Page 99 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
It’s just me and Leo in the family room now, and when I get to my feet, Leo says, in the first words he’s spoken all afternoon, “Did you get the email I sent last night? About our friend Mr. Footlicker95?”
“I did,” I say. Neutrally.
“Which Bram read it?” Leo asks, lifting the scotch to his mouth but not drinking. “Good Guy Bram or Fuck Shit Up Bram?”
I take a swig of my beer, eyebrow lifted.
Leo laughs suddenly, a laugh that is rich and chilling and beckons a person closer even as it promises certain peril.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asks.
“About Gentry Cooper Wade the Third?” A real smile pulls at my mouth. The only thing better than ruining that piece of shit before the election would be to ruin him badly enough after the election that he’ll need to step down before he’s even been sworn in. “Got anyone else you’d like to bury this weekend?”
Leo looks like I’ve just proposed, and beams. “Always.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Maddie
Ithink I killed the tofurkey,” my sister-in-law, Bee, announces from the kitchen while Mom hovers over her simmering homemade cranberry sauce like a witch closely monitoring her brew.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, babe, but it was never alive,” my brother says as he runs in from the backyard where he’s been frying a real turkey with Bee’s moms, who are visiting from Texas.
Bee lets out a fretful whimper, and from where I’m setting the table I can see the tears brimming.
Nolan drops the utensils and serving platter in his arms and rushes over to coo at Bee, who is in her third trimester. Apparently, a few months ago, her pregnant body decided that she could no longer stand to eat meat, citing the texture. Bee, who loves a Thanksgiving spread, was determined to make the best tofurkey of all time.
As I lay my last utensil, I make my way into the kitchen and hover behind Mom to get a whiff of all the various sides she has waiting in the wings.
“The sides are the best part of Thanksgiving,” I assure Bee. “One year when we were kids, the only thing I ate was Mom’s rolls with homemade cranberry sauce and little molded pieces of butter in the shape of corn, and you know what? Best Thanksgiving ever.”
Bee takes a deep breath as Mom turns and gives me a soft kiss on the cheek. LA has been good to my mother. She’s thriving in her little studio apartment behind Bee and Nolan’s house, and when I flew in on Monday, she walked me through her garden, pointing out all the different things she would be using for Thanksgiving dinner. It made me think of Bram, and that made me cry. It only took a split second for Mom to get over the shock of seeing me cry before she was pulling me into her arms and rocking me against her chest.
“You’re r-right,” Bee says as she absentmindedly strokes her belly and Nolan cradles her hips.
It’s sort of gross to see your brother be so physically affectionate, but goddamn is he happy. It’s actually a little painful to watch at the moment.
Bram and his snakes rallied together and got me moved into one of Sloane’s apartments above The Dry Bean. In fact, I can see my cozy patch of sidewalk where a very amused Leo and a stern Bram found me on Halloween night.
Bram insisted on getting the place ready for me while I stayed with the girls. When Junie and I drove over later that night with the rest of my belongings and a hot pizza, I found the kitchen stocked with the essentials and my cactus on the windowsill with handwritten instructions from Bram.
I cried. It was the first time since I’d ended things with him, and those tears broke some sort of seal, because over the course of the last two weeks I have cried more than I have in my entire life. It didn’t help that I’d also just learned that Gentry won his election within thirty minutes of the polls closing. It was a blatant confirmation that everything people like Penelope Pike and Veronica Balentine preached was true. The focus groups mattered. The donors mattered. Getting into office required the right package, and there wasn’t much room to veer from the plan. So maybe ending things with Bram really was the only choice I had if I wanted to keep hope alive for a future of my own.
I wanted Bram to hate me. I wanted it so badly. In fact, I was angry at him for not hating me. How could he not see how much easier this would all be if he could just hate me?
Junie stayed with me for a while that first night. She turned a movie on and didn’t mind or push too hard when I spent most of the evening just staring at that prickly pear cactus.
At first, Bram’s gentle demeanor felt like a game to be won. Who could out-polite the other? But after a day or two, I remembered the way he’d described his divorce from Sara and how, for him, the end of a relationship required just as much care as the relationship itself.
It was healthy and good, and when I got over the urge of wishing he would just scream at me, it began to hurt. Truly hurt. The immediate moments and days after the breakup were full of me appearing overly confident in my decision in an attempt to convince myself that I’d done the right thing. And then came the hollow sadness as I began to realize that the choice I made wasn’t just about ending something I’d sworn was only physical. It was about choosing between two very different lives. The life I thought I should want and the one that took me completely by surprise.
I don’t know how long it will take me to decide if I’ve made the right decision, but what I do know is that after living so long in the service of someone else’s ambition, I have chosen a future that belongs to me. At the very least, I can say that.
Nolan heads back outside to monitor the turkey with his mothers-in-law while Mom takes over the job of salvaging the tofurkey and I help Bee on drinks.
She pauses for a minute and sets the water pitcher down while she presses a hand to her stomach.
“Everything okay?” I ask. I am totally good with kids, but I don’t know the first thing about being pregnant, so as far as I know Bee could turn to me and say she’s going into labor.
