on me. Not now.” Nora looked deep into Dawn’s face. Her skin was smooth, and her eyes were strong and piercing. She exhaled and pushed the line out of her mouth with it. “They died.”
Dawn unfolded her arms and relaxed her rigid posture. “Both of them?” The honest expression that colored her face—shock or condolence or comfort or all of it mixed together—stirred a twinge of remorse in Nora’s gut behind the lie.
Nora nodded.
“Cancer?”
“For her. Him, heart attack. The famous heart surgeon felled by a heart attack,” Nora said, a slight shrug to her shoulder. “Guess that’s irony.”
“Fuck irony. Justice is what was needed. He should’ve been shoved into a prison box and just rot there.”
“My point is, this . . . my way of living, it’s not hurting anyone.” Nora pulled herself up straight, aligned with the wall behind her. “I’m happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“Okay,” Dawn said, firmly.
Nora’s eyes lit up through the remaining tears. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay, as in I heard you. You asked me to come meet you to hear you out and I did. I heard you.”
The flash of brightness in Nora’s face fell away. “You heard me. So, what does that mean?”
“It means my coffee is cold and this little meet-up is over.” Dawn’s tenor reverted to sour. “And that means I’m gonna go.” She pushed back her chair with a strident scrape to the floor.
In an instant, before she could even gauge whether it was a smart move or not, Nora reached out and grabbed Dawn’s tense arm. “Wait! Please. Just wait a minute.” She took a breath and let go of the arm, but her hand remained floating over it. She was teetering on the edge of her seat, holding the corner of the table for balance. “You have to tell me if you’re going to say any—I mean, do we have an understanding?”
“I’ll think about it. That’s as understanding as I’ll ever be.”
Nora’s head sank to her chest and she tried to put a cork on the scream coursing through her body, rising up her throat.
“Don’t worry. We have time,” Dawn said, and stood up, dusting invisible crumbs from her pretty dress. “I’ll know by wedding day.”
Nora’s head shot up. “Wait, what do you mean?”
“J. F. Christ. You always want to know what people mean when it’s right there in front of you.” Dawn rolled her eyes. “At the tea party. Before ol’ girl got carted off on the gurney, your mother-in-law-to-be, she was looking for you. I should’ve told her that you did what you do, run away the minute shit gets real.” Dawn lifted her chair and pushed it into the table’s edge. “Instead, I did you a solid and told her that you just got a call from your wedding planner”—she grinned—“about the seating chart. Anyway, we got to talkin’ about your big day, and she asked if she was going to see me there. Since she so enjoyed talking with me,” Dawn said, clenching her teeth and turning her nose up in an overdone spoof. “I didn’t have an answer. To be real with you, I wasn’t sure this wedding was gonna actually happen, because, well, you know. But then, Lady Beaumont says, ‘Of course you’re going to be there.’ So I said the only thing I could: ‘Of course!’ ” Dawn’s laugh sounded like it had teeth, crunching the air like ice cubes. “Life comes at you fast, right?”
“Dawn . . .” Nora moved to stand.
“I told you I’d think about it,” Dawn said, and her chuckle vanished. She pointed a finger at Nora. “You better not push it.” She turned on her low heels and left.
Nora dropped back in her seat and watched as her promise of a new world glided out the door.
CHAPTER 16
“Hon, the only way you’re going to truly relax is by giving yourself permission to do so,” Jenna said, and
stuffed her phone into the generous pocket of the luxury robe perfectly embroidered with the spa’s gold logo by the left lapel. “I mean, put your oxygen mask on first.” She sat down next to Nora on the soft bench and rested her hand at the top of her friend’s exposed back. “It’s what the universe would do . . .” Jenna’s face crumpled into laughter. “Oh, my God. Can you imagine?” Her holler echoed through the quiet changing room. “Did I totally sound like Richelle Simon just now, with her full line of five-digit, woo-woo bullshit?”
Nora smiled and tightened the thick towel wrapped around her chest. “A little bit.”
“I wish publishers could work under a pseudonym for some titles. I’m so embarrassed by that Simon book. The whole billionaire housewife gives tips on living your best life—please, such garbage. Just stay home and shoot those perfect babies out your Texas Tunnel, Richelle!” Jenna pursed her lips and swept her thick brown hair to one side, letting it cascade down her shoulder like a waterfall. “But seriously, enough about Richelle Simon; back to you. This whole day is about you releasing all that wedding stress, just leave it and let it melt away into these fucking outstanding Kashwére robes.” Jenna slipped hers off and draped it over the door of an open locker.
Being naked in front of other people didn’t bother Jenna. She had told Nora on the first of their many regular visits to Mandarin Oriental Spa that nude felt more comfortable than wearing clothes to her, especially after the near decade of work and therapy she had put into feeling comfortable in her own skin. “Nothing more potently toxic to a girl’s self-worth than the one-two punch of a Southern mama and an outspoken Gigi,” she had said while sprawled out next to Nora in the special, amethyst crystal steam room. “The number of times I’ve been called fat—in the most colorful ways, too—the word doesn’t even sound the same to me anymore.”
“I’m okay,” Nora said, and shook her head. She could hear how limp and unconvincing she sounded. “I’m getting close to it, anyway.”
Jenna smiled and passed her classic oh, sweetie condolences look onto Nora. “Well, you know what you need?” She stood and moved her robe to hang inside the locker, pulled out a towel, and wrapped it around her waist. “Remember that ancient episode of Sex and the City where Samantha hits the spa and finds out there’s a masseur who goes down on some of his women clients? Kevin. I will never forget that dude’s name.” She bunched her hair up into a floppy mess of a bun. “Ol’ Kev provided plenty of source material for Up in My Room Diddlin’ with Teen Jenna.”
Nora groaned. “Gross, Callaway.”
“Gross? It’s nature, Nora. It’s nature and beautiful and totally what you need right now. We all need a Kevin. The Mandarin needs a Kevin. Unless”—Jenna’s face went straight—“there is a Kevin here, but we don’t qualify for the secret menu. How dare you, Kevin!”
“You need serious help,” Nora said, laughing, fully and finally.
“I’m serious, a little head would set you straight. But not from Fish. Like, you need non-husband-related stranger face. It will hotwire your brain and clear out all that shit clouding things up. Set you on to some next-level calm and common sense. Trust me. Why do you think I’m so fucking sharp all the time?”
Nora frowned at her friend. “Please tell me you’re not collecting cunnilingus from randoms you meet on that dating app—what’s it called again, Winnerz?”
“Spinnerz. And no, that’s a whole different audience,” she smirked. And for a flash Nora was reminded of Dawn, her face and that leer.
Since their meet-up yesterday, Nora couldn’t shake her. Everything reminded her of Dawn. Even as she dozed off in the wee hours, Nora would jolt awake sweating, her jaw and body sore from being clenched so tight, and Dawn—her voice, her smirk, her scowl, her chronic animus—would be there, so real it left Nora trembling and covered in goose flesh.
She had done all that she could, rehearsed her scenes and played them to the letter. And still, Dawn was going to burn her life down.
Or she wasn’t.
Nora kept thinking that she saw something in Dawn’s eyes, a sliver of something as she turned to leave the café yesterday that looked like compassion. Perhaps it was pity, but it didn’t matter, because it was there and it was a seed. From her time spent at the Conservatory Garden, Nora knew what good could come from a seed.
Fisher managed to sleep through her fits in the bed, and when he did wake up, Nora feigned sleep. She felt him brush the hair by her temple with the backs of his fingers, but remained still as stone, silently begging him to leave. Getting out of the bed felt like too much to ask, and pretending to be animated, excited to be awake and breathing seemed unimaginable. She almost muted Jenna’s early-morning call; she was not yet ready to be nice to anyone.
“Get ready to put the ah in spa, woman. I have us booked for the complete works—Quintessence Body Scrub, Bio-Radiance Facial, Therapeutic Massage, Aroma Stone mani-pedis, and a bento box lunch, bitch. I’ve forgotten nothing. I’ve even slotted in some time for me to do a bit of the sunless tan—not advisable for brides-to-be. Plus you’re the perfect blush of pale for that gorgeous gown of yours. However, I did leave room for you to roll over to Nadia’s for a wax. It’s next door, she’s the best—I told you she does all the porn gals, right? Anyway, I’ll get some color on this skin while you get your li’l Susan stripped bare and we can meet up at Blue Meadow for a real lunch right afterward.”
“Jenna, I . . . I can’t do all that. It’s nice and it’s sweet of you, but I can’t. I just need some rest today.”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“You can’t say no to this, hon. It’s coming straight from Fisher. He told me you’ve been maximum stressed these last couple weeks. And I was, like, and water is wet, bro. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Wait, wait . . . he told you this how? Did he email you?” The panic in Nora’s voice was piercing, but she didn’t have it in her to modulate anything. Mateo’s secret infosec contact had shored up her emails and her newer new iPhone, but Nora was still nervous that Dawn could play Peeping Tom into her life through other channels, namely Fisher.
“I don’t even think Fisher knows my email address. No, he called me, which was also a little awkward. He sounded so unsure, as if he dialed the wrong number but just rolled with it to save face. But when he started talking about you and how you’re not sleeping or even eating, well, hon, I dropped everything. I knew exactly what to do, and so, spa day with your MOH or HBIC, as I prefer to be called for the rest of this week.”
“Only this week?” Nora said, a half of a grin edging up.
“You know me too well. So . . . let’s get up, slide into our basic white-girl yoga pants, and hit that spa.”
“And I can’t say no to this, huh?”
“Nope.”
Jenna pulled two white towels from the fluffy stack and flung one over her shoulders, barely covering her breasts, and bundled up the second at her waist. “First stop,” she said, jabbing her index finger toward the spa locker room ceiling, “that pool. Swear to God it’s comprised of, like, seventy-nine percent Taylor Swift’s tears. You’ll see.” Jenna slid her hand into the tight space between Nora’s crossed arms and tugged her toward the locker room’s exit.
Standing by the spa vitality pool together, Jenna wasted no time and lowered herself into it. “This feels so good,” she said, her eyes closed and face flushed. “Wouldn’t it be awesome to have one of these at home?” She looked over at Nora. “You should totally talk to Fish about that. He’d do it, too, because that is a man in absolute, dumb love with you.” She closed her eyes again and dropped her head back, sinking deeper into the calming water. “You know he’d do anything for you, his wonderful, magical creature.”
“Don’t call me a creature,” Nora said under her breath. The tears were moving in.
“What’s that?” Jenna’s head was still tilted back.
Nora cleared her throat. “Nothing,” she said, and splashed water over h
er face. It doesn’t matter.
Jenna pulled her chin down and looked at Nora with bright eyes. She was laughing, chuckling. “I literally just put my hand in this pool to reach for my phone in my nonexistent pocket. I’ve got phantom vibration syndrome like I’m Sweaty Betty or some tragic millennial. But that’s how hooked I am on this goddamn podcast. Have you been listening to Slay? It’s amazing. The case they’re following this season is about this guy, a British spy named Edmund Thackeray and—”
“I know. Oli listens to it,” Nora said, tuning back into the moment. “She’s obsessed with the show, with the whole story.”
“I’m obsessed, too. You kind of have to be obsessed. It’s so damn good. They were supposed to upload the new episode yesterday morning, but there was a glitch or whatever and now all of us junkies are strung out waiting on the corner for someone to sling them rocks. Has me so on edge, I can’t even tell you. I’m not supposed to be so keyed up; it’s Saturday, y’all! All this agita, that’s what the weekday is for. And this next episode—it’s supposed to come out any minute now today and I’m, like, jonesing. It’s right at the crux of this whole fucked-up story. It’s all about the poison right now. I mean, radioactive polonium-210? Jesus Christ! Who does that? That shit is crazy.”
“It really is. Fisher was talking about it a couple months back. They were doing tests with something just like it at the Institute.”
“Oh, my God. Do you force Fish to take Silkwood showers when he comes home, because—”
“Silkwood?”
Jenna lowered her chin more and gave Nora a frowning, appalled look. “You’ve never seen Silkwood? Starring the goddess Meryl Streep and Goldie’s Kurt? And also Cher, for all that’s good and holy. Plus, those plum awful accents. None of this rings bells for you?”
All Nora could offer was an empty stare and shake of her head.
“Dagnabbit,” Jenna squawked, “who raised you?”
Have You Met Nora? Page 21
