You Deserve Each Other(18)
A Shakespearean plaque is bolted to the brick siding: A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD STILL SMELL AS SWEET. There’s not supposed to be a still in that quote. I looked it up once to make sure it was a typo but never pointed it out to Mr. and Mrs. Rose because I don’t want them getting a new one with the correct quote. I derive vicious pleasure from knowing their plaque is wrong.
I think about the first time I stood on this doorstep, nervous and optimistic, hoping so hard that I’d fit seamlessly into their world and they’d treat me like part of the family. Nicholas had wrapped his arm around my shoulders and kissed my cheek, grinning from ear to ear. They’re going to love you, he’d said.
The door opens. Deborah bares all her teeth at me in a smile she doesn’t mean, and I want to stick my finger down my throat right in front of her.
Nicholas and I exchange one last look of mutual loathing before we grin and hold hands. He squeezes. I squeeze back harder, but end up hurting my own fingers.
Their lair smells like a postapocalyptic Bath & Body Works that has been stagnating in dust for ten years, with base notes of Aqua Net. The dusty odor has always confounded me, since I’ve never managed to find any actual dust. Each room is heavy and rich, trying hard to evoke French castles with Louis XV chairs while hoping you don’t notice the stained pink carpet. If you’re under twenty years old, you’re expected to take off your shoes. There’s one single television in the “salon”—a relic of the seventies that is never turned on and whose sole purpose is to reflect your shock that such a mammoth television set is still in someone’s house.
Absolute silence falls over you like a hood once you cross the threshold into an Agatha Christie murder set and makes you want to speak quietly, which is translated through Mrs. Rose’s human emotions processor as admiration.
It’s her ode to a gilded age gone by, when children suppressed all their thoughts and emotions to make life easier for their boozy parents. Cherry wood, thick fabrics, onyx-on-charcoal damasks. Thousand-dollar bourbon, cork undisturbed, and crystal candy dishes that have nothing in them. Ornate frames of gold rope and eighteenth-century ashtrays you can Look At But Not Touch, enshrined behind backlit glass. A museum of Rose history that no one cares about except for the withered old Roses who grow here, and maybe me, the unwelcome and unsightly weed, if I end up having to marry into this mess.
Nicholas’s honor roll ribbons from high school hang framed at the head of the dining room. Evidence that they have a daughter is scrubbed from everywhere except a tiny room they call “the paaah-lah,” which contains one grand piano, a horde of porcelain cat figurines, and Heather’s senior portrait. There are laser beams in the background and she’s wearing braces with black rubber bands. Her mother sometimes talks about her like she’s dead. Nicholas has told me that she’s an EDM deejay, and just for that she’s my favorite member of this family.
“Naomi! My dear! So very good to see you,” Deborah cries, swinging forward to air-kiss one cheek, then the other. She learned from her own mother-in-law (a truly terrifying individual I got to meet only once before Satan called her home) how to be frigid and passive-aggressive. Honestly, this woman has no inkling where she is. We live in Morris, for crying out loud. Half our population has fur and nibbles on berries in the forest.
Meeting Deborah in person for the first time was jarring. She’s persistently written in to the Beaufort Gazette with so many complaints about life in general that they gave her an advice column, Dear Deborah, where she doles out pearls of wisdom to loyal readers all over the county. I know Deborah’s pearls for the costume jewelry that they are, because she’s never come up against a problem that she didn’t run to Nicholas to fix. The picture that accompanies her rants is at least fifteen years old. She’s still got the same feathered bob, now with more highlights, but the skin around her eyes is stretched tight even though the eyes themselves seem to have shrunk to half their original size. The earrings she wears are so weighty that the lobes are stretched to two inches long.
She clasps my face between her soft, cool palms. I’m not sure she has blood. Sometimes she gets a little red in the face but that’s only because she was left plugged in for too long and the outlet overheated.
“Goodness, Naomi, you cut your hair! And right before your wedding! What on earth were you thinking? Give me the name of your beautician and I’ll have her fired for what she’s done to you.”
I ruffle my woefully short bangs and Nicholas hides a smile, pleased that he’s got his mother insulting me for him. “It’s a style. Like Amélie.” Amélie’s going to be my go-to reference with this hack job. I’ll draw comparisons every chance I get.
She looks like she’s holding back a mouthful of bees. “It really doesn’t suit your face shape. Although I’m sure you already know that, and you’ve got an appointment booked to get hair extensions.” She doesn’t wait to hear a confirmation, eager to dive into her analysis of my appearance. It’s what she does every time she sees me. “You’re looking wretched all over, my dear. So washed-out and puffy. Are you ill?”
“Yes,” I reply gaily. I hug her, which I’ve never done before (look at me trying all these fun new things!), and her bones shift and crunch under her prim clothes. Her clavicle protrudes so far, it’s like someone buried her bones too shallow.