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.
She skitters back, covered in my imaginary sick germs.
“Naomi’s joking,” Nicholas says plaintively. “She said she was fine in the car.”
She pats her chest as though she’s having palpitations, and we follow her to the living room so we can see her new coat rack (giant sequoia wood, twelve hundred dollars) and compliment it. I smell food cooking, and the promise of a free meal is the only reason I don’t immediately impale myself on the coat rack.
When Mrs. Rose goes to check in with “the woman” about dinner, I pull out my phone and start tapping. “Potpourri,” I say aloud. “Scribbly paintings. Creepy Hummel figurines of peasant children doing chores.”
Nicholas gives me a wary look. “What are you doing?”
“Taking notes on how to make our house more enticing to you. You adore this one so much that you never want to leave, so I’m working out how to replicate the magic.” I resume my phone tapping. “Bouquets of flowers bestowed by loved ones. Hmm, I’ll have to find some loved ones.”
He points to a crisp brown bouquet of last week’s just because present. “You want that?” he whispers sarcastically. “An ugly handful of forty dollars?” He points next at a gaudy emerald brooch in a glass display case. “What about that? Would impractical jewelry make you happy, darling?” If I hear one more word from him about impractical I’m going to stuff him in the trunk.
“Steal it and we’ll see.”
His lips mash together. Knowing I’m under his skin makes my heart sing.
Mrs. Rose wafts back into earshot, so I pick up a vase that used to belong to Harold’s mother and say, “I like this urn.”
“That’s a vase, dear.” She pronounces it like vahz. There’s no way she doesn’t hate this vase, since legend has it that she and her mother-in-law once got into a physical brawl over where Harold would be buried—next to his wife or next to Mommie Dearest. Nicholas comes by his issues honestly.
“I’m surprised an urn this lovely isn’t already occupied,” I say as if I didn’t hear her. “Although I suppose one day it will be.” I give Deborah a contemplating look, up and down slowly from the top of her head to the tips of her pristine white shoes. “You have the nicest heirlooms. It’s humbling to think that someday I’ll have them all in my own home. Nick, can’t you just see this pretty urn sitting on top of our fridge someday?”
His eyes sharpen when I call him Nick, but he doesn’t have room to reply because Mrs. Rose says, “Nicky, what do you think of dear Naomi’s new hairstyle?”
The only reason he keeps a straight face is that he’s standing directly in front of a window. It’d be too easy for me to push him through it. “Naomi always looks great.” Then he steps three paces off to the side before adding, “She has a large enough forehead that she can get away with short bangs.”
They cover their bitchy grins with their hands in identical gestures. Nicholas notices and drops his hand. He looks a little shaken. I smile at him to confirm his worst fears.
Yes, Nicky, you’re turning into your mother.
“Aren’t those roses so nice?” I say to Deborah, gesturing at the dead brown ones from last week. “Very considerate of your adult son to bring you flowers all the time.”
“Isn’t it?” she croons. “Nicky spoils me so; he’s such a wonderful boy. He does the same for you, I’m sure.”
My smile twists at the corners and Nicholas has found something in the carpet to captivate him.
“Come look at these fresh ones!” she tells me, waving for us to follow her into the salon. Another forty dollars of Nicholas’s regret stares mockingly at me from a small table. He’s peeled the gas station sticker from the plastic wrap, and I muse that with cold weather approaching roses are going to be harder for him to find. He’ll be forking out a hundred bucks a week for 1-800-Flowers.
“Aren’t they precious?” Deborah thrusts the bouquet under my nose. I lean in and inhale.
“So that’s what flowers smell like! I never get the opportunity to see them up close, so I had no idea.”
Nicholas sighs at the ceiling.