by Naima Coster
“You fat cunt.”
The nurse slammed the door.
Lacey stomped through the woods, smashing down fallen branches under her slippers. As she neared the house, she heard the phone ringing. She ran to make it in time.
“Robbie?”
It was the school nurse. Diane had vomited again on the bus, and she needed to go home. Could Lacey come and pick her up? On the long drive to the school, Lacey found herself shaking.
Margarita was the one who had spilled the beans. When her teacher asked her why she kept putting her head down on her desk, she said she hadn’t slept right because it was winter in her house. And since Diane threw up on the bus, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.
“I’m working on a solution,” Lacey said in the principal’s office.
The principal shook her head and asked what was going on. It hadn’t occurred to Lacey that they didn’t know. Shouldn’t there have been a letter from court to the school? Wasn’t there something the government had done to spare her this moment?
“My husband got high and stole a cop car. Not a black-and-white sheriff’s one, a regular one. It just belonged to a cop. It was parked in front of a bar downtown. He didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ventura,” the principal said. “But after Monday, I’ll have to make a call. You’ve got the weekend.”
Lacey went around to the classrooms and got all her girls. They drove home in silence, past the rows of houses in town, then fields and forgotten barns, the railroad tracks where they had to stop and wait for a train to pass.
“Woo-woo!” sang Margarita, and it made Diane smile weakly, her cheeks pink.
Back at home, she boiled cans of broth for the girls, peeled and dropped in potatoes, a tin of shredded chicken. And then she made grilled cheeses, too, and chocolate milk, and they carried it all into Lacey’s bed, where she piled blankets on top of the girls and then crawled in herself.
“If one of us is going to be sick, we might as well all be sick together,” she said, and she kissed her girls on the nose. It was still light out, hardly past midday.
“Aren’t you going to turn up the heat? You heard what the principal said.”
Noelle still wasn’t looking at her, her ears flushed bright, and Lacey wondered whether she was catching a fever, too, or if she was just ashamed.
“Hush,” Lacey said. “I’m going to tell y’all a story.”
The girls squeezed in closer to their mother, even Noelle, although she probably only wanted to get warm.
“Once upon a time, there was a princess, and she lived in a castle deep in a forest, with just her sisters. All the men were at war, and it was a kingdom with no old people, you see, so there was no one to show them how to live. How to fill the moat, how to feed the horses, how to keep the torches lit, and the dungeons clean—”
“What’s a moat?” Diane asked, sucking on a Tylenol and making a face. Lacey told her to swallow.
“So they saddled up the horses, and they went riding, far and far, over valleys and streams to a kingdom where they had heard the men went to war and never came back. The princesses there showed them how to do all the things they were afraid of—how to clean the stables and grow wheat, how to cast spells, and burn the dead—”
“How to fill the moat?”
“Mm-hmm—and when they knew everything they needed to know, they went riding back to their kingdom, all day, and all night, and they weren’t afraid anymore. They were all ready to rule. But they didn’t have to, after all, cause while they were gone, the princes had come home. They had won the war.”
Noelle rolled her eyes. “Short war,” she said. “What a stupid story. They rode all that way and learned all those things, and then it doesn’t even matter.”
Lacey wanted to explain that you should never give up a prince if the prince really loves you, but Noelle plugged her ears, and Margarita shouted that she wanted to be a princess, and Diane stood solemnly and asked for someone to go with her to the bathroom because she had to throw up.
After the girls nodded off, Lacey slipped out from under the blankets. She shut off the light and went out to the back porch with one of the leftover lollipops from the supermarket. She cracked the hard candy between her front teeth and counted the days on her fingers since she had sent Robbie the money—five, and he still hadn’t called. Goddamn you, Robbie, she thought. Goddamn.
She went back in the house, and she didn’t feel a difference anymore between inside and out. Lacey found her old address book in a drawer, and she went flipping through the pages until she found him there, alphabetized by last name. Gibbs, Hank. She carried the address book and the phone out to the living room. She muted the TV and dialed, waited for the ringing to stop.
“I knew you’d change your mind,” he said, and Lacey, with her free hand, turned up the thermostat a full ten degrees.
3
September 2018
The suburbs north of Atlanta, Georgia
The sun wasn’t up yet when Noelle went out to the porch to decide what to do about the party invite. The Suttons threw this party every year, and she’d gone to the first with Nelson when they moved into Golden Brook. It had been exciting, all their neighbors’ German cars, the crystal wineglasses, the women and men in crisp, creamy-colored clothes. They talked about local government, the community initiative to build a bigger dog park. It was like being cast in a minor role in a dull but pleasant movie.
The shimmer was gone now—from the Suttons, their gabled house, and all of Golden Brook. Even the cottage she and Nelson had bought looked too small to her now when she drove up. The lawn, where she’d said she wanted to plant a garden, was bare except for the signs they’d driven into the grass to announce they leaned left, voted blue.
It was warm, even in the early dark, and Noelle went out with her coffee, bottle of vitamins, a nail file, the invitation. She laid it on her lap while she scraped her nails into shape. How many things about herself did she no longer tend to? She hardly exercised; she drank too much; her hair was thinning at the ends. She took the vitamins, still, at least. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d read a play.
This curve of Golden Brook was shaded by oaks so tall they must have been older than seemed possible. “From slavery times,” Nelson had said when they moved in. It was the kind of joke she had learned to laugh at over the years but would never make herself.
If she went to the Sutton house tonight, at least she’d look the part. She’d put yogurt in her hair, shave her legs, smear on one of those citrus-smelling serums that promised to lift and tighten and erase. When she looked at Nelson, she could see the old adage was true—black don’t crack. She, on the other hand, had a fan of lines around her smile, her eyes. It didn’t bother her, really, to look older. It was more what the wrinkles signified: time was running out.
It was noon in France, too early for a lunch meeting, too late for a morning shoot, so Noelle called Nelson. The phone rang and rang.
“Sweetheart,” she said when she got his voicemail. “I’m almost happy you’re not here. If you were, you’d be stuck going to the Suttons’. You’re the lucky one, yeah? Love you.”
She’d expected him to call more, even with the time difference, his work. But the way they’d left things—she couldn’t blame him. She dialed again. “I guess you’re working. I missed your voice yesterday. Call me soon.”
Noelle felt her chest draw inward, as if she were getting narrower, shrinking. It was a sick feeling. She texted him. I can’t go to the Sutton party alone. These people make me feel like I’m in high school again. He would know what she meant. It was like keeping a secret, like passing, like choosing between getting along and being clear about who she was. She stared at the phone for a few minutes. Maybe he couldn’t talk, but he could text. She took her prenatal. She finished her coffee.
She went back inside, turned her phone volume all the way up so she wouldn’t miss him while she was in the shower. When the phone rang, it startled her. She h
adn’t really expected Nelson to call. She rushed out and saw that it was her mother, Lacey May. Noelle didn’t answer.
It was a sick chain, she thought. Nelson ignores me; I ignore my mother. I hunt after my husband; my mother hunts after me.
Noelle left the house in her exercise clothes. She knew exactly whom she’d ask to go with her to the party, to help her get through. And Inéz would say yes. She was sure. They had forged their friendship in that golden stretch of years in college when they would do anything for each other, when nothing was more solid or mattered more than the love of your girlfriends. They’d pierced each other’s ears, taken the bus to Babeland to buy dildos together. They had forgotten their families and clung to one another, as if their old lives might not ever resume.
In the car, she tried Nelson once more—“Headed to the city, hope you’re getting the best pictures of your life”—then hung up and turned onto the freeway.
Golden Brook was less than an hour from the city, her old life, and yet she’d let her days shrink to the circumference of a few miles. She could spend a whole day driving between the house, the grocery store, one strip mall, then another. She and Nelson had loved living near downtown. It was a proper city, not like home. The skyline was blue and gray glass, the buildings shaped like spaceships. Her heart gave a thump as she coasted through the streets. She rolled down the window, breathed in the flowering trees and exhaust. She reached the studio just as the class was starting.
Inéz was at the front in a black leotard and tiny turquoise shorts rolled up to nearly nothing. She gave Noelle a quick arch of the eyebrows through the mirror, ignored the students as they filtered in. Her hair was pulled into a gumdrop-sized nub at the top of her head, her skin bare, her gold septum ring sparkling in her face. She was magnificent. Noelle stood at the back, reached her arms overhead as if she knew what she was doing.
Inéz counted them in, Five-six-seven-eight. It was hard for Noelle to keep up, and it was only the warm-up. Her limbs were stiff, heavy. She hardly left the ground when she tried to leap up. She had to steady herself with her hand when she sank her hips to the ground. Inéz had a parakeet’s voice, high and sweet. That’s it! she shouted with enough gusto that it was almost convincing.
At the end of class, Noelle hung at the back, watching the students hover around Inéz, as if they weren’t sure whether to say good-bye or simply leave. She was aloof and beautiful, mesmeric. In this way, she was like Nelson. Perhaps that was all Noelle had been doing with her life: collecting stars that never wanted to be collected in the first place.
When the room was empty, Inéz found her. “Excuse me, ma’am, did you pay? I don’t remember you signing up for a class pass.” She crawled down to the floor where Noelle sat, bound her with her arms. “What are you doing here?”
Noelle took her friend’s hand in hers. “I want to take you to lunch. When’s your next class?”
“Is everything all right? Are you pregnant or something?”
“Far from it. I need your help, baby girl.”
Noelle drove them to a place on the Westside with tinted windows and small bistro tables. They ordered eggs, a coffee for Inéz, a glass of wine for Noelle.
“God, it’s been forever. I thought you’d gotten lost up there in the country. Golden Hollow, or whatever it’s called?”
“It’s the suburbs, not the sticks.”
“Same thing. Nelson out of town? Where this time?”
“Paris.”
“But of course.”
Inéz smiled and shook her head. Fourteen years ago, she was the most beautiful person Noelle had ever seen, and she still was now. Even Lacey May had referred to her once, when Noelle was home from college for Thanksgiving, as “that pretty dark girl.” She was no darker than her sister Diane, Noelle had said defensively, and then it troubled her that she had felt the need to point out that someone she loved wasn’t all that dark.
Noelle took her wine down in gulps, and Inéz watched. It was eleven in the morning.
“Don’t you miss it here, Nells? You must be bored out of your mind out there, without your work, your friends. Do you even see people during the day? Or just in the grocery store, as you roam the aisles searching for a chicken to roast?”
It pained Noelle how accurate her friend’s parody of her was.
“If these months had gone the way I wanted, I wouldn’t mind being somewhere quiet, with fresh air and green space.”
“Green space? Do you hear yourself?”
“I wanted a change.”
“Well, you got one, honey.” Inéz poured a drop of maple syrup into her coffee, swirled the spoon around with grace. “Now, tell me everything. I’ve got to be back in half an hour.”
“We’re a part of this homeowners’ association.”
“Naturally.”
“And there’s a party tonight. It would look awful if I’m not there, but I hate these things, especially when Nelson isn’t around.”
“Nelson isn’t the best at parties though, is he? He just sits on the couch and pouts until someone asks him about his photographs, then you can’t shut him up. Or if he’s drunk, then he’s fun for an hour or so until he sobers up and gets sulky again. No offense.”
Noelle knew her friend’s opinion of Nelson had turned sometime over the years. At first, Inéz, like all their classmates, had admired Nelson’s cool. But eventually, she’d tired of how he seemed to live without moods, impenetrable. Everything was fine, nothing was a crisis, but nothing was a tremendous pleasure either. She didn’t expect Inéz to love him, but she ought to leave him be. After a life like his, what did people want? For him to give a song and dance? He’d done enough.
“Please, Inéz. Every time I go somewhere without Nelson, I get asked a dozen times, ‘Where’s your husband? He travels a lot for work, hunh? Must be lonely, hunh?’ It makes me feel like we’re doing this whole thing wrong.”
Inéz looked at her, as if to say, Maybe. “Who cares what they think?”
“It doesn’t help that we already feel like anomalies out there.”
“Because he’s black and you’re white?”
Noelle was taken aback that her friend would call her white—she knew about her family, her father, Robbie. She decided to let it slide. “Because we don’t have children.”
Inéz seemed unmoved.
“Please, I’d have much more fun if you came with me. We can get drunk and eat all their catered food, and then you can spend the night. I’ll drive you back in the morning.”
“The booze better be good, expensive.”
“It will be,” Noelle assured her.
“Fine, but only because I love you. I’ll consider it a kind of social experiment.”
“It’s my life.” Noelle leaned across the table to kiss her friend.
“I know,” Inéz said as she swatted her away and drained the last of her coffee.
Noelle spent the day in the city, waiting for Inéz to teach her last class. She parked in their old neighborhood. She and Nelson used to go for walks by the row houses, the rosebushes and hydrangeas in the front yards. Instead of going to church on Sundays like good Southerners, they went to the farmers’ market, made elaborate breakfasts at home while listening to podcasts. They drank coffee, then had sex in the living room, took turns pleasing one another. Then Noelle left for the theater to work, and Nelson to the arboretum for one of his long runs. He couldn’t go without ten or twelve miles on the weekend; it kept him calm, steady. So did the sex. She never made fun of his rituals, never let him go without the things he needed day to day.
Now Noelle had no place to go, no apartment, no office at the theater, so she stopped into shops. She bought herself tea, then a cheap necklace made of plated gold, then a clip for her hair. She didn’t call Nelson because she was embarrassed at her small, dreary life. She filled the time with buying things, waiting out the day until there was someone to be with her again.
Being a wife, it seemed, was mostly waiting. Waiting for a
phone call, waiting to be thanked, waiting for a delivery, the plumber, her husband to come home, to ask whether she was all right, to slip a hand in her underwear. Waiting with her legs up. Waiting because it seemed a way to love him. It hadn’t bothered her as much when she was working, in the city. If he was remote, she knew it wasn’t because he didn’t love her. It was just his way. But now, without the theater, she felt that all she did was unnecessary; Nelson could fend for himself if he had to. If one shirt was wrinkled, he could wear another. If dinner never appeared, he’d make a sandwich. He could survive, handle his own needs; he was doing so in Paris. Perhaps that was why she had wanted the baby. To be needed, indispensable, at least for a time. Nelson gave the impression, always, of absolute independence. She was used to it, the off-and-on loneliness of feeling like an appendage to a man. She knew that becoming a mother was only a temporary respite. Any child would one day leave her; she could count on that. But wouldn’t it be worth it for those delicious years? A soft skull nuzzled into her neck, the tug of gums at her breast, that precious infant smell of powder, crusted milk? She knew it wasn’t modern. It was the kind of convention that her college degree and her years in the city were meant to cure, and they hadn’t.
On the drive north, they got caught in traffic. Inéz rolled down the window to smoke, offered Noelle a cigarette.
Noelle shook her head. “I’ve quit. Remember?”
“Yeah, but you’re not pregnant yet. Come on. I saw you down that wine at lunch. How long have you been trying now?”
“I’ve lost track.” Noelle fixed her eyes on the road.
“There’s no shame in that, Nells. Is that why you haven’t been coming around as much? You don’t want to talk about it?”
“It’s the distance. I’m far away now.”
They sat for a while through the discord of honks and running engines.
“I’m not going to let you off the hook that easily. It’s not right—the way you disappeared.” Inéz was staring straight at her now, her tongue pressed against her lower lip in annoyance, her head titled into her hand.