Seven
At the clubhouse, I continued to obey Roula’s instructions, still flinching at every sound and checking for her over my shoulder, but with less urgency now that a day had gone by peacefully. Again she showed no interest in me, so I determined to show no interest in her, not to give her that satisfaction, in case she was in fact paying attention. By lunchtime, I’d built up a reserve of optimism and a small appetite. As I went to retrieve my trail mix from the closet, Roula stepped out from the shadows. “Look,” she hissed, thrusting something into my face.
She’d started wearing beige compression socks with her shorts, and I glared at the sheen of the nylon, tight as a tourniquet around her calves, and at the flesh of her knees, how it puffed over the top of the elastic, because I didn’t need to look up, I knew exactly what she was holding.
“Someone destroyed them,” she said. “I came in the other morning, and this was all that was left.” She jostled the loose dirt around. “It was when that old woman was staying in room one. I always thought she had something off about her. Some people think they can treat us however they want, just because of our job. I’ve seen it before. I grew them from seeds, since when I first started here.” She paused, waiting for me to react. “You don’t know anything about it, do you?”
I shook my head. “Maybe it was an accident.”
Roula blinked. “Maybe,” she said.
* * *
I fled into room 3, locked the door, and stood trembling. It wasn’t the real me who’d wrecked those plants. I’d been in a state of temporary insanity, which Roula had driven me to. The things we do during a difficult time don’t define us, that’s what Peter had said. But that didn’t mean those things couldn’t still change the course of your life, like getting you fired, or kicked out of school and sentenced to five hundred hours of community service. Peter had tried to prevent it back then. That was why he’d slid my exam aside and set his elbow on it—though I could see the number at the top, 48%, even worse than the last, despite my studying harder than ever, staying up most nights. “You know,” he’d said. “These tests, sitting around trying to remember Jung’s theory about this or that—it can all feel pretty meaningless in the scheme of things.”
I was possessed by the number at the top of the page, bewildered by it, but also energized. It didn’t reflect all the work I’d done, but that just meant I’d have to work even harder, and I liked the idea of that.
“We both know you’re more than capable and you’re willing to put in the time, there’s no issue there. But we, all of us, need to take care of ourselves first.” He paused. “Amy, I don’t want to overstep, but have you put any thought into taking the rest of the semester off? You could take next semester too, if that felt right. The school is very accommodating when it comes to situations like this.”
Situations like this—I turned the words over a few times in my mind, and then I knew. Nnenna. She must have told him about my mother. She’d come to the funeral and brought some other people too, but the moment she saw me, she’d left them all behind, even her boyfriend, Nick, because she understood that I needed her to sweep me away and into the bathroom where we could be alone. “I’m in shock. I had no idea she was that sick,” she’d whispered into my hair. “Me neither,” I said, and only then did I realize how much of a lie that truly was. Nnenna, generous and always clean-smelling, made you want to melt into her arms, and that’s what I did. It was the only time I broke down all day, and I did so with abandon because she made me believe we’d stepped outside time and space into a temporary void where nothing counted. But apparently it had counted.
“I don’t need a semester off.” I’d already had to beg my father to take me back to school to make up the work I’d missed, and now I was finally up to speed, had even read ahead for all my classes. With a little more time, I’d get my grades back up, maybe even better than before.
“What about someone to talk to, a professional, have you looked into that at all?”
“Like you?”
“Right, someone with a similar background, but not me of course, since I’m your teacher. And I’m just a research wonk these days. But there are a ton of great people out there. The Mental Health Services Center has an excellent staff. And they have counseling groups for students who have suffered similar losses.”
“Thanks, I’ll think about it,” I said, but my mind was only on Nnenna now.
I found her at her desk in our room. She looked up when I slammed the door. “So he suggested I take the rest of the semester off, the rest of the year even—is that what you wanted?”
“What?”
“It’s exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? Get rid of me, and have Nick move in. You probably have him packing right now.” I had the sense I was moving and speaking at double speed, and I didn’t want to slow down.
“Don’t you think taking a little time off would be good for you?” The tremble in her voice made me want to knock her to the floor, stomp on her throat. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. You can just come back whenever you’re ready.”
“No, actually. I happen to think it’s the worst possible thing I could do. But apparently my opinion doesn’t matter.” Though the words were my own, it felt like I was acting out a scene, my voice and my movements overly exaggerated, theatrical. I found it liberating. “No, wait, I’m sorry, you’re right. This is definitely something you should decide, behind my back. How silly of me.”
She stood so abruptly that her chair rolled backward, and she had to catch it with one hand. “Look, I didn’t know what else to do.” I could always tell when she felt overwhelmed because her hands would vibrate in the air as she spoke, her fingers all hyperextended. “It’s impossible to talk to you. And I know you really like Peter, so you might actually listen to him. And he’d be a lot better at dealing with something like this than me. I don’t know. But you can’t go on like this forever, just studying twenty-four seven. It just won’t work. It’s not healthy.”
“It never bothered you before.”
“You know it’s not like before. Come on, Amy. You’ve been acting like—I don’t know. But this has nothing to do with Nick. I don’t know why you even brought him up.”
“Ha. As if you’re not the most transparent person in the world. If anyone here needs an intervention, it’s you. He obviously has you brainwashed, that’s the only possible explanation.” I smiled, impressed by my own performance. “You’re literally the only person on the planet who would date him, you do realize that, right? It’s actually kind of hilarious. Everyone thinks so.”
“What, you can’t be a bitch to your mom anymore, so now you have to be a bitch to me?”
This seemed to shock her even more than it did me. She turned and stood looking out the window with one hand around her neck. I stared at her numbly. “I’m going to get food,” she said at last. She had trouble getting her arms into her jacket. “Look, um. I’m sorry I said that. I don’t know why you’re trying to hurt me, of all people, but I won’t hold it against you because I know you’re in pain, even if you don’t want to admit it. I guess you just need to take it out on someone. I’ll be the mature one here, as usual.”
That would be the last time I saw her—she didn’t even show up to court, just had them read a statement on her behalf.
As I listened to her footsteps echo down the hallway, my arms began to itch. I looked down and discovered red splotches all over them. I scratched and paced. I had never felt so free of emotion and in need of action. I lost all awareness of where I was, until I stopped moving and looked up at the wall. One of the paintings we’d made together was a tropical garden, full of hidden objects. Random, meaningless things: an airplane, a basketball. And in the middle, a giant human head sprouting out of a flower stem. She’d called it a self-portrait. I needed it to disappear. But when I closed my eyes, the image only multiplied. I wanted to scream, I did scream, without opening my jaw, freakish, strained noises trapped in the back of my throat. I dri
fted to Nnenna’s side of the room. She kept candles on her dresser, even though they weren’t allowed in the dorm. I’d never seen them lit, though they had been, probably when Nick was over and they knew I’d be out all night at the library. I picked up her lighter. The flame was my twin, wild and hot and ready to make something happen. I brought it to the wall, to the curled edge of the garden. It ignited and then burned out. I took the delicious wisps of smoke into my lungs. The smell invigorated me.
I tore the painting down, and the rest of them too. I piled them on her bed along with her clothes and notebooks, her candles, her towels, her photographs. I flicked the lighter again and watched the flame spring back to life, just as wild and ready as before. I didn’t care what it would mean. There were so many things in life that I couldn’t do, couldn’t undo—not an hour had gone by since my mother passed that I didn’t think of them—and now I finally had the chance to do something, I held the power right here in my hand, and so I had to, I just did, I just had to.
* * *
I fixed my face in the mirror of room 3. This situation with Roula was not the same, I was not the same, and I would not let myself be banished from the clubhouse like I had been from school. If anyone should have to go in front of a judge, it was Roula. She was the pathological one here, lying in wait, biding her time until the moment I’d finally regained some morale—it was no coincidence. She’d been playing with me this whole time. And she’d purposefully muddied the details, knowing how that would torment me. Of all the guests who came and went, why had Roula singled out Valerie? Could Valerie have witnessed what I’d done and acted as Roula’s informant; could the two of them possibly be working together, orchestrating some scheme against me?
Once my hands had steadied, I splashed water on my face and skulked down to the second floor. Doug’s laughter resounded from the kitchen, where he was probably bugging the cook to add more sugar to his dish. I inched toward his office. The door was ajar; it creaked when I pushed it. I moved quickly. I skimmed through his filing cabinet, past financial reports and employee records. Finally I found a file with new member information and, behind that, a folder with a handful of member directories, each spiral-bound with a photograph of the clubhouse on the cover. He would never miss one. I scrambled out, gently hinging the door back to its original position.
Roula would be gone for exactly thirty minutes. She refused to forfeit even a millisecond of her lunch break, whereas I would eat in big gulps standing up, keeping my muscles limber. I thumbed through the Cs until I found Valerie Calvano. If I used the phone in the housekeeping closet, she would recognize the number of the clubhouse and be sure to pick up. Then I could confront her about her role in all this, diplomatically at first, getting tougher if I had to. Roula had put her empty pots back on the table, and though I turned away, I could feel them behind me as I dialed, nosy, disapproving.
The ringing droned on and on, until an automated voice broke through to tell me the mailbox had not been set up, please try again later. I tried the number again, and this time someone picked up—a woman, but much too hoarse to be Valerie. “Good afternoon,” I said. “I’m looking for Valerie Calvano.”
“Why, is she trying to ruin your life too?”
I lifted the phone from my ear and gawked at it. “I’m not sure,” I said.
“This is her daughter.”
“Really?” She didn’t sound like a person who could be related to Valerie. She was rough, with a smoker’s voice. A television played noisily in the background.
“Well, we’ve never taken a test. That’s not a bad idea, now that I think of it.”
“Will Valerie be in tonight? I could try to reach her then.”
“She doesn’t live here anymore. Moved to one of her summer houses. She was generous enough to leave this place for me.” She made a snorting noise, between a laugh and a cough. “What’s this about?”
I considered hanging up, but then what? “I work at the yacht club, she’s a member here. She recently stayed in one of our rooms.”
“You the manager?”
“Assistant manager.” She hadn’t made any effort to adjust the volume on the television. “Is that The Price Is Right?”
“An old one, from the eighties. It was better back then.”
“I think so too.”
“But the outfits!”
I felt annoyed at myself for indulging her. “So you see, one of our guests left behind a beautiful pot of twenty-four-karat gold butter. That’s a kind of exfoliator for your skin. I’m trying to make sure it gets back to its rightful owner. It could be Valerie’s.”
“Where does a person get off putting gold on their face?”
“Do you have her new number, or is there someone else there I could speak with?”
“Just me, myself, and I. She made sure of that,” she said, her voice full of venom. She coughed again. “For solid oak? You’ve got to go higher than that. Come on, lady.”
For some reason, my impatience gave way to an overwhelming curiosity to hear whatever this psychotic woman had to say. “What do you mean, she made sure of it?”
“She wants me to die alone. That’s what gets her up in the morning. My husband—ex-husband—he had a problem with pills. He didn’t want to feel anything, and I can’t blame him for that. But his heart was pure. I don’t give up on people, it’s not in my nature. Thank god that’s not genetic. She wouldn’t help me out unless I did it, the divorce. I’m sure she doesn’t talk about that at the club. She goes around like nothing ever happened. It’s easy for her.”
“Valerie?”
“I’m not even supposed to have contact with him. But she can’t control everything, despite what she thinks. I have a second cell phone she’ll never know about. Bob Barker is just torturing this girl. Show her the damn card already! If I could go back, I wouldn’t do it. Jason had his problems, but I don’t give up on people. All I ever wanted was to get the hell out of this place and, what do you know, I’m right back where I started.”
I was baffled, but not unmoved. I could understand how it felt to have Bob Barker be the most prominent figure in your life. “Sometimes out of suffering comes the cure,” I offered.
“Says who?”
“For example, there’s this type of treatment, for cancer. It’s pretty promising. They extract cancerous cells from the tumor and alter them in a lab, then inject them back into you.”
“I wouldn’t let them try that on me. It was doctors who got Jason addicted in the first place. He used to say a doctor’s just a dealer dressed up in a white coat. I’m going to sell this house and take the money, and then we’re going to move to Spain or Italy or California.”
Now I realized that I’d been duped, sucked into her warped little universe with a half-baked story. Somehow she’d known from the tone of my voice that the fraught-mother angle would work on me, get me to lose track of my common sense and my purpose for calling in the first place. “Congratulations,” I said. “You’re a supreme idiot. I lied before. I don’t work for any club, I work for Valerie. I’m her representative, and everything you’ve said has been recorded. You can expect to hear from her tomorrow. I wouldn’t get too ahead of myself with those plans if I were you.”
I crashed the phone down, out of breath. I hated her, whoever she was, but I hated myself more. This had been a disastrous waste of time, and I should’ve known better, there was no way Valerie and Roula would have formed an alliance against me. They were as far apart as two people could be. I was stuck somewhere between, and still too far away.
* * *
I didn’t go home when my shift ended. I drifted aimlessly around the parking lot of the clubhouse, watching two gulls peck at the shreds of a Styrofoam cup. A group of members or guests who had been properly introduced congregated near a parked car with a silver mat accordioned across the windshield to block the sun. A man wearing sunglasses on a leash around his neck attempted to rest his butt against the car, then jumped up at the heat of it. I didn
’t get close enough to hear their conversation, but I caught the words “Thoroughbred” and “Steve Jobs.”
Roula emerged from the clubhouse, strutting on her compression-socked legs and cooling herself with a paper fan. As she crossed the parking lot, I followed. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I prowled behind her all the way to the bus stop, where she sat on a bench for twenty minutes under the spotty shade of a tree, obsessively fanning herself. I didn’t mean any harm. I only wanted to see whatever I would see. When the bus finally came, I waited for her to plop into a seat in the back, then ducked into a seat up front with my hair spread over the side of my face. I monitored every pull of the stop cord, stealing glances over my shoulder.
The bus had no air conditioning, and as it swerved and jolted, my legs slipped across the seat, leaving dark streaks of sweat. I tried not to get too close to the window, since it had a patch of glue on it, full of stray hair and fuzz. After a rickety hour riding inland, doubt set in—it hadn’t occurred to me that Roula’s home could be so far away. Did she really spend all this time riding the bus every day? It was getting late, and I still didn’t know what I was even doing here. If only I hadn’t switched dinner plans with Gary from tonight to tomorrow, if only I’d had a reason to get home! I scanned once more for the top of her head, but they all blended together now, and I couldn’t get a better view without exposing myself. At the next stop, I gave up and made a run for it. I didn’t slow down until the huffs and screeches of the bus had died away. As I hunched to recover my breath, I saw that I had only myself to blame. I’d accomplished nothing beyond stranding myself in an unknown place, with no clue how to get back home. I tried taking out my certification card—Amy Hanley, Registry No. E4068211—then tucked it away, not in the mood.
I slogged under the heavy sun on two bloated ankles for an hour or more, and just as my faith was nearly depleted, I came upon a cluster of trees. I’d reached the far end of the woods where I used to roam, back before I’d started my summer job. I felt so revived that a verse from Longfellow’s poem, written in tribute to Florence Nightingale, came to mind, and I spoke it aloud:
Nobody, Somebody, Anybody Page 10