Chapter 16 #3
It had been two years, but somehow Nate looked exactly the same as he always had. Maybe a little more tired. More worry lines crinkling around the corners of his mouth, his eyes. But for the most part, he still looked like the messy-haired teenager she’d gleefully run to meet on the beach.
“You want to join us for a walk?” he asked. “It’s the only way I can get her to nap in the afternoon,” he added, sounding apologetic.
Julia hesitated for a second, wondering if two years was enough time to soften the blow of what had happened between them in Santa Monica.
Nate’s entire life had changed in the two years since, been turned around and now upside down.
Nate was someone’s father now. A single father, at that.
And she would be leaving in the morning anyway.
Maybe a walk would do them both good. Reset the Nate and Julia clock to make everything steady and normal again, the way it had been for so many years.
She got off the porch swing and jogged down the path to meet him, and then she offered to push the stroller, which she noticed on closer inspection was a Bugaboo. Well, that brought up so many questions that she swallowed back.
It was the middle of the afternoon but the sun hadn’t quite made it out today, the sky a misty gray and the air cool. It was emptier than usual on the sidewalk by the beach, and Julia pushed the stroller with ease.
“I know this is weird,” Nate said softly as they walked.
“Lucky for you, I’m an expert stroller pusher,” Julia said. But in her head, she kept repeating the word baby as she walked. She was thinking about how she would never again have another one of her own who would need a stroller like this. Veronica didn’t even need a booster seat in the car anymore.
Nate chuckled. “That you are. But you know what I mean. You and me. The baby. My baby.”
“I’ve been doing much better this year,” Julia said, and it almost didn’t sound like a lie. “I went back to work part-time.”
“Do you enjoy it?” he asked.
“I do. It keeps me busy,” Julia said, and that was the truth.
She’d been wallowing in self-pity for so long that it felt good to have another purpose.
She liked her new position focusing on custody cases, essentially, as she saw it, helping kids who needed her.
Plus, it was exhausting working, mothering Veronica, trying to keep everything easy and good with Ted in between.
Exhaustion made it so much easier to fall asleep each night.
“I don’t want this to be weird between us,” Nate added, interrupting her thoughts. “I mean Santa Monica…” His voice trailed off, like he couldn’t quite finish the thought.
“It’s not weird,” Julia said emphatically. There would be many more May weeks and more Ocean Boulevard walks. Mallory would bloom and grow, and Julia would love her because she was a part of Nate, not in spite of that. “And Santa Monica is in the vault,” Julia said firmly.
“Thank God for the vault.” Nate laughed wryly.
They walked on for a few minutes in silence. Mallory’s thumb migrated slowly into her mouth and then she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. “Success,” Julia said quietly, pointing into the stroller.
“I’ve really missed you, Jules,” Nate said in response.
She had missed him too, but she didn’t let herself say that. Instead, she looked at his beautiful, peaceful sleeping baby and said, “You should work things out with Heidi.”
He shook his head. “Heidi isn’t interested in that.”
“Still, you could co-parent. I could help you with some kind of legal agreement.” Her short time in custody cases had already taught her that this was generally the best option for any kids involved in a parental split. “Mallory deserves to have her mom, no matter what happened between—”
“Don’t you think I want that too?” Nate cut her off, sounding rattled in a way that was out of character for him. “But Heidi isn’t interested. She fell in love with some guy at the base, and when his unit got sent overseas, she left and went with him. She left me a goddamn note to explain herself.”
Julia felt the pain in Nate’s voice in her own chest, and she sharply drew in her breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Heidi came into Nate’s life like a whirlwind and left that way too.
Now Julia was glad she’d never actually met Heidi, because in her head she pictured her like the Wicked Witch of the West, Veronica’s new favorite movie villain, being swept in and out of Coronado in the eye of a tornado.
“You know, I’m here,” Julia said. “If you ever need me.”
“One week a year,” Nate said evenly, neither a revelation nor a disappointment. Just a fact.
Julia wanted to tell him that the rest of the year she was only an email, call, or text away. That the space between them wasn’t as huge as it used to be when they were kids and barely had a way to communicate. But instead she said, “This little girl is lucky to have you.”
Nora was packing her suitcase Saturday afternoon when her cell phone rang. Miraculously, duct-taped and all, the old flip phone still managed to jingle through half of the speaker when someone called her. Thank goodness. Because she didn’t have the money to replace it.
“Hey, kiddo,” Leo’s voice came through the line, sounding staticky and far away.
“Leo! Hi! Don’t worry, I’ve been practicing all week, and I’ll be back in the city before five tomorrow. Ready for rehearsals first thing—”
“Nora,” Leo cut her off. “We lost funding.”
“What?” The words were unexpected, and therefore made no sense. “What do you mean lost funding?”
“I mean, the show isn’t happening anymore. I’m so sorry.”
Isn’t happening? “What?” she said again, still not totally comprehending.
“It’s canceled,” he said.
But she’d spent the whole week steeped in Miss Marmelstein. Running lines in her head as she’d jogged on the path with her sisters. Singing lyrics into the ocean when she was out on the beach early mornings alone and also in the shower, much to Emily’s chagrin over their shared bathroom.
“Do you want me to pick you up at the airport tomorrow?” Leo was still talking. “Which one? LaGuardia?”
She shook her head, forgetting for a moment he couldn’t see her. She was flying to JFK and had planned on taking the train. And anyway, she didn’t want to face Leo under these circumstances. “No, I’m good,” she lied. “I’ll just… call you next week once I’m back.”
“Okay. I’ll buy you a drink. Chin up in the meanwhile,” Leo said. “Something else is going to come up soon.”
But as Nora disconnected from the call, she started to really doubt that it would, that it would ever happen for her the way she and Grandma Vera had once dreamed. She was never going to make it.
Nora was set to fly out last the next morning, and after Emily and Julia left in a cab together for the airport, and Nora was throwing all their linens in the washing machine (as Julia had reminded her three times before she’d left), she suddenly heard Mallory’s screams coming from Nate’s porch.
If Mallory had sounded like a goose as a newborn last year, this May, as a one-year-old, she sounded more like a possessed alien.
Bigger, stronger, louder. Bossier. And entirely unearthly.
Poor Nate. Nora worried he was in over his head.
She abandoned the wash and walked outside, across the front yard. Mallory was standing up in a Pack ’n Play on the porch, screaming her head off, and Nate was sitting on a chair across from her, his head in his hands.
He looked up when Nora walked up the porch steps. “I don’t know what to do,” he shouted. “I don’t know why she keeps crying.”
Nora had absolutely no experience with one-year-olds and on top of that, very little interest. She planned to stick to the promise she and her sisters made to each other as kids—she never wanted a baby.
She would never have a baby of her own. But she opened her mouth and did the only thing she could think of: She started to belt out “Miss Marmelstein,” the song she’d been rehearsing into the ocean all week, and which now she would never actually get to perform onstage.
As she belted out the very first Miss Marmelstein lyric in the very first line, Mallory suddenly and all at once stopped crying, stared at Nora, and Nora did the only thing she knew how to do: She kept on singing.
“Damn,” Nate said when she finished the whole song, and he and Mallory were both staring at her wide-eyed. “Damn, Nora. You’re so unbelievably talented.”
She felt her cheeks turning hot with the compliment. “Yeah, well, I was supposed to start rehearsals on Monday for this show, but it suddenly lost funding.” She sighed. “So now I’m about to fly back home to absolutely nothing.”
Nate stared at her for another moment. “What if you didn’t?”
“What if I didn’t what?”
“Fly home. I could really use some extra help for a few weeks. What if you stay here with us instead, just until I can get my shit together,” he pleaded.
What was he asking her, exactly? To stay with him, here, in his house, for a few weeks?
“I don’t even know the first thing about babies,” she heard herself saying.
But she was thinking, no matter how much time passed or how much her girlhood crush had faded, she would still, always, have a hard time turning Nate down.
“I don’t know how to do this alone.” Nate’s voice broke, like it was the first time he’d spoken this particular truth out loud. “Please, Nora.”
Nora thought about the few days she’d stayed here with him, after Becca canceled their wedding, the way he had slowly come back to life as they’d spent time together, and how for once, Nora had felt like maybe she was the glue.
And as she stood here now, Leo and the sting of another career disappointment suddenly felt a million miles away.
“I guess I can stay for a little while,” she finally said.
“You’re a lifesaver.” He grinned, that classic Nate lopsided grin. And now she felt that he was looking at her like she was this talented, powerful woman whom he needed, not like she was just little Noradora.
He wrapped her in a quick hug, and she suddenly worried he’d feel the rapid pounding of her heart in her chest. Then he pulled back, pointed to Mallory in the Pack ’n Play. “Do you mind watching her while I go make up the guest room? God, no one has stayed there since Julia—”
“Since Julia?” Nora cut him off, confused. “When?”
Nate hesitated for a moment. “Never mind, I misspoke. I haven’t been sleeping much.”
“But when did Julia ever stay in your guest room?” Nora pushed, feeling somewhere between curious and annoyed.
He bit his bottom lip, not answering for a few seconds. “I guess… um… right after Vera died, and she came to clean out the house.”
Nora, relieved, let out a laugh. “So I’ve stayed here since then, silly.”
Nate stared at her for another moment, and then he nodded. “Like I said, haven’t been sleeping much. Time got away from me.”