Chapter Sixteen

Heron

Despite her eagerness to get out of Millet, Heron hadn’t been sure what to expect in Seattle. She’d spent some time in the city for short visits, but not since Felicia moved there. She’d surprised even herself with wanting to go, and by the time they’d been in the car an hour, she was second-guessing herself. After Charlie’s cruelty, maybe it was foolish to leave the people she could rely on to treat her kindly, even if their kindness sometimes felt stifling. The drive was tense and mostly silent. She and her mom had so little to talk about under normal circumstances. Since October, wedding planning had been monopolizing most of Heron’s conversations and its absence as a viable topic was a gaping void. Deep down, Heron knew they needed to have a real conversation about their relationship, but she couldn’t face that yet and sensed Felicia wasn’t interested in doing so, either.

The discomfort subsided once they had the distractions of the city. During her first week staying with her mother, Heron discovered she liked the bustle and anonymity of the city neighborhood. Felicia worked days doing alterations at Nordstrom. She was usually up from the sofa where she insisted on sleeping (leaving the Murphy bed to Heron) and out of the apartment by eight. Heron would rise, shower in the doll-sized bathroom, and take her laptop to one of the seemingly countless coffee shops nearby. She was fine-tuning her thesis, but it was pretty much done. She liked the idea of being a student hard at work in a cafe so much, she went over the prose again and again just so she could continue to play the role.

On the first day, her latte, an elaborate cluster of foamed leaves in a big cerulean bowl of a mug was so pretty, she took a photo of it next to her laptop for social media. Then she decided to do that every day, a photo of wherever she was working with hashtags like #citygirl and #studylife. Soon, she had to scroll far down her grid to find any pictures of Charlie. Charlie’s own social media accounts were silent. She wondered what he was doing. She shouldn’t care what he was doing. She hoped he was okay.

The other thing Heron discovered, well, rediscovered, was that her mom was fun. She’d forgotten the nights they used to play dress-up or go out to dinner, just the two of them, before Felicia left. Once or twice, they cooked together in the corner of Felicia’s apartment that served as the kitchen, bumping into each other, sitting at the table to chop vegetables, washing the dishes afterward in a kitchen sink so tiny it barely fit one plate. Most of the time, they went out. Happy hours in the spots near the apartment full of students and young professionals, or the restaurants near Felicia’s work, full of office workers waiting for the commuter traffic to clear.

One night, they dressed up and Felicia took Heron to the Space Needle. They ate seafood and drank swanky cocktails as they watched the sun set over the bay and the lights of the city twinkle beneath them.

Over dessert, Felicia leaned forward and said, “I’m proud of you, honey.”

Heron didn’t know quite how to react. “Thanks, Mom,” she said, ducking her head.

“I mean it, Heron. You’ve picked yourself up, you’re not letting your schoolwork slip, you’re not letting what happened get in your way.”

“I don’t really know what else to do, you know? I’m just…trying to keep going.”

“Atta girl. Pretend it never happened. Who needs ‘em?”

Heron tossed and turned all night, thinking about what her mother said. She would never forget what happened or forget Charlie, but she was on her way to pretending she had, which was at least something. Here, away from Millet, it was easy. She spent whole hours without thinking about how much she missed Charlie or how much his rejection hurt.

But letting it slide to the back of her mind wasn’t quite the right thing to do, as much as she wanted to let the whole thing go and move on. After Felicia went to work one day, Heron pulled out the little packet of papers Bea had tucked into her backpack, right on top. Non-consensual nude photography was listed and the consequences for code violations ranged from censure to expulsion. To file a complaint, one needed only to fill out the form and email it to the review board’s inbox. It seemed far too easy and also insurmountable.

The packet sat next to Heron all day, as she polished the chapter of her thesis that detailed second-wave feminism’s impact on professional dress. Every time she thought about it, she got a shaky, heart-pounding feeling. Heron checked her horoscope app, reading:

TAURUS: Doing the right thing isn’t easy but living with the wrong thing is always more difficult. Buck up, little bull.

She knew what she ought to do, but she closed the app and stuffed the papers back into her bag.

Bea

Bea had been sleeping in her guest room for ten days. It all started innocently enough. With her dresser drawer reclaimed from Ben, she was able to sort her bras and underwear into different drawers again instead of having them all jumbled together. But then she decided to go through it all, getting rid of the lace bras that itched, but she kept because Ben seemed to like them, the underwear that was pretty but rode up every time she wore it. She didn’t need that stuff anymore and didn’t expect to need it ever again. Ridiculous to have it in the first place. The same went for the satin shortie pajamas with the slit on the leg Ben liked to slip his hand into as they were falling asleep, to rest on her bare hip. Soon, the entire contents of her dresser had been dumped onto the middle of her bed. And then she started emptying the closet, because, why not?

She’d heard you were supposed to hold each thing, ask yourself if it brought you joy, and let that feeling help you decide whether to keep it. The Messiman sweatshirt from her freshman year, perfectly faded and soft? So much joy. Keep. Her flannel I Love Lucy pajamas? Joy. Her industrial strength, practical underwire bras? Absolutely no joy but they cost $125 each and although teaching braless would be a baller move in the fight against the patriarchy, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Reluctantly, keep. A drab brown blouse she’d bought only because it was appropriate for teaching, and it fit? Toss.

Herschel climbed to the top of the pile and enthroned himself on a stack of Bea’s sweaters. Bea reached over to stroke his back, and her eyes fell on a midnight shimmer. Her velvet dress. She pulled it from the pile and held it, letting the cool fabric slip through her fingers. Wearing this dress, she’d felt beautiful for the first time in her life. She’d been satisfied with her appearance before: thought she looked sharp in her suits; cool in a pair of skinny jeans and a flannel shirt; cute in the retro dress she’d worn to the reunion. But she had never before felt powerfully beautiful—sexy—the way she had in the blue dress. Some of it was Ben, the way he’d looked at her when she wore it, the way it seemed to invite him to touch her, but it wasn’t all him. She’d felt it before he ever saw her in it. The velvet crumpled in her clutching fingers, and she spread it over the pile on the bed, backing up to look at it. Did she even want to feel that way again? Because right now, she felt like she’d been dropped off a building. Like she’d gotten used to the feeling of being supported by wings, only to find herself looking at her own pudgy, useless arms again, plummeting. But knowing she could feel it was something, at least. What would one call that emotion?

Unable to answer, or decide what to do with the dress (Pass it on so some other woman could have a similar magical experience, like the jeans in the books Heron read in junior high? Bury it? Burn it in a ritual?) and overwhelmed by the pile of clothes—half of which she knew she hated and had only bought because they fit on her body—Bea had simply closed the bedroom door and gone to sleep in the guest room. Why not? She’d decorated the room in a whimsical patchwork of bright jewel tones, and it held the shelves where she kept her novels. The bed was comfortable, and none of the pillows smelled like Ben. He’d never slept in it or held her in it, the empty expanse next to her didn’t make her think about him. She’d never learned to sleep on “her” side of this bed. She spent a week holed up in there, reading. Thank goodness for spring break.

Frozen with indecision about the pile of clothes on her bed, she’d been wearing a wild hodgepodge of outfits pulled off the top of the pile or things from the guest room closet, which held various special occasion clothes. That was why, when Sarah dropped by to pick up the serving platter Bea had borrowed for Heron’s shower, she found Bea dressed in her Rosie the Riveter Halloween costume. Bea was finding it practical and comfortable—the coveralls had oodles of pockets and no waistband, and the polka-dot headscarf was keeping her overgrown bangs out of her eyes.

“So,” Sarah said, “this is an interesting look.”

“I’m cleaning out my closet. The life-altering magic of getting rid of shit you don’t want.”

“I see. And…doing your part for the war effort?”

“Well, I have to wear something.”

Sarah squinted at her. “Mmm hmm. How long has this project been going on?”

“I started on Saturday.”

“I’ve heard that Kondo thing takes a few days.”

“Last Saturday.”

Sarah blew out a resigned sigh. “Take me to your pile.” Bea sheepishly led her upstairs, and when Sarah surveyed the bedroom she said, “Oh, honey.”

“I tried to do the hold-each-object-and-see-how-it-makes-me-feel thing, but it turns out there are more complicated emotions than ‘joy’ and ‘not-joy,’ and I kind of got stuck.”

“Okay. Well, let’s simplify it a little bit, then.” Sarah held up a forest green sweater. “Do you like this?”

“It’s one of my favorites.”

“Keep.” Sarah folded it and placed it on the top shelf of Bea’s closet. “This?” It was a black blazer.

“I don’t love it, but it was expensive, and I need a dark jacket for conferences and important meetings.”

“Keep.” They went on like this for some time, folding together. “So,” Sarah said, in what Bea recognized as a trying-to-be-casual voice. “I ran into Ben at Mostarda. He asked how you were doing, and I said I thought he ought to know better than me, since he sees you much more often these days. He said you broke up. Were you ever going tell me about it?”

Bea sank back into her pillows, visible now thanks to Sarah’s capable handiwork. “I didn’t want to be, like, heartbreak girl, you know? I’m sorry,” she added in response to Sarah’s hurt expression—she’d Ben Jerry’d Sarah through more than one ugly breakup. “It was just a lot. I don’t have the easiest time dealing with emotional stuff.”

“Oh?” Sarah’s voice was full of gentle sarcasm. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“I knew I would have to tell people about it eventually, but I couldn’t quite cope yet.”

“So, you decided to be Little Edie for a while?”

“I can think of worse things to be. I always have been staunch.”

Sarah laughed. “True enough.” She folded a few more t-shirts, then said, “Bea, what happened? Obviously, I’m on your side no matter what, ovaries over brovaries and all that, but Ben seemed pretty great.”

“You saw everything that happened at the shower—”

“Shitshow.”

“Shitshow, yes. But I had things under control, and Ben wanted to help, but he was in my face so much and I really needed, like, a second to think things through. I felt smothered.” Answering Sarah’s wince, she continued, “He was upset that I wanted space and I just…couldn’t deal.” Bea stood and began slamming sock balls back into her drawer. She didn’t need this mess, either. She was a thirty-eight-year-old, fully capable grown woman and not sleeping in her own bed because of a breakup was ridiculous.

“Wow, Bea.” Sarah’s tone was gentle. “It sounds like you had a stupid fight, not a relationship-ender.”

Sarah made a good point, so Bea handled her friend’s insight the only way she was equipped to. By ignoring it. “Anyway, I think the whole Ben thing was just…an experiment. To see if I could be a couple person after all. I am not a couple person. Being with someone must improve upon being alone. That’s a pretty high bar for me. I’m great alone.”

Sarah gave Bea’s costume and the disarray of her bedroom a pointed once-over. “Yeah. You seem super great.”

“I’m a little upset about the transition, that’s all. Being with Ben is over for me and it’s fine. This thing isn’t over for Heron, and I need to be able to be there for her without also having to mollycoddle some man into feeling helpful.”

“How is Heron?”

“She seems okay. She’s been texting and tells me the final draft of her thesis is almost done. She says she’s enjoying spending time with her mom. She said she’s still thinking about registering a code of conduct complaint against Charlie and Jason. I think she’s coming around to the idea that she needs to stick up for herself.”

“And you’re sure you’re okay with this breakup? Because I got the feeling Ben was hoping you’d change your mind.”

“Yes.” It came out sharper than Bea intended, and she added, “Sure, I’m sad, but I’ll be fine. With a little help from my personal closet organizer.” She threw a sock ball at Sarah, who caught it and tossed it into the drawer. More solemnly, Bea added, “Ben’s better off without me, too. We had some fun but neither of us needs the drama.”

“Hmm,” Sarah was using her thoughtful tone again, the one that was slightly infuriating when you were trying to talk yourself out of dealing with your feelings. “Well, you wouldn’t want to keep anything you don’t need around.” The blue velvet dress was the only thing left on the bed. Without asking Bea how the item made her feel, Sarah picked it up and hung it at the back of Bea’s closet.

Heron

The email came while Heron and her mother were eating breakfast. Felicia grabbed bites while doing her hair and makeup for work. Heron was perched at the tiny kitchen table with her laptop. It was Charlie’s mother, demanding repayment of a deposit the Brewsters had made for a wedding reception they’d planned to hold in Darien in the fall.

Black spots swam in front of Heron’s eyes. Now she could be sure Charlie had told his parents about the breakup. It was stupid, but she’d been holding onto a tiny little piece of hope that they’d get back from spring break, he’d apologize, and they’d move on as if nothing had happened. This message thoroughly deflated that balloon. What had he said about her? How was she going to get thousands of dollars for Mrs. Brewster’s deposit? And that was on top of all the money her dad and Toni had spent on a wedding which wasn’t going to happen.

Heron’s pulse rose and her head went light. The image of her laptop sitting on the table blurred.

“Mom,” she called, but she could barely hear her own voice over the roar of blood in her ears. Then she slid off her chair onto the floor, pulling her knees up to her chin to hug them. “I think I need help,” she said. Or, thought she said. It felt like there wasn’t any air in her lungs to push the words out.

Felicia came to her side, finally. “What’s wrong?”

Heron gestured at her computer, but it had gone to sleep, the blank screen temporarily replacing the messages with her screensaver.

“It’s too much, Mom. I can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can. Pull yourself up, dust yourself off. Keep trucking.”

“I can’t.”

“For chrissakes, Heron, you can too. You’re stronger than you think you are.”

Felicia filled a glass at the tap, handed it to Heron, then came back with a cold washcloth. “Lean forward,” she said, putting the cloth over the back of Heron’s neck. With the cold and the change of position, her head began to clear.

“I have to go to work. Take a warm shower, get dressed, drink some juice, and pull yourself together. I promise you’ll feel better.”

And then Felicia just…left. She didn’t slam the door behind her, but when she closed it, Heron jumped as if she had.

Right before she turned fifteen, Heron saved up to buy a pair of knee-high boots she’d fallen in love with. They were perfect, just the right shade of deep, chocolate brown, knee high, with a low chunky heel. She’d kept them in the box and was saving them to wear to school on her birthday, wanting to mark the occasion with a sophisticated outfit.

The day before her birthday, Heron came home from school to find her mom on her way out to the book club she attended at one of the wine bars in town. Felicia was wearing a body-hugging, cream-colored dress with boots that looked…suspiciously familiar.

“Are those my boots?” Heron asked.

Felicia looked down. “Oh, yeah, you don’t mind, do you? I love that we’re the same shoe size now. Hopefully your feet won’t grow much more.”

“I kind of do mind. Can you change? You’re stretching them out.” Their feet were the same size, but Felicia’s calves were fuller.

“Oh, they’re fine. You’ll thank me when you don’t have to stuff your jeans into them.” Felicia looked at her watch. “Besides, I don’t have time to change and my black boots don’t look right with this dress.”

She moved to go, and Heron’s anger flared. This was so unfair. She got between her mother and the door. “Mom. Give them back. Please. I bought them with my own money.”

Felicia tried to step around, but Heron moved with her. “Don’t be ridiculous, honey,” she said. “They’ll be fine, and I look great, don’t I?”

“You look like mutton dressed as lamb.” She had heard Felicia use this phrase herself when she was being catty about her friends. Heron knew it was too far—Felicia took a lot of pride in looking young and staying up on trends—but her mother wasn’t listening, and she needed to command her attention. It worked.

“You ungrateful little bitch.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Felicia recoiled, pressing a hand to her mouth. And then, she reached down, unzipped the boots and stepped out of them, jammed her feet into a pair of garden clogs she kept by the door, and slammed out of the house.

Heron presumed she’d gone to book club. She shoved the boots under her bed, and when her father came in from the cellars to eat dinner with her, she didn’t say anything about the argument. She heard her mother’s car pull into the driveway late that evening and assumed they would make up in the morning, but when she woke, Felicia was gone. Later that day, Len got worried enough to call the police. Heron had been working up the courage to tell them about the fight when he found Felicia’s note. At that point she figured it didn’t matter. It was her fault her mother left them, but she couldn’t bear for him to know. He was all she had left.

In the seven years since, she’d buried the incident deep in the back of her mind, just as the boots were buried under the bed. But now that she took the memory out and looked at it in the light of day, she felt a new surge of outrage. Heron always believed the fight about the boots had been the last straw for Felicia, pulling the disappointment of having a daughter she didn’t like into sharp focus. All these years, she’d been so wrong. She hadn’t been out of line, not really. Even if she had, who lefttheir child over something like that? It wasn’t her fault at all, it was something within Felicia that made her leave. Just as what happened with Charlie was more about him than it was about her. She hadn’t failed to be good enough for him. He had failed to love her as she was. More than that, he had failed to treat her with decency.

Using the seat of the chair, Heron pulled herself up from the kitchen floor. She felt a little wobbly, but stable enough. Her meds were in her toiletry kit, and she considered taking a pill, but there wasn’t any point. If she’d had one before she read the message, maybe she could have staved off the reaction, but the reaction was over and she felt…like she’d been run over by a truck, actually. But also like she would be okay.

Heron took a shower. She made a pot of tea, adding a big spoonful of honey to her cup. She read the messages again. Okay. She could handle this. A short internet search told her Charlie’s mother probably didn’t have legal standing to demand reimbursement. The Brewsters were trying to scare her. By freaking out after reading the message she’d done exactly what they wanted, but they would never have to know it. She did feel bad about them being out money, even though they could obviously afford it, but maybe she could fix this another way.

Heron’s heart thudded again, but this time the adrenaline signified her determination to get things done. The first call she made was to the country club in Darien. Lauren remembered her from their planning session, and when Heron said the wedding had been called off, her reply was “I’m so sorry to hear that.” But then she added under her breath, “To be honest, you’re dodging a mother-in-law bullet.”

“That’s actually why I’m calling.” Heron explained about the deposit. “Would it be possible for you to refund it?”

“Let me check…Yes, we can do that. Honestly, the Brewsters are such longstanding members we probably would have waived it anyway.”

“Great. Lauren, would you please issue the refund, email a copy of the confirmation to me, and cc Julia Brewster?”

Heron could hear the grin in Lauren’s voice over the phone. “I’d be delighted to. Take care, Ms. Hunter.”

Next, Heron called Lucy at Old, New, Borrowed, Blue.

“Heron!” Lucy said. “I was just about to ship your bridesmaid dresses.”

Heron surprised herself with a self-effacing chuckle. “Don’t bother.”

“Oh, honey. What happened?”

“It’s a long story.” She’d have to figure out a way to make it shorter though, wouldn’t she? She’d be telling it a lot. “Charlie wasn’t who I thought he was. Or I’m not who he thought I was. Both, I guess.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll tell you what. I haven’t charged your card for the second payment on the dresses yet. I’ll put them on consignment. There are a lot of brides realizing summer wedding season is sneaking up on them and these are a popular design. I bet they’ll go like hotcakes, and if they sell, I’ll refund your deposit. Sound good?”

“That’s great. Thank you so much.”

“And if you haven’t started on your gown yet, I’m happy to take the silk back.”

Heron laughed bitterly this time. “It’s almost done.”

“Oh, honey.”

“I know. It was really beautiful, too.” She sniffled. “Is really beautiful.”

“I’m sure it is. And I bet you’ll wear it in the future with someone better than Charlie.”

Heron considered it. She couldn’t stand the idea of putting that dress on again. “I don’t think so. If I get married someday, maybe I’ll wear red.”

“Send me some photos, then. I’m not making any promises, but if the construction and design are good, I might be able to sell that on consignment, too.”

“Thanks, Lucy.”

Then she called her dad.

“Hi, Birdie, how are things going over there?”

“Fine,” she said. And then, she did the hardest thing. She told him about the fight over the boots, and how she’d kept it from him.

Her dad was silent for a long time. Finally, she heard a shuddering exhale. “Birdie. Sweetheart. It wasn’t your fault. I wish you had told me.”

“I know I should have. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have a thing to be sorry about.”

“Dad?”

“What, Birdie?”

“I’m also sorry about all the money. For the wedding.”

“We aren’t out a dime, sweetie. Toni was going to handle all the catering, we hadn’t made any deposits yet for the photographer, we were going to use our usual DJ. In fact”—he switched over to video—“we redirected part of the budget to your graduation gift.”

He turned the phone to show a cherry red electric car sitting in the driveway of the winery.

“Dad! Are you serious?”

“Totally serious. It’s yours. I’d been planning to do this for ages, but when it looked like you might be in Manhattan next year I held off. I thought, well, if you’re more comfortable staying in your old room when you come back to school, you’ll need wheels to go back and forth.”

Heron felt like she’d been wrapped in a warm blanket. She’d spent so long absorbed by Charlie, then despondent when she lost him, she’d forgotten how many other people loved her. It wasn’t only the car, although the car was wonderful. It was the way her dad had anticipated her needs.

She reached into her bag and dug out the conduct complaint information. It was time. She deserved an acknowledgment that what happened to her had been wrong. Maggie and Bryant did, too. Heron wrote up her account of the incident, keeping her tone as dispassionate as possible. Her finger hovered over the “send” button for several minutes before she squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, exhaled, and clicked.

The hardest part came after Felicia got home from work. Heron suggested they go to the diner down the block to have breakfast for dinner, a mother-daughter tradition from when she was little.

“I have an anxiety disorder, Mom,” Heron said evenly. “It’s a real thing. It’s just how my brain works. My fight or flight response is disproportional sometimes.”

Heron had been in the middle of telling her mother about filing the complaint and how difficult it had been to work up the courage, when Felicia broke in to say she didn’t understand the problem with Heron’s “nerves.”

“But you were never like that as a young girl. Totally fearless on the playground. Not a bit of stage fright when you were in Annie…”

Heron took a deep breath. “It’s different for everyone. Both the things that trigger it, and when and why it starts.” She hesitated to say the rest, but maybe it was time to stop protecting Felicia from the truth about the impact of her departure. “For me, it started after you left. Dad and I were so scared before he found your note, there were police in the house. You and Dad never even fought, but you and I had been arguing a lot, so I thought it was my fault.”

Felicia set her fork down. “Don’t be ridiculous, Heron, of course it wasn’t.”

“I know that now.”

“You’re saying this…disorder…is because of me.”

“I’m not blaming you, Mom. I’m just explaining. For all I know I would have had these issues anyway. But, when you disappeared, I felt like the bottom dropped out of everything all of a sudden. It took me a long time to recover. And I guess I just wanted you to know I’m doing okay. Because it dropped out again, with Charlie—”

“I’ll say.”

“And it was awful, but I am recovering. It still hurts, but I’m okay. And I’m proud of myself and I guess”—the words rose like a lump in her throat—“I want you to be proud of me, too.”

“Oh, sweet girl. I am proud of you. So proud. I always have been. You have such a bright future and you can do anything you want with it. I envy that.”

Heron felt a fat tear spill down her cheek. She hadn’t noticed it form and wasn’t sure which emotion had created it. “You could still do something else if you wanted to, Mom. Even go back to school.”

Felicia shrugged. “I could. But I like my job now and I don’t need a degree for it. If I’d stayed in Millet, I’d be so miserable. I was miserable and I tried to push it down and hide it for as long as I could, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. It might have been our arguments that made me realize that, but you didn’t do anything wrong, honey. The way I reacted to you made me feel like I didn’t have any business being your mother, like I was going to do more harm than good. I’m so sorry the way I left hurt you and your dad, but I’m not sorry I left, love. I’m sorry I didn’t go sooner. If I had, I think I would have still had it in me to make it a little easier on you.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to be unhappy, Mom.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad you’re happy now.”

“Me too. And I want you to be happy, too. I’m so sorry what happened with Charlie this year hurt you, but to me, your future looks brighter than it would have if you were getting married next month.”

“Well. It certainly looks different.”

For the first time, a future without Charlie felt like a kaleidoscope of possibility instead of a minefield of uncertainty.

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