After yoga, Natalie followed Gillian out to the parking lot.
"What are you doing?"
"Going home. Why? What are you doing?" Nat asked.
Gillian looked at her, then at the gym doors, then to the back of the parking lot where their cars sat in the paltry shade.
Nat retreated to the shadow of the entrance overhang, sucking in her stomach. "What?"
Gillian shook her head. "You never just walk out of class."
"You always do." Natalie said, wielding her water bottle like it could deflect her friend's curiosity. She fought off the urge to smooth back her hair, much of which had sprung loose of her ponytail while she was saluting the sun. Knowing she would retreat post-workout to the locker room if she gave herself the option, she'd left her street clothes at home. It was time to brave walking sweatily through a parking lot full of other sweaty or soon-to-be sweaty people. Most people exhibited more bravery in an average week, but for Nat, it was a definite step out of her comfort zone.
Gillian linked an arm through hers and nudged her to start crossing the asphalt. "Good for you."
She ignored the fact that she stunk worse than the summer-hot parking lot, and was slicking her body all over Gill, and had splotched red skin. If Gill could do it, so could she. She'd be in her own home, exfoliating in her own shower, in mere minutes.
"For the record," Gillian said, "no one looks at us. Every year I grade at least two essays that quote the same 2006 study about people not noticing details about others they pass. I keep meaning to propose my own article about SEO-optimization for researchers who want to be quoted by undergraduates."
Natalie shook her head. "One of these days you'll succeed in being smartass enough to lower your Rate My Prof ranking."
"Doing my best."
"And we're all pulling for you. Thanks, by the way. I know I'm ridiculous." Since coffee with Evan earlier in the week, Natalie was noticing--and quelling--her obsession with presenting a careful appearance to the world. She didn't believe his statement about being attracted to her without the smooth shell. That first day at Black Gold, he'd ignored her actual professional self and looked instead for, as he'd said, her lion's mane of hair. His assessment of her as adorable in the Turkey photo was revisionist at best, if not an outright lie. But she wasn't going out in public with messy, sweaty curls to meet men. She was doing it to prove to herself that she was no longer thumping a disapproving finger against her own forehead.
"You're not ridiculous," Gillian said. "We all have our quirks and insecurities. No matter how much our best friends tell us we don't need to harbor them."
Natalie hit the button on her key fob to lower her windows. The air shimmered with the outpouring of the humidity that built up in her car during the most blistering of Houston's hot months. She looked back to Gillian. "I could say the same to you, if you want to turn from my physical appearance to your sarcastic defensiveness."
Gill had a combative way of tucking her chin at people. It terrified her students. "Very kind of you, I'm sure. Let's pencil that in for after Tuesday's class."
Nat leaned in to kiss her cheek. "It's a date," she said with a wink, backing towards her car.
Gillian snorted out a laugh as she tossed her yoga mat into her trunk. She slammed the lid. "Oh, go hydrate."
Luke swung by Evan's desk before lunch. "Hey, quick favor."
"Pretty sure you own me now." He didn’t mean it. Without Luke's blind date quandary, he'd never have called Natalie. Never have discovered Black Gold's Cubanos. And he was addicted to Black Gold's Cubanos.
"Well, shit, if it's a problem--"
"Nah, I'm full of it. Anything you want."
"Great. I snagged a four-pack of theatre tickets from Marilyn Martin over in Customer Relations. Leticia's been wanting to see this Agatha Christie they're showing."
Evan suppressed his smile. It didn't take a superforecaster to see where this was headed. Not that Luke had ever had subtlety on his side. "You've been talking a lot with Leticia?"
On cue, Luke's ears turned red. The guy should grow his hair out, make his blushes less obvious. "A little bit. We had drinks over the weekend."
“Nice.”
Luke shrugged a little. "It went good, I think. Leticia, she liked your Natalie a lot. So I thought the four of us, we could make a night of it again. Dinner, show, all that."
Evan nodded. "Sure, sounds fun. What night are the tickets for?" He took down all the info and reached for his personal cell as Luke headed back to Nineteen West. With any luck, Natalie would be between clients and free to check her calendar.
"Natalie East speaking." He sank into her honey-smooth, professional voice.
"Nat, hey, it's Evan. I thought of the perfect way for you and me to celebrate my dad's birthday."
"Was that one of the things we were looking for in life?"
"Of course we were. Why would you doubt that?"
"No comment."
"Sorry, I didn't ask, is this an okay time to talk?" Mr. Sensitive, that was him. He should have emailed instead.
"Sure."
Evan pitched the theatre idea. Turned out Natalie was interested in the play, and didn't have to rearrange anything to fit in the double date.
Get-together. Not date. They weren't dating.
"I'll have to head out right after; I've got an early showing the next day, but it sounds great, thanks."
"Thank Luke, he's the one with the tickets."
"Sounds like I should thank Leticia, actually. She's the one who likes me."
"Hey. I like you."
"Aw. Sweet. I like you, too, Evan."
He could hear her rolling eyes again. He should stop calling before her eyes popped out from all the rolling he seemed to make them do. "Yeah, yeah. Just don't let my parents hear you say that."
"Or my mom."
"The last thing I want is them pushing us into a relationship."
"The feeling, my friend, is mutual."
To: Natalie East
From: Lee, Evan
Theatre Plans
Evan Lee speaking up to say
I'm glad you'll join us for the play
Be ready at five*
To go to a dive
Beer and burgers to eat, okay?
*I'll pick you up at six, but that doesn't rhyme. What's your address?
To: Evan Lee
From: Natalie East
Re: Theatre Plans
I don't have your skill at rhyme
But I'll be ready for burgers at the right time
2311-B Desmond St. Maps don't always pull it up right--it's the one with the dark blue door. Text or call if you have trouble finding it. Thanks!
Natalie reread her lame attempt at poetry and hit 'send' before she could edit again. What did it matter? Evan's limerick was cute; so what? His mild jab at her phone greeting had given her a warm fuzzy, which she deflated by imagining telling Gillian about it. Her wry friend would ask if it was noteworthy to have a man listen to Natalie's words and remember them for entire days afterward. She couldn't come up with a comeback, which was proof that she wasn't being sensible. She and Evan had owned up to their attraction--to his overall appeal, and to hers when she had access to her usual stash of clothes and cosmetics.
But attraction meant nothing. The prior generation's heavy-handed matchmaking guaranteed prying and incessant speculation if they dated. With Marisa and Koray shaping up to give Elaine some serious competition in the interfering-parent race, more ammo for any of them was a rotten idea. Chris had left her not three months ago, after over three years together, and in those years, Natalie had learned some things. Elaine had raised her only child to believe, deep down and incontrovertibly, that she needed a man in her life. Before Elaine's brief second marriage, Nat had been too young to question her mom's refusal to rely on herself.
Duncan Colby had moved in when Natalie was eleven, married Elaine before she was twelve, and he and Serena moved out when Natalie was thirteen. Fourteen eye-opening months. Duncan wasn't cut from the same take-charge pattern of every other man in Elaine's life, from Natalie's dad to every mechanic, handyman, and financial advisor Elaine hired to help her out. They were all patterned on Elaine's maternal grandfather.
Elaine's mother had turned toddler Elaine over to her parents so she could follow her bliss into rural Georgia. Nat didn't remember her great-gran, but Bubbe lived until she was ten. Few things had shocked her as much as her mom deliberately ripping the pocket of her shirt before the funeral. Lips pressed firm to make it clear she wouldn't tolerate questions, she steered her daughter to a seat at the front of the funeral home, and kept a staying palm on Nat's kneecap until the service was over. When they returned to Bubbe's Orthodox synagogue a year later for the yahrzeit, she called on all her preteen worldliness so she could take the separate women's entrance in stride. Bubbe and Gran expressed love for their granddaughter by doubling down on the lessons their free-love-embracing daughter had rejected. Elaine's move to Reform Judaism hit them harder than the news another out-of-wedlock baby was joining the family, but they'd always welcomed Elaine and Natalie to their Seders.
Natalie understood exactly where Elaine's viewpoints came from. Until her stepfather blew through her life, with his easy charm and easy affection and easy assurance that they'd be fine once he left, Natalie hadn't questioned her mother's lessons.
Serena had. Serena was nothing but questions. And provocations. Why did dinner have to wait on Duncan's arrival even when it was ready and they were hungry? Wouldn't it be easier to change the tire themselves instead of standing on the hot sidewalk waiting for roadside assistance? Did Natalie know that Serena's mom taught herself to use a computer and had planned a whole vacation with flights and rental car and hotel and a pass to visit the White House just by going on the world wide web?
On reflection, it wasn't hard for Natalie to grasp why Serena moving out hadn't bothered Elaine. She could have done without Duncan's blasé passing on the responsibility to get his name off their joint bills and straighten out their tax return, but Elaine had proved him right by competently handling every task he left in her lap. The experience did nothing to change what Elaine taught Nat about the respective places of men and women.
Her high school boyfriends were alternately chivalrous or macho, taking her adherence to their plans for granted. She'd accepted their leadership. A combination of luck and good instincts kept her from blindly following any of them into trouble of one sort or another. In college, Rachel's stories of her past prompted Natalie to recognize how wrong various nights with Tom or Gene or Victor could have gone. Not because any of them were inherently bad, but because they were all, Natalie included, less mature and far stupider than they'd thought.
Dating with caution throughout college and her early twenties didn't alter the kinds of men she went out with. Elaine approved of them. Wholeheartedly. They paid for dinner and brought flowers and set up a budgeting spreadsheet for her and helped her move into her first solo apartment and accompanied her to services on High Holy Days, even the non-Jewish ones. Because Natalie asked, and they were gentlemen. Caretakers.
Chris fit the mold. Elaine flat-out adored Chris. His deft mechanical mind determined when the broken dishwasher needed an hour of his labor, or a repairman, or comparison shopping for a new machine. He told bluff, brash, ballsy stories about the Air Force and swaggered up to Natalie in his pilot's uniform, dipping her for swoony kisses before taking off for a few days. If he'd managed to be as manly, but more available, he'd have been perfect. Or so Elaine’s campaign went.
Natalie hadn't disagreed. She ignored Serena's jokes about Chris cooling her down when he programmed her remote-operated thermostat. They both had unconventional schedules, so her need to work weekends never fazed him. He arranged for take-out and floral deliveries to her house when his flight segments kept her out of town. He could talk for a half-hour straight about how much he appreciated her understanding of the pilot's life.
Most of the time, Natalie had not questioned Elaine's 'Chris makes your life better' narrative. Most of the time, she and Chris agreed they had a comfortable, compatible arrangement. Until the evening she found his note in her mailbox, Natalie thought they were on track to get married. So did Elaine. And Natalie shied from analyzing whether she or her mother was more upset by Chris's still–unexplained sudden disappearance.
"My Sweet Sunrise, I'm moving on from Houston. Sorry it's such short notice, and that I can't explain. I hope you move on, too, and find a life of being valued as much as you deserve."
Which left, as Gillian had been sure to point out, a certain ambiguity as to how much value she deserved, in Chris's opinion.
Her friends arrived with wine and snacks. They drank and dissected every nuance of the note shoved, unsealed, among her catalogs and bills. She drove by his empty, paid-up apartment, called his disconnected cell. Talked to the one coworker whose contact info she had. He left no trace. After helping to plan her thirtieth birthday party, he became part of the ether before it took place.
While rolling the dice for the fortune-telling game that promised Natalie a tiger in her future, they came up with theories. Rachel, whose daughter considered Chris one of few acceptable adult men, was staunch in her conviction that he was in witness protection. Gillian concocted an elaborate drug-running scenario. Serena, pandering to her sci-fi loving boyfriend, claimed it was an alien abduction, although she conceded they were considerate aliens, since Chris had been able to quit his job and drop Nat a kiss-off letter before beaming aboard the UFO.
Elaine let stricken tears flow when Natalie showed her the note. "Oh, baby girl, oh no! What could have happened? Do you think he's okay? Is he sparing you the news of something terrible? Who's going to give the toast at your birthday party now?" On and on in that vein, ricocheting between fretting over Chris's safety and Natalie's ability to get through the next days of her life. She'd finally extracted herself, stuffing her mom's list of odd-jobs-men in her purse, and spent the next weeks convincing Elaine that a mother's birthday toast was preferable to a boyfriend's.
By party time, Natalie was heartily sick of Chris. Her mother's messages about the ways her life was suffering without the support of the man. Her friends trash-talking the negative qualities they'd left unsaid while she and Chris were together. Her gift to herself was to enter her thirties as an independent, self-sufficient woman. And as far as possible, to cajole Elaine to enter her sixties the same way.
Every few days, she regaled her mom with the details of some accomplishment that didn't rely on a man's help. She took to forwarding YouTube tutorials featuring women performing manual tasks, and pics of herself at work. She snaked her shower drain. She power-washed her driveway. She installed a dimmer switch for her dining room lights. She made all of their travel plans for the Turkey trip, which almost backfired with Elaine's conviction that Chris could have pulled some top-secret airline employee strings to recover her lost suitcase.
With each brag on herself, Natalie crashed into Elaine's resistance. It was active. She texted a selfie with her newly-hung floating shelves, and Elaine countered with a story about the gardeners prepping her beds for spring flowers. Natalie extolled her kickboxing class, and her mom mailed a newspaper clipping about a women attacked when out jogging alone.
"I think I'm turning her into a men's rights activist," Nat told her friends. It was her turn to host the four of them plus little Hannah for dinner, a monthly tradition they'd begun after Gillian had moved to Houston several years earlier. Natalie tried to keep griping about her mom to a minimum, but that afternoon Elaine had called to get Natalie's opinion on the father's rights in cases of unplanned pregnancies. "If she hadn't dealt with her own circles of hell just getting my dad to be available on his custodial days, I think she'd be out there campaigning against paternity fraud and judicial bias and all that."
Rachel's jaw tightened, and Gillian wrapped her arm around her, shooting Nat a narrow look. "I'm sure she wouldn't really."
Natalie grimaced. "Of course not really. Between her history, and knowing what a rat-fink Sergei the Idiot is, she's got a few lines she won't cross. Barely."
No one thought Rachel's ex-husband, Sergei, could do greater emotional damage during the divorce than he'd done during the marriage, but they'd been proven wrong. He'd only capitulated to sanity and the courts thanks to the intervention of his mother, Depy, who was determined to keep links to her precious grandbaby. Although Rachel and Depy hadn't truly bonded, they both knew--everyone who glanced at Hannah knew--Sergei was the father. The paternity test was just one of the hurdles designed to put off the day when he would have to finally take some responsibility, even if it was only financial.
Gillian had campaigned until Rachel relented and used Hannah's connection to Yia Yia Depy as a bargaining chip. She hated to reduce her infant to a pawn. Serena kept pointing out how expedient it was, ignoring the emotional gut-punch. Natalie had been the one who'd understood, and agreed. Thinking of it now, a year and many empowering links later, Nat was angry at herself. Because she hadn't nodded sympathetically about being forced to use Hannah for the right reasons. It wasn't to support Rachel's worries about the long-term consequences to the father-daughter relationship, or because she'd seen as clearly as their friends that Sergei was unrepentant about his failures as a parent and as a husband.
No, Natalie had interpreted the crap Sergei had his lawyer pull as sincere. Even witnessing his disinterest in Hannah, seeing the circles of exhaustion growing daily under her friend's eyes, and overhearing Sergei's scornful dismissal of his family, a part of Natalie had sided with the rat-fink. She loved Rachel unreservedly, and baby Hannah had stolen her heart with one blink of her solemn eyes, but Natalie's gut reaction to Sergei's legal manipulation was to consider it justified. Because he was a man. And as Elaine had taught her, men knew what they were doing.
Natalie pushed back from her chair abruptly, circling to Hannah's portable high chair. At one, Hannah was all messy eating and half-comprehensible babble, and even her occasional outrage and tears brought Natalie joy. She loved the girl's fierce spirit and total engagement with her world. "What's up, Monkey? Are you done eating? Want to help me get the watermelon?"
Hannah threw the pita bread she'd been chewing to the floor and stretched her arms out to Nat.
"Food goes on plates," Rachel reminded her daughter.
Nat scooped up the crust before Rachel could bend for it. "No worries. It's not like we're at Serena’s.”
"Hey," Serena said, but there was no force to her tone. And she was straightening the placemats into a precise line, which killed any protest that she wasn't a neat freak.
There was nothing in the world like burying her nose in a baby's curly mop of hair, Natalie thought. She carried Hannah into the kitchen to wash her hands and face before handing her a serving spoon. "You're the yummiest monkey in the land."
"Monkey," Hannah said.
"You got it." She set the bowl of watermelon in the middle of the table and took Hannah to her seat instead of strapping her back in the highchair. She offered a chunk of fruit and tugged at the spoon. "Trade you."
Gillian took over filing the dessert bowls, and Natalie sat back, enjoying the warm weight of the toddler and the warm lightness of filling her house with her friends. "Hey, Rachel?"
They all looked at her, and Natalie kissed Hannah's crown before meeting Rachel's gaze. "I figured it out a while ago. Maybe even before Chris left, but I didn't spend enough time thinking it through. So this is long overdue. My apology. You're an amazing mama, and you haven't done anything in Hannah's entire life except the best possible thing for her. Including the divorce. I never told you that, and I should have, and I should have been more supportive of you while you were going through it. I'm sorry I wasn't."
She shut up then, because there were only so many words she could say with a one-year-old trying to stick watermelon in her mouth. And because it was hard to chew watermelon and fight tears at the same time, even without the complication of speaking.
Braving a glance up from Hannah's sticky fingers, Natalie saw she wasn't the only misty one. She swallowed. "I'm sorry to you guys, too. Neither one of you whapped me upside the head and asked me why I wasn't being a better friend to Rachel, and while I appreciate your restraint, I'm sure it wasn't easy. Sorry my--you know, my whole mommy issue stuff--got in the way of me being a grown up and a good friend."
Gillian and Serena opened their mouths, but it was Rachel who spoke first. "If Hannah Banana wasn't sitting there," she said, and Nat fought off the tension in her limbs. Rachel huffed out a breath. "I'm not threatening violence, Natalie. Honestly, have we just met? I was just going to say that I can't say the bad words I'm inclined to say at the moment."
Natalie relaxed, but her arms tightened on Hannah. "Sorry."
"Stop apologizing! You i-d-i-o-t woman, there's nothing to apologize for. It's not your fault I married that b-a-s-t-a-r-d, and not your fault he was a rat-fink during the divorce, and it's certainly not your fault that your mother thinks it takes a Y chromosome to make the sun shine and the engines of the modern world to turn."
"I wonder what she thinks about solar power," said Gillian. "Does that make her cosmology stronger or weaker?"
Rachel wrinkled her nose at Gillian. It was what she did when she was dismissing trivialities so she could get on with business, and Natalie was never sure if Rachel knew how cute a tic it was. She met Nat's gaze steadily. "I mean it. We're fine. Don't fret."
"Look, hon, you and me, we're children of divorce," Serena said, patting Natalie's arm. "It causes some knee-jerk reactions about the whole marriage thing. We're allowed to bring that baggage with us when we reach adulthood."
Gillian snorted. The constant recalibration of what constituted a household for Serena during her parents' several marriages and divorces had given Serena a matched set of extra-large polycarbonate baggage. She had only figured how to stash it in her emotional attic once Dillon came along and picked a few of the locks.
Natalie said, "You never asked if Rachel was sure this was the right choice. Or advocated for more counseling even after it was clear Sergei was flat-out lying to the therapist about their homework."
"No," Serena said. "But my parents instigated almost every one of their divorces. They raised me to think if it's not easy, it's easiest to bail as soon as possible. Your mom got left both times, and even if we can't know how your dad bailing on the wedding changed her, I know full well you saw her pleading for another chance and promising to change if my dad would just come back to her."
Natalie flinched. Despite all the things Serena didn't remember about their year of step-sisterhood, she had an unfailing memory of the demise of their temporary family unit. Over the years since they'd reconnected in college, Natalie had realized Serena had the same eidetic memory about all of her parents' divorces. She counted herself lucky in comparison.
But she wasn't done being self-accusatory. "You didn't act like Sergei had the right to ask for full custody." That had been after the paternity test came back.
"Well, no. Neither did you, exactly. But also, I never liked Sergei as much as you did."
"I didn't like Sergei," Natalie told Serena.
At that, Gill guffawed.
Rachel came around the table and hugged Natalie from behind. "You liked him. You fell for his charismatic thing, and I can't blame you really, since I did the same thing. So unless you were lying to my face during my months of colic and court papers, you were a good friend to me. You always have been, and I'm not just saying that because your falafels are sinful."
"It's not the falafels, it's the tzatziki," Serena said.
"It's all of it," Gillian said. "And you even managed to clean most of the kitchen before we came over, so we barely have any dishes to do."
"Don't do the dishes," Natalie said, but Hannah was still in her lap, and Rachel was still hugging her shoulders, so she sat, pinned in place by a mother-daughter show of trust and support.
"We okay?" she asked Rachel.
"We're totally okay. We already were."
"Your daughter is the best kid in the universe, by the way. She's a credit to her mama."
Rachel perched beside them, taking another piece of watermelon. "Well, now we're even more than okay. Keep her entertained for an hour more tonight while I fix a schedule snafu, and we'll even be perfect."
Nat kissed the sticky-sweet little girl cheek. "Deal."
Natalie spent half their twenties talking up the joys of long-term relationships at Serena. She was a regular crusader for settling down, and smug about being right when Serena finally gave Dillon a chance to break through her barriers. Their relationship was new, and not just in terms of longevity. It was new for Serena to have opened herself up--opened her heart and her mind and, most difficult for her, her home--to the security and happiness of love.
It hadn't occurred to Nat that she'd swallowed the propaganda Elaine had swallowed from her grandparents. Or that she'd been regurgitating it. Not generous, to press regurgitated propaganda on her friends, and to judge them when they recoiled. It all gave Natalie a lot to digest.
When she'd decided that she and Elaine both needed to embrace their independence, Natalie hadn't been looking outside herself. Every brag about her ability to do her own heavy lifting had been designed to assert her newfound 'we don't need men' philosophy forcefully enough to sway her mom. Or to at least get her to accept that her daughter was single by choice.
She'd turned the campaign into anecdotes for her friends. She'd blithely accepted that they would cheerlead her triumphs and snicker over Elaine's affronted reactions. She'd received their kudos as her due.
And not once had she considered that she had failed them, repeatedly, by tossing her worldview at their issues. Not once had she taken the time to evaluate what was right for them, regardless of her mom's 'woman needs man, man must have his mate' philosophy. Not once had she applied her revolutionized attitude to her past actions towards her friends and let them know she was sorry to have judged them.