Chapter 25 – NOELLE
NOELLE
My college roommate and closest friend Tanya arrived on Thursday with two bottles of natural wine and a bag of groceries large enough to suggest she'd been planning the visit longer than she admitted.
"I'm not in crisis," I said, at the door.
"I know. I just wanted to come." She handed me the bags and started taking off her coat.
"Okay, I lied. But everyone is worried about you and your sister-in-law was worried enough to send me a message asking me to check in on you, so that's saying something because until this point, our entire relationship consists of mutual events and cat memes. "
"That does sound pretty grave," I said flatly.
"Very proactive family, the Calvellis." She followed me to the kitchen. "Not Grant, obviously. The women."
I found glasses while she opened the first bottle.
The flat felt smaller with another person in it, in the good way.
The walls moved back, the rooms became actual rooms instead of spaces I was carefully occupying.
I'd been here nine days and I'd noticed the difference between the quiet I chose and the quiet that was just absence.
"How are you?" She poured and handed me a glass. Leaned against the counter and looked at me the way only someone who'd known you since freshman year could.
"Good." I turned the glass. "Honestly. I sleep now. I eat what I want when I want it. I've been drafting every morning. I've even taken a couple of commissions. The rooftop on that renovated theater across town."
"I know the one. I recommended you."
"You didn't tell me."
"I wanted to see if they'd call." She smiled. "They called."
I'd spent the last three days on the rooftop brief.
Not socializing, not event logistics, not someone else's calendar.
A drainage plan, a planting scheme, the particular question of what survived full sun at that height without looking strained.
The work had a texture I'd forgotten, rough at the edges, resisting, demanding things I had to figure out rather than retrieve from a perfected system.
"He called me after he got the papers," I said, since I knew she was going to let me bring it up first. "Tried to get me back."
"And what did you say?"
"Nothing profane, so there's that."
She laughed. "Is he still hounding you?"
"No. He stopped when I hung up on him." I paused. "I don't know what that means. I don't know if it means anything."
"Does it have to mean something yet?"
Outside, the canal showed itself between the buildings across the street, just a strip of gray-green water visible from the kitchen window, boats occasionally, the light going different colors as the afternoon shifted.
I'd been watching it most mornings. It had taken me until day four to remember that watching water was something I used to do before the marriage, before the calendar, before there was always something that needed doing more urgently than standing at a window.
"Vivienne called again," I said. "She's not pressuring me. She just calls to talk."
"She loves you. So does Celeste."
"If only I'd been as popular with my husband." I smiled ruefully. "Celeste told me he isn't working as much."
"That's new."
"That's extremely new."
Tanya was quiet for a moment, which meant she was choosing her words carefully, which meant they were going to be honest.
"You're not ready to hear it yet," she said. "About whether he's changed. You're still in the part where you're becoming yourself again. And that needs to happen completely before you can trust your own read on him." She refilled my glass. "But I'm noting it. For later."
"You're noting it."
"I keep a file." She raised her glass. "To the rooftop commission."
"To the rooftop commission."
We drank. Through the window, a barge moved slowly through the lock, patient and enormous, going somewhere it had clearly been before.
"He doesn't know I'm good at this," I said. The words came out sideways, unexpectedly, the way some truths arrive when you've stopped guarding the door. "At the work. He knew I trained, years ago. He knew I gave it up. But I don't think he ever knew what it meant to me."
Tanya set her glass down. "You've been invisible long enough."
I looked at the strip of canal between the buildings. The barge was gone, the water settling back to its original expression.
"The rooftop will be good," I said.
"It'll be extraordinary." She picked up her glass. "I've seen your drafts."