considered popping on Margot’s hair and escaping to the tropics, my sole plan was to numb myself until 2015 was in the rearview mirror. In that sense, I’d been telling the truth: The Queen’s chambers were exactly what I wanted. I could crawl deep into my bottle without being forced into fake-cheerful conversation, and yet I also didn’t feel alone.
“Mom, please go have fun and we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” I said. “Marta and I are going to have a great time watching…” I checked the TV listing on the bedside table. “Bryan Adams’s hit parade.”
“I am going to hang up, but only because I have a bridge game at Hardware Pete’s house,” Mom said. “I think he and his wife are trying to set me up with Contractor John from John’s Contractors and I am not interested, but I’ll never turn down a chance to eat Pete’s onion dip.”
“Happy New Year, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said. She leaned up to the mic. “HAPPY NEW YEAR, MARTA.”
Marta looked startled. “I’m not deaf,” she spat.
* * *
After the state dinner, Nick had kept slipping away. Anytime I nudged the conversation in the direction of his feelings, he deflected, changed the subject, or didn’t respond to me at all. More often, I caught him simply staring out the window, which I knew from past experience meant he was adrift in whatever choppy inner seas he was hiding from me. And I got the distinct impression he was circumventing going to sleep until I was already conked out, or sneaking up to bed early so he’d be snoring by the time I noticed. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night to find him wrapped around me the way he used to, and I’d breathe deeply, inhaling him, enjoying it until he stirred enough to catch himself and roll away. Other times, he didn’t come up to bed at all. It wasn’t healthy, and I’m sure he knew it, but he seemed to believe avoidance would keep the cracks from getting any deeper.
No such luck.
New Mentality was a subsidized in-patient facility in Dalston that served at-risk teens struggling with anxiety and depression. The organization had been making a strong play for a patronage ever since Nick had told the nation the truth about his mother’s own condition a few years back, and the brothers had made mental and emotional health one of their primary causes. Freddie and Nick and I were coming by to admire New Mentality’s athletic field, and then sit down for some casual roundtable discussions with the kids and staff. It was the sort of relaxed engagement both men could do in their sleep. But it was also the first time the three of us had been in close quarters since the fight and that fleeting, awkward moment at the state dinner. We were on what the palace called a “private visit,” which meant there were no journalists or photographers there, and this was a blessing because even an unpaid intern on their first day would’ve realized something serious was up. Freddie and Nick were impassive at best, stony at worst.
I hoped they would loosen up once we got into it with the kids. We all sat on the floor of their lounge, a cozy, carpeted space done up in warm tones, which the residents had been encouraged to wallpaper with handwritten inspirational quotes, photos, and even in-jokes. Nick surprised me by breaking the ice with a short recollection of his mother, and one by one, the kids took turns discussing their unique struggles. One girl described her depression as bleaching the color out of the world; another kid said he felt like he was living inside a permanent, chilly fog. Others talked plainly about feeling anxious from the moment their eyes opened in the morning to the second they closed at night. An older teenage boy recounted lying awake obsessing about his fears, which grew and multiplied and took on lives of their own, until he felt like his brain was running on a treadmill where an unseen force kept relentlessly upping the pace.
And Nick cried.
Actual dripping tears.
Freddie shot me an alarmed glance over the top of Nick’s head. Nick’s public face rarely slipped, but this time it fell all the way off into his lap.
“My goodness,” he managed.
The kids seemed unfazed. “People cry in here all the time,” one of them said, and passed him a box of Kleenex. “You should’ve seen Martina the other day.”