Nell and Lady: A Novel

by Ashley Farley

  Regan passed over Broad Street into the residential section, and when it began to pour, she ran for shelter in the doorway of a friend’s house two blocks from home. She removed her phone from her backpack and called her father’s cell phone. When her call went to voice mail, she hung up without leaving a message. She tapped on the contact information for his office.

  “May I speak to Daniel Sterling?” Regan asked after the receptionist recited the long list of partners who made up her father’s law firm.

  “Who may I say is calling?” the nasal voice responded.

  “Regan. I’m his daughter.”

  “Just a minute,” she said and placed Regan on hold.

  Classical music filled the line for two minutes before the receptionist returned. “I’m sorry. He’s in a meeting and can’t be disturbed. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Can’t you put me through to his voice mail?”

  “I’m sorry, miss. Daniel Sterling doesn’t do voice mail. If you’ll give me your name and number, I’ll pass it along to his administrative assistant.”

  Did I not just tell you I was his daughter?

  “Never mind,” she said and ended the call. The receptionist had placed her on hold for two minutes. Clearly, her father wasn’t interested in speaking with her.

  Regan hadn’t seen her father in two years, despite the custody agreement that stipulated monthly visits. He never initiated a phone conversation with her, and on the rare occasion she reached out to him, it took him several days to call her back. His new wife, the home-wrecking slut who’d broken up her parents’ marriage, sent her birthday and Christmas presents—expensive gifts that proved how little she knew about her husband’s daughter. What did a seventeen-year-old girl who wore uniforms to school every day need with a pair of Jimmy Choo black velvet booties with four-inch spiked heels? Regan displayed the booties on a shelf in the bookcase in her room as a reminder of the type of person she did not want to become.

  She returned her phone to her backpack and zipped it up. Oblivious to the lightning cracking in the distance and the heavy rain flooding the streets, she trudged toward home in her soggy tennis shoes.

  Her mother was waiting for her on the piazza. “Thank the Lord! I’ve been worried sick. I was about to get in the car and come looking for you. Why on earth would you walk home from school in weather like this?”

  “It’s fine, Mom.” Regan tugged off her wet tennis shoes and left them on the wooden porch floor.

  Lady followed Regan inside. “Mrs. Redmond said you’re sick. Do you have menstrual cramps?”

  Regan rolled her eyes. Why, whenever something was wrong, did her mother always assume it had to do with her period? “I threw up at school.”

  “Oh.” Lady took a step back, pressing her fingers to her lips.

  “Chill, Mom. I’m not contagious.” She left her backpack in the front hall and went upstairs. She peeled off her sodden clothes, slipped into her bathrobe, and wrapped a towel around her dripping hair. She crossed the hall to her room and climbed into bed. Even the warmth from the down comforter couldn’t stop her body from shivering and teeth from chattering.

  Her mother appeared in the doorway. “Can I get you anything? Perhaps a cup of hot tea.”

  She drew the comforter tight under her chin. “You can turn up the heat. It’s freezing in here.”

  “It’s April. We haven’t had the heat on since February.” Lady removed a crocheted blanket from the back of the love seat beside the bed and draped it over her. “You know how your grandmother is about the electrical bill.”

  Willa insisted they keep the thermostat set on sixty-six in the winter and seventy-eight in the summer.

  “I don’t care what month it is. Willa has lung cancer. This is one time you should veto her. She could catch pneumonia in this house.”

  “You’ve been out in the rain. You’ll warm up in a minute.” Lady sat down on the edge of the bed. “Tell me what’s bothering you, sweetheart. You’re not usually so snippy.”

  Regan caught a whiff of cigarettes and vodka. How many martinis had her mother consumed for lunch? Or had she been drinking since breakfast?

  “You want to know what’s wrong, Mom? I’ll tell you what’s wrong.” She struggled to sit up in bed. “Booker’s mother told him what happened at your sixteenth birthday party. It would’ve been nice if I’d heard it from you and not from him.”

  Lady’s body grew still. “Heard what?”

  “That my father raped his mother.” Regan watched her mother’s face for her response.

  Lady gasped and brought a shaking hand to her forehead. “I knew something bad had happened to Nell that night. I tried to get her to confide in me, but she never would.”

  “Booker’s mother trusted him with the truth. I think you owe me that much.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Lady said in a resigned tone of voice. “Let me fix you some tea first, to help you warm up.”

  Her mother got up and left the room before Regan could stop her. She didn’t want tea. She wanted the truth. Lady returned ten minutes later with a mug of tea in one hand and a tumbler with clear liquid and ice in the other. Vodka on the rocks. The martini pregame was over. Barely two o’clock and the party was in full swing. A number of comments came to mind, but Regan held her tongue. This was one time she wouldn’t begrudge her mother her alcohol, if liquid courage was what it took for Lady to tell her what she so desperately needed to know.

  Her mother set the tea down on the nightstand and moved the gooseneck rocker closer to the bed. She rested her head against the back of the rocker and closed her eyes. “It all started on a snowy night in January of 1981.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LADY

  1981

  Lady fell hard for Daniel Sterling the first moment she laid eyes on him. She found him strikingly handsome with his thin face, dark wavy hair, and dimpled chin. His authoritative presence, the way he manipulated situations to his advantage, captivated her. He was so different from the boys she knew, so much more advanced—far more man than boy, actually. But she lacked experience in hitting on men, and her attempt at getting his attention proved disastrous.

  She’d avoided the party scene until then. Never had much to drink, aside from a couple of beers consumed at friends’ houses over the past few months.

  “Lighten up a little, Lady,” Mindy said as she poured the first tequila shot. “Getting drunk on your sixteenth birthday is a rite of passage.”

  She drank several more tequila shots and, after Daniel arrived, three or four beers on top of that. The alcohol washed away her inhibitions and made it easier for her to flirt with him. At least that’s what she believed at the time. She didn’t realize until the next day how drunk she’d gotten and what a fool she’d made of herself. When Daniel brought out the marijuana, she eagerly partook in the hopes of impressing him. Why not? she thought. It’s your birthday. Live a little. But she was unprepared for the effects of the pot. She was paranoid at first, her butt glued to the floor where she sat cross-legged during the game of truth or dare, afraid to move for fear of toppling over. Then she broke into hysterics when asked if she’d ever french-kissed another girl.

  She didn’t find it funny, however, when Daniel chose Nell, and not her, to make out with him in the closet. She shot Nell the death stare as he dragged her off. For the first time in her life, Lady resented her best friend.

  While the game continued, Lady crawled across the floor and onto the sofa, where she fell into a semiconscious state. She was vaguely aware of movement around her. Mindy ordering everyone to help clean up. The shuffling of feet and dragging of furniture as the room was restored to its preparty state. The incessant barking of a dog in the distance. Murmured goodbyes as guests retrieved their coats from the hooks in the back hallway. Blasts of cold air from the opening and closing of the back door as her friends exited the house.

  Sometime after the last person left, Lady was lying on her back and staring a
t the ceiling, trying to piece together the events of the evening, when a disheveled Daniel emerged from the closet. She rolled off the sofa to her feet and crossed the room to him.

  “Everyone’s gone home,” she said, her arms spread wide at the empty room.

  He nodded. “I can see that.”

  “Where’s Nell?”

  He gestured at the closet and, with a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, said, “Give her a minute to get herself together. She’s basking in the afterglow, if you know what I mean.”

  Lady’s face flushed warm. Had Nell done more than just kiss this handsome stranger?

  “I’d better get going,” he said, his eyes on the door.

  “Oh. Right,” Lady said, and stepped out of his way.

  He shrugged on his coat. “Happy birthday, Lady.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek.

  She touched the wet spot on her face. “Thanks.”

  She watched him go. Like a child, he threw his head back and stuck his tongue out to the snowflakes as he sauntered down the driveway.

  Returning to the den, Lady stood outside the closet with her ear pressed to the door. She heard the muffled sound of crying. Why is Nell crying? Did she consent to something she now regrets?

  She called out to her, “Nell, are you okay in there?”

  “Go away and leave me alone!” she answered.

  As a sense of dread settled over Lady, she left the closet and paced around the room, biting her fingernails as she considered what to do. She tried to recall how much Nell had drunk. She remembered her holding a can of beer but noticed she’d passed on the joint and tequila shots. Had she gotten caught up in a moment of drunken lust and let Daniel take advantage of her? Surely he hadn’t forced himself on her. He didn’t seem the type. She was tempted to call her mother home from the Colliers’ but thought better of it. She didn’t want her mother to see her intoxicated, and if Nell had, in fact, done something she wished she hadn’t, getting Willa involved would only embarrass her more.

  She went to the kitchen and finished tidying up. When all the party platters were stored away, she plopped down at the table and watched the seconds click off the wall clock. It was eleven thirty, her head was throbbing, and her mother was still not home when she heard footsteps in the back hallway. Nell, with her eyes glued to the floor and Willa’s trench coat wrapped tight around her body, padded through the kitchen.

  Lady waited several more minutes before deciding to turn in as well. She would not beg Nell to tell her what’d happened with Daniel if Nell didn’t want her to know. She’d never asked for a birthday party. She hated surprises. She’d been content with the original plan of going to the movies and out to dinner with her mother and two best friends. Now her life was ruined. She’d gotten drunk and high and made a fool of herself in front of a guy she’d been attracted to.

  Lady lay awake for hours. It was well past twelve thirty, well after the faint sobs in the room next door subsided, when she heard her mother’s car pull in the driveway and her footsteps on the piazza. She finally drifted off, and when she woke a few minutes after eleven the following morning, the snow had melted. She retrieved her slippers from under the bed and her robe from her closet. She knocked on Nell’s door, and when no one answered, she peeked inside. The room was empty. Her bed was made and her draperies open. She found her mother in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading the Sunday Post and Courier.

  “Why didn’t you wake me for church?” Lady asked as she filled a glass with orange juice.

  “Services were canceled because of the snow,” Willa said without looking up from the paper.

  “But the snow’s melted.”

  Willa shrugged. “I know. It’s ridiculous.”

  Lady retrieved the box of Special K from the pantry. “Where’s Nell?”

  “At church. Her services weren’t canceled.”

  “Oh. I guess her preacher has a four-wheel drive.”

  She wasn’t surprised that Nell had gone to church. She rarely missed a Sunday. But her worry mounted when Nell missed Sunday brunch, a sacred time for Willa and the girls. When she called midafternoon to say she was at a friend’s house working on a project and would not be home for supper, Lady knew she was lying. She’d spotted her book bag upstairs in her bedroom earlier that morning.

  During the days and weeks that followed, Nell avoided Lady at every turn. She left before breakfast and returned home after supper. She couldn’t gauge the emotions simmering beneath the surface of Nell’s steely demeanor. Was she afraid or sad? Clearly, she was angry at Lady. But why? What had she done at the party that was so wrong? Lady grew increasingly worried that Nell might be pregnant and was relieved to see a tampon wrapper in the bathroom trash can one morning in early February.

  “Tell me what’s bothering you,” Lady said when they met in the hallway outside the bathroom late one night. “Are you sick or something? You’ve been taking an awful lot of showers lately.”

  “Mind your own business, Lady.”

  “Have I done something wrong?”

  Nell set her golden eyes on Lady. “If you don’t know, I shouldn’t have to tell you.” She started toward her room, but Lady grabbed her by the arm.

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know.” Lady lowered her voice so her mother couldn’t hear. “I had too much to drink that night. I don’t remember most of what happened.”

  “Then that’s your problem,” Nell said and closed the door in her face.

  Over time, Lady grew angry at Nell in turn. She viewed Nell’s unwillingness to confide in her as a betrayal of their relationship. Did their friendship mean so little to Nell that she couldn’t be bothered to address whatever was wrong? Even if Nell never forgave her, Lady deserved a chance to apologize for whatever she’d done to make her so angry. The animosity between them festered, and by the time summer rolled around, their home had become a silent battlefield.

  Willa demanded to know what had caused the rift between the girls. Lady couldn’t tell her what she didn’t know, and Nell refused to talk. Willa assumed Lady was at fault and tried to make it up to Nell by lavishing her with gifts and praise. The praise was well deserved. Nell’s grades had steadily improved since her mother’s passing, and with the extra time she’d been spending in the library, she made dean’s list that spring semester. During the following two years, their junior and senior years in high school, Nell’s fury fueled her drive to succeed while Lady’s anger sapped what little ambition she possessed. Willa helped Nell secure a partial-ride scholarship to study nursing at Spelman College, but on the flip side, she had to pull strings to get Lady into Converse College, her alma mater, because her grades were so poor.

  With both of them away at college, between the distance and lack of communication, the divide became too great for any bridge, no matter how tall or long or strong, to bring them back together.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LADY

  When Lady opened her eyes after finishing her story, she saw that Regan had fallen asleep, her tea untouched on the nightstand beside her.

  Lady drained the rest of her vodka and stared down at her ice cubes. The roots of her alcoholism traced back to those first tequila shots on her sixteenth birthday. During the ensuing months, she’d gotten into the habit of taking nips from whichever of her mother’s liquor bottles was the fullest at any given time. She preferred vodka, but she wasn’t picky. The alcohol made the pain of her rift with Nell more tolerable. That summer, with Nell no longer number three in their threesome, she and Mindy grew closer. Desperate to escape the gloom that had settled over their house, she spent the summer with Mindy at her parents’ beach cottage on Sullivan’s Island. They had some wild times together during those long hot months. They drank to excess, experimented with drugs, and lost their virginities to suntanned surfer boys they hoped they’d never see again. That marked the beginning of her thirty-seven-year stumble down the path of life, her only direction an arrow pointing her toward the neares
t vodka bottle.

  She’d made a few detours toward sobriety along the way. The year she married Daniel, when her mother treated her like a princess and Daniel treated her like his queen. During her pregnancy and the first years of Regan’s life, when the joy she experienced holding her child was the only high she craved. When Daniel called her a drunken lush after she’d gotten smashed at her forty-fifth birthday dinner and she’d given up booze in hopes of saving her marriage. That last bout of sobriety had lasted a year, until Daniel left her for his secretary and she’d been forced to move back in with her mother. Would she be stuck in this drunken haze of a life if she’d worked harder to make something of herself?

  She glanced up from her drink and saw Regan staring at her.

  “Why’d you marry him?” she asked, her lovely blue eyes glistening with tears and her sweet voice tinged with blame.

  “Because I loved him. At least I thought I did when he asked me. And because I was twenty-nine years old and desperate to be married and have children like the rest of my friends.”

  Regan rolled over on her back and flung her arm across her face. “That’s not what I’m asking, Mom, and you know it. Why did you marry a rapist?”

  Lady set her empty glass down on the nightstand. “Haven’t you been listening, sweetheart? Until this afternoon, I never knew what happened to Nell that night. The idea that Daniel might have mistreated her in some way crossed my mind for about a second, but I quickly dismissed it. Nell and I were as close as friends can be. We’d shared our deepest, darkest secrets since we were old enough to keep secrets. I had convinced myself that she would have told me if he’d raped her.” Lady hung her head. “I truly thought she’d had consensual sex with him, regretted it afterward, and was acting out of shame.”