Enid laughed. “Don’t be silly, my dear. Threats are only meaningful if you have the power to execute them. And you, my dear, do not.” She stood up. “I’ve tolerated your antics for quite a while. But today you’ve made me very, very angry.” She nodded at the coffee table. “Take the test.”
Lola grabbed the box. Enid was old, but she was still the meanest mean girl Lola had ever encountered, and Lola was afraid of her. So afraid, in fact, that she actually peed on the plastic indicator and handed it over to Enid, who examined it with grim satisfaction. “Now, that’s lucky, my dear,” she said. “It seems you’re not pregnant after all. If you were, it might have been complicated. We wouldn’t have known who the father was. Not until the baby was born. It could have been Philip’s—or Thayer Core’s. And that’s no way to bring a child into the world, now, is it?”
Lola had come up with a hundred responses—after the fact. In the actual moment, facing Enid, she wasn’t able to think of what to say.
“Consider this an opportunity, dear,” Enid said. “You’re only twenty-two. You have a chance to start over. I had a long conversation with your mother this afternoon, and she’s on her way to pick you up and take you back to Atlanta. She’s a lovely woman, your mother. She should be here in an hour. I’ve booked a room for you at the Four Seasons hotel so you can enjoy your last night in New York in style.”
“Oh no,” Lola said, finding her voice. She looked around in a panic, spotted her handbag next to the door, and grabbed it. “I’m not leaving New York.”
“Be sensible, dear,” Enid said.
“You can’t make me,” Lola shouted. She opened the door, knowing only that she had to get away. She frantically pressed the button for the elevator as Enid followed her into the hallway.
“Where are you going? There’s no place to go, Lola.”
Lola turned her back and pressed the button again. Where was the elevator? “You haven’t any money,” Enid said. “You don’t have an apartment. Or a job. You have no choice.”
Lola turned. “I don’t care.” The elevator came at last, and she stepped in.
“You’ll be sorry,” Enid said. As the doors were closing, Enid made one last attempt to dissuade her. “You’ll see,” she called out, adding fiercely, “You don’t belong in New York.”
Now, in the church, Lola remembered with glee how Enid’s plan had backfired. Her admonishment that Lola didn’t belong in New York had only made her more determined. In the past two weeks, she’d put up with quite a bit of hardship, returning home with her mother—who had begged Lola to stay in Windsor Pines and even tried to fix her up with the son of one of her friends who was getting a business degree—but Lola wouldn’t hear of it. She sold several pairs of shoes and two handbags on eBay, scraping together enough money to return to New York. She forced Thayer to take her in, and for the time being, she was living with Thayer and Josh in their little hellhole, sharing Thayer’s tiny bed. On the third day there, she’d broken down and actually cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen sink. And then that disgusting Josh, thinking she was free bait, had tried to kiss her, and she’d had to fight him off. She couldn’t bunk with Thayer much longer. She had to find her own place—but how?
She tried to peer around the many heads in front of her, looking for Philip and Enid. She spotted the back of Enid’s coiffed head first. What would Enid do when she found out she was back in New York? Sitting next to Enid was Philip. Seeing the back of his head, with that too familiar longish dark hair, brought back all the fresh hurts and indignities she’d suffered at his hands as well.
After rushing out of his apartment on what would turn out to be her final evening in One Fifth, she’d wandered around the West Village, weighing her options. But after two hours, her feet began to throb, and she’d realized Enid was right—she had no money and no place to go. She’d returned to One Fifth to find her mother and Philip and Enid waiting. They were calm, treating her with kid gloves as if she were a mental patient who’d had a breakdown, and Lola realized she had no choice but to comply with their plan. Then she’d had to endure the disgrace of allowing her mother to help her pack up her things. Philip was disturbingly distant throughout the process, as if he had become a completely different person. He’d behaved as if he hardly knew her and they hadn’t had sex a hundred times—and this, to Lola, was the most unfathomable of all. How could a man who had put his head between your legs and his penis inside your vagina and mouth, and kissed you and held you and tickled your stomach, suddenly act as if none of it had happened? Riding uptown in the taxi with her mother, she had burst into tears and cried and cried and cried. “Philip Oakland is a fool,” Beetelle declared fiercely. “And his aunt is even worse. I’ve never met such an awful woman.” She put her arms around Lola’s head and stroked her hair. “It’s a good thing you got away from those terrible people,” she said, but this only made Lola cry harder.
Beetelle’s heart broke for her daughter, reminding her of her own heartbreaking incident in New York with the doctor. She would have been about Lola’s age then. Pulling her daughter closer, Beetelle felt helpless in the face of Lola’s distress. It was the first time, she realized, that Lola was discovering the terrible truth about life: It wasn’t what it seemed, and fairy tales did not necessarily come true. Nor could
men be relied upon to love you.
The next morning, Philip came to the hotel to see Lola. For a moment, she’d held out hope that he would tell her it was all a mistake, and he loved her after all. But when she opened the door, his expression revealed that he hadn’t changed his mind; indeed, as if to make a point, under his arm were the Post and the Daily News. They went downstairs to the restaurant, and Philip put the papers on the table. “Do you want to see them?” he asked. She did, of course, but didn’t want to give him more ammunition. “No,” she replied haughtily, as if she were above such things.
“Listen, Lola,” he began.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I owe you an apology.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“I made a mistake with you. And I’m sorry. You’re young, and I should have known better. I never should have allowed our relationship to continue. I should have ended it before Christmas.”
Lola’s stomach dropped. The waiter brought her food—eggs Benedict—and Lola looked at her plate, wondering if she’d ever be able to eat again. Had her whole relationship with Philip been a lie? Then she understood. “You used me,” she accused him.
“Oh, Lola.” Philip sighed. “We used each other.”
“I loved you,” Lola said fiercely.
“No, you didn’t,” Philip said. “You loved the idea of me. There’s a big difference.”
Lola threw her napkin onto her plate of eggs. “Let me tell you one thing, Philip Oakland. I hate you. And I will always hate you. For the rest of my life. Don’t you come near me, ever again.”
Holding her head high, she got up and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Philip sitting there, embarrassed.
A little later, leaving the hotel with her mother, Lola wondered how she would ever recover. When they got to the airport, however, she bought the papers; and seeing her photograph on the third page of the Post, and reading the brief story about how Philip had dumped her for Schiffer Diamond, she began to feel better. She wasn’t some little nobody. She was Lola Fabrikant, and someday she would show Philip and Enid what a mistake they’d made in underestimating her.
Now, scanning the pew containing Philip and Enid, she saw Schiffer Diamond sitting next to Philip, followed by auburn-haired Annalisa Rice. A few pews behind them was that awful Mindy Gooch, with her rigid blond bob, and next to her was James Gooch, with that familiar sweet bald spot on the top of his head. Ah, James Gooch, Lola thought. She’d forgotten about James, who was apparently back from his book tour. Now he sat before her, like Providence. She took out her iPhone. “I’m behind you in the church,” she texted.