One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  So I showed them the Santa picture that could not be but could not not be either that revealed how at Christmas 1963 there was a river running right through the middle of downtown.

  Mab looked and looked, and Mirabel looked and looked, and Mirabel made a squeak, and Mirabel started to type, and then her Voice said, “What did the fish say when it swam into a wall?”

  And I said, “Fish cannot talk.”

  And I said, “There are no walls in the ocean.”

  And I said, “You might think fish are stupid because their brains are small but fish are not stupid and—”

  But Mab interrupted, “Oh.” And then Mab said, “Damn.”

  Or, to be more accurate, Mab said, “Dam.”

  Mirabel explained that the rivers were not triplets or even twins. Mirabel explained that the river in the Santa photograph was our very same river but in a different place. It took all night for Mirabel to explain because her predictive software did not predict you could move a river just like I did not and because she did not have anything saved already on the subject of river diversion so she had to type every single word. It also took a long time because I did not understand. When she told me you can move a river I was thinking you would have to fill a bucket with water and carry it somewhere else and dump it out and then go back and fill it again and carry it again and dump it again and then do that over and over and over. I said no matter how many times you did that it would not work because more water would keep coming. But Mirabel helped me understand you can turn the river itself which is the difference between big dams and little dams. The big dams you think of when you think of dams generate power which is called hydroelectric, but smaller dams like ours are used to make lakes and divert rivers which means move them, and then the place where the river used to run would be a ravine and fill with vines and plants and brambles so you would not think that a river used to run there but it did.

  Which means sometime between when the Santas pretended to fish in 1963 and every single memory we have, someone put in the dam.

  Mab got very excited and started asking questions we did not know the answers to. I do not know why she did this since we did not know the answers, but Mirabel kept nodding her head and tapping her screen and her Voice kept saying, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Mab said, “When was the dam put in?”

  Mab said, “No, wait, why was the dam put in?”

  Mab said, “No, no, no! Who put the dam in?”

  Mirabel’s Voice did not answer any of these questions. Mirabel’s Voice said, “Yes yes yes yes yes.”

  * * *

  This morning we are very tired because we were up too late last night understanding dams, but it is Saturday so Pastor Jeff is here so we get out of bed anyway. We have many questions we cannot remember the answers to because we were not born yet, but he and Mama probably remember because they were.

  By the time we finish getting up and dressed, Pastor Jeff is already eating. Mama has made blueberry danish and chocolate brioche plus lemon muffins for me, but Pastor Jeff is eating one of my muffins, even though he is a man of God. (He does not care what color his food is, and also what if he touched all the muffins when he took one?) But then Mama puts out a separate plate of untouched lemon muffins for just me. This is nice of her.

  “When did they build the dam?” I shout which I did not mean to, but I am very excited. Mama stops pouring coffee. Pastor Jeff stops chewing my muffin.

  “Good morning to you too, Monday,” says Pastor Jeff.

  “When did they build the dam?” I say again.

  Pastor Jeff and Mama share a look which means confused but also laughing at me.

  “Why are you asking about the dam, love?” Mama says.

  “We cannot remember before it was built,” I explain, “because every time we can remember it was already there.”

  Mama looks at Mab who sometimes explains me when I am too confused or excited or upset to explain me myself, but Mab is just sitting there looking like she is wondering the answer too, so Mama figures that the question I am asking is the question I am asking. Her face does a funny thing. “It was right before…” But she does not finish.

  “Right before what?” I ask even though I should not have to because people should complete their sentences.

  “It was right before Belsum came to town,” Pastor Jeff says quietly. “Before they broke ground on the plant even.”

  “We thought…” Mama begins, then has to clear her throat. “We thought everything was about to get so great. And instead everything got so terrible.”

  “But the park was nice,” Pastor Jeff says.

  “Briefly.” Mama snorts.

  “Why did they?” I ask.

  “Why did they what?” says Mama, as if I have changed the subject which I have not.

  “Why did they build the dam?”

  “To make Bluebell Lake,” Mama says like this is obvious.

  Pastor Jeff does a better job of saying more. “In the summer, kids used to wade in the river to cool off.” I try to picture this. I cannot picture this. “Splashing contests, prying up rocks, catching tadpoles in jars, that kind of thing. But the water moved too fast out in the middle. Parents started to worry about some kid getting swept away. I think there was a petition or something. People lobbied the mayor—this was the mayor before Omar—until finally they dammed the river to build the lake and the park so we’d have somewhere to hang out and swim safely.”

  “Did you?” I cannot picture anyone swimming in Bluebell Lake or anywhere in Bourne. It is like Pastor Jeff has admitted he spent his summers swimming in something gross and also dangerous like a vat of drooling wolves.

  “Sure we did. It was really nice.”

  “Briefly,” Mama says again.

  “It was nice to have somewhere to swim instead of just wade,” Pastor Jeff continues. “And the park was pretty all year long.”

  “Your dad proposed to me there,” Mama says. Suddenly my sisters and I are alert as birds because we have never heard this story. “It had snowed, and it was late, and we were walking around the lake holding hands, just, you know, to be out in it, throwing snowballs at each other, hugging to keep warm. And it was so pretty, all white and moonlit and quiet. Clean. It was one of those nights you could stay in, perfectly content, forever. You know?”

  I do not know. I have never heard her talk like this. She is not looking at me or Mab or Mirabel or Pastor Jeff. She is looking above our heads.

  “And then he tripped over a branch or something. It was buried in the snow, and he couldn’t see it. He fell right over, and we laughed so hard, and when I tried to help him up, I slipped too, and then we were just lying in a pile together in the snow, laughing, tears streaming down our faces. I made it upright finally, and I reached out to pull him up, and he took my hand but resisted when I tugged his, and then he said, ‘As long as I’m down here…’ and he was on his knees and I was standing there, and he said, ‘I think you better marry me.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I think I better.’ And then he got up, and he walked me home. And then at my door he said, ‘I am pretty sure I love you more than anyone has ever loved anything ever.’”

  She is quiet then. Even I can see there is more to say, but she does not want to say it. She has sucked her lips inside her mouth like she is afraid of what will come out of them next and wants to keep the words in. Her eyes are wet and pink and still not looking at us but no tears fall out. Then she closes them and scrunches them up and then she opens them and makes them wide and then she blinks and shakes her head and shakes her head some more. And then, after a long time, she starts talking again like she is right in the middle of her sentence and did not interrupt it with a very long silence. “And he said, ‘But wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll love you even more.’” Then she swallows a lot and does a little cough and then she says, “And you know, they never shut the park. All these years, the park’s still there. Hardly anyone goes anymore because you wouldn’t go in the lake for anything,
and going to the park with that lake just calling to you and you not being able to go in, that’s just cruel. Plus, you know, all those memories. It’s hard. But it used to be a really nice place.”

  Pastor Jeff reaches over and squeezes Mama’s hand which squeezes his back.

  No one has anything they can think of to say next.

  I look at my sisters. Their faces show confused which is just how I feel too because Mama and Pastor Jeff answered the question. But it did not answer the question.

  Three

  I’m doing English homework in the clinic waiting room. King Lear. Now there’s a character with three daughters who has a rough time of it. Aside from that, though, he and Nora don’t have much in common. Lear bought his own troubles, and that’s a luxury Nora’s never had. Maybe he’s right that he’s more sinned against than sinning, but Nora is not sinning at all. Nora is sinned against instead of sinning. Maybe if she’d had the chance, she might have liked to sin a little in her life, but her whole world has been taken up with being sinned against, so there hasn’t been time. It’s not that the well-connected, well-endowed, and powerful don’t have troubles. It’s that they’re so much more likely to have earned them than the ones who are isolated, poor, and defenseless. And not the king of anything.

  My own sins include telling my mother I wasn’t well enough for school this morning when really I just wanted to come to work with her so that I could be here for Apple Templeton’s appointment this afternoon. I don’t know why it’s important that our library is her lineal home, but it must be. Bourne is too small for it to be a coincidence that her forebears lived in this town and then she married into the family that destroyed it. I don’t know whether what she’s looking for has anything to do with what we’re looking for, but I do think if it were in their attic, in their plant, or in the files Omar let her look through, she’d have found it already. After all, unlike me, she knows what it is. All of which means, whatever it is, there’s a chance it’s in our house and has been there all along. And if only I knew what it was, we could find it.

  Chris Wohl emerges from his appointment, pulls his jacket off the coatrack in the waiting room, and winks at me. “Miracle Mirabel, how’s it hangin’?”

  “I am good, thank you,” my Voice says mechanically. “How are you?”

  He stops like I’ve unplugged him. “I’m not so great right now, actually.”

  “No,” says my Voice, and I hope he knows I don’t mean “No, don’t talk to me” or “No, I don’t believe you” but “No” like “Oh no.”

  “The usual.” He gestures over his shoulder. “I was just telling your mom. Leandra’s cancer is back. Soon there won’t be anywhere left for it to spread. I know it’s my job to cheer her up, but who’s going to cheer me up? There are drugs that help, but only she’s allowed to use them. It blows.”

  “No,” my Voice says again.

  “But at least I can say so whereas you…” He waves at me, my chair, my Voice. Chris has no filter. Nora says it’s part of his recovery. You stop doing drugs, you also stop lying, even the little ones that make conversation less awkward. Not that non-awkward conversation is an option available to me either. Or maybe when all your energy goes into staying sober and taking care of your wife, you have no reserves for masking your social anxieties.

  “It is okay,” my Voice whirs.

  “It is?” I am surprised to see he has tears in his eyes. “Life is kicking my ass up and down Main Street. How are you okay? How do you do it, Mirabel?”

  He waits patiently while I type. Then my Voice says, “I am Miracle.”

  “Miracle Mirabel.” He grins through tears. “Yes, you are.”

  He squeezes my hand and leaves. This happens all the time, as if I’m an extension of my mother: patients leaving her sessions only to confess to me in the waiting room, even the ones who aren’t recovering addicts.

  Nora comes and stands in her doorway.

  “You are, you know.”

  I duck my head at her.

  “You are a miracle. Some people’s bodies make it easy for them to get through life.” I am thinking of Apple and wondering if Nora is too. “And some people’s bodies make it hard, but your body, your body makes it miraculous.” She pauses so I can agree or reject this. I do neither. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Yes, I nod. Yes I know, not Yes I agree.

  “You know what else? You’re great at this.”

  At what? I flip my hand up.

  “This. You’d be a great therapist.”

  A pause again. Again, I neither yes nor no.

  “For one, you’ve had a lot of practice.” She laughs. “You listen well. You’re thoughtful, which is the most important part. You raise good questions.”

  Raise, she says, as if I cannot ask them.

  “I don’t mean the sight of you or the fact of you.” Nora, of course, can read my mind. “I don’t mean you inspire people with how brave you are or any bullshit like that. I mean you are mindful, and mindful is contagious. You have perspective, so the people around you seek some too. Your effort is apparent, which reminds people of its virtue and necessity. You could help people if you want to, Mirabel. And you should. Because you’re good at it. And because people need help. And because it will help you too.”

  Part of the perspective she means is If Mirabel can smile in the face of such soul-crushing constriction, my dead end doesn’t look so bad. But it is true I look for bright sides, not because I am an optimist by disposition, not because I don’t know any better—I do—but because I am so slow. It takes me so long to do everything I do. And if you go slowly enough, every moment of the day becomes its own journey, either its own triumph, which you get to celebrate, or its own failure, which you get to move on from, by definition, in the very next moment. If you operate at speed, each word is not a victory, each swallowed piece of food or sip of water is not a conquest. If you operate at speed, you need bigger things to vanquish than a sentence or a muffin or a single line of King Lear. It’s not that slow is not also frustrating—for me, for Nora, for my sisters—but frustrated is what people are supposed to make their sisters feel, what teenagers everywhere are always provoking in their mothers. It’s not that slow isn’t painful, maddening, restrictive. It is all of those things. Plus it’s not like I have a choice. But slow is also one of the blessings of being me. Mixed blessings. Slow is one of the mixed blessings of being me.

  As I’ve said—though not, of course, to Nora—there’s no way I’m going to be a therapist, but as for what I’ll be instead, I’m still narrowing it down. There’s a lot you can do when you can use one arm, one hand, when you control your Voice and your thoughts, when you can study and read and type. When you are smart and curious. When you have learned forbearance and acceptance and generosity of spirit the hardest of ways. My skies may not be the limit, but they are less clouded than they seem.

  Whereas Apple’s are flat-out stormy. She’s nothing but weepy today. I feel bad that she feels bad. I feel worse that because she feels bad, she’s talking in circles and not about anything useful.

  “Daddy worried these last years. Or, I don’t know, maybe he was worried all along. But especially at the end. I want to do what he wanted me to do. I just don’t know how.”

  “You’re not a mind reader.” Nor, at the moment, is Nora, who’s not sure what Apple’s talking about but says all the right things anyway. “It’s just as hard for children to know how to make their parents happy as it is for parents to know how to make their children happy.”

  I exchange a secret smile with my mother. We do read each other’s minds most of the time. We do share happiness and unhappiness like we’re splitting a sandwich.

  “He had a good heart, my dad.” Apple nods, sniffles, nods. “Lots of people couldn’t see it—wouldn’t see it—but it’s true. Maybe he didn’t always do the right thing all the way, but he did the right thing some of the way, when he could, and the truth is that’s more than most people do.”


  “It’s hard.” Nora might mean doing the right thing all the way. Or she might mean having a father who split these particular hairs. Or she might mean honoring that father now that he’s gone.

  But Apple isn’t really listening anyway. “Dad was a man who saw the value of compromise. Doing things halfway gets a bad rap, but a lot of the time it’s better than not doing them at all. When it’s the most you can expect, you’ll be happiest if you learn to settle for it.”

  I imagine Apple’s version of settling looks different from ours. Still, this strikes me as an unusually Bourne-like sensibility.

  * * *

  We are closing up. Nora’s filed her patient notes and progress reports, powered off her computer. Pastor Jeff left ten minutes ago, so she turns the lights off and the heat down. We are on the front stoop at the top of the ramp, and she’s got her key in the lock when there’s a sound.

  It’s a throat clearing. Then a voice. “Nora?”

  She turns, surprised. Takes him in, more surprised still.

  “Dr. Mitchell,” the voice amends.

  She turns back to the door and thunks the dead bolt into place. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “I know I’m not on the schedule, but I wonder … is there any chance you have time for one more today?”

  She does not say she’s been here nine hours already. She does not say she is due at the bar in twenty minutes. She does not say anything. So he keeps talking.

  “I do realize it’s a lot to ask, but I … well, I could really use someone to talk to for a few minutes.”

  Nathan Templeton looks at her, fully, right into her eyes. She looks right back. Their gazes are hard—not hard like cold, hard like challenging, thorough. I feel like Monday. I cannot read either of their expressions (too complicated) or emotions (too many), but neither of them is shying away from whatever this is.