The Invisibles (23 page)

“Don't start.” Monica's index finger trembled as she pointed at Ozzie. “That man shot my mother. And then, because she was taking too long to die, he went over and finished her off. Do not criticize my decision to never lay eyes on him. Ever.”

“I'm not criticizing it.” Ozzie's voice softened. “I'm telling you that there is more to him than the part that did those horrible things. No one's born all bad. We've all got light and dark parts to us. Which means you got some of the shit genes belonging to your dad. And you also got some of his good ones. But assuming that the shit choices
you
made are because of him isn't only unfair, it might also be way off base. Maybe you got some bad traits from your mother, too. Did you ever stop to think about why she got involved with a man who was so cruel to her?”

Monica held Ozzie's gaze for a long while. Her lower lip trembled as she absorbed her words, and Nora could tell from the way the color drained from her face that she had never considered such a thing before. Grace was quiet too, her left eye twitching. It was a fine line with Ozzie: on the one hand, she could be pushy and judgmental; on the other, honest in a way that forced you to look at yourself in a way you'd never quite done before. Would maybe never do if it wasn't for her.

“You can't honestly be blaming my mother for anything,” Monica said.

“I'm not blaming your mother
or
your father for anything here,” Ozzie said. “I'm pretty sure the ball's in your court, Mons. Yeah, your parents gave you a crap deal. Neither of them were around long enough to give you any of the tools you needed to navigate through this life. But that doesn't mean you spend the
rest of your life blaming them for it. And it certainly doesn't mean you relinquish your responsibility for things because of it. That's just cowardly, babes. I'm sorry, but it is.”

“I'm not
relinquishing
anything.” Monica's eyes darkened. “I'm in a car heading back to Manhattan right now. I'm going in to stand in front of a judge and face what I've done.”

“And I applaud you for that,” said Ozzie. “Now you've got to do the same thing up here.” She tapped the side of her head. “Inside.” She paused. “Maybe we all do.”

“Okay then, how about you?” Monica asked Ozzie. “You never feel like you're the way you are because of your mother? Because of what she did to you?”

Ozzie ran a hand roughly through her hair. “I think I've gone the opposite way. I think I've been so desperate
not
to turn into my mother that I turned into someone I don't even recognize anymore.”

“In what way?” Grace asked.

“Well, I know it's hard to believe, since I'm still so bossy around all of you . . .” Ozzie laughed, a loud, nervous sound. “But the truth is, I'm pretty much a doormat at home.”

Nora braced herself.

“You mean with your kids?” Monica asked.

Ozzie shook her head. “With Gary.”

“Yeah, right.” Grace snorted. “Like you'd ever—”

“I told you it's hard to believe.” Ozzie's voice was sharp as she cut Grace off. “But it's the truth.”

Grace crossed her arms over the front of her chest. “How are you a doormat?”

Nora watched Ozzie out of the corner of one eye. She was
gnawing again on one side of her thumb, and her breathing had shifted.

“How?” Ozzie repeated.

“Yeah, how?” Grace challenged. “What, does he set all the rules in the house or something? Order you around? You can't really expect us to believe—”

“He's mean, okay?” Ozzie's eyes blazed. “He's mean and possessive, and a few times during some of our worst fights, he's hauled off and hit me so bad I've ended up in the hospital.”

Grace gasped and then clapped her hand over mouth. Nora thought back to the bruises she'd seen under Ozzie's arm at the airport, how quickly she'd dismissed them as something her children had inadvertently done, how terribly wrong she'd been.

“Ozzie, no!” Monica's voice broke and Nora thought that if she or Grace had spoken just then, each of their voices would have cracked too.

“Oh, don't worry, I fight back.” Ozzie stared down at her fingers, pulled at a cuticle. “It's not like I'm a battered woman here or anything. Believe me. He's stronger than me, but I've gotten a few right hooks in.” She snorted. “I've even given him a few black eyes. And once he had to get his lip stitched up in the ER.”

“But, Ozzie!” Monica pleaded with her. “You . . . I mean, you've never taken shit from anyone! Anywhere! I . . . I just don't understand!” She shook her head, begging for an explanation.

“I don't really know how to explain it, either,” Ozzie said. “I had a million things going on in my head the first time he hit me, you know? It was right in the middle of this stupid fight; I'd glanced at some guy at a bar and Gary wanted to know what the ‘story' was between us. There was no story; I'd just looked at the
guy, and he'd looked at me, and that was the end of it. But Gary kept putting his finger in my face, over and over again, insisting that I tell him, that I ‘own up,' and finally, I just slapped it away and told him to go fuck himself.” She inhaled deeply and then let it out all at once, as if breathing fire. “He decked me so fast that I barely even felt it. I mean, it was that quick. It took a few seconds for it to register, but as soon as it did, I was like a crazy person. I wanted to kill him.” She jabbed at her chest with a finger. “I mean it's me, right? Ozzie Fucking Randol.” She began to cry, her face contorting into a strange dissolution of everything that had ever held her up. “The girl who always stood up to everyone. The one who called all the shots, who led all the meetings, who got in everyone's face. Always.”

“Yes,” Grace whispered, putting a hand on her shoulder. “
Yes.
So what happened?”

“You mean that night?” Ozzie asked.

Grace nodded.

Ozzie shrugged and pulled hard at the loose cuticle, ripping it finally from the skin. “I went home with him and fucked his brains out. He fell asleep right after, but I remember lying awake for hours and wrestling with all of it. Trying to figure out what had just happened, what I was still
doing
there. Logically, I knew I couldn't stay. That even though he hadn't hit me all that hard, it was still unacceptable. I knew that, you know? Kind of like I knew what two plus two was. Or what color my eyes were. No-brainers. But then I remembered feeling something on top of all that that I hadn't felt in a long, long time.”

“You liked it.” Grace's voice was flat.

“I didn't
like
it.” Ozzie's face twisted. “I'm not a masochist. But
I knew it. It was familiar, you know? Terrain I could navigate. Living with Cesar was fun and wild, but I never knew what was going to happen when he got angry. Sometimes he'd laugh it off; other times he'd yell. Once he drove off on his motorcycle and didn't come back for three days. I thought I was going to lose my mind, trying to figure out where he'd gone, if he'd come back. With Gary, I knew what to expect. I'd already done it for half my life. And I was so good at it. God, I was so fucking good at it.” She shrugged. “So I stayed. A few years later, I married him. And now it'll be twelve years in June.” She stared into her lap. A tear dropped onto her pants, but she did not move to wipe it away.

Nora reached over and took Ozzie's hand. Despite the warmth in the car, it was cold, the fingertips icy. The great Ozzie Randol. Broken not by a man finally, but by her decision to stay with the wrong one. Nora squeezed her hand and kept it inside of hers.

“Well, you know you can't stay,” Grace said. “I mean, you have to leave him, Ozzie.”

“I don't know what I know anymore,” Ozzie said.

“What about your kids?” Monica asked.

Ozzie's head shot up. “What about them?”

“They see everything, don't they? With the fights, I mean. Gary hitting you?”

“No.” Ozzie picked at her cuticle again. “Well, maybe a few times. Nothing too terrible, though.”

Nora and Monica exchanged a glance. “Maybe not too terrible to you,” Monica said. “It's a different story for them.”

“Their only story,” Nora said softly.

For a while, no one spoke; it was as if Ozzie's information, on top of everyone else's, had sucked the last bit of life out of the car.
Ozzie stared out of her window while Monica and Grace looked out of theirs. It was hard to know, Nora thought, if each of them was trying to come to terms with the information they had just shared, or with hearing someone else's.

“That just leaves you, Nora,” Ozzie said suddenly, turning her head from the window.

“Leaves me what?” Nora's ears got hot. Even from the backseat, she could feel Monica's and Grace's eyes on her neck, waiting.

“I don't know.” Ozzie sounded dangerous somehow, as if she was daring Nora to say something. “You tell us. Are things really as great in your life as you've said?”

“Well, yeah.” Nora shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I wouldn't use the word
great
per se, but they're okay.” She pulled on her earlobe as Ozzie's eyes bored into the side of her head.

“No secrets?” Ozzie pressed.

“Ozzie, stop,” Grace said from the back. “You don't always have to
harangue
people.”

Ozzie inhaled through her nose and set a foot against the edge of her seat. Nora pressed down hard on the gas, maneuvering the car around a large white Lexus, and then settled in behind a red Honda. A bumper sticker on the back read:
The village just called. They're missing an idiot.
Perfect. Just what she needed to see right now. She looked out the side window, bit down hard on her lower lip. Keeping things to herself at Turning Winds had been a necessity, a primitive need born out of fear. Letting those secrets out would have meant not only baring herself but also risking the loss of the most important people she had ever known in her life. Besides, those memories were the only things she had left of herself, the last threads that still connected her to Mama. As strange as
it was, she wasn't ready to sever them. She still hadn't let go. And so she had shared the barest minimum of information when their questions arose, answering just enough to keep any more prying at bay.

But things had changed. She wasn't a teenager anymore. They were far from Turning Winds. And despite the fact that all of these women, every single one of them, had just revealed a horrific truth about their own life, she understood that she still loved them. Maybe even more than she had loved them back then. And it was
because
of their weaknesses, because of their secrets. Why couldn't the same be true for her?

“Okay, you know what, they're not,” Nora heard herself say.

“Who's not what?” Ozzie looked at her.

“Things,” Nora said. “In my life. They're not as great as I said they were. I don't have a boyfriend. I actually haven't dated anyone in about three years. I just said I did because . . .” She stopped, wondering what else she could say that would not make her sound any more idiotic than she already did. “I don't know. I guess I was embarrassed. Everyone here has someone and I . . .” She shook her head. “It was stupid. But there you go. I'm single. No boyfriend. Not looking. Not even interested.”

The ensuing silence was deafening. Nora tried to swallow, but something felt as if it had gotten caught in her throat.

“Okay,” Grace said encouragingly. “Well, my goodness. There certainly isn't any hard-and-fast rule about being attached. Especially these days.”

Nora didn't move.

“Why would you feel embarrassed at being single?” Ozzie asked. “Shit, I envy you.”

Nora had gone this far. Maybe she'd try another step. “I don't really
like
dating. It gets too . . . complicated.”

“Tell me about it.” Ozzie snorted. “And then they want to fuck you.”

Nora's stomach tightened. “Actually, that's what I'm talking about.”

“What, the sex?” Ozzie said. “It's been a while since I've been out there.” She nudged Nora in the side. “Catch me up. What makes it complicated?”

Oh God. Ozzie had misunderstood. But of course she had. Nora had said too much, opened the door too wide. She backpedaled frantically, trying to figure out how to end the conversation.

“Do they get all
Fifty Shades of Grey
on you?” Ozzie pressed. “That reminds me, this one friend of mine who just got divorced signed up on a Christian dating website and wound up going out with some guy who asked her to be part of a threesome. On their first
date
!”

“No, God, no.” Nora shook her head. “It's nothing like that. Really. I don't even know why I brought it up. It's honestly nothing.”

“Oh, don't do that, Nora!” Grace protested. “Tell us what you're talking about! What makes things so complicated?”

Nora closed her eyes briefly and then opened them again. It was mortifying that she still had issues with sex, that things got to a point where she'd rather not have it at all than have to deal with the memories that surfaced once it started. Real women didn't deal with that. Or at least none of these women did. She was sure of it.

She took a deep breath. Screw it; what did she have to lose by
telling them? Or maybe that wasn't even the question. Maybe the real question was, what did she have to lose if she didn't tell them?

“It's not that the sex is complicated,” she said slowly. “It's that
I'm
complicated. With sex in general.”

“It's hard for you to be intimate with someone?” Monica's voice was so kind that it brought tears to Nora's eyes.

She nodded instead of responding and readjusted her hands on the wheel to stop them from shaking.