The first call I made was to Elizabeth. I told her I was too sick to come into work, a lie that thrilled her because she saw right through it: it meant my date had gone well.
“How well did it go?”
“I can’t talk right now.”
“Because he’s still there! Okay! That is so good!”
The second call was to Cassie, which went straight to voice-mail, and the next, to Matilda.
She now sat on the other side of her desk in the Coach House, where she had told us to meet her when we dressed. Mark was in the seat next to mine, holding my hand tenderly between his.
I couldn’t believe, still, that this was happening.
“You both look like guilty dogs,” she said. “Why? And Mark? You’re leaving us too, then.”
I looked at his profile. My rock star, so bold on the stage, looked so sheepish in front of Matilda.
“I feel the same way as she does, ma’am. Lightning doesn’t always strike like this. I just want to be with her,” he said, seeming as surprised to say the words as Matilda was not to hear them.
“Why wouldn’t you feel this way, my dear? You’re not a complete idiot. Maybe I’m even a little envious. Because you’re right, what’s happened between you two doesn’t happen often. But it’s quite special when it does.” She paused.
Not just special, I wanted to say—momentous, life-changing, mind-blowing. I had worried she’d try to talk me out of this, that she’d caution me not to confuse great sex for true love. But we were getting a ringing endorsement.
“This means finding your replacement, Mark, and looking for another S.E.C.R.E.T. candidate, Dauphine, but that’s what we do. Now Mark, I’d like to have a quiet word with Dauphine. Why don’t you wait for her in the courtyard? We won’t be a minute. And thank you for your service, however brief. Clearly, you were … revelatory.”
“The pleasure was all mine, ma’am.”
He stretched to standing and looked at my face, his hand reaching for my chin.
“And Mark—” Matilda added, sweetly, as he got to the door. “Never call me ma’am again.”
He nodded, embarrassed, as our eyes followed him out the door. When we were alone, I turned to her.
“I tried to reach Cassie, but her phone’s off,” I said.
“She’s at the hospital. Her colleague went into labor last night. I’ll tell her,” she said, placing a hand over mine. “Listen, you should know the Committee voted yesterday to donate the money we received from Castille Industries, all of it, to various causes that help women. Pierre won’t give us the painting back, but we decided that we cannot operate an organization dedicated to liberating women by taking money from a man dedicated to manipulating them.”
“But what about all the women you could help with his money?”
“S.E.C.R.E.T. has had a marvelous run. Almost forty years. We have another few years in us, I think. We’ll make them really count. And if needed, we have one more painting, though it’s one I hope not to part with.”
She shook off the sad turn of events, then gave me a genuine smile.
“You’d have made a terrific Guide, Dauphine. But we’ll be in touch. I want to know how you’re doing, how every little thing’s going. I’m sure Cassie will want that too.”
“You don’t know what y’all have done for me, Matilda. You’ve given me back my spirit, my joy. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that this organization exists.”
I came around the desk to squeeze her tight. As much as I loved this place and all its magic, I couldn’t wait to get back to my dusty hovel and my tidy store and my wonderful customers and the lovely Elizabeth.
And Mark.
My man was waiting for me outside in the sun, his hair a wreck, his smile delicious, his arms warm, his stomach growling madly.
“Baby, I need a big fat greasy omelette, I need home fries, I need bacon, I need toast,” he said, kissing my neck. “And I need you.”
This wasn’t a fantasy. This was real. Look what happens when you let go of control and make a little room, I thought. The whole wide world rushes to you.
“You read my mind. Let’s get out of here.”
19
CASSIE
TRACINA PICKED OUT the baby’s name—Rose Nicaud—in honor of the Café, which itself was named after one of the first African-American female entrepreneurs in New Orleans.
“We’ll nickname her Neko,” she said, cooing into the baby’s tiny forehead, no bigger than a silver dollar.
To say the baby was small would be to describe only a part of what made her so extraordinary to look upon. She was almost translucent; a network of teeny pink veins covered her whole face and body like a pale web, giving her a light purplish hue. When she wasn’t being held, she was splayed in a portable incubator next to Tracina’s bed, a diaper—the size of a coffee mug—completely swallowing the lower part of her body, her fists no bigger than rosebuds. Tracina had a private room, courtesy of her baby’s wealthy father.
“The doctor says she’s going to be fine,” Tracina whispered to me, not because she wanted to keep the noise down, but because her voice was nearly gone from the screaming during the birth, at Carruthers and at Will, both of whom she allowed in the delivery room, just in case.
Now Carruthers, the seeming victor, in hospital greens and a cap, had clearly made a home for himself in the giant armchair, his suit, vest and tie strewn about the place. He slept with his hand resting protectively on the incubator’s glass cover.
“I might have to stay here for a few more days, but there shouldn’t be any complications,” Tracina said.
Medical complications, at least.
Everything else I would learn came later, when Tracina and I inched towards a kind of friendship in the weeks and months that followed the dramatic birth, when I would discover I had a lot more in common with her than I thought.
She told me her insistence on waiting as long as possible before a cesarean was because she knew there’d be a test and she wanted to delay Will’s heartache as long as possible. No one doubted she cared about Will a lot, but it became clear during the delivery and after that Carruthers was the man she loved. Still, she felt that Will would have made a better father—more reliable, more hands-on, less complicated with his love for the baby. Carruthers was a high-powered politician; he had a wife (now soon-to-be-ex) and two college-aged children. And yet, it was touching the way he stayed by Tracina’s side all night, ducking out to take and receive phone calls, even trying his best to treat Will with some kindness, though Will struggled to return the gesture.
That’s why she told all those lies. Like me, Tracina didn’t want to be a wedge in someone else’s relationship. Even though Carruthers had been ardent from the beginning, he just wasn’t ready to leave. Tracina knew how easy it would be to fall into the role of mistress and she wasn’t having it, never wanting to hide and lie, especially when Trey was getting so smart, and a good man like Will was so available. She broke it off completely. Then she discovered she was pregnant. Not having had a father around herself when she was growing up, she wanted to do everything in her power to make sure her baby had one who was. And she felt that as long as she kept her mouth shut, only someone ignorant of her and Will’s family trees would question the paternity just because the baby’s skin might not perfectly match Will’s. He had two African-American grandmothers; Tracina had white relatives on both sides. The baby’s skin color, like her parents’ before her, was always going to be the result of a spin on a blessedly infinite wheel of hues.