Page 44 of Sublimate
“Thank you,” Nolan told him. “It was good to see you, Dad.”
“It’s always like this,” his father answered. Then he went back in.
We walked toward the road, Nolan carrying the bags while I ordered a car on his phone. “Why is it always like this?” I wondered.
“It’s how they are. I’m sorry you had to deal with it, though.”
“Are you kidding? I’m thrilled! I got the two most important pieces of paperwork and now I can get the rest, too. It’s amazing and I’m extremely grateful to you and also to your mom, even if she did try to insult me.”
“I like your shirt,” he mentioned.
“Thank you. Thank you for setting all this up, too. We could have stayed the night—maybe it would have been nice for you tospend more time with your dad? You could have slept in your old room.”
“He’s enjoying his time with a bottle of scotch right now,” he answered. “That’s about as much of them as I can take. Anyway, I don’t have a room there.”
I looked back at the house. “There’s definitely space for two guests in a building that size.”
“My actual bedroom isn’t mine anymore. When I went away to boarding school, they removed the furniture. They boxed up my belongings and had them shipped to the dorm,” he explained. “I’m not saying that I was blameless, because I was a terrible little shit at that point in my life. But I also remember sitting on the top bunk and thinking that it was my only home. That felt awful, especially because I hated my roommate so much.”
“The bully. I hate him, too.” I had done this routine for Kolter, promising that I felt the same way as he did about people who had wronged him. I actually did hate Nolan’s former roommate, though. “I’m sorry, but I also don’t like your parents very much.”
“No one does. My grandparents wouldn’t allow them inside their house up north. But luckily for me, I was allowed there alone.” He put down our bags. “How long until the car gets here?”
“Fifteen minutes.” I handed back his phone and carefully checked the folder I carried to make sure that my paperwork was still inside. “I can’t believe I have this stuff. Maybe your mom is mean, but she must be a good lawyer.”
“Madeline also hires the best people to work for her. They hate her for a few years but I think it’s worth it in the end, because they learn to be utterly ruthless and compassion-free. Viv, I’m very sorry about what she said to you.”
“About my shirt? Or about how she kept repeating that she wasn’t able to track down my high school and college transcripts, even though you had already told her that I hadn’t gone to high school or college? Or how she mentioned that people did such interesting things with drugstore makeup and then she stared at me and winced? Or when she was concerned about whether I would be able to sign the back of my social security card and asked if I needed to practice first with a pencil? Or how she wondered if I was small because of malnutrition or because my mom never got prenatal care? I’m sure those things are true.”
“Fuck. Yes, I’m sorry about all that but I was referencing when she brought up your mother’s criminal history.”
He had said that he was aware of my mom’s profession but he’d stretched the truth about other things, like when he’d announced that the two of us were together, a couple. “I’m not really surprised by the length of her rap sheet,” I said. “I know she used to get arrested regularly for various stuff, not just solicitation. She had a bad drug problem and so did my sister. I used to look for their latest mugshots but I stopped a few years ago. It was sad to see how much they changed, because both of them were so pretty. My mom was really worried about losing her looks, too. Like how you said that going grey and getting wrinkles wasn’t on your list of concerns? It was near the top ofhers because she depended a lot on her face and body to get men. Not just johns but boyfriends and ‘husbands.’”
He nodded. “Do you think that either one of them would go to rehab and try to change?”
“No.” I sighed. “You know how it is, right? You have to really want something different and neither of them can even imagine their lives in another way. It’s hard when everything feels so narrow and there are so many boundaries. You get like, ‘Holy bells. Is this it?’ And it is. That’s it for you. Patchouli would react by going on a big bender that would end up with charges for disorderly conduct and property destruction. My mom would get married again. She also went on a lot of big benders.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It’s a hard way to live,” I agreed. “Now I won’t have to. I have this.” I patted the folder that I cradled to my chest. “I can have something different now.”
“You’re really not upset about those insults?”
“I mean, I didn’t think they had the ‘zing’ that she was after,” I said. “Like, I was surprised when she mentioned that most criminals are redheads—you know, I don’t believe that, anyway.”
“I don’t believe it either.”
“But the other stuff, like my ugly shirt, my lack of education, my mother’s occupation, my sister’s arrests, the blank on my birth certificate where my dad’s name should be? That’s all very accurate. I don’t get upset by things like that anymore,” I explained. “I remember crying at school and a teacher telling methat sticks and stones could break your bones, but words could never hurt you. They could back then but I’ve toughened up a lot. Actual sticks and stones still hurt a lot, though.”
A cool wind blew and rustled the paperwork in my arms. I glanced around.
“We’re nowhere near a graveyard,” he mentioned casually. Then he stepped close, like he had inside his parents’ house, and he put his arm around me. Maybe he’d only done that in case they were watching through a window but no matter the reason, I was glad.
The car arrived soon enough and we zipped away. He looked out the window as we went and so did I, watching big houses and then a lot of traffic that we didn’t have up north. He had gotten us rooms in a pretty hotel right in the city of Detroit and it was the first time I’d stayed in a place like that. I looked around my room and found a refrigerator full of beverages…oh, no.
“Yes?” Nolan asked as he opened the door across the hall. “What’s wrong?”
I had been pounding to demand entry so it was a legitimate question. “I need to look in your baby refrigerator,” I said, and went under his arm to enter.
