The Invisibles

by Cecilia Galante

  But.

  “Do you remember how I was when I first came to Turning Winds?” she asked.

  “Of course I remember.” Ozzie took her hat off and rubbed her hair.

  “You didn’t talk,” Monica said fondly. “You wrote everything down in that little unicorn pad of yours.”

  “I was a shell of a person,” Nora said. “And then I met you. And you brought me back to life. All of you.” She paused. “Remember when I talked for the first time?”

  “Meeting Number Six,” Ozzie said, winking at her. “Never forget it.”

  “Me either.” Monica’s eyes glistened.

  It hadn’t been a “moment,” or even anything special. Certainly nothing wrapped in dramatics. There had been no scene or yelling, nothing yanked out of her by force. It had simply been another Invisibles meeting, her turn to share another first line that she’d already chosen and written down carefully in her notebook for Grace to read aloud. And yet for some reason she didn’t pass the notebook to Grace that night. She’d stared at the cover of it instead, studying the swirl of blues behind the rearing unicorn, the narrow, conchlike pattern of the animal’s horn, and realized that she didn’t need it anymore. That part of her life was over. It was time to go on, to open another door.

  “Nora?” Grace had prodded. “You want me to read it?”

  She had shaken her head and placed the notebook down next to her. And then she’d opened her mouth. “I want—” she started. The words came out slowly, haltingly, a baby bird pecking its way out of a shell, and she cleared her throat and tried again. “I want to do it.”

  For a moment, no one moved. The silence, combined with the weight of the girls’ stares, felt intrusive, as if she’d done something wrong, and she felt a catch in her throat.

  “Go,” Ozzie said before Nora could take another breath. “Go, Nora.”

  Monica and Grace leaned forward just as eagerly, and Nora straightened up a little bit, feeling for the first time in as long as she could remember that nothing in the entire world could hurt her in this moment.

  “‘When I . . . stepped out into the bright sunlight . . .’” She paused here, amazed at the slight trilling sensation that emanated from the back of her vocal cords, dusty strings stretched thin across a violin, and pressed her fingers against her neck.

  “Keep going,” Ozzie urged. “Keep going, Nors. You’re doing great.”

  She swallowed. “‘From the darkness . . . of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman . . . and a ride home.’”

  Ozzie let out a whoop and clapped her hands. “From The Outsiders! Nora, you did it! Oh my God, you fucking talked!”

  They crowded around her, drawing her in close under their arms and pressing their cheeks against hers. Monica cried a little, Grace hid her mouth behind a pair of cupped hands, and Ozzie laughed, punching the air with a fist. Over Grace’s left shoulder, Nora caught a glimpse of the moon, round as a coin, white as milk. It was brighter than she’d ever thought possible.

  “But you opened up after five or six months,” Ozzie said now. “We’ve got two and a half days to work with here.”

  “We don’t have to change her,” Nora pressed. “Maybe all we have to do is give her something to hold on to. That’s what happened to me. Right after our first Invisibles meeting. It was like something that had been sealed off for years and years opened inside and let the air in, after that first night when we all sat under the moon and shared our stuff and did our stick wishes. And I know it was just a start. But that start changed everything for me.” She shrugged. “It helped me find my voice again. And maybe that’s all we can give Grace now. A start. But it’s something.”

  “You’re absolutely right.” Monica reached out and took Nora’s hand. “It is something.”

  Ozzie scowled. But, Nora noticed, as Monica took her hand in her other one, that Ozzie pressed it gently.

  Something was better was nothing.

  And sometimes, Nora thought, if you got very lucky, maybe even a little more than that.

  Chapter 10

  Another ten minutes passed before Grace returned from the bathroom. She had pulled her hair up into a knot and loosened another button on her shirt. Stray tendrils fell down like wayward roots along the side of her face, and her skin had a just-washed look, as if she had splashed water over it.

  “Hi, angel,” Monica said. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes.” Grace sat back down heavily. “I’m sorry I took so long. I just needed a moment.”

  “No need to explain,” Ozzie said.

  The corner of Grace’s eye creased ever so slightly at Ozzie’s statement. Nora wondered if the old tension between the two of them was building. Or if it was already back.

  “Listen, I don’t want to jump the gun or anything on our plans,” Monica said. “But Liam made reservations for all of us tonight at a beautiful restaurant in the city.”

  “He did?” Ozzie turned her baseball cap around and settled it backward on top of her head. “Wow, that was big of him.”

  Monica looked hopefully at Grace. “Have you ever been to a place called Tru? Right in downtown Chicago? Liam says it’s one of the best restaurants in the country. He’s so excited to be treating us.”

  “Oh, Monica.” Grace looked alarmed. “I wish you had said something first. I think Henry was planning on making a special dinner for all of us tonight. I don’t think we should . . .”

  “Absolutely not.” Henry appeared in the doorway, holding a tray of miniature éclairs on small glass plates. “Don’t even give it another thought. You girls go out on the town tonight and have fun.” He put a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “It’ll be great for you, sweetheart. You haven’t done anything like that in a long time.”

  “You’re sure?” Grace looked up at him anxiously.

  “I’m positive. I’ll be perfectly fine staying here at home. Besides, after Georgia goes down for the night, I can catch up on my boat.”

  “Your boat?” Ozzie repeated.

  “Henry’s building us a rowboat in the garage out back,” Grace said. Nora could hear the pride in her voice. “We’re going to take it out on Lake Albeena on summer nights. Especially when the moon is full. Henry and I love being out on the water under the full moon.”

  Nora wondered if it was a slip of the tongue that Grace had mentioned going out on full-moon nights. She’d been sure that she was the only one who still took an interest in it, but did any of the rest of them ever think about their meetings and stick wishes up there on the roof? Did any of them still regard the moon as the strongest female force in the universe, under which anything was possible? Maybe she wasn’t the only one, after all. The thought made her feel light inside.

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Monica slid an éclair in front of her, running her index finger over the flat wedge of chocolate on top. “I’ve always wanted someone to row me across a lake. That sounds amazing!”

  “It will be.” Henry leaned down and kissed the top of Grace’s head. “Now who wants tea?”

  “Where in God’s name did you find him?” Ozzie stared at Grace as Henry left again.

  Grace smiled. “He’s sweet, isn’t he?”

  “Sweet?” Ozzie repeated. “He’s a goddamn saint!”

  Grace smiled. “We met at a wine-tasting party a few years ago. It was random seating and we were next to each other.”

  “Was it love at first sight?” Monica sounded breathless.

  “No.” Grace’s voice was soft. “Actually, I didn’t even really look at him until I overheard him tell the maître d’ he couldn’t drink red wine. The guy looked at him like, What the heck are you doing at a wine tasting, buddy, if you can’t drink red wine? but I understood perfectly. I can’t drink it either. The tannins make me break out in hives. But I love all different kinds of white. Anyway, that’s what started us talking.”

  “What was the first thing about him that you liked?” Ozzie picked up her éclair and took an enormous bite. Nora
watched her eat, Ozzie’s mouth moving up and down voraciously the way it always had. Ozzie ate things the way she did everything else—quickly and without much thought of the consequences.

  Grace considered this for a moment, her fingers touching a tiny vein along the side of her neck. “I think his kindness. He was kind right away, from the first minute we started talking. He asked me if I was comfortable where I was sitting or if I wanted him to move over.” She paused. “That and his lips. He has very sexy lips.”

  “You like being married to him?” Ozzie’s jaws were still working, pulsing with every chew.

  “I do.” Grace nodded. “It’s very . . . what’s the word I’m looking for? Comforting, I guess. I feel comfortable being married to Henry.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Monica said.

  Ozzie stopped chewing. “Oh, really? Is that really how you would describe your relationship with Liam? Comfortable?”

  “Absolutely,” Monica replied. “I’m the most financially comfortable I’ve ever been in my entire life.” She threw her head back and laughed. Her ivory teeth glittered against the late afternoon light. Nora got the feeling that Ozzie and Monica knew something she did not. Maybe they knew a lot of things she knew nothing about. It wouldn’t surprise her. Not anymore.

  Ozzie snorted and tossed the last of the éclair into her mouth.

  “How did you and Liam meet?” Grace asked.

  Monica folded her hands in her lap. A coy smile spread across her lips as she took the clip out of her hair and shook it out. “Well,” she sighed. “I used to have this fabulous job as a bike messenger in the city.”

  “A bike messenger?” Grace repeated. “You?”

  Monica laughed. “I know! Can you believe it? I’ve always been such a klutz; I never even considered trying to balance on top of a bike. But my first roommate was a bike messenger, and after I quit the whole nanny scene—which was a nightmare, by the way—I needed a job, and her company was looking, so I just said to hell with it and tried it out.” She leaned forward, as if letting everyone in on a secret. “And guess what? I was good at it! I could shoot in and out of traffic, up and down those long, wide streets, like you wouldn’t believe. God, I’d get such a rush going places at that kind of speed. And that’s how I finally, finally lost the weight! You girls wouldn’t believe it. I mean, I turned into a lean, mean bike-riding machine.” Her voice sounded wistful for a moment, and Nora wondered when the last time was that Monica had been on a bike, how long it had been since she’d done anything so plucky, just for herself. “Anyway, one day I had to deliver a big manila envelope to this address on Park Avenue. Liam opened the door and . . .” She paused, flicking her wrists out on either side. “The rest is history.”

  “He asked you out right there on his stoop?” Ozzie asked. “Right there, while you were standing there in your bike shorts?”

  “They were really cute shorts,” Monica said.

  Ozzie laughed. “I bet they were.”

  “And now you’re married?” Grace asked.

  Monica blushed and fiddled with the edge of her plate. “No. We’re not married. Just . . . together. We’ve been together for three years and have a place right off Central Park West.” She smiled again. “And two cats. Coco and Chanel.” She nodded, as if the picture was complete. “We’re very happy.”

  Nora thought back to a day at Turning Winds when she and Monica had been lying outside in the backyard. They were quizzing each other on vocabulary words for an upcoming test (the prospects of which looked bleak for Monica) when the conversation turned to the future. “I don’t care about being smart or getting any kind of real important job when I grow up,” Monica said. “I just want to be happy. And pretty. I want to be happy and pretty more than anything else in the whole world.”

  She’d certainly cornered the market on pretty, but was she happy? Really?

  “How about you, Nora?” Ozzie asked. “You said something to me yesterday about a guy in your life, but you didn’t really get into any details. What’s his name?”

  “Oh.” Nora’s fingers went up to her earlobe. “Joel. His name’s Joel.”

  Joel was the name of a man in his late seventies who had been coming into the library every day for the last six years to read the New York Times. Nora knew his name because once, in all that time, he had checked out a book—The Life and Times of Winston Churchill—and had to hand her his library identification card.

  “And . . . ?” Ozzie encouraged her with a wave of her hand. “How’d you meet?”

  “Oh, he came into the library.” How many lies did this make since her first conversation with Ozzie yesterday? Three? Four? But how could she not lie? How could she sit here and be the only woman who not only wasn’t in a relationship but had decided that she didn’t want to be, that she wanted instead to live a life alone with her dog, her walks, and the moon? How did you go about explaining something like that? To anyone? Including herself?

  “What’s he look like?” Monica asked.

  “He’s . . . um, tall.” Nora coughed. “Dark hair. Nice looking.”

  “Is it serious?” Grace asked. “I mean, do you think he’s the one?”

  “Oh no,” Nora said. “We’re just . . . I mean, we just started . . . it’s new, you know? We only met a little while ago.”

  “I thought you said you’d been together a while.” Ozzie leveled her eyes. “When we talked on the phone?”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Nora smoothed the front of her pants with the heels of her palms. “You know. It feels like a while to me. But it actually hasn’t been so long.” She dropped Ozzie’s gaze, unable to hold it.

  “Just take your time.” Monica nodded her head. “There’s no need to rush anything.”

  “You can say that again,” Ozzie said. “I just jumped in—feet first. It didn’t even occur to me to wait.” She pointed to Nora’s untouched éclair. “You gonna eat that?” Nora shook her head. Ozzie popped it into her mouth, chewing with the same voracious movement as before.

  “Do you think you rushed it?” Monica asked.

  “I know I rushed it.” Ozzie’s mouth was full of chocolate and pale cream again, all mixed in together. “I married Gary when I was twenty years old. Who the hell knows who they are at twenty?”

  “Whatever happened to your Argentinian lover?” Monica raised an eyebrow.

  “Cesar?” Ozzie rolled her eyes. “Best sex I ever had, but he had a really mean drug problem. I couldn’t take all the people constantly coming in and out of our apartment. It was like living at a zoo.”

  Nora looked down at the table. It was not hard to imagine Ozzie doing drugs or having sex; both things seemed as natural as breathing when it came to her. Still, she felt guilty as the sudden images flooded her head, as if she’d opened the wrong door by accident.

  “You say no one knows who they are at twenty,” Grace said slowly, “and I’d have to agree with you there, but does anyone ever know who they are at any age?”

  The question slowed Ozzie’s chewing. “Well, yeah. I mean, I hope we do. Isn’t that the whole point of getting older? To find out who you are, what you want?” She leaned forward. “Or, more importantly, what you don’t want?”

  “But who’s to say that happens at a specific age?” Grace asked. “I mean, isn’t this whole ‘finding ourselves’ thing a lifetime process? Something that changes all the time? Look at me. I would have never thought I’d want a child as badly as I’ve wanted one this past year. And now I have one . . .” Grace’s mouth began to quiver. Around the table, breaths were taken in and held, fingers closed in reverence. This was the reason they were here. It was time to be quiet now and listen.

  “How do things work like that?” Grace said. “Why does it happen that way?”

  “What things?” Ozzie asked. “What way?”

  “It just doesn’t make any sense.” Grace shook her head. “I mean, when I found out that I was pregnant, I was ecstatic. I started taking those horrible prenatal vita
mins and stopped eating sugar. I didn’t exercise at all except for the occasional walk, I stopped drinking coffee, I didn’t even look at wine.”

  Inside the house somewhere, Nora could hear a clinking noise. It was probably Henry fumbling with the teacups, setting them neatly inside another tray with fresh napkins. Stay inside, she thought to herself. Don’t interrupt this. And then, in the next breath, she thought, He probably already knows all this. He probably knew it first.

  “I was so excited about it,” Grace continued. “So thrilled. And then I had her. And a few weeks in, I just . . .” Her voice drifted off, a boat fading on the horizon. “I don’t know what happened. But I don’t feel that way anymore. Not even a little bit. It’s just . . . gone.”

  “But it’ll come back,” Monica whispered. “Won’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” Grace’s eyes shimmered. “It’s so far away from me right now that some days I really don’t think it will.”

  Ozzie leaned forward. “But you know it’s not real. You just feel this way because of the postpartum depression.”

  Grace’s face contorted, a map crumbling in on itself. “Just because?” she repeated. “Are you really going to kick all this down to a ‘just because,’ Ozzie?”

  “I’m not trying to diminish it, Grace,” Ozzie protested. “I’m just saying it’s a feeling. It’s not reality.”

  “It’s Petal,” Grace said firmly. “And until you’ve been through some of the things I have, please don’t talk to me about how real or unreal my feelings are.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .” Ozzie blinked rapidly, at a loss.

  Grace shook her head. Her mouth was still twisted, as if she were sitting on a nail. “Please stop, okay? Please. Henry and I have been over all of this already.” She inhaled through her nose and placed her hands flat out in front of her. “Maybe it’s not about having a child. Maybe it’s that I realize now that I don’t—and haven’t ever—deserved to be a mother.”

  “What do you mean, sweetheart?” There was a catch in Monica’s voice. “Why would you say something like that?”