Say cheese!” Henry pointed Ozzie’s camera at the group of them posing in front of the fireplace.
“Cheese!” Nora was in between Ozzie and Grace, their arms clutched around her waist. Monica was on the other side of Ozzie, jumping up and down like a little kid. Nora held in her stomach again, hoping that a sudden burst of laughter wouldn’t split open the back of Monica’s black silk pants. She had on a blouse of Monica’s too—a sheer peach thing with ruffles in the front that pulled a little across the front—and a pair of very expensive pearl stud earrings. The only thing she’d refused to try was Monica’s high heels. Her dark gray New Balances with the pink stripes would do just fine. And when she had come downstairs in Monica’s clothes, her face done up with Monica’s makeup, both Ozzie and Grace had gasped in amazement.
“Oh, Nora!” Grace breathed. “You look spectacular!”
Nora bit her lip, smoothed down the front of the blouse. She looked over at Monica, who was beaming. “It’s just . . . you know, for going out tonight. I don’t usually get dressed up like this.”
“Well, you should!” Ozzie said. “There’s a friggin’ bombshell inside that frame of yours, dying to get out.” Ozzie did not look as if she had rested; on the contrary, the shadows under her eyes were darker, and her mouth lapsed every so often into a scowl. But she was trying, Nora thought. Despite everything else, she was trying. Just like she always did.
She got into formation with the rest of them as Henry prepared to take their picture. They were all done up: Ozzie in soft wide slacks and a purple V-neck sweater, Monica in a tight black dress and heels, her perfect face punctuated with a swipe of deep red lipstick, and Grace in a flowy skirt and blouse, her blond hair pinned up in a twist. A different scarf than the one she’d had on earlier had been looped several times around her neck and knotted neatly on one side. As awkward as she felt on the outside, Nora could feel a warmth rising in her belly too as she stood there, an assuredness she had not felt in a long time.
“Cheese!” they said in unison.
“Okay!” Ozzie said. “Enough already. Let’s go eat!”
The white-gloved maître d’, a thin man with wire spectacles, confirmed Monica’s reservation for four and then led the women to their table by the window. Nora had never been to a restaurant like Tru before, had never even seen a restaurant like Tru before. The few times she’d accepted Trudy’s repeated Friday night dinner invitations, they’d gone to a seafood place that was decorated with white-and-red plastic life preservers on the walls or a steak joint where peanut shells littered the floor. Here there were candles everywhere, some nestled in small coves along the walls, others in copper candelabras, their tips glowing in the dimmed room. Gold drapes framed the rectangular window at one end, and an enormous Warhol painting adorned the west wall. The carpet was a plush cream, the tablecloths stark white, and the chairs a smooth black satin. It was like something out of a magazine.
“So, what do you think?” Monica grinned as the waiter, dressed in a dark blue designer suit, left with their drink order. Nora had followed Monica’s lead, ordering a glass of sauvignon blanc, while Ozzie ordered a Jack Daniel’s, neat. Grace asked for a club soda with lime.
Nora shook her head and looked around anxiously. “I can’t even imagine what a drink in a place like this is going to cost, let alone a meal.”
“Let alone four meals!” Ozzie echoed, pointing to the menu. “Look at the appetizers!”
Nora’s eyes roved over the tissue-thin paper anchored with gold ribbon inside her menu, trying to take in the strange words—langoustine, carpaccio, foie gras—without giving away her ignorance. But when she saw the prices—$260.00 for a trio of caviar samplers—she closed it again and put it to the side. Paying that amount of money for any kind of food, no matter how rich someone was, did not make any sense.
“Are you sure Liam is okay with this?” Grace asked. “I mean, he’s never even met us.”
“He doesn’t have to meet you to treat you to dinner,” Monica said. “He already knows how much you mean to me. Besides, he likes doing things like this. It makes him happy.”
“He likes spending his money, eh?” Ozzie asked.
Monica arched an eyebrow. “On certain things, yes.”
“Like you.”
Monica nodded. “Yes. Like me. And really good food. Come on, girls, don’t worry. I mean it. Besides, when will we get the chance to do something like this again?”
“Well.” Grace still sounded unsure. “It certainly is generous of him. You’ll have to make sure to leave me your address, Monica, so I can send him a thank-you note.”
Monica smiled. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll tell him.”
“Absolutely not,” Grace scoffed. “It’s the least I can do. My goodness.”
“You know, I never think to do things like that.” Ozzie closed her menu and looked at Grace over the top of it. “You’d think now that I’m all grown up with kids and everything, sending thank-you notes would be something I’d be doing all the time. God knows I should. Gary’s parents probably spend a thousand dollars on Christmas presents alone for my kids.” She pressed her lips together. “But I always forget. And then when I do remember, it’s too late. Like, embarrassingly late. It’s just one of those things, you know, where I wonder . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Oh, never mind.” She opened her menu again, scanning the inside.
“What?” Grace asked. “That if someone had taught you to do that when you were younger, it wouldn’t be so hard to remember now?”
Ozzie closed her menu again, slowly this time. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”
The women moved back a little as the waiter appeared with their drinks. Nora took a sip and then placed the glass—which was the size of a small fishbowl—back on the table. The wine warmed her belly, but left a slightly sour pool on the back of her tongue.
“I used to have that problem with going to the dentist,” Grace said. “It literally took me years to remember that I should probably be going on a regular basis to get my teeth cleaned and checked for cavities.” She shrugged, stirring her drink with a slender stick. “She just never took me.”
She. She meant her mother. Nora remembered a story Grace told them once about her and her brother going weeks without brushing their teeth because their mother couldn’t afford brushes or toothpaste. Another time they had toothbrushes but had to rinse them in the Dunkin’ Donuts restroom since they were out of bottled water.
“Well, Liam’s the one who taught me how to eat properly.” Monica’s voice was soft, as if she was ashamed of this fact. “The first time he took me out and I looked at all that silverware on either side of the plate, I got so anxious about using the right one that I almost burst into tears. And then there were three different glasses!” She reached up and fingered one of her diamond earrings. “I caught on eventually. But I felt like a little animal for a while, until I did.”
“Or like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman,” Grace said forgivingly. “Remember that scene with the snails? Where she sends one of them flying across the room because she doesn’t know how to use that weird little fork?”
Nora nodded, listening. There had been a lot for her to learn on her own too, things Mama had never shown her, such as eating three meals a day instead of whatever you could find before bed. Taking a daily vitamin. Flossing. Changing her bedsheets every two weeks instead of every six months. Dusting. For real, with a cloth and lemon oil, instead of with the back of her hand. She’d picked up a lot of things by reading what other people did in books, such as getting an ob-gyn and following up once a year for a checkup. Even managing her periods had been an exercise in futility; the first time she had started to bleed, she had been sure she was dying. It was only when she went to the woman on duty at Turning Winds and confessed what was happening that she got the full story—and a box of pads, to boot. Once, when Trudy had observed her in the library kitchen, eating yet another lunch of saltine crackers and grape jelly, she’d put her hand on her hip and asked: “Don’t you ever get sick of eating those every single day?” The question had startled Nora, who had taken to preparing the jelly crackers for lunch without even thinking about it. Now, though, as she thought back, she realized that they were exactly what she had prepared for herself back in grade school, when Mama had forgotten to pack her a lunch, and crackers and jelly were the only things in the pantry. Old habits were hard to break. Some more than others.
“I try hard,” Ozzie said. “God, I try so hard to give my kids everything that monster didn’t give me.” She clenched her teeth. “But I still fuck up. The thank-you notes are just one example. I still forget so many things. Like just the other day, Gary had to remind me to turn the lights on when the kids were doing their homework.” She shook her head. “It’s ridiculous, you know? You’d think that getting used to working in the dark because my mother was spending her money on drugs instead of the electric bill would have worn off by now! But I still do it! After all this time!”
Monica reached over and touched Ozzie’s cheek. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s just the way it is.”
A muscle pulsed along Ozzie’s tight jaw. “No, that’s the way it was. That’s the way it was, Monica. It’s not the way it is. And I don’t want the way it was to keep being an excuse for the way it is.” She grabbed her whiskey glass, took a slug, and grimaced as it went down. Next to them, a woman with a beehive hairdo and frosted pink lips looked over as Ozzie plunked her glass back down. Nora stared across the table until the woman looked away again. She watched as the woman said something to the man across from her and then patted her lips with a cloth napkin.
If she were braver, she would stand up now, right at this moment, and walk over to the other table. She would tap the woman’s thin shoulder, watch as the beehive turned, the painted eyebrows arched skyward. Can’t you see that my friend is peeling back her skin and laying herself on the table for all of us to see? Turn around. Cover your eyes. Show some respect, she would say.
But Nora did not say anything.
She put her head back down and took another sip of her wine instead.
The meal lasted a good three hours. They shared multiple hors d’oeuvres, tiny plates of bizarrely shaped creatures—snails, mussels, chunks of squid—all drizzled with squirts of neon green liquid, and small dishes of white sherbet served in crystal wineglasses, something the waiter called palate cleansers. Nora spooned it carefully into her mouth, letting the bitter, sour taste melt along her tongue, and then asked for another one. The main courses came next. They had each taken a long time to decide on what to order and shared bites of their selections. Nora settled on what she thought would be a relatively benign piece of fish, only to sit back, shocked, as the waiter placed a gold-rimmed plate in front of her, heaped with a tangle of translucent noodles. The pile was drizzled with brilliant squiggles of green and a bright red poppy, complete with a stem, tucked in along one side.
“Oh, I just ordered fish,” she said. “I don’t know if this . . .” She paused, embarrassed, as the waiter nodded.
“The fish is under the noodles,” he said, smiling. “You can eat all of it. Even the flower!”
Even Ozzie seemed a bit flummoxed. “Well, shit,” she said, surveying her dish. It was some kind of venison braised in wine, bedecked with an enormous variety of green leaves and purple and yellow pansies. “Should I eat this or frame it?”
Nora poked at her pile of noodles with her fork, but they didn’t budge. They had a shellacked appearance to them, smooth and glossy, as if they had been sprayed with Aqua Net. She stuck her fork into the middle of it, cracked off a section, and put it inside her mouth. To her amazement, the noodles turned soft and salty against her tongue, the crispy veneer a thing of the past.
“What do you think?” Monica was simultaneously watching her and texting on her phone.
“It’s good,” Nora said happily. “Really good.”
“Mine too!” Ozzie’s mouth was full, but she grinned, talking anyway. “Really fucking good!”
“Ozzie.” Monica’s voice was low as she put her phone back. “You gotta keep the vocab in check here. Please.”
“Oh God, I know.” Ozzie was still chewing. “Sorry.”
Grace ordered some kind of chicken that had been freeze-dried and then flash-fried. It was settled atop a glistening puddle of cherry compote. Small green gooseberries dotted the sides, and an enormous pink orchid filled the other half of her plate.
“You gonna eat your orchid?” Ozzie asked, still grinning. “I dare you.”
Grace took a small, careful bite of one of the petals and chewed. “It doesn’t taste like much of anything,” she said. “It’s kind of bland.”
Ozzie shivered. “They really shouldn’t serve flowers to people. It goes against every rule of nature I’ve ever learned.”
“What’s a rule of nature?” Grace asked.
Ozzie shrugged. Her plate was almost empty. “Flowers are to be admired, not eaten.”
“Point made.” Grace nodded. “What else?”
Ozzie stopped chewing then and put her fork down. She looked at all of them around the table and then lifted her napkin and wiped her mouth. “The moon is the strongest force in the universe,” she said slowly. “The moon is our rightful mother, the one we should have had from the very beginning.” Monica looked over at Nora. “Children are to be loved and cherished,” Ozzie went on. “We are to be loved and cherished.”
A silence descended over the table. No one moved.
It was, Nora thought later, one of Ozzie’s finest moments.
Then, and now.