I shrug and find my pants in the hallway and my shirt in the living room. When I come back, Aurora hasn’t moved. She’s still hunched over cradling her legs and resting her head in her hands.
“Do you want to take a shower?” I ask. She shakes her head. I bring her clothes and lie down next to her.
“It's going to be okay,” I say. “She'll get over it."
“No, she won’t."
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Aurora takes a deep breath and exhales even slower. “I know my mother. She's going to make me pay for this.”
“Okay…So, maybe she’ll make you give up your apartment, so what? You can always move in with me.”
“You know that they are paying for my school, right? And I'm also getting a monthly stipend to live on. I don't have a job. I don’t have any way to pay for anything without them.”
I take a step away from her, crossing my arms. “Well, you are twenty-five years old, maybe it's as good a time as any to learn to be an adult.”
Slowly, she looks away from that spot in the distance that she has been focusing on and turns her gaze to me.
“This has nothing to do with me not wanting to get a job,” she says coldly. “It's everything else. It's my whole life. My parents are assholes but they're still my parents. And I'm not ready to give up on them.”
“I'm not asking you to,” I say.
“It certainly sounds like you are.” She shakes her head just as I shake mine.
I don't understand where she's coming from and I don’t understand her.
I know that we need to talk about this more, but I just can't bring myself to do it right now. Besides, there's something else that is on my mind.
“I thought that your parents knew that we were living together,” I say.
She doesn't respond.
“I mean, I knew that they weren't my biggest fans, but I also didn't realize that they hated me.”
She looks down at the floor and doesn't respond.
“My mother had a talk with me about it after the boat incident,” she says after a while. “I didn't wanna tell you because I thought that I could change her mind. I thought that we could meet up sometime in the city after they got back from Europe and have a do-over. I didn’t expect her to come here today and just blow it all up.”
17
Aurora
Two days later, in between my morning and afternoon classes, I meet with my mother at her favorite restaurant in Midtown, the one next door to the Ritz-Carlton Spa that she goes to religiously. It takes me forty-five minutes to get there, which she is well aware of. Yet, when she suggests it, I don't complain about the commute.
“How's your day going?” I ask, taking a seat across from her at the clothed table.
This is the kind of place where all of the waiters are old men who know way too much about wine and not enough about cocktails.
“I got my nails done this morning,” my mother says after giving me two air kisses, careful not to mess up her makeup. “As you can see, they did not do a very good job.”
I look down at her nails and don't see a single thing wrong with them.
“Right over here.” She points to her index finger. “Look closer at the cuticle.”
“Oh, yes.” I nod demonstrably even though I have no idea what she’s talking about.
After we place our drink orders, she intertwines her fingers, careful not to put her elbows on the table, and peers at me.
“Your father is not well,” she says.
The statement hits me like a blow to the stomach.
“What are you talking about?” I ask. "Did something happen?”
“No, but he is not healthy. He's okay right now, but he has heart issues.”
“I know that already,” I say. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” She shrugs. “I just want to create some context for you.”
I take a sip of my martini and wait for a further explanation.
My mother has always been an enigma. I rarely understand where she's coming from or what she means. Ever since I was a little girl, I felt like we have existed on two separate plateaus, seeing each other, hearing each other but not really interacting with one another in any meaningful way.
“I don't know how to tell you this, Aurora, because we don't talk about things that really matter, do we?” Mom says, running her fingers through her perfectly coiffed hair.
“Can you just tell me what's going on?”
I don't know if she's trying to be tactful or just trying to build up anticipation on purpose, but I am running out of patience either way.
“Your father's business is not doing very well. He has been taking a number of shortcuts, the details of which I cannot go into at this point. But I just wanted to tell you that things are not as they seem and your relationship with Henry is not coming at a good time.”
I stare at her, unsure as to how to react at first. But then anger starts to rise up.
“How dare you?" I ask her. “How dare you say that to me? My relationship with Henry does not exist on your timetable. I am sorry that there are problems in the business, problems you never bothered to tell me about before. But I don't understand what my relationship with Henry has to do with Tate Media. Or why you're even so concerned about it.”
“Honey," my mother says.
And if you know anything about my mother, she does not mean it as a term of endearment.
"Honey, I worry about you. What do you really know about Henry?”
“What is there to know?” I ask her. “He’s a teacher and a writer and that’s it.”
“But what if there’s more?” she asks, tilting her head and narrowing her gaze.
“People are complicated, Aurora. You don't seem to know that. You have always buried your head in books where everything works out in the end, one way or another. The characters go through predictable ups and downs, they learn the lessons, or they figure out a crime, or whatever the heck happens but, in the end, everything is resolved. Right?”
“I'm sorry, Mother,” I say. “Is this conversation about Daddy’s health? Your business? My relationship with Henry? Or my poor choices when it comes to my studies? What are we talking about here exactly because you are going all over the place?”
“You are impossible,” she says, taking a sip of her martini and tapping her long nails on the table.
Our food has arrived but neither of us have tried a bite.
“I wanted to meet with you because I wanted to talk to you about all of these things. They are all related because they all concern you,” she says.
I sit back in my chair and wait for her to explain.
“Our business has taken a turn and there are certain issues that have to be resolved. I cannot go into it anymore than this here. I probably can't even tell you anymore than this at all because the less you know, the better.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” I say quietly.
“I have already told you my concerns about Henry and seeing what you two were doing did not alleviate them.”