Chapter 29 Florence
“Florence.”
Evelyn says my name like a teacher losing patience with her least favorite student. I had plenty of those when I was a kid. They could always find something to complain about.
Florence doesn’t pay attention.
Florence doesn’t apply herself.
Florence disrupts her classmates.
Florence asks too many questions.
Florence stopped coming to class.
Didn’t matter whether I was there or gone, quiet or loud. They hated me all the same.
“Florence,” Evelyn repeats slowly, emphasizing each syllable like I may not know the meaning of the word. “I want to make our time together as productive for you as possible.”
Evelyn may be the whitest person I’ve ever seen. I mean that literally: Her hair is white-blond, her skin white-pale, her eyebrows nearly invisible (though brushed into place). White tips on her fingernails, crisp white blouse, white-gold wedding band on her finger.
Thanks to Andrew, I know the ring is a lie, part of a charade to present herself as the sort of person who has her life together, the sort of person who has any right to tell other people how they should live.
I’m sick of your lies
As you sit there and therapize
Who are you to tell me how to live?
When your own husband cannot forgive —
You wouldn’t last one day in my shoes
One hour with my blues
You’d fade so fast into gray
Never bursting into every shade
A rainbow that will never fade
Like me.
My first album was filled with lyrics about living life in Technicolor, Dorothy after she landed in Oz, leaving the black and white behind. Back then, I thought my life would never be dull again. I certainly never thought I’d bleed into the background.
This morning I notice that Evelyn’s wide-set eyes are bloodshot, the whites run through with pink and red. Maybe her divorce kept her up crying all night.
“Define productive,” I say finally.
Evelyn looks pleased that I’m responding, like this is progress.
We’re sitting on the (white) couches by the fireplace.
Evelyn’s back is to the kitchen, where Andrew stands, preparing lunch.
I can already see that it’s some kind of salad, food you’re supposed to eat, every vitamin from A to Z.
The ingredients are probably all local and organic, those catchphrasey words I was supposed to care about as soon as I started making enough money to afford it.
Though how produce could be local in this climate this time of year, I don’t know.
I’m tempted to ask, just to catch Evelyn in a lie, but I don’t want her to think I’m the kind of person who cares, because I’m not.
Andrew catches my eye and pulls a Snickers bar from his pocket, winking as if to say, Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
I bite my lip to keep from smiling.
“Productive is something we can define together. What would you like to get out of your time here?”
I gaze at my guitar, propped in the corner where I left it last night. I didn’t write after Andrew disappeared. It was like the song got snagged and stuck, unable to keep moving.
“Lady, we both know I’m just here to ride out the storm,” I answer.
“What does ‘riding out the storm’ mean to you?” She makes my words sound like a punchline.
“It means I’m here till things settle down at home.”
“What would home look like if things ‘settled down’?”
Joni Jewell would be stricken from the radio, banished to the world of washed-up pop stars.
My kid and my mom would stop conspiring against me, two peas in a pod leaving me out in the cold.
My husband would show up on my doorstep after all these years, a smile so big plastered on his face like he couldn’t remember whatever it was that made him leave.
“If what you want is to live a more settled life,” Evelyn continues, “I can help with that.”
“Can you?” I ask archly.
“Another word for settled is stability. And you’re not exactly known for being stable, are you?”
“I thought you weren’t interested in what anyone else said about me. Isn’t that what you said the other day? You wanted to hear my version of events, threatened to drug me for suggesting you read my bio online.”
I expect Evelyn to look humbled—I caught her lying—but she merely smiles. “It would be dishonest to pretend I don’t know anything about your life, and I don’t think dishonesty would help us build a strong connection.”
I feel my gaze wither when Evelyn suggests that she wants to connect with me, like she isn’t here because she’s paid to be, like she actually cares about me, wants to know me. “I don’t think there’s much chance of us building any kind of connection.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re not the kind of person I have any interest in connecting with. Besides, there’s all kinds of instability.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Like, financial instability. Whatever else has happened, I’ve been paying my own way since I was a teenager. Never missed a mortgage payment or a phone bill. Not once.” I pay someone to keep track of all that for me—dates and deadlines aren’t exactly my strong suit—but it still counts.
“And you know, my marriage ended, but we never got divorced.” I emphasize it like it’s a dirty word.
Outsiders never understood our relationship.
Journalists said I made him miserable, snapping pictures of us that made it look like we were fighting on the street when we were really making fun of each other.
Not to say we never fought. Of course we did.
But the rest of the world had no idea what it looked like when we made up in private.
The press announced our engagement like it was a tragedy, shocked that I’d managed—as they put it—to land him, like I’d tricked him into loving me.
They didn’t know that he’d had to ask me to marry him once, twice, three times before I said yes.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love him—I did, so much it scared me sometimes—but I wanted to make my own name before I became someone’s wife.
So I didn’t say yes until our second album went gold.
But when we announced our engagement, the press made it sound like I was just another groupie.
His female fans gathered outside our wedding venue crying. When I pulled up in my white dress, I saw someone holding a sign begging him not to go through with it.
After he left years later, I knew that all those people who said we were doomed were patting themselves on the back for having been right.
“We never battled over custody, never divided up our assets,” I continue. “Not like some people, who spend years arguing over who gets what.”
Evelyn shifts in her seat, so I know I hit a nerve.
“I’m proud of my marriage.”
Evelyn scratches her scalp, causing a strand of hair from her perfect bun to come loose. As she presses it back into place, I can see that she’s shaking slightly.
I add, “Whatever else I’ve done wrong, at least I know I didn’t fail at that.”
The lie tastes sour in my mouth, but I’m careful not to let it show. No one knows the truth of how things ended, I made sure of that.
In the silence that follows, I concentrate on the sound of Andrew chopping vegetables. It sounds like a drumbeat. I bet he’s doing that on purpose.
“Lunch,” Andrew announces finally, breaking the silence.
I stand immediately, patting my belly like I’m starving. “I guess we’re done for the day.”
This afternoon, a personal trainer will (try to) get me to exercise, and then a massage therapist will loosen up all the muscles I was supposed to be strengthening.
I feel the soft flesh of my belly beneath my hands.
My kid was an emergency C-section. I hadn’t been scared, figured it was a routine procedure, happens every day.
I was awake when things started to go wrong.
I heard the panic in the doctors’ voices when they saw bleeding where there shouldn’t be.
My kid and I stayed at the hospital for weeks.
When they finally sent me home, I could barely walk.
In between bites of my salad, I hear a soft but firm thump. I turn and see that a tiny bird has flown into the wall of windows behind the couch.
Sascha, the housekeeper, is already outside, shivering in her gray scrubs.
She pulls on rubber gloves and picks up the tiny ball of feather and bone.
She doesn’t check to make sure the bird is dead before dropping it into a plastic bag and tying it closed.
I imagine that bird’s heart still beating, imagine it flapping its wings, trying to escape.
It’s the first time I’ve actually seen Sascha clean anything.
This place is like a fancy hotel where the maids wait for you to leave the building before they clean up, so you walk into a spotless room without a reminder that someone had to get down on their hands and knees to undo the mess you made.