“Wait.” Nora shook her head, feeling as though something had drained from inside her chest. She turned off the faucet, set the water bowl down in front of Alice Walker. “Grace goes by Petal now? What are you talking about?”
“She changed her name. I don’t think she went and made it legal or anything, but her husband says she likes to be called Petal now.” Ozzie paused. “It could be worse. She could be calling herself Stem. Or Root.”
Nora didn’t laugh. “Why would she change her name?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s part of that whole artist-persona thing she had going on. You remember.”
Nora did remember. The four of them had been as close as sisters in that house, but she had shared a bedroom with Grace for two years. Nora knew parts of Grace that Ozzie and Monica did not. Parts they might not ever know.
“Anyway,” Ozzie said. “Grace—I mean Petal—”
“Just call her Grace.” Nora felt impatient suddenly, and it startled her. She rarely got impatient. With anyone. “I mean, at least to me. Petal’s . . . I don’t know. It’s too weird.”
“Okay, so Grace’s husband called me last night, and we talked for a long time. Over an hour, I’d guess. They live right outside of Chicago now; I don’t remember where, exactly. Somewhere in the suburbs, I think. Anyway, the point is, she’s not doing so well.”
Nora held her breath, as if to block the pinprick of fear rising behind it. “Can you be more specific?”
“She’s . . . well, her husband—his name is Henry, by the way—said that she was in the hospital.”
“She’s sick?”
“Yeah, but not physically sick,” Ozzie said. “It was a mental hospital. She tried to kill herself, Nora. Just a few months ago.”
The pinprick exploded into a flash of heat that spread out across the front of Nora’s chest and down into her stomach.
“And it was no joke, either,” Ozzie continued. “You know how some people kind of do it half-assed because they don’t know how to ask for help and making a few scratches on their wrist is the only way they can get anyone to take them seriously? Well, Grace wasn’t asking for anyone’s help. Henry said he found her hanging in the closet. She was blue. Her eyes were bulging out of her sockets.”
Nora blocked a cry that was trying to escape from her mouth with the side of her fist. It just didn’t seem possible. Grace had always been horrified by death. Once, when the two of them had been walking back to Turning Winds from school, they had come across a dead bird lying on the sidewalk. It was a sparrow, small and brown, with tiny feet that curled up under it like fern fronds. There was no sign of violence, no mark that gave any indication as to how it had died, and for a moment, as Grace sank down next to it, Nora had been sure it would wake up and fly away. It hadn’t, of course, and when Grace turned to her, her wide face stricken, and said, “What do you think happened?” she hadn’t known how to answer.
“Why?” Nora asked now. Her voice was a whisper.
“Henry said they’ve been having a lot of problems,” Ozzie said. “I mean, obviously. But I think she’s been struggling with depression for a while. And then she just had a baby this past May. Henry thinks it was postpartum depression mixed in with everything else. I guess it made her suicidal.” She paused. “If he hadn’t come home when he did that day, we’d all be meeting up again at her funeral instead of talking like this.”
Just for a moment Nora wished Ozzie had learned not to speak so bluntly. And then, in the next breath, she was glad she hadn’t. Ozzie had always been the one who said the things that the rest of them could not.
“She has a baby then?” Nora pulled at the soft skin along her throat.
“Yeah. A little girl. Henry’s parents have been taking care of her until he can get things sorted out, I guess.”
“Is Grace back home? Or is she still in the hospital?”
“No, she’s been home for a while. Since the end of July, I think. Henry said she’s really been making progress. But he also said that he was worried she was starting to relapse again.”
“Relapse?”
“You know, reverting back to her old behaviors. Crying a lot, not sleeping. Especially in the last two weeks or so. I think he’s scared.”
“Well, he should bring her back to the hospital!” Nora stood up and raked her fingers through the top of her hair. “What’s he doing calling you?” She bit her lip, realizing how that sounded. “I mean . . . you’re not a doctor. He should be calling her doctor, right?”
“He’s done that.” Nora could hear a catch in Ozzie’s voice. “Her therapist, too. They upped her meds, and they’re monitoring her pretty closely. Henry says rough patches are normal; that they’ll come and go.”
“Okay,” Nora said uncertainly.
“Here’s the thing, though, Nora. Henry says that she just wants us. If he said it once last night, he said it ten times. Apparently Grace keeps telling him over and over again that all she wants is to see the three of us.”
“The three of us?” Nora repeated. “You mean you and me and Monica?”
“Uh-huh. That’s why he called.”
Nora let her hand fall from the back of her head. She had been carrying the hope of this—or something exactly like this—around like a stone in her pocket, a toothache that never stopped throbbing, a constant, steady pulse. The stone had gotten smaller, the toothache less painful, but the pulse was still there. It was always there.
And yet . . .
“Nora?”
“God, Ozzie. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“Are you going to see her?”
“Well, of course I’m going to see her.”
“What about Monica?”
“Monica’s in,” Ozzie answered. “I called her just before I called you. She already booked her flight, and she’s meeting me at O’Hare tomorrow afternoon, which is what I was hoping you would do. Then we could all drive to Grace’s house. Together. Like she asked.”
“And . . .” Nora walked over to the window and pressed her palm flat against the cold glass. “And . . . do what?”
“What do you mean, ‘do what?’” Ozzie sounded indignant. “I don’t think Grace is looking for us to take her to the mall or anything here, Nora. She just wants us to be there. For . . . support.” A faint clicking sound came over the phone, and Nora realized that Ozzie was biting her nails. Ozzie had bitten her nails back in high school, so badly sometimes that she drew blood and had to wear Band-Aids over the raw skin. “Don’t you want to be there for her?” Ozzie’s question hung in the air.
“Well, yeah.” Nora’s voice wavered. “I mean, of course I do. But I don’t think you can blame me for being hesitant about seeing people I haven’t seen in almost fifteen years.”
“People?” Ozzie repeated. “I know it’s been a while, Nora, but we’re not just people. It’s us! We were the best friends of your life!”
“Were.” Nora repeated Ozzie’s word gently. “We were best friends, Ozzie. And then nothing. Not a card, a letter. Not even a phone call. For . . .” Her voice drifted off. It had been a long time, but she wanted to say forever. That was what it felt like. Forever and then some.
A small child’s voice wailed in the background. “Mommy! Olivia dumped the flour on the floor!”
Ozzie muted the mouthpiece again with her hand. “Two more minutes!” she bellowed. “Mommy’s busy right now!”
There was a short silence. And then, “I . . .” Ozzie’s voice was already heavy with apology. Quieter too, as if letting Nora in on a secret. “Shit, you know how we all left things, Nora. After that night. And I know I was probably the most vocal about just forgetting all of it and moving ahead. I know I was. I said those exact words, didn’t I? To all of us?”
Nora didn’t say anything, afraid that Ozzie would stop talking.
“I did,” Ozzie said, answering her own question. “And you know, back then, I really thought that was what we should do. I mean, we were seve
nteen years old! None of us knew what the hell to do after it was all over. At least I didn’t. Shit, the only thing going through my stupid head was how fast we were going to get the hell out of there, and what we’d need to do to forget it.”
Nora could hear herself breathing through the line, a desperate sound, muffled like a trapped animal. She wanted to scream, could feel it moving like a living thing from the depths of her belly. “And have you?” she asked instead. “Forgotten, I mean?’
“Mostly.” The word entered Nora’s ear like a bullet. “What about you? Do you ever think about it anymore?” Ozzie’s voice was hoarse, barely audible. “Or are you okay with things now?”
Nora removed her hand from the window glass. A large, damp stain remained, the outline of something that looked as though it might still be breathing. “I’m okay with things now.”
“All right.” Ozzie swallowed through the phone. “But you know, maybe Grace isn’t. I mean, she was a basket case afterward. You remember. Maybe she has some kind of posttraumatic stress thing going on. I don’t know. I’m not a shrink. All I know is that she needs us. She needs the three of us to help her get through this, whatever it is. I know we’re not teenagers anymore. I’m not asking you to come out to Chicago so we can stand around in Grace’s backyard and stare up at the moon. But I think she needs us to be around right now, you know? To just . . . be there for her. I need you to be there for her.”
“You?” Nora repeated. “Why do you need me to be there?”
“Because it won’t work without you. There’s no such thing as three of us. There never was. It’s the four of us or nothing.” She paused. “C’mon, Nora. Please say you’ll come.”
The pale purple had drained from the morning sky, leaving behind a slate of gray. The sky had been that kind of gray the morning Ozzie left, as solemn and still as Nora had felt. Nora had held her tightly at the bus station, knowing that she would not see her for a long, long time after everything that had happened. She might have held on longer if Ozzie had not pulled back, insisting, “Let go now, Nora. You have to let go.” She’d obeyed, unclenching her arms, watching as Ozzie ascended the narrow set of steps into the bus and disappeared into the belly of it.
Now her own belly churned like some kind of lopsided washing machine. Just the thought of reuniting with all of them again made the inside of her mouth taste sour. A rushing sounded in her head, and the tips of her fingers tingled. There was no way she had it in her to go through it again; she’d barely made it through the first time. And yet there was something about hearing her name again—Norster—combined with the nearly defunct feeling of being needed that almost made her knees buckle. Two parallel lines of pain began to work their way up the back of her throat. Beyond the red maple tree on the sidewalk, she could see the narrow steeple of Saint Augustine’s rising in the air like a pair of folded hands, a perpetual prayer. She’d stopped praying so long ago that she couldn’t even remember how to begin anymore. And yet right now, this instant, she knew that one of her prayers had just been answered.
“All right,” she heard herself whisper into the phone. “Okay, I’ll come.”
Chapter 2
She stayed at the window for at least five minutes after Ozzie hung up, her eyes fixed on the horizon, a myriad of thoughts drifting from one thing to another and then back again. In just over twenty-four hours, she was going to be reunited with her girls. Her family. Her life. She could still say those things, couldn’t she? It was how she felt. How she’d always felt, even if she’d forgotten she did. Their faces came rushing back at her in rapid succession: Ozzie with the short, cropped hair that she cut herself, dark eyebrows, and wide, fleshy lips; Monica, whose smooth, doughy face was framed with orange curls; and Grace, the beauty of the group, who had long blond hair and a bone structure so delicate that it sometimes looked like porcelain. They would have changed undoubtedly through the years, just as she had; maybe some of them were a little wider around the hips or had a few more wrinkles under the eyes, but she knew she would still be able to spot any of them in a crowded room.
She was glad Grace’s baby was staying with her grandparents and that she was not going to be at the house. Seeing Grace was going to be difficult enough, but adding a baby to the mix would ratchet things up another hundred degrees. Nora didn’t do well with babies. She never had, and she doubted she ever would. They made her anxious the way little else could. It was not so much their gigantic, wobbly heads that, mishandled at just the right angle, could snap their necks in half, or their rubber limbs that seemed to fold in on themselves like pieces of Play-Doh. It was not even the vague terror that crawled up the length of her arms when she held one, sure that at any moment she would drop it on the floor where it would break apart into pieces. It was the crying that undid her, the sorrowful, helpless sound unraveling some tight ball deep inside her chest when she heard it. There was no way she would have agreed to go if Ozzie had said the baby would be there. No way in hell.
She startled as Alice Walker barked behind her, and, realizing how much time had passed, rushed to the shower. It took her less than ten minutes to get dressed for work, and she raced up the back steps of the library, hoping to slide in through the kitchen before anyone noticed. She was supposed to be at work by 8:30, but the phone call had taken up more time than she realized. It was now 8:46. The library opened at nine.
“Happy birthday!” Trudy and Marion jumped out from behind the wall as Nora turned the corner. Pieces of yellow and white confetti fluttered down around her like snow, and Marion blew on a paper horn. Trudy was holding a cake covered with white icing. The words HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NORA! were scrawled across the top in shaky pink letters.
“Oh!” Nora covered her mouth with both hands, suppressing a giggle. “You scared me!”
Marion blew on the horn again.
“Put that thing away,” Trudy said, swatting at it. “It sounds like you’re strangling a goose.”
Marion blew it once more, this time in Trudy’s face.
“A child,” Trudy muttered, shaking her head. “Eternally stuck at six.”
Marion Hubbard and Trudy Randolph were both in their late sixties. They had known each other for almost thirty years. Between the two of them, they had gone through four marriages, the death of a child (Trudy’s), and two cracked pelvises. Trudy, who had actually started the library in her own living room before getting enough federal funding to transfer it to a larger building on Maple Street, was the library director, and Marion, who had been her first hire, was her right hand. It was Marion who had approached Nora with the suggestion of working for them after observing her reading in the corner of the second floor for months on end; Marion, too, who had encouraged her a few years later to apply to the local college so that she could get her degree in library science. Nora had refused outright—the thought of having to immerse herself in yet another close-knit social structure (or being on the outside of one) had literally given her hives—until Trudy mentioned the possibility of doing everything online. It had taken her a little over five years, but Nora had done it, applying for and receiving financial aid every semester, staying up late to make sure her papers were perfect, even asking Marion and Trudy to quiz her some days before a big test. She was twenty-seven when she received her bachelor of arts in library science and media diploma in the mail, and it was one of the proudest days of her life. Marion and Trudy had taken her out to dinner to celebrate, and she had smiled all night long.
Now, Trudy set the cake down on the kitchen table, plopped into a chair, and yanked up one of her knee-high argyle socks. Her wide face was accentuated with bright green eyes and soft jowls. Tufts of her short white hair were clipped into place with a variety of plastic barrettes—two blue butterflies, an orange grasshopper, and several pink kittens. Marion had told Nora once that Trudy had never graduated from the eighth grade, and sometimes Nora wasn’t sure if she was kidding.
“You know I’m always glad to see you,” Trudy said, looking steadily
at Nora, “but for a minute there, I thought maybe you’d decided to live large and were going to play hooky today. I wouldn’t’ve docked you, you know. It is your birthday, after all.”
“Oh no,” Nora said, “I wouldn’t have skipped work. And I’m sorry I was a little late. I just . . . I got a phone call this morning from an old friend. We were catching up. I didn’t realize how much time had passed.”
“Oh, there’s nothing better than a birthday call from an old friend!” Marion clasped her hands together wistfully. “How lovely! Who was it?” The silk triangle of scarf that peeked out from her breast pocket matched her navy shoes. Marion dressed every day as if she were about to begin her own talk show on national TV instead of getting behind the periodical desk at the public library.
“Just someone I used to know in high school.” Nora took off her brown barn jacket and draped it around the back of her chair. “She wants me to come out and visit her this weekend in Chicago.”
Trudy’s finger, which she had just coated with frosting and inserted into her mouth, froze between her lips. “You’re going, right? Tell me you’re not going and I’ll whack you on that empty head of yours.”
“Trudy!” Marion scolded.
“I am going.” Nora sat down. “I’m a little worried about the money, though. I can’t even imagine what a plane ticket might cost these days.”
Trudy removed her finger from her mouth with a soft sucking sound. “Round trip to Chicago’ll cost you about four hundred dollars. Maybe a little more since it’s the weekend and you’re booking so late. In the long run, Nora, that’s not a lot of money. Do it.”
Nora glanced away from the older woman, hoping she didn’t look as uncomfortable as she felt. Trudy was always bugging her about taking time off or going somewhere on vacation. It wasn’t like she hadn’t; just last year, after Trudy had nagged her incessantly, she and Alice Walker had rented a car and driven down to the Jersey Shore, where they stayed for two nights at Trudy’s beach house. It had been a nice enough trip—the moon especially, which had been a barely visible crescent, had looked magnificent above the water, like an electric eyelash—and one night she had gotten a bucket of soft-shell crabs that she had eaten out on the deck, but being down there had exacerbated her loneliness, too. She’d left with an empty feeling that gnawed at her all the way home, an ache that did not leave for a long time afterward. It was not something she was yearning to do again.
The Invisibles Page 2