Chapter 4: The Diner (Part 1)
Hello, everyone, and thanks for reading! This chapter got so long, I ended up dividing it into two halves. I tried cutting it, but it was such fun to write an intense talk between Nick and Luke, I just couldn't bring myself to shut them up. The guys have a lot to discuss. So here's part 1. Please enjoy, and leave a review if you're inspired to.
"You look worried," Luke Bankole observed. "I don't bite."
"Right, of course not." Nick shook himself, then slid into the booth across from June's husband. Relax, he ordered himself. "Hi there, Luke. Nice to see you again."
"Hi. Or blessed morning, isn't that what you're supposed to say? Rita always says that. Or blessed day, or whatever it is."
Nick smiled sadly. "How is Rita?"
"She's good. Trying to, you know, adapt. Like all the Gilead refugees. A little shell-shocked, a little lost. But she's okay. She volunteers with the Refugee Aid Foundation, and she's trying to get a full-time job somewhere. Maybe with the US Consulate. Mark Tuello has taken a shine to her."
"Oh, please tell her I miss her. And her sarcasm. And her cooking."
"Sure." He took a sip of his drink, caught Nick eyeing it enviously. "You want a milkshake?"
"I don't have any money."
Luke snorted. "Yeah, I think I can cover it. You already owe me, like, three thousand dollars for diapers. I'll just put it on your tab." He signaled to the waitress. "Could we have another chocolate shake, please?" More quietly, he added, "Is chocolate okay?"
Nick briefly looked down at the orange plastic tabletop, embarrassed to be indebted. "Thanks." Then he raised his head and nodded earnestly. "I really do owe you for taking care of Nichole. She looks so happy; you've done a phenomenal job raising her. I can't…well, I'll repay you some day. Somehow."
"Just get Hannah out. Keep her safe, get her out if you can."
"I'm working on it, Luke. Always. But she's in the middle of the country, you know. It's not like driving Mrs. Putnam a couple of hours; I can't just put Hannah in the trunk of the car all the way from Colorado. Especially if she doesn't really want to escape."
"Yeah, I get that. But, well, whatever you can do. Thanks for the file you put together. That was incredible, all that information, seeing pictures of her. Ah, which reminds me." He took an envelope out of his leather jacket pocket. "June wanted you to have these."
"Oh, great, thanks so much." Bankole watched as Nick carefully ignored the love letter she'd sent him, and instead pored over each photograph. Eagerness, disbelief, affection, and melancholy all flitted across his handsome face. "Her hair's gotten a little darker."
"Yeah, it's that Swedish blood of June's. Apparently all northern European kids start off white-blond, then get darker after a couple of years. The pediatrician says Nichole will probably have brown hair, eventually."
"Really. I kinda like it blond."
Luke said what they were both thinking. "She looks a lot like June in some ways—her eyes, mostly. And a couple of her facial expressions. But, uh, Nichole's nose and mouth aren't quite the same." He didn't want to add that she might have some features that resembled Nick. Luke protectively thought of the little girl as his, not the product of some Gilead affair.
Nick understood the unspoken implication, but changed the subject to save Luke the awkwardness. "So how's the potty-training going? June said she was being stubborn about it." He returned the pictures to the envelope and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
"Yeah, we're working on it. I'm trying to explain the virtues of being diaper-free to her, but supergirl's not convinced yet. She's talking now, that's the major thing."
"She talks?" His shoulders slumped. "I'm missing everything," he said hoarsely.
"No, I mean, like, just a little. Fifteen or twenty words. But it's pretty adorable."
Luke took out his phone, scrolled through the pictures until he found a video of the toddler talking into the camera. June's encouraging voice was in the background, making Nick's stomach clench. He was secretly pleased to see among Nichole's toys the little pink-dressed doll he had given her. At least she had that one minor connection to him. He wasn't completely alien to her. "What was her first word?"
Dada, Luke thought. But somehow he didn't feel like shredding Nick Blaine's heart with that detail. So instead, he told him Nichole's second word: "No."
"Oh God, she's going to be just like her mother, isn't she?"
Luke laughed. "I mean, it's possible. Holly—that's June's mom—used to say June was a real handful, an incredibly stubborn kid. She wasn't potty-trained til she was two and a half. And if there was such a thing as karma, Holly said, June should have a kid just as bad as she was. But Hannah was actually really easy. Nichole was the tough one. At first."
"Really?" Nick murmured. "She seems pretty laid-back to me." Another thing she had in common with her father.
"Yeah, now she is. But when she first came to Canada, she refused to take a bottle. I tried every brand of formula in the supermarket—she spit them all up and was miserable. Cried constantly. She lost over a kilo in that first month's hunger strike. She just missed her momma." He scratched his beard and looked away, remembering. "I was so mad at June in those days. Emily said she could've come with them, but she chose not to. June should've been here to take care of her baby. Instead she…abandoned Nichole because she wanted to stay in that shithole country of yours. No offense."
"None taken. I was pissed at her, too. She was supposed to get on that fucking truck to Canada and she didn't. It's the only time, I think, that I actually raised my voice to her. I was so frigging angry when she turned back up at the Waterfords' house."
"Oh yeah?" It made Luke feel a little better to know that they'd both been mad at her. He still felt lingering guilt over his initial attitude towards Nichole. He hadn't wanted that pint-sized product of rape in his house. Every time she'd spit up a bottle, or screamed all night, his resentment had mounted. Moira finally had to order him to get his shit together and take care of the little one. None of it was the baby's fault, Moira had pointed out. She was an innocent victim of circumstance.
The waitress finally stopped by to place a milkshake in front of Nick, who took an eager sip. "God damn, that's good. I miss chocolate so much."
"Hershey's is out of business?"
"Oh, yeah. The trade embargo doesn't allow us to import cocoa. Or coffee, either; we just get the artificial powder stuff. Nescafé from Switzerland. It sucks. Sometimes I get real coffee beans on the black market, but…well, you didn't come here to talk about coffee."
"Yeah, I actually wanted to talk to you about June. Because she's not doing well, and I thought maybe you'd want to, I don't know, join forces to help her."
Nick stopped wolfing down the shake and looked up at him. "Sure, of course. She's not doing well?"
"Uh, no. Not really, no." He sat back. "The only time she's happy is when she's playing with Nichole. Then she's the old June—smiling, relaxed, funny. But otherwise she's…the new June. She's only got, like, two emotions: either she's furious enough to kill someone or depressed enough to commit suicide. She's nothing like she used to be. So I was wondering, uh, what she's like with you."
"In Gilead? None of the above. She only relaxed when she was feeling safe, which wasn't very often. But usually not furious or depressed. After Gilead, when I met her at the border with Nichole, she was much better. Calm, happy. We just hung out and played with the baby. But I never knew the 'old June' before, so I can't really compare."
"So, she was never suicidal with you."
Nick sighed. "Well, nobody in Gilead is completely fine. I mean, it's constant stress and violence, with no psychologists. It's not like Dr. Phil is hanging around." He had a sudden, vivid memory of the first Offred hanging from the ceiling fan. "A lot of handmaids kill themselves," he confessed quietly. "Or go insane. Emily Malek could tell you more about that. And June, she had her bouts with that too. I mean, she jumped out a fucking window."
"Wait, what?"
"She probably told you she fell. That's what she told me."
"She has never mentioned a word about that."
Nick looked down, stirred his drink with the spoon. "We were trying to get her out of Gilead. And we almost did it; she was in a safe place, free, for two months. That was really great. She transformed into something like the old June: laid-back with me but determined to get out. Just before she escaped, though, she got caught and was taken back to the Red Center. The aunts really fucked with her for a few weeks. Mentally and physically."
"Like…they beat her?"
"No, they tortured her," Nick murmured. "Whipping, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, burning her skin. Have you seen the bottoms of her feet since she got to Canada?"
Luke shook his head. "She always wears socks. And long sleeves, and pants," he whispered.
"Well, they whipped the hell out of her feet. And made her feel guilty about everything she'd done. By the time she came back to the Waterfords', she was kinda out of her mind for a while. She told me later she was dehydrated and passed out on the bench in front of her bedroom window, then fell, but I think she did it on purpose. She had been hemorrhaging all day, but didn't tell anyone. Ended up in the hospital. Almost lost the baby." She didn't tell anyone about the bleeding because it was my wedding day, and she didn't want to draw attention away from me. As if I cared about a marriage to a teenager I didn't even know.
"She was pregnant when this happened? What the hell, June…." Luke looked lost.
"Yeah, about six months pregnant. So she didn't mention this all to you."
"No, she most certainly did not. Was she trying to end herself or just Nichole?"
He shrugged gently. "No difference, really. The penalty for attempting abortion is dismemberment. Being ripped apart by wild dogs. So it's a suicidal move. But anyway, everything turned out okay. She got better after that. Much better after Nichole got to Canada. That gave us hope. It's what's kept me going this whole last year, knowing that Nichole is safe and happy. You have no idea how grateful I am to you."
"Would you boys like to see a menu?" The waitress interrupted with fake cheerfulness.
"Sure," Nick said, just as Luke said no. He'd completely lost his appetite. Nick, however, seemed to be able to discuss near-death experiences and drink a chocolate shake at the same time. June could do that too, now: discuss hangings during dinner. They traded a look.
"Yes, menus would be good," Luke said. "You can get whatever you want," he added.
Once Nick had ordered a plate of loaded nachos and the waitress had left them alone, he admitted, "I think June's whole relationship with me was a kind of slow-motion suicide."
"What's the punishment for sleeping with a handmaid?"
"Oh, execution. No question."
"For you or her?"
"For both of us. Unless the handmaid was pregnant, in which case they'd keep her in solitary until the baby's ready, then cut her wide open to get the child out and let the woman bleed to death."
Luke was definitely not going to be eating anytime soon. He tilted his head. "Yeah, I don't think…I mean, she's a great lover and all, but I don't think I'd risk getting killed just for sex."
Nick was silent for a long moment, staring at the tabletop. She was worth it, and it wasn't just sex, he wanted to say…but not say it to her husband. "We had nothing else to live for," he finally offered.
"Yeah, she always was a romantic. Nothing's more important than love, all that. And she is in love with you. If you didn't know that already." Luke tapped his fingertips on the table. "Not with me."
Nick shook his head. "Nah, you're still her husband. You're there, I'm here."
"She might know that intellectually, but her heart is with you. I try to be loving and supportive, but she's always annoyed at me. I don't know how to fix her. I tell her she needs to forget Gilead, forget all that shit and just count her blessings. I try to remind her of how lucky she is to be safe in Canada. I tell her to focus on raising her daughter and be a good mom. But she doesn't want to hear any of it. I told her to forget about Waterford, she looked at me like I was betraying her and said she wanted to hang him from a 'fucking wall.' She used to take my advice; I'm older than she is, so she always respected my opinions. Now…what changed her so much? And how do I change her back?"
Nick fought the urge to roll his eyes. Stop fucking telling her what to do and don't try to fix her. "Listen, man, I have to drive back to Boston tonight. I can't explain everything that's happened in the last four years. But she's not going to forget about Waterford, I'll tell you that. Not in this lifetime."