“I knew your mother,” she waits to say until after I’ve signed.
Instantly the line ceases to exist. There is no one else in the room but this woman who knew my real mother. I was prepared for this at the signings in New York and New Jersey and Philadelphia, for long-lost relatives angry I’ve aired our family’s dirty laundry, for the truthers with documents and police reports that fact-checkers missed. But here, in Chicago, in front of the cameras, I am completely defenseless and at the mercy of this frail, cold, and possibly battered old woman. Justine looks to be in her seventies, meaning she can’t have been a peer of my mother’s. If my mother were alive today she’d be approaching fifty. It takes a sizable amount of courage just to ask, “How did you know her?”
Justine nods, a single slow dip of her chin, as though she’s gotten my attention now. “I grew up with her mother.” Her pointer finger does a little leap, skipping a generation, the gold bracelets on her wrists caroling together. “Your grandmother. Your grandmother was a good woman.” She makes a noise to back this up. “She tried everything to help Sheila. Rehab. Doctors. A program in California one time too. And Sheila, she wasn’t a bad person. But she had her troubles with alcohol and with men. Your grandma did too. With men, that is. So many of us did back then.” Justine’s chin is held at a high, strong angle, but a tear slips down her face.
I pluck a tissue from the box on my table. I also learned on the last book tour: Keep tissues at the ready. “What happened to her?”
Justine blows her nose quietly, folding the tissue in half and taking her time slipping it into her purse. When she looks at me again, her eyes are dry. “She died. Twelve years ago this summer. She would have been so sorry this had happened to you. It was in your blood, for this to happen to you. But she would have been proud”—her voice wavers briefly on the word—“that you found a way to break the cycle. Promise me you’ll stay away from it. Alcohol and bad men.” Justine draws herself together with a deep breath, casting a steely glance first at Vince, then at me. “I only wish you had the courage to pay your respects at St. Mark’s. We would have embraced you.”
There is a resistance in my chest when I try to breathe, like I’m wearing one of those lead bibs in the dentist’s office. In the book, I write that I stood across the street from the church during my mother’s funeral service, watching the puny gathering process in and process out. Thinking about going inside was as close as I got. There just weren’t enough people. I would have been noticed. I would have had to explain who I was.
But that’s not what has left me short of breath. It was the very particular mention of St. Mark’s that did that. And now I just want her to go away. I need her to go away. I say, with a note of finality in my voice, “Thank you for coming tonight, Justine.”
“Well, okay now,” she says, with a smile that says she gets it.
I wanted to be seen so badly I made it the title of my memoir. Whatever comes next, I asked for it. I had it coming.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
Brett
“Garbage?” Arch holds up a copy of Business Plan Writing for Dummies that’s seen some things.
I reach for the tome and clutch it to my chest. “Never,” I say, stroking its yellow-and-black cover with inflated sentimentality. “I can never throw this out.”
“Holding on to it until you finally read it?” Kelly quips, tying off a garbage bag in my kitchen.
“Hey,” I say, placing the book tenderly in the keep pile, “I don’t have to move, you know.”
“Then who are you planning to film with?” Kelly purses her lips at me, sassily, before heading toward the garbage room down the hall.
“Who are you planning on filming with?” I call after her, lamely. The door rebounds off the dead bolt, seeming a little bit stunned.
Arch looks up at me from the floor, where she’s seated cross-legged, surrounded by old mail, DVDs, power cords, and Happy Belated Birthday cards from my dad and Susan. Her dark hair hangs over her shoulder in a long braid, and she worms it around her finger with a small, private smile. Arch is an only child and thereby endlessly amused by the ways in which Kelly is able to so easily irritate me.
“Well, that you can trash.” I toe an old copy of She’s with Him: A Novel by Stephanie Simmons. People promises on the cover: The sexiest beach read you can pack in your beach bag right now. Stephanie hated that her books were reduced to summer reads. They were smarter than that, exploring the nuances between working-class and white-collar blackness, and how they manifested in a romantic relationship. The New York Times did not agree. They passed on reviewing all three in the series, which chronicled the passionate-bordering-on-abusive relationship between a seventeen-year-old prep school girl and a seventeen-year-old rising football star from the wrong side of the tracks. Think Fifty Shades of Grey with black characters and writing that won’t impair your IQ.
“Can I read it?” Layla asks, emerging from the bedroom wearing a pair of my earrings.
“When you’re thirty-five,” I tell her.
Arch flips open the book. “But she signed it,” she says. Her lips trace the inscription, silently. She is still a moment, then looks up at me strangely.
“What does it say?” I ask, crouching down next to her to read it. To the love of my life Sorry, Vince! She dated it 3.21.15. “Whoa,” I say, wholly unprepared for the burning tightness in my throat, that feeling like you’re gurgling your heart. I can’t believe that just two years separates that inscription and the news Lisa delivered yesterday.
“You’re going to hate this,” Lisa had said over the phone, a smile in her voice.
Stephanie, back from her book tour, had a private prod meeting with Lisa. Morocco isn’t going to work for her either. The World Health Organization has issued a Zika warning for North Africa and, well, she’ll let all of us do with that what we will.
I had to squeeze the phone tighter to keep it from sliding out of my damp hand. “She’s pregnant?” For as long as I’ve known Stephanie, she has been adamant: Kids are for women with no other path to glory.
“She and Vince are talking about it.”
“Oh, come the fuck on!”
“We will still film you going to Morocco,” Lisa said, suddenly on speaker. I could hear her fingers playing the keyboard. I could feel her retreating, as though my spray of emotions had repelled her to the other side of the battlefield.
“It’s not the same if I go alone,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. Lisa has a freeze response to emotion. “You know that.” If I go alone, the trip and all the Imazighen women who deserve visibility will be reduced to one, maybe two, segments within a single episode. They will be treated as filler, between a scene of Stephanie and Vince pretending like they still have sex and Lauren ordering a third glass of wine at lunch.
“Look.” Lisa sighed. “They all think you got your turn last year with the L.A. trip. It’s someone else’s opportunity.”
“The L.A. trip?” I repeated, incredulous. “That trip was for the group. It was for the show. It had nothing to do with SPOKE.”
“I know.”
“When we went to Paris, it was for Stephanie’s book. When we went to the Hamptons, it was for Jen’s juice stand. When we went to Anguilla, it was for Hayley’s—”
“Hang on a sec?”
I was taken off speaker, and a muffled conversation between Lisa and nobody had ensued.
“Brett, I have to take this. It’s the network.”
“Sure.” I know a get me the fuck off this call maneuver when I’m the target of one.
“It will work out,” Lisa said. But then she stopped typing. “Or maybe you should talk to Stephanie. She’s convinced them not to film with you.”