One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  So while Mab is off with River in the woods and Mama and Mirabel leave for work, I go online. It is slow because internet in Bourne is slow, but slow is better than intermittent and unpredictable which is what cellular telephone service is in Bourne, and when your cellular telephone does not work you think if only you wave it around or stick it out the window or climb on a roof it might, but this is false hope because it never does and also because climbing on a roof is dangerous, whereas if your internet is slow you might be sad but you are not in peril.

  Ninety-eight minutes later, I have read and learned, which are two things a librarian is supposed to do, but I am more confused than I was before so I might not be the kind of librarian Mama needs.

  I find out that Belsum Basics is officially registered as a wholly owned subsidiary of Belsum Chemical. I find out there is a new slogan, and it is trademarked, and it is “Belsum Basics for Life” which makes sense since “Belsum Chemical: We Might Kill You” is memorable, which is one thing Mrs. Lasserstein says a slogan is supposed to be, but not a major selling point, which is the other.

  I find out a company called Harburon Analytical, the most exacting, state-of-the-art independent testing and chemical analysis company in the world, says Bourne’s water supply is one of the safest in the nation. I find out they gave Belsum a grade as if Belsum were a student at Bourne Memorial High School, and that grade was an A-plus.

  I find out Duke Templeton thinks of the citizens of Bourne like family, and Duke Templeton is so certain his plant is safe that his own son has moved to town to head up resumed operations, and Duke Templeton feels touched and honored because the citizens of Bourne are all so thrilled Belsum is back.

  Which means I have not found out anything at all.

  I find a picture of Duke Templeton on a horse, but there is nothing in any of the articles about a horse. I find a picture of Duke Templeton with big scissors cutting a big bow, surrounded by seventeen people the caption says are new employees of the new Bourne plant on opening day. I go downstairs and find the Oxford English Dictionary under the double boiler in the cabinet and take its domed magnifying glass upstairs with me and look at each of the faces surrounding Duke Templeton and grinning at the camera and excited about their new jobs, but I do not recognize a single one which means either they were lucky and left and are living elsewhere, or they were unlucky. And living nowhere.

  I find a picture that looks like a crack in the earth after an earthquake or a portal to hell lined with lava or a gushing, sliced-open artery in the body of an about-to-be-dead giant. But really it is our river on the first day it turned green. The photograph is black and white so you cannot tell it was green unless you know, which I do, but you can tell that it was very, very wrong.

  I print out the pictures and cut them all up into tiny tiny tiny pieces until they look like grains of rice but, more accurately, are confetti made out of Duke Templeton’s words and face and horse and ruined plant and ruined river. I have been saving a box that used to contain banana pudding mix, and I cut it into a postcard, and over the side that lists ingredients and nutritional information, I glue the Duke Templeton confetti, shards of his giant scissors, halves of letters, sometimes a comma or period, but no pieces large or neighborly enough to make a whole word, even a short one.

  And on the other side, I write:

  Dear Mama,

  I have gained some knowledge, but I do not think it has given me power. Duke Templeton can lie and does lie, and I cannot and do not, so I do not know why he is CEO of a company and I have to take classes to learn what facial expressions mean. I am sorry I was not able to help you.

  Your librarian and daughter,

  Monday

  Three

  Saturday evenings at the bar are my favorites. They’re most crowded so I’m most forgotten. They’re most normal, like what I imagine regular bars in regular towns look like on regular Saturday nights—drinking that seems more fun than depressed, laughter that seems more genuine than sarcastic—what’s supposed to be rather than what is.

  All the way over, Nora’s reassuring herself while pretending she’s reassuring me. “There’s no way, Mir. None. No way. He’s wrong. He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A company that size is never going to tell its secrets to a sixteen-year-old, even if he is the CEO’s grandson. Besides, Omar would never let it happen again. It’s got to be that the lawsuit’s got everyone panicked. That has to be it, don’t you think? I know you do. You’re so smart, Mir-Mir. Don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be just fine, Mirabel, my belle.”

  Her nicknames get more inane the more manic she gets. It’s good Mab’s still out and Monday has a job to do. Otherwise Nora would have left me home, and clearly she needs a chaperone tonight. My plan for the evening had been biochemistry homework. I realize that doesn’t sound Saturday-night exciting, but pickings are slim as splinters around here, and anyway I’ve started a project on vertical farming (no soil, little water, perfect for Bourne) that’s at least as thrilling as most teenagers’ weekend plans. The wifi at the bar is no worse than the wifi anywhere else in town, so I’m happy to den-mother my mother while I work.

  But when we arrive, I see my presence won’t be enough to keep her sane because there, at the end of the bar, is Omar. Norma’s is already as crowded as it gets, even though it’s only just five, and, we can hear from the back entrance, loud, but as Nora emerges behind the bar, a hush falls over the whole place. Everyone’s eyes dance back and forth between Nora and Omar, Nora and Omar. Frank passes behind her, rests his hands lightly on her shoulders for a few beats before moving on. I’m on your side, his hands promise. Don’t start a scene in my bar, they add. Everyone waits to see what Nora’s got in store for Omar tonight—this is what passes for entertainment in Bourne—but everyone (except Omar) is disappointed.

  “Omar!” She forces a smile. “Just the man I was hoping to see.” She pours him a beer, even though he has a nearly full one in front of him already. He looks at it nervously.

  “You were?”

  “I was.”

  “To yell at me?”

  “No!” She laughs. “Well, maybe. Depends what you say. But probably not. I hope not.” She’s grinning now, but even she doesn’t quite look like she’s buying it.

  “Me too.”

  “You too what?”

  “I hope not.” Then he turns to me. “Whatcha think, Mirabel? Is she going to yell at me?”

  “Signs point to yes,” my Voice pronounces, a saved joke because my Voice sounds kind of like how you imagine a Magic 8 Ball would if it could talk. Omar throws his head back and laughs, a real laugh. “You’re a funny, funny girl. And probably a correct one.”

  People are turning back to their own drinks and conversations but much quieter than before, one eye on their beers, one on Omar and Nora, so they won’t miss it if fisticuffs break out.

  “I heard an appalling, ridiculous rumor this afternoon,” Nora begins lightly, like she’s going to tell a joke or a story.

  “From whom?” Omar goes back to looking nervous.

  “A little birdie.”

  Omar raises his eyebrows to mime Who? but the rest of his face falls. He knows.

  “What little birdie?” Hobart asks.

  “Well, see, that’s an interesting story itself.” Nora nods. “You’ll never guess who stopped by my house this afternoon.” She takes a breath, maybe to build suspense, maybe just to give everyone one more moment before she delivers the bad news. “River Templeton.”

  A pause.

  “Who the hell is River Templeton?” Zacharias says.

  “Well, wouldn’t you know it”—no one is buying, but everyone is made edgy by, Nora’s extreme good cheer—“Duke Templeton has a grandson.”

  “And he came to your house?” Zach says.

  “He did.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither,” Nora says.

  “They named him River?” Tom’s trying to catc
h up.

  “They did. Can you believe that?”

  “Apt.” He smiles at his beer.

  “Because they destroyed ours?” Nora says.

  “Not like a river. Like one who rives.”

  “What’d he want?” Frank asks.

  “To flirt with my daughters,” Nora says darkly.

  I wish.

  “What did he say?” Omar just wants to get it over with, I think.

  “Well, that’s where it got weird.” Nora’s taking her torturous time. “I asked what brought him and his family to town—”

  “Good question,” Tom says, but it’s everyone’s.

  “And he said Belsum is reopening the plant.”

  I hear the bottoms of beer glasses hitting the bar, forks and knives clattering onto plates, a few scattered gasps, and then that falling sound that is no sound at all, everyone’s conversations lapsing into silence at once.

  “No fucking way,” someone says.

  “That’s what I said.” Nora nods.

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, I didn’t say it until after he left. Mirabel made Mab take the kid for a walk.”

  “Lucky kid,” Hobart says, and everyone grins at me, picturing the alternative: Nora dismantling the Templeton scion with her teeth.

  “But I told the girls he was an idiot. Had to be wrong. Or lying. Or screwing with us. Something. Because there was no way Omar would let it happen. Not again. Never. Didn’t I, Mirabel?”

  I work hard to nod, but no one’s looking at me because everyone’s looking at Omar, Nora included, who looks at him—it must be said—with surety, certainty. Faith. This isn’t a setup or a trap. In fact, it’s Omar’s moment of redemption, and she holds it out to him like a prize he’s won off her fair and square. Her look is equal parts proud of him for earning it at last, grateful to him for doing so, and slightly sheepish for all the shit she’s given him in the past, and mostly, it is beyond-a-doubt confident of his fealty and good sense.

  Which is why what happens next is heartbreaking. Not because of what he says. Because of the gap between what he says and what she vividly finally imagined he would.

  In fact, at first he doesn’t say anything at all. But the hesitation tells her all she needs to know. The whole bar is holding its breath (except for me; I am pointedly breathing, deep and steady, so as not to distract from the scene playing out before us).

  Nora is the one to break—her will, this silence, and a great deal more. “You said yes to them again.” Halfway between a question and a keen. She is furious. Of course she is. But beneath that, her face shows something else. She is betrayed. She so believed deep down, beneath all those years of animosity she’s held toward Omar for getting us into this mess in the first place, that he wasn’t really the bad guy here. And he failed her, deserted her, broke her faith and trust which, however small, were hard won. She looks heartsick. Him too.

  “Worse.” Omar can’t look at her. He sees what I see in her face. “I didn’t say yes again. This was in their contract to begin with.”

  She pales. “How is that possible?”

  “The land is theirs. And when we zoned it, we zoned it for them. We gave them their designation and land-use rights for a hundred years.”

  “A hundred years!”

  “As a gesture, obviously. To show them we were all in, we’d support them now and into the future.”

  “Why?”

  “We wanted them to stay.” Omar shrugs miserably but raises his head to take everyone in. He is our leader, after all. “And we didn’t want to give them a chance to renegotiate the deal five years down the road when they were employing half the town and could demand whatever terms they wanted. I thought we were being smart. I could envision them wanting to leave us behind. I never imagined there’d be a time we wouldn’t want the jobs. I never imagined we would want to get rid of them.”

  “Or keep them from coming back.” Nora looks, more than anything, exhausted. “Fucking hell.”

  “Yeah,” Omar agrees. “But listen—”

  I would like to. Everyone would like to. Even Nora, if only out of desperation, would like to. But no one gets the opportunity because the door opens and in walks Nathan Templeton.

  He stands inside the doorway for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, being seen, and my brain pulls up from its cloudy nethers the second half of that “Speak of the devil” saying. Both the rest of the aphorism and the man himself seem conjured not from thin air but from its opposite—thick opaque substances: mud, sludge, primordial stuffs—like they were there all along, only dormant, lying in wait to rise up at the merest suggestion. We conjured Nathan Templeton by speaking of him. As usual, it feels all our fault, never mind that, as usual, there was no avoiding it and nothing we could do.

  We have not seen him before, any of us, but there is only one man he can be. I suppose that’s why the saying isn’t “Speak of the devil, and some dude shows up with goat feet and a flaming pitchfork, and you’re all, ‘Who the hell are you?’” He is a clean bright light in Norma’s sticky dankness, and I see what Mab means. There is something strong about him—something whole, something sure and neat and well rested—that no one else in Bourne possesses. Nora literally recoils, and all the blood drains from Frank’s face, and everyone falls silent as snow.

  “Norma’s Bar.” Nathan Templeton opens his arms into the gloaming. “No wonder everyone speaks fondly of this place. I can see I’ll be a regular.”

  His smile is a lightbulb in the gloom. He looks around quite pleased—with himself for discovering such a gem of an establishment, with all of us for being in the know, with Nora and Frank for doing a fine job running the place—and not at all bothered that everyone’s staring at him. He ambles from door to bar slowly, stopping to shake hands with the few bewildered people dotting the tables in the middle of the room—both of his soft ones grasping one of theirs, looking into their eyes—and inserts himself on the empty stool between Zach and Tom.

  He reaches out and puts one hand on one man’s shoulder, one on the other’s.

  “Great to meet you guys.” He looks and sounds like he means it. “I’m Nathan Templeton.”

  They nod mutely. Nora hasn’t closed her mouth in minutes.

  “So”—Nathan picks up a menu and looks it over—“what’s good here?”

  Zach considers the lately frozen neon wings before him. “Nothing?”

  “Hey!” says Frank.

  Nathan winks at Frank and laughs with Zach. “Now, I’m sure that’s not true…”

  “Zach,” Zach supplies.

  “Zach.” Knowing. Proud of him. Like Zach is a perfect name. Like Nathan is certain Zach must be a wonderful man to have such a wonderful name. “Pleasure.” He turns the other way. “How about you…”

  “Tom.” Tom looks surprised to hear his own voice.

  “So, Tom, you seem like a man of taste. What’s the best thing on the menu?”

  “Beer?” Tom guesses.

  Nathan laughs, loud and warm. “Isn’t it always? You’re a wise man, Tom.” He turns to Nora. “Beers for everyone, if you please, Madam Barkeep. This round’s on me.”

  She stands there, frozen, and Nathan’s smile wavers just slightly.

  “Nora,” Frank’s voice warns.

  She shakes her head, blinks, shakes, and starts pulling each of the guys’ favorite beer. As she puts them on the bar, she leans in and whispers, “On the house.”

  “No, hey,” Nathan protests, “let a guy buy another guy a beer. I’ll buy you one too, pretty lady.”

  She takes in a breath deep as a sea trench. I watch her brain flip through thousands of clamoring options in search of where to start her response, but Frank leaps in first. “Frank Fiedler. Owner. Very generous of you.” They shake.

  “And look!” Nathan crows. “It’s my main man—and yours—the great Omar Radison.” He comes down the bar and shakes Omar’s hand. “Good to see you again, man.” So I was wrong. None of us have ever seen
this man before except Omar.

  “We were just talking about you,” Omar admits.

  “All good things, I hope,” Nathan says in a tone that suggests he’s never in his life doubted it. But as he turns to make his way back to his beer, he trips over my footrest.

  It is normal to regard something you’ve tripped over with surprise. After all, if you’d known it was there, you would have walked elsewhere. But the look he gives me is less surprise than shock, shock verging on horror.

  Which, to be honest, is interesting. It is probably true that people who use wheelchairs in the rest of the world get appalled looks and disgusted stares, but not here. Here, no one looks at me twice.

  But the look is fleeting. I catch it for only a moment before Nathan Templeton wrestles his smile back into place. “Well, hi, hello there.”

  I give him a little wave. He waves back.

  “I’m learning everybody’s name tonight.” He’s talking too loudly. Maybe he thinks I might be hard of hearing. Or maybe he wants to make sure everyone notices him talking to me. He needn’t worry about the latter. All eyes in the place are on him. “So tell me who you might be.”

  I have to type in the first part: “I might be”—then tap my name—“Mirabel.”

  He is dumbfounded at first by my Voice but recovers quickly. “You might be, eh?”

  I nod.

  “Are you one of the famed Mitchell sisters?”

  I might look surprised he knows—I am—or he might just be showing off because he laughs too loudly, goes to clap me on the shoulder, changes his mind, and brags, “I keep my ear to the ground, don’t I?”

  I don’t know what to do but nod.

  “You look too young to be in a place like this, Mirabel,” he says. “Must be clean living.”

  Frank watches Nora consider breaking a bottle over the edge of the bar and impaling this guy. He redirects. “So, Nathan, what brings you to town?”