Chapter 9 #3
“It’s not,” he told her. “I’m already aware of this.” He put his arm around me, his hand on my hip, and he pulled me slightly behind his body.
“Nolan, calme-toi,” she said, shaking her head at us.
“We’re leaving. Let Dad know I said goodbye.” We were already walking and he had called those words over his shoulder.
“You’re not going to stay the night? What about my invoice?”
“The check is in the mail,” he told his mother and we kept moving, right out through the front door.
“Thanks for standing up for me,” I said once we were in the driveway. “It’s too bad that our bags are inside. Also, we don’t have a car.”
“Damn it. It was a good exit line, right?”
I nodded. “I can go back and knock. I actually have no shame.”
But at that point, the door opened again and his dad walked out. “You left these,” he said, and handed over the matching luggage.
“Thank you,” Nolan told him. “It was good to see you, Dad.”
“It’s always like this,” his father answered. Then he went back in.
We walked toward the road, Nolan carrying the bags while I ordered a car on his phone. “Why is it always like this?” I wondered.
“It’s how they are. I’m sorry you had to deal with it, though.”
“Are you kidding? I’m thrilled! I got the two most important pieces of paperwork and now I can get the rest, too. It’s amazing and I’m extremely grateful to you and also to your mom, even if she did try to insult me.”
“I like your shirt,” he mentioned.
“Thank you. Thank you for setting all this up, too. We could have stayed the night—maybe it would have been nice for you to spend more time with your dad? You could have slept in your old room.”
“He’s enjoying his time with a bottle of scotch right now,” he answered. “That’s about as much of them as I can take. Anyway, I don’t have a room there.”
I looked back at the house. “There’s definitely space for two guests in a building that size.”
“My actual bedroom isn’t mine anymore. When I went away to boarding school, they removed the furniture.
They boxed up my belongings and had them shipped to the dorm,” he explained.
“I’m not saying that I was blameless, because I was a terrible little shit at that point in my life.
But I also remember sitting on the top bunk and thinking that it was my only home.
That felt awful, especially because I hated my roommate so much. ”
“The bully. I hate him, too.” I had done this routine for Kolter, promising that I felt the same way as he did about people who had wronged him. I actually did hate Nolan’s former roommate, though. “I’m sorry, but I also don’t like your parents very much.”
“No one does. My grandparents wouldn’t allow them inside their house up north. But luckily for me, I was allowed there alone.” He put down our bags. “How long until the car gets here?”
“Fifteen minutes.” I handed back his phone and carefully checked the folder I carried to make sure that my paperwork was still inside. “I can’t believe I have this stuff. Maybe your mom is mean, but she must be a good lawyer.”
“Madeline also hires the best people to work for her. They hate her for a few years but I think it’s worth it in the end, because they learn to be utterly ruthless and compassion-free. Viv, I’m very sorry about what she said to you.”
“About my shirt? Or about how she kept repeating that she wasn’t able to track down my high school and college transcripts, even though you had already told her that I hadn’t gone to high school or college?
Or how she mentioned that people did such interesting things with drugstore makeup and then she stared at me and winced?
Or when she was concerned about whether I would be able to sign the back of my social security card and asked if I needed to practice first with a pencil?
Or how she wondered if I was small because of malnutrition or because my mom never got prenatal care? I’m sure those things are true.”
“Fuck. Yes, I’m sorry about all that but I was referencing when she brought up your mother’s criminal history.”
He had said that he was aware of my mom’s profession but he’d stretched the truth about other things, like when he’d announced that the two of us were together, a couple.
“I’m not really surprised by the length of her rap sheet,” I said.
“I know she used to get arrested regularly for various stuff, not just solicitation. She had a bad drug problem and so did my sister. I used to look for their latest mugshots but I stopped a few years ago. It was sad to see how much they changed, because both of them were so pretty. My mom was really worried about losing her looks, too. Like how you said that going grey and getting wrinkles wasn’t on your list of concerns?
It was near the top of hers because she depended a lot on her face and body to get men.
Not just johns but boyfriends and ‘husbands.’”
He nodded. “Do you think that either one of them would go to rehab and try to change?”
“No.” I sighed. “You know how it is, right? You have to really want something different and neither of them can even imagine their lives in another way. It’s hard when everything feels so narrow and there are so many boundaries.
You get like, ‘Holy bells. Is this it?’ And it is.
That’s it for you. Patchouli would react by going on a big bender that would end up with charges for disorderly conduct and property destruction.
My mom would get married again. She also went on a lot of big benders. ”
“That’s too bad.”
“It’s a hard way to live,” I agreed. “Now I won’t have to. I have this.” I patted the folder that I cradled to my chest. “I can have something different now.”
“You’re really not upset about those insults?”
“I mean, I didn’t think they had the ‘zing’ that she was after,” I said. “Like, I was surprised when she mentioned that most criminals are redheads—you know, I don’t believe that, anyway.”
“I don’t believe it either.”
“But the other stuff, like my ugly shirt, my lack of education, my mother’s occupation, my sister’s arrests, the blank on my birth certificate where my dad’s name should be?
That’s all very accurate. I don’t get upset by things like that anymore,” I explained.
“I remember crying at school and a teacher telling me that sticks and stones could break your bones, but words could never hurt you. They could back then but I’ve toughened up a lot.
Actual sticks and stones still hurt a lot, though. ”
A cool wind blew and rustled the paperwork in my arms. I glanced around.
“We’re nowhere near a graveyard,” he mentioned casually. Then he stepped close, like he had inside his parents’ house, and he put his arm around me. Maybe he’d only done that in case they were watching through a window but no matter the reason, I was glad.
The car arrived soon enough and we zipped away.
He looked out the window as we went and so did I, watching big houses and then a lot of traffic that we didn’t have up north.
He had gotten us rooms in a pretty hotel right in the city of Detroit and it was the first time I’d stayed in a place like that.
I looked around my room and found a refrigerator full of beverages… oh, no.
“Yes?” Nolan asked as he opened the door across the hall. “What’s wrong?”
I had been pounding to demand entry so it was a legitimate question. “I need to look in your baby refrigerator,” I said, and went under his arm to enter.
“My…oh, the minibar? You don’t have to worry. I asked them to empty it when I made our reservation.”
I already had it open and saw that he was telling the truth. “I was thinking that after tonight, you might be feeling the urge to crack one of those little bottles,” I explained. “It made me nervous.”
“I appreciate your concern. Would you like a water? They gave me about a hundred of those in place of the alcohol.”
I took one. “Thank you. There’s a safe in my room and I put the paperwork in there, but I don’t really think anyone will take it.”
“Probably not. And now, you can get more copies, too. For backup.”
That sounded great. “I texted Cadence and she’s so happy. She and her mom are watching a series about personal empowerment and she thinks that it’s working for her.”
“She’s empowered?”
I shrugged, because that would have been great but I doubted it. “Maybe I should watch those.”
“I was thinking about you and your videos. How many times have you seen people making bread?”
“I could check my history. The answer is probably around a trillion.”
“Why don’t you try it for real?”
“In your kitchen? In your nice ovens?” I asked. I felt doubtful about that, too.
“Sure. Let’s do it when we get back,” Nolan answered.
“Ok. I was also thinking about something for you. I think that you should have a job”
“What?” He stared at me. “You mean a job baking bread?”
“Sure, if you want! But you could do anything. I don’t mean it like your dad, like I’m disappointed in you somehow. I think it would make you happy to have one, so let’s make a list of possibilities,” I said. “We can discuss your future.”
Right now, that seemed to be full of baked bread and boundlessness. I was smiling as I flopped onto his bed, because it sounded wonderful.