In the bathroom, Diana removed her drag carefully. She peeled off the false lashes and wiped off the makeup; she slipped out of the suit she’d borrowed from Rent the Runway and folded it, and the blouse, carefully in a garment bag. She pulled on jeans and a plain jersey top and replaced her suede kitten-heel pumps with sneakers. She removed the earrings, zircons she’d borrowed from a work friend, and slipped them in her pocket. She brushed the spray out of her hair, which she’d had done at a blowout bar that morning. When she washed her hands, she avoided her face in the mirror. She felt, for reasons she couldn’t name, as if she might not recognize the woman staring back at her.
When the plane touched down, at just after eleven o’clock, Diana pulled her leather carry-on over her shoulder and stepped down the three steps of the plane’s staircase. The airport was the size of a small-town post office, and was almost empty at that hour. Outside, two cabs idled at the curb, the drivers standing beside their vehicles, scanning the terminal for passengers. A heavyset man with a thick beard and red hair threaded with silver was waiting, too, leaning against a pickup truck.
“You didn’t have to come,” Diana said.
“Didn’t have to,” he said agreeably, reaching for her bag. “I wanted to.” He held the door as she got into the passenger’s seat, and waited until she’d gotten her seat belt buckled before he started to drive.
“So how’d it go?” he asked, swinging the truck out onto the two-lane road that ran from Route 6 to the National Seashore.
Diana thought about how to answer. “Okay,” she finally said. “I think it went okay.”
He didn’t press her, but she could feel his disapproval fill the space between them. Ignoring it, she bent over the phone, tapping out the message she’d send in the morning. Really enjoyed meeting you. Hope we’ll get to do it again soon. I’m getting my next posting on Monday. Will let you know where I land!
They were silent as he turned up the driveway to the cottage. He pulled up beside the deck and turned the engine off. Diana rolled down the window and took a deep breath, imagining the smell of salt and the feel of the ocean replenishing her, scouring the grime of the city off her skin. “I liked her,” she blurted, then pressed her lips shut. She hadn’t planned on saying anything, and she definitely had not planned on saying that.
“The other Diana?”
“Daisy.” Diana’s lips felt numb. “She calls herself Daisy. Isn’t that sweet?” Her voice caught on “sweet.” She’d meant to sound sarcastic, but instead she’d sounded like she was going to cry. Because Daisy was sweet. She was sweet and young and innocent, and Diana was going to come smashing through her life like a wrecking ball. She was going to hurt her, whether she wanted to or not. The wheels she’d set in motion were turning; the train was racing down the tracks, and Diana couldn’t stop it, not even if she’d tried.
Part Two
Our Lady of Safe Harbor
6
Diana
After that summer, Diana came back to a world that felt bleared and grease-streaked, gray and dingy, permanently corrupted. For three weeks she felt like she could barely breathe, or eat, or sleep, and when her period came, she fell on her knees on the bathroom’s tiled floor, shaking with relief. Her bruises faded, and she didn’t have any symptoms of diseases unless he’d given her one of the sneaky kinds.
“Honey, are you okay?” her mom asked, the first night at the dinner table. She’d made Sunday gravy, a sauce that simmered all day long, with chunks of pork shoulder and sausage from the market at Faneuil Hall. It was Diana’s favorite dinner. Or, at least, it had been. That night, all she could do was poke at it and nod, knowing that the lump in her throat wouldn’t allow her to speak.
After dinner, her sister Kara cornered her in the hall. “All right, what happened?” Kara asked in a low voice.
“What? Nothing.”
“You’re walking around with a face like…” Kara made a hideously mopey expression and knuckled fake tears off her cheeks. “So what happened?”
“Nothing,” said Diana.
Kara’s expression was not without sympathy. “Older guy? College guy? Married guy?” Her eyes widened. “It wasn’t Dr. Levy’s husband, was it?”
“No,” Diana said. “He was fine. They both were.”
“So what, then? It was a boy, wasn’t it?”
Diana nodded. She knew she wouldn’t be able to tell the truth. Not to her sister. Not to anyone. Let them think that some boy on Cape Cod had broken her heart. It was, at least, a version of the truth.