The Awakening of Nina Fontaine

by Michelle St. James

  She’d spent the day putting together the bed, surprisingly easy despite the fact that Peter had refused to buy anything from Ikea, insisting it wasn’t worth the hassle. She’d stood back when it was done, taking in her work and feeling proud of herself.

  After washing her new sheets in the apartment’s basement laundry room, she’d shopped for food and wine for the cozy housewarming Karen had insisted Nina host to celebrate her new place.

  She’d protested at first, but now that everyone was there, gathered around the living room, laughing and drinking wine, telling raunchy stories, Nina had to admit Karen had been right. There would be lots of time for Nina to be alone. It was nice to be reminded she didn’t have to be.

  “So I asked him what I could do to help him get hard,” Karen was saying. “And he said, “What do you mean? I am hard.”’

  Nina shook her head and laughed along with everyone else as she got up to get a new bottle of wine. She looked at the women in her living room with a mixture of affection and detachment. She hadn’t had any close friends other than Karen in a long time, and she was still figuring out how she fit into Karen’s city circle.

  There was Robin, a woman Karen had met years ago at a communications conference. Robin was small and curvaceous, with chic silvery hair chopped short and a tattoo of a phoenix on her wrist. Nina had met her a few times in the past and had immediately admired her youthful spirit, her willingness to pick up and travel to exotic places at the drop of a hat for her employer, an NGO that advocated for clean, accessible water in underprivileged communities around the world.

  Amy was Robin’s polar opposite. Raised by a Chinese Tiger Mom, Amy had been all but cut off from her family when she came out, marrying her longtime partner and adopting a baby girl. Amy’s life looked charmed from the outside, but Nina always felt a pang of sadness when Amy talked about her parents, sorrow apparent on her delicate face. She’d gotten an MBA from Harvard, but her choice of a life partner had been a deal-breaker.

  “I like this place,” Robin said when Nina returned to the living room with wine in hand. “It’s homey already.”

  “I might have a way to go to homey,” Nina said, pouring more wine into Robin’s glass. “But thank you. It does have potential.”

  “Now we just need to get Karen to Brooklyn,” Robin said from her cushion on the floor.

  Karen almost spit out her wine. “When hell freezes over.”

  “You’re such a snob,” Amy said, taking a drink from her glass.

  Nina poured herself another inch and returned to her seat on the sofa.

  Karen lifted her eyebrows. “Says the woman with four-hundred-dollar sheets.”

  “Hey!” Amy protested, laughing. “I work seventy hours a week. Nice sheets are my indulgence.”

  Karen held up a hand. “You don’t have to defend the choice to me. I have a doorman. I’m just suggesting you might not have much credibility on the snobbery front.”

  “Point taken,” Amy said. “But seriously, all the fashionable people live in Brooklyn now.”

  Karen lifted her glass to her lips. “Define fashionable.”

  “A pillow might be coming your way right now,” Robin said. “If there were any pillows, I mean.”

  “I’ll work on throw pillows next,” Nina said. “That way you’ll have them in your arsenal for next time.”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to need them if we keep meeting in Brooklyn,” Robin said.

  “No way.” Karen reached for a piece of cheese from the platter Nina had set out. “Next time you guys come to me. In fact, you can start tomorrow by coming to my reading.”

  “Can’t,” Amy said. “Moira has a work thing. I’m on munchkin duty.”

  Robin made a sad face. “I’m afraid I’m out too. Sarah is in town with her new boyfriend. We’re doing dinner.”

  Robin had three children. Sarah was her oldest daughter and worked for an app company in San Francisco.

  “Is it the tech guy?” Amy asked. “Tom… Ted…”

  “That was Tom,” Robin said with a sigh. “He’s long gone. This one is in venture capital. I think his name’s Mark.”

  Karen made a face. “I’ve dated two Marks — one had a microscopic penis and the other had a microscopic vocabulary.”

  Robin laughed. “I hope for Sarah’s sake that she fares better.”

  “Remember back when we were young and dating?” Amy asked wistfully. “Back when men had jobs we understood?”

  “I remember back when you dated men,” Karen said.

  Amy laughed and finished her wine. “Ah, the bad old days.” She grinned at Karen. “You could always switch teams.”

  Karen sighed. “Never. I like the D too much.”

  “Aaaaaand that’s my cue to leave,” Amy said, standing.

  Amy and Karen had been young and single in the city when Nina had been setting up house with Peter. Nina had felt so smug, so fortunate to have found her soulmate while Karen dated a string of mediocre-to-awful men. She’d even felt bad when Karen got pregnant, wondering how Karen would manage her demanding job at a small press as a single mom.

  But Karen had risen to the occasion, single-parenthood bringing out a sleeping ambition that caused her to angle for a bigger job, then a bigger job at a bigger publishing house. She’d never found lasting love, but she seemed happy, and at least she wasn’t reinventing her life at forty-five.

  “I should go too,” Robin said. “Sarah’s going to think I’ve aged twenty years after all this wine.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Karen said, giving her a hug. “You always look amazing.”

  Amy and Robin picked up their coats from the couch — Nina hadn’t yet bought hooks or figured out how to deal with the outerwear situation in such a small space — and headed for the door. They left amid a flurry of goodbyes and hugs and promised to do it again soon. Then it was just Nina and Karen, who’d insisted on staying to help clean up.

  “You really don’t have to stay,” Nina said. “It’ll take me five minutes.”

  “I want to,” Karen said. Nina added a coffee table to the mental list of things she needed to buy as Karen plucked empty glasses off the floor. “I could even crash on the couch if you want.”

  Nina smiled. “Stop. I’m fine. Seriously.”

  “I know you are, honey.” Karen set the glasses next to the sink and leaned on the half-wall between the kitchen and living room. “But it must be a little weird.”

  Nina nodded. “A little.”

  “Are you okay?” Karen asked. “Really?”

  Nina drew in a breath. “I keep thinking about the house upstate, how cozy it looks with the lamps on at night. I’ve been wondering…”

  “You’ve been wondering?” Karen prodded.

  “I’ve been wondering if Peter will remarry and live in it.” It was something Nina hadn’t voiced until now, but it had been there, lurking in the back of her mind, since Peter offered to buy out her share of the house.

  “That would be shitty,” Karen said.

  Nina shrugged. “The house is his now. He can do what he wants with it.”

  “Jesus,” Karen said. “I need more wine.”

  Nina laughed. “Sorry. It just seems like we get the short end of the stick, you know?”

  “What end of what stick are we talking about?” Karen said, heading back into the living room to pick up the remaining plates.

  Nina went to help. “Think about it: I’m done. I can’t have children, but even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to have any more of them. I have no choice but to figure out how to be a single, middle-aged woman with no family while Peter can have a whole other chance at the perfect life. He can marry someone younger, have children, be a Little League coach. He won’t even be that old when they’re grown. Where does that leave me?”

  Karen wiped her hands on a paper towel — Nina would need to buy dishtowels too — and turned to put her hands on Nina’s shoulders.

  “It leaves you free to start
a whole new story,” Karen said. “You have a world of possibility in front of you. Embrace it. Better yet, surrender to it. See where it takes you.”

  Later, when Nina lay in bed, the street lamps casting a column of light onto her new duvet cover, she was still thinking about Karen’s words.

  Embrace it. Better yet, surrender to it. See where it takes you.

  For the first time since she and Peter decided to divorce, she felt a flicker of something besides despair.

  A flicker of something that felt a little like excitement.

  4

  She headed into the city the next night after a day spent scoping out her new neighborhood. She’d gone back to the market two blocks away and stocked up on supplies to make meals at home with the goal of avoiding takeout, careful to only buy what she could carry.

  Everything was more expensive, but the higher prices were offset by the fact that she was only buying for herself, and she’d felt like a kid in a candy store as she’d bought all her favorite things. She’d been alone in the Larchmont house during the divorce proceedings — Peter had graciously agreed to take a temporary apartment — but there she’d been trapped in her old habits, buying all the same food she’d bought for her and Peter, half expecting to see him peering over her shoulder, asking if she’d remembered the peanut butter.

  Now she was liberated. She’d bought full fat yogurt and cheese, skipped the bread in favor of veggies and olives, and threw in a few experimental items for good measure.

  She’d stopped in at a nearby dry cleaners after spotting an ad in their window for laundry and had been thrilled to find it was cheaper to have them do her wash than to pay in the basement of her building. They’d given her a bag to fill with dirty clothes and told her they’d return it in 24 hours for only fifteen dollars, a bargain as far as she was concerned.

  She still didn’t have enough furniture, and she was missing some small things like dish towels and a spatula, but she’d planned another trip to Ikea the next day for the remaining essentials and had ended the afternoon feeling accomplished.

  It had lasted until she’d had to get dressed for the reading in the city, at which point she’d realized her outfit choices were more than a little paltry. She’d passed over her two ill-fitting dresses — she hadn’t worn a dress for ages — and defaulted to her tried and true slacks and silk blouse, plus flats for comfortable walking of the city.

  Over the past couple years, she’d been relieved to see a lot of women in the city ditch their heels for comfortable shoes. She’d never understood women like Karen who managed to totter around on stilts, flagging cabs and racing up and down subway station stairs without somehow breaking their necks.

  Even now, looking around at the people on the subway, it was easy to see that things had gotten more relaxed. She almost laughed out loud when she heard Karen’s voice in her head saying, “Only because you’re coming from Brooklyn!”

  Maybe it was true and she’d be underdressed once she got to the event, but it was too late to change her mind now, and she did feel pretty in the deep green silk blouse that matched her eyes. She’d left her hair down, grateful it was still thick with natural waves, and made a small concession for Karen’s event with a little bit of eye makeup and lipstick.

  It was good enough. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress anyone, and Karen had said the reading was from one of her non-fiction authors, a philanthropist who’d recently published a book about his time in Africa. Nina expected the evening to be more intellectual than glamorous.

  She’d been on the train for ten minutes when she pulled out her phone to see where she was on her journey to Midtown. She wondered how long it would be before she didn’t have to check her phone during every leg of her journey, how long before she could navigate the subway system by instinct like everyone around her.

  Three stops later, she exited at Lexington Avenue and followed the map on her phone to the bookstore that was hosting the event, stopping when she came to a storefront paneled in rich mahogany, brass letters spelling out ARGOSY above the door.

  Half of the front was an open-air extension of the store, books lining rich wood shelves under cover of a ceiling that looked to be an extension of the one inside. Opposite the books, antique maps were protected behind glass, everything bathed in soft, golden lighting. The effect was elegant and storied, more like a collector’s library in a historical mansion that a bookstore.

  She looked up, wondering how everything was secured overnight, then saw a rolled up iron gate that must be pulled down when the store closed.

  Beyond the front window, people milled about inside the store, the murmur of conversation and laughter carried to her as an older man in a tweed jacket stepped onto the sidewalk.

  She looked down at her slacks and flats. This wasn’t at all what she’d pictured when Karen told her the event was being held at a bookstore. She should have forced herself to wear a dress, or at the very least, brought a bigger bag to hold some heels.

  The door opened again, this time expelling a chicly dressed woman who did nothing for Nina’s confidence. She waited for the woman to step onto the sidewalk before stepping into the store.

  The interior was even more welcoming, the soft overhead lighting further complimented by the glow of old-fashioned library lamps with green shades, each one illuminating old maps and books. It smelled like pipe smoke and old paper, like ink and money.

  She stopped just inside the door and unbuttoned her coat, using the time to scan the crowd, moving aside as a couple entered the store behind her. The place was packed, and it took her a minute to spot Karen, standing next to an older man in a suit on the mezzanine level that overlooked the main floor.

  Nina was momentarily entranced, envious of the casual placement of Karen’s hand on the man’s arm, the unselfconscious way she tipped her head back when she laughed. She was wearing a red dress, her hair knotted into a professional but somehow still alluring knot at the back of her head.

  During the last twenty years, the majority of Nina’s socializing had involved chatting up people at the grocery store and playing the good wife on Peter’s arm at work functions. In both cases, there had been no pressure, the only expectation that she be moderately pleasing, or at least acceptable. She suddenly felt overwhelmingly pedestrian and out of place.

  She didn’t belong here. This was a mistake.

  She was considering ducking out when Karen spotted her. Her friend’s face lit up, and she leaned in to say something to the man she was talking to before making her way down the stairs. Nina waited by the door as Karen wound her way through the crowd, stopping to talk to people along the way, raising her hand to wiggle fingers at anyone too far away to greet personally.

  “You made it!” She leaned in to hug Nina. “I’m so glad.”

  “I’m not really sure this is my scene,” Nina said. “I’m way underdressed.”

  Karen looked Nina up and down, taking in the sliver of clothing visible between the flaps of her open coat. “What are you talking about? You look great.”

  “Are you sure?” Nina asked. “Maybe I should go home and — ”

  “No way. You’ll feel better once we hit the after-party for drinks.”

  “After-party? I didn’t agree to an after-party.”

  Karen linked her arm through Nina’s and pulled her into the room. “Because I knew you wouldn’t come if I told you.”

  “Great,” Nina said.

  Karen led her toward the stairs. “Come on. Sadly, drinks aren’t allowed in this place because of all the rare books. We should have met up in advance to pregame, which according to Alex, is what all the cool kids do now.”

  Alex was Karen’s son, and apparently pregaming was getting drunk before you actually went anywhere.

  They headed up the stairs to the mezzanine level where rows of chairs had been set up for the event. Karen waited a few minutes while Nina got settled, then looked at her watch.

  “Jesus,” she said. “We need to
get started. I’m going to find Vincent. You okay here?”

  “I’m fine.” Safely ensconced in her seat, Nina already felt silly about her panic attack. Argosy was just a bookstore, the crowd around her made up of people like her but wearing nicer clothes.

  “See you when it’s over,” Karen said.

  She waded into the crowd, expertly navigating the masses and craning her neck to look for Vincent Reynolds, the author of the book they were there to celebrate.

  She settled in, the anonymity of her position comforting as everyone chose seats around her. No one but Karen knew her.

  She could have been anybody.

  5

  Nina stood next to Karen, listening as she introduced Vincent to a reporter from the New York Times. The reading had ended hours ago and the after-party had been a series of conversations just like this one — Karen schmoozing and introducing, Nina smiling and drinking.

  It was the second part of the equation that had finally nixed Nina’s nervousness. She was on her second cocktail and feeling good, almost like she belonged here as much as anyone else, in spite of the fact that her suspicion about being underdressed was confirmed the moment she’d stepped into the swanky restaurant that had been rented by the publisher for the after-party.

  Karen was right though: it didn’t matter. The lighting was dim, the crowd so thick it was hard to see more than the face of the person you were talking to. Everyone was having a good time, and Nina had relaxed into her role as Karen’s best friend, newly arrived in the city from the mysterious land of “upstate”, a region that wasn’t really upstate to anyone but city dwellers.

  Everyone was friendly and interested, and Nina had had brief conversations with several intriguing people she would never in a million years have met had she had stayed in Larchmont.

  There was an artist who’d recently had her first show at a gallery in Tribeca, a buyer for Bloomingdales who was gearing up for New York Fashion Week, a woman who was a trustee for Carnegie Hall. It had gone on and on, a parade of people proving that Karen had been right: a world of possibilities had opened up for Nina, and if she didn’t believe it with the first drink, by the end of the second, she was starting to.