Dark Rooms
Page 31
The guidance counselor hired to replace Shep, a Ms. Lynch, is young but already professional seeming. She posts a new inspirational message on her office door every day. Stuff like “We Work Best When We Work Together” and “Dare to Dream.” Her fiancé is a junior professor at St. Joseph’s College, and they live on its campus rather than Chandler’s.
Ms. Lynch wasn’t the school’s only new addition. Over the course of the year, the counseling and psychology staff was also beefed up. I’m sure after what happened with Nica and Manny the administration was eager to assuage parental anxieties, prove that it was capable of safeguarding its charges’ emotional health as well as physical. Whatever the reasoning, it was a good idea. In spite of being located in a city, Chandler is isolated, its atmosphere tending toward the overheated, its inhabitants—not just the students, the faculty, too—uncommonly prone to hysteria and distortion, the result, no doubt, of being thrown back on themselves and each other so much. Consequently, outside voices are more than welcome; they’re necessary.
When it became clear that Shep was gone for good, the Outdoor Club was quietly disbanded. As far as I know, there are no plans to re-form it.
And finally there’s my mother. Her show was held in Chelsea in November as scheduled. It made a big splash, so big that some of the droplets even landed on us here in Hartford. Early on in its run, a group of radical feminists got wind of the content of the photographs. Protests were staged, signs held aloft that read WOMEN CAN BE MISOGYNISTS TOO and CHILD PORNOGRAPHY IS NOT ART. The front of the gallery was doused in a bucket of red paint. There was even an attempt to get Aurora arrested on charges of lewd exhibition. Of course all this publicity only served to make the show—and Mom, a virtual unknown—a huge success. Galleries in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Chicago are now apparently clamoring to display her work. And there was an article in last month’s Artforum on photography as taxidermy, a whole paragraph of which was devoted to her.
I’ve heard from her a couple of times. Or rather my voice mail has. She’s living in New York now, has a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village with a spectacular view of a brick wall, she says. She says other things, too. That I should come to the city for the weekend, stay with her, for example. Or fly with her to Paris next month where she’s been commissioned for a group show. I have yet to call her back. The truth is, I’m afraid to. Just the sound of her recorded voice produces a violent rush of need in me. A need to slap her. To spit on her. To gouge out her eyeballs with my fingernails. To throw myself in her arms. I don’t want to know what seeing her in the flesh will do and I don’t want to find out.
Still, I can’t bring myself to delete the messages.
The last time I saw Nica before I died—well, almost died—was the last time I saw Nica. Until today, I’m hoping. I want a final glimpse, for her to come back and haunt me one more time.
It’s the anniversary of her death. A year has passed. Damon and I are in the graveyard, winding our way through the rows of snaggle-toothed tombstones. When we reach the oak, he hangs back as I arrange daffodils, picked from my house, at its base, then drop down into its shadow. Feeling the soft, cool give of damp earth beneath my knees, the sharp, green scent of new grass inside my nostrils, I clasp my hands together. I close my eyes, hold my breath.
I wait.
It’s the first truly warm day of spring, hot almost, though dimmish and overcast, the sun obscured by a layer of thin gray clouds. I’m willing my body to stay still inside so I can attune myself to Nica’s presence, detect its movement in the air and in the spaces between the air. But I can’t. Hard as I try, I can’t. All I hear is scattered birdsong. All I feel is sweat pebbling my skin.
Finally, after several minutes, I open my eyes. Brushing off my knees, I stand and walk back to Damon. I’m smiling so he won’t see my disappointment, guess at its source.
Still, he looks worried when he says, “You okay?”
I start to say yes but am unable to get the word out of my mouth. I nod instead.
He extends an arm. I lean against his side, though am mindful not to put my full weight on him. “Come on,” he says, guiding me toward the entrance. “Let’s get out of here.”
I allow him to lead me for a few feet. And then, suddenly, the stirrings of a memory. I break away, run back to the tree. Trailing my hand along the trunk, I come to a split, a hole within the split. No, not a hole, a hollow, I realize with excitement, the one Jamie told me about, the one he and Nica used to store things in. Thrusting my arm inside, I feel around. Empty. Behind me Damon’s saying my name in a questioning way and my elbow’s scraping painfully on bark and I’m about to give up when the tips of my fingers brush against something hard and smooth, light nearly as air. I pull it out. Nica’s zebra-striped Bic.
A breeze starts up. Two clouds slide past each other, letting down a beam of sunlight. The beam strikes the Bic. It seems to come to life in my palm, and I’m momentarily blind.
“Grace?” Damon says. “Grace?”
I slip the lighter in my pocket. I turn back to him.
Acknowledgments
This book had been in the works a long time and I’d like to thank those who not only put up with me as I wrote it but helped me along the way: my mom and dad, Margie and Bill Holodnak; my agent, Jennifer Joel; my editor, Katherine Nintzel, and her assistant, Marguerite Weisman; John Zilliax; Patrick Hunnicutt; Olette Trouve; Allison Lorentzen; Leslie Epstein; David Freeman; and Ike-O.
Above all, I’d like to thank my husband, Rob, who has read this book more times than anyone should ever have to read anything.
About the Author
LILI ANOLIK is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her work has also appeared in Harper’s, Elle, and The Believer, among other publications. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.
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Credits
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover photographs © by grmarc / Shutterstock (zebra print); doomu / Shutterstock (lighter)
Author photograph © by Michael Benabib
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DARK ROOMS. Copyright © 2015 by Lili Anolik. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Title page image © by DVARG/Shutterstock, Inc.
ISBN 978-0-06-234586-8
EPUB Edition MARCH 2015 ISBN 9780062345882
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