The Happiness Thief

by Nicole Bokat

  But Garrick had expected her to attend his party.

  The crisp warmth from the alcohol suffused through her body, which helped as Natalie witnessed her stepfather. His arm was around a woman whose waist was as tiny as a Victorian girl’s, sucked into a corset. Otherwise, his date—her name was Iris—was not attractive. Her eyes were rather high on her face, and she had an overbite that she ran her tongue over nervously.

  As she drank, Natalie stared into this room of men, many bald or with receding hairlines, a sprinkling of women whose shoulders curved forward as if they cradled heavy textbooks in their arms all day. At some point, she turned towards the window and saw a woman illuminated by the porch light. Ellen, with her trademark knotted scarf, staggered down the stairs then ran to the car parked behind Garrick’s in the driveway. Natalie pushed aside the curtains to watch as her stepfather’s secretary, in an accelerated fury of motion, scratched her key against Iris’s black Audi. When Ellen looked up, her face was stamped with alarm as if stunned by what she’d done. She craned her head from side to side and then started back to the house.

  Good, Natalie had cheered her on silently, hating her stepfather for trying to replace her mother. Never mind Ellen’s motivation, her wish to be the replacement.

  FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Natalie was fixated on her mail. When she returned to her apartment from outings, she looked for notes from FedEx saying they’d missed her. Could the wind have loosened the tape, caused the paper to fly off the front door? She checked FedEx.-com, but because she had no tracking number, she couldn’t determine the status of her shipment. One morning after dropping Hadley at school, Natalie contacted the local center. When the customer service man asked her for the tracking number, she said, “I don’t have that. But I know it was sent overnight.”

  “Maybe there was a mix up. Can you get in touch with the sender?”

  “No,” she lied. “It was a letter my father wrote to me the night before he died.”

  “Sorry to hear,” he said.

  “I’m happy to come pick it up if you verify it’s at your location.”

  “One minute.” He put her on hold and when he returned said, “Our records show that package was delivered to your residence.” He reported the date.

  “No, that’s wrong,” Natalie insisted, her bare toes tapping the floor. “I never got it.”

  “It says here—”

  “I don’t care what it says. It’s a mix-up.”

  “Well, there was no signature required. Perhaps your spouse or roommate picked it up?”

  “No. There’s neither.” But she wondered. Could Hadley have gotten the package without her knowledge?

  Natalie quickly dismissed this idea, as her daughter was never home when FedEx packages arrived. Even if she had been, Hadley would have left it on the dining room table or the hutch, as usual. Her daughter would have no reason to suspect what the contents contained, the crushing secrets inside.

  When the conversation with the representative ended, Natalie mumbled, “Idiot.”

  She attempted to reach the old woman again on her way into the studio. She tried the law department first, and this time the young man was more abrupt. No, Ms. Alden wasn’t back. Would she like to talk to another assistant who could help her? “Yes, please,” Natalie said, on speaker. This second person explained that Ms. Alden had tendered her resignation abruptly. “I can check the date if you need me to.” Natalie took a sharp right onto a narrow, European-style street, the white steeple rising above an elegant brick church. The woman explained she was not at liberty to disclose further private information.

  Isabel’s words buzzed in Natalie’s head. I won’t be surprised if she dies of a broken heart.

  Natalie wondered if that were possible as, at a standstill on the road, she entered the digits of Ellen’s now memorized telephone number. She heard a click and the sound of a woman’s slightly startled voice. “You have reached the home of Ellen Arden. I am not here at the moment, but if you leave your message at the tone, I will get back to you shortly,” then a beep.

  “Hi, it’s Natalie. I’m so glad to have finally reached your voice-mail! The folks at the law school said you’re no longer working there. I hope everything’s okay.” Before she had the chance to explain about the documents, there were three beeps, followed by a dial tone.

  As soon as she parked her car, she called again. This time no message played.

  WHEN ELLEN HADN’T replied by that Sunday morning, Natalie decided to take action. Hadley would be at Marc’s till after dinner, which left her plenty of time to ride over to the secretary’s home. She knew the address in North Cambridge by heart, as well, and could use the GPS on her phone to navigate.

  She pulled on the boots Hadley disliked, zipped up her coat, and grabbed her scarf. On the drive, she imagined Ellen lying face up on her bed, her skin waxy and whatever hideous hue an un-embalmed corpse turned, her body bloated.

  “Don’t overreact,” Natalie repeated Marc’s scold aloud. She felt disjointed, her limbs floppy, the usual prelude to panic. She tightened her hands around the wheel and narrowed her eyes on the road to concentrate.

  Ellen’s street was tree-lined with a suburban look to it: all houses, no apartment buildings, and small private yards enclosed behind wood fences. Natalie parked in front of a two-family beige Victorian with maize-colored trim and side-by-side brick-red doors. The lights were out in both homes. Natalie surveyed the area—up the street, down, across, where a pine tree towered next to a row house, seeming to pierce through the dull sky—and saw no one.

  She turned off the engine, left the car unlocked. Even in leather gloves, her fingers burned from the dramatic dip in temperature. She walked up the three steps, which were icy but salted. Someone was taking care of the upkeep. On the narrow porch, she peered through the identical glass doors of both homes, first the neighbor’s, just to ensure that no one was in the front of the house. All she could see was a coat rack with a couple of jackets and a red plaid scarf draped over it. Faded lace curtains hung in Ellen’s window, blocking the view. The light under the stained-glass fixture in her hallway was off, and the wood blinds on her slimmer window were drawn. Natalie rang, just to be certain. “C’mon, Ellen.” She rang again. A loud, furious barking: the sign she needed. A dog in the house meant Ellen was alive.

  Or most likely.

  Of course, she is.

  But what if the dog was alone, without food or water? Another animal Natalie would leave to die? Natalie turned the doorknob. Locked.

  She searched inside her bag for the pen and notepad she’d carried with her. She wrote quickly: “I hope you’re well. Please call or email me when you get this. I never got Garrick’s package. Thanks, Natalie.” The lid to the metal mailbox creaked when she opened it, and inside was empty other than the crumpled pieces of a dead leaf. She stuck the note inside.

  “COME IN, WELCOME,” George exclaimed as he opened the door to his and Isabel’s Back Bay apartment. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  Natalie and Hadley had arrived mid-afternoon to the brownstone near the French Library and Cultural Center, with twin, potted mums adorning the front steps. They’d brought a bottle of white wine and one of cider, as requested. The minute they stepped into the apartment, Natalie hoped the calm ambience would work its magic on her. There was a still, cathedral feel to the place, with its high ceilings, lack of clutter, and low temperature that warranted sweaters in winter.

  George hugged her, a stocky man with milky brown eyes, slightly disheveled looking with his lock of hair hanging over his face and his creased Brooks Brothers shirt. Pressed against him, she smelled the mix of cigar and orange tea on his breath. She watched Isabel rush from the bay windows, sleek in her black pants and silver sweater with leather pockets.

  “Hey, kids!” Isabel kissed her niece on both cheeks. “Look at you, Hads! You’re so beautiful.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Belle.”

  Hadley had become more aware of quality clothes in the last few
months: from Merino Wool to the unattainable Vicuña. She’d spend hours perusing shopping sites online, scouting for sales.

  “Is that coat a Belstaff?” Isabel asked, sliding her hand over the waxed cotton fabric.

  “An impracticable gift from Marc and the girlfriend,” Natalie said. “Way out of our price range.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him,” George frowned. Frugality was a quality the two men shared, despite the difference in their circumstances. “Sex and baked goods, that’s how I get him to do what I want,” Isabel once had joked to Natalie.

  Isabel asked, “Did you pick this out, Hads? It’s so sophisticated.”

  “Yes, thanks. Oh, I love your shoes, Aunt Belle! They’re super cool.”

  Natalie glanced down at Isabel’s snakeskin pumps that almost crackled with animal life. There was something obscene about them, their seductiveness and opulence. They must have cost upward of five hundred dollars.

  Isabel smiled as she gazed at her purchase. “Decadent, right? I wasn’t going to buy them. But with all the pressure from my seminars and then my dad’s death, I needed to treat myself. You like them, right, George?”

  “Not the price tag,” he said with a stiff smile. “But you’re working non-stop on this new blockbuster book.”

  Natalie chewed the inside of her cheek. The editor had slammed the last draft of Isabel’s manuscript. “She hated the direction it was going in. First time that ever happened to me,” Isabel had confessed. “I’ll fix it.” A paper cut on the skin, stinging but barely visible. “Don’t tell George. I already spent the advance on my business, building a brand.” Attendance at her lectures was down. She shrugged it off, plaited hair swinging. “That happens between books, my PR team says.”

  “I meant how they look,” Isabel said in a flirty voice.

  “Well, sure,” George said. “You’re beautiful in them.”

  “See, Mom?” Hadley turned towards Natalie, the spray of pink on her cheeks reaching down to the part of her chest exposed by her wide shawl neckline. “Men like heels.”

  Isabel said, “Hads, your mom has her own style.”

  “Yeah, boring.”

  “Hey, enough,” Natalie snapped. “That’s mean.”

  Isabel said, “Your mom isn’t boring; she’s classic. George, would you mind getting the gifts in the bedroom for my favorite niece and stepsister?”

  “Why did you get us anything?” Natalie asked, exasperated. “It’s not Christmas yet.”

  “We’ve all had a tough year. I wanted to celebrate early.”

  “I’ll do it. You can hang onto mine. I’ll get Hadley’s,” Natalie offered, slipping her phone in her pant pocket.

  Not every man finds me undesirable in my flat shoes.

  “It’s the bigger box,” Isabel said.

  The bedroom was long, airy, and fragrant with the scent of Isabel’s tea rose sachets. A shiver ran through Natalie, not just from the temperature. It was the sense of the forbidden. She could poke around the drawers or the boxes of Isabel’s jewelry. In her closets hung cashmere sweaters Hadley would covet, light as meringues, her crepe de chine shirt-dress, her gray suede pants. Natalie wondered what it would be like to don these clothes, the soft wool and cool silk against her skin, to feel what it was like to be Isabel. No wonder Hadley admired beautiful things; she’d acquired that trait from her. Natalie fingered the fabric of her drab tunic. She would not let herself tank.

  Until we meet again.

  She could email Simon Hotmail Drouin right now, wish him a “Happy American holiday.” Not that much time had passed, a couple of weeks. He’d remember her. It would be her secret, as luxurious as one of Isabel’s shimmering scarves. An antidote to feeling like the dreary stepsister, the rejected wife. But then she thought of her photos, the leaves with the reddish-brown splotches, and tucked her phone back in her pant pocket.

  “It’s chilly in here,” George said when Natalie reappeared. “Maybe I should turn up the thermostat.”

  “Yes please, Bear,” Isabel said.

  The intimacy of the nickname made Natalie think about pressing her lips against Marc’s cheek, of the smell of his skin, cedar and sandalwood from his aftershave.

  How ironic. The first time Natalie had met George, she couldn’t figure out her sister’s attraction to him. Isabel’s previous boyfriends had been sinewy, charming men with the stamina to work long hours, then stay up making love half the night. Natalie was proud she’d nabbed the more desirable mate, with his lanky build and sloping height, his large hazel eyes, and his expressive mouth that she wanted to kiss while he talked. But what did any of that matter in the end?

  George is the keeper.

  “Can I help with dinner?” Natalie asked her stepsister.

  “The turkey’s cooking. The crust for the apple pie is in the fridge. I have to make the mashed potatoes and finish the salad.” Isabel smiled.

  “Impressive. When did you learn to cook?”

  “Don’t laugh! I watched YouTube videos. It helps to keep busy since my dad died. Come help me.”

  “Hadley, you keep me company,” George said. “I’ll make a fire. That’s cozier.”

  “Be careful.” Isabel wagged her finger at him. “Last time he almost burned down the house. Can you imagine if he’d gone into neurosurgery as planned?”

  “Surgeons are glorified plumbers,” George said with mock outrage, palm splayed on his chest. “I’m too scholarly to spend my days slicing into brains. Researching how they work is more intellectually taxing.”

  “I’m glad you chose so wisely.” Isabel bowed towards her husband. “I’m lucky to have an in-house consultant for my program.”

  Natalie witnessed the adoring look Isabel gave her husband. She rarely loosened up like this in front of others. Natalie envisioned them, when alone together, as engaged in parallel play, like toddlers building their block creations without awareness of their buddy’s construction. Working, always working. Perhaps grief was an emollient, loosening Isabel’s emotions.

  Natalie followed her stepsister down the hall on the Persian rug runner. Everything was polished and gleaming: brass floor lamps with sleek hoods, the coffee table with its slender vase of white roses, and the bronze bookshelves with medical and psychology tomes. The kitchen was a showstopper with its granite countertops, the herring-bone backsplash, and the glittering silver range.

  Isabel opened the refrigerator door and took out a bag of arugula, one of mixed greens, and one of rainbow-colored baby carrots. She handed them to Natalie and gestured for her to put them on the counter. “Did you get the letter?” she asked, peering back inside the fridge, pushing away neatly lined plastic cartoons and emerging with several potatoes. She dumped them next to the lettuce.

  “No. Ellen must not have sent it.”

  “You’re kidding! Do you think she forgot?”

  “No idea. I found out from the department, she retired.”

  Isabel shut the door with her elbow, arms full of tomatoes and peppers. “Big surprise. She was only staying for my dad.”

  “I can’t reach her. I keep trying her at home, and she doesn’t answer. I’m worried something happened to her.”

  Isabel shrugged. “Maybe she went on vacation. God knows, the woman barely took off a minute for forty years.”

  “Does she have anyone, family, friends, who’d know where she is?”

  “I think my father mentioned she has some family in Boston, a nephew maybe.”

  Natalie asked, “Did you talk to her at the funeral?”

  Isabel’s eyes were pearlescent with tears. “Briefly. She was wrecked about my dad. She hung onto this fantasy of a life with my dad forever. She didn’t even ask how I was.”

  “Ugh, sorry.”

  For a while, Natalie sliced endives, yellow and orange peppers, purple and white carrots on the cutting board. Her stepsister chopped potatoes into wedges and then threw them into the pot of boiling water. Then, George poked his head into the kitchen. “Do you need
any help? I don’t want you to think this is women’s work.”

  “We have it covered,” Isabel said.

  Hadley was out of earshot, but Natalie spoke in a low voice. “I did want to ask you something, George, about my scan. I read something, an article about inactivity in certain parts of the brain.”

  Isabel put down her knife. “I thought you’d stopped looking that stuff up ages ago. There was no structural damage, no bruises.”

  “I’m wondering if you found this pattern.” Natalie went back to sprinkling sunflower seeds on the salad. “Too many black areas, meaning problems with empathy and moral reasoning.”

  “Are you talking about the Fallon study?” George asked, pressing down on Natalie’s wrist as if checking her pulse. “How he made a correlation between reduced ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex activity and psychopathology?”

  “Yes,” Natalie whispered.

  “Why are you reading about that?”

  “To torture herself needlessly,” Isabel said.

  They heard Hadley squeal. “Oh my god, I love this!”

  “We can take a break while the potatoes cook,” Isabel said.

  Releasing Natalie’s arm, George shook his head. “Fallon’s reasoning is flawed and, anyway, has nothing to do with you.”

  When they went back into the living room, the girl was holding up a black leather satchel with a lovely sheen to it.

  “Belle, it’s too much!” Natalie scolded.

  “Mom! C’mon.”

  Isabel said, “From a doting aunt.”

  One extravagant gift from the doting aunt, another from the new girlfriend. And, she, Natalie, was just the “boring” single mom on a budget.