Now That You Mention It: A Novel

by Kristan Higgins

  “You’re not getting one. I already told you that.” She adjusted her purse strap and sighed.

  The little boy pushed out his lip, then saw me looking. “What happened to you?” he asked, eyeing my sling.

  “I didn’t look crossing the street, and I got hit by a car,” I said. “So you make sure you look both ways and always hold a grown-up’s hand.”

  The mom looked back at me.

  It was Darby Dennings, sidekick of Amy Beckman, Queen of the Cheetos, receiver of hugs. Amazing how I knew everyone instantly, as if I hadn’t been gone for fifteen years.

  “Sorry if he’s bothering you,” Darby said with a smile. Her eyes flicked up and down, assessing my injuries, her gaze lingering on my purse. “That’s a great bag,” she said. “Mind if I ask where you got it?”

  “Oh, um...I think I got it at—”

  I’d bought it at a snooty boutique on Newbury Street after I was hired by Boston Gastroenterology Associates. Roseline, who had a serious shopping addiction, believed that every woman needed to own a purse that was way too expensive. We’d made a day of it, both of us still heady with our salaries, and settled on this one, made of buttery brown leather so smooth and supple I wanted to date it.

  It had cost an amount that still embarrassed and thrilled me.

  “I got it at T.J. Maxx,” I said.

  “You can get great stuff there,” she said. “The one in Portland?”

  “Boston.”

  “Is that where you’re from?” There wasn’t so much as a flicker of recognition in her eyes.

  “Mommy, I want a cookie!”

  She ignored the little guy, smiling at me, and I saw myself through her eyes for one deeply satisfying second. Granted, the sling. But still, my hair was shiny from the straightening iron and the high-end products I used to tame it. Makeup was Chanel. I wore a blue cashmere sweater and Lucky Brand jeans and buttery leather Kate Spade flats.

  “I’m from here, actually,” I said. “Nora Stuart. How are you, Darby?”

  Her jaw dropped, and her face went from pleasant to flushed, her smile fading. “Well, holy crap.”

  “These are your kids?”

  “Yeah. Uh, Matthew, Kaylee and Jordan.”

  “Hi, kids,” I said. “I went to school with your mother.”

  The children didn’t respond or notice or care.

  “You lost weight. Christ. I didn’t even recognize you.” Her eyes narrowed as if I’d played a trick on her.

  “Whatcha want there, Darby?” asked Lala.

  Then the door opened again, bringing a gust of cold air, and in came a good-looking guy.

  Darby glanced at him, too. “Hey, Sully.”

  Good God. Sullivan Fletcher. Twin brother of Luke Fletcher, god of high school. For a second, I wobbled on my bad knee.

  He did a double take when he saw me.

  “Nora! Hey. How are you?” He didn’t smile, but he didn’t scowl, either.

  “Hi,” I breathed. “Fine, thanks, Sullivan. Um...how are you?”

  He looked good, thank God. I never did learn exactly what had happened to him in that car accident senior year...just that he’d had a brain injury. I remember they said he was expected to recover, but you never knew what that truly meant.

  But the years had been kind to Sullivan Fletcher. Once, he’d been an ordinary-looking boy, brown hair, brown eyes. Now age had given him character. His face had lost its boyish softness, and his jaw and cheekbones were hard and well-defined. Curling hair, on the shaggy side. He was tall, maybe six-one and rangy and...well, interesting.

  And he was normal. My adrenaline burst was followed by relief. Those words—traumatic brain injury—had haunted me. Every time we’d had a TBI case in residency, I’d thought of Sullivan Fletcher.

  But here he was, looking completely healthy and...well...good.

  Really, really good. My mouth was dry with relief.

  “I heard you were back,” he said.

  “Yep. I am.” So much for witty repartee.

  I wondered if Luke had turned out, as well. Once upon a time, I had loved Sullivan Fletcher’s twin, right up until I hated him.

  “Darby, what do you want? I don’t have all day,” said Lala.

  “A loaf of rye. Jesus. Do I ever get anything else?”

  “I want a cookie, Mommy!” said the little guy. The other two had yet to look up from their phones.

  Lala put the bread through the slicer, wrapped it and handed it over, taking Darby’s money at the same time. “Help you?” she said to me.

  “Could I please have a donut?”

  “Just one?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “You’re in Boston now?” Sullivan asked.

  “That’s right,” I said, nodding. “Here for a little while. Are you getting donuts? I love them. I mean, you know, who doesn’t, right? Donuts should be the universal sign of happiness. We could win wars with donuts. And, hey, no one makes donuts like Lala, right?”

  You are a highly trained physician, my brain told me. Snap the fuck out of it.

  Sullivan’s eyebrows drew together a little.

  “What do you do for work?” Darby asked, making no move to leave.

  I dragged my eyes off Sully, trying to regain my cool “Um...I’m a doctor.”

  “A doctor?” she said. “A real doctor?”

  “Yep. I’m a gastroenterologist.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stomach and digestive track.”

  “Gross,” Darby said.

  I usually had a reply for that, some alleged Mark Twain quote about the joys of pooping, but my mind was blank. Was Sullivan mad at me? What had happened to Luke? Did he still live here? Should I apologize? Maybe I should just get out of here.

  Yes. That one.

  “Here you go,” Lala said, and I handed over a couple dollars, then hobbled out, my bad leg locked, the other feeling weak.

  Sully held the door for me. “See you around,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. Another eloquent answer.

  Then, before I made more of an ass of myself than I already had, I stiff-legged it down the street. I kept my head down, the fear that had splashed at me earlier now rising like a fast tide.

  Luke Fletcher would definitely know I was back now.

  8

  When it finally became clear that my father wasn’t coming back anytime soon, I did what unhappy girls do all over the earth, and especially in America.

  I ate.

  That first, joyless summer crept past in inches. A new school year started, and I was hungry all the time. Loneliness for my father was like a sinkhole, and I couldn’t find enough food to fill it, despite always taking seconds, always scraping my plate.

  Then I started eating in secret, sneaking down to the kitchen at night when my mother was in bed to stuff a leftover meatball in my mouth, chewing the cold, tasteless wad, reaching for another before I even swallowed. I told my mother I could make my own lunches now and added extra slices of American cheese, folding one in quarters, pushing it into my mouth while I slathered the bread with mayonnaise.

  At school, I started stealing dessert from the cafeteria, even though I was a cold-lunch kid. Pudding or Jell-O with fake whipped cream on it, the big hard cookies that spattered crumbs everywhere. I’d go through the lunch line, pretending I needed an extra napkin, and subtly grab a little bowl or cookie or Twinkie, then slip off to the gym, which was always empty at lunchtime, and swallow my treat in gulps, tasting only the first bite, shoving the rest in as fast as I could.

  I didn’t have friends anymore. All those years of rushing home to see what Dad and Lily and I were going to do (because it was better than anything in the world) had left me outside the harsh world of junior high, where cliques were carved in stone, and cafeteria seating wa
s more complex than the British peerage.

  At home, I helped myself to seconds of my mother’s boring, unvarying dinners. Monday night: chicken, baked potatoes, carrots and peas. Tuesday night: meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans. Wednesday night: pork chops, rice, peas again. You get the idea. But I ate and ate and ate.

  “You’re getting fat,” Lily accused. She remained elf thin. Soon, I knew, she’d start to become beautiful. “Stop eating, Nora. It’s gross.” She pushed back her own untouched dinner, superiority and disgust shining from her blueberry-colored eyes. One of our shared chores was after-supper cleanup. I always volunteered to do it solo. That way, I could eat her meal, too.

  “Go do your homework, Lily,” our mother said, her eyes on me.

  My father wasn’t the only one who’d left, it seemed. The day he packed up was the day my sister stopped loving me.

  I ate and waited out the year, trying to be as invisible as possible in school that year, counting the weeks till summer, when I prayed Lily and I would recapture the magical times we’d had with Dad. When she would love me again. When I’d once again have a place in the world.

  When summer finally arrived, I tried to re-create some of the things we’d done before—draw little maps in the dirt of the secret ancient Mexican cities Dad told us about or make birds’ nests that a real bird might want to live in, shinny up the saplings that lined the rocky shore, make forts.

  It didn’t work.

  Lily wanted nothing to do with it. One time, I brought up the subject of our father and put my arm around her to reassure her—I was the big sister, after all. She shrugged it off like my arm burned. “Get over it, Nora,” she said bitterly and went back inside.

  In a lot of ways, Lily seemed older than I was. She had a sharpness about her, a complexity that I lacked. While I had hidden in sixth grade, Lily started the year off by talking to the prettiest, richest girls in our school without fear, without hesitation, as if she was one of them. And they accepted her.

  Everyone knew about our father leaving. In Lily’s case, it made her edgy and badass. In my case, it made me a loser.

  My solitude continued into the next school year. I worked hard, because homework could fill up hours, because if I was hunched over a math work sheet at our kitchen table, I didn’t have to see my younger sister, once so loved, glaring at me. I asked for extra-credit projects so I could spend more time at the library, sitting in the cool, dim stacks, reading, scribbling notes, so I didn’t have to go home to the home where my father no longer lived. The one bright spot in my life was straight As every semester.

  I worried that our dad called Lily, that he was coming to get her, but he’d leave me with Mom. Every day when I got home, I checked the answering machine. Every day, a zero sat unblinking.

  One time, I screwed up my courage when my mother was driving me to the dentist. Somehow, talking in the car was always easier. “Do you think Dad will ever come back?” I asked, looking out my window.

  There was a pause, then, “I don’t know.”

  Thus ended our conversation.

  So I had homework, I had my secret food (which wasn’t that much of a secret really). And then came puberty. Overnight, it seemed, the plagues of Egypt visited my body. I went from a chubby adolescent to someone with breasts and a beer belly, thick thighs that chafed, a butt that was both wide and flat. The hair on my legs was as thick as on my head. I had to shave my armpits daily, or the stubble would prick my skin. I had a ’stache. I had bacne. I got warts on my knuckles.

  There was no indignity too great. My first period—white pants. My second period left a puddle in my chair in math class. During that special time of the month, I would sweat like I’d just finished the Boston Marathon during a heat wave. I had inexplicable halitosis, despite flossing and brushing three times a day. A new clumsiness happened upon me when I grew boobs, throwing me off balance, causing me to trip and stumble more than anyone else in the world, it seemed.

  I started researching witchcraft to see who had done this to me.

  And as I had predicted, my sister grew beautiful.

  For a while I just existed, watching my sister live without me, even if she did sleep four feet away. My mother went to and from work at the hotel, did the books for her freelance clients in the evenings, made our dinners, packed our lunches. She didn’t say anything about my weight gain. If she knew I was wretched, she didn’t say anything. Told me I did well on my report card, resting her hand on my shoulder for a second, which made me just about cry.

  Every day, I prayed my father would call. Would come back. Would bring happiness back into our lives.

  Then came ninth grade, and I fell in love.

  It was ridiculous, really. There I was, a “husky” girl in a world of beautiful waifs, wearing my homemade jumpers (because jeans cut into the soft fat around my waist), my turtlenecks to cover up as much skin as possible, sturdy shoes and knee socks to mask the fact that the warts had spread to my feet. My hair was a horrible combination of frizzy, wiry, curly and straight, and because spitballs were good at hiding in there, I wore it in a ponytail most of the time. I looked like the definition of spinster, even at the age of fourteen.

  Of course, Luke Fletcher wouldn’t notice me.

  But love is stupid, isn’t it? My brain couldn’t stop the free fall of my heart. I knew even the idea was a joke, but my insides leaped and wriggled when he walked by. He’d always been cute—the better-looking, funnier, more athletic Fletcher twin. Sullivan wasn’t hideous or anything...just average.

  Luke, on the other hand, was breathtaking. My lungs literally stopped working at the sight of him. He had tawny blond hair, green eyes, dimples. A flashing, easy smile, and a laugh that echoed in the chambers of my swollen, empty heart.

  He was great at sports, already six feet tall, and had gone from lean to muscled over the summer. He was tan from working outside—his father owned Scupper Island Boatyard, and both boys worked there, and now Luke’s skin was golden and perfect, hypnotic. He was on the soccer team, a starter his freshman year.

  My crush was horrible, absurd, embarrassing. I wished with all my heart that it would wither and die, but it didn’t. It grew. It was a virus.

  If God hadn’t already blessed Luke enough, he was smart. As smart as I was, smarter even, because my grades came from studying and reading, and his came from simply being. He and I were the only two kids from our class to take Algebra II as freshmen. The only two kids who got put into the Honors English class. The only two who got an A-plus on our biology midterm.

  He was nice, too.

  When it suited him, he was nice.

  I knew I’d never have a chance with a boy like that. Of course, I didn’t. But my stupid, ridiculous heart lived for any notice, any opportunity just the same. Once, I sat next to him in assembly by some miracle and sweat and blushed for the entire hour, drunk with the smell of him—shampoo and sweat. His arm brushed mine, and my whole body clenched with lust.

  Twice a week, Mr. Abernathy, the English teacher, made us (like it was a sacrifice for me) stay after school to do college-level writing prompts. The math teacher wanted us to compete as a team in the Math Olympiad, and in the two glorious weeks leading up to it, we crammed together at the library, four nights in all. Sitting with him at the competition, scribbling notes, looking at each other with smiles when our answer was correct... It was magic. We took third in the state. When the principal broadcast our results in the morning announcements, I blushed so hard my face hurt.

  “Way to go, Fletcher!” Joey Behring called. “Too bad it had to be with the Troll.”

  Did I mention my nickname? Yeah. My physical appearance wasn’t unnoticed by my peers. Did I have some good features? Who cared at that age?

  “She’s okay,” Luke said, and my face burned hotter from the gallant defense.

  Sullivan Fletcher paused at my desk as homero
om let out. “Good job, Nora,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  And so went high school. Study, savor every second my academic achievement let me have with Luke. More than college, more than the urge to do well, his presence was my motivation.

  The summer between freshman and sophomore years, I got a summer job at the Scupper Island Clam Shack, which meant I deep-fried a lot of seafood. Ate a lot of seafood, too. Working there was a relief; most of the customers were the summer nuisance, and I tried to be cheerful and sunny and pretend I wasn’t fat when I waited on them. I gave my mother my paychecks—money was always tight—and she told me I was a good kid.

  Sullivan Fletcher worked at the Clam Shack as well as at his father’s boatyard. He was not as blessed athletically as his twin, not particularly brainy, though not dumb, either. He wasn’t mean, didn’t talk much, and I might’ve liked him, had he not dated Amy Beckman, one of the beautiful Cheetos, one of Lily’s pack. Amy went out of her way to mock me, and Lily pretended not to notice (or didn’t mind).

  Lily...sharp-tongued, model thin, blue-eyed and graceful, carelessly sexual, an expert at conveying everything with a look. Her grades were in the toilet, but she didn’t care. When Mom suggested I tutor her, Lily made a face of such disgust that tears came to my eyes.

  Worst of all, we still shared a room. Our little house only had two bedrooms. Every day, Lily would dress in front of me, totally unselfconscious about her body, her ribs striating through her skin, her vertebrae rippling as she pulled on pants. She was tiny and perfect, still so beautiful to me, as she had been when she was little. I tried not to look, but her body fascinated me. What would it be like to bend over and not have a stomach bulge? To not have to wear a bra? To have arms as long and slim as a ballerina’s, an ass that was both round and shapely but still fit into size 00 jeans?

  At night, I’d cry sometimes, fully embracing my misery like any teenager worth her salty tears. I lacked my mother’s ironclad pragmatism, lacked Lily’s sense of self-preservation. Instead, I wrapped myself in melancholy, remembering when my sister and I were little, when we were close, when we were happy. I missed my father and hated him and loved him and hated him some more for ruining everything. Tears would slip into my ears as I listened to Lily breathe.