Naddy
Naddy
This woman has been crying since she walked in. Not quiet crying either. Not the kind where you dab under your eyes and apologize for ruining your mascara. She’s sitting in one of the little consultation chairs by the counter with both hands wrapped around a wad of tissues, trying to breathe through whatever is happening inside her chest while the woman beside her studies pictures of casket sprays.
Her mother-in-law, I think. I’m afraid to ask because everything about them feels fragile enough already.
“I think he would’ve liked the white ones,” the older woman says.
Her finger rests against a photograph of white roses mixed with lilies and greenery. The girl makes a noise that hurts to hear.
“He hated lilies.”
The older woman looks at her. “He did?”
She nods hard, wiping at her face. “He said they smelled like funerals.”
Nobody says anything. Well, fuck. I look down at the binder because there isn’t really a useful facial expression for that.
The older woman closes her eyes for a second and presses her lips together. “No lilies, then.”
“No lilies,” I agree quietly.
She turns another page. They’ve been here almost forty minutes trying to choose flowers for a twenty-six-year-old Marine’s casket. Twenty-six fucking years old. Caroline wrote everything down before she handed them off to me: Staff Sergeant Matthew Reynolds. Killed overseas. Wife, mother, father, little brother. Apparently a baby on the way too.
The crying girl is his wife. Definitely his wife. She’s pregnant, but early, and Caroline has it written in the notes because they want something from the baby incorporated into the funeral later, although nobody seems to know what yet. Every few minutes the girl presses one hand against her stomach without seeming to realize she’s doing it, and that might be the worst part.
At some point in the next several months, her body is going to hand her their kid and he’s still going to be dead. She’s going to have to do the hospital and the first night home and the diapers and bottles and every other piece of shit that was supposed to belong to both of them, except half of the both is being buried this week. There’s a thin gold wedding band on her finger and a second ring with a little diamond she keeps twisting around and around like she’s trying to unscrew it from her hand.
“He liked blue,” she whispers.
The mother looks at her immediately. “We can do blue.”
“There aren’t really blue flowers,” I say before realizing maybe I should shut the fuck up.
Both of them look at me. I point toward one of the arrangements in the binder.
“Not naturally, anyway. We have delphinium. Hydrangeas can be blue. Iris. We could do mostly white and bring blue through it without making it look…”
I stop myself before saying like somebody dyed a bunch of carnations at a gas station.
“Without making it look artificial.”
The wife starts crying harder, and I panic for half a second before she says, “He liked blue.”
“Okay.”
She nods. “Okay.”
I pull the binder closer and start putting something together that doesn’t have lilies in it. White roses. Blue delphinium. Hydrangea. Greenery. Something clean. Something that doesn’t look like a goddamn funeral even though there’s absolutely no way around what it is.
His mother keeps asking questions because somebody has to. How large should it be? Will it cover enough of the casket? Can they put his insignia in it? What happens to the flowers afterward? His wife mostly cries, but every once in a while she answers something.
“He doesn’t like red.”
“He likes those.”
“Can we put the ribbon on the other side?”
Present tense. Every time. He doesn’t. He likes. Not he didn’t. Not he liked unless somebody else says it first. Eventually I stop correcting the order form in my head.
His mother reaches across and takes the girl’s hand, and that does it. The wife folds forward like somebody cut whatever was holding her upright.
“Oh God.”
Her mother-in-law is out of her chair immediately, wrapping both arms around her while she sobs into her shoulder.
“I can’t do this.”
“I know.”
“I can’t fucking do this.”
“I know, baby.”
“I want him home.”
Her voice cracks so badly on the last word that I have to look away. There are flower buckets behind me. Pink roses. Yellow daisies. Baby’s breath. All the cheerful shit people buy when someone gets engaged or has a baby or wants to apologize for sleeping with somebody’s sister.
And three feet in front of me, a woman who looks maybe my age is trying to pick flowers for her husband’s coffin while carrying the kid he’ll never meet.
Over my dead fucking body will I fall in love with a Marine. I’ll sleep with one. Fine. I’ll pour them drinks, flirt with them for tips, take one home if he’s hot enough and I’m stupid enough. That’s manageable.
But fall in love with one? Absolutely fucking not.
No dress blues at my front door. No deployment countdown taped to the refrigerator. No lying awake wondering whether some asshole halfway across the world is going to knock on my door and turn my entire life into a folded flag and a casket spray. No getting pregnant and finding myself sitting in a florist shop while somebody’s mother helps me decide what flowers he would’ve wanted on top of his coffin. No fucking thank you.
The wife finally sits back up. Her face is blotchy and wet, and somehow she looks embarrassed about it.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I tell her.
“I’m making a mess.”
“You’re really not.”
“I’m getting tissues everywhere.”
“We have a broom.”
That gets the tiniest sound out of her. Not quite a laugh, but close enough that I’ll take it. Her mother-in-law squeezes her hand.
“We’ll do the blue.”
The girl looks at the arrangement I’ve started marking. “No lilies?”
“No lilies.”
She nods. “Okay.”
I finish the order while they sit together. I don’t try to make conversation anymore because there isn’t anything I can say that won’t sound stupid.
When they finally leave, the mother thanks me twice. The wife hugs me, which surprises the hell out of me. She smells like vanilla lotion and somebody else’s perfume, and for about three seconds she clings to me like I’m somebody she knows. Then she steps back, wipes her face and follows her mother-in-law out the door.
I watch them through the front window until they get into a black SUV.
“Jesus,” I whisper.
Caroline comes out from the back room carrying a clipboard. “Hard one?”
I look at her. “Twenty-six.”
“I know.”
“He had a wife.”
“I know, Naddy.”
“And a baby coming.”
Caroline’s face softens. “Yeah.”
I glance back toward the parking lot even though the SUV is already gone. “Fuck that.”
Caroline raises an eyebrow.
“I’m serious. Over my dead body will I ever fall in love with a fucking Marine.”
“You work six miles from Camp Lejeune.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t fuck one.”
“Naddy.”
“What? Those are completely different levels of commitment.”
She shakes her head, smiling a little. Then the smile disappears, which should probably warn me. Instead, I start straightening the binder.
“Do you want me to put this back?”
“Actually, can you sit down for a minute?”
I look at her. There are sentences in life that are never followed by anything good. We need to talk. Can you come into my office? Can you sit down for a minute?
“No.”
Caroline blinks. “No?”
“I feel like whatever you’re about to say will be less annoying if I’m standing.”
“Naddy.”
“Fine.”
I sit in the chair the Marine’s wife just vacated. There’s still a crumpled tissue on the floor beside my shoe.
Caroline takes a breath. “I’m going to have to let you go.”
I stare at her. “What? Did I do something wrong?”
“No. God, no. Naddy, it’s not you.” She shifts the clipboard against her chest. “It’s the needs of the business. Things have been slower than I expected, and I can only afford to keep one staff member right now.”
I already know where this is going. “Lania.”
Caroline nods. “She has more tenure.”
I blink at her. “Tenure. In a fucking florist shop.”
Her mouth tightens.
Okay. Probably not my finest response to being fired, but I’ve just spent forty minutes helping a woman choose flowers for her dead husband’s casket and now apparently I’m unemployed, so Caroline is getting whatever version of professionalism I have left.
“I really am sorry,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“I wish things were different.”
“Sure.”
She opens the register and starts counting bills.
“What are you doing?”
“I wanted to give you a little something.” Caroline pulls out some cash and holds it toward me. “For today and a little extra. I know this is sudden.”
I look at the money, then at her, then back at the money. There are situations where pride is useful. This isn’t one of them, so I take it and shove it into my purse.
“Thanks.”
“I really mean that, Naddy. You were good here.”
“Just not tenured.”
Her mouth tightens again, and I decide maybe I should stop saying that. She already fired me. There isn’t much left for me to accomplish besides getting myself banned from buying funeral arrangements.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“No, I probably do.”
That gets a tiny smile out of her. I grab my hoodie from beneath the counter and pull it on while she tells me she’ll be happy to give me a reference. I tell her that would be great because apparently my new career plan is convincing another minimum-wage employer that I’m exceptionally qualified to stand upright for eight hours at a time.
The afternoon sun hits me directly in the eyes when I walk outside, and I stop on the sidewalk with my purse over my shoulder and nowhere I actually need to be anymore. Well, fuck. Two jobs became one in less than ten minutes, and the one I still have is Marjie’s, where the good money exists almost exclusively on Friday and Saturday nights when every Marine within fifty miles apparently decides whiskey is a food group.
I unlock my Ford. It takes two tries because the key sticks.
“Don’t you fucking start too.”
The car doesn’t answer, which is nice. At least something in my life knows when to shut up.
I climb in but don’t start the engine. My purse is in my lap, Caroline’s pity money is inside it, and my phone is already in my hand before I can talk myself out of checking. The bank app loads.
$142.36.
I stare at the number, refresh it like Wells Fargo might realize there’s been some terrible mistake, and get the exact same answer.
“Shit.”
I close my eyes and immediately think about the groceries. That’s the problem. I spent almost two hundred dollars yesterday because yesterday I had two jobs. Milk, cereal, chicken, hamburger, bread, fruit, yogurt, frozen stuff Mason can make if I’m working late, school snacks and juice. Then Mason stood beside the cart holding a bag of barbecue chips and asked if he could get them too.
He almost never asks, so I said yes. Then he found those chocolate sandwich cookies with the stupid little designs on them, and I said yes to those too. Juice boxes instead of the giant jug because he likes taking them outside when he plays. Yes again.
None of it was ridiculous, and somehow that makes me feel worse. I could’ve told him no, and he wouldn’t have thrown a fit. Mason doesn’t do that. He would’ve put everything back and probably told me it was okay because my eight-year-old has gotten disturbingly good at understanding when something is too expensive. I fucking hate that phrase coming out of his mouth.
So yesterday I said yes. Today I have a hundred and forty-two dollars.
“Stupid,” I whisper, resting my forehead against the steering wheel. “Stupid, stupid Naddy.”
I know better than to grocery shop like I’m financially stable. That’s beginner-level poor-person shit. You never spend based on what you’re supposed to make. You spend based on what has already survived long enough to reach your checking account. I’ve known that for years, but I got comfortable.
Not comfortable comfortable. I don’t have throw-pillows-and-vacations money. I had both bills might clear without me moving money around six times comfortable. Apparently that was reckless.
I finally start the Ford, and it answers with a noise that sounds expensive.
“Nope.”
I turn the radio up and back out of the parking space. Problem solved. For now.
By the time I get home, I’ve done the rent calculation four different ways and hated every answer. I carry my purse inside, kick the door shut behind me and immediately see yesterday’s groceries sitting around the kitchen like they personally betrayed me. There’s the bread. The cereal. The fucking barbecue chips.
I point at them. “You better be delicious.”
They remain silent. Everybody is really respecting my boundaries today.
Mason won’t be home for another hour, which gives me time to panic privately instead of doing it while he’s sitting at the kitchen table telling me about Minecraft or whatever kid at school apparently committed an international war crime by stealing somebody else’s mechanical pencil.
I pull the electric bill off the fridge, add the car insurance notice and rent statement, then sit at the table with a pen and start subtracting. I can cover part of it with Marjie’s. Friday and Saturday can be good if the Marines are out. Great, occasionally, if there’s some birthday, homecoming, breakup, deployment sendoff or other event that makes twenty-three-year-old men decide they need twelve Jack and Cokes and the emotional support of a bartender.
But tips aren’t a paycheck. Marjie gives me what she can, and I’ve been pushing for more shifts, but weekday nights are garbage. April already has most of those anyway, and April has been there forever. Apparently tenure is everywhere now.
I stare at the numbers until they stop meaning anything, then pick up my phone and open Jase’s contact. I close it, open it again and mutter, “Fuck,” before typing so I can’t lose my nerve.
Me: Hey, can I ask for a loan?
I regret the wording immediately, but it’s too late. The three dots appear, disappear, then come back.
Jase: Again?
I drop my head onto the table. “Of course.”
I love my brother. I do. But asking Jase for anything is like applying for a federal grant administered by someone who remembers every stupid financial decision I’ve made since I was sixteen. He somehow escaped our childhood as a completely functional adult, and I still don’t understand it.
Jansen. Or Jase, because that’s what Mom always wanted to call him. Apparently somebody told her Jase wasn’t a real name, so she put Jansen on the birth certificate and called him Jase anyway. I’ve barely known him as anything else.
Same mother. Different fathers, not that either one deserves any trophies. Jase’s dad came around maybe five times, which technically puts him approximately five visits ahead of mine. Still, somehow Jase came out responsible. He barely drinks, never did drugs, married his college girlfriend, bought a house and has a yard he voluntarily maintains. His kids probably have college funds already. He’s thirty-something going on sixty-five.
I stare at his name in my phone for a few seconds before finally typing:
Florist let me go.
My phone rings almost immediately. I roll my eyes.
“What the hell happened?” he asks the second I answer.
“Nice to hear your voice too.”
“Naddy.”
“Business is slow. Apparently Lania has tenure.”
There’s a pause. “You work at a florist.”
“Thank you. That was my response too.”
“I thought that job was solid.”
“So did I. Caroline said she can only afford one employee and Lania has been there longer, so apparently I got voted off Flower Island.”
“That’s fucking ridiculous.”
“At least somebody understands.”
I get up from the table and start wandering around the kitchen while we talk, mostly because sitting still means staring at the bills spread across it. Rent. Electric. Insurance. Everything with a due date and absolutely no concern for whether I still have two jobs.
“How slow can flowers be around a military base?” Jase asks.
“Shotgun weddings outnumber fancy flower arrangements.”
“Jesus.”
“Accurate, though.”
He lets out one of those long sighs he’s been perfecting since we were teenagers. “How much?”
I stop near the refrigerator. “I just need something to stay afloat until I find another job.”
“That isn’t a number.”
“This is why I hate asking you for things.”
“You hate asking because you know a loan from me isn’t really a loan.”
My jaw tightens. “I pay you back.”
“Sometimes.”
“Fuck you.”
“See? This is why banks are more professional.”
That almost gets a laugh out of me, but then he ruins it.
“Why isn’t Freddie giving you money?”
My stomach drops. Of course.
“He isn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s Freddie.”
“That stopped being an answer eight years ago.”
I open the refrigerator even though I’m not hungry. It’s still packed with everything I bought yesterday when I had two jobs and enough confidence to let Mason throw chips and cookies into the cart without checking my bank balance first. At least we have food. Now I just need to keep the electricity on long enough to refrigerate it.
“Ask him,” Jase says.
“I can’t.”
“You fucking should.”
“I heard you.”
“He’s Mason’s father.”
“I know who he is.”
“Then make him act like it.”
I shut the refrigerator harder than necessary. Easy for him to say.
Freddie has money. Actual money now. Not private-jet money, but enough that when he talks about lawyers, it doesn’t sound hypothetical. The last time I pushed hard about support, he got real quiet and asked whether maybe Mason should just live with him if I was having such a hard time providing.
He never outright threatened me because Freddie is too smart for that. He floated it like some thoughtful solution he’d just come up with for my benefit.
Maybe Mason would be better off with me for a while.
Then he started listing reasons. His schedule was becoming more stable. He could afford a good school. Mason could have his own room. I work nights. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Maybe he’d never actually try to take Mason from me. Maybe the whole thing was just meant to scare me into shutting up about money. It worked either way, and I’m not interested in finding out how serious he was.
“Drop it,” I say.
“Naddy—”
“I said drop it.”
Something in my voice finally gets through to him, because instead of arguing again, Jase goes quiet.
“Fine,” he says eventually. Then, because he is incapable of leaving anything alone for longer than ten seconds, “How much?”
I look back at the table. “Four hundred?”
Silence.
“Jase?”
“Jesus Christ. I thought you were going to say fifty bucks.”
“You asked how much I need. Fifty dollars will keep me from sitting in the dark for approximately twelve minutes.”
“You’re dramatic.”
“I’m poor.”
“Same thing with you.”
I roll my eyes and go back to the table. “Forget it. I’ll figure something out.”
“That means you’re going to ask Mom.”
I snort. “Maybe.”
“Don’t.”
“Why? You’re so cynical about her.”
“Because I’ve met her.”
That one does make me laugh. I can practically see the look on his face from here.
“It’s worth a shot,” I say.
“No, it isn’t. Asking Mom for money is like throwing a coin in a fountain and waiting for the fountain to call you back.”
“Asshole.”
“I’m right.”
Unfortunately, he is. Mom loves us. I know she does. Unfortunately, Mom loving someone and Mom being useful in an emergency have never had much to do with each other. She’ll tell me she wishes she could help and then spend twenty minutes explaining whatever financial catastrophe is happening in her own life, which will somehow involve a boyfriend, a car, an appliance or all three.
There’s a muffled voice on Jase’s end, and he says, “Hang on,” before answering whoever it is.
“Was that Jocelyn?”
“Yes.”
“What’d she say?”
“None of your business.”
“She told you not to give me money, didn’t she?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“She asked who I was talking to. I said you, and she said, ‘Of course.’”
I laugh. “I love her.”
“She loves you too. She also thinks you’re a financial emergency with hair.”
“That feels unnecessarily personal.”
“It’s the truth.”
I sit down and start picking at the corner of the electric bill while he talks to somebody in the background again. I shouldn’t have called him. He has kids too. A mortgage. Groceries and school clothes and whatever normal adult expenses come with having a house where the lawn gets mowed before somebody from the city threatens you.
“Fuck, Naddy,” he says when he comes back. “How much do you actually need?”
“Four hundred.”
“You said that already.”
“Then why did you ask again?”
“Because I was hoping you’d become less expensive.”
“Didn’t happen.”
He sighs, and guilt crawls up my throat before he can say anything else.
“You know what? Forget it. Seriously. You have kids and a mortgage and all your own shit. I’ll figure something out.”
“Quit trying to talk me out of helping you.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You always do this. You ask me for something, then the second I say yes you start giving me reasons I shouldn’t.”
I pick harder at the electric bill. “Because I know you have your own shit to pay for.”
“And I know what my bank account looks like. You don’t.”
“Jase—”
“Naddy. You said four hundred. Leave it alone.”
Before I can argue again, the phone vibrates against my ear. I pull it away and look at the notification.
$400.
For a second I just stare at it.
“What did you just do?”
“Sent you the money.”
“Jase.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
My throat tightens before I can stop it. “Thank you.”
“Find another job.”
“That was already on the list.”
“And reapply for assistance if your income changed. If you qualify for more now, use it.”
“Yes, Dad.”
There’s a brief pause. Then he says, “Someone has to be one.”
The smile disappears from my face. He probably doesn’t mean it the way it lands. At least, I don’t think he does. Jase says shit like that because he’s spent most of his life cleaning up after everybody else and pretending it doesn’t bother him. Neither one of our fathers ever managed to stick around long enough to deserve the title, and somehow Jase became the person who lectures, lends money, asks whether I’ve paid my electric bill and reminds me to fill out government forms.
Still, hearing him say it makes something ache.
“Love you too,” I say.
He snorts. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Tell Jocelyn I love her more.”
“She already knows.”
“And tell the kids Aunt Naddy says hi.”
“I will.”
There’s another short silence before his voice softens. “You’re gonna be okay, you know.”
I look at the four hundred dollars sitting in my account. It doesn’t fix everything. It doesn’t even come close. But it buys me time, and right now time feels almost as useful as money.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
“Call me if it gets worse.”
“I thought banks were more professional.”
“Fuck off.”
I smile despite myself. “Love you, Jase.”
“Love you too, pain in my ass.”
Then he hangs up. I put the phone down and look at the payment again. Four hundred dollars doesn’t fix the missing paycheck, the rent waiting at the end of the month or whatever fresh mechanical disaster the Ford is preparing to unleash on me, but it keeps me afloat.
For a few seconds, I let myself sit there and breathe. Then I pull the bills back toward me and start calculating again.
