by Megan Abbott
Looking past them, through the crossbars of the bleachers, he saw a woman with a long dark braid who looked familiar.
It took a moment, but as she turned to talk to the man next to her, something in the stiffness and purpose of the way her body moved triggered his memory.
The woman in the parka. The one in the classroom questioning Deenie.
She wasn’t wearing the parka anymore, just a dark raincoat.
And the man she was talking to was a uniformed cop.
“Isn’t it enough that our lake is forever polluted by who knows what sins of the past?” Mary Lu was shouting, her voice strong and searing.
But everything else fell away for Tom. Because it seemed suddenly, palpably clear that his daughter had been talking to the police that afternoon and didn’t know it.
The woman and the cop started walking swiftly toward the back exit.
Placing his hand on Kit’s shoulder—her body jumping from it—he moved past her and walked quickly toward the pair, disappearing behind the heavy exit doors.
“Hey,” Tom called out. “Hey, stop!”
* * *
There was a thud from the school’s east breezeway, something hitting the glass.
A light arced across the floor.
Eli walked slowly toward it, the same spot he and Brooke had stood a few hours ago.
That’s where, she’d said, pointing to the bushes. Right there.
Outside, there was a blur of movement, the strobing of flashlights.
From the dim corridor, just before the breach into the breezeway, he peered through the glass.
Three figures in dark jackets, caps. Light blue plastic gloves like at the hospital.
One of them was lifting something off the ground with a stick. A bit of pink fabric, spattered with mud.
Another was holding a shovel, its tip grass-stained.
A camera flashed and Eli jumped back, as if they were looking for him.
And that made him think of something.
He couldn’t be sure if he’d have thought of it sooner if he hadn’t smoked with Skye, or if he wouldn’t have thought of it at all.
Walking briskly now, he returned to the trophy case. The banquet picture.
The shaggy-haired kid next to him.
“You two are sporting quite the hockey flows,” the photographer had said to them both. “You think you’re Guy Lafleur or something?”
The forward from Star-of-the-Sea, Sean.
The one who worked with Deenie.
Sean. Sean Lurie.
* * *
The night air like a wet hand over his mouth, Tom pushed through the doors, caught sight of the woman and the uniformed cop walking purposefully ahead of him, across the parking lot.
Running now, the fierceness in his chest nearly took his breath away, reminded him of when the kids were little, those moments you’d realize how vulnerable they were. A decade ago, that visit to DC, he’d made Deenie hold his hand everywhere, made her walk on the inside of the sidewalk, her rampart against chaos, against pain.
“Stop!” he called out again, chest clutching.
Both of them swiveled around.
“What were you talking to my daughter about?” He panted, hand to chest.
“Excuse me,” the woman said, blinking.
“My daughter, today. You locked her in a room.” His voice sounded rough and unfamiliar to him.
She squinted, then appeared to recognize him. “Mr. Nash,” she said, “I tried to tell you this afternoon, those were standard questions. The room was not locked.”
The officer next to her stepped forward slightly, his hands at his waist.
“You didn’t say you were a cop,” Tom said. “That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
“Detective Kurtz,” she said. “And I did identify myself. All we were doing was gathering information.”
“What do you have to do with any of this?” Tom said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Sir, can you keep your voice down?” she said, but all he could see was the woman, the flat line of her mouth, and the way everything felt wet and close and she was not giving him anything.
“We’re here to help you,” she said, “all of you.”
“How does interrogating my daughter help anybody?” He couldn’t stop his voice from sounding loud, ragged. The way they were looking at him, standing so still it made him feel like he was lurching.
“We were not interrogating your daughter, Mr. Nash,” she said. “Do you have a reason to believe we might be?”
“You know something,” Tom insisted, not answering the question. “Why aren’t you telling us what you—”
“Now I remember,” the uniformed cop interrupted. “How are you, Mr. Nash?”
Tom pivoted. “What? Do I know you?”
Both of them so infuriatingly calm, their hands at their waists, their feet planted, watching him.
“I was there that time your wife called us,” the cop said. “That fistfight between you and that fellow in the district parking lot.”
The back doors to the school now rattling open and shut, Tom felt the push of people exiting, gusts of heat and wet insulation and rage, and his chest corded tight.
“Hope things are easier now,” the cop added.
Tom stared at him, his glistening rain-cap cover and fogged glasses.
“That was a long time ago,” Tom said, breathing carefully, “and that wasn’t how it happened.”
It wasn’t a fistfight, or any kind of fight. There’d been some shoving, like you might see at a ball game, a barbecue, or a bar after one too many beers.
He couldn’t believe the officer remembered.
Georgia, he never understood why she’d gotten so upset, that look on her face and crying. They hadn’t even put cuffs on him.
And he hadn’t known until now that she was the one who’d called the police.
“Mr. Nash,” the detective said. “You should go home now, be with your daughter.”
Later, he would try to understand what happened next, what tore through him, the words seeming to come from some hidden well inside him, bottomless and newly ruptured.
“Do you have a daughter? Did either of you ever have a daughter?” he said, his voice shredding. “Because if you did, you’d know why I have to ask you these questions, why I had to chase you out here, why I have to not care what you or anyone thinks. I have to do something, don’t I?”
Moving closer and closer to her.
“I have to do it, raise her, protect her. And no one ever tells you what it means. To hurl your kid out into this world. And no one ever warns you about the real dangers. Not dangers like this.”
His hand, his pointing finger, a hard jab, perilously close to the woman’s chest before he stopped himself, the officer stepping forward fast.
Moving back, hands in the air, and saying, “Did you ever look out in that dark and fucked-up world out there and think, How do I let my daughter out into that? And how do I stop her? And the things you can’t stop because you’re…because—”
“Mr. Nash,” the detective started, voice firm, arm out, but Tom could barely hear her, people everywhere now, noise and confusion, and the car lights coming up, “don’t make us—”
But both their radios began clicking then and the uniformed cop whispered something in her ear.
From the edge of the parking lot, from the tall hedges that crept along the breezeway, another officer emerged and headed toward them carrying a plastic bag in either gloved hand, his face wet and forearms streaked green.
“Mr. Nash,” the detective said, moving to block his view, turning her eyes hard on the officers, “Mr. Nash, you need to leave…”
Her eyes suddenly avid, anxious, desperate.
15
Sean Lurie. Sean Lurie.
The sound of Eli’s tires thumping the name.
Maybe it was the strange crystal dewiness in the air.
But probably it was because the streets were e
mpty, carless, noiseless.
All the sound sucked out of the world.
He had that feeling he’d get, flying down the wing with the puck, and you know you can’t look back, but someone’s behind you, someone’s catching up. You can tell by the sound of his skates shredding that ice.
And the quick double-tap of a stick, and someone’s open and you have to decide: Do I turn my head or do I just send the puck over?
Except, in some way, he was both players. Part of him was charging ahead and the other part saying, Don’t miss it, don’t miss it.
From a half mile away, he could see the glow from the Pizza House sign.
The hardest-working 510 square feet in Dryden! read the cartoon bubble over the mustachioed man on the storefront sign, his chef’s hat tall and tilting.
The whole window seemed to radiate orange.
Skidding to a halt out front, he looked inside.
A gum-chewing boy, face ablaze with acne, stared back at him from the carryout counter.
“Is Sean here?” Eli asked, walking inside, the bell ringing.
* * *
Driving home the quick way, skipping the lake, the sky like wine on wood, Tom turned the radio loud, Eli’s clamorous hip-hop. Anything to make noise.
Listen, I’m not the bad guy here. That’s what the man had said. Georgia’s lover.
He’d said it, shoulders hunched into a hapless shrug, to Tom in the parking lot of the Community School District 17 building.
Tom in the car on the way to the hospital, Georgia next to him, her knees tucked against her chest, sobbing. It couldn’t be his, he’s nothing at all. As if that should make him feel better.
This man. The man with whom his wife spent all those hours at Seven Swallows Inn. The man with whom she’d been so careless that maybe she’d even gotten herself pregnant by him, despite her promises at the time (It’s not his. I swear to God).
Tom couldn’t even remember driving to Georgia’s building, couldn’t remember how long he’d waited before he saw the man.
The man who actually raised his briefcase in the air as if to say, Who, me?
In the face of that, who would not have done what Tom did, thrusting his arms out and shoving him, the briefcase falling, spinning like a top on the ice-gruffed concrete.
He could still picture Georgia tapping on the second-floor window, pounding maybe, mouthing, Stop, stop.
A shove back, another shove, the man slipping, his elbow cracking. The blood seeping through the arm of his coat, spider-webbing the ice.
Tom could hardly believe it when the police came.
Could hardly believe that the raging man with the scarlet face in the car’s side mirror was him.
It wasn’t him.
The uniformed officer who thought he’d remembered him was wrong.
That wasn’t me.
Except it was.
Now, less than seven minutes from home, Tom saw it.
In front of him, the bar’s sign winked: TUDGE’S PUB.
He turned the wheel, hard.
The air inside felt cool, artificial, the vague scent of Freon, wood soap, and popcorn. The sulfuric tug from the gold-foil can of Bar Keepers Friend just behind the tap handles.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a bar, a true bar with creaking floors and varnished wood yellow with smoke, with glowing bottles of forgotten liquors (Haig & Haig Five Star, Ronrico rum, green Chartreuse) arrayed pipe-organ style, a long clouded mirror behind them.
Where friends meet, the cursive letters announced, half-mooned over the crested center where the cash register sat. Above it, a pair of hockey sticks crossed.
He’d forgotten all of it. The comforting feel of a nearly empty bar, the bartender’s expectant eyes, the red vinyl stools like cherries, the soft black in the middle, where the bar itself met the back tables, the jukebox and its sizzling promise.
That great soft black, like lifting the bedcovers, inviting you in.
“Whiskey, on the rocks,” he said, sliding onto a stool, even letting his fingers curl under the wood ridge, shellacked with oil, grime, pleasure.
It seemed only appropriate to order a real drink, even though he could scarcely remember what he liked and hoped it was this.
Why, he asked himself, taking his first biting sip, did I ever stop going to bars?
And just when he thought the relief couldn’t be greater or more vivid, the jukebox hummed to life. A song he couldn’t identify but that had surely been tattooed on his heart, something from twenty years ago, his college dorm room, a car at night with a girl, a sleeping porch.
“Ohh,” he said, not realizing until he heard himself that he’d said it out loud.
Swiveling on his bar stool, he turned and saw a woman standing in front of the electric juke. And she was looking straight at him.
“Tom Nash,” she said.
“Lara Bishop.” He smiled.
* * *
All the lights from all the news trucks, it felt to Deenie like a Hollywood premiere.
The hospital’s front steps were swarmed over with people, cameramen, women like the TV woman from the night before, panty hose and business-suited, waiting.
Dozens of bright-colored suits, the slick Action News and Eyewitness News seals on the cameras, all under the mounted lights, everything rotating, snapping, and flicking.
From a distance, it looked like one moving thing, like when you peer into a microscope. Like when her dad used to show her gliding bacteria, swaying filaments like ribbons. It made her stomach squirm but it was also oddly beautiful.
Exiting the bus with all the night-shift nurses and orderlies, Deenie had no plan, but something about the way no one spoke, their hands wrapped tightly around their travel mugs, told her no regular rules applied right now.
It gave her a sense she could do anything. No one was looking at her.
The hospital staff, heads down, moved quickly to the back entrance where two security guards stood, hands on belts like soldiers.
It felt as if a presidential helicopter might appear in the sky and land on the front steps.
Nothing had ever happened here, until it did.
“It hasn’t started yet.”
Deenie didn’t see the woman until she was right next to her.
She was wearing a yellow raincoat and matching hat that shone under the parking lot lights. In her arms she held a large Tupperware container.
“Oh,” Deenie said. “I’m not here for that.”
“Do you know what this is?” the woman said, holding out the container, something orange settled at its bottom.
“No,” Deenie said, trying to figure out if she knew the woman, her face dark under the hat brim.
“A fungus,” the woman said, lifting it so Deenie could see. “It comes during warm, damp springs after hard winters.”
Deenie squinted at it. It looked like the Tang her grandparents used to keep in the kitchen cupboard.
“I think maybe it’s just rust,” Deenie said.
“All rusts are parasites,” the woman said, nodding. “They need a living host.”
Deenie tugged at the wool of her jacket on her neck. “Where did you get it?”
“From the shore of the lake.”
There was something scraping up Deenie’s throat, a word, a sound.
“The lake water’s in everything. So this,” the woman said, gazing into the bottom of the container, “could be in all of us.”
She looked back at Deenie, one long strand of rain sliding from the brim of her hat.
“But it’s definitely in those girls,” she said. “The girls at the school.”
The woman lifted the container up in the air so the parking lot light hit it, making it glow.
Suspended in the liquid were a few grass blades, hovering. Sticking to them, the smallest of spores, or something.
“It affects the brain,” the woman was saying.
It did look, to Deenie, like something.
But
who could tell, with the mist-scattered light and the pearly sheen of the Tupperware.
“What does it do?” Deenie said. “If it’s in you.”
“Spasms, convulsions,” she said. “Some people feel like they’re burning inside.”
The shimmering spores reminded her of the MagiQuarium she’d had as a kid, the dark wonders inside, the hatching and unhatching. The spinning and seizing of dying things, a briny trail at the bottom of the tank. The sea monkeys that, Eli told her with horror, mate for days at a time. Stuck together, twisting as if trying to strangle each other.
Eyes fixed on them, Deenie felt her mouth go dry. Inside. Inside a girl.
“How…how does it affect the brain?”
“That’s the next stage. Visual disturbances. Hallucinations. Seizures.”
“Oh,” Deenie said.
The woman turned the bright orb in her hands, catching the light so it looked almost on fire.
Then she said, “It makes you lose your mind.”
* * *
“Your sister’s not working tonight,” Sean Lurie said from the back ovens, behind the warming station.
“I know,” Eli said. “I’m not here to see her. I’m here for you.”
“For me?” He grinned, pushing his hair off his brow. “Well, I’m working now, dude.”
“Take a break,” Eli said, glancing around at the deserted store, the barren warming shelf under the cone lamps.
Sean looked at him for what seemed like a long time.
It was almost as if he knew why Eli was there.
“Out back,” Sean said, very quietly. “Meet me out in the back.”
The alley had a dank cat smell, but the parking-lot light gave everything a sparkly look that Eli found hypnotic, like the rink after it’d been sheared to glass.
And the longer he stood there, the more he thought maybe the smell was coming from him, the salty tang of his hockey gear, which seemed to leach into his skin.
He waited three minutes until he realized Sean wasn’t coming out.
“Dude,” the ruddy kid at the counter said, “he’s gone.”
Running outside, Eli caught sight of Sean across the street, the blare of his red interscholastic jacket in front of a rusted Firebird.