A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

why getting past that secret door mattered so much to her. They wouldn’t let people in there just to be magnanimous. And we all needed to belong somewhere. “I really am sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“So you and your mom don’t talk anymore either?”

“Nope. She believes what he believes. Besides, I don’t really know how to respect her. The major activity of her adult life has been ruining someone else’s marriage.”

“Maybe she really, truly loves him. You can’t always help it. I mean, I’ve fallen a little bit in love with a married man, despite my better judgment.”

Libby gasped. “Raf is married?”

Dammit. Again, I needed to get better at remembering that he was supposed to be my boyfriend. “Oh no, sorry, I mean it happened a while ago. Should’ve spoken more clearly,” I lied. “What I’m trying to say is that I think everyone makes mistakes. And sometimes you go down careless, selfish paths because you want to fill up that stupid gaping hole inside of you—”

“Mm,” Libby said seriously. “Your vagina.”

“I was thinking a more metaphorical hole, but sure, that too.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t mean to presume anything about your relationship with her. I guess I just feel like . . .” I hadn’t said this out loud to anyone before. My voice caught. I swallowed. “Like now that I’ve lost my mother, I’d give anything for a chance to talk to her again.”

“Oh, Jillian,” Libby said, and stroked my hair. “It’s so hard to lose your family.”

I didn’t sleep on the foldout couch that night. I slept in the bed beside her. Like lovers, or like friends.

TWENTY

A couple of mornings later, I sat in my mother’s bedroom, boxing up the remaining things of hers to give to charity as the contractor banged around downstairs. Already, sawdust hung heavy in the air of the house. I wanted to take all her clothes with me but that wasn’t practical, particularly since I didn’t even really know where I was going. I held a sweater of hers to my face, searching for a hint of her smell in it. Nothing.

My phone rang, an unfamiliar number with a New York City area code. “Hello?”

“Libby mentioned that you’re looking for an apartment,” the voice said. Of course Margot wouldn’t announce herself on the phone. She didn’t need to. That serene, rich voice couldn’t belong to anyone else. I had a perverse impulse to ask Sorry, who is this? just to see how she’d react, but I swallowed it.

“Libby’s apparently very concerned about me,” I said. “But I’ll be fine. It’s the New York real estate market. That’s only, what, the seventh circle of hell?”

“Caroline has a great broker,” Margot said. “When she was buying an apartment, she talked about this man so much that I half expected her to leave her husband and run off with him instead.” She paused. “Not actually, of course. Caroline would sooner run into traffic than get divorced. And Caroline would never run into traffic. Too messy. Want me to connect you?”

“That’s really kind,” I said. “Maybe.”

“I can text her right now—”

“I . . .” I hesitated. “I think my budget might be somewhat lower than what Caroline’s broker is used to.”

“Ah, I see,” Margot said. She exhaled like she was blowing out smoke. But Margot didn’t smoke, did she? I could picture her with an occasional cigarette, if she were really drunk. Now, though, a joint seemed more likely. Margot, on the other end of the phone, reclining on her bed in a silky robe, holding a joint delicately between her fingertips, blowing tendrils of smoke up at the ceiling. Meanwhile, I paced around, wearing a ratty T-shirt I’d gotten for free from participating in a college dodgeball tournament ten years ago. “In that case,” Margot went on, “I may have something else for you. Just give me a couple of days.”

“You really don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to,” she said, with an easy laugh. “But you’re in the club now. We take care of each other. Besides, it’s Libra Season.” I had no idea what she meant by that, but I made a knowing noise anyway. She exhaled again. “By the way, I was reading some of your old articles from Quill. They’re cutting, aren’t they? You know how to destroy your target.”

I tensed, even as a small part of me thrilled to her compliment, to the fact that I’d caught her attention. Maybe something I’d written had made her laugh, or maybe she’d stopped and lingered over a particular turn of phrase. But a much larger part of me heard the alarm bells starting to ring. “Thanks, I guess so. I don’t do that anymore though. Gotta save all that cutting criticism for my fictional creations, you know?”

“Interesting,” she said. “Are you sure?”

Shit. The alarm bells blared louder now. A fire drill, or time to start running? “I . . .”

“Because that district judge that Iris brought up at the Concerns Circle, the one who will be hearing the reproductive rights case soon, we’ve heard some stories about him over the past couple days.” My breathing slowed as she kept talking. “Lining his pockets in exchange for favorable rulings, things like that. Some journalists might be starting to look into it, but that kind of reporting takes time, and the case is coming up fast. We couldn’t help imagining how much an anonymous takedown—a well-written, incisive Twitter thread, for example—could fan the flames. Make some trouble for this piece of shit.”

Was this how things had started with Nicole Woo-Martin, a casual phone call, the hitch of Margot’s breath on the other end of the line? “Are you asking me to write a hit piece?” I asked.

Again, that easy laugh. “No, of course not. I was just thinking that if you were itching to stretch a muscle that you haven’t used in a little while, you might be interested in hearing some of the stories too. You might have