The Invisibles

by Cecilia Galante

  “It’s worth a shot.” Grace pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine.

  Ozzie yanked open her door and came around to the other side. She opened Nora’s door and stood there, waiting. Nora was still holding Elmer close to her chest.

  “I gotta take him, Norster,” Ozzie said. “You want to come in with me?”

  Nora met Ozzie’s eyes, but she did not move. “Just one more minute, all right?”

  “Yeah.” Something in Ozzie’s face flickered. “Okay.”

  Nora lifted her hands close to her face. She could make out the warm scent of dirt and fur from between her fingers. Inside, the rabbit trembled and quaked, a minuscule bag of bones and skin and nerves. She could imagine its tiny heart inside there, banging away like some kind of piano key, alerting its whole body to danger. “You’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Hang in there, little guy, and you’ll be okay.” She leaned down and kissed him on the nose. “And don’t worry; somebody’ll come for you.”

  Ozzie waited as Nora lifted her face again. She extended her hands this time and nodded. “All right?”

  Nora nodded as she handed the animal over. But she was not all right. She felt as though part of her was disappearing somehow, drowning in a void of memory and loss.

  “I’ll go with you,” Monica said, sliding out of the car next to Ozzie. “I mean, since we are giving him away and everything. I’m not totally coldhearted.”

  Nora watched as the two of them disappeared inside the store. For the first time since she had arrived, she was alone with Grace. Nora could feel her eyes on her from the front seat, but she did not raise her head to meet them. She had a feeling that she knew what Grace was thinking, and she did not want to go there. She could not bear it just yet.

  “I thought she was going to tell us the name Elmer had some kind of meaning,” Grace said. “You know, like ‘abandoned one’ or something.”

  Nora tried to smile, but it came out quivery and fake; she could feel it on her face like a plastic thing. “Yeah, who knows? You know Ozzie and names. I bet it means something.”

  Grace hunched forward a little over the seat, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Maybe it means ‘lucky.’”

  “Or unlucky.”

  “Why unlucky?” Grace asked.

  “What if it dies?”

  “Well, then.” Grace’s voice was slow, as if moving through a great body of water. “He’ll have died with someone. And not alone out there in the field.”

  Nora didn’t answer, not because she didn’t want to, but because she could not. Her voice had vanished, maybe lodging itself somewhere inside the trembling rabbit, like another rapidly beating heart. The seconds ticked by in a weighted silence. The clock on the dashboard read 11:03 p.m. They’d been on the road for eleven hours and it already felt as though an entire year had gone by. But then, that was the way it had always been with the four of them. You could give The Invisibles an afternoon or an evening, and they could have the world—and the universe—at their disposal.

  “Are you glad you came?” Grace’s voice drifted over the seat.

  Nora lifted her head. “On this trip or out to Chicago?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me, too.” There was a pause and then: “It’s so good to see you again, Nora. It’s been too long.”

  “Yes. It has.”

  “Tell me some more about you.” Grace reached out and touched Nora’s sleeve. “You’ve hardly said anything since you arrived.”

  “That’s not true!” Nora suppressed an annoyance. “I told you about the whole . . . you know, fake boyfriend story.” Her face felt hot, thinking of it again. “So stupid.”

  Grace’s hand moved over Nora’s. “Tell me more about the other stuff. You know, that you started telling us. Sex is supposed to be one of the most amazing feelings in the world. What happened that ruined it for you?”

  Nora shrugged and looked out the window. They were sitting in a rental car in a pet store parking lot in Hopatcong, New Jersey. A painted snake with googly eyes and a forked tongue stared out at them from the pavement. Did Grace really expect her to get into this right now? Here?

  “Nora?”

  “Oh, it’s a long, boring story. Seriously. It’s not even worth—”

  “I think it’s worth it. No matter what it is.” Grace rubbed a thumb over the top of Nora’s hand. “Can you try to tell me? Even just a little bit?”

  For a moment, Nora felt so embarrassed that she thought she might cry. And then she did cry, not out of embarrassment, but because the thought of sharing such an enormous burden she had been carrying alone for so long took her breath away. It was a moment before she found her voice, and then another moment until she could use it again. “It was my mother’s husband,” she said finally. “He’s what ruined it.”

  “Daddy Ray?” Grace whispered.

  “From fifth grade to seventh.” Nora stared out the window. “At least once a week.”

  Grace bit her upper lip. Her eyes filled with tears, and the edges of her nostrils turned white. She put her other hand over Nora’s, clasping it between both of hers, and then she dropped it and slid her arms around Nora’s neck. “Oh, Nora, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Nora pulled away and stared at her feet. She felt humiliated. Naked. As if she had just pulled down her pants and exposed herself, right there in the car. And why was Grace looking at her like that? God only knew what kind of images were going through her head, probably some X-rated monstrosity involving a grown man pushing his way between a little girl’s legs. Nora covered her face with her hands and leaned back against the seat, breathing into her palms. Her breath was hot and rancid; a roaring sounded in her ears.

  “Nora?”

  “Just give me a minute,” she said behind her hands.

  The car was quiet, the only sound the echoed breathing inside her own palms. Quietquietquietquietandthenitwillbeover. Quietquietquietandthenitwillbeover. Except that the quiet mantra wasn’t working. In fact, she thought suddenly, maybe it had been one of the problems all along.

  She lowered her hands. Grace was still watching her, her big eyes wet and glossy. “I need to get out and walk,” Nora said.

  “You got it.” Grace was out the door before Nora could straighten back up. She opened Nora’s door and stood there waiting. “Come on. We can walk around the parking lot for a few minutes.”

  The air was cool against Nora’s face, a much-needed respite from the stifling temperature inside the car. Or was the heat coming from inside her own body? No matter. She was already breathing easier; her heart had slowed down inside her chest, and the terrible anxious feeling was starting to lift.

  They set off, moving away from the painted snake and the fake tree toward a mass of shrubs opposite the store. The trucks on the highway rushed by less than fifty feet away, their headlights cutting narrow swaths through the darkness.

  “Walking’s good,” Grace said as they turned around and started back across the lot again. “Remember the walks we used to take together? Next to the railroad tracks? That little birch tree grove?”

  “I still go there,” said Nora. “With my dog. It’s only about four miles from where I live now.”

  “Wow.” Grace was staring at her. “You walk all that way?”

  “Every morning.”

  “Every morning?” Grace whistled softly. “Man. I wish I had that kind of discipline.”

  “I wouldn’t call it discipline.” The tightening sensation was back. “I like it. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”

  “Why do you go there?” Grace asked.

  Nora sidled a glance at her. “Why?”

  “I mean, is it just your regular route? Or . . .”

  “Yeah,” Nora heard herself say. “It’s just my regular route.”

  There was silence for a moment. Nora felt as though something inside of her might burst—might literally explode�
�if she did not say something else, and so she lifted her head and said, “Grace?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why didn’t you ever call me? After you left, I mean?”

  Grace looked down at the ground. Her eyes moved back and forth between her shoes, as if determining their size. “Oh, Nora, I was such a mess. I told you earlier in the car. After that last night at Turning Winds, I was so out of touch with things that I just walked around in a stupor. For months. Then . . .” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize the bipolar stuff was starting up. I was manic for months, and then I’d crash. Up, down, all over the place.” She paused, fiddling with her wedding band, a thin ring of silver etched with tiny leaves. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I didn’t even have the wherewithal to call my boyfriend half the time back then, and I was living with him.”

  They had stopped walking, were facing the traffic now. “But I was going through it too,” Nora said stubbornly. “Not the bipolar stuff or anything, but God, Grace! Not a word? Not a call, a letter? Just to check in? You knew what I—what we’d just been through. I just don’t understand.”

  Grace nodded. She rolled her teeth over her bottom lip to stop it from trembling. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I don’t need an apology. I just want to know why. I think in some ways not hearing from any of you was even worse than that night.”

  “No one called?” Grace asked. “Not even Ozzie?”

  Nora shook her head.

  “Ever?”

  Nora shook her head again. “Ozzie said the reason she didn’t was because she wanted to forget it, leave the whole thing behind.”

  “Yeah.” Grace’s voice was barely audible over the scream of traffic. “I guess that was true for me, too.”

  “But that included forgetting me.” Nora’s voice rose. “I was part of that night, remember?”

  “I do remember. God, as much as I try to forget it, Nora, I do remember. Every single day.” Grace’s blue eyes were as big as dimes. “It was wrong of me not to call. I was protecting myself when I should have been more concerned about you. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Yes.” The word came out of her mouth automatically, a learned response, like some kind of Pavlovian dog. She was too afraid to say no, that she couldn’t forgive her, that she didn’t even know how to go about doing such a thing. What she did know was that it had hurt too much and been too long for a few words in front of a highway to erase it all now. Still, if Grace needed to hear her say yes, she would do it. Maybe it was a start. Besides, what would it hurt?

  She turned and started back across the parking lot, shoving her hands inside her pockets. Something bumped against her fingers, and she pulled out Grace’s bottle of medication.

  Grace peered at the bottle, a funny look coming over her face. “Is that mine?”

  “Yeah.” Nora shook the bottle, as if to remind Grace what was inside. The pills made a rattling sound, dried seeds inside a gourd. “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot to give you one when we ate back there.”

  “Give me one?” Grace looked confused. “Since when are you doling out my medicine?”

  Nora blushed. “Henry asked me to make sure you took it.” She bit the inside of her cheek as Grace’s face blanched. “He said you probably wouldn’t remember.”

  “He told you about me?” Grace’s eyes narrowed.

  “No. He didn’t get into any details. At all. He just asked me to keep track of when you took your medicine.” She winced. “Which I already screwed up.”

  “It’s okay.” Grace shook her head disgustedly. “I’ll eat a little something in the car and take one now. It won’t mess anything up.” She took the pill bottle out of Nora’s hands and studied the cryptic writing on the side, as if examining it for clues. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. He’s always on me at home, too. Like some kind of ward nurse. I should have known he was going to ask one of you to keep an eye on me.”

  “You’re not angry, are you?” Nora asked. “He’s just trying to take care of you.”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of!” Grace snapped. “I’m not a fucking child.”

  Nora thought about Grace’s old boyfriend Max, how she used to smack his hands away when he reached for her, how sometimes, when Grace talked to her at night, she complained how “ridiculously nurturing” he acted. “You’d think he was my father instead of my boyfriend,” she said one night. “All he ever does is fuss and worry and ask me if I’m okay. It’s pathetic.” Nora couldn’t help but wonder if Grace’s harshness toward the people who wanted to care for her was purposeful. Did she resent them for trying to fill the void her mother was supposed to fill? And would she punish them ever after because of it?

  “No, you’re not a child,” Nora said now. “You’re sick.”

  “Well, I know how to take care of myself.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, Nora.” Grace raised her eyes. “I do.”

  “Then why’d you try to kill yourself?”

  The fingers on Grace’s right hand curled slowly into a fist, and for a moment, Nora thought she was going to take a swing at her. “I knew one of you would throw that in my face eventually,” she said instead.

  “I’m not throwing it in your face. I’m trying to make a point. You had to take care of yourself for a long time, Grace. And you did a pretty good job of it. It’s not your fault that you got sick. And there isn’t anything wrong with needing people to help you through it.”

  “It is my fault.” Grace’s voice cracked.

  “What is?”

  “Being sick. Being so . . . screwed up like this.”

  “How is it your fault?”

  “I don’t know!” Grace stared at a point in the distance, past Nora’s shoulder. “Because it’s my head! I’m supposed to have control of it, aren’t I? I’m supposed to be a better person than this! Stronger or something.”

  “Being bipolar doesn’t mean you’re weak,” Nora put her hands on Grace’s arms, holding them just above the elbows. “Actually, I think it means the opposite. You have to be stronger than anyone I know to withstand something like this.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And another thing.”

  Grace lifted her head.

  “Just because you have this doesn’t mean that Georgia will.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “No.” Nora shook her head slowly. “But neither can you.”

  “Nora.” Grace raised her eyebrows. “There’s a sixty percent she’ll have some kind of mental illness. It runs in my whole family. These things are genetic.”

  “Okay. So the chance is there. Which means you’ll get her help if it happens. You’ll help her through it.”

  Grace stabbed at the ground with her shoe. “It just sucks. I wanted to give her everything. Except this.”

  “But everything of you includes this,” Nora said. “Which isn’t the end of the world. You’re going to miss out on her whole childhood, Grace, because you’re so worried about what might come up from the past and damage her future.”

  “But what if it does?”

  “Then you’ll deal with it! Remember what you told us about Georgia O’Keeffe? About how she was brave enough to go out there and create her own world? That’s what you’ve got to do, Grace. You’ve got to create a life for yourself and your little girl. It won’t be perfect. And it probably won’t be easy. But it’ll be yours. It’ll be your light. And no matter what happens, you can always be proud of that.”

  Grace stared at her without blinking. Her eyes moved over and around Nora’s face, as if seeing it for the first time. Maybe, Nora thought later, she was trying to memorize something, the shape of her face perhaps, or the way her eyes looked there so that she could take it back with her again. Or maybe she was just listening to her talk.

  Hearing her words, the way Nora herself was for the first time.

  Chapter 25

  Our boy is all set!” Ozzie announced, em
erging from the store with her arms over her head. She yanked open the door on the driver’s side and climbed inside.

  “You want to drive?” Grace asked.

  “I want to drive!” Ozzie clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “I am re-fucking-energized!”

  “Great.” Grace climbed into the passenger seat while Nora and Monica got in back. “I’m exhausted.”

  “You should have seen Ozzie,” Monica shook her head. “Like some kind of Doctor Dolittle in there. They were eating out of her hand!”

  “I still can’t believe anyone was even in there,” Ozzie said. “They said they were working late, doing inventory.” She stuck the key in the ignition. “Actually, the one guy seemed kind of thrilled. He hooked Elmer right up to a little feeding tube and put him in an incubator. That’s what took so long. I was just hanging around, making sure they got everything working right.” She revved the engine. “But he’s going to be fine. He’s going to make it, Norster.”

  “That’s such good news,” Nora said, leaning back against the headrest. She was exhausted suddenly, too. “Good for you.”

  Ozzie placed her hands on the wheel and sighed. “I haven’t felt this good in a long time. Seriously. In a long, fucking time.” She turned around in the seat, surveying the lot of them. “You all could ask me anything right now and I’d give it to you.”

  “Well,” Monica coughed nervously. “Since you put it that way.” She fiddled with her ring. “We’re only about an hour or so from New York. And I know it’s . . .” She checked her watch. “God, is it really midnight already?” She bit her lip, glanced at Nora and then Grace.

  “You want to find a hotel out here?” Grace tilted her head. “Call it a night?”

  “No.” Monica was holding Nora’s gaze now. “I was thinking maybe we could take a little detour. Say, an hour or so south? I mean, if you all feel up to it. It’s crazy late, I know.”

  It took a moment for the suggestion to register.

  Nora caught on first. “You want to drive down to Willow Grove?”

  Grace gasped. “We could see Turning Winds!”