Have You Met Nora?

by Nicole Blades

Genres: African American Women's Fiction

Synopsis

She's blossomed from a wealthy surgeon's beautiful daughter to elegant socialite to being the top fashion stylist in the country. And Nora Mackenzie is only days away from marrying into one of New York's richest, most powerful families. But her fairy tale rise is rooted in an incredible deception - one scandal away from turning her perfect world to ashes.

What no one knows is that Nora is the biracial daughter of a Caribbean woman and a long-gone white father. Adopted - and abused - by her mother's employer, then sent to an exclusive boarding school to buy her silence, Nora found that "passing" as a white woman could give her everything she never had.

Now, an ex-classmate who Nora betrayed many years ago has returned to her life to even the score. Her machinations are turning Nora's privilege into one gilded trap after another. Running out of choices, Nora must decide how far she will go to protect a lie or give up and finally face the truth.

Release date: October 31, 2017

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Nora opened her eyes and stared through the darkness at the ceiling. Three twenty-eight, she thought, before rolling up off her back a little and craning her neck to look just past Fisher’s shoulders at the blue numbers on the clock by his nightstand. He was dead asleep, the rhythmic flow of his deep breathing like white noise. The numbers gleamed: 3:41 AM. Close enough, she thought, and returned to the ceiling. Although Nora had long been an early riser—she couldn’t remember a time when she had slept later than the sun—this was different.

She eased the covers off and slid out from under Fisher’s muscled arm, moving slow and steady toward the edge of the bed. She hopped down, landing with a soft thud, and then froze, shifting her eyes back to Fisher. No change. Not even a break in the beat. Nora grabbed her iPhone and padded along the hall. The moon, pushing through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse, provided more than enough light for Nora to find the handle to the mini champagne fridge that Fisher bought for her last year. Nora gave the half-drunk bottle of Armand de Brignac—a gift from a client—her deepest bow with prayer hands before grabbing it and shutting the fridge door with her foot. She pulled the orange stopper from the bottle, letting it drop to the floor, and started typing into her phone on her way to the bathroom at the far end of the penthouse. Nora waited until she was inside the empty, freestanding tub before taking her first, long swig from the bottle. She rested her phone on the ledge of the tub and pressed a button on a remote that sent the massive blinds skyward. Nora stayed there in the empty basin, soaking in the city’s glow, and waited.

Her phone buzzed and vibrated against the acrylic. She took another sip before answering it.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” a croaky voice said.

Nora shook her head. “I’m just—”

“Nervous? You’re just nervous, hon. It’s pre-wedding jitters. You’re fixin’ to get married to that gorgeous, big-dicked, super-hot bastard in twenty-two—no, twenty-one days and you’re feeling anxious. That’s all. No Biggie Smalls.”

“Jenna, I’m sitting in an empty tub, pounding old champagne straight from the bottle, and staring out the fucking window. Do you really think it’s necessary to remind me that there are twenty-two days—”

“Technically it’s twenty-one—”

“Jesus, fine, twenty-one days. It’s twenty-one days before the wedding. I’m aware. My whole entire body is aware. We’re all very aware.”

“Deep breaths, sweetheart. You’re freaking out. This is what freaking out looks like on all normal women,” Jenna said. Her Southern twang, though soft, still tickled Nora. “You’re just different. It’s foreign territory for you.”

Nora stopped mid-swig, her arm wobbling and then dropping with the weight of the bottle into her lap. “What does that mean?” she said, squinting her eyes and bracing her body.

“Nothing, just, I don’t know.... I mean, you’re always even and calm; it’s preternatural,” Jenna said. “No matter what’s going on, you’re on like perma-chill. It’s automatic for you. No headless chicken stuff.” A chuckle. “It’s why we kept calling you I.Q. when we first met you. Ice Queen.”

Jenna’s full creaky cackle made Nora move the phone away from her ear and level it on the ledge of the tub. She could still hear Jenna from that distance, but pushed Speaker anyway and went back to drinking her champagne. Nora reclined, cradling the bottle into her chest. “Ice Queen? Seriously? And here I was thinking you were dazzled by my smarts.”

“Oh, we were. Totally. By your smarts, for sure, and also your long legs, your frat-boy mouth, your perky tits, them Kelly Ripa arms, and your entire wardrobe, espesh the shoes. Plus, you speak fluent French—I mean, fucking French—and you’re the first white girl I’ve ever met who can actually dance. Like, legit, Beyoncé backup dancer dance. Need I go on?”

“Yes, you need. Come on, I’m practically perfect,” Nora said, the beginnings of a laugh tickling her throat.

“Practically?” Jenna said, yawning. “Okay, so we’ve thoroughly covered your Boss Bitch status. It’s why Fish is locking you down so fast, while those eggs are still viable.” Nora’s expanding grin disappeared, replaced by a clenched jaw and gnashed teeth. “What I need clarity on is: Why are you dry-tub drinking again?”

“How did you know I’m in the tub?”

“Echoes, booby. Also, you said so earlier. Either way, I’ve got you pretty much figured out. You’re not the QB on this play. What’s the wedding planner’s name again, Gloria? Glenda? Whatever. She’s the quarterback. She’s the one calling all the plays, and you’re watching from the sidelines and it’s driving you bananz.”

“First, are you talking sports at me?”

“A little,” Jenna said through her teeth.

“You’re still hooking up with that sports writer guy?”

“A little.”

“Wait, isn’t he the one who sent you the dick pic when you asked to see his new coffee table?”

“Well, it was pretty impressive . . . the coffee table.”

“Jesus, Jenna. What needs to happen to get you out of these dating app traps? Nothing but Dumpster fires on there.”

“Hold up, I met Sports Guy the old-school way, my dear: at a bar, not on a dating app,” Jenna said. “You kidding me? My filters are tight. He would’ve never made the cut.”

“What about the one who called you from rehab on what was supposed to be your third date?”

“Oh, that whole thing was about me trying to be charitable. I’m from Texas. It’s how we do.”

“Father-God, you need prayer,” Nora said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back in the tub.

“You sound like my sister’s nanny, Bernadette. She says that all the time about those twins: Fahdah-Gowd,” Jenna said, mangling it. “She’s from Trinidad, I think. No, St. Kitts. One of those islands. But you got that accent down solid. So many tricks in your little black hat, woman.”

Nora sat up straight, her eyes popping open as if called by a siren. The empty champagne bottle clanked against the bathtub.

“Oh, God, did you just fall asleep on me?” Jenna said, chuckling.

“No, I didn’t. . . . I should go, though.”

“Thought we were fixin’ to talk about wedding planner Glenda.”

“It’s Grace, and no, we weren’t fixin’ tuh do anything, Dollywood,” Nora said. She placed the bottle on the floor and curled her knees up into herself, burying her forehead and trembling chin into them.

Jenna’s tone got sharper and the grogginess dissipated. “First of all, Ms. Dolly Parton is from Tennessee. Secondly, you know the Texas comes out when I’m tired or drunk. And third, are you, like, mad at me because I forgot the wedding planner’s name?”

Nora knew her voice could not be trusted right then, that it would likely betray her and reveal too much. She swallowed hard, and once more, and again. The vein by her left temple pulsated. It was long, bluish, and exposed itself when she was angry. Nora’s mother said she got it from her deadbeat father. The vein, piercing green eyes, and a surname—Mackenzie—are the only things she inherited from the vanished man. Nora needed to push all that was rising up just behind her tongue back down to the underneath, the subterranean pit where these kinds of things were free to unfold, to fester, and to die.

“Are you serious right now?” Jenna said.

Nora extended an arm to the phone, her finger hovering over the button to end the call. Her mind flashed forward to her next steps, but nothing was clear or sensible. Then, as fast as it came, the tumult in her brain was gone. Her heartbeat quieted; she relaxed her muscles, took a deep breath to quell her knotted stomach, and fixed her face, like her mother always told her to do. The morph ended with a light clearing of her throat. “Sorry, J. I was reading a couple emails,” she said, faking a yawn. The sound of Jenna’s long exhale only made Nora’s shoulders relax even more. “What were we talking about?”

“About how many sheep just jumped over the fence,” Jenna said. “Go to bed, Nora—your real bed, the one with the man in it.”

“Yeah, it’s crazy late. Thanks for listening, Callaway.” Nora rolled her eyes but maintained the brightness in her voice.

“It’s what we do,” Jenna said. “Good night, moon.”

“G’night.”

Fisher traced the length of Nora’s body first with his eyes, then the back of his fingers. When he reached the top of her head again, he massaged her temple and brushed back her hair from her damp cheek. Nora, feigning sleep, tried to maintain a natural breathing pattern and keep her body still, especially her eyelids that twitched under the pressure of the tears pooling behind. Nora wanted to turn and look up at him, be awakened by him, and surrender to his lifting her out from the cold hollowness of the bathtub, carrying her back to their bed. But she couldn’t; she wasn’t her yet. She wasn’t Nora Mackenzie.

His touch was warm, gentle. For no clear reason, in that moment, the touch reminded Nora of that of Dr. Bourdain’s in the earliest days, back when he was still the husband half of the kindest couple—and her mother’s employer—who saw something special, “a spark,” in young Nora; back when he still looked at her as a girl, a child to guide and tutor, instead of a viable conquest to seduce.

“Babe,” Fisher said. “Mack, wake up. What are you doing in here?” He lightly squeezed Nora’s shoulders.

She flinched.

The ruse could not play on. Nora opened her eyes partway and rolled her head toward Fisher. He was wearing only underwear, and his brawny torso glistened in the moonlight spilling through the window. “Hey,” Nora said. The phlegm and tears from moments ago added frog and gurgle to her voice, lending a layer of drowsiness and veracity to her hoax. “Wow. What time is it?”

“It’s late,” Fisher said. He stroked her hair once more. Her eyes fluttered as she tried to blink away the memory of Dr. Bourdain’s revolting touch. She rubbed her brows with the back of her hand, wanting to scrub the gross sensation of the old man’s spotted paw on her with the very same swipe.

Nora sat up in the tub and breathed in her fiancé. “Sorry. I didn’t want to wake you. I came in here to”—her eyes fell on the empty champagne bottle by his feet. “It’s Jenna. Boy drama, again. And let’s just say it required time, tears, and, of course, champers.” Nora gestured to the bottle with her pinky. She was grinning at him in her way—their way. A smile curled up the side of Fisher’s face and he stepped into the other end of the tub, rolling out his legs as best he could, encasing Nora. Fisher was here, not him, she reminded herself, and settled back in the tenderness of his embrace.

“Champers, huh?” he said, his smile stretching up to his bright eyes.

“Of the finest grade,” Nora said, nodding.

“Full bottle?”

“Halfway,” Nora said.

Fisher pulled his legs, along with Nora, closer and leaned into her face, speaking barely above a whisper. “Tipsy?”

“Mmm. Halfway,” she said, matching his hush. He dragged Nora onto his lap, making her straddle him. “What’s next, Mr. Beaumont?” Nora said, leaving her lips pursed and arching her body into him.

Fisher took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking up at his Nora, at her lips, her long neck, the bones along her collar, and then down the deep V of her top, at her hard nipples pressing through the thinness. He rested his forehead between her breasts, and Nora caressed the back of his head, patting the dark blond hair at the nape. There was something off, something tired, resigned about him. Nora slid back so she could better see his eyes. “You okay?”

“That’s what I’m wondering. About you.”

Nora stifled her eye roll. “What do you mean—about me? What about me?” She lifted herself all the way off of his legs.

“Easy,” Fisher said, tilting his head and raising his palm. “All I’m saying is, this is the third or fourth time I’ve found you in here—drinking, upset, sad. Look, I know my mother can be a bit much and . . . old school—”

“Lady Eleanor? Why would you think anything’s wrong there?”

“I don’t know. I keep thinking I should have never told you that whole story with Rock’s first girlfriend . . . her being Asian and my mother’s completely wrongheaded reaction to that and—”

“Your mother has been perfectly lovely. Has been since day one.”

“Right, but you’re white, so that ugliness isn’t an issue here.” Fisher shook his head. “Anyway, I just don’t like seeing you so uneasy and not knowing what I can do to fix it for you. Is the wedding planning getting to be too much?”

“The wedding planning is tied up in a bow handcrafted by Grace and Co. It’s all completely handled.” Nora shrugged. “There’s really nothing for me to even do.”

“So, it’s the wedding itself?” He placed his hand on Nora’s foot. “Are these flawless things feeling a bit of a chill?”

Nora looked at Fisher, at his beautiful, soft face set with sharp edges—his nose, his chin, his jaw. She let her eyes rest on his sweet grin and the laugh lines gently etched into his creamy complexion, taking in all the majesty of him, and she decided right then to open a gate, just a hair, and let a slip of truth spill out. “No, I want to marry you,” Nora said. “It’s just that it doesn’t feel like that. It doesn’t feel like it’s me marrying you and you me. It’s this bigger, grander thing set on a bigger, grander stage with the photographers trailing everywhere, the online stories, and all the speculation and talking about every little detail. Jesus, this town always needs to know everything about you, your family. It’s just so public. I’m not into being public. You know that.”

Fisher reached out to calm Nora’s teetering head with a gentle stroke of her cheek. “Mack, I get it. I get it. It’s a lot. But,” he said with an easy shrug, “I’m a Beaumont. It’s always going to be a lot. And I don’t want to come across like an asshole here, but you’re going to be a Beaumont, too, love; you need better skin. Like my father told me and his told him, and back and back centuries all the way to France: We can’t show cracks. We can’t have them seeing any cracks on us.”

Nora’s chuckle came out like a sneeze. She felt the snot edging out of her nose, but did nothing about it. She instantly regretted starting down this line with Fisher. Showing cracks and better skin and France—she didn’t want to hear any more about it and was desperate to end the whole interaction. You don’t get it, that’s what she wanted to say, because he didn’t. Instead, Nora nodded and smiled brightly at her fiancé. He squeezed the top of her arm, kissing her face and stepping out of the tub in one smooth movement.

“Come back to bed,” he said, and tipped his head toward the door. He was standing with his hands resting on his trim middle and his body squared, the only thing missing, a red cape flapping behind him.

“In a bit. I want to just clean up,” Nora said, nodding and smiling once more. “I smell like subway homeless.” She paused, off his look. “The subway . . . it’s this mode of transpo, kind of like a train, only underground . . . totally out of your scope.”

“You’d be surprised by the kind of underground things in my scope,” he said, smirking and shaking his head. “Just come to bed, smartass. I’ll wait up—for a bit. But word to the wise: Leave the champers out here.” Fisher turned and glided out of the room. The minute he cleared the door and his footsteps were at a proper distance, Nora popped out of the tub and made her swift way to the closet just outside the bathroom. She slid the door open as quiet as possible and stooped down to ease a flat box partway out from the lowest shelf. Nora peeled back the dusty quilt draped over it and slowly cracked open the topside of the box wide enough to slip her hand in. She still knew exactly where to go, how to navigate blindly through the clutter and grab it by its dog-eared corner. Nora went back to the bathroom, a photograph clutched close to her chest. She looked behind her, listening for any stirring from Fisher.

Silence.

Nora went straight to the farthest corner of the whistle-clean bathroom with all its white and height and steely, modern edges, and she squeezed her body tight into the space where the glass and wall met, her forehead pressed against the cool of it while she angled her face to look out the window and steady her mind. Nora only dragged this photo out when she was at the lowest point on her rope, deciding whether to let go or pull herself up again.

The picture was from that long-ago Christmas, one of the first in the Westmount mansion. In it, posed by the lavish, heavily decorated tree, stood a smiling young Nora, her mother, and the Bourdains. It was the photo Nora used to love, the one she had pinned to the corkboard above her frilly, pink-and-white-everything bed in her pink-and-white-everything bedroom in the Bourdains’ basement. There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a cozy nook off the side of the small, basic kitchen down there. It was the basement, Nora knew, but no one in the house ever called it that. It was the flat according to the Bourdains, and our place to hear Nora’s mother tell it. Warm and reasonably bright, it was a considerable step up from where Nora and her mother came. Although Nora’s memory of their cramped, crappy beginnings was limited—they moved in with the Bourdains when she turned six—she could still recall, with a woeful precision, the moldy, dank stench soaked into the walls of their old fall-apart-ment.

Three years after that photograph was taken, it was folded into a tight square and shoved into the toe box of an ugly shoe Nora had long outgrown. The picture needed to be out of her sight, its specialness completely destroyed, after that one vile summer evening when Nora went to Dr. Bourdain’s fourth-floor study with a message from her mother: “Will your company tomorrow require something more substantial than the trimmed sandwiches with the tea?”

Nora, then a freshly turned nine-year-old who rarely paid close attention to her mother’s directives, jumbled it. She skipped over the longer words, boiling it down to what she felt was the crux: “Do you desire more for your company tomorrow?”

Dr. Bourdain, a man of great intellect and refinement, knew what the girl meant, but he didn’t reply. Not right away. Instead, he let his eyes linger on Nora, on her lanky body, for too long. Instead, he asked Nora to go into the alcove off to his left and fetch a book shelved low on the built-ins. Instead, he sidled up behind her as she stooped, and brushed then pressed his pelvis on Nora’s shoulder, on her head, sweeping her thick, wavy hair from one side to the next. She felt the sick twitching in his dress pants against her ear, her jaw. Nora froze, unable to process anything beyond the books’ titles on their spines. She kept her eyes locked on them. And as the speed of his repulsive rubbing increased, Nora could only recite the titles in her mind on a slow loop.

The Flowers of Evil. In Search of Lost Time. The Red and the Black. Notre-Dame de Paris. Remembrance of Things Past.

Looking down at the photograph now, the creases dingy, worn, and cracked, Nora could still make out the top part of Dr. Bourdain’s face behind the black ink splotch. She shook her head, disgusted at herself anew, thinking about the countless times she nearly tore the picture to crumbs or burned it or threw it down a sewer grate. But it was always nearly, almost, not all the way, because she knew that obliterating the picture did nothing to erase what happened. All of it—the scrape of his calloused palms along her inner thighs; the set-in stench of tobacco on his clothes; the low, persistent rumble in his heaving chest as he twitched and trembled behind her—it was never going away.

Nora swallowed hard and reached for her phone, still balancing on the narrow edge of the tub. She stared at the web page for a moment before squeezing her eyes shut and swallowing once more. She scrolled down to the bottom of the short post, the same one that had haunted her for the past eighteen hours, and quietly—barely moving her lips—read the last lines again: Dr. Bourdain is survived by his loving wife, Elise, and adopted daughter, Nora (estranged). He was preceded in death by his parents, Jacques P. Bourdain and Odette V. Bourdain, as well as his brother, Anton J. Bourdain. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to the Montreal Heart Institute.

Nora’s stomach lurched into her throat as she clutched the phone and photograph in each hand. After a long breath, she grabbed the champagne from the floor—the picture wrapped around the bottle’s neck—as she stepped into the tub, took a long swig, and collapsed back into the sunken middle.

Still battling a headache and dry mouth from bathtub drinking the night before, Nora almost didn’t show up at The Chestnut. But she knew that flaking was not an option, not with Jenna. She also knew that skipping out on their weekly lunch meet-up would only push her best friend deeper into wedding-jitters-something-ain’t-right theorizing.

Wednesday afternoons were reserved for Snack Time with Jenna. The snacks were always mini dinners—full-cut steaks, whole pizzas, raw bar towers, burrito platters—and the food themes were always decided upon by Jenna at the start of the month. These were in no way meal replacements. (“Listen, from my G-cup tits to my size-eleven shoes, I’m a Real Bitch, and I eat real food,” she explained, after Nora balked at her habit that first time.) The way it worked was: Jenna would have lunch with the other editors and publishing folks at noon sharp, clockwork, and then an afternoon snack with her best friend, Nora, somewhere “far enough from these Midtown monkeys, please,” which usually meant Brooklyn.

Nora arrived at the restaurant early and glided over to the bar to order her drink, the one perfect for a Wednesday afternoon: a French 75. And there she stood surrounded by an assorted box of special artisanal Brooklyn hipsters, waiting between the silence and noise, staring out through the window. Although Nora could feel the many eyes on her, this long, corn-silk blond beauty poised like a ballerina about to take flight in a grand jeté, she actively ignored them, pushed them to the blurred periphery, and tried to look unconcerned about anyone or anything. This was a skill she honed in middle school, when stares and sneers were aimed at her almost hourly. She checked the clock on her phone. Jenna was late, which was not her style.

Nora met Jenna Callaway shortly after moving to New York City to launch her own reimagined life. They were both at an exclusive investment banking event—two of only five women there. Nora was shadowing Vincent Dunn, her ever-fabulous mentor and fashion fairy godfather.

“Did you get a load of that fucking giant gray tooth?” were the first words Jenna had said to Nora that night. She was in between sips of her short, iceless drink and gawking at a curvy woman hanging off the arm of a saggy, older man. “I can’t stop looking at it. Every time she opens her mouth, I stare at it like it’s going to tell me something about the future.”

“She’s a toothsayer,” Nora said, surprised at how easy she slipped back into high school mode. She shook her head, slightly disappointed with herself.

That’s when Jenna unleashed her laugh—a roar, really—and grabbed on to Nora’s shoulder as she folded over, red-faced and hollering, “Oh, my God! Toothsayer! The best!” After more gasps and bellowing, she righted herself and looked into Nora’s face. “Honey, you’re the best. But you already knew that. We need to know each other. . .