The Girls I've Been(85)

“It’s very Brigitte Bardot,” Ms. Moulton says.

“That’s what I said!”

The two of them share a smile, all conspiratorial and warm.

“You always look great.” Ms. Moulton smiles at me. “But this is cute, too. You did a good job, Iris. The theater department would be lucky to have you.”

“Thanks,” Iris says, like she didn’t just come up with that lie on the spot.

“Did you two want something to eat? I was going to order pizza. Half vegetarian, half pepperoni?”

“Sounds good,” Iris says. “Nora?”

“That’d be great. Thanks.”

“I’ll holler when it’s here,” she says, closing the door behind her.

We’re quiet for a moment, Iris fussing with the collar of the black cashmere cardigan she put me in. Finally, she lifts her gaze to meet mine in the mirror.

“You’re good at coming up with stuff on the spot,” I say, careful not to call it good at lying, even though that’s what it is.

She shrugs. “I spent a lot of time finding ways around my dad’s rules.” Her hands are suddenly still, like she’s as surprised as I am that she’s brought him up.

We haven’t talked about what she told me in the bank bathroom. I don’t want to push her, but I worry if we don’t talk about it sometime when there isn’t a bomb she built between us, she’ll think that what she told me is another kind of bomb, one that’s ticking down. And it’s not. She was strong, then and now. It’s one of the reasons I love her.

I’d like to punch that asshole ex-boyfriend who didn’t like wearing condoms, and I’d love to destroy her father . . . but that’s another matter.

“I had a lot of rules to follow, too.” I hate how tentative it comes out, but that’s how I feel. With Wes, everything came out in a horrible flood of stories that never seemed to end until suddenly, there weren’t any more to tell, and then we just had to endure in the space between them.

This is different. This is giving pieces up and getting some in return. The ground was tilted toward me when I was with Wes because I had the truth and he didn’t. But with Iris, she and I can be on even footing. We can know each other, piece by piece. We can build something with that knowledge.

“I bet,” she says. “Are you scared?” She fiddles with my collar again, and then her hand settles on my good shoulder. There’s a little catch to her breath when my shoulders relax under her touch, and I lean back into her, trusting her to hold my weight. Her fingers stroke my shoulder as the back of my head presses into the soft heat of her stomach.

“I can’t be scared,” I tell her.

She bends, a lock of pin-curled hair swinging over her shoulder. She presses a kiss to my forehead, then the tip of my nose, then an upside-down kiss on my sticky lip-glossed lips.

When she pulls back, she says the thing that burns the doubt and worry away and replaces it with something more. Something stronger.

You can be scared with me.





— 68 —


August 30 (22 days free)

the truth



Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida

I’m not surprised when they take me to a private visitation room. She’ll have made friends in here, dazzled a guard or two, maybe even a whole handful. If there’s one thing my mother knows, it’s how to work a person and a system. It’s why I’ve never worried too much about her in here.

I’m alone for a minute or two, and the nerves flutter. Lee never talks about her visits here, and the nights after she comes back are the only times all year she drinks. Glass after glass of wine until she’s stumbling and I have to help her to bed. One time, as I covered her up with a blanket, I heard her whisper, I don’t want to, Mommy, as she curled into it, and my heart burned in my throat for days after, because I knew.

I knew.

The time alone gives me a chance to assess the room: the table and two chairs bolted to the floor, the metal loops on the table and floor for the chains.

Do they shackle her in here? Of course they do. What a naive thing to even wonder. I can’t think like that. I know better.

The back of my neck tickles from the wig, the weight of hair on my shoulders unfamiliar after all these years. I take deep breaths and keep my back to the door I know she’ll be coming in from, even as I hear the footsteps and the scrape of the lock, the clank of what I know are her chains, because I am not naive. I’m not.

I can hear her settle in the chair, the murmur of the guard’s voice, and then his footsteps, leaving us alone. Definitely against regulation. Absolutely not a surprise.

But I still don’t turn. I show her my back and the spill of long hair that looks real, and I wait.

“Natalie.”

It’s strange, to hear it. My name. But it isn’t. Not anymore. Natalie was the touchstone. She was supposed to be my secret forever. The name I kept for myself. For my family and no one else.

I had been Natalie longer than any of the other girls. I’d been Natalie much longer than I’ve been Nora, but someday, that won’t be true anymore.

And that is my new forever secret. Just like all the girls and names I carry.

The girl my mother loves, the girl she thinks I am? She’s no one’s touchstone. I let her go. She became something that needed to be killed so Nora could flourish.