Have You Met Nora?

by Nicole Blades

  “The facts are always friendly.”

  It blared in her head like an off-key reprise.

  “The facts are always friendly.”

  She closed her eyes, squeezed them, as if that could change the track, break the loop playing in her brain. It was no use. Her phone let out its strange ring again and like that, the drone was over. Nora saw Oli’s face pop up on the phone’s screen and answered.

  “Oli,” Nora said, sounding relieved. “Say something good.”

  “Glad Mateo got the phone stuff worked out. That’s good, right?”

  “Sure. It’ll do. What’s up? Am I already late for something?”

  “Ha. No. Actually, I thought I was going straight to voice mail, given the hour. Then remembered that you’re probably up . . . given the hour. But, speaking of being late, your wedding boss-lady sent a guy to the studio to do some paperwork business with you yesterday.”

  “Ah. Yeah, I meant to message you about that. Crap.”

  “No big deal. I took care of it. I know where you keep your passport,” Oli said. “You just have to sign some shit when you get in today and I’ll messenger it back to her. Then boom—you’re a Beaumont, and it’s all good in the ’hood.”

  Nora nodded.

  “Oh! On the subject of hoods. We have a new client: Jay Schuyler. That kid with the dating app Facebook just bought? He’s come into lots of money-dollars, obvi. Translation: he’s ditching the Killer Mike T-shirts, those wretched camo pants, and that frowsy hoodie he lives in for something a little more upgraded and sharp.”

  Nora chuckled at Oli’s use of the word frowsy. It’s something she heard her mother sometimes say under her breath about certain kinds of white women whom they would encounter at the grocery store, on the bus, or occasionally at church. Those women who looked down their noses at Nora’s mother as if their little lives were worth more than hers. Whenever Nora witnessed these moments that rested in between disregard and judgment, it would leave her fuming for weeks. She remembered the looks they gave the two of them, the raised brows, the pushed-up mouths and snickers. Stay there with your frowsy self, her mother would hiss as she breezed past them without so much as a bat of her eye. As devoted as Mona Gittens was to her God, she never fully committed to the notion of turning the other cheek.

  “He’s ready to grow up. Good for him,” Nora said to Oli.

  “More like someone’s ready for him to grow up. I think his lawyers strongly recommended he get sorted,” Oli snickered. “There are a lot of jagged edges that need smoothing with this kid. Doesn’t give even the thinnest slice of a shit about how he comes across or the right way to deal with people in general life. He’s real . . . external. Nuance is a different language to him, you know? Jay Schuyler definitely needs guidance, a template for how to be human in these streets, because right now—this kid is spinning out, hard.”

  “Right, so, he’s one of these hard seeds wrapped in wads of money and set out in the sun, but underneath it all he’s—”

  “Still a hard seed. Yeah, that’s totally it,” Oli said. “That’s really good, Nor. Like, such a perfect way of describing his whole situation. You’re good.”

  “I just know the type.” Nora smiled to herself. A hard seed. That’s exactly how her own mother would have described Nora when she first arrived in New York with her “school money” bank account cleaned out and shoved into the bottom hidden pocket of her lumpy backpack and an altered identity—again. Vincent helped her sand down the last of the prickly fringes so she could move through this new beau monde. But most of the Nora Mackenzie transformation work came from Nora Mackenzie herself. She had picked up on the patterns of reinvention—deflection, magnetism, sheer conviction—from watching Mrs. Bourdain’s artful rewiring of her.

  “So, when I get in you can give me the full rundown on Jay’s deal,” Nora said.

  “Well . . . I’m thinking this time me and Mateo can cover this. You can swoop in at the end for last looks and give us your head nod on what we’ve pulled.”

  “Oh,” Nora said, narrowing her eyes. “He didn’t come to us to work with me?”

  “No,” Oli said, before blurting out, “I mean, of course he knows who you are.”

  “Oh-kay . . .”

  “Mateo brought him in. They have a mutual friend who’s a deejay and . . .” She trailed off, then loudly cleared her throat. “You have the wedding, which is, like, blink and it’s here. It’ll probably be like this anyway, right? Me and Mateo—and, eventually, Kazzy; she’s killing it lately—we’re all kind of taking the lead on clients more. It just makes sense, with you being married off into—”

  Nora bristled. “Into what exactly, Oli?”

  Oli cleared her throat again, and Nora could hear the creaking of her chair beneath a shaky exhale. “You’re going to be an official Beaumont of Manhattan. I hardly think you’ll have space in that life for helping these guys pick out suits.”

  “It’s more than that, picking out suits. This is my career. It’s what I do, and I’m good at it. Why would I just walk away from that—because I got married?”

  “Nora. Jeez. I-I’m talking about how I can help make your life easier. That’s all. It’s not an attack on your feminism. I know this work is important to you. I know who you are. But I’m wondering if you know who you’re about to become. Because, real talk? Nora Beaumont means something so totally different from Nora Mackenzie. That name, it’s got weight on it. That’s just facts.”

  Nora was long past tired of hearing about facts, but she wasn’t up for adding yet another person to her bad side today. It wasn’t even 9 AM. She moved to swallow the whole thing and right the morning. “This is true. You’re not wrong. It is different. I’m sorry. My back went up—instinct. It’s been me and those clients for so long; they’re like my very special projects, all of them.” She smiled because that part—the unvarnished joy she felt about her faithful clientele and seeing her polished touch and fine haberdasheries on full display—was accurate. “Guess I should get used to it, right?”

  “With the quickness, woman.” Oli’s tone seemed light again. “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your morning. See you at the studio. This time I’m gonna jangle my keys super loud when I get in.”

  “Preemptive,” Nora said. “I’m into it.”

  After the call, Nora tossed her new phone on the nightstand and hopped out of bed before her mind had the chance to drag her back into the dark. She opened the blinds, fixed the pillows, and made the bed. Eager to peel out of the last pieces of stale clothing and wash a fresh day into her skin, Nora hustled to the bathroom. As she reached to turn on both showerheads, she heard the lobby phone ring.

  “Good morning, Miss Nora. I’m sorry to disturb.”

  “Morning, Javie. It’s okay. You’re not disturbing me at all.”

  “I said I didn’t want to call this early, but this guy, he wouldn’t take no, you know?”

  “Which guy?”

  “Messenger, but official type, you know? He said he needed to make sure that you got this box and wanted verbal confirmation, and his boss needs to know you got it in your hands so it’s not sitting on a table down here and all this. I told him: Look, it’s too early for this kind of thing. But this guy . . . Anyway, you have a box here delivered to you from . . . it says here, The Beaumont House. I can have one of my guys run it up to you later. I would, but I’m gotta wait here for—”

  “Javie, it’s fine. I’ll be heading down shortly, so I’ll scoop it on my way out.”

  “Very good. Again, my apologies. Have a good rest of mornin’, Miss Nora.”

  “That’s the plan, Javie.”

  * * *

  By the time Nora got back home, it was dark and her mood was leaning that way, too. It had been a day filled with various people telling her how different everything would be once she crossed over the line and became an official Beaumont. All of it grated her nerves, so much so that the insides of her mouth started to itch and the incessant yawning began
—an ancient, faded tell of Nora’s akin to an eye twitch or gnawed-at fingernails. She tried rubbing her tongue along the roof of her mouth a few times when it started to get out of hand, but soon remembered that that was how to stifle a sneeze, not a yawn. Even with the covered mouth, her watering eyes gave it all away.

  “You should just bounce early,” Mateo had told Nora more than once, while looking at her as one would a decidedly sleepy toddler or lost kitten.

  Oli kept pulling Nora aside offering up her own brand of subtle suggestions while practically shoving the woman out the door.

  We’ll take care of all this.

  It’s handled.

  No big deal; don’t worry about it.

  When Nora finally took the hint and left, announcing that she had forgotten a meeting scheduled with the wedding planner, no one raised a head or a brow. Although it seemed clear to all that the meeting was likely made-up, the team was in a groove and just let the fib dissolve on its own. And Nora moved through the room toward the door as she always did: nose high, focus fixed, chest open, and breathing easy.

  After a drink at a new bar far uptown, Nora walked to Central Park and found her way to the Conservatory Garden. Along with the Flatiron Building, the Conservatory Garden was Nora’s favorite place in all of New York City. The Garden in the summer was truly hard to beat. So tucked away, but open and free. To be hidden yet still surrounded by lush greenery and colorful flowers, wrapped in that beauty and fragrance, it felt like the Heaven Nora’s mother told her was promised to us, God’s children.

  She discovered the space by chance only days after stepping off the Greyhound at Port Authority a decade ago. Back then—thirty days short of being an official high school graduate—she was still reeling from everything that had sent her running away from Vermont and from her life. The garden and its brilliant offerings are what saved Nora in those first years in the city; she swears by it. She would walk along the many acres, moving through the smaller gardens; going from the French to the English and then the Italian one and back again. As she would stare out at the late spring flowers, blessing them with new names all her own, Nora began to notice that the urgency and anguish that had been vibrating in her fingertips, they were fading, falling away. Instead of thinking about Mrs. Bourdain, the betrayal, Nora would consider which flowers her mother would have enjoyed most. The Lilac Droplet (actual name: Roy Davidson Lungwort).

  As she admired each flower, Nora felt the weight of everything lifting from her shoulders. Breathing came easier, the chronic headache subsided, and the frown lines that had taken over her face melted back, letting the glow return to her features.

  And Nora soon started visiting the Conservatory Garden to read, flip through fashion magazines, and just be, alone in the rare quiet of New York. It’s in this same garden that she met Vincent Dunn one windy autumn day, where she signed the lease paperwork on her office space, and also where Fisher arranged a picnic lunch for the two of them on their third date. The garden had become a private happy box for Nora, one that never emptied and that possessed the power to make even the mundane magical.

  Now, sitting in it smiling and floating on clouds back through time, Nora reached into her purse for her phone and dialed. Fisher answered, but sounded immediately on edge, hurried, crisp, and she instantly regretted calling. Nora went ahead anyway. “Hey, I was thinking about you. I’m at our garden, in Central Park and I—”

  “Listen. Nora.” Fisher typically used her first name in moments like this, when he was deep in business mode. “I am—”

  “Busy. I get it. Not a big deal.”

  “What I was about to say is, I am going to call you back in thirty-five minutes. But if it’s not a big deal, as you just said, then we can pick this up in about three, three and a half hours, if that works on your end.”

  Nora shook her head, annoyed—at herself more than anything.

  “You still there?” Fisher said, his tone flat.

  “Yes, I am. Sorry. I was distracted by . . . this bird here.” Nora cringed. “We can just talk later tonight or even tomorrow morning when you wake up.”

  “That works. Oh, and, Nora?” Fisher’s voice eased up. Nora started smiling again. “You do need to get back to my mother. Her assistant needs your RSVP for the tea. Can you please look into that at your earliest?”

  Nora felt her cheeks warm and the corners of her mouth began twitching. “Oh. Yeah. Of course. I’ll . . . do that right now.”

  “Works. I have to run, but we’ll talk tomorrow, yes?”

  “Yes, speak to you then,” she said, as if talking to her accountant.

  “Very good. Tomorrow.”

  Nora slipped the phone into her bag and walked right back to the bar far uptown, leaving behind her beloved respite and all its vivid memories tucked inside.

  * * *

  Looking at the tea party invitation box, still unopened, Nora took another swig of beer, the last of Fisher’s favorite brand. She slammed the bottle down and started moving toward her champagne fridge but stopped short. This invitation yet unseen was literally driving her to drink and she felt ridiculous. “It’s just tea,” she said, and doubled back to the box sitting on the kitchen counter. She ripped it open and read the note out loud, mockingly imitating Lady Eleanor’s trademark through-her-teeth affect:

  Lady Eleanor D. Beaumont

  Requests the honor of your company

  For afternoon tea to welcome

  Miss Nora Mackenzie into our family

  Nora stopped reading and stared at the word family. The black calligraphy ink looked shiny and fresh, not all the way dry. She traced the strokes of the lettering with her finger, then checked the tip of it, halfway expecting to find a smudge of ink there. She set the beer bottle down on the counter along with the thick invitation and walked over to the closest mirror in the hall. Nora brushed back the stray wisps of her blond hair and stood taking in her reflection.

  “I’m so honored to be accepted—” She stopped, cleared her throat, and started again, but louder and more maudlin. “I’m truly touched by the tremendous warmth the entire Beaumont family continues to show me. I can’t remember a time that I’ve felt so wrapped in unconditional kindness and love. This—an authentic, wonderful, whole family—is what I’ve dreamed of all my life; it’s what I’ve always wanted. So, thank you. I am ever grateful to you, Lady Eleanor.” Nora bowed before the mirror, her hand to her chest. And when she stood up, visions of her mother came crashing through the glass. There she was, looming large in the room, her brown skin wan, her jaw slack, and her hooded eyes resting on Nora. Each phantom version of her mother looked more sorrowful than the next, and Nora knew why. It was the look her mother would give her whenever Nora was skirting the truth.

  She moved back from the mirror, keeping her eyes to the floor. It was the one place she didn’t see her mother’s face. With careful steps, she made her way to the kitchen counter again—never once looking up—and reached for the beer bottle. It was empty.

  “Of course,” she muttered, and let out a long exhale, tossing her head back. She opened her eyes and was relieved to find nothing before her but the high ceiling. Her mother was gone.

  Another long breath.

  Then, an idea: Nora decided to follow Jenna’s advice and instead of popping open another bottle of something, she would suit up and go for a run.

  * * *

  It was sluggish at first. Nora could hear the beer sloshing around in her stomach. But she stuck with it, picking up her pace as she cut through SoHo on her way to Little Italy and hitting her stride as she crossed Broome Street. The night was warm with a kind breeze that kicked up right when Nora needed it most. But her left leg caught a stitch, her arches felt pinched, and she figured she had three more blocks in her, tops. Still, it all felt good, invigorating. Her mind was clear and focused on only one thing: getting to the finish line, which Nora had already decided was going to be at the Bean House Café one block away.

  She slowed to an ea
sy trot, pulling out her phone to check her stats on the running app that she had downloaded in the elevator ride to the lobby. Nora, her head down and thumb scrolling the phone, took a tiny leap up the uneven, high sidewalk. She had done it so often, hopped over the sidewalk’s quirky edge, that she could do it blindfolded and still glide into the always-busy coffee shop with her usual grace. But this time was not usual. This time she should have been watching her step.

  Crunch. Splash. Goddammit.

  She had smashed right into someone walking out of the café. Light brown liquid dripped down the front of her expensive, white wind jacket. It was iced coffee and it had already soaked right through. Nora barely looked up at the person before she started apologizing.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, slipping her (miraculously) dry phone into the zippered angle pocket. “Please, let me pay for your drinks.” Nora wiggled her hands out of the jacket’s damp thumbholes and reached for the slim fold of cash stashed in her other pocket—for emergencies. (Nora really was her mother’s very own child.)

  That’s when she finally raised her head and made eyes with the collision victim.

  That’s when her world stopped spinning. She swallowed hard and her full breath anchored in her belly.

  “Holy shit,” the woman said. She was standing across from Nora, also wearing spilled coffee, but with more of it sprayed across her brown skin, and she held the scraps of the wreckage: cracked plastic cups, a bent straw, a couple stray ice cubes resting in the crook of her arm. “I can’t believe it. It’s you! Nora Bourdain. Jesus fucking Christ, it’s really you! Finally.”

  “I-I-I don’t—” Fix your face. Nora squared her shoulders and stuffed the money back into her pocket. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, miss. Like I said, I’m sorry—”