Chapter Thirty-Six Maddie
Chapter Thirty-Six
Maddie
Growing up, no matter how hard things were, Mom always went to great efforts to create holiday magic for us.
It warms me to my core to know that, with the help of Bee and Nolan, the picturesque ideal Mom had always strived to create in our old, little house (that had the worst insulation but somehow never felt cold) is possible.
The reality of the holidays finally has met the version in her head.
Life is tumultuous and uncertain and full of an aching pain right now, but I can at least say that I am no longer worried for the well-being of my mother.
I know that she is taken care of now. It’s not as though we never had the desire to before, but money.
Fucking money. It always came down to money.
And I’m filled with a fiery anger all over again—the same anger that had me falling for Gentry and the future we could build.
The anger that had me eagerly saying yes to Veronica Balentine and the power she could help me garner.
The power to make a dent in our broken—no, nonexistent—mental health services.
Mom sits down next to me, and Nolan passes over a cozy blanket for us to share. I take a sip of my cider before setting it down and laying my head in Mom’s lap.
She makes a pleased noise as her soft, dish soap–scented fingers brush through my hair.
A single tear slides over the bridge of my nose and into the line of my hair.
“Why are you crying and what have you done with my sister?” Nolan asks.
Bee smacks him hard on the arm and he chokes on his cider.
“What?” he asks. “The only time I can remember Maddie crying when we were kids was when INK broke up because she was using a quote from Kallum as an INK endorsement when she ran for class secretary in fifth grade.”
“It was a weak campaign,” I tell them. “You know it’s bad when your platform is that you’re INK approved.”
Mom smooths my hair back and my bangs away from my forehead. “Is it Gentry?” Her voice drips with an indignation I did not think her capable of. “I can’t believe anyone voted for that buffoon.”
“No, actually,” I tell them. “I mean, yes. It starts with Gentry.”
“You know what,” Bee says, her finger jabbing angrily in the air. “You’re broken up, so I can just say it now. I hate that motherfucker and I always have.”
Above me, Mom nods as Nolan says, “Hell yeah, baby.”
“And I shouldn’t even be surprised by his horrific sex worker registry stunt,” Bee adds.
I’d read more about it over the last few days now that my news feeds were more Southern California–focused again.
It was always part of Gentry’s plan to run on family-first policy and to straddle the line of liberal and conservative, and if it was for the sake of pushing through legislation that truly mattered, I understood why he would do that, even if my younger self would have been horrified.
But I really hadn’t seen that family-first olive branch coming in the form of a California sex worker registry so that you could see on a map if any sex workers lived in your neighborhood.
The map was supposedly anonymous but did give specific addresses, just like the sex offender registry.
It was the kind of policy that would (hopefully) never pass, especially in a state built on the entertainment industry, but I’ve thought that before about absolutely inane bills that were then used to amass attention and dominate news cycles.
And it worked, because in the last week of his campaign, when thousands of base supporters had already voted early, Gentry began to float this new idea of his and immediately piqued the interest of zealous extremists who wanted to rid the earth of anything that they deemed sexually deviant even if it meant burning it all to the ground just to build it back up.
The furrow in Bee’s brow is riddled with genuine concern.
The registry would greatly impact many people she knows and possibly even Bee herself.
Even if I don’t know how much truth there is to it, I feel compelled to comfort her.
“The good news is he’s only a junior lawmaker,” I assure her.
“He’s only doing all this to make some noise.
Very few people would actually vote for this. ”
“I hope so,” she says as Nolan pulls her under his arm and kisses the top of her head.
And I do too. The word registry in conjunction with anything outside of babies and weddings is almost always a bad idea.
“Okay,” Mom begins, “so we are in agreement that Gentry is an awful mother . . . effer.”
“Mom!” Nolan and I both say at the same time, his voice full of alarm and mine full of delight.
She shrugs. “I’ve said the actual word before.”
“What else are you keeping from us?” I ask.
Bee snorts. “Maybe you should ask her about her contractor boyfriend.”
I shoot up now to face her, and Nolan is on the edge of his seat.
“What the ever-loving fuck, Mom?”
Mom rolls her eyes as she pulls me back into her lap. “Oh, hush, you two. It was one dinner date.”
“And three coffee dates,” Bee adds.
“And four brunches,” Mom continues.
My brother’s nostrils flare. “I’m going to beat the shit out of this guy with his own tool belt.”
Mom giggles. “Donald doesn’t wear a tool belt on most days. He’s the contractor, dear. And you’re the one who hired him to rebuild the steps and pergola in the backyard. And he’s a very kind gentleman.”
“He didn’t even kiss her until the third date,” Bee says, trying to prove Mom’s point.
“And how exactly do you know all of this?” Nolan asks.
“I’m observant, okay? And it was more entertaining than my book club book when I had to back out of filming for that new Hope After Dark movie last month because I was already showing too much.”
“So you and Donald are a thing?” I ask, feeling a little hopeful for our mom.
“We are taking it slow,” she confirms. “But perhaps we are . . . the beginning of a thing.” With a huff, she turns her attention back toward me. “Enough about me. Maddie, talk to us, baby.”
Nolan nods. “Yeah, we’ve hardly heard from you since you left for the gig in Mount Astra.”
I groan and bury my face in the blanket Mom and I share, but she silently squeezes my shoulder, and I know it’s finally time to tell them everything. Not just about Bram.
My first confession comes in the form of my nonexistent law school scholarship and how it was an informal guarantee that Gentry and his family would pay for my student loans once we were married.
Nolan leans forward, like he has a lot to say, and I’m sure he does—mainly that he would have rather paid for law school than have me in debt to a bank or the Wade family. But Bee pulls back on his shoulder and encourages me to continue.
I walk them through how desperate I was to leave Southern California and then getting the childcare job with Bram to help offset expenses.
“Where in Mount Astra are you staying?” Nolan asks.
“Well, I was staying with Bram and his girls.”
“So you were a live-in nanny?” Mom asks.
I frown as I think of how Bram would gently, but quickly, correct her by saying childcare provider.
“Sort of . . . um, so Bram . . . he offered me his spare room when . . . he . . .” I take a deep breath. I’m either telling them the truth or I’m not. I’m fine now. I have an apartment, so any of their worry would be retroactive. “He realized I was living in my car.”
“Maddie!” Nolan and Bee shout just as Mom weighs in with an outraged “What the fuck?”
I sit up again now. “Okay, that didn’t go very well. Though, Mom, I am impressed by your usage of a four-letter word.”
The three of them sound off with more questions and general outrage.
I explain. I don’t expect them to understand.
But I explain. I explain that I thought I had to do this on my own and that Bram proved me wrong.
Nolan grits his teeth, and I tell him that I love him and that he doesn’t owe me generosity.
He grumbles about paying off my student loans whether I want him to or not.
I tell them about the girls, and I can feel my whole face light up as I go on about Fern and how she conquered her boy troubles and how Letty and Berry are like salt and pepper and how one complements the other.
I tell them a little about Junie and our morning coffee dates.
I tell them about Veronica Balentine, and they all seem cautiously optimistic at what the future might hold.
And then comes Bram. With tears on the verge of spilling, I tell them about Bram and his greenhouse and his eco–bad boy past and I tell them about how I was having a hard time in the classroom at first and how Bram helped me find my footing.
I leave out the best parts, of course, even though I’m tempted to tell my brother a little too much to make up for the time I caught him and Bee in his childhood bedroom a few months after they got together.*
“This Bram guy sounds like he likes you a little too much,” Nolan says, his chest puffed out in big brother mode. “You think I need to send Kallum down the road to have a word with him while he’s in KC?”
“Trust me,” I tell Nolan, “if anyone needs a talking-to, it’s me.”
“Oh, Maddie,” Bee says. “What happened?”
I shake my head. “He fell for me. I fell back. Maybe even harder. I don’t know. And then I broke it off, because he is basically enemy number one to everyone who might consider donating to my campaign. Veronica gave me an ultimatum and I’m a heartless power-hungry bitch, so I dumped him.”
Mom grunts at my self-burn. “You are not, Madelyn.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Bee says as she reaches her foot over to lovingly poke me. Nolan might be a total doofus in the eyes of his sister, but he chose well when he chose Bee.
The three of them let me tell them even more about Bram and his group of friends and Hester Prynne and Porcupine the frog and the way I absolutely reinvented the school pickup line.
Bee is on the verge of violence as I regale them with the story of Professor Wallace and how I stood up to him with Bram’s encouragement. (The PG version.)
“So does this Bram guy have anything to do with the cactus you were forlornly holding when I picked you up at LAX?” Nolan asks.
My lip trembles. “He gave me that stupid cactus, and we’re not even together anymore and now I’m just responsible for it!
I have to keep it alive somehow and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of me killing it without him.
” (Even though that is the exact opposite of how Bram would react.) “So I brought it on the plane so I could keep an eye on it and so that it wouldn’t die of neglect. ”
“It sounds like you’re really projecting a lot onto this cactus, little sis.”
“I just think it’s rude that he would leave me with something to be responsible for when I can hardly keep a roof over my own head. It’s like he’s trying to prove how incapable I am without him.”
“Babe,” Bee says with a soft smile. “It’s hard to say for sure without meeting this plant daddy myself—”
“Can we call him literally anything else?” Nolan asks.
“What?” She shrugs, and I love that she organically found her way to Bram’s nickname without me even saying so. “He’s a plant person and a father. Plant. Daddy.”
Mom chuckles. “He sounds lovely. What were you saying, Bee?”
“Before I was so rudely interrupted by the father of my unborn child, I was saying that”—Bee looks down at me—“with love, I think you’re completely delusional, Maddie.”
I roll over onto my back like I’m in a therapist’s office and the pillow is my mother’s lap. “I know,” I concede. “But it’s just easier to hurt when there’s something to be angry about, you know? The pain has a place to go.”
“You’re so much like your father,” Mom says softly.
I hardly knew him. Nolan remembers more than I do, but my father is more foreign than a mythical creature to me.
The sadness in my mom’s voice, though . .
. For the first time I feel like I truly comprehend the way her voice sinks and then floats anytime she mentions him.
Sad to have lost him but happy for what they had.
Bram is alive. Thank God. And we were so short-lived, but our relationship feels more impactful in a matter of months than mine with Gentry did in four years.
For as angry as I want to be, for as much as I want Bram to fight me, I can’t find it in me to regret a thing.
Like Mom, I’m sad it’s gone but happy it existed at all.
The conversation shifts to Bee and Nolan, and they swear us to secrecy as they list out potential baby names.
We watch our first Christmas movie of the season, the Hope Channel’s attempt at a lower-budget ode to Die Hard.
I slip in and out of sleep, as does Mom.
Nolan offers to walk her out back to her studio, and she holds a hand out for me to come with so we can cuddle up like we did when I was a child and Nolan was away on tour and it was just the two of us and the act of sleeping in separate beds seemed like a useless boundary to maintain when all we truly had was each other.
I feel like myself. Telling them everything, even if they don’t have all the answers, feels like fresh air.
And it feels so, so good to be Maddie again instead of the Gentry-shaped fiancée I had folded myself into.
The girl who spent each holiday with her family, trying to make them see how lucky she was to have such a handsome and smart guy from a wealthy, established family interested in her.
Being fat for much of my life always meant trimming myself back until all that was left was the version Gentry wanted to see.
Especially because he was this traditionally attractive guy, and if I let myself become anything other than what he needed, his light might stop shining on me.
It was already hard enough to get anyone to take me seriously, but with Gentry by my side, I was so certain we could be this power couple and that the world would see what he saw in me. Worth.
But I and my desires would always come second, so maybe I owed a thank-you to Penelope Pike for breaking up with me.
I definitely wouldn’t have found Bram, and even if he and I are over, now I can say that I know what can be.
Thanks to myself, of course, but thanks also to him and his encouragement of every good girl, bad girl, sharp, hungry girl part of me.