The morning after Jada's Debutante Ball, Iva Novette-Naim woke up drunk. She spent the first few hours of the bright new day clutching the pristine white of the ceramic toilet bowl with her chipped nails, puking up the remains of the shrimp cocktail, escargot, and various breads and cheeses she'd sampled the night before. Hours passed in the haze of alcohol, little puffs of vodka breath huffing in and out of a mouth smeared with mauve lipstick. Iva did not remember how she got into Jada Chamberlyn's bed. She did not remember her daughter dragging her out to the car the hotel sent hours later. She certainly did not remember asking a tall gentlemen about twenty years her junior if he'd ever gone bareback with a stranger.
Needless to say, Iva was not feeling much like herself.
Another wave of bile rose in her throat, and she released it with a great cough into the stained bowl of the toilet. A moan escaped her lips, chin clicking hard against the toilet seat. Beside her bent leg, a gloved hand from just outside the door pushed a glass of water across the tile. It bumped into her bare legs. Iva groaned. "F-Fallon, my girl?" Her hand reached feebly for the glass.
"I'm here."
In the next room, Fallon sat slumped against the wall opposite where he mother was busy liberating the contents of her stomach. A surgical mask covered her mouth and nose, and bright yellow dish washing gloves went all the way up to her elbows. She had been sitting like this since her mother woke up, shoveling fresh glasses of water to her every so often. This was simply the first one her mother was sober enough to remember.
Iva tilted the glass to her lips, spilling the majority of the water down the stained front of her designer gown. "Oh, baby, I'm so em--" Another wave of nausea hit, and she puked again. It splashed against the porcelain of the bowl.
Fallon suppressed a shiver. She hated the sound of people vomiting. She hated the smell. She hated the sight. After all the embarrassment her mother caused the night before, this was almost worse. "I texted Andeon. He said that I should make you eggs and toast with a lot of grease. Do you want that? I can do that." Her tone was terse, cold. There was no love in it, not now.
Mere feet away, Iva felt like she was on opposite sides of the world from her child. She could hear the judgement in her daughter's voice, and it hurt. "Does that help with a hungover?" she asked, spitting excess drool into the toilet bowl.
"I'm sixteen. How would I know?" Fallon sighed. "And it's
hangover."
Iva was too weary to snap at her daughter, too embarrassed to feel justified. She was a fifty-year-old woman being babysat by her teenage child. There wasn't a lot of room for her to assert her parental authority in the situation. "Hangover, hungover, hangedover, what have you," she mumbled. It dissolved into another fit of vomiting.
Fallon rested her gloved hands in her lap. It was all she could do not to rush in there to start cleaning the toilet now. A sour smell had permeated the room, nearly unbearable. She had to take breaks every so often just to breathe. There were so many things that she wanted to say to her mother. Curses to throw. Tears to spill. She was embarrassed and frustrated, and worst of all, she had never seen this coming. Getting drunk was not something that her mother ever did. She was the kind of mom who had wine on holidays. Fallon had never seen her drink hard liquor until last night.
Something was wrong. And Fallon knew it.
A pregnant pause spanned the space between them. Iva knew that Fallon was waiting for her to explain. Fallon had always been a very observant baby, crying seldom, watching everything. Her father, Bertrand, once watched her for three minutes straight and claimed she did not blink, not once. Iva could picture her composed child now, hands folded, mouth tense, shoulders squared, just waiting for her mother to say whatever it was she was avoiding saying. The alcohol had been a red flag. Iva was trying to lubricate herself for something unpleasant. Fallon did just didn't know what it was.
On the other side of the wall, Fallon cleared her throat. Iva groaned, only partially from the splitting headache, burning throat, and upset stomach. It was guilt too. It was an inability to talk about the things that she deemed
unsavory. Iva opened her mouth, then closed it. She knew this was her responsibility as a parent to tell her daughter the bad news in the softest way. She knew that she had to be the bigger person. She knew these things, and yet, she said nothing. Iva had never been good at this.
So Fallon spoke. "Do I need to tell Crystal Academy I'm leaving, or have you done it? I will need to order some boxes from UPS for the things I can't fit in my TupperWare. Naturally, I'd like time to say goodbye to my friends. We'll have to do something about Taillevent. I want him to come to France with me, no exceptions. I won't abandon him. Have you purchased the tickets yet? I'd like to formulate a schedule." In her time since the hospital, Fallon had run out of ideas to avoid going back to France. Her parents had control over her. They could make her do whatever they wanted. It was the law. If it was going to happen anyway, then she at least wanted to be in charge of the means of that uprooting.
"No, honey. No."
"No, what?"
"No to France. No to going back to France. We aren't going back to France.
Fallon was quiet. "What do you mean
we?" Iva didn't work in France, but that was where Bertrand lived. That was where her friends were. That was where her life was. Why would she remain in Destiny City?
Iva coughed, her throat wet and slick. The conversation sounded painful for her on many levels. "I'm staying too. I talked to Szelem. She pointed out some nice homes around Jada's neighborhood. I might look at those. It depends on my finances."
"Finances?" Fallon sounded skeptical. Her mother wanted for nothing.
"I don't know if I could afford it."
"Why couldn't you afford it? Is Dad having money problems?"
This time, it was Iva who fell silent. Fallon could hear her mother drumming fake nails against the side of the toilet bowl. She was revving herself up for something, but Fallon didn't know what. "I was tired of fighting, baby. I was tired of being sad all of the time." Tears were welling in Iva's throat. They made her sound like she was constantly surfacing for air. "I felt like I was a prisoner in my own home, and when you moved out and came here, it was like all of my joy went with you. And what am I, honey, without my happiness? People used to say I was the happiest person they knew. I won 'Best Smile' in high school, you remember, don't you?" Fallon remembered. Her mother was always showing her old high schools year books, old photos from her childhood, newspaper clippings from when the pillows she made were used in a fancy magazine.
Her mother had just begun to talk. Fallon had no intention of interrupting her. "I was on my way here before I knew what had happened to you. I was coming to tell you and be with you, so we could find our happiness again. I was going to say we should move to the south of France, you love it there, I know. And then I landed and I had all these missed messages… And you were asleep for so long in that hospital bed that you didn't even realize how quick I got there, how there was no way I could've gotten there so fast. And you were so relieved to see me, and so injured -- my baby girl, always so injured -- and what was I supposed to do? I didn't want to deflate you again. It was bad enough when I told you we'd go back to France. I couldn't even imagine… I couldn't even fathom what you feel if I told you." Sobs choked her throat, and Iva cried into the toilet. It echoed up, like she was crying in a cave.
All the hair on Fallon's neck had gone on end. Her mouth was dry, hands clammy inside the rubber gloves. She licked her lips and said, "Tell me." It was a command.
Iva stilled, her sobs dying out to an unevenness in her voice. "Your father and I are getting a divorce."
A wave of nausea struck, and Iva pitched over the toilet, vomiting until she had no breath in her body, until she was choking for air over the tears. When the tidal wave stopped, Iva was left sputtering weakly. "Baby…" she called out, nails scratching at the wall. "Baby girl, my honey, Fallon, sweetheart…" There was no response. Pulling a sheaf of toilet paper from the roll, Iva wiped her mouth, gripping the wall with her free hand. She glanced into the other room, face pale, eyes red.
Fallon was gone.
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