Chapter 3
THREE
By the time June buzzes at my apartment, I am a snotty, teary mess. I don’t bother trying to make myself look better while she jogs up the steps – she’s seen it all before – but I do at least blow my nose. A girl’s got to have standards.
She knocks on my door, using the rat-a-tat-tat code we’d established when we were kids and had contraband to hide. The contraband started as candy Nanna Nora had snuck me, and changed over the years – make-up, padded bras, the romance novels we stole from my mom’s bookcase and read out loud to each other. We couldn’t resist the cover pictures of muscular Regency earls who owned half of England but could never afford a shirt.
Worse than Mom finding us, it could have been Suzie. After I saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose when I was sixteen, I became convinced my sister was possessed by a demon. I still have my suspicions that if I slipped holy water into her wine, she might burst into flames.
When I hear the knock code tonight, it brings a huge sense of relief. June is the best friend ever, and I wouldn’t have survived the aftermath of that day without her.
She comes bearing gifts – wine and a big bag of Thai food. She dumps it on the kitchen table, and gives me a hug.
June is tiny, barely scraping five foot, with crazy blonde curls. She dresses like she’s at a music festival, all flowing skirts and battered Converse, and looks like the kind of woman who works in a crystal store. She actually runs her own successful accountancy firm.
She wipes away my tears, and says: ‘You’ve got to stop, Cassie. This isn’t good for you. I don’t want to be one of those insensitive assholes who says you’ve got to move on – but, well, you’ve got to move on. You’ve got to stop torturing yourself like this. I’m almost tempted to sneak in here and erase that damn video.’
‘I know, you’re right,’ I reply, as we decant our food and settle on the couch. ‘I know how insane it is, poking and picking at everything, but I just don’t seem able to stop. It’s like tugging at a broken nail, or biting your lip when it’s already bleeding… it’s bad for me, but something makes me do it! Especially this year…’
This, frankly, has been the year from hell. My hours at work were cut due to the ‘challenging economic environment’, and that stings. I used to be ambitious and driven, essential to the company. Now I am competent but easily sidelined – more likely to want to hide in a closet than pitch my vision to a client.
I have less money coming in, and too much time on my hands. I’m thirty-seven, and most of my peers are married, have kids, high-flying careers and vacations to the Bahamas. I just seem to be in freefall, stuck in reverse. If I keep on like this I’ll be back to eating illicit candy and wearing a padded bra in my childhood bedroom.
Even worse, my beloved Nanna Nora died six months ago, just before her 100 th birthday. We’d planned a big party, complete with an Irish band and male strippers (she was that kind of girl), but she slipped away in her sleep a few nights before. It was a good way to go – peacefully, after a long, full life – but it’s left a Nanna-shaped hole in my life that will never be filled. I miss her every single day.
The third highlight of the year from hell was Ted finally getting married. It was a September wedding in the Hamptons, because that’s how he rolls these days. His wife works at his bank, and is the very picture of refined old money. They have an adorable Labrador called Humphrey, enjoy biking and skiing, and wear matching outfits on their vacations. Best not to ask how I know all that. It’s definitely not because I’ve stalked them on social media with fake accounts or anything.
Even though I knew the wedding was coming, it still hurt. He wore a white suit to match her dress, and the stormy weather that had been sweeping down the Eastern Seaboard cleared up as if by magic, just for that weekend. Most importantly, he actually went through with it.
‘I saw him the other day,’ June mutters between spoonfuls of tom yum soup. There is no need to explain who ‘he’ is. ‘I was on my way from a client meeting in Midtown, and he was coming out of a bar.’
‘How did he look?’
‘Fat, really fat. Bright red zit on the end of his nose. Losing his hair. Revolting. I almost threw up in my purse.’
I have to laugh at this, because Ted has great hair and is the kind of guy who can eat pizza every day and not gain a pound. I can hold out hope for the zit though.
‘He looked like a proper eejit, so he did,’ she adds, doing a good impression of the Irish twang that Nanna Nora never lost despite all her decades in the States. ‘Eejit’ was one of her favourite words, and it slipped into our vocabulary over the years, along with its stronger sibling ‘fecking eejit’, ‘what’s the craic?’ and calling handsome men ‘a ride’.
June used to agree that Ted was a ride, but now she rates him somewhere below plankton on the food chain – she’s never forgiven him for what he did. If he ever plummets off a balcony or accidentally falls in front of a subway train, she’s my prime suspect.
I’d been more forgiving – or, frankly, more desperate. I wanted to believe it was a blip –something we could overcome. I told myself he’d been overwhelmed by the pressure, the wedding, the planning.
I’d cried and pleaded and promised to do it however he wanted. We could elope, or go to Vegas, or not even get married at all – as long as we stayed together. If we stayed together, we could work it all out, I was sure.
I was still sure when he moved out the next day, leaving me in our luxury apartment with tear-swollen eyes and the rent paid up for a month. I was still sure when he changed his number, and told his PA to stop putting my calls through. I was still sure when he took a trip to Aspen with his new girlfriend, and when the girlfriend turned into a fiancée. Now, the fiancée is a wife – and there is no coming back from that.
‘I think,’ I say to June, feeling a fresh round of crying sneak up on me, ‘that I’ve finally accepted it’s over.’
‘Well, that’s positive,’ she replies, patting my knee in reassurance. ‘And it’s only taken you three years.’
She’s right, and I am a ridiculous woman. How could I have been holding on to this for so long? How could I have let myself sink so low? It’s as though when Ted rejected me, I started rejecting myself, and I’ve never figured out how to stop. In fact, I’ve been getting better and better at it. Ted might have broken my heart, but I’m the one who has stopped it healing.
‘This sucks,’ I say, placing the soup down. I have no appetite anyway. ‘I miss Nanna Nora, and Ted is married to Wall Street Barbie, and work is awful. They’ve put me back on children’s parties, June!’
I started at my company straight out of college, and my first job there was organising events for rich kids. After a year of explaining to parents that it wasn’t good for ponies to be dyed pink and have plastic unicorn horns glued onto them, I progressed.
I worked hard, was passionate about what I did, and made my way up the ladder to the really big events. Corporate gatherings, product launches, flashy charity fundraisers – the kind with celebs and lobster bars. Now, after the decline of both the economy and my self-belief, I’m at the bottom again. My whole life is a game of Chutes and Ladders.
‘Babe,’ June replies, squeezing my hand, ‘I know – and it does suck. It’s been a bad year, and it’s going to be Christmas soon and that always makes you feel worse. Let’s look ahead. What are your plans?’
I bury my face in my palms, anxiety settling in my stomach.
‘Suzie’s invited us all for Christmas this year,’ I say. I sound about as happy as if the creepy clown from It had asked me round to his underground sewer for a body-part buffet.
‘And how do you feel about that?’
‘Like I’d rather put my head in a blender.’
‘Nice image. So – crazy idea – why don’t you just… not go? She always makes you feel crappy about yourself. I say screw Suzie. Give yourself the Christmas gift of not seeing her.’
‘You know I can’t do that, June! You know what they’re like. You know how important family is to them.’
‘Is it though? Your dad, yeah. He’s just like Nanna Nora with a Magnum P.I. moustache. But your mom, and your sister? When they’re on a roll, they make Cruella de Vil look like a pushover. They’d give Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones a self-worth problem. They’d eat Regina George whole, and have room left over for Nurse Ratched. They’d?—’
‘Okay, okay, I get it!’ I say, holding my hands up in surrender. ‘They’re mean girls. But they’re mean girls I’m genetically related to, and it’s just my fate. My Christmas destiny.’
‘Well, screw destiny as well – make your own. Do something totally different. Something that’s just for you.’
I tilt my head to one side as I consider this. I’m not totally sure what ‘just for me’ would even look like these days. I’d like to be more adventurous. I’d like to do something brave – but in reality, I suspect I might just sit here in my little apartment alone all Christmas, eating my way through a pile of take-out fortune cookies in the dark, in case Mom and Suzie did a drive-by.
‘You used to want to travel,’ she persists. ‘You wanted to see the world.’
She’s right, I did – but all of that was tied in with Ted. We’d made so many plans, but they all fell to pieces on our wedding day. When a guy jilts you at the altar with all of your friends and family there to witness it, it leaves a dent in your travel itinerary.
It also left a dent in me. It wasn’t just the very public nature of the jilting, it was the fact that the man I’d loved, the man I’d trusted, the man I’d expected to spend the rest of my life with, decided that I wasn’t enough. When the person who knows you best in the whole world rejects you, it leaves scars that nobody can see on the surface. It also made me doubt myself and my own judgement – how had I not seen it coming? How had I not known something was wrong?
I’ve felt constantly nervous ever since. Like nothing in life is solid, like nothing can be counted on. I’m always waiting for the rug to be pulled from beneath my feet. I even got freaked out by a trip to Macy’s today, for goodness’ sake – never mind anything further afield.
‘Remember how much you wanted to go to England?’ June continues, a determined look in her eyes.
‘That was during my Hugh Grant phase. And I’m sure England isn’t really like it is in the movies.’
‘Probably not – but why don’t you go and find out? Or see where Nanna Nora came from? I know you don’t believe in yourself anymore – but I believe enough for both of us.’
‘Well, that’s really nice of you, June, but I don’t think I can get a belief transfusion. England, Ireland… they’re on the other side of the world!’
‘Exactly. If you were in England – or Ireland, or France, or even Alaska – you’d have a really good excuse not to spend Christmas with your family.’
I have to admit that is tempting. It’s always tough, but this year will be even harder because Nanna Nora won’t be there as a buffer zone. She won’t be sitting at the Christmas table in her leprechaun hat. She won’t be leading a round of carols after the holiday ham, or drinking Guinness from her wine glass, or cackling away as my nephews make fart noises with their armpits. She won’t be anywhere, and even the thought of it chokes me up.
‘Nothing is quite the same without her, is it?’ says June quietly, knowing exactly where my thoughts have gone.
‘No, and her not being there will make Christmas even worse.’
‘All the more reason to just say no.’
‘But what about Dad?’ I say, blatantly looking for excuses. ‘What about work?’
‘Your dad is a grown-ass man who can fend for himself – and as for work, didn’t your boss send out that email, offering people unpaid leave?’
I mull it over, and reply: ‘Yeah. Okay. But it’d be so expensive. I’m not sure I can afford it.’
June makes the kind of duh-duh buzzer noise you hear on TV quiz shows when the contestant doesn’t know the capital of Venezuela, and says: ‘I’m calling bullshit on that one. You can use the money Nanna Nora left you. I honestly can’t imagine a better way for you to spend it. I’m worried about you, Cassie, and I know she was too. Ted’s married. You’ve spent the last few years scared of your own shadow. Something needs to change. Use the money – she’d call you a fecking eejit if you didn’t.’
She probably would – after all, I am acting like an idiot. After the whole wedding-that-wasn’t, Nanna Nora was a rock. My mom and sister were devastated, but only part of that was for me. The rest was social embarrassment. They never vocalized it, but it was there, hidden beneath their subtle looks, the slightly judgemental tone, the way they’d go suddenly silent when I walked into a room. I’d made a mess, and they really don’t like mess.
Nanna Nora, though? She didn’t care how messy it all was. She told me she understood what it was like to have your heart broken, reassured me it was only a matter of time before it healed whole – and stronger than ever. I never quite believed her, but it was comforting. We’d always been close, but even more so after the wedding.
When she died, she left me a surprisingly large chunk of change in her will. We were all shocked, especially Suzie, who was gifted Nanna Nora’s ceramic cat collection. One last joke from Nanna Nora, because Suzie is allergic to cats. To be fair to my sister, she has them on display in her otherwise minimalist house, but even looking at them makes her sneeze.
Some money was set aside for Suzie’s boys, and she left small gifts for everyone, but the majority came to me. It’s not enough to retire on, but it would be enough for a really nice trip. If she’s up there watching me, she’ll be laughing, I think. Maybe she’ll raise a glass, and give one of her insane made-up toasts – something about the sun shining on my face and the plane staying in the sky and the runway rising up to meet me.
So far, I haven’t touched the money she left me. I’ve learned to live within my reduced means rather than dip into my little nest egg. Somehow, spending it would make it too real – it would mean that she’s really gone.
That’s a hard concept to explain, so I just say: ‘I was saving that for a rainy day.’
‘Sweetie,’ says June. ‘It’s already raining. It’s time to buy yourself an umbrella.’