Chapter 22 Now
Now
Over the next few days, my phone is more alive than ever with unanswered calls from my mother, as if she’s sensed me looking through the windows of my memory into her past life, transfixed. Horrified. On the twelfth missed call I answer.
“Are you dying?” I ask.
“No.”
Silence. Irritation creeps up my spine.
“Then what is it? Are you sick?”
“No.”
Her breathing is heavy on the other end of the phone. It’s unlike her to leave gaps in conversations for other people’s words to fill. A wariness creeps in.
My voice quietens. “Is this about Claire?”
“I suppose it is about your sister in a sense. It would be easier if you came to see me.”
Aha. “Mother, this is a new one for you.” She was always “Mother” to me. Never “Mommy,” “Mom,” or “Ma.” All those diminutives were too warm for her. Too familiar. She hadn’t earned them. “I’m not coming home. If that’s all—”
“Natalie, I need to talk to you. I need to tell you some things.”
“I’m sure you do, and given the things you’ve said before, I’m sure they won’t be true and will be designed to hurt me.”
A sigh, and then a classic. “Sometimes, you’re so much like your father. Natalie—”
“Goodbye, Mother.”
The call only leaves me more on edge than before.
For years after he died, I couldn’t mention Dad without Mother becoming apoplectic, but now she unsheathes his memory to slice me with when I’m unprepared, defenseless.
I can’t deny the truth of it, though. Despite my best efforts to hide it, sometimes I am so much like the monster he was. No wonder she hates me.
I’m relieved to be away from it all for an evening, finally sitting in this bar, on James’s earlier advice, sandwiched between Ama and Marketer Molly.
Although Ama’s no longer at the same company, our offices are nearby, and on this Thursday night, we’re crowded into a generic bar in Central.
The walls are almost sweating, it’s that hot, but the lights are dim and so everyone looks more attractive than they should.
This includes the group of suited city boys eyeing us up from the table nearby.
They’ve been watching us for a while now, casting glances our way that are less subtle than they think they are.
There are four of them. The easiness between them suggests that they are close, although one is clearly on the periphery of the group, and one is the leader.
Not that friendship groups should have leaders, but that this is the kind of friendship that does.
Work friends, which the location of the bar and the attire speak to.
Ama and Molly are in good spirits. Ama has finally just been promoted and Molly has gotten a raise. More good news than usually runs in junior employee circles, but our respective businesses are booming—even when times are hard, people love a beer.
The two of them are enjoying the looks being sent our way by the nearby suited gentlemen.
Or not gentlemen. Almost gentlemen. Whatever.
The point is, they’re enjoying the looks.
Ama is single and Molly has a boyfriend she doesn’t much like whom she will likely marry.
Perhaps it’s the certainty of this, of being stuck with him forever, that makes her so desperate for the attention of other men.
For an evening, she can pretend that she would be bold enough to leave him, to start a life with someone else.
I straighten my spine, try to shake out the mean thoughts with a shimmy of my shoulders.
“What’s the matter?” Ama asks, hand on my back.
“Nothing,” I reply, slouching down again on the barstool.
“Are you sure?” she asks. “I know sometimes things just kind of get…” She gesticulates vague shapes in the air. “Just kind of a lot, you know?”
It’s a strangely incisive and left-field question. I don’t like it at all.
A distraction. We need a distraction, something fun.
“Let’s call them over,” I say, noting that the gazes are now a two-way street from table to table. Aren’t I the fun Cool Girl, after all? The one guaranteed to make a party more interesting, a family barbecue less dull?
When the men arrive at our table, the leader is right into names.
None are worth remembering, so we’ll call them Suit 1, Suit 3, Suit 2, and Mr. Periphery.
I’m not sure why it makes sense to name them in that order, but it does to me.
Suit 1 immediately turns his chair around as he sits so that he can rest his forearms on the low back.
I’ve already decided to make Mr. Periphery my coconspirator for the evening, using the fleeting moment in which our eyes lock to roll mine. He clears his throat and looks away.
Hmm. Not what I expected from the clear outsider.
Mr. Periphery is quiet, and Suits 3 and 2 don’t have much of interest to say.
Neither does Suit 1, but he’s happy to carry the conversation nonetheless.
Ama and Molly titter along to vaguely funny and mildly offensive jokes.
It’s clear that they also know how to ingratiate themselves with guys like these, make them adore them.
It’s simple, really—shut up and laugh. But tonight I can’t stomach playing that role.
Instead, I go into Cool Girl overdrive, raised eyebrows and unimpressed smirks that carry enough humor to suggest that beneath it all, maybe I do want to fuck them.
The suits, entertained and alive in the presence of women to perform for, keep the drinks coming.
Martinis and palomas and mojitos and prosecco.
It’s obscene. I hope they’re paying. Implicit as it is, you never know when an ego might get bruised, or an attack of conscience might appear after a glance at the white line that marks where their ring usually sits.
Men can up sticks and leave at any moment if you’re not careful, and neither Ama nor Molly nor I can afford to be stiffed with the bill.
Before long, we’re all a little sloppy—we girls more than the four men, and even then, me far less so than Ama and Molly.
In fact, it’s a stretch to call me sloppy at all.
I’ve made a point of not letting myself get too loose for several years.
There have been too many dark nights followed by fatalities in the mornings.
Too many blank spots in my memory clouded over by nice tequila and narcotics.
What I can do is keep my faculties about me.
I’m terrified of what I’ll do if I don’t.
Suit 1 and Molly are jostling each other with their shoulders.
There’s a palpable tension in their locked eyes and loose smiles.
I wonder if I should put a stop to this, seeing where this is going.
I want to. And not just because Suit 1 is obnoxious, bigoted, too handsy—but because I know what it will mean for Molly if she takes this too far.
“Molly?” I ask. I try to make the question sound carefree, a cheeky raising of the eyebrows, a laugh. But it’s clear she knows what it means.
“Oh, give over, Nat,” she says, garnishing the comment with an eye roll of her own. I don’t love it.
“What?” Suit 1 asks. He jostles her, bleary eyes scanning between the two of us. He finally settles his gaze on me, laughs, and says, “I think our girl here needs another shot.”
Great. The last thing I need is to stand out as the sober friend. I accept the shot handed to me by Suit 2, laughing along with jokes and mentally planning my route home. The night has been disrobed of its facade of fun and is shrugging on something unseemly in its place.
Before long, Ama announces her intention to head off. It is late, after all. Suit 2 surprises me by saying much the same. Suits 3 and 1 and Molly are keen to head to another bar. I look at the time and my heart sinks.
“Molly, babe, I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”
She scoffs, grabs her bag. I try to tell her not to go and she looks at me like I have three heads. An alarm is whirring in my brain. I stand, physically take her arm in mine, stare her down.
“Molly, go home. Brian will be wondering where you are. Get an Uber, and text me when you get in.”
A pout forms on her lips as a question settles on her brow. The sound of his name has been at least a little sobering. She glances at the suits, perhaps begins to see what I see. She nods, straightens.
“Yeah, I’ll order an Uber now.”
“You sure we can’t convince you to come for another?” Suit 1 asks me.
“I think I’d best head home soon.”
He shrugs. “Your loss.”
The tension leaches out of me and I realize how badly I need to pee.
The girls and I hug, promise to meet each other outside.
I run to the loo, cool plastic beneath my thighs as I sigh and relieve myself.
It’s clear to me that I’ve drunk more than intended, forgoing my usually extensive wipe-down of the seat. My phone pings. A message from Molly.
Uber’s here. Hopping in but so fun catching up, speak more soon x
By the time I reemerge, there’s a girl waiting outside my cubicle door, slightly smudged mascara under wide eyes. It’s clear that she’s desperate. I sidestep out of her way.
“Sorry, it’s all y—” The sight of the empty stall next to mine stops me. All the other stalls are empty, in fact.
“You’re with that guy in the bar, right?” she asks.
I make my way to the sink, soaping my hands. “Which guy?”
She shifts from foot to foot, fingers twisting together. “The guy in the gray suit, brown hair. Looks a bit like James McAvoy. You were with your friends, but they just left, I think.”
Mr. Periphery. “Oh, him. Yeah, we’re not really friends. We just met.”
“Yeah, well— Sorry, I don’t know how to say this…but I’m pretty sure I just saw him put something in your drink.”
I freeze for a moment. “Wait, what?” The tap goes off and I don’t bother with a paper towel, patting my hands on the sides of my jeans. “What do you mean?”