by Nicole Bokat
“I can’t keep this. It must have cost a fortune.”
“Not so much,” Isabel waved away the discussion of money. “Anyway, it’s for fun. You can always take it off when you start entertaining gentleman callers.”
Natalie laughed at the Katharine Hepburn imitation. She slipped the ring on her finger and held out her hand in front of her. Her eyes brimmed again. “How did you manage this? All the stores are closed.”
“I got it last summer and was waiting till the right time, when you were ready to ditch Marc. I had it fitted for you. The band was too big. But you always had the tiniest fingers.”
AFTER NATALIE WALKED her stepsister to the stairs in her building, she paused on the landing. She remembered hearing that phrase before: the tiniest fingers.
So many years ago. The sound of howling had woken her in the night. When Natalie tiptoed towards Isabel’s room, she’d realized the noise was coming from the TV, one of those horror movies her stepsister loved. She’d edged open the door to see Isabel lying on her stomach on her area rug. A pile of clothing towered near the bed. It was a worse mess than usual: dirty sneakers under a standing lamp, schoolbooks scattered all over the floor, a mug with the residue of milk in it, and a plate with crumbs balanced precariously on a canvas chair.
“Shush,” Isabel whispered and hopped up. She took Natalie by the hand. “Let’s get a snack.”
They padded their way into the Newton kitchen with the canary-yellow wall phone, which matched the sunflower wallpaper and the canvas on the stool seats. Natalie poured milk into a bowl of Honeycomb cereal. Isabel swiped a dishcloth from the handle of the refrigerator and tortured it into a tight knot. She was barefoot, her toes polished a blackish red color so that they looked banged up.
“She wants us to be apart, but I won’t let her.”
“You sure the school was my mom’s idea?” Natalie asked. Her gut was bunched up like the towel.
“Of course,” Isabel said, leaning on the Formica countertop. “Laura makes all the important decisions. My dad would never come up with it.”
“But things aren’t that bad, are they?”
“She said it would be better for you, ‘a calmer environment.’ Those are the words she used.”
Natalie couldn’t let the riptide of fear pull her under. “I’ll tell her that’s not true.”
Isabel picked up a dry piece of cereal on the side of the bowl and bit down on it. She edged off her own mother’s wedding band. Isabel hardly ever discussed Sigrid, but she’d held onto keepsakes. “For you, so you don’t forget me.” She eased it over Natalie’s knuckle, which wasn’t big enough to prevent it from slipping off. “Wow. You have the tiniest fingers.”
“No,” Natalie said and returned the band. “I’m not going to forget you. I’ll convince Mom or figure something out. Don’t worry. I’ll do whatever it takes for us to be together.”
nine
—
SINCE THE HOLIDAYS, NATALIE HAD STARTED USING THE WIRED Happy app daily. Chimes. Breeze. The sound of Isabel’s voice: “Sit or lie down and focus on your breathing. Place one hand on your stomach and one hand on your chest. Observe the belly as it rises and falls. You are in a place of tranquility.”
Natalie was too far from that place. Sitting with the pillows wedged between her and her bed frame, she spun her foot around and around as if drawing geometric circles and tried to ignore the racing interference of her thoughts. But disturbing images crammed through. A dark street, a sudden burst as if a strobe light were aimed in their direction, her mother’s car veering—then losing time.
She thought of the memory that had come back to her. She’d told Isabel, “I’ll figure something out. I’ll do whatever it takes for us to be together.” Was it because Natalie was so desperate not to be cast from her home, away from Isabel, that she’d caused the crash, an impulsive act by an impulsive girl? She pictured the flashlight in her drawer, right here next to her bed, and was certain it was a token, a recognition of the child who needed a school for troubled teens.
There was no one else she could ask about the girl she was before the crash, the one teeming with fury and fight. Other than Cate and Isabel, there’d been only her stepfather. And his message to her had been lost with Ellen somewhere in South America.
Isabel proclaimed, “With each breath you are being renewed and regenerated. At this moment, there’s no sense of time. You are being healed, cradled by the sky. You are floating on the wind.” Natalie imagined the cradling sky loosening its arms and dropping her—whoosh—until she splatted onto the street below. One eye open, she viewed the glowing green numbers of her clock change to 3:53 a.m.
Natalie snapped the wires from her ears and wrenched them free of her cell. She switched on her table lamp and padded to her closet. On a high shelf was a shoebox stuffed with loose Polaroids of her childhood and a couple of her mom’s old albums. Quietly, she tiptoed to the kitchen. She filled the kettle with water and turned up the flame on the stove, the room partially illuminated by moonlight. At the table, she studied the plastic-covered album pages.
In snapshot after snapshot, Natalie was surprised by her mother’s youthfulness, the candor of her smile, flyaway hair, casual in her clothes and poses with only the peachy-orange lipstick as a concession to beauty. While the sense of her mother was always with her, Natalie could no longer summon up her mom’s features on demand. Her brain, that unreliable organ, had erased the exact details: the hazel tint of her mom’s eyes, the slope of her cheeks, the olive skin and curly dark hair of Natalie’s great-grandparents who’d left Kiev in the late nineteenth century.
Here was a picture of Isabel at maybe fourteen-years-old: her hair cut so that it kissed the middle of her neck, her eyes staring straight into the camera, exhibiting the usual sense of self-containment. Isabel’s intensity and superior intellect had garnered her the respect of other students, but not their friendship. There was one odd girl who’d come to the Newton house and watched TV while Isabel did her homework. Natalie couldn’t conjure up her name but recalled the girl was chunky and wore gobs of concealer over her chin acne. Later there were others: a pack of slim-hipped boy-men, and a few young women in breast-hugging shirts, drinking from bottles of beer in the low light of the living room. Where were her mother and Garrick who, certainly, wouldn’t have allowed these kids to drink alcohol in their house?
Natalie paused when she came to a portrait of herself at what must have been close to the age of the crash. She was skinny in bell-bottoms and a t-shirt, her eyes wide and her curly hair awkwardly parted down the middle. She was wearing a chunky turquoise ring on her index finger. Natalie examined this girl who was smiling dreamily. Beneath her preteen languidness, had rebellious rage hid? No answer. Her fickle memory refused to cooperate.
The room was still. The whirring, coming from the refrigerator, had temporarily stopped. Natalie felt an ache in her abdomen, a longing like homesickness. She shuffled to the couch and scrunched one of the pillows under her head.
What did I do?
HADLEY’S VOICE WAS tinged with concern. “Mom, why are you out here?”
Natalie blinked awake. “Hi, Hads.”
“I went into your room and you weren’t there.”
“Oh, I got up to get a glass of water and must have conked out.”
Hadley’s eyes rested on the photos scattered on the floor. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Did you have that nightmare again?”
Natalie startled, felt a flutter of heat. “What?”
“Dad told me you dream, sometimes, about, you know, the accident.”
“He shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m not a little kid.”
“I’m fine,” she chopped down on the words. Glancing at the Roman numeral wall clock, she added, “Hey, I better hurry and get you to school.”
January third. First day back to their routine, thank God.
“Yep.” Hadley gnawed on her lip. “I’ll get
my stuff.”
Natalie hurried to start the coffee, shower, and grab a pair of jeans and sweater from the hamper. She towel-dried her hair so at least water wasn’t running down her back and frowned at her reflection. Since the Caribbean, she’d dropped ten pounds, and it showed on her drawn face, her sunken cheeks. She touched a small constellation of brown freckles near her mouth. “You look like crap,” she said.
In the car, Hadley asked, “Don’t you have a job today?”
“Best Pastries of Boston. Want me to bring you home cannoli?”
“Sure.” Her daughter slid the wand out of her lip-gloss applicator and dabbed it on her bottom lip. Through a mouth glistening like mango sorbet, she said, “You had that same sweater on last night.”
Natalie turned right onto Washington Street, snow dusting the trees. “Hads, when did you become the clothing police?”
“Mom, it’s gross. You promised you’d make an effort.”
How much of Hadley’s new habit of inspecting flaws was normal teen behavior? Hadley might be fuming at Marc for his engagement to Elizabeth, yet she wasn’t going to let Natalie off the hook. Natalie hadn’t paid enough attention to her presentation, her daughter’s comments scolded, the way she dressed, her unkempt hair, her disheveled home office—all of it a symptom of a disordered life. Natalie was tempted to ask if Elizabeth ate breakfast in pearls and lipstick, if she rolled her underwear into neat compartments and stacked them in rows. But the argument wasn’t, never could be, with Hadley.
“My job isn’t till ten. We had to get going. Next time I’ll wear my diamond tiara.”
“Yeah, thanks, Mom.”
Natalie slowed down the car, as she edged closer to the school. She reached out to touch her daughter’s arm. “Listen, Hads …”
Don’t blame me for Dad’s behavior.
“I’m going to be late,” her daughter said, pulling away.
It struck her then, after her night of studying photographs. “You have my mother’s eyes.”
The girl’s expression softened. “Grandma’s?”
How could her mother, dead at thirty-eight, be a grandmother? Natalie nodded. “The exact shape and color.”
“Wow. You never talk about her.”
Natalie stroked her daughter’s cheek. “It’s hard for me.”
“Mom? They’re your eyes, too.”
SHE ONLY HAD a few moments to check her email before getting ready for her shoot. Natalie’s throat clutched. There were three new ones: an inquiry about work, one from a political fundraiser, and one from bbGodfrey@gmail. She placed her hand on her stomach and watched it expand as she slowed down her breathing. You are in a place of tranquility. Not so. She clicked on the message. It read: Doesn’t it bother you what they did, that you were lied to? That guy witnessed what happened, the blood on the car. Why haven’t you done anything yet?
There was no sign off or name. It felt like a clap to the cheek, the soft spot under the bone and above the teeth that hurt the most when hit. She tapped reply: I’m asking again, who are you and what do you want?
She read the message over and over until the words thumped like a headache: What they did. You were lied to. She envisioned the emailer squatting in the bushes, balancing on his haunches, the warm dirt beneath sandaled feet. She thought of action movies in which kidnappers send a ransom note, followed by intricate, explicit instructions. There were no clear directions here. If Natalie went to the police, gave herself up, who would she save?
What if bbGodfrey was actually outing himself, if the emailer was Simon, who’d acted helpful, then flirted with her the next day? Many people had more than one online address.
Is that why Isabel had warned her against Simon who had flirted with her in his charming British accent, had asked her to dinner, and sent her a Christmas greeting? A little perversion never hurt anyone. If he was hiding his identity behind subterfuge, he’d need a motivation. Extortion, a monetary payoff to keep him quiet, was the most likely one. He knew Isabel was successful, maybe figured he could blackmail her to save Natalie. No, that made no sense. He would have asked for money already. But what if he had contacted Isabel and her stepsister had kept this from her for the same reason she’d shielded Natalie from learning about Dr. Strout?
Her mind jammed on images of those moments in the tropics: the thump of the car, the sliver of moon, the man’s startling eyes and his easy walk to search the bushes.
In the moments before Natalie joined them on the road, Isabel could have pleaded with him to keep quiet about the wreckage. An injured or dead child, not an animal. “She’s been through enough. Please. How much will it take?”
Quickly, Natalie rushed to her bedroom, pulled open the drawer to her night table, and reached for her Xanax bottle. She stared at the oval pills inside, which reminded her of blue Pez candies. Rather than cleaving the pill down its fault line—“Half a pill to help me sleep! Don’t confuse me with Sigrid”—she stuck the entire thing in her mouth. She held the Xanax on her tongue. When the medication kicked in, she’d stop worrying.
Great. I need drugs to get me less anxious about taking drugs.
Natalie spit it out into her palm. She had photo editing to do before her pastry shoot and couldn’t be foggy headed.
An idea germinated. Her fingers aquiver, she wrote to Simon: Thank you, again, for the Christmas card. You told me to write if I was ever in NYC. I’ll be coming in….
Was she serious? She took a second to consider and confirmed that, yes, she was. It would mean withholding her plans from Isabel who would try to discourage her with warnings about this man, warnings that she’d be justified to make. Natalie mustn’t do that push-pull thing she did, doubting herself, her every choice, turning to Marc or her stepsister for confirmation. She would imitate that girl she once was before her mother died, the one Cate described to her, who was prepared and focused, not afraid. The next day was Friday. Natalie couldn’t arrange to get away so quickly. Chances were he had plans already. She chose the following Saturday’s date, even though it wasn’t Marc’s weekend to be with Hadley. She could work it out at the last minute.
Let me know if you’re available for coffee or a drink. Best, Natalie.
ISABEL WAS CONDUCTING the workshop from the center chair in the semi-circle, not perched on her desk, as she usually positioned herself. She scanned the audience, eyes ablaze, her face aglow from whatever cream or peel she’d used to refresh her skin. “Physiological problems can arise from chronic stress: the production of cortisol and epinephrine and the rise in levels of a neurotransmitter called catecholamine. This particular neurotransmitter affects your central nervous system and hormones. It sets off a chain of events that can suppress your immune system, cause poor sleep and appetite, even depression.”
Isabel’s voice was melodic. How could she make grim medical jargon sound like poetry?
Natalie was perspiring in the heated loft. Her eyes wandered around the room, observing the usual crew: a college girl wearing a tie-dye shirt, a chubby, middle-aged woman, and a bearded man wearing Birkenstocks with socks who appeared to be dozing. She stared at Prama/Heather in black leggings, Uggs, and a hibiscus pink pullover, and felt a flash of annoyance.
“Remember our innate negativity bias? Tonight, I’m going to talk about how this works. If, right now, you’re thinking this doesn’t sound very scientific, blame your brain! Two-thirds of the neurons in the amygdala are programmed to receive bad news. So, doubting my research means your brain is doing its job.” Isabel grinned.
Natalie watched as Jeremy strode into the room, ten minutes late, in the same rancher’s jacket and cowboy boots as last time. She couldn’t believe her own carelessness at confiding intimate details to a stranger. Even if they did have an easy rapport, even if she liked the way his hair jutted out, his agate brown eyes with the creases and soft pouches beneath. He winked at her and, suddenly, she had the urge to photograph him. When was the last time she’d felt that? Quickly, she looked away, stifled the urge.<
br />
Isabel said, “We can consciously train ourselves to focus on and store positive experiences, to increase our compassion for others and for ourselves.”
Ms. Anshaw raised her hand, and Natalie noticed that she had gray sludge marks under her eyes. She felt a swell of sympathy, an unlikely camaraderie. When Isabel nodded in her direction, the girl asked, “What if someone has done something so truly horrible that the negativity isn’t a bias but is … justified?”
Yes, exactly.
A woman with hair the color of peach pulp, so closely cropped to her skull it looked like a side effect of chemotherapy, recited, “‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.’ Catholic school K-12.”
“Thank you, Ms. Demsey,” Isabel said with a grin.
A ripple of laughter throughout the room.
“I think it depends what you mean by horrible,” Isabel said crisply. “Most of us are much harder on ourselves than we deserve.”
The girl frowned. “Not always. What if someone has done something unforgivable?”
“Such as?” Isabel asked, eyes steady on the girl.
“I don’t …” Ms. Anshaw faltered. “Those school shooters or the white supremacists, you know, those men marching with the tiki torches.”
“I doubt they are signing up for happiness seminars,” the chubby woman chimed in. “And I’m sure whatever you feel guilty about is nothing like that.”
Some things were indefensible. Like murdering your mother.
When Isabel directed the group to consider the various materials she’d distributed at the beginning of the meeting, Natalie picked up the first pamphlet without reading it. After Isabel laid out the exercises to do, the group broke up.
Isabel’s most fervent disciples were congregated around her. When Ms. Anshaw tapped her on the wrist, Isabel snatched her arm away—a sign of stress. More flack from her editor to hurry up? With a wave, Natalie ducked out. As she reached the vestibule to the building, she noticed Jeremy’s back to her. She was ahead of the others, but once in the entranceway, she aligned herself with the crowd.