Home > The Perfect Woman(5)

The Perfect Woman(5)
Author: Nicole French

“Oh,” sniffed Nina. “Oh, yes. That’s right.” She didn’t remember at all. So instead, she cleared her throat. “I, um, I use de Vries now.”

She vaguely remembered meeting this Mr. Gardner at some dinner party or another the last time her father had visited from London, maybe four or five years ago. Her father hadn’t had time to spend with his daughter at Christmas, so Nina had been shuttled to a business party and watched men like this one beg for his attention all night.

If there had ever been a night to run off with a busboy… Perhaps she might have if she had thought her father would have cared at all.

Nina tried to suppress the rest of the memories. How she had begged her grandmother for the rights to her maternal family’s name rather than her absent father’s. Or how she had only been given permission with the awareness that it wouldn’t change her chances at inheritance.

She’d get a trust like every other female member, but the de Vries fortune and company were patrilineal. Meanwhile, its single heir had run away in fury.

Fuck Eric, Nina thought with sudden vengeance, the word sounding as strange in her head as it would have on her lips.

“Nina?”

She shook her head, yanked back to the present.

“It’s really too bad that deal never went through,” Mr. Gardner was saying, chatting on about the night they apparently met, though his words didn’t translate as Nina’s own mind started to cycle.

Had he seen her hand on the door?

Had he seen her about to cry?

Did he know why she was here?

Gardner’s eyes flickered to the title on the door, clearly printed in peeling white letters: Clinic: Abortion Services and Other.

There it was. Plain as day.

“I—oh.” His small brown eyes flew back over Nina, landing on her stomach, where her right arm was clasped around her waist.

She dropped it immediately, all sorts of inappropriate language flying through her mind. Well, if he hadn’t known before, he did now.

To his credit, though, Gardner’s face softened.

“Ms. Ast—de Vries,” he said. “Nina. Do you—can I help you with something? Is there someone we should call?”

Nina glanced around. “I—oh, no. There is no one here.”

That, she would realize later, was her first mistake.

Mr. Gardner’s head tipped. “Really?”

“Really,” she insisted weakly. “And you know, Mr. Gardner, I should probably be going…”

He took her wrist before she turned away completely. Nina stopped and stared at it.

It had been two weeks, four days, and seven hours since someone had touched her. Since Peppe had slipped his hands around her neck and pressed his lips to her cheeks at the train station, one at a time, before letting her go.

Buon viaggio, principessa.

“You don’t need to be ashamed,” Mr. Gardner said, glancing at the door again and then back at Nina. “I don’t judge. Really.”

“Oh, Mr. Gardner, it’s not what it looks—”

“Calvin, please.” Gardner offered a kind, if somewhat forced, smile that made his otherwise dull features warmer. The hand on Nina’s wrist relaxed but didn’t let go. “You shouldn’t be here alone. If there isn’t anyone you’d like to call, I could come in and sit with you. If you want. Only until—until you need to go in.”

As awkward as the offer was, he almost looked eager. And as alone as Nina felt, it almost seemed sweet. More attention than anyone had given her recently. Except, of course, one.

She opened her mouth to tell this Calvin everything she knew she should say. That he was mistaken. That she was in the neighborhood looking for a fabric store, or got lost on her way to the Queens MoMA, or some other tall tale that would protect her reputation and keep him at arm’s length.

But suddenly, the idea of walking into this crumbling building, up the stained carpeted steps to a waiting room that was probably just as depressing made Nina want to cry all over again. Calvin seemed to understand, pulled her close enough that she could smell his mild scent of cheap deodorant, aftershave, and sweat. His light brown eyes were unwavering, unwilling to let her look away.

“Oh—okay,” she said, surprising even herself. “Yes, I would appreciate that. Thank you.”

Gardner released her wrist then, but only to prop open the door. He then took her other hand and helped Nina limp up the stairs in her broken shoe, all the way to the clinic on the second floor. Into the waiting room that was as predictably beige and decrepit as she had imagined. Where three other women sat with their toes touching, trying as hard as she was not to make eye contact with anyone else in the room.

Nina sat down while Calvin went to the receptionist to check her in. He returned with a form in hand.

“Do you want me to help you fill it out?”

Nina’s hands were shaking. Shame and dread pressed on each of her shoulders.

Principessa. I love you.

Oh, would Peppe still say that if he saw her now? Or would he be relieved that she was saving him from another kind of shame and ruin?

“No,” Nina said. Suddenly, she couldn’t stop shaking her head, back and forth, back and forth. She couldn’t do this, could she? No, she should. Or maybe she shouldn’t.

She was twenty years old. Too young to be a mother. Too young to weather the tabloids, the press, all the unwanted attention when she was discovered pregnant out of wedlock. Too young for her family to turn on her like they had turned on Eric.

Would Peppe be the next to die in a bathtub?

She was much too young for that, just as Eric had been.

Ultimately, she was too young for love.

Principessa.

Nina turned to Calvin, a man she hardly recognized, but who was the only person in that moment who seemed like he knew her at all. His face was blankly sympathetic, like a character on a sitcom. Practiced and flimsy, but still kind. Like he was doing what he thought he was supposed to in this awkward situation, rather than what Nina actually needed.

It was all she deserved anyway.

Nina stared down at the paper and raised the pen to the first line of the intake form. It wanted her name and address.

She scratched a line.

Terror shot through her.

Everything was wrong.

She dropped the form to the floor and turned to Calvin.

“I c-can’t,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I need to go home. Can you take me home?”

Calvin swallowed, looked at the empty form on the floor, then back up to Nina. “Are you certain?”

That same strange eagerness pervaded his voice.

Do you want me to get an abortion? Nina almost asked. But instead: “Y-yes. Yes, I’m sure.”

Calvin eyed her for one moment more, almost like she was an animal in a zoo doing something out of the ordinary. But the expression only lasted a moment before several others consumed him. Sympathy. Kindness. Friendship.

And then…knowing.

“Don’t worry, princess,” he said as he helped her back up onto her ruined shoes. “I’ll take you home. And we’ll take care of everything.”

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

June 2008

 

 

“You’re going to have to do something about that, you know.”

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