by Nicole Bokat
“But we had a deal.”
“Forget it. Let’s do something else … if you’re up for it.”
“Sure,” she enthused.
You were wrong this time!
“You up for a movie?”
She pictured herself in a dark theater, the hum in her head competing with the booming noise on the screen. Sitting too long was dangerous; brooding would ruin this, an actual date.
“How about something physical?” she proposed.
The idea of movement, of whizzing past her ruminations, appealed to her. She added quickly, “Athletic.”
“Athletic?” he laughed. “Sure. Want to shoot some hoops?”
“Umm, no.” She laughed back, shucking off her boots.
“Do you ski?”
“Hate it.” The snow-dappled mountains in Stowe, Marc and Hadley soaring in the gondola lift above her head. The frisson of terror.
“Good. Too expensive anyway.”
“I can ice skate.”
The Saturday morning ritual of going to the rink with her mother began when she was seven. Natalie had taken lessons, learned the basics: how to move with one hand on the rail, to bravely glide away, how to dip and fall onto the freezing surface. She’d conquered forward and backward crossovers, a basic one-foot, and then a two-foot, spin. Soon after she’d turned eleven, she stopped taking classes. All she’d craved was time alone with her mother, spinning together.
Jeremy said, “I played hockey as a kid.”
“I have to warn you. I haven’t done this in almost three decades.”
“Same here. We can be Laurel and Hardy on ice. How’s tomorrow afternoon? Too soon?”
She almost joked about his availability. “No, it’s great.”
NATALIE’S DREAM STARTED out differently that night. She was trapped underground, trying to follow her mother’s whispers to the surface, round and round a honeycomb-patterned tunnel. She couldn’t reach daylight. Her mother said, “Your dad, if only he hadn’t gotten sick. He was always so kind and gentle, like you.”
No, mom. I’m not like that, I’m not.
The scene switched to the car, her mother staring into the rearview window. Her cry, “The light’s blinding me. For Christ’s sake, what’s going on?”
Natalie whipped her head around and, in the twilight, spotted the familiar hood ornament on her stepfather’s white Mercedes, the radar detector cord bobbing against the dashboard.
Her mother whispered, “Garrick?”
The pulsating lights flooded her vision before their car pivoted. There was only a moment left in which to react. Natalie might have screamed for her mother or grabbed for the door handle as ballast. Her head swung forward and knocked against a hard surface and everything went blank.
eighteen
—
THEY’D RENTED SKATES AND TUCKED THEIR BOOTS INTO lockers. The locker’s key hung from a rubber bracelet around Natalie’s wrist, same as it had on her mother’s so many years ago. She tied the laces so tightly her ankles ached. Before, when the world was still a safe place, she’d never worried about a lace coming loose, that she’d trip over it.
Jeremy stood up from the bench, which was across from the vending machines. Down the hall was a concession stand where frankfurters, hamburgers, and donuts were sold. “Yum, my kind of food,” he’d exclaimed as they passed by. She grinned at his easy nature. Easy peasy.
Jeremy asked, “Want to race?”
Natalie regarded him in his rancher’s jacket and wool hat with hair flipping out at the sides. “Seriously?”
He clapped his gloved hands together. “Last one on the ice pays for hot chocolate.”
Natalie watched him totter through the glass doors. The rink was outside and, as Jeremy approached it, he jerked forward, nearly falling. He reached out for the railing while she slid by him onto the ice. She smiled at his pouty expression.
Natalie listened to the click, swish, click of her body pushing off. She glided and stopped. She was halfway around the ellipse when Jeremy caught up to her. “I used to be much faster,” he puffed. “And in better shape. Must get my ass to the gym.”
Her cheeks smarted. “I don’t remember it being this cold.”
“This is nothing. Chicago’s brutal. You grew up here?”
“Newton. Then Cambridge.”
“Harvard?” he asked.
“No way. That was Isabel. BU.” She turned around to brave backward crossovers, and he skated toward her. “I’d never have gotten into Harvard, not that I wanted to. Bad associations with it.”
“Cause of Isabel?”
“Garrick, my stepfather, taught in the law school. He wasn’t the warmest person.”
He faced her as if they were about to dance. “But you must have been close to your family to stick around. Me, I couldn’t wait to get away—well, not from Alex.”
“It wasn’t that.” Her body remembered: right foot on the ground. Then push off with the left. “I don’t have any family left, other than Belle.”
“No aunts and uncles, cousins?”
“Nope. My parents were both only children. I was one—well biologically—so is Marc, and Hadley. We are a long line of onlies. Hads hates it.”
“Yeah. I have cousins, but it’s not the same. I loved having my sister around.” He lowered his voice. “Having someone to complain to about our parents, someone I thought was cooler than me.”
Stroke, cross, stroke, cross. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she reached his side. “Hadley always complained, wanted a sister, like I had with Isabel.”
“You guys seem tighter than most siblings, never mind that you’re ‘steps.’”
“Here’s an example of what she’s done for me. I couldn’t bear to be alone in our house with Garrick. So, Belle commuted to Harvard rather than live in the dorm. Imagine giving all that up, all that camaraderie.”
“That’s a big concession.”
When he slowed down, Natalie changed direction, moving forward. Her eyes were tearing, and she couldn’t say if it was from the chilly air. “That’s the thing: she never made me feel like it was a sacrifice.”
“I want to know,” he said, moving closer, his breath a whisper of wind, “all of it, your story.”
What if she tried to spin, round and round, so quickly, no one could stop her? Her story was such a heavy weight to carry. How could she spin with that strapped to her back? “Buy me that hot chocolate.”
“Let’s go.”
Indoors, Natalie heard a woman say, “Tighten your laces, Becky, so they don’t come undone on the rink.” Then the clopping of skates, a child’s sigh. Her mother never had issued such a warning.
When Jeremy returned from the snack bar with two steaming Styrofoam cups, she glanced at his hands, at his wide thumbnails and ragged cuticles. They were unselfconscious hands, busy and bitten. Marc’s, she loved, so solid and sexy. Simon’s were smooth to the touch, his fingers long and thin and nimble. The thought of where Simon’s fingers had been made her squirm and shift on the bench.
“Thanks,” she said. “So, what do you want to know?”
Jeremy sat down next to her. “For starters, are you still worried about Grace Cooke?”
“Isabel had a private investigator look into it.” When Jeremy cocked his head in surprise, she said quickly, “Someone she met on the island.” She repeated the information Grace’s boyfriend had given the police.
“You must be glad that’s been put to rest,” Jeremy said.
“Not the emailer’s identity.”
“Still think it’s the stalker fan?”
Was this a test? A way to ferret out information about Isabel and her work? She looked at Jeremy, his olive skin—the suffusion of apricot in his cheeks—the lines reaching from his eyes forming a sideways peace sign under his glasses. He didn’t seem to be judging. But she couldn’t say what his intentions were.
“Probably.”
“What about the rest of your personal narrative?”
&nbs
p; She snorted. “Now, you sound like a journalist. Like what?”
He shrugged. “Anything. I could rattle off a list of questions, reporter-style. But you’d probably bolt.”
“Ask one.”
“Okay.” He tapped his finger against the Styrofoam cup. “What’s the most unusual thing about you?”
I might have killed my mother.
She took a sip of her hot chocolate. It tasted chalky, like a cheap candy bar that had sat too long on the shelf and turned gray. “I had a bad concussion when I was thirteen,” she said. “It wiped out a lot of my memory from around that time.”
Jeremy reached for her hand. “Same year your mom died.”
“Yeah.” He was a good listener. “Same accident. I only remember bits and pieces. The doctors say it’s not neurological at this point.”
“PTSD?”
“Maybe.” She licked her lips, which were chapped, and tasted a speck of blood on her tongue. “I’ve always felt so guilty, responsible for what happened.”
“You weren’t driving the car, at thirteen?” he asked, his tone incredulous.
“Of course not.”
“Where were you going that night?”
She shook her head. “That’s the thing … It’s complicated. I was a problem kid.”
“Like what? Drugs? Drinking? Hanging around with the partiers, skipping school?”
Laughter broke out, and she turned to see a group of teenagers, girls and boys, around Hadley’s age, sitting in a pack. Most were holding glazed donuts. Their hats and scarves looked glazed too, as if printed on luster paper, the colors bright and sharp. Before her life split apart, she’d had a pack of girlfriends, too. They’d gather at each other’s houses, eat chips and ice cream, paint each other’s fingernails and gossip about Denise Rappaport, how she was giving blowjobs in her basement while her mom was working her nursing shifts. They’d giggle and fall into each other like a litter of puppies.
“Not that. More, like, just angry. My stepfather wrote me a letter about what happened.”
“What did it say?”
“That’s the thing. His secretary, Ellen, was supposed to send it to me. FedEx swears it was delivered. But I never got it and, now, Ellen is in the Galapagos.”
“Skipped town?” He took a sip of his drink, his eyes beaming. “The plot thickens!”
She laughed nervously. “I’m like one of those Lifetime movie women who feels like she’s going crazy but is actually being poisoned by the nanny.”
“I’m not acquainted with that particular genre.”
“Post-break-up TV.”
“You don’t seem like either the poisoned woman or the nanny. You sound like someone who’s had some tough breaks.”
When he hugged her, Natalie felt that ache, so deep, the origin was impossible to locate. It pushed against her ribs, making her breathing feel labored.
AT THE DOOR to her place, Natalie paused for a second before fiddling the key into the lock. Marc would have dropped off Hadley by now. She’d be in her room, on her phone or laptop. There was no possibility of inviting Jeremy into her apartment and not introducing him to her daughter. She hadn’t brought home anyone other than Isabel and Cate since the divorce, certainly no men.
What about the condition of the apartment, she wondered? She hadn’t vacuumed or thrown out the pile of newspapers on the coffee table or sorted through the junk mail on the sideboard in the dining room. But Natalie was fairly certain that, unlike Marc, Jeremy wasn’t the kind of man who’d care about her housekeeping.
She led him into the living room, which was neat enough, where he lingered by the fireplace. He picked up a framed picture of six-year-old Hadley in her Halloween pumpkin costume.
“Can I get you some coffee?” she asked. “Or water? I have a bottle of wine, but no beer, I’m afraid.”
Jeremy shook his head so his hair, flecked with snow, flew in front of his face. “Nah, I’m good. This must be Hadley. She’s adorable. Looks like you.”
“Thanks.” Natalie smiled at the floor, the faded varnish on the wood strips. “I should just poke my head into her room, tell her I’m home.”
“Go ahead. I promise not to snoop.”
The copy of Isabel’s book in her hand, the taste of vomit in her mouth, the pictures of her stepsister strewn at her feet.
“You know the worst about me already.”
Stop lying. I can always tell.
Natalie stopped for a moment—the memory of her mother’s voice was devoid of time or place—then knocked on her daughter’s door.
“Yep,” Hadley called out. “I’m alive.”
She creaked it open to see her girl cross-legged on the bed, ear-buds in, attached to her phone. Her math book and notebook were open, and there was a bag of pita chips on her lap. “Two hours of busy work from Mr. Dick,” her daughter said.
“Very nice. Hey, there’s someone with me.”
“Really? Who?”
“A friend from … I met him at Aunt Isabel’s group.”
“Him?” Hadley’s eyes grew bigger. “Like a boyfriend?”
“No, of course not,” Natalie said, pleased at the suggestion. “If I had one, you’d be the first to know. Come say hi.”
As Hadley disengaged from her wires, Natalie realized she wanted her daughter to like Jeremy. She wanted them to like each other very much.
Hadley stood up in loose pajama bottoms that fell at her hips and a tight crop top with spaghetti sleeves. Her long corkscrew curls covered her breasts, but Natalie was certain she wasn’t wearing a bra. The thought, Too sexy, surprised her. The kid was fifteen.
Thank God, Hadley yanked open her dresser drawer and extracted her ever faithful Liberté Egalité Beyoncé t-shirt, layered it over the other one. She slid her bare feet with the peeling pedicure into her Ugg slippers—Elizabeth’s Christmas present. “Let’s go see your boyfriend,” she said cheerfully.
Jeremy was seated on the couch reading his own publication. “Hey,” he said. He bolted up, banging his knee against the coffee table.
“Careful there, cowboy,” Natalie said. “This is Hadley. Hads, Jeremy.”
“Hi,” her daughter said shyly.
“He’s hot,” Natalie imagined her daughter telling her friends. Now her child would have something new to report back to Marc when he asked about the workshop, something that wouldn’t show Natalie in a bad light for a change. Satisfaction slipped down her throat like a cool, sugary drink.
“Nice t-shirt,” Jeremy said. “I saw her in the On the Run tour. Pretty amazing.”
“Really?” Hadley asked, El Greco-eyed. “I tried to get tickets, but they sold out in, like, five minutes.”
“Helps to have a friend who’s the music critic.” He gestured to the Boston Globe on the coffee table.
“Jeremy is an editor there,” Natalie boasted. She felt thrilled he wanted to impress Hadley, which meant he wished to please her.
“‘Lemonade’ is the best music video ever.”
He nodded. “It’s certainly up there. I can get you tickets next time she comes to the area if you’d like.”
“Oh my God! Yes! Thank you!”
Jeremy grinned. “No problem.”
AFTER HADLEY HAD said goodnight and scampered down the hall with a backward glance and wave to Jeremy, and after he’d proclaimed, “That was easy,” and Natalie had asked, “What?” and he’d responded, “Winning her over,” they sat for a while talking and laughing. An hour passed without any mention of traumatic events. Or Isabel’s workshops. Or the Happiness industry.
“I’d better get going,” Jeremy said. He dusted off his pants as if he’d spilled crumbs on them.
“Yeah, gotta feed the kid,” Natalie said. She could invite him to stay for dinner. But she didn’t want to appear too eager, too expectant. Jeremy had discovered the truth about Sigrid. They’d solved the mystery in the Caribbean—unless Natalie contacted the investigator with her qualms and alternative theories. But she’d vowed not to h
old the events of that night up to a magnifying glass until she found a coincidence, a twist, a timing issue. Which meant: there was no compulsory reason for her and Jeremy to keep meeting.
“Hey,” she said, “I still owe you an interview.”
“No, you don’t.” He stretched as he stood up. “I can no longer be objective about anything to do with you. Including your sister.”
Natalie walked with him out of the living room. At the door, he was so close she saw a freckle below his right eye she’d never noticed before.
“Can we … get together again?” she asked.
The question hung in the air like a spider’s silk, but only for a second.
He leaned over and kissed her. His lips were slightly chapped, and his breath smelled of mints. The tip of his tongue on hers moved slowly, as if inscribing his initials. Natalie felt like an abandoned house re-inhabited. Her currents were surging again, her circuits switched back on.
As soon as Jeremy closed the door behind him, she heard a shuffling. It was Hadley in her Christmas slippers. Natalie turned quickly. What had her daughter witnessed?
Down the hall, her kid beamed. When she got to Natalie’s side she said, “Nice going, Mom. Guess Aunt Isabel was right, after all. Her group works.”
“We’ll see,” Natalie shot back. It was a wondrous feeling, this lightness and speed, like coasting down a water slide at an amusement park.
Hadley rapped, “‘Whenever I feel afraid, I hold up my head and sing, oh, yeah, and whistle a happy tune.’”
Natalie’s mother in the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel, her whispery soprano, “‘So no one will suspect!’”
“How do you know that?” Natalie asked.
“The kids in the show are obsessed with Kelli O’Hara. They played The King and I’s music the whole time we painted sets.”
“My mother used to sing that.”
“She did?” Hadley glimmered with curiosity. “What was she afraid of?”
“Good question.”
NATALIE COULDN’T GET the song out of her mind as she rinsed the tomato sauce from the pan and stacked their plates and glasses in the dishwasher. Or as she soaked in the bathtub, the room lit only by her new tranquility candles that smelled like lavender. Or, as she checked her mail, a nighttime habit she needed to break, she told herself the second she read the sender’s address.