Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Nessa
In the time it took her mother and grandmother to travel from the lobby to her apartment, normally chill Nessa decompensated. From a young woman involved in an admittedly stressful emotional discussion, she unraveled into a distraught mess with swollen eyes and streaming nose, choking on sobs and unable to catch her breath long enough to speak more than two words.
Ranney and Mame were understandably terrified.
"What is it? Is someone…? Nessa, tell me!" Ranney held her by the shoulders, having dropped the bags of Vietnamese food on the floor. Mame stood behind her, stricken into silence, her hands over her heart. Neither of them had ever seen Nessa even close to this upset; not when Truffle died, not when she caught her best friend in high school and her boyfriend making out, not even when her senior project at Parsons got ruined the day before it was due.
"He's. Gone," Nessa hiccuped, then resumed sobbing.
" Who? Who's gone? Who died, Nessa?"
Shaking her head, she managed, "Not. Dead."
"An accident? Someone's in the hospital? Not Ashanti? Not Patrick or Caleb–oh dear God, not little Teddy? "
"No!"
"Nessa, please! What's happened?"
"It's all my fault!"
"Your fault? Ranney, call Evan! Don’t admit to a thing!" Mame found her voice. Ranney's brother, Evan, was a partner in a large Boston law firm.
"Evan does mergers and acquisitions, Mame. I don't think he'll be helpful here."
"No, of course not, but he'll know someone!"
"No mergers," Nessa said sadly, followed by a long, wet sniffle. "No mergers at all."
Ranney and Mame exchanged a suspicious glance.
"Let's go sit down and try to talk calmly. Mame, could you look in the refrigerator and see what there is in the way of chilled wine? Three glasses. Big ones. Use water glasses if you have to."
As they were settling on the sofa, Mame called from the kitchen, "Were you making coffee, darling? What should I do with this glass pot?"
Nessa's answering howl was like a wounded animal.
"Sweetheart," Ranney tried again, "is this about a man, by any chance? No one's hurt, right?"
"Me!" Nessa wailed. "And Matt, I hurt him, it's my fault, I am such a loser, I–"
A startling crash, the sound of shattered glass, and Mame appeared in the living room. Instead of wine glasses, her hands held strands of pearls, so many that they cascaded over her arm, looping down to her knees.
"Nessa, what in the world…?"
Ranney looked up at her mother, then down to the necklace, and then over to her daughter, who had covered her eyes with her hands. For a moment, no one spoke.
"Mamie, please could you put those back in the box? I don't want to see them–I never want to see them again."
The buzzer buzzed, and Nessa leapt up joyously from the sofa. "He came back!"
Dashing to the intercom, she cried, "Hello?"
"Hi, it's me," a calm female voice answered in that scratchy intercom way.
Nessa screamed in frustration but buzzed Liv in. Then she cracked the front door open and returned to the sofa, where she collapsed sideways, face down, shoulders heaving. Mame was nowhere to be seen but rustling sounds could be heard from the kitchen, presumably from the packing up of the offending necklace and cleaning up whatever had broken.
And so they remained until Liv's chipper voice called, "Hi, everyone, sorry I'm late!" Two steps into the living room, she staggered as Nessa's thin body hit her full force, arms around her neck, wild hair blocking her view.
"Well, hi, honey," she started, but quickly realized this was no ordinary greeting. "Uh, Ranney, do you..?"
"Yep. There's some problem but we haven't been able to get to the exact cause. We’re accessing the wine. Maybe you can help?"
"Ness?" Liv stroked her hair. "What's going on? Tell me."
Nessa shuddered. "I ruined everything. First it was the wedding on Saturday, and our job is to protect it and it was ruined , all my fault, and then Chris Allister at the photo shoot and I wasn't trying to, you know, assert myself but he posted a video, and Matt saw it. And I should have returned his calls but, I don't know, I was freaking out about work, so he came over and we were going to talk but then the necklace! And there was a note, and he saw it, and it was really bad… I ruined everything, every single thing, because another man gave me a pearl necklace!"
Mame chose this moment to enter, walking carefully, balancing a bleached wood tray with four very full balloon wine glasses and a dish of nuts. Bending slowly at the waist, she set the tray down on the cocktail table.
"Here we are," she announced. "I found a bottle of Cakebread. I think I saw this tray at Serena and Lily, very nice. And I found some protein, too. Now we can all sit down and solve Nessa's problem." She gave Liv a kiss on the cheek.
"No," Nessa said miserably. "It can't be solved. I'm a loser and I ruined it. It's over."
"Very few things in life are just over ," Mame said tartly, "and it's rarely the ones that you think are over. For better or for worse."
Nessa blew her nose into a tissue. "Matt is this amazing person. He's super smart, and he's thoughtful about things–big things, right? He's a minister . And we like to do the same things, he's fun, and he's…"
"Really handsome," Liv filled in, but that brought another sob. A smaller one, though, as the support began to buoy Nessa a little bit.
"What's he doing with me, anyway? I'm just a girl with a fashion degree and a career in parties. He belongs with someone smart and empathetic and, I don't know, someone who doesn't care what shape of heel is trending. Someone who wears peach dresses and little pearl earrings–oh, God, the pearls!" Closing her eyes, she let her head droop down.
"Wait, what pearls?" Liv asked, confused. "When you said pearl necklace, I thought you meant...” She cleared her throat suggestively. Ranney’s eyebrows shot up.
The joke went over Mame’s head.
Crooking her finger, Ranney led her to the kitchen. The sound of cardboard box flaps opening was followed by Liv's hushed, "Wow." Evidently, they read the card next, because her tone became outraged: "What an asshole!"
"Indeed," Mame commented, having already seen it. She brushed something invisible off the lap of her pink Chanel suit.
When she was sitting back down, Liv said with wonder in her voice, “That necklace is worth a lot, right? Like, five thousand dollars?"
"Two hundred, I would guess," Mame said.
"All this fuss over two hundred dollars? That's nothing to someone like him."
"Thousand," Mame clarified.
"Two–?"
Ranney nodded and declared the value. “Two fifty, actually.” Liv said nothing, apparently incapable of speech; she just looked at her friend and blinked.
"It was supposed to be a prop at the photo shoot," Nessa said, sighing. "I told you about the shoot. We were waiting for Cara, and Rob put it on me and Chris made a video–he said he was learning about photography–and he posted it. It looked worse than it was, and Matt saw it–I guess a lot of people did. And then the package came when Matt was here–we were going to talk–and he saw what was in it. The card, too."
"What happened then?"
"He left," she said with a tiny, sad shrug.
"You were going to talk," Mame said, "and that's what you need to do. A calm explanation and a sincere apology can fix almost anything, in my experience. Your grandfather and I were happily married for forty-two years, because we talked to each other. I highly recommend it."
"The video is actually quite beautiful," Ranney put in. "I mean, maybe not to someone you're dating, but Katie and Kari liked it."
"They did? They said that?"
"They did, this afternoon. They also said the preliminary magazine layouts for the Santorini wedding make it all look beautiful, like it was supposed to happen that way. Those women from their office did a good job rearranging everything on the lawn. If the guests all resist the urge to post disaster shots–and those photos wouldn't do George and Gianni any good, either–then we dodged a bullet there."
"You mean I dodged it."
"I mean we . We're a team at Wedding Protectors, Nessa, you know that. Do you think no one else there has ever made a mistake? Have you ever heard about the McCormick wedding, when Katie was still working there? A dog, a cat, and a bridesmaid almost drowned in a swimming pool and the bride and groom left in a helicopter– before the ceremony!"
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. I'm not minimizing what happened with the tide, Ness. It was bad. But you learned an important lesson, right? With Matt, that's a little different, but I think what your grandmother is saying is that you have to communicate. Lord knows I'm not a role model for successful relationships–" she rolled her eyes, "–but it's easier to give advice. Especially to your child. Right, Mame?"
Mamie smiled like the Sphinx and sipped her wine.
"It's not just the video," Nessa told them. She was calmer now. "He thinks I'm materialistic and too interested in how things look. Am I? Do you think he's right?" This time, she looked straight at Liv.
"I think you're one of the most generous people I know," Liv said sincerely. "And I think you like beautiful things, but not just when they're expensive, or because they have a certain label. Look at that." A graceful branch rested in a heavy glass cylinder on the table, anchored by beach stones. "That branch didn't cost anything, but you saw that it would make this whole room kind of perk up."
"Thank you," Nessa whispered. Liv's words were like aloe on a sunburn.
They took some of the sting away.
"Maybe, though," Liv went on, sounding thoughtful, "maybe that isn't coming across in your posts. You could think about making that more clear? Like, more branches and fewer…"
"...Porsches?" Nessa chimed in with a laugh. It was a good point, and it gave her a great idea. She sat up a little straighter. "I could use my site to show how to get the same look for less money! I could talk about how style is just a way of seeing things. I could…" Her voice trailed off, excitement evaporating. "You're right. But it's too late for Matt. He already thinks I'm superficial."
"Nessa, in every post I've ever seen, he's either in the gym talking about his weights or he's at some wedding in Nantucket or, like, on a glacier in Patagonia. Don't tell me he looks like Saint Matthew of Somerville, feeding the poor. I know he does important, spiritual work and he helps people every day–I know the gym videos are targeted at teens–but come on. Pot kettle black and all that, if you're talking about an online image."
"He's a good boy," Mame pronounced. "You're both good children. But you need to stop worrying about your phones and videos and TicTacs and get together and talk, like Melvin and I always did. Two people, in the same room, holding hands, looking at each other. Now what happened to those spring rolls? I'm hungry. I want my dinner."
Nessa had no interest in food–she was still too upset to eat anything–but she went with Liv to get the dishes and silverware and napkins. Ranney retrieved the bags of food, miraculously intact, from the floor where she had dropped them. By the time the meal was plated, garnished with basil and mint, and the wine glasses refilled, Nessa found that she had a little appetite after all.
"I love you all," she said, slurping a mouthful of noodles.
"We love you, too, darling," Mame replied. "Please don't talk with your mouth full. It's not attractive." She appeared to consider for a moment, then added, "And if you're single again, you have to be more careful."
When Ranney and Mame went home, Liv stayed to have another glass of wine and help clean up, but mostly she wanted to be sure that Nessa would be okay.
Nessa knew this because Liv had been blunt earlier, while clearing the table.
Blunt as in asking, “You know you won’t be struck by lightning for dumping a minister, right?” Nessa hadn’t even deigned to answer that, and of course she wasn't dumping him, but now with Mame and Mom gone, she was fresh meat.
"What are you going to do now?" Liv demanded, as if Nessa were a sitting duck.
"I guess brush my teeth and go to bed? What else is there to do?" Her voice did crack a little.
"I think Mame's advice made sense," Liv said slowly. "I think you have to talk, and I think it's usually easier to say things–and to hear them–when you're holding hands. Texting is good for 'what do you feel like eating?' or 'what time should we meet?' but it's not ideal for 'what do you want in life?' or ‘do we have the same values?’ That's what you were going to do before the pearls came, right? Hold hands and talk about it?"
" Yeeessss ," Nessa drew the word out. "But I don't know if he wants to talk to me now. He was pretty upset when he left. I guess I'll find out when he calls. If he calls."
Liv finished drying the bowl in her hands and set it on the shelf. "What if he's saying the same thing?"
"Olivia, please do not say I should call him. I can't. What if I call him and he doesn't pick up and he doesn't call me back? That would be horrible."
"You mean, like you haven't picked up or called him back since last week sometime?"
Nessa became intensely interested in wiping lipstick off a wine glass. "Anyway, he stormed out of here, not me. He should call and apologize."
Liv stared at her. "As someone whose job is primarily about resolving interpersonal conflict, I'm just gonna say that that is not a winning strategy. This is a relationship, not a debate. Come on, Ness, you really like this guy, right?"
"You know I do!"
"I can't make this decision for you, but if you never hear from him again, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering if there could have been a different outcome if you had just made one phone call. I saw this old movie once, An Affair to Remember , did you ever see it? They're in love and they're going to meet but she gets hit by a cab, I think? And she never calls him because she's, like, partly paralyzed? And there's no internet so he never finds out what happened until decades later? I cried so hard, oh my God–there's even a cool grandmother in it."
"That’s a really old movie. The one with the actress who played Diana Nyad?”
“Yes!”
“I saw that in college! I thought it was so stupid–how could she not call him? Who would do that?"
“Hold on. Back then, there weren’t even cell phones! How can you compare the two?”
“It’s not like they used carrier pigeons, Liv. They had phones. Letters. Fax machines.”
“That’s even worse, Nessa! You have a cell phone. He has a cell phone. Just reach out to him.”
“But I’m right!”
“Do you want to be right, or do you want to be with the right guy? Do you want to win the argument, but lose the relationship?”
"That’s not – but I’m – and he — "
"My work here is done."
Nessa’s phone buzzed. Hopeful, she grabbed it, then practically threw it across the room as if burned.
“Ack!” she screeched as it landed on the couch.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Natalya !”
“Natal – your stepmother?”
“YES!”
“She never contacts you unless she wants something.”
“I know!”
Liv picked up the phone and, in that way besties have of giving each other tacit permission to cross boundaries others cannot, began reading the text aloud in a thick, overly-haughty Russian accent:
Alexi wants to meet Chris Allister. Carmine says we come to Hamptons house and you can bring us to party. It will be fun. Sisters bonding.
“The universe hates me,” Nessa said, hysterical laughter bubbling up as she inhaled sharply through her nose, cold air assaulting her sinuses.
“Nah. Natalya’s just an opportunist.”
“Well, duh.”
“Ignore her text. Ignore her .”
Bzzz
We must take picture of Alexi in pearls. So beautiful!
As Liv read the words, Nessa laughed so hard her head hurt and her stomach tightened into a wall of pain.
At the door, they hugged, and Liv whispered, "You're sure you're going to be okay? I can stay over if you want me to."
"No, but pretty sure," Nessa answered, making a wry face. “I need to sit with my own thoughts.”
“That’s usually code for a bath bomb.”
“That, too.”
When the door had closed, though, it was suddenly very quiet in the apartment, and she didn't feel okay at all. Silence was one thing when you chose it, she realized, but it was completely different when it was someone else's choice. A few days ago, solitude was what she craved; getting into her bed alone at night felt like crawling into a refuge. Now, she looked at her bed with dread. Once she turned out the light, there was nothing to do but think, go over all the mistakes she had made, all the miscommunication, all the poor choices.
Over and over and over .
Her phone lay face down on the kitchen counter, outlined by the glow reflected in the white quartz. Snatching it up, she checked for the little red circles that meant someone wanted her attention.
No one wanted her attention.
Maybe Liv was right. After all, she had nothing to lose at this point by sending him a text. Calling, in real time, when he could ignore her and let it go to voicemail or, even worse, decline the call– that would give her something to lose. But a simple little text..?
Hey, she typed hesitantly. I feel really bad about
About what, exactly? Too much to type–she erased it.
Hey. Can we try again?
That was good. Not too much, not too little. Normally, she had a two-hour rule about emotional messages, but she already had Liv's approval, she wasn't drinking wine, and it was only five words, so she waived the rule and pressed the blue arrow.
The kitchen was clean, nothing left to do, so she turned off the lights and wandered to her bedroom. Stripping off the tan linen shift dress she'd worn to work, now wrinkled and dotted with tear spots, she dug to the bottom of a drawer and pulled out her oldest and softest sleepshirt.
Generally, Nessa was not one to preserve ratty old clothes out of sentimentality. Her philosophy was, if you loved it, take a photo, archive it, then throw it out and buy a nice, fresh, almost equally soft new one. This nightshirt was her one exception. Pink and gray striped (at least, it was when it was new), the fabric was worn through at the elbows and around the neckline, literally rubbed away by wearing and washing and wearing.
It was her equivalent of the Velveteen Rabbit.
Even Liv had never seen this garment, much less any male of her acquaintance.
And, reliably, it did its job:
I wore this when Truffle died , she thought. I wore it when I found Mandi and Chase making out in the laundry room in high school. I wore it the night the window got left open in the studio and the rain ruined my senior project. And it's still here, and so am I.
As she splashed water on her face, rinsing, she weighed the idea of the nightshirt as content for a post. Suggesting that her followers see the beauty in something old and well-loved–that would be different. Reaching for the jar of moisturizing cream, she noticed a foil packet containing a facial mask treatment. Her hand hovered, then picked it up.
Anti-aging–perfect. If anything is going to give me wrinkles, it's this situation.
Mame’s comment about being single again haunted her.
The directions on the packet instructed her to mix the contents with water and apply with the enclosed plastic trowel, then allow to set for twenty minutes. It was thick and pink, and it smelled okay but not exactly like perfume. As for any anti-aging properties, she was skeptical, but it certainly couldn't hurt.
Twenty minutes. Picking up her phone, she took a few experimental shots: her jawline, caked with pink goo; the neckline of the beloved sleepshirt, where the binding had pulled away and left an ever-growing hole; the spine of the book she was trying to read– Madame Bovary –resting on her new bedside table.
The post more or less wrote itself. "What Really Matters," she titled it, then added her thoughts, more than she'd ever put out there before. When she finished, she didn't even bother to do her usual careful proofread. No one was going to be sending her a free ratty nightgown to promote next week.
This was only about her.
It is what it is, she thought, and so am I.
The whole thing had only taken her ten minutes. With ten left before she had to peel off the now-hardened mask, she was headed for the kitchen and a bottle of water when she paused and took in a long, deep, cleansing breath.
Everything was going to be fine. Being her real self was part of growing. A step on her journey, one that felt shaky and unstable, but she’d taken it anyhow.
Time stood still as she let her mind run freely, a tornado of thoughts floating through her in a spiral. Developing a following on Instagram had been a thrilling ride, one she’d never taken for granted. Being paid attention to, her opinion mattering , had been such a rush.
When had it become so… constraining, too?
It would be ridiculous to let something like social media ruin her relationship with Matt. One viral video, then a viral photo and — that was it? Kaput? He’d gotten so angry about the pearl photo — why? In her reactive state she’d been so upset she hadn’t been able to think like this, feeling everything first.
Now, though, alone in her apartment, the authentic post out there, her face mask pulling on her skin, she smiled. It began to crack.
She smiled more.
Regardless of what happened now, she would be fine. Better than fine. Matt was an extraordinary man, but he was just that — a man. A human being, like her, with faults and weaknesses, with insecurities and worries.
As she stood still, contemplating everything, a glow washed over her skin, warm and comforting. She didn’t need Matt. She wanted him, but didn’t need him, any more than she needed one million Insta followers to like her.
Being liked felt good.
Being herself felt even better.
The doorbell buzzed. It startled her for a second, but then she automatically scanned for Liv's forgotten item–hat, scarf, wallet, whatever it might be. This had happened before. Nothing caught her eye, so she went to the intercom and pressed it.
"Olivia?"
"No. It's me."