And there, at the bar in Galvin’s on the corner of Hilton and Dean, is where I met Joe. The next morning I’d awoken with a stinking hangover and his phone number scrawled up my arm, but more, I’d felt the smile, pulling at the corners of my mouth. A genuine one.
Of course I’d told Nina about Joe, though had limited it to the basics. Not that I’d known much more at that point myself. Even collecting the marriage licence from the County Clerk’s Office on Monday had been eye-opening (finding out Joe’s middle name was Alphonso). From behind his desk Mr Surley had been adamant our wedding was tinged with green. He hadn’t been afraid to tell us either, until Joe forced an apology out of him.
An hour after calling her, I watched an immaculate Nina Durant catwalk past the bare brick and worn booths in Bemo’s restaurant on Harvelle Street, turning heads while she was at it.
‘You look amazing, girl! What are you all dolled up for?’ Nina sang as she slid into the red leather booth by the window. ‘No more splurging on Oak Street without me, do you hear?’
She’d become my new best friend. Make that only friend after everyone back home had disowned me like a leper. Nina fitted my friend profile right down to her couture cuts and daily doses of sarcasm. Her canary-yellow wrap dress didn’t fit Bemo’s usual dress code, hence the wandering gazes, though her bobbed Afro curls and blingy necklace perfectly suited her svelte frame and ebony skin. She looked ready for Fashion Week, not that I was far behind in a cream Stella McCartney jumpsuit. It was my honeymoon outfit, only it turned out this was my honeymoon: an early dinner date with a woman I barely knew and a husband out doing god knows what.
Bemo’s had come fifth in Chicago’s Top Ten Eateries, topped the TripAdvisor ratings and Joe incessantly raved about the place. Yeah, it wasn’t the swanky K2 on South LaSalle, but it didn’t hurt the family-style food was nothing short of divine.
‘An ice water for me and the Carpaccio salad,’ Nina instructed the aproned waiter who’d appeared by our booth, and while they blatantly checked each other out, no less.
When we’d met up in Wildberry’s on Tuesday, for red velvet pancakes and a gossip after my first tour of Faith, the server had also taken a shine to Nina. Tall, slim and gazelle-like, and with a tongue you could sharpen a knife on, what wasn’t there to like?
My stomach was doing backflips, whether from nerves or excitement I couldn’t tell, but faced with a calorie-rich menu I was skipping the starter, main course and dessert. All I’d managed to force down all day was alcohol and plenty of it. Folding the leather-bound menu, I returned it to Nina’s number one fan. ‘Nothing for me, thanks.’
Judging by Nina’s contorted face, I’d committed a serious social faux pas. ‘You’re not eating? Come on, you have to order something from the hottest waiter in Chicago.’
‘I can’t. I mean, I don’t think it’ll do me any good. Acid reflux.’ I placed a tentative hand on my abs. I didn’t know why Nina looked so shocked. She hadn’t achieved a waist the same circumference as my inner thigh with Domino’s on speed dial.
After the handsome waiter left, smiling back over his shoulder at Nina after her remark, Nina folded her arms over the table and gave me a stare like she was channelling some hard-nosed detective. ‘What’s going on? Why the emergency phone call? You didn’t break up with Petrocelli, did you? You’ve only just moved in with him.’
‘His name’s Petrozzi,’ I corrected. While on the subject of Joe, it was best I jumped straight to the point. Nina was that kind of girl. Through gritted teeth, I added, ‘As it happens, it’s my name now too. I’m the new Mrs Petrozzi, as of today.’
There was no hiding her confusion. Nina’s eyes were practically out on stalks. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ she asked through a half laugh.
I glanced at the salt shaker, the napkin holder, the grey bouffant wobbling behind Nina’s head, but I didn’t look at Nina.
‘You’re not kidding, are you?’
‘No, I’m not kidding! This is officially my honeymoon.’ It was meant to sound casual, aloof, but I came off as lame. Majorly lame. Any cool points for our off-the-cuff elopement were heading down the drain.
‘Hell, you must love him. Head-over-heels-can’t-live-without-him love.’ Nina’s fingers fanned the table top, her neon nails aimed like little spears. ‘Girl, this is wild! This is, like, the last thing I expected from you.’
I turned my head to her amused expression. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, you look like a . . . nice girl.’
‘A nice girl?’
‘You know, with your Rapunzel hair and Disney eyes? You’re cute! Cute girls don’t marry guys from Armanti Square. I thought it was just part of the deal, like, move to Chicago, get a new job, move in with your wrong-side-of-the-tracks boyfriend of a week until you come to your senses or something. I didn’t think you were actually serious about him.’
This wasn’t the first time I’d had a Chicago zip code – I hadn’t chosen this place at random. Fifteen years ago with Ma and Pa this city had been my home, on one of the lesser streets in Oak Park until the grand old age of eleven. It’d been a while, but I knew what Armanti Square and Joe weren’t, and maybe that was the point.
‘Okay, I don’t know you well, but you don’t look like a girl that’d marry a guy after . . . how long have you been here? A month? Unless you’re not telling me something.’
‘What do you mean?’ There was plenty I hadn’t told her (I’d failed to mention Will), but there was plenty of time to navigate that minefield.
‘Maybe Joe’s a god in bed or not lacking down there in his nether regions . . . oh, shit. You’re not pregnant, are you?’
I mock-slapped the table. ‘Nina!’
‘Just saying. People will talk. And don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Size-wise, I mean.’
I took a sip of the iceless gin and cranberry I’d been nursing, doubting my desire for validation over Joe. It didn’t look like I’d get it from Nina. ‘Talk. People always want to talk.’ I stared down at my hands like I was sitting in the confessional. ‘Don’t they have anything better to do than gossip?’
‘And why do you think they talk? Their lives aren’t as exciting as yours, honey, and neither is mine. This is like a movie, girl! It’s like a riches-to-rags melodrama. Only reading between the lines here, but I guess you have money and he doesn’t?’
I’d hoped starting over would mean just that. Try as hard as I like, but maybe I couldn’t slum it with the best of them.
‘Come on, you didn’t get that jumpsuit off the rack in Target. You have money, and people with money don’t live in Armanti. You have a story, girl, and I need to hear it.’
I wasn’t short of cash. My dad’s adventures in corporate crime before we left Chicago fifteen years ago had taken care of that. Judging by Nina’s spectacular designer wardrobe, she wasn’t tight-roping the poverty line either, though I despised the connotations. These labels would be harder to shake than I thought, especially the Chanel and Dior.
‘Today’s schedule did involve me, Mickey’s cardboard health snacks and a lame series box set, but this is way more interesting. Start at the beginning, why don’t you?’ Nina re-folded her arms, her head did a little shimmy, and then came the pout.
I was going to have to spill my guts now. ‘I met a guy, we got married, in fact, wasn’t that today or something?’ I quipped, a finger to my cheek.
‘Spit it out, Blondie.’
‘What do you want to know?’
Nina knitted her brows together, like I was some quantum physics conundrum. ‘Like, why do you sound like the Duchess of Cambridge but you came here and married a guy from the wrong side of everywhere after no time at all?’
‘I was born here. We only moved to England when I was eleven.’
‘Yeah, okay, but why come back? And why come back now?’
I examined a chip in my pearlescent wedding manicure before flicking my gaze upwards. ‘Would you believe me if I said
I missed the pizza?’
From Nina’s blunt expression and voluminous pout, that would be a no. ‘You lived in Lake Forest last time you were here. I’d bet my life on it. You had an outdoor pool, a view of the lake, a butler like Geoffrey on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air . . .’
I got it. I got where she was coming from, though fifteen years ago there was no outdoor pool, and certainly no Geoffrey. My dad’s company had hardly been in the Fortune 500 and then, out of the blue, he moved us four thousand miles away to the English countryside and into a Bel Air-esque mansion of our own. I was upset, sure, to leave my friends, but I didn’t question the move. That we were running away certainly didn’t cross my mind.
After crawling through the traffic earlier, I’d half expected Joe to drive the once familiar route to Oak Park. It was the road to my glittering past, the secret foreboding of fifteen years earlier. There it remained, the now dead and empty house teetering on a precipice. Even if it never succumbed, time would crush and crumble it eventually. Like the twinkling horizon of a distant city, the memories couldn’t sustain it; my childhood tied up with a pretty pink bow.
Back then, life had been everything Hallmark didn’t forget to print. Our home in Chicago, no matter how small, had been my perfect little world until it happened. The dividing line of all that was once good juxtaposed with the allegory of the sins of the father. My father: architect of the theft fifteen years before.
Howard Clarke had been joint owner of a personal investment company in Chicago. When I was sixteen, and realising there was more to our midnight flit than I’d been told, my father confessed he’d rogue-traded his way to ten million dollars by way of a Ponzi scheme using his company, T&C Associates, before relocating us across the Atlantic to my mother’s homeland. He said whatever I thought of him, my life was comfortable because of what he’d done. The way he saw it? He’d simply seen an opportunity, and taken it. They sold the house for under market value, the relocation had taken days instead of months, and, after my father’s partner fell upon ill health, probably in part due to the company’s collapse, he’d left half the money hidden in an account in Chicago, using the other five million to fund our new life in England.
As for the five million he’d left sitting in Eagle First Bank in Chicago? The account was in my name. When the time was right, and I was old enough, the money was mine. He’d meant when nobody was looking for it anymore. He’d meant on my wedding day, my first wedding day, with Will.
So, my father, mother and I absconded under a cloud of anonymity the day before my eleventh birthday. The gate of the Chicago house had probably swarmed with party guests, armed with parcels and balloons and the trappings of convention. Turned out self-preservation hadn’t only been taken to new heights by my father, but surpassed.
After we left the city, it took a couple of months but the stress of the business and his secret melted away. Appearances at my piano recitals and school plays became the norm, and just in time.
I could see Nina was still waiting for tales of my exuberant childhood to match her own. I could hardly tell her it was more Rogue Trader than Clueless. Artfully changing the subject, I asked, ‘Have you ever been to England?’
‘I have a strict policy of only leaving the US for sandy beaches and cocktails before noon.’
I didn’t doubt that.
She added a giggle before slipping back into detective mode. ‘So, you spend all that time in England and then leave your job, your home and marry the first guy you meet? Don’t they make films about this? And how have we never talked about this before?’
‘And shouldn’t you have been a cop?’
‘Come on, girl. I’m waiting for an explanation.’
‘All right. It’s my New Year’s Resolution.’
‘In May?’
‘It’s to say yes, to everything. Joe proposed so I said—’
‘Yes?’
‘As a matter of fact . . .’
‘And before that? Come on, don’t skip the good stuff.’
‘Before that I was with a guy I met at Oxford.’ There was no harm in throwing Nina a few choice morsels. I didn’t need to mention the next five years passed absent of drama though full of certainty, culminating in the wedding I’d feared since the Tiffany ring box had quivered in Will’s hand. ‘After a few years, Will proposed.’
‘And?’ Nina looked like she was about to burst.
‘ . . . and three weeks ago I left him checking his cravat by the church altar.’
‘You skipped out on him?’ she breathed. ‘No freaking way.’
‘I took my dad’s garden shears to my wedding dress, downed half a bottle of Southern Comfort and boarded a plane to Chicago.’
I waited for Nina’s witty retort, but her mouth sat open. It was then I realised she was the only person I’d told. Now breathing out the sickness I’d held in for almost a month, maybe confession was good for the soul. ‘Okay, I ran, but I ran to the one place in the world which still felt like home. And then, I met Joe.’
Nina shuffled excitedly over the booth. ‘I don’t think you ever told me where you met him.’
‘In Galvin’s bar on Hilton and Dean?’
Nina snorted. ‘Classy, once you pull your feet off the floor.’
‘I’d seen him ordering a drink and thought he was worth a few second glances, but when he fell to one knee by the bar, shot me a few lines of what could have been Shakespeare and called me his “beautiful stranger”, I thought it was a joke. He was drunk, but deadly serious; hence, the marriage.’
‘You thought it was a good idea to marry someone else after leaving your fiancé at the altar?’
I was not on the rebound, despite Nina’s implication. However many times I’d nearly told Joe the truth, I couldn’t bear to hurt him. I couldn’t squander the rest of our lives together because I had a past. Everyone had a past. Besides, I guessed Joe was far from a choirboy himself.
‘Yes. I married Joe after leaving my fiancé at the altar.’
She tipped her newly arrived glass to me. ‘This so deserves a toast: to living life instead of watching it. Never knew you had it in you, girl. I mean, to marry Petrocelli.’
‘You know I’m not married to a Seventies TV lawyer, right?’ Married. Weird.
‘My dad loved that show. Let me call him that, all right? So? How is it? Living with him?’
‘How about baptism of fire? I’ve had seven days of odd socks turning up in the weirdest of places, a fridge full of failed science experiments and a fire escape home to a couple of thousand cigarette butts. I don’t know why, but the word cleaner keeps springing to mind.’
‘Because it sounds like you’ve married the human equivalent of a dumpster? Can’t you move? I mean, both of you? Get a nice apartment and he’ll want to keep it pristine.’
‘He doesn’t want to move.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Joe likes the neighbourhood.’
‘Joe likes living in Armanti Square?’
‘He says there’s nothing worse than living uptown with a bunch of Testa di Merdas and besides, we have to “keep it real”.’
‘Keep it real? Testa di Merdas? Who does he think he is, a fake gangster?’
‘I guess it is only mess, he can sell the rust bucket car and there’s nothing wrong with being a courier, Nina.’
‘That’s what he does? He’s a courier?’
Evidently, Nina didn’t keep her opinions to herself.
‘Well . . . Joe says he’s more managing director than delivery driver, but that doesn’t matter. I want Joe for him. The other stuff’s not important.’
‘I’ve known Mickey two years, been engaged for one, and is there any hint of a wedding dress on the horizon? And you’re in one already!’
Our marriage was far from a sham, contrary to popular opinion. It had been a whirlwind engagement, yes, but a genuine one. It was a genuine attempt to fix my life by impulsively selecting another off the rack and, so far, it was working.
&
nbsp; ‘Now I need your advice,’ I confided, after dropping the bombshell and walking away largely unscathed. ‘My parents don’t know about Joe.’
She bit at her lip. ‘And the plot thickens.’
‘Even worse is my mother’s booked me a plane ticket home. What am I supposed to do with that?’
Raising her glass, Nina shot me a wink. ‘Get drunk and forget your old life. Welcome back to Chicago, girl.’
THREE
I bottled it. After five days of my mother calling, texting and badgering me to death, I took the ticket. I went home. I couldn’t admit I’d been swallowed up by the city, Joe, my own stupid resolution . . . but I had, and it was time to put some perspective on things.
To get one thing straight, I wasn’t keen on subservience when I did live at Stable Hill Manor, and this wasn’t about running back to my parents. Mother preferred the mansion’s full title, Stable Hill never had enough syllables. People couldn’t possibly assume anything less of her, or of the seven bedroom suites, vast wine cellar or room for that travelling circus in the garden.
My mother was all about the moolah, the coin, the money; my father’s stolen money. She knew where it had come from, she wasn’t that stupid, but didn’t know about the Chicago account. I’d been sworn to secrecy by my father, and knowing something she didn’t had always made me feel rather smug.
With Joe keen to keep running his ‘errands’, he encouraged me to make the journey alone. It would do me good. What, to see how utterly ashamed they were of me? To know I’d not only upset the applecart but left it overturned with my abandoning and disregarding? My past achievements amounted to nothing in the face of my ‘unfortunate decision’, or so it seemed.
Though surprisingly I was convinced not by Joe, but my own unwitting sense of obligation. I’d married someone else after abandoning a wedding they’d spent five figures on. It was only manners to tell them in person.
Now back in the cavernous dining room at Stable Hill, it felt like I’d taken one giant leap backwards. There was too much here; too much clutter and chintz and talk and questions. There was too much life. I was no longer anonymous. Chicago was a million miles of discreet fulfilment, of wishes and future chances and of a cute guy named Joe. Now, Chicago was a million miles away; our nuptials a vivid dream in the face of regimented order and sempiternal familiarity.
The Good Kind of Bad Page 2
