DOUBLE KNOT Read online

  I let out the breath I’d been holding for eighteen years and two months and five days, and it was coming out in miserable wrenching sobs that threatened to make me sick when I finally found the dressing room door, for once so eternally grateful that my cat was stone deaf and couldn’t hear my heart breaking wide open.

  Closing the door behind me, I stumbled to Hers and my stone deaf cat wasn’t in her bed. I ripped an Alice + Oliva sherelle feather maxi skirt from the hanger, rolled it into a ball, and used it as a pillow on the round ottoman. I’d rest while I waited on my cat. Who was surely up the wall. Then I’d tell her what happened. I’d tell her everything, going back eighteen years, two months, and five days.

  Anderson Cooper was a good listener.

  * * *

  The tapping woke me up. I didn’t move, except to spit feathers. More tapping.

  “Davis?”

  It was Fantasy.

  “Davis, let me in.”

  “No.”

  “Come on,” she said. “It’s me.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t stay in there forever. You don’t have food or water. Davis, let me in.”

  “No.” I still had a teeny white feather in my mouth. “Where’s That Woman? Wait,” I said. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”

  “She feels horrible, Davis. She didn’t mean for it to come out that way.”

  “Oh yes she did.”

  “No, Davis. She really didn’t.”

  “I don’t even care, Fantasy. And I wish you’d go away.”

  “I can’t go away. I love you, Davis.”

  “Well, stop.”

  “Is this how it’s going to be? A big pity party?”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  That shut her down. For about three seconds. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I dragged myself up, unrolled my pillow, spread it across my lap, and picked feathers from it. “I didn’t not tell you, Fantasy.”

  “But you never told me.”

  One feather, two feathers, three feathers, four.

  “Does Bradley know?”

  “Of course he knows.”

  Five feathers, six feathers, seven feathers, more.

  “But you never told me?”

  “Fantasy.” I watched a feather float. “There’s no good way to say I got pregnant the summer of tenth grade. By my twenty-one-year-old History teacher. Then had a baby. Then gave her to parents who could give her a life. There’s no way to tell that story. There’s no way to start that story.” My heart was in a vise grip. “And why now? Why here? Why would she do this to me?”

  “It’s why she came on the cruise, Davis. She was looking for the right time to tell you the baby you had grew up.”

  “Like I can’t count.”

  “Davis, the baby you had went to Pine Apple to find her birth mother. She found your birth mother.”

  I was dizzy with motherhood.

  An hour or four passed. “When?”

  “On her eighteenth birthday.”

  Two months and five days ago. When Mother was sick. Really, truly, sick.

  I found a voice. Not necessarily my voice, because I don’t usually sound so strangled. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Your parents didn’t know if you could handle it.”

  A valid concern. Considering the shape I was in.

  “Davis, your dad set this up. He thought it would be a good idea for you to hear it from your mother.”

  What? That wasn’t what this was about. Daddy asked me to help That Woman face the truth. And he sent her with truth for me? I’d never speak to either of them again. Ever again.

  Ever.

  Had I not been sitting I’d have fallen down when That Woman said, “She’s going to Oxford, Davis.”

  Another wave of rage, shame, and the end of my life as I knew it knocked me down all over again at the sound of her grating voice. I opened my mouth to tell her to go straight to hell, but what came out was, “Mississippi? She can’t. No one graduates from Ole Miss. She shouldn’t go to Oxford.”

  “Oxford in England,” That Woman said. “Not Oxford in Mississippi. She’s very smart, Davis, like you. And very beautiful. She looks just like you.”

  A picture slid under the door. A picture of the daughter I knew I couldn’t do right by eighteen years, two months, and five days ago. I reached for it with a shaking hand and laid eyes on my firstborn for the first time since she was an hour old. It looked as if her adoptive parents had done very right by her. And with the small studio portrait of this angel eighteen years of questions were answered. Eighteen years of guilt assuaged. Eighteen years of curiosity satisfied. And eighteen years of love with no visible target found a home.

  I touched her face, I kissed her picture, I placed her against my belly button and whispered, “It’s your big sister.” Maternal love poured over me in buckets and might have drowned me had it not been so rudely interrupted.

  “So? Will you let me in?”

  Are you kidding me? I rolled my eyes all over the crystal chandelier above my head. They were all three sitting in the hall? Then I heard the ungodly sound of an Anderson Cooper caterwaul. Coming from the wrong side of the door. She wasn’t up the wall; she’d been in the bedroom. Or the sitting room. The people on the other side of the door had my cat. They were all four sitting in the hall.

  “Anderson Cooper wants in, Davis.” (Fantasy.)

  I wasn’t about to open the door. I wasn’t ready. I might never be ready. I wanted to be alone. With my picture. And my cat. “Leave Anderson and go away.”

  Then That Woman tried to bribe me. “I made you a sandwich.”

  My stomach growled. “Go away. Leave my cat and go away.” I wondered what kind of sandwich.

  “I sliced the chicken real thin,” That Woman said. “It’s on French bread with a little dab of mayo and shaved provolone. It won’t keep out here forever.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I was famished.

  “I brought you a pickle spear.”

  I love pickle spears. “Leave my cat and leave the sandwich and go away.” Chips would be good.

  “I brought you chips too.”

  Dammit. My mouth watered. My babies kicked around.

  “Fantasy only,” I said.

  “Okay, honey.”

  Honey, my ass.

  I used the feather skirt to mop my face, because my eyes were still leaking a little.

  “Are they gone?”

  “They’re gone.” Fantasy spoke through food.

  “Are you eating my sandwich?”

  “She made me one too.”

  With one last look at the picture That Woman would never get back, I tucked it close to my heart. I unlocked the door, cracked it open, shot out my arm, and said, “Give me my cat.” I pulled Anderson in, sat her down, then put my arm out again. “Give me my sandwich.” I hoped it was a big sandwich.

  “You can’t hold it with one hand.”

  “The sandwich is bigger than Anderson Cooper?”

  I repositioned myself, cracked the door a half inch more, and put both hands out. I pulled in a serving platter piled high with chicken sandwiches. I couldn’t even count the sandwiches, cut diagonally like That Woman does, and I shouldn’t have been trying to count them, because the door slammed open. They flew in on the wings of a cat and chicken sandwiches. That Woman, Jess, and Fantasy marched right past me.

  Dammit.

  Fantasy had the computer tucked under one arm, The Compass under the other, and a bag of Ruffles between her teeth. That Woman had a stack of dinner napkins and three bar glasses, and Jessica had a bottle of wine and the dead V2s she dragged everywhere. Did they not bring me anything to drink? That Woman pulled a
bottle of raspberry lemonade from a pocket and held it out. I’d never forgive her, but I wouldn’t die of thirst just because she was mean. And cruel. And had a little bitty black heart. I was ready for them to leave, now that I had my cat, and the sandwiches, and the raspberry lemonade, but when I opened my mouth to kick them out, it stayed open. Because we heard something solid banging and bouncing its way down the bulkhead behind the mirror.

  We crept in the direction of the noise.

  It was a V2. It fell down the wall and landed in the shreds of Bianca’s Monique Lhuillier strapless gown.

  That Woman said, “Look what your cat did to that dress.”

  We had a V2. And it worked. Or it would have worked, if we had the right thumb.

  SIXTEEN

  The front door of 704 laughed at our V2, flashing red for no instead of green for go. It was surely programmed to open a door somewhere, just not here. We filed back to the dressing room, way slower on the return, and gathered around the chicken sandwiches. Which were delicious. I was on my third. I reached for my fourth. I’d stop after this one. Maybe.

  “Did we think it would open the door?” Fantasy asked.

  “If the thumb lock was overridden it would,” I said.

  “Even if it was,” Fantasy said, “what did we think we were going to do? March out in the hall?”

  “So, yes.”

  “No, we wouldn’t, Jess,” I said. “We don’t know what’s out there. Do you want to walk out the door and get shot? Or locked in the submarine with No Hair?”

  “So, no.”

  “We have a working V2, and I know we can find a way to use it to our advantage, but right now our best options are still the computer, the cell phone, or that.” I pointed to the wall.

  “I’ll do it.”

  We all looked at That Woman.

  “You’ll do what?” Fantasy asked.

  “I’ll climb up the wall,” That Woman said. “I used to climb trees, you know.”

  I turned to my interpreter. Fantasy.

  “Tell her I said no.”

  Fantasy spoke to That Woman. “Davis said no.”

  “Tell her my father would kill me.” Of course, he’d have to get in line behind Bianca. Anderson Cooper destroyed her Monique Lhuillier, which was now designer silk confetti. And I’d pulled half the feathers out of her Alice + Oliva sherelle maxi skirt when I’d used it for a (Kleenex) pillow. And then there was the Louis Vuitton luggage. I should gather the rest of Bianca’s luggage, clothes, shoes, and jewelry and throw the lot of it overboard just to make a clean sweep of all things Bianca’s.

  Fantasy passed on the news. “She says her father would kill her.”

  “I heard her.” That Woman leaned past Fantasy and spoke to me. “I can hear you, Davis.”

  “Tell her the chances are too great that the minute one of us pokes our head outside of this suite, someone will blow it off. They have our biometrics.”

  Fantasy opened her mouth to relay the news, but before she could That Woman said, “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “So, when you registered.” Jess spoke slowly to That Woman. “Remember when you filled out your paperwork a long time ago and they took your picture with the camera that went around your head?” Jess made a wide circle above her head, demonstrating. “They were recording your face. So, your cheekbones—” Jess traced her own dramatic cheekbones, then she began drawing circles around her dark eyes,“—and your eye sockets. And your chin.” She tapped her chin.

  “I never had my picture made with a round camera.”

  “She’s right.” I dropped my fourth sandwich. “She flew in last minute under the radar.” I pointed at That Woman. “She’s not in the Probability system.”

  “And she’s the only one of us who’ll halfway fit up the wall,” Fantasy said. “Come on, Davis, you said it was a service area behind a bar. How dangerous is a service area? We’ll be able to see her and talk to her the whole time.”

  “I’m not talking to her,” I said.

  “Suit yourself, sourpuss,” That Woman said.

  “That cat of yours has been up and down the wall fifty times and there’s not a scratch on it,” Fantasy said.

  “Her.”

  “Whatever.”

  It was ten o’clock. Most, if not all, Probability passengers were toasting the bride and groom at Tie the Knot, far from the casino, which wouldn’t open for another two hours. If we were going up the wall to find (help) the owner of the V2, now was the time.

  “It’s too dangerous.” I couldn’t let anything happen to her. “And that’s my final answer.”

  “Well, you’re not the boss of me, Davis Way.” That Woman stood. “I’ll be right back.” She got up and marched out of the dressing room.

  “Fantasy, where is she going?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Well, ask her.”

  “Mrs. Way, where are you going?”

  “I’m putting on my party suit.”

  Fantasy looked at me. “This I gotta see.”

  “So, me too.”

  Fantasy and Jess stood and followed her, leaving me sitting on the ottoman alone. Anderson Cooper and I brought up the rear. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but I was going too. I turned back to grab the last sandwich. Just in case. They were so good.

  “What are we doing?” Jess asked as we filed through the salon.

  “I’m going up that wall to the casino,” That Woman said over her shoulder. “And I can tell you this right now.” She stopped cold and we ran into each other. Boom boom boom. That Woman turned and spoke to us. “Gambling is a mortal sin. I don’t want to have to explain it when I meet my maker. I’m going on a rescue mission. I’m not going to play casino games. Everybody got that?”

  We got that.

  * * *

  The Party Suit was wide-legged black trousers with brass sailorette buttons marching down the long pockets, paired with a red twinset featuring black whales blowing white bubble fountains. It was cuter than it sounds, very sensible, and obviously brand new. I paced and tried not to pay attention.

  Jess said, “Your hair. Pull it back in a chignon. So classy.”

  That Woman sat on a stool at the makeup mirror. “You go ahead. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.”

  “She’s lying.” I said it through the last of the chicken.

  “Do not talk with your mouth full, Davis Way.”

  I wished I had another sandwich (in general), so I could talk through every bite of it.

  “So, like, your hair didn’t fall out,” Jess said.

  “Child, nowadays they freeze your head. Ice cap. Keeps your hair in.”

  “Was it cold?”

  “It was ice,” Mother answered. “On my head. So yes. It was cold.”

  Fantasy was digging in That Woman’s makeup. “Do you own stock in Estée Lauder? I’ve never seen so much of this in my life.”

  “Get my rouge out of there, Fantasy,” That Woman said. “Give me some spots of color. And get my Youth-Dew.”

  “Who is Youth-Dew?”

  “It’s my signature fragrance, Fantasy. Everyone needs a signature fragrance.”

  Fantasy was deep in That Woman’s forty-year-old makeup bag full of fifty-year-old makeup. She pulled out a gold-capped bottle half full of amber liquid with a beat-up gold bow tied around the waistline of the pleated glass, then asked, “How old is this?”

  That Woman snatched it, craned her neck, squirt squirt, and filled the room with the scent of my life. “It doesn’t go bad, Fantasy.” She shot a stream on the inside of her left wrist, then rubbed her wrists together. “It’s not eggs.”

  After what felt like an eternity, That Woman was ready. And barefoot. “Davis, get my high heels.”
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  “You can’t wear heels, Mrs. Way,” Fantasy said. “You need traction.”

  I looked in the closet and found what That Woman called heels, and they did, indeed, have a hint of a lift at the back of the shoe. Maybe. They were Naturalizer black patent leather pumps, and I found them on a shoe shelf beside a pair of bright blue Easy Spirit Traveltime Cloggers. I passed the cloggers to Fantasy.

  “I’m not wearing those,” That Woman said. “They don’t match.”

  “Tell her this isn’t a fashion show,” I said. “It’s a reconnaissance mission. To see what’s up there. She doesn’t even need to dress up and she sure doesn’t need high heels.”

  Fantasy opened her mouth and That Woman said, “I heard her. And I’m wearing my heels. We don’t know what’s up there. You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.”

  She was right about one thing: We don’t know what’s up there.

  The shoe fight ensued and a compromise was reached. She could fit her high heels in her big pockets and change when she got up the wall. Fantasy talked her into the cloggers for the climb.

  We marched back through 704, Anderson and I bringing up the rear again. When we stepped inside my sitting room, I held back and let the others go. I could hear Fantasy and Jess passing out uphill advice. I could hear That Woman assuring them she’d forgotten more about climbing in her sleep last night than the two of them put together ever knew when they were awake. I kept my nose buried in Anderson Cooper, who was resting on my babies. I tried to keep my breathing slow and steady, and I wondered why I was so cold. Maybe I wasn’t so cold, but I was shaking, head to toe.

  “Davis?” A finger lifted my chin. “Look up here.”

  I met her dark caramel eyes, the exact color of mine. “Did you tell her about me?”

  She tapped my nose. “I told her how much I love you.”

  My eyes started leaking again. “Mother, please be careful.”

  * * *

  The high heels in her pockets didn’t last two minutes. They came banging down the wall, first the right, then the left.

  “Dadburn it.” She was reporting from somewhere near the middle of the chute behind the mirror. The acoustics were quite good. “My high heels.”